NEW INTERESTS. 157 



when a few enterprising men drove modern machinery into 

 the country and undertook the cultivation of rice by the 

 methods, modified to suit circumstances, which were bringing 

 forth such incredible quantities of corn and wheat from the 

 prairie states a thousand miles to the north of them. They 

 were immediately and immensely successful, and the magnet 

 of their success began to draw immigration from near and 

 far. Farmers felt the influence in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota 

 and Michigan. They felt it in the Eastern States and in 

 New York. And thus from widely separated and distant 

 localities the tide is at this moment flowing in. New rice 

 farms are being settled so rapidly that the rice-growing region 

 is repeating the scenes of the wheat-growing regions of the 

 middle North a generation ago. An immense aggregate num- 

 ber of acres will this year be planted with rice, but the new in- 

 terest is at present only well under way. The belt especially 

 adapted to this industry varies from 20 to 50 miles in 

 width, and extends from the banks of the Mississippi to and 

 beyond the Brazos River, a distance of more than 400 miles. 

 Moreover, in many sections of Florida a little capital judi- 

 ciously expended would bring profitable returns. In south- 

 ern Mississippi also there are large tracts of land suitable 

 for rice culture which may still be had at merely nominal 

 prices. When it is remembered that lands devoted to new 

 purposes have frequently shown multiplied valuation within 

 a comparatively few years wheat lands that were bought 

 for $1.25 per acre, and others that were obtained merely for 

 settling upon them have within a generation risen to $100 

 an acre, and other lands, obtained at the same terms, and 

 planted as orchards, now selling at $1,000 an acre it seems 

 safe to say that the man who is adapted to the occupation of 



