The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-10-03
THE RICE INDUSTRY.

4
| While rice has dwindled to the
vanishing point as a Hawaiian export
staple within a few years past, the
lrice industry of the mainland has been
advancing by leaps and bounds. The
Crop Reporter, published by authority
of the Secretary of Agriculture, in its
September issue states that a preliml-
nary report to the Chief of the Bureau
of Statistics of the Department of Agri-
culture shows the total acreage of rice
in the United States this season to be
about 643, 400 acres. distributed as fol-
lows: North Carolina, 1,SOO; South
Carolina, $4,000; Georgia, 5000; Louisi-
ana. S65, 100; and Texas. 2S4,20O acres.
The rice acreage of the country has in
creased SO per cent within the last five
years and is now four times as large as
it was fifteen years ago. In 1899 Louisi-
ana and Texas contained 59.s per cent
of the total rice acreage of the coun-
try. Now these States contain 9S.1 per
cent of the greatly increased total.
Rice cultivation in the Gulf States is
not the same kind of an industry as
we see in Hawaii. To compare them
would be like comparing the operations
of the great wheat farms of the United
states with the corn-growing industry
of the time of Moses, who made it
rnisdeme&nor to muzzle the OK that
threshed out the crop with his hoofs.
In louisiana and Texas modern ma
ehinery and methods are used in every
stage of the rice industry from the
preparing of the ground to the market
ing of the cleaned product. The ques-
ton has been raised as to whether or
not the availab bic areas good for rice
growing are large enough and the lay
of the lands is suitable, in these islands.
to make practicable the cultivation on
a large scale with machinery and meth
DDS of irrigation such as are employed
on the vast marsh level of the Gulf
States. However that problem may be
determined, it is to be hoped that the
local industry will not utterly pass
away. The large domestic consumption
OF rice as the principal food of thou
sands of plantation laborers, makes the
saving to the Territory from raising it's
own supply something worth an effort
to procure. Even with the ancient
system in vogue here, where the plan
tiers are Orientals, the absence of all
winter conditions and the un-
equaled productiveness of the soil,
together with the transportation item,
ought to count for much in meeting
competition of mainland rice. AS was
shown in the September number of the
Hawaiian Forester and Agriculturist,
on the authority of the United States
Census, both the yield and the aver
age value an acre of rice in Hawaii
We're out of sight higher, four years
ago, than they were in the Southern
States. The only cause that we have
heard stated for the depression in the
Hawaiian rice industry is a scarcity
of labor. If there are no other causes,
: then, under the Exclusion Act and so
long as the Chinese planters are de-
pendent on, or look only to, their own
countrymen for labor in the rice fields,
the condition would seem to be ire
mediable. 1t would probably be idle,
during strong sugar market, to pro-
pose the interposition of American en-
terprise and capital for creating a new
rice industry, supposing, what has been
shown to be questioned. that labor
saving devices could here be success
fully applied