The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-02-09


that rice growing is likely to become
an important industry here. Yes, we
grow some rice now; but only a paltry
five hundred million pounds a year
one three hundred-and-fiftieth part of
the worlds crop-iust about enough
for making our own croquettes and
buildings. The serious talk runs that
Wen begin growing for export.
You don't think you'd like sloshing
around knee-deep in a soggy mudpud-
die, getting yourself all messed up
and developing chronic rheumatism or
web feet or something, just for the
sake of growing little rice for feed
ing a bunch of Chinks, or Buddhists,
or dervishes-or whatever-you-call-
'em. Let the philanthrophists do it.
How does anybody hope to make It
a good business proposition? How
could a white man hope to compete
with that wretched, cheap labor of the
swarming Orient? Nothing doing.
Now, isn't that your impromptu YER
dict?
That just shows how much you
know. Let's look into it a minute and
see. If there's some easy money to
be picked up you'd like to be put wise,
wouldn't you?
First, about that cheap labor. Do
you still take stock in that warcry of
the political Straightforward men,
"God-and the divine tariff-preserve
the highborn American against COM
petition with cheap foreign labor?
Haven't you found out that that's all
| falderdash THAT the so-called
Cheap labor" with it's crude methods
and sodden understanding, is the very
dearest that may possibly be used in
getting things done? The figures on
rice growing, here and in the Far East
give as clean an illustration as might
be found.
The Japanese grower at home does
mighty well if he takes care of one
acre of rice through the season. A
method more primitive than his could
not be devised-pricking out the seed
ling plants, one by one, by hand and
nursing them through to harvest with
no more gumption than is shown at
planting. And what does he get at
the seasons end? He gets an aver
age of twenty-nine and a half bush
els of grain from his acre. And the
average cost Of growing an acre II
rice in Japan is thirty eight dollars
including labor, fertilizer. land tax
and the other items-which makes
each bushel of rice cost the japanese
grower, at harvest, one dollar ant
twenty nine cents.
On the Arkansas rice prairies
whence come the fullest and freshes
figures on the industry, two men TAX,
care of the crop on a quarter section
of one hundred and sixty acres b!
means of modern machinery useC
: with brains. The average yield TO
the last two or three years has beef
seventy-four bushels to the acre; thu
outside cost of production is twent!
dollars an acre, which makes Arkan
sas rice cost at harvest, twenty-sevel
cents bushel-just about one-fiftl
the cost of producing a bushel in ia
There are the straight facts. Can
compete? Why, we've got the JaI
backed off the boards, beaten to ;
standstill at his own game. If it eve
comes to the point of actual competi
ton for control of the industry tn,
Jap will have to quit or else adopt ou
ways of doing things.
Modren methods followed with mod
ern machinery-there's the combina
ton that gives the American his gri
in rice farming as in most of tn
other big undertakings of the eartf
Years and years ago rice was grow
rather extensively in the Unite
States, mostly on the low marsh
lands of the southeastern coast. Their
were considerable exports in thos
= days. The manner of growing wa
then fixed largely by imitation of or
iental methods. Marshland CROWN
was supposed to be the only wa,
There was nothing American aboI
it-very little effort to cheaper pro
duction according to the new theor
of farming. That was the old era i
rice growing. Then, latter the war
when labor conditions in the Sout
became unsettled, the industry dwir
died until there wasn't much left {
, it,; and for long time it languishe,
awaiting some new impulse.
The impulse was given when SOM
u body took it into his head that riC
u might be grown under conditions a