The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1914-07-25

human habitations and people as WELL but the
character of the crops under cultivation makes
it necessary that the peasants should be housed
in settlements or villages away from the large
wet areas given up TO the growing of rice and
other crops.
These rice areas are divided up into fields or
plots of all shapes and sizes by small grassgrOwn
ridges few inches in height and averaging
about a foot in BREADTH thus enclosing the soft
mud in which the rice is planted. The prepare
ton of these fields is extremely arduous work,
involving much hoeing and careful construction
of these mud DAMS and it includes whole sys-
tenn of terracing, whereby the water necessary
for irrigation is led gradually down from field to
field, for all high-class rice requires flooding The
little streams and rivulets which provide the
water for these terraced hills and wide valleys
very often shaded by bamboo plants and
these streams feed the bitches cut for water
channels; narrow tracks foOtpaths also
made through the rice fields. But if these fields
look desolate at sprngtme. there is no lack of
life in them when the planting season begins in
June for then they filed with and
women busily engaged in transplanting the young
rice plants; and, fortunately for this industry
Japan possesses a large supply of cheap labor
The seeds of the rice first thickly sOwn in the
small wet fields, nursery beds, in the early
spring (ApriD and when the young plants have
attained the height of four inches or Whereabouts,
they very carefully transplanted to the larger
fields, at wider intervals, in rows, and, may be
ina gined, this is an exceedingly Iaborious kind
of work When looks at the innumerable lit
tie plants in the nurseries, with their vivid green
shoots and delcate-lOoking roots, the removing
of them by hand to the larger fields and planting
singly seems an almost impossible task, and with
European labor it might be so; but the peasantTy
of Japan have been accustomed to this tedious
metho5 of agriculture through many centuries
and, from habit it is taken a matter of course,
and the and women, standing kneedeep in
the mud and water and stopping over their toll
some work, spare pains in the planting out of
the young rice in the soft mud. The value of the
harvest is probably in their minds the reward
for all this labor.
The eastern agricultural laborer must be seen
to be fully realized. japanese backs are supple,
but the sight of much STOPPING and bending
IS enough to make European feel the pains of
1umbago in his back from the mere contempla-
ton of it.
show a very brilliant green, and they are kept
under few inches of water all the time the
young crops are growing, which is only drained
away just before the harvesting of the rice. The
rice plant blooms early in September, and the
crops are reaped in October, and hung up to dry
on short poles. The threshing is done with fails
or heckes, kind of comb. Various methods of
some of them most unsavory to the. European
nose; in fact the smells that emanate from the
ground in the agricultural districts in Japan often
destroy ones sense of appreciation of their fine
cultivation when inspecting it closely, and the
japanese people must either have less keen noses
than else do not mind the odors, for they
appear in no way to affect them they do
fields, or paddy fields" he calls them, during
the hot months he is sure TO get severely bitten
by mosquitoes and for Europeans living near the
rice areas these pests are great trial during
the summer.
Some Europeans have stated that Japan pro-