AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 145 



merous small experiments with growing rice in the 

 river deltas were made, 110 commercial quantity was 

 ever gathered. 



On the other hand, utterly forsaking this dream 

 and the kind and situation of land for which it was 

 projected, rice-growing, which did not give Cali- 

 fornia entrance to the list of rice-growing states in 

 the United States Census of 1910, began about that 

 time, chiefly in the Sacramento Valley, and within 

 a decade reached such production that the State be- 

 came second for rice in the whole country, as afore- 

 said. It is dramatic also that, refusing the rich 

 open soils of the deltas upon which other products 

 properly handled rival the production of all other 

 lands of the State, rice accepted hard rebellious lands 

 on which other grains had become unprofitable be- 

 cause of the exhaustion of organic matter from the 

 soil and often because of the increase of alkali therein. 

 Such lands were usually far away from the rivers 

 but when water was brought to them by irrigation 

 canals or locally supplied by pumping from shal- 

 low wells, they held it up to the rice roots as coarse 

 open soils could not do. The water, with adequate 

 summer heat for large growth and safety for the ma- 

 turity of the plant in a frostless autumn, produced 

 surprising development. With the arrest of the wa- 

 ter supply at the proper time, the land quickly 

 dried out by evaporation in the dry autumn air and 

 brought itself into an ideal condition for harvesting, 

 with such a thick stand and full maturity of the 

 plants that the average acre yield, as reported by 



