Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-08-19
AMERICAN RICE CROP.
Possibilities of Its Cultivation
 Tn the Southwest.
INCENTIVE TO TOWN BUILDING,


 Have Been Used I'm EstabIashing
 Banks and Aiding Growth of Com-
 munitfes-Rice Growers Ambitious
 to Compete With ChAna and Japan.
 During 1902 about 10000 railway cars of the average capacity were re. quired to haul the product of the southwestern rice fields to market. says a writer in Gunton's Magazine. The crop at present averages about 100000 barrels annually and could supply two-thirds of the present con- sumption in the United States. When it is remembered this is merely what has been accomplished on tenth of the area that is available for cuItiva- ton in Louisiana and Texas an idea of the possibilities of the region can be gained.
 The agricultural and social develop ment resulting from the influx of peo- pie and capital into the section re- ferred to has progressed far beyond the experimental stage and can be said to exist on a permanent basis. It has actually resulted In the formation of a new group or community that is well worth studying. The residents of the towns and cities are as dependent up- on the soil as are the rice growers themselves. Prior to the division of this prairie land into fields intersected by network of canals reaching from ,NN %o<1. 3o& e. other there was no incentive for town building, and had it not been for the efforts of the little group of Iowa farmers who first began growing rice by modern methods the country would probably still be as poor and as sparse ly settled as a half century ago.
 As the growers have prospered those depending on them have prospere0 also, and the money into which the haryests have been converted has been distributed in variety of ways. While the farmers have taken advantage of science and invention to aid them by employing labor sax lg machinery, they have not neglected public inn provements. Their profits have estab- lished banks and aided in the growth of these communit. in other ways
 In tour of southwestern Louisiana and eastern Texas it is easy for one to imagine himself in a Kansas or Ne braska town, for everywhere prevails the hustle and hustle of the west.
 The belief is prevalent that the con sumption of rice in the United States has but begun. Apparently rice Is con eidered an occasional rather than staple food, served merely to vary a menu, although very large quantity is used annually by the southerners, both white and negroes, with whom it is a regular article of diet. 1t is un-. necessary to refer to the opinion of among the most beneficial of foods and cite the vigor and hardihood of the Japanese and other eastern races who subsist so largely upon it as illus trations of it's good properties.
 The southwestern rice grower is looking to the future, and, although he has good reason to be content with the results already attained, he is far from being satisfied. He desires to compete with the Japanese and Chinese in the markets of the world, to send his rice to the Asiatic market, for he believes that quality equal if not superior to the home grown cereal can be sold in eastern Asia at profit, yet lower than the native can sell it. He argues that the construction of the Panama canal means an incentive to further devel- opment of the rice territory that will cause the present activity to seem small in comparison, for the canal means direct route not only to the great market of the east, but to the Pacific coast of both Americas.