144 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



Year Bushels 



1900 1,477,093 



1910 1,878,000 



1915 2,624,000 



1920 3,150,000 



The relative insignificance of these figures is very 

 plain by proper comparisons. The California corn 

 crop of 1919 was only about one two-hundredth that 

 of Iowa,, while that of Iowa is but little more than 

 one-seventh of the whole country. Roughly speak- 

 ing, it would take about fifteen hundred states with 

 California's liking for the crop to make the corn 

 product of the United States. 



In contrast with the lack of great achievement 

 of corn is the rapid advance of rice, the production 

 of which in 1919 constituted California second only 

 to Louisiana in the volume of product and first of 

 all the states in the average acre value of the crop. 

 It was natural that the first Americans looking on 

 the vast area of low rush-grown lands along the 

 courses and in the deltas of the two greatest rivers 

 of the State should have dedicated them to the pro- 

 duction of unlimited rice. Especially did their 

 prophecies pertain to the deltas where the land was 

 always subject to overflow. There were sharp ex- 

 hortations to rice-growing both to use lands, then 

 thought to be almost worthless otherwise, and to dis- 

 place the forty million pounds of rice annually im- 

 ported, partly to feed the sixty thousand Chinese who 

 were then in the State. This was the current dream 

 for two decades centering in 1865 and, though nu- 



