THE TEXAS RICE BOOK. 51 



A NEW TEXAS CROP. 



WHAT RICE CULTURE WILL DO FOR THE COAST COUNTRY. 



Port Lavacca, Texas. One of the most interesting fea- 

 tures of the meeting of the Texas Real Estate and Industrial As- 

 sociation at San Antonio, June 27th and 28th, was an address by 

 Mr. S. L. Gary, of Jennings, La., on the subject of "Modern Rice 

 Growing in Texas." In reviewing the history of rice culture, 

 Mr. Gary said: 



"Modern rice growing is something new under the sun. Rice 

 has fed the world from Adam to McKinley, with little or no im- 

 provement in its growing or its preparation for market from cre- 

 ation until A. D. 1884 ,when Maurice Brien brought his twine- 

 binding harvester from Delaware County, la., to Jennings, La., 

 where it was used successfully in the rice fields. 



"Fifteen years ago a few of us were growing one to five 

 acres of rice in some low spot, trodden in the ground by Creole 

 ponies or cultivated with a wood tooth harrow, harvested with 

 the sickle, threshed with mules, and cleaned with a club. To-day 

 gang plows, press drills, 6,000 twine binding harvesters, thresh- 

 ers and the largest and best mills on earth are placing on our 

 home market the finest rice the world has ever seen ; and all this 

 was accomplished by immigration from the Northwest of people 

 too poor to live there longer. They brought their poverty, their 

 day's work, their knowledge of machinery and a laudable ambi- 

 tion to get to the top in any line presented. 



We have in Louisiana forty rice mills, with 300,000 acres in 

 rice ; Texas has one or two small mills at Beaumont, one at Gal- 

 vesion and one at Houston, with over fifty thousand acres in 

 rice, and with two very large mills building at Beaumont by the 

 largest importers of foreign rice on either side of the continent, 

 and more to follow. Now capital is freely offered at reasonable 

 rates." 



"If the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one 

 grew before is a public benefactor, what shall be said of the man 

 who puts down a well and makes a farm? Two hundred such 

 wells are already in use, and it is found that for a hundred and 

 fifty miles East and West, by fifty North and South, in South- 

 west Louisiana and Southeast Texas, these conditions exist. How 

 much further, will soon be determined. One six-inch well, a five- 

 inch pump, with a fifteen horse power engine cost of all $1,200 

 to $1,500 will flood from one hundred to two hundred and fifty 

 acres of rice at a cost of $1.50 up to $3.50 per acre and with re- 

 sults fully equal to the canals. 



The most noted artesian wells of history, of great depth ,could 

 not furnish the amount of water we get from our shallow wells. 

 The noted Crenelle, near Paris, 1798 feet deep, only furnishes 

 516 gallons a minute, while we get from 500 to 3,500 gallons m 

 the same time Seventy-five wells in the great Sahara yield 600,- 



