Rice 



39 



MEN HUSKING RICE AT BANGKOK, SIAM 



harvesting machinery. Hand labour thus becomes necessary, which in the United States is 

 enormously more expensive than in the tropics. 



In Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi, there are large areas in. the river deltas, etc., 

 which can be flooded at high and drained at low tide. Arrangements are easily made to 

 regulate the water supply, and rice is grown in much the same manner as in the East. Hand 

 labour is necessary to a large extent, and these naturally favoured territories produce less than 

 one-twentieth of the rice grown in the United States, although South Carolina has been famous 

 for the high quality of its rice for perhaps two centuries. Comparatively recently — about 

 1880 — a great prairie region in Louisiana and Texas was opened up, and, where water was 

 available, was found to be suited to rice cultivation. Accordingly, with the aid of deep wells, 

 powerful pumps, and elaborate irrigation canals, naturally dry prairies are flooded at will to allow 

 rice to grow. But it is important to notice that when the water is run off, the lands are left 

 sufficiently dry to allow ordinary harvesting machinery to be used. In this region, therefore, 

 instead of having to reap rice laboriously by hand, up-to-date reaping and binding machines 

 drawn by mules are employed, with an enormous reduction in cost. 



In 1904 this region produced twenty of the twenty-one million bushels of rice grown in the 

 United States. Modern steam threshing machines are used, and every detail of the industry 

 carried out under as good conditions as in the case of wheat or any other cereal; so that rice 

 can now be grown in Louisiana and Texas at a cost actually less than in China, although a 

 man's wages in China are only about one-twentieth of those paid in the States. This is due 

 to the fact that with hand labour in China one man cannot cultivate more than about one 

 or two acres, whereas in Louisiana or Texas with the aid of machinery one man can cultivate 

 about eighty acres. 



Harvesting. The crop is reaped by cutting the stalks in practically the same way as one 

 would reap wheat. The instruments used vary in different countries, and sometimes the 



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