THE TEXAS RICE BOOK. 9 



Our modern rice mill is an automaton of complicated ma- 

 chinery, into which the rough rice passes and finally appears, 

 ready for market graded, sacked and weighed, at the rate of 

 20,000 to 200,000 pounds per day, according to capacity. 



Thus far the evolution of rice in its production and milling 

 processes have gone forward with perfect success upon South- 

 ern soil. The problem now widens. It is one of economic distri- 

 bution. The producer of wheat in Dakota receives within a third 

 of a cent per Ib. of the sum the consumer in Louisiana pays for 

 the flour. In case of wheat, transportation, milling and profits 

 are kept within a third of a cent per pound. Reversing it, the con- 

 sumer of rice in Dakota pays five cents per pound more than 

 the farmer in Louisiana receives at his home market. That is, it 

 costs fifteen times as much to mill and market rice as it does to 

 mill and market wheat. When I was a boy I held my atlas on an 

 incline in front of me, and somehow the idea took possession of 

 me that it was always uphill toward the north pole. Transporta- 

 tion lines must have arrived at some such conception, and are 

 charging for heavy grades in moving freights toward the North. 

 However, the battle of the toiling millions for cheap food will 

 soon arbitrate the question in favor of rice, and the two great 

 staples, wheat and rice, will be placed upon the same footing 

 commercially. With transportation and other questions of eco- 

 nomic distribution adjusted, the producers of rice will enter upon 

 a battle royal with the producers of wheat. With what result? 

 In India, China and Japan, which contain about one-half the pop- 

 ulation of the world, wheat and rice have been produced for 

 centuries under similar conditions. Both are cultivated 

 and harvested by the crudest hand processes. There, under sim- 

 ilar conditions, the result has been favorable to rice. In the Unit- , 

 ed States both are machine products, upon a parity. Rice has 

 against it the greater cost of irrigation and of cutting. It has in 

 its favor a larger yield per acre, a more certain crop, and an adap- ! 

 tation to rich low lands unsuited to wheat. The by-products of j 

 rice are fully as valuable as those of wheat. The straw is supejj=J 

 ior as a stock food. , Thousands of tons of rice straw have been 

 sold this year in Louisiana for $4 to $6 per ton to stockmen. 

 Rice bran and rice polish rank for food with wheat bran and 

 wheat middlings. 



It should be noted that wheat production in the United 

 States has passed the meridian of its vigor. Many States that 

 were once large contributors to the wheat supply do not now pro- 

 duce enough for -home consumption. Wheat was fortunate in 

 finding wonderfully favorable conditions on the prairies of the i 

 Northwest, but it exhausts the soil rapidly; ten to fifteen years . 

 continuous cropping reduces the annual yield per acre to scarcely 

 paying quantities. The center of wheat production is moving 

 steadily to the North. There is little remaining territory for it 

 to devastate. Already it is a giant with paralyzed limbs. 



