The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-01-21
THE RICE CROP OUTLOOK.
TIE ACREAGE 10 BE CONSIDER
ABLY LESS THAN LAST YEAR

Planters Kept Back by the Bad
Weather-Very Little Flowing Done
Yet and Many Fields not Yet
Burned-Efect of the Floods on the
What They say About
Congress- and the Rice Tariff.
The unfavorable weather has retarded
the rice planters in their usual preparations
at this season of the year for getting their
ground cleaned up and plowed for spring
sowing. Interviews with planters on the
Savannah and Ogeechee rivers elicit the in
formation that very little blowing has been
done thus far and many Of them have not
yet burned their stuob lie.
The general impression is that there will
not he as large an acreage Of rice planted
along the Savannah river this year above
tho freshet banks. Two years of successive
losses to crops and widespread damage
to banks and gates have discouraged
the up-riyer planters. The greater part Of
the lands so situated, it is not believed will
be put in as good condition as last year. or
cultivated on as systematic plan. On the
contrary, much of it will no doubt be
rented to colored tenants, and if there are
no great freshets, fair crops may be ex
pected, but the expense it would entail to
bring tho banks to the condition they were
in before the floods of Lass year swept
through them will hardly be undertaken bv
planters this year-certainly on no great
scale.
WILL NOT PLANT THIS YEAR.
1t is learned that Mr.. Sweat who planted
the Potter place will not attempt it again
this year, but will plant with Messrs. Purse
and Rowland on the Deptford plantation.
inside of, or rather below the freshet
banks there will be no falling off in the rice
acreage. 1t is true that the losses on these
lands were very heavy, but they were more
the result of continuous wet weather which
prolonged the harvest and rotted OF deteri-
stated the grain. Some of the plantations
were inundated, but the loss was heavier
from the wet weather than from the over
flow.
Planters say that the rice industry is ma
terially retarded by the menaces from I'll me
TO time in congress by the efforts to remove
or materially lower the tariff which alone
enables them to proftably cultivate a crop,
hazardous at most. A Well-informed rice
planter said last night that the threatening
attitude of congress on the rice tariff had
deferred rice planters in this country from
using anything but primitive appliances in
the cultivation of their rice fields
INVENTIONS SLOW PROGRESS.
The planter added that the inventive
genius of scientific men has not been
directed to field where there is no immedi-
ate prospect OF profitable return, and the
preparation of the land, the sowing of the
grain and the harvesting of the crop con-
tinue to be conducted by the slow and ex-
pensive methods of former years. Rice
planters say that in the rice fields of the
Orient, where labor is abundant and is en-
ployed as low as cents per day, improved
methods Of cultivation and harvesting
would be supert1uous, and, as labor in the
rice fields of this country is paid from so
cents to 81 50 per day, the taking off of the
tariff or any material lessening of the tariff
would lead to total abandonment of the
rice industry in this country.
THE PLANTERS AND SENATOR BUTLER.
The rice planters here, some of them
at least are very much disap-
appointed in Senator Butler, of South Caro-
lima, whom they say is Numerically opposed
to the public sentiment of his state. and
section, if the language attributed to him
In the Washington dispatches is not mis-
quoted, and they claim there is no possible
justification for the doubt Senator Butler
expressed that the rice tariff enables plant
ers in the south to compete with the coolie
labor of Europe, and they say that the re-
moval Of the tariff would mean the abso-
Lutte abandonment of the tide water lands
of the southern coast states, and the loss of
the capital Investment for their purchase
and Improvement