The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-04

down and fix 1t and in this way every
 rice stalk yields its best product. As to
 the amount of labor required for such
 cultivation, if you will imagine one of
 our farmers sprouting his wheat in seed bed, and then setting out each plant with a dibble and weeding and cultivat- ing 1t, you will get some idea of it.
 Harvesting Rice.
 The harvesting of the rice Is even more difficult than harvesting wheat After
 the grain Is cut it has to be pulled from the straw and be husked before 1t can
 be used. If you will take a sheaf of ripe oats, and then pull them over a cross-cut saw, fastened to a piece of wood about the height of a table, so that all the grains are torn off, you will have fair idea of how the Japanese get their rice from the straw. The grains are still in the husks. and the husks have to be taken off before 1t can be used. This is mostly done by hand, the grains
 in the shell being put fin mortar and pounded with a wooden pestel until the
 kernels are free. Some of the farmers have rice mills, worked by water and
 others hulling machines, worked by hand Much of the rice is winnowed by
 machinery, small hand mills being used. A good rice field ought to produce
 40 bushels to the acre. and some of the
 best lands here produce more. Japan
 has altogether almost 200 different kinds I , rice in the world. It's finest varieties are so valuable that much of them are
 exported to other countries, the nation importing other kinds at lower prices for it's own food
 In the Farm Villages.
 The Japanese farmers seldom live on their farms They have little villages of wooden houses thatched with straw. Here they come at night and from here rl..< people generally work in gangs. You seldom see a man alone in the fields. A whole family father. mother. boys and girls. all work together. There are many
 hired hands, and the wages paid are exceedingly small. It is poor part of
 the United States where a farmland is not worth 50 cents a day and his board.
 or where he gets less than s15 month.
 if employed the year round The wages here without board are Is cents per day
 for men and 10 cents for women. with
 much less for children. The work goes on from sunrise to sunset and 1t is fully as hard as any on our farms at home.
 Hands employed by the year receive proportionately less. Including board. men are paid about s5S year. or less than s a month"; the women get about $50 or q little more than S month. In government report of 1906 I see that male farm laborers were getting less
 
 s10. There is a steady rise going on in wages of all kinds, and these cannot re- main as they are
 In some cases, farm 1aborers hire out to work only on alternate days, devoting themselves to their own little tracts of land during the rest of the week. Boys are often bound out to farmers for terms of from five to seven years. their pay be- ing little more during the time than their
 board and clothes. Of course. I under stand there has been a considerable
 movement of the farming classes to the cities. and just now there are many who are emigratng to Corea and Manchuria. Educating the Farmers.
 Indeed the farmers of Japan are rap idly changing There are public schools everywhere and the boys and girls of the country communities attend them. Near ly every man can read and write, and most of the landholders know what is going on as to scientific cultivation. The government IS doing a great deal along the lines of agricultural education. It has big agricultural colleges at Tokio and Sapporo: and there are 36 smaller col Ieges which are teaching theoretical and practical farming in the towns and pre- lectures. There are special colleges in Kyoto devoted to the art of silk culture, and instruction is also given in tea rais- ing and in the other specialties of Japan. The government has BIO travelling lec- turers who go from town to town and from district to district preaching ad- vance agriculture to the farmers and in- structing them as to insects, fertilizers and various crops. Some of these men are present at every agricultural show.