Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1905. RICE AS A FACTOR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8038, 10 January 1905, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1905. RICE AS A FACTOR.

The War in the Far East has taught the world a good many lessons already; not the least important of which is the nutritive value of rice. Hitherto most of us have regarded this cereal as a sufficiently useful side-dish, pleasant and somewhat nutritive, but not to be depended upon as a staple food. We have been wont to remark that the rice fed Hindoos and Chinese and other Orientals, man for man, are no match for our race which has been reared on beef and beer. But circumstances have demolished this self-confidence. For we have seen a rice-fed people proving themselves, in every respect, superior to a western nation, nourished on vodki and meat. There must be much nourishment in rice, since so many millions of people have no other food supply. This may lead to its very much more general adoption among our own people ; and it' is interesting to notice that the rice harvest of the East is an affair of immense importance. The yield of the Yangtse-kiang Valley, in China, is enormous ; and it may present the agricultural implement makers of Europe and America with a new problem. For the lower valley of the delta of the Yangtse is really one of the greatest of the world's granaries. Rice can only be grown in swampy ground, and the reaping of the harvest is done by manual labour alone, thousands of families being employed in cutting, making into sheaves, stacking, and threshing. It is in the gathering of the rice harvest that the wonderful patience and persistent toil of the Chinese are best exhibited. Every operation is carried on by the labour of human hands. The husk of rice is adhesive, and necessitates the employment of a sort ol milLstone framework, a very primitive affair. And the labourers who are thus employed have neither meat nor beer nor cider nor pudding, or any of the comforts that iftie British reaper finds it necessary to be supplied with. A pot of cold tea and a pan of rice—that is the rice-harvester's diet. And on this cold comfort he works and plods an. The Englishman's wheat, the Scotchman's oatmeal, and the Irishman's potatoes produce no more inuscls than this half-despised swamp-seed that supports so many teeming millions of human beings, whose life is a ceaseless round of toil. Great satisfaction is everywhere felt now at the excellence and abundance of the rice crop of China, for it is a circumstance of economic and political importance; and we may faintly imagine the widespread misery that a bad crop entails upon a nation whose staple food it is.