HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 433 
during the past year in the same ratio in which it was growing for- 
merly, or whether there has been the check that was anticipated? 
Secretary Witson. There was a little check, but it increased prob- 
ably this last year 40,000 tons. It has a healthy growth now. You 
can see the value of the Department work there. 
There is a strip of country along the Gulf coast 50 miles wide and 
700 miles long. Seven years ago we produced 25 per cent of our rice, 
now we are producing the equivalent of all the rice we consume. We 
do import some varieties, because the Chinaman is a queer proposi- 
tion; he will not eat any rice but the kind that grows in the neighbor- 
hood of where he was born. The California Chinaman, heretofore, 
would not eat American rice, and imported it; but we found that 
out, and they will eat American rice unbeknown to themselves some 
of these days. That is becoming an enormous industry down there. 
We found a queer condition of affairs in New Orleans. One set of 
men were swearing at the Cuban bill for its possible injury to the 
Cuban crop, and another set were going to send a committee to Wash- 
ington to insist on its passage in order to give them a market for their 
rice. So we havea big income now. Weare saving a heap of money 
to the United States along rice lines. The rice work is substantially 
finished. If they want help there, as they will by and by when an 
insect will get there, we will have to send an entomologist or, if a plant 
disease, we will have to send a plant pathologist. But the work is 
finished there and out of the way. 
Searching the world for crops necessary and desirable for the several 
localities in the United States has resulted in finding many things that 
grow in localities where nothing grew before. There were 10,000 
bushels of macaroni wheat grown this year. I was out in that Utah 
Valley this summer. I learned there they had planted this Durham 
wheat—hard wheat. It grows in northern Algeria and in northern 
Russia on the Volga in 10 inches of rainfall, and it was grown in the 
Utah Valley on stretches that could not be irrigated, and they got as 
high as 9 bushels to the acre. The legislature of Utah appropriated as 
high as $30,000 to take not only that wheat but other nee we are 
introducing there and get them started all over the State of Utah for 
the benefit of the people. They put $30,000 in it at once. 
Mr. Henry. Has there been any difficulty in finding a market for 
that macaroni wheat? 
Secretary Witson. There was a difficulty with the millers. Twenty- 
five or thirty years ago, when we got the first hard wheats from Russia 
into the Northwest, the millers objected because the mills would not 
grind them without remodeling. However, they finally remodeled the 
mills. Now those wheats are the most popular wheats and they do 
not want to get anything else.. ; 
Mr. Henry. Are the macaroni wheats bringing the price : 
Secretary Witson. They are intrinsically worth the price; and if 
for the time they do not happen in the various localities to get what 
it is worth it will be only a short time until they will get it, because 
there is more muscle-forming material in the macaroni wheat than in 
the bread wheats, and the bread they get is more sweet and nutritious. 
Next year it will go on the desert from western Texas to Arizona and 
North Dakota, ond it will continue its way westward. ‘There is scarcely 
any part of the desert but that has 10 inches of rainfall. 
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