14 THE TEXAS RICE BOOK. 



Foundries and factories will come to her unsought; her cit- 

 ies will broaden to meet the demands of an increasing commerce, 

 and her marts of trade will teem with merchants from every land. 



Thus far it appears to me that this convention, from an in- 

 dustrial standpoint, has 'been apologetic and penitential for the 

 neglect of its past opportunities with promises of reform and 

 good resolutions for the future. I do not think Louisiana and 

 Texas require any apology. For the past fifteen years they have 

 embraced every opportunity for industrial improvement, and 

 have gone into every battle for the commercial and industrial ad- 

 vancement of their people with the flags of their States spiked to 

 the staff. 



Speaking for the rice section, fifteen years since there was 

 scarcely a barrel of commerical rice produced in what is now 

 known as the prairie rice section, which extends 400 miles along 

 the gulf coast, and contains some of the most fertile lands on 

 this continent. These lands were then valued at 25 cents to $1.50 

 per acre. There were few settlements and no rice mills. To-day 

 it is the rice-producing center of this country. Unimproved 

 lands are worth on an average of $12.50 per acre. There are 

 thousands of improved farms and happy homes. Within the ter- 

 ritory are twenty-seven rice mills, with a daily capacity* of over 

 20,000 barrels of rice. A score of young cities have sprung from 

 the prairies, are clamoring for harbors and public bulidings, and 

 are heralding themselves as the future urban centers of the South. 



To illustrate the momentum of progress, it may be stated 

 that one firm has sold in a retail way over 20,000 acres of land 

 for actual settlement since last July. Within the past ninety days 

 over $10,000,000 of new capital have been invested in the rice 

 industries of Louisiana and Texas. I can not say we are exactly 

 in line, but we shall be when the rest double-quick for a few years. 



RICE CULTURE IN EAST TEXAS. 



(By G. McManus, at the Texas Farmers' Congress, A. & M. Col- 

 lege, College Station, July 5th, 1900.) 



My friends, you may have been reading the cyclopedias, or, 

 perhaps, newspaper correspondence from the Philippines, or your 

 friends from the Carolinas have told you all about rice growing 

 in their quags. But none of them knew about our methods in 

 Southern Texas or- Southwest Louisiana. Let me tell you of them. 

 We cannot use a marsh or swamp for rice growing. We must 

 have high, smooth (not necessarily level), well drained land. We 

 plow the land for rice just as we would for wheat or oats, with 

 ordinary sulky or gang plows, cut the sod with a disc harrow, and 

 sow about one-third of a barrel of rice seed per acre with press 

 drills. The land must be as dry for sowing as any wheat land. 

 Then while the seed is sprouting and growing its first six or 



