3 o8 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



of machinery the maximum expenditure of human effort on 

 one acre of rice is two days and the use of a team for a day 

 and a half. The comparison, therefore, is that of 40 and 

 60 to i in favor of the American method, and the chief factor 

 of this advantage is machinery and its intelligent use. 

 Stated in terms of product and omitting animal aid, in India 

 80 days' labor produces 1,000 pounds of rice; in the Philip- 

 pines, 900 pounds ; in Japan, allowing for the help of a team, 

 3,000 pounds ; but in Louisiana and Texas, 64,800 pounds. 

 Twelve and one-half pounds of paddy, or unhusked rice, are 

 produced by a day's labor in India. In the Philippines, 11% 

 pounds. In Japan, 373/2 pounds. In the United States, 810 

 pounds. In other words, the farm laborer in this country 

 produces practically 64 times as much rice in a day as the 

 Oriental, and could therefore be allowed, not counting sev- 

 eral other items in his favor, as of methods of subsequent 

 handling, quality of product and higher prices, $1.25 per day 

 on a basis of 2 cents per day for his Eastern competitor. 

 Such are the facts and the figures that make our growers 

 confident that they will in the not distant future not only sup- 

 ply the home demand for rice, but that they will eventually 

 export the cereal to the world's markets and there success- 

 fully compete with the product of the penny-a-day laborers of 

 the Orient. 



What American machinery is doing for our planters in the 

 production of rice is not unique, but typical. The human 

 labor required in the production of a unit's measure of almost 

 any one of our staple crops has been, in comparison with our 

 own achievements of a generation ago, incredibly reduced. The 

 census of 1870 did not report crop acreages at all, neither did 

 it report separately the value of agricultural products, but the 



