quiring 10,000 cars to transport it to market. It supplies two-thirds of the quantity consumed in the United States.

THE MODERN PROCESS OF RICE GROWING.

Modern ideas and systematic methods attend the culture of the grain from seedtime until it leaves the field to be sorted and prepared for the market. The grower may till 50 or 5,000 acres ; but about each tract the bank of earth is carefully thrown up by the ditching plough, frequently "tamped" on the inside with spade and shovel to prevent leakage. The horse drill and cultivator can be used in seeding, while furrows are turned as in an ordinary field intended for wheat or oats. Water flows upon the shoots when a few inches out of ground, and until harvest time in early autumn the country is turned into a series of lakes, for the plant roots must be continuously submerged, three or perhaps four months, to a depth of two or three inches.

Every acre is a great sponge absorbing 14,000 to 15,000 gallons every 24 hours, yet when the grain nears maturity, and the water is drained from it, evaporation is so rapid that the farming machines can pass over the fields without diffi culty in a few days. Then the scene is strikingly typical of harvest time in Kansas or the Da kotas. No less than 5,000 harvesters, actually doing the work of 200,000 men, sweep through the mile after mile of golden stalks, for by a few alterations the mechanism which cuts and binds the sheaves of wheat ready for the stack without human aid has come to the assistance of the rice growers. The steam thresher following converts the chaff and straw into mammoth stacks, pouring the white kernels into a hundred bags in a day.

The tendency toward economical and intensive farming is every where apparent,--it is not how great an area can be cultivated, but how much it can be made to yield. A study of the methods

reveals one of the secrets of the remarkable success attained by these men who have ventured into an unknown territory to engage in an equally unknown means of securing a livelihood. Necessity aided by experience, some of it bitter in the extreme, taught them to husband their time and labor. They studied every source of expense to ascertain if it could not be reduced. They did not confine their investigation to the farming processes alone. Realizing the outlay for transportation and commission in sending the rice to a distance to be prepared for market, they built mills in sight of the fields which clean, polish, and separate the cereal into its marketable grades. But the greatest economic factor is this wonderful subterranean sea, which, scientists say, contains a water supply that cannot fail. These "waters under the earth" are held in gravel strata having a foundation of hard clay, which the well-borer's tools reach at distances ranging from 100 to 200 feet below the surface. To fill the canals from well and stream one of the most extensive pumping systems in the world has been constructed,500 plants distributed throughout the district. A single station filling one of the larger canals could serve the needs of a city, as it lifts 60,000

to 75,000 gallons a minute the 30 feet or 40 feet to the conduit level. The canals reaching the larger rice fields range from 20 to 30 miles in length, sustaining a volume of water 100 feet in width and five to six feet in depth. From the main or feed channels are excavated branches which connect directly with the fields. Wooden aqueducts or flumes are extensively employed to carry the water across valleys and for waterways at the source of supply in order to give sufficient elevation to create a rapid current. During the flooding season these arteries of nourishment enhance the artistic effect of what is in truth an attractive landscape, gleaming like ribbons of silver in the sunlight and presenting a striking contrast to the masses of luxuriant green which later turns to gold. It is a picture which pleases the æsthetic and the material sense alike, for it is a picture of plenty and prosperity only to be appreciated by one who has spent a day or a week in the rice belt.

PROFITS OF THE SMALL GROWER.

The production of this cereal in the Southwest has long since passed the experimental stage, and the man who wishes to become a rice farmer can

secure an ample fund of statistics from any of the various centers to enable him to calculate closely on the cost of tilling a tract of 10, 100, or 10,000 acres, for he can find companies who have invested half a million dollars to purchase and prepare farms" of the last-named size for the industry, but the majority of the growers have confined their individual effort to 50 or 100 acres. Taking a group of the hundred-acre proj ects and averaging the results, the expenses are as follows: Ploughing and cultivating, $4 an acre; seeding, $3.50; harvesting, threshing, and hauling crop to mill or railroad station, $5. Levee work and other items swell the total cash outlay of making" the crop to $20 an acre. owner contracts with the irrigation company to furnish sufficient water for the season for onefifth of the yield, unless he controls his waterworks, which for a hundred-acre farm cost from $1,000 to $1,500. The harvest, of course, varies considerably. It may be 10

barrels of 162 pounds each to the acre. A specially favorable season may increase it to 15 barrels. The price, too, fluctuates. Basing it at $3.50 per barrel for the minimum yield, the farmer obtains $800 from his rice alone. Deducting interest at 6 per cent. on the cost of his land at $20 an acre, taxes, and insurance, he nets a profit of $600. But to this he can add $500, the value of the straw and bran left after threshing. Thus 50 per cent. of the original land value may be paid by the proceeds of one year's harvest. Usually

The

enough vegetables, perhaps fruit, are raised for the family supply, and the tendency to diversity is becoming yearly more pronounced; for the energetic grower has an opportunity to produce some other staple during the half-year when the rice is not under cultivation. The profit may average nearer $25 or $30 an acre from all sources of income than the estimate given.

CAN AMERICA COMPETE WITH THE ORIENT ? Stimulated by their success, the aim of these ambitious agriculturists is to place the American rice belt in as dominant a position as the corn, wheat, and cotton belts. As the South regulates the price of cotton in the world's market, the day will come when we shall dictate the rice market as well," is the universal sentiment. Although readily disposing of the bulk of their staple at home, they have already entered Europe; and with an opportunity to sell on equal terms

with their Oriental competitors, they are sanguine of attaining their object. The claim that this prairie land will produce grain at a lower cost than even Asiatic fields is well founded by com. paring the average yield per acre and the time and labor required. The Japanese is content to till his plat at one-sixth of the wages paid the laborer in Louisiana and Texas, but one American with his irrigation system and machinery can cultivate a hundred acres in a year where his eastern competitor, depending upon natural flooding and hand tools, can work but three-fourths of an acre. Every rice expert is familiar with this fact, and it is one of the sources of the general optimism that prevails. No one can predict the limit of future success.

CITY BUILDING IN THE RICE BELT.

The cooperation so apparent throughout the territory is another feature of interest. Every where is to be found an interdependence, so to speak. The producer is not merely the landowner and farmer, but a stockholder in the ir rigation company, while he patronizes another company, harvesting and threshing his crop, that represents an alliance of his neighbors. As he accumulates a surplus he becomes part owner of one of the adjacent rice mills. If a bank is chartered in the neighboring town, he subscribes to its stock, perhaps takes a partnership in one of the mercantile enterprises. Thus are his in

bulk of the money received is held at home and distributed in local channels, benefiting those directly or indirectly interested in the main and dependent industries. The yearly extension of the area under cultivation and the consequent enlargement of the irrigation system broaden the market for necessary machinery and supplies and require additional labor. These evidences of prosperity offer inducements to immigration, not only to the agricultural element, but to the merchant and the capitalist, who realize the future of the locality and the prospective growth of its cities and towns. A stimulus has been given railroad building as well; for not only must means of transportation be afforded for the

The communities which have been created include notable illustrations of the general cooperation. Townsfolk and country folk, alike interested in their growth, have joined in adopting plans which they hope will culminate in important cities. Indeed, some have already increased so rapidly in population and business as to rightfully deserve this title. Here is another parallel to the development of the West, for instances are known where they have originated from a nucleus of a few huts; others were born on the bare prairie, not even a tree to mark the site. The city of Crowley is a typical community. When its streets and avenues were laid out with tripod and sextant not a building stood upon the land, nor was a spear of rice growing within miles of it, but the promoters had such faith in the future that when the Southern Pacific Railway Company refused to stop its trains at a "station" in the open country, they moved a shed to the town site from an adjacent settlement, engaged a ticket agent at their own expense, and offered the building and the agent's services to the company if it would consider the

Next they succeeded in getting a colony of Germans to locate here, then they began excavating with their own hands the first irrigation canal in the Southwest, assisted by the colonists. From the half-mile used to flood the first rice field in 1894, it has been enlarged to 10 miles in length and 40 feet in width. The colony and the canal developed the "one-building" town into a city of 7,000 inhabitants, with courthouse, public schools, churches of the principal denominations, opera house, three banks, eight rice mills, and a score of pretentious business blocks. From its mills a million barrels of rice are sent annually to market, while its merchants serve a territory forty miles square. Throughout the belt, and far away in eastern Texas, can be found other examples of equally rapid urban growth, but these people are building for the future as well as for the present, and it can be said in all sincerity that they are forming a civilization out of this semi-wilderness that rests on a broad and permanent foundation composed of education, religion, patriotism, and the type of modern vigorous Americanism to which the great West, their example, owes so much of its prosperity.