f^e ONLY RAILWAY 
 
 TRAVERSING THE GREAT SOUTHWESTERN 
 
IS IT 
 
 Rice OR Oil? 
 
 You can find both 
 on the line of the 
 
 Southern Pacific 
 
 SUNSET ROUTE. 
 
 In Louisiana and Texas. 
 
 The only line traversing 
 the Rice and Oil Belt 
 from end to end ^ ^m ^h 
 
 Writ© for Information to 
 
 S. R B. MORSE, U J. PARKS, 
 
 Assistant Pass'r Traffic Mgr. Gen'l Pass'r and Ticket A} 
 
 HOUSTON, TEXAS. 
 
I/NTKODUeTO-Rg. 
 
 / j VERY important question for eacii of us to answer, is, vvliere 
 f«vi. ^h'^" ^ locate my liome ? A good location means prosperity. 
 A bad location means adversity. Please read carefully the 
 very full description of Southwest Louisiana along the line of the 
 Southern Pacific Railroad, before deciding this great question. Is it 
 accessible .-' is it healthy ? Can 1 live easily ? Can I find good 
 society, schools, churches ? Are there more or less advantages and 
 disadvantages than elsewhere .-' The Southern Pacific Railroad fur- 
 nishes good and fast transportation through this immense prairie 
 and timber country. More than 20,000 Northern people have located 
 homes here, and take this means of reaching you with an invitation 
 to come and help them develop the best partly improved field in 
 America, We will give you in detail the experiences of our best fruit 
 experts, the best breeders and stock farmers, the best rice and sugar 
 cane growers, and the best general farmers. A careful reading of 
 this book will give you the best opinion of the best men in the country, 
 located on the line of the Southern Pacific in Louisiana; men of ex- 
 perience North and South, and experts in the business which they 
 describe, much better qualified to judge of comparative values than 
 men who have never lived North and South. You must summer and 
 winter in a country to know it. The value of the country is no ex- 
 periment, its possibilities, also, are great. Only look at what has 
 been done here in ten years, in one industry, rice, by the Iowa colony 
 who introduced the twine-binding harvester only sixteen years ago. 
 Now four thousand are in use, doing the work in harvest time 
 (three months) of 100,000 men. The shipments over our Southern 
 Pacific Railroad then two million pounds, 1886 and 1887 ; three hun- 
 dred millions, 1892 and 1893; with an increase of thirty-nine million 
 pounds in December, 1892, over December, 1891 ; since that time 
 the crop has approximated 250,000,000 pounds yearly, ' Every 
 branch of agricultural industry has largely increased. Vast numbers 
 of fruit trees have been planted. Stock has been improved. Large 
 quantities of hay have been cured and sent to market, and now at- 
 tention has been turned to the sugar industry, with every prospect of 
 success. This book is made and distributed at great expense by the 
 Southern Pacific Railroad Company, that its patrons may be thor- 
 oughly posted about the country along its line, to which they invite 
 immigration, and where there are at least twenty thousand Northern 
 settlers who have been brought there by our agents, and whose 
 history is a marvel of success. Read it carefully and you will act 
 understandingly. 
 
O^INCEthe publication of this book, eight years ago, a volu- 
 /^ tioii has occurred in Immigration. The westward trend has 
 been stopped, and now the South, for the first time, is getting 
 the bulk of the business. This Immigration is not only large, but is 
 of the very best classes from the North and West, American born, 
 who understand and love our laws and institutions ; mostly farmers, 
 who are familiar with improved farming methods and machinery. 
 
 Southwest Louisiana, "The Prairie Region," has been trans- 
 formed from grass-covered plains, separated by rivers, skirted with 
 valuable timber, to improved farms, enclosed with wire, with good 
 buildings, gardens, orchards and ornamental trees. Rice, so far, is 
 the leading industry, and is steadily gaining in volume and favor as 
 the most profitable cereal grown, relished by man and beast. We 
 can grow more bushels and more dollars per acre than can be 
 done with any other cereal. North or South. Rice=growing leaves no 
 waste land and has fully demonstrated the entire healthfulness of 
 the business. 
 
 Small farmers can grow cane in the "Prairie Region." where 
 the soil is easily cultivated and the sugar content fifty per cent, 
 greater than elsewhere, at a fair profit at present prices. Corn 
 growing has increased nearly lOO per cent, in this part of the State. 
 Diversity of crops crowds the farmer from the rut. Nowhere in the 
 North can such a diversity be grown. The best products of two zones 
 push the farmer to the front. The successful feeding of rice has 
 pushed stock-growing into greater favor. Creole ponies and cows 
 are fast going and the better breeds fill their places. Larger horses 
 of good breeds are in good favor. The mule is largely and profitably 
 used. Galloway, Jersey, Hereford, Holstein and Shorthorn cattle, 
 Poland China, Berkshire and Jersey hogs all do well and fatten very 
 cheaply on rice and sweet potatoes ; but not at one cent a pound, 
 hardly, but at a cost far below what can be done in any cold climate, 
 and right at the best market in the United States. Via New Orleans 
 is as good a market for our farmers as New York City; each a sea- 
 board market with practically the same expense to European markets; 
 below the storm belt; abundant rainfall; valuable crops; certainty 
 of product ; length of growing season ; prairie and timber lands ; short 
 winters ; excellent fruit country ; cheap lands ; good titles ; healthful- 
 ness ; law-abidihg, church-going, educated, enterprising people ; 
 located on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, whose facilities 
 for distribution and transportation are not excelled, who have com- 
 menced laying a double track from New Orleans through this, the 
 most valuable, partly developed country in the United States. 
 
^ouihwest J^oulsiana 
 
 ►►► 
 
 UP TO DATE. -« 
 
 (Omaha Edition, 1901.) 
 
 Important Information 
 for People 
 Desiring 
 to Find 
 a Better 
 Country. 
 
 Rice. 
 
 Sugar Cane. 
 
 BY ONE WHO HAS SUfiriERED AND WINTERED EIGHTEEN YEARS IN THE 
 
 PRAIRIE REGION OF SOUTHWEST LOUISANA. 
 
 Great progress has been made in rice-growing in Southwest Louisiana the past 
 year. More rice has been grown under pump than ever, and this rice has yielded 
 "from 8 to lo barrels per acre of rough rice, selling at an average of three dollars 
 for 162 pounds. Then rice grown along canals, given water too late in the season, 
 yielded 3 to 7 barrels, and poverty or providence rice, depending upon rainfall 
 ^ione yielding 2 to 4 barrels, and a large percentage of the providence rice not 
 worth harvesting. The average cost of growing rice per acre is ten dollars. 
 
 An average crop of ten sacks generally pays cost of growing the crop and 
 the cost of the farm. 
 
 A WORD AS TO CANALS. 
 
 The extremely rapid increase in the number of irrigation arfd canal companies, 
 and the magnitude of the recent investments in the directions of canals, makes it 
 impossible to give a detailed history of the many enterprises. A glance at the 
 list of canals and irrigating plants elsewhere in this book will give the reader an 
 opportunity of estimating to his own satisfaction the advances which have been 
 made. The modest investment of a few thousand dollars in a pumping plant of 
 three years since, has given place to companies with a capital stock of $250,000, 
 like that of the Abbott-Duson concern, or with plants like that of the McFarland 
 Co., at Jennings with a battery of magnificent pumps or of the Vermillion Im- 
 provement Co. at Greydan, with a flow of 250,000,000 gallons every 24 hours. 
 Daily the extension of tlie system is making the rice crop a "sure thing" and 
 Southwest Louisiana will be marked with artificial waterways its length and 
 breadth. 
 
 The new deep well system will render rains unnecessary and the rice farmer 
 will have nothing left to do but cultivate his crop and then harvest them. 
 
 RICE MILLS. 
 
 As might have been expected, the rapid development of the rice industry has 
 given a stimulus to rice factories. In the past five years nearly fifteen rice clean- 
 ing mills have been erected throughout the rice country in Southwest Louisiana, 
 and more are being erected. At present more than half the crop is being milled 
 where it is grown, the remainder being shipped out in the rough. 
 
 _ in a few more years sufficient factories will have been equipped to clean the 
 entire output even taking into consideration the probable large increase in the 
 yield. 
 
DIAGRAn SHOWING THE ASSESSMENTS OF CALCASIEU 
 PARISH FROn 1882 TO 1900. 
 
 1882. 
 $1,991,085 
 
 1883. 
 $2,333,065 
 
 1885. 
 $3 018,570 
 
 1886. 
 $3,191,125 
 
 1887. 
 $3,479,130 
 
 1888. 
 $4,060,475 
 
 1889. 
 $4,300,330 
 
 1890. 
 $5,738,775 
 
 1891. 
 $5,864,455 
 
 1892. 
 $6,457,430 
 
 1893. 
 $7,090,170 
 
 1894. 
 $7,625,000 
 
 1897. 
 $7,830,020 
 
 1898. 
 $8,555,520 
 
 ]899. 
 $9,650,340 
 
 1900. 
 $10,567,433 
 
 Products are in greater variety, surer, and of more value than 
 north. Three things are essential to successful agriculture — soil, 
 moisture and heat, and the greatest of these is moisture. Sixty 
 inches of rain supplemented by our system of canals and wells give 
 Southwest Louisiana the safest and most profitable farming in the 
 States. Sugar and rice are a success, and we have a home market 
 which takes one hundred and fifty millions "of dollars to fill. 
 
 Don't Invest Until You See The Prairie Region In Southwest Louisiana. 
 
 20 NOV 1905 
 
 D.ofO< 
 
ASSESSHENTS OF ACADIA PARISH, 
 
 1SS8. 
 $1,192,001 
 
 1889. 
 $1,344,541 
 
 1890. 
 $1,339,545 
 
 1891. 
 .$1,526,420 
 
 1892. 
 $2,008,425 
 
 1893. 
 $2,267,880 
 
 1896. 
 $2,624,110 
 
 1897. 
 
 $2,584,015 
 
 1898. 
 $2,933,750 
 
 1899. 
 $3,368,110 
 
 1900. 
 $3,685,799 
 
 We have no doubt that with the improvements now in sight, planters will 
 liave one hundred per cent, profit in present prices of rice in five years, and you 
 can judge what the effect will be upon the price of real estate. The time is at 
 hand when we can speak as confidently of a crop of rice as we do now of a 
 crop of figs. With water at command the gambling element in farming is gone. 
 Seventy-five canals and many more pumping plants have laid a sure foundation 
 for the agriculture and general prosperity of a region that has no equal in its 
 general advantages. 
 
 "TOO HIGH TO OVERFLOW AND TOO FLAT TO WASH." 
 
 GOOD UNinPROVED PRAIRIE LAND SELLS ON TIME AT FIVE 
 TO TEN DOLLARS PER ACRE. 
 
 GOOD TIMBER AT SEVENTY=FIVE CENTS TO FIVE DOLLARS 
 PER ACRE. 
 
 SEB BOOK DESCRIBING THIS COUNTRY. 
 
 For further information, books, maps, circulars and. rates, apply to 
 
 v. C. CARY. N "W. P. & I. A., 
 
 Kansas City, Mo. 
 S. L. GARY, N. I. Ag-ent, 
 
 Jenningrs. La., or Manchester, la. 
 OEO. "W. ELY, Trav. Pass. A^ent. 
 
 Montgomery, Ala. 
 K. O. BEAN, Trav. Pass. Agent. 
 
 4 Noel Block, NashTrille, Tenn. 
 W. R. FAGAN, Trav, Pass. Agent, 
 
 Atlanta, Qa. 
 C. W. MXJRPHEY, Trav. Pass. Agent, 
 
 18 E. Bryan Et., SavajanaYi, Oa. 
 
 S. E. CURRIER, New England Agent, 
 
 9 State Street, Boston, Mass. 
 R. J. SMITH, Agent, 
 
 109 South Third St , Philadelphia, Pa. 
 B. E. BARBER. Agent, 
 
 209 E. German St., Baltimore, Md. 
 W. H. CONNER, Commercial Agent, 
 
 Chamber of Commerce, Cincinnati, O. 
 L. E. TO^WTNSLEY, 
 
 421 Olive St., St. Louis, Mo. 
 GEO. E. BCERKING, Agent. 
 
 201 Telephone Bldg., Pittsburgh, P». 
 
 W. G. NIEMYER, C. W. BEIN, 
 
 Gen'l 'Western Freight & Pass. Agt., Traffic Mgr., 
 
 238 Clark St., Chicago, 111. 
 
 S. F. B. MORSE, 
 
 Gen'l Pass. Agt. & Ticket Agt. 
 New Orleans, La. 
 
 E. HAWLEY, 
 
 Assistant Gen'l Traffic Mgr. 
 349 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
*— *war 
 
 Xii 
 
Southwestern Louisiana. 
 
 Wonderful Developments in Recent Years. 
 
 Big Returns Have Invariably Followed Intelligent Effort and 
 
 Industry. 
 
 From tlie New Orleans Times-Democrat. May 21, 1899. 
 
 "Very few people have a thorouglily comprehensive idea 
 of the wonderful development of Southwest Louisiana," said 
 General Passenger Agent S. F. B. Morse of the Southern 
 Pacific Company to a Times-Democrat reporter yesterday, 
 " but it only requires the most cursory investigation to 
 determine the fact that this development has been uuequaled 
 in agricultural circles in any portion of the United States. 
 
 " To begin with, it must be understood that it has only 
 been in the last ten or twelve years that Southwest Louisiana 
 from an agricultural standpoint has made any particular 
 claims upon the attention of the people generally, and it is 
 not a very pleasant commentary upon our own people to note 
 that this development has been the result of immigration 
 from several of the States of the Middle West. , These 
 people, thrifty and filled with an energy the result of long 
 acquaintance with the winters of the West, came into this 
 country, and quickly realizing the advantages offered by soil 
 and climate, set up their roof trees in the verdant savannas 
 of this Southwest Louisiana, and have made the prairie lauds 
 blossom in all the glory of ripening grain and the fruits of 
 both tree and vine. 
 
 " Fifteen years ago, S. L. Gary, at present immigration 
 agent of the Southern Pacific Company, entered the prairie 
 section of Southwest Louisiana, coming from Iowa, and dis- 
 embarked from the train at what is now the prosperous and 
 progressive village of Jennings in Calcasieu parish, on the 
 line of the road. He found land so cheap that one of the 
 
r 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 9 
 
 large land owners was giving away hundreds of his acres in 
 order to save the expense of a possibly increased taxation. 
 For $30 Mr. Gary purchased 300 acres of land. Fifteen 
 years of progress and development throughout the entire sec- 
 tion in which these acres rested, has witnessed a gradual in- 
 crease in the price of the lands, and it will be a startlin|^ 
 •evidence of what this progress has been, when I tell you 
 that these 300 acres can only be bought for $30,000, and 
 this is one of the results of an intelligent and comprehensive 
 cultivation of rice. 
 
 ''This is not an unusual case. Throughout the rice belt 
 lying along the rails of the Southern Pacific, there have been 
 hundreds of instances which equal this remarkable increase 
 in values. This fact that the farmers of Iowa, tired of 
 placing their fortunes upon the turn of the wheat crop, and 
 lealizing that the cultivation of this cereal had worn out 
 the soil of their home State, had brought into Louisiana 
 improved methods of cultivation and farming, has been in a 
 large manner responsible for the success which has attended 
 the cultivation of rice in Calcasieu and Acadia parishes. 
 These farmers were quick to grasp a possibility. They 
 found the soil contained a subsoil, which was practically 
 impervious to water; that water placed upon the prairie 
 lands was held in abeyance as if this subsoil were cement ; 
 that when the water was turned off the fields became stiff 
 enough in a short while to permit the use of horses and har- 
 vesting machines, and this to them solved the entire problem; 
 for they had already demonstrated beyond the shadow of a 
 doubt that rice grew nowhere as well as it did upon the 
 ^worthless' prairie lands of this fertile State, and to cultivate 
 rice as they did wheat, filled their hearts with joy. 
 
 " It was hardly necessary to do much proselyting. The 
 news of the wonderful success which followed the efforts 
 of the early contingent, was soon scattered throughout the 
 circles they had once frequented. Delegations were sent 
 into the new area, and conditions were investigated. It was 
 found that climatic influences were benign; that timber was 
 in abundance ; that fruit grew well; that diversified crops 
 were delightful possibilities, aad that the skies of Louisiana 
 were as balmy as ever were those of the famed ' Islands of 
 the Blest.' 
 
 "And then lands began to augmen; in value. From fifty 
 
10. SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 cents, which sum represented its maximum value in those 
 days when the long-horn cattle ranged at their own sweet 
 will, throughout that section, prices gradually advanced in 
 corresponding ratio to the demand, and the jumps became 
 early and often. From fifty cents it became a dollar; and 
 from $1, $2 and so on up the gamut during the years, until 
 to-day lands adapted to the culivation of rice demand any- 
 where from $10 to $35 an acre; and values are still pro- 
 gressing. Towns have been created, communities have 
 become wealthy, branch lines have been extended and manu- 
 facturing enterprises have been located. Thousands of enter- 
 prising and progressive farmers have entered the territory 
 and the past ten years have witnessed an upbuilding along 
 the line of our road between Lafayette and Lake Charles tha^t 
 has been almost phenomenal. 
 
 "In 1886 the Southern Pacific Railroad handled out of 
 Southwestern Louisiana some 2,000,000 pounds of rice ; in 
 1887 this had doubled; the following year witnessed a pro- 
 duction of 8,000,000 pounds. This in 1889 had increased to 
 16,000,000 pounds; while in 1892, which year represented 
 the largest production, owing to peculiar climatic influences 
 over 200,000,000 pounds were produced; or, in other words, 
 250 cars carried the crop of 1884 between Lake Charles and 
 Lafayette, while it required over 7000 cars to carry the crop 
 of 1892. Since that banner year the crop of Southwest 
 Louisiana has fallen a trifle behind the figures quoted, and 
 this has been due until the past season to a scarcity of rain- 
 fall, and a consequence lowering of levels in the streams 
 which traverse the rice-growing section. ' Providence ' rice, 
 or rice which receive the rains only, has practically ceased to 
 be. The establishment of pumping stations and the building 
 of irrigation canals has revolutionized the industry. In 
 regard to the building of these canals, which are of recent 
 institution, let me tell you that at present there exists over 
 eighty of these artificial streams, extending throughout the 
 prairie, and their establishment has made the rice crop ' a 
 dead sure thing.' This is apparent. Picture to yourself 
 miles and miles of irrigation canals, fed by pumps which 
 elevate the water from the streams, erach canal irrigating 
 anywhere from I to 20,000 acres of land. The canals are 
 flushed during the growing season and the water is given the 
 rice just at the time when it needs it most. So successful 
 
ON LINE OP THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. II 
 
 has been the irrigation scheme that in considering the 
 development of any uncultivated territory the first question 
 raised is that which includes the building of a canal. 
 
 "As a natural sequence of the rapid increase in produc- 
 tion the establishment of ricemills for the cleaning and 
 polishing of the grain became an absolute necessity. To-day 
 the finest ricemills in the world are located at the several 
 rice centres of Acadia and Calcasieu parishes. Rayne, 
 Crowley, Mermeiiteau, Jennings and Lake Charles each pos- 
 sess one or more of these mills, and during the past season 
 five milling establishments were in operation night and day 
 during the rice season in Crowley, while a like condition 
 existed in a less degree at each of the other points men- 
 tioned. And yet not one-half of the raw crop is milled in 
 the territory in which it is produced. It is extremely likely, 
 however that this condition of afiairs will not continue. The 
 rice growers themselves have gotten a taste of the extremely 
 large profits which attend the milling of the product, and it 
 is beyond question that they will either utilize their own 
 capital or attract other capital to the end that the entire crop 
 shall be handled in the sections in which it is grown. 
 
 "And now let me give you an idea as to the wonderful 
 profit which has and is attending the cultivation of the crop, 
 the canals and the mills, and this a profit which is but com- 
 mensurate with the industry, thrift and enterprise of the 
 people who are engaged in their several occupations, and 
 here I want to qualify my remark in which I mentioned the 
 stimulus given Southwest Louisiana by the injection of an 
 element from another State, as I would not for the world 
 take from the native element that which is their just due,, 
 for, while in the main, my remark was correct, yet it has 
 been also due to such men as W. W. and C. C. Duson of 
 Crowley, both of whom have labored to their own end and 
 the country's upbuilding and its wcrtiderful success. And to 
 Messrs. Duson I might add a great many others who have 
 also contributed to the development of Louisiana's resources. 
 
 " Individual cases, in which farmers have purchased 
 farms on absolute credit, and by the cultivation of a single 
 season's crop have paid for their farm and put money in 
 bank, are extremely common. I personally am cognizant of 
 instances where men have made large fortunes in the rice 
 belt during the past eight or ten years. I know of two men, 
 
12 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 brothers, who reached Crowley, eight or ten years ago witb 
 $500 between them. To-day they are worth $250,000. 
 Another firm, after an agricultural and business existence of 
 eight years, can count their total earnings at even a larger 
 figure, while there has not been a single instance in which 
 success has failed to attend an intelligent effort, and every- 
 where the eye falls upon a condition of things and of men^ 
 which conduces to the belief that God must have set a seal 
 of favor upon the country and its inhabitants. Beautiful 
 residences, handsome farm buildings, are the general rule,, 
 and their opposite the exception, while progress is rampant 
 in every direction. 
 
 "Just look at a few of these figures: A. M. Garrison, 
 Crowley, from 220 acres of rice received $8682 ; A. D. 
 McFarland, Jennings, 300 acres, $10,500; S. W. Boyd, 
 Lake Arthur, 200 acres, f 4200 ; Taylor & Evans, Jennings, 
 200 acres, $7100; C. L. Shaw, Jennings, 230 acres, $8200 : 
 Green & Shoemaker, Crowley, 1000 acres, $77,000 ; Abbott 
 Bros. Crowley, 1000 acres, $77,000. 
 
 " These are but a few of many instances taken from the 
 crop of 1897. And in considering these figures, it must b(> 
 remembered that the expense as against the gross receipts, 
 will average about one-third, or of a given amount received 
 for the crop in bulk, two-thirds go to profit. 
 
 " Then the rice mills. Take any of the mills of Crowley 
 for instance. I went through one of these rice mills the 
 other day while in Crowley with Secretary Wilson, of the 
 Agricultural Department, and I ascertained that the capacity 
 of this mill was 1200 barrels every twenty-four hours. The 
 mills receive on an average for their part of the work (they 
 both cleaning, sacking and selling the product) about 50 
 cents a sack. This represents a gross earning capacity for 
 at least ten months in the year at present of $600 per day- 
 Allowing $200, or even $300, as a legitimate expense and in 
 parenthesis as it were, I will say that these figures far exceed 
 the facts, and you have a net profit of not less than $300 a 
 day, a total of $9000 per month, or a total net of $90,000 
 per year, and this on an investment of $50,000. Comment 
 'is unnecessary, 
 
 "A canal or irrigation company, whose initial expense 
 was the raising of levees and the purchase of pumping ma 
 chinery, receives one-fifth of the total crop to which it sup 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC ' 13 
 
 plies water. This profit iipou the investment must be at 
 least 25 per cent. In support of these figures, let me quote 
 a geutleinuii who recently organized a stock company in St. 
 Louis for the purchase of land for vice farming in Chambers 
 county, Texas. In considering the question with St. Louis 
 capitalists he mentioned the proposed profit of 25 per cent 
 and he was laughed at. The iigures were too big and yet 
 they were true. 
 
 " In connection with this new company let me tell you 
 that this contemplates the building of a canal twenty miles 
 in length and the cultivation next season of 20,000 acres of 
 rice in one body. 
 
 " The rice condition will bo changed materially in the 
 course of the next eight or ten years. At present this entire 
 country produces about one-half of the rice consumed in the 
 United States. The development of the rice sections along 
 our line will, in the course of the time mentioned, force a 
 production equal if not greater than the consumption, and 
 then prices must fall of necessity. It is because of this 
 contingency that I am inclined to support the views of Sec- 
 retary of Agriculture Wilson, who said at Jennings the other 
 night, that farming must not consist of a one-crop idea ; that 
 a diversification of crops indicates a lasting prosperity and 
 such must inevitably ensue. He said that Louisiana was 
 adapted to the growing of all the fine grasses, and conse- 
 quently of fine cattle and horses ; that its fertile lands could 
 produce every agricultural product needed by its people, and 
 that with intelligent cultivation and selection, nothing was 
 impossible to a people who had already accomplished 
 so much. 
 
 " Southwest Louisiana is a paradise for the farmer, and 
 its people are growing wealthy faster than any agricultural 
 people in the entire country. As a rice grower of Crowley 
 said the other day, when he was told that money could be 
 secured in Boston for 3 per cent; *Give us ten years of 
 prosperity such as we have enjoyed during the past ten years 
 and we will lend Boston money at her own figures.' 
 
 "At any rate Southwest Louisiana is progressing with a 
 vengeance and the existing conditions and its past develop- 
 ment are without precedent. The soil is productive, the 
 people intelligent and enterprising and its climate delightful. 
 Nothing is there peculiar to the South that will not grow 
 
14 , SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 there, and the land is verdant with the promise of a wonder- 
 ful and God-given bounty to man and beast." 
 
 THE PRESENT OUTLOOK OF AGRICULTURE IN SOUTHWEST 
 
 LOUISIANA. 
 
 A PAPER ON KICK PRODUCTION BY S. L. CARY, READ AT THE FARMERS IN- 
 STITUTE HELD AT JENNINGS, LOUISIANA, MARCH 21ST, 1899, 
 SOME PROBLEMS SOLVED. 
 
 It were well before going into the merits of my subject 
 to determine what is success in agriculture, what shall be 
 the measure of it. As a matter of statistics, in general busi- 
 ness 97 per cent, make failures. In the solid city of Boston, 
 (the hub of the universe.) Mr. Wise, after 45 years of close 
 observation, said that 95 per cent of the business men of 
 that city failed during life or died insolvent. 
 
 A prominent banker in the same city selected 1000 of 
 his heaviest depositors, and after forty years he reported that 
 all but six had failed while living or died in debt. Some one 
 has said " a farm that gives me a place to put the labor of 
 my family at good wages is a bonanza." The late J. "A. 
 Daniels often said that Michigan farmers worked at an aver- 
 age wage of seven cents per day. 
 
 My own experience tells me that 75 per cent of north- 
 ern farmers make failures during their business life. From 
 this standpoint w^e can better measure the success or the fail- 
 ure of agriculture in S. W, Louisiana of which rice growing 
 is much the largest and best part. 
 
 You may ask, why is this? Answer, it pays best. Not 
 that we can grow little else, for we grow nearly everything 
 grown north of us and sugar, rice and earlier truck, fruits 
 and many other things besides. 
 
 All of us are brought up in fiction, later on we find it 
 out and begin the search for truth. The fiction that rice can 
 be grown profitably without flooding on upland or on sandy 
 soil or without careful study is past, and now we want to 
 know, what is truth? Truth lies hidden in the bottom of a 
 well, (about 200 feet down,) covered with clay and quick 
 sand representing good and evil. The clay is good and the 
 quick sand is treacherous as evil. Diogenes with a lamp in 
 daylight was hunting a man. ^ 
 
 We are seeking truth. Truth commends itself to all, 
 is always eloquent, it needs no embellishing. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 15 
 
 Our investigation will begin and and end -with rice grow- 
 ing, and its incidentals, for the very good reason that rice 
 raising is the leading crop, and if that is a failure then we 
 must begin again in some other line, which we can well do, 
 but for which we see no probable necessity. Modern rice 
 growing began fifteen years ago with the introduction of the 
 twine binding harvester, by Maurice Brien, of Jennings, La. 
 It was indeed an infant industry, a few scattered fields in the 
 low ground trodden into the earth by the w41d cattle and 
 horses, watered by the rains of Heaven harvested with the 
 old sickle. The exports were limited to about 100 car loads 
 from Welsh, Jennings and Rayne. 
 
 Now we use 4000 improved harvesters; (each doing the 
 work of 40 men with sickle,) over seventy canals and pump- 
 ing plants aggregating over 400 miles, each mile capable of 
 flooding 1000 acres of rice or of irrigating more than 5000 
 acres in other crops. Canals are the work of the past seven 
 years, the number increasing each season. Over 300 irriga- 
 ting wells for flooding rice have been put down, beginning 
 about three years ago, increasing in number each season. 
 They have an average depth of 200 feet ; a six inch well 
 will flood from 55 to 100 acres. Ten to fifteen new canals 
 have commenced business this season and about 200 or more 
 deep wells, (and more to follow.) Southwest Louisiana 
 leads all competitors in the States by growing over one mil- 
 lion barrels of rough rice, (or six thousand six hundred and 
 sixty car loads at one hundred and fifty barrels per car.) 
 But is there any evidence that rice growing pays as well as 
 to grow other crops? Let us see. What per cent of our 
 rice farmers have made financial failures? If 75 per cent 
 fail in 20 years, (the average business life of a farmer,.) 
 then in the same ratio 55 per cent of the rice growers would 
 fail in 15 years, (or during the time of modern rice growing.) 
 Being on the ground the past sixteen years, and my business 
 being to investigate for the good of immigration, I will 
 make the assertion from the best of my knowledge that less 
 than 25 per cent have failed from the effects of rice farming. 
 In spite of the fact that it was a new business to them all. 
 Besides the iailures have not been as disastrous as they gen- 
 erally are in other districts. There has been no occasion for 
 
l6 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 appeals to the outside world for help. After all, the best test 
 of the outlook for agriculture will be the present price of 
 real estate as compared with the beginniug 15 years ago. If 
 I should say that land sells more readily now at twenty dollars 
 per acre in Southwest Louisiana than at one dollar then, I 
 am well within the mark, and that means 2000 per cent, 
 advance. But some one says: that's so, but how does that 
 compare with countries that grow wheat, oats, stock and cot- 
 ton ! Let us see. The New England States that grow 
 nearly every thing except sugar, rice and cotton, prices for 
 lands have gone down. In the Eastern Middle States real 
 estate prices are lower. In the Western Middle States 
 prices are much lower than 15 years ago. And the same 
 may be said of the Pacific and the grsat northwest. Look- 
 ing over the whole field, Southwest Louisiana is the brightest 
 spot on the horizon. In the good old days when a man was 
 a failure the trouble was in his STARS, now we lay it to the 
 TRUSTS. 
 
 Ask a man what is a trust and he will answer, its a 
 combination to curtail production and thereby raise prices, 
 and all agree that it is a very wicked thing except in our own 
 line, and in our business its a very commendable thing to do. 
 The cotton planters find the cotton trust a remedy for all the 
 ills of life. The same parties are death on all other so-called 
 trusts but theirs. My own opinion is well expressed by the 
 colored preacher: "Keep in the current, brudder." If 
 there is any trusti"Dg going on, be sure that you are in the 
 swim. Keep your credit good and get TRUSTED whenever 
 you see any money in it. Pope said: " It's in the culture, 
 not the soil." It's in ourselves, and not the stars. The world 
 is on the up-grade, and now is the tide in the affairs of men, 
 which, if taken at the ebb, leads on to fortune. What about 
 hard times, A PANIC ? Don't talk it or fear it. Our ex- 
 ports exceed our imports 600,000,000 of dollars, and bid 
 fair to soon reach one billion of dollars. Our debt to Europe 
 is nearly paid, and then this balance must be paid in cash. 
 Ten years of such trade would exhaust the metallic money 
 of the world. We have the raw material to manufacture, 
 and we are the people to do it, and, unless the great wheels 
 of trade stop, there will be no scarcity of money or material 
 in this, the youngest, most powerful and richest nation on 
 earth. Eight billions of gold and silver, all the world's stock 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. . 17 
 
 of metallic mouey, and our mortgage upon it ia our bread- 
 stuffs, our cotton, our coal, iron, copper, gold and silver. Our 
 a-esources are unlimited and scarcely touched, and our labor 
 ■more efficient than any other. Assisted by the best inventive 
 genius our manufactures have captured all markets. Ameri- 
 can engines are hauling trains over American iron in China 
 and the Orient. We go wherever men go and trade follows 
 our flag. The Star Spangled Banner is hailed with delight 
 by all people, including our late enemies, the Spaniards. We 
 are the largest exporting country, having passed Great Britain 
 the past year. 
 
 Southwest Louisiana is settled by a thinking people, and 
 "what are we here for? Answer.* To make money, and that 
 comes from higher prices for what we own and produce ; to 
 make homes, and they come of prosperity; and, above all, to 
 make character, and that comes from obstacles overcome, aiid 
 the good Lord knows we have had our full sliare. I have said 
 that we have been systematically robbed. First and most by 
 our ignorance of the rice business. We tried Providence 
 and challenged Nature to a combat in which we came out 
 second best; then tried the New Orleans millers and came 
 out busted;, then we tried the rice buyers and speculators 
 and came out worsted ; and last we challenged the heavens 
 and declared our independence of the clouds, and the angel 
 of the harvest invoked the aid of Neptune, and he opened 
 the flood-gates of heaven upon us and never let up for our 
 ■crying until there was nothing to show for the largest and 
 "best crop of rice ever grown in Southwest Louisiana but a sea 
 of mud. And now in TRUTH, tell us what is the present 
 outlook for the rice industry. Has it overcome these ob- 
 stacles and made them stepping-stones to success? If so, 
 then its character must be -well developed and we can lean 
 upon it safely. That we have overcome our ignorance of the 
 crop we know by the school of experience. We have beaten 
 the New Orleans millers by building better mills in the rice 
 country, where we have the largest and best mills in the 
 world. We beat the rice speculators by compelling them to 
 "buy in our home markets and pay for the rice on delivery. 
 , One more problem. Proper DRAINAGE, and we are 
 a long way ahead of any other rice growing country that wo 
 know of to-day. A clay soil, easily flooded and capable of 
 supporting the heaviest machinery. (No transplanting, no 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 19 
 
 sickliug, no plowing, sowing, weeding or harvesting in water.) 
 Can we solve and overcome this last obstacle to perfect suc- 
 cess, DRAINAGE? On the ridge running from Lake Arthur 
 on the south through Jennings and to China on the north it's 
 a question of little importance, 20 to 30 feet above the Mer- 
 mentau and the Nezpique, and on the west 10 feet above the 
 Grand Marias. Water seeks its level and the problem of 
 drainage is easy. Three-fourths of all rice lands in South- 
 west Louisana can be drained inexpensively and without 
 pumping ; one-fourth may, as many sugar planters do, use the 
 pump and high levees. Canals and wells will both assist in this 
 work of drainage. We will soon have a deep well on each 
 quarter section. The water rises to within 8 to 12 feet of 
 the surface, and water turned into these wells disappears as 
 rapidly as if turned into a canal or the river, whenever they 
 reach a strata of coarse sand and gravel. 
 
 How does rice growing compare with cotton? We grow 
 1620 pounds of rough rice per acre as a good average; this 
 equals 1000 pounds of clean rice of the several grades, aver- 
 age price four cents a pound, equals $40. 250 pounds of 
 lint cotton and 500 pounds of seed is a good average yield of 
 cotton. 250 pounds of cotton at 4 cents equals $10, and 500 
 pounds of seed at $12 a ton equal $3, total $13, as against 
 $40 for rice. How about wheat? A good average is ten 
 bushels, suppose we say fifteen, at an average price of sixty 
 cents a bushel, equals $9. As against $20 to $30 for rough 
 rice, corn gives an average of $8 to $13, oats rather less and 
 hay less than oats. And now the fact that after all these 
 disasters and after the failure to harvest the last season's 
 crop, more acreage will be put into rice than ever, tell us 
 what the best men in the business think of the present out- 
 look of agriculture in Southwest Louisiana. Since writing 
 this the rice belt has had two remarkably fine harvests ; two 
 good crops sold at good prices and the prices of land has 
 doubled in the rice belt the present season. 
 
20 SOUTHWESTERN LOUlSIA^fA 
 
 Rice. 
 
 Its cultivation on the prairies of southavestern Louisiana.— does 
 
 IT PAY? 
 
 Riee is a cereal plant of the genus oryza. It is culti- 
 vated in all warm climates and forms a large part of the food 
 of those countries. It is light and nutritious and very easy 
 of digestion. It is a staple of commerce all over the world 
 and is largely used in the United States. 
 
 Heretofore our supplies were mainly from Japan, Chin^i 
 and the Carolinas. Laterly Louisiana has come into the mar- 
 ket as a rice-producing country, and by the use of improved 
 machinery in cultivating and harvesting has stepped to the 
 front rank as a rice-producing State. 
 
 The rough rice is sown on new or old laud prepared as 
 for other grain. Fifty to sixty pounds per acre is suffi- 
 cient. 
 
 Level land capable of flooding is best. Soil, clay loam 
 with clay sub-soil. Levees should be prepared as long as 
 possible before seeding, and field should be flooded when 
 rice is 6 to 12 inches high, with 4 to 12 inches of water. 
 Sow from March 10 to June 20, and harvest in August, Sep- 
 tember and October. 
 
 In appearance rice much resembles wheat in its early 
 growth. The head more nearly resembles oats, but the ker- 
 nels resemble barley and are more closely packed in the head 
 than oats. It stools thickly, having thirty to one hundred 
 straws from one seed and one hundred to four hundred Seeds 
 in a head. It is the only small cereal plant that yields Ihe 
 hundredfold of Scripture. 
 
 Rice raising for commerce began in Southwestern Louis- 
 iana with the advent of the Iowa Colony and twine-binding 
 harvesters, in 1884, when Maurice Brien, of Jennings, La., 
 put a twine-binder in the field. 
 
 In 1883 five acres was about the largest field; since then 
 the growth has been rapid, as figures show. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 21 
 
 The Southern Pacific Railroad shipped, in 1886, 2,000.000 
 pounds; 1887, 4,000,000 pounds; 1888, 8,000,000 pounds; 
 1889. 16,000,000 pounds; 1890, 60,000,000 pounds; 1891, 
 180,000,000 pounds; 1892,300,000,000 pounds; crops to 
 1898 approximated 250 million pounds yearly. 
 
 In 1884 there was used 1 twine-binder. 
 
 In 1885 there were used 5 twine-binders. 
 
 In 1886 there were used 50 twine-binders. 
 
 In 1887 there were used 200 twine-binders 
 
 In 188S there were used 400 twine-binders. 
 
 In 1890 there were used 1,000 twine binders. 
 
 In 1891ihere were used 2,000 twine binders. 
 
 In 1892 there were used 3,000 twine-binders. 
 
 In 1894 there were used 3,200 twine-binders and 10 headers and 
 
 binders, 10 feet cut. 
 In 1900 there were used 4,500 twine-binders. 
 
 The Southern Pacific Railroad shipped, in 1884, about 
 250 cars of rice between Lake Charles and La Fayette ; in 
 1889, over 1,000 cars; in 1890,2,000 cars; 1891,5,000 cars; 
 and for 1892 and 1893, 10,000 cars. 
 
 With good cultivation and care rice yields fifteen barrels 
 (60 bushels) per acre. This has brought an average of ,$3 
 per barrel — $45 per acre. 
 
 The cost of growing, harvesting and marketing will gen- 
 erally reach $1 per barrel, say $15 per acre, when you have 
 to ])ump water by steam. Most of the rice is raised by 
 artificial irrigation, canals, wells and pumping plants which 
 raise the water to the field level. Some 300,000 acres are 
 now being watered. 
 
 Cost of growing an acre of rice, say fifteen barrels, is SI 5, 
 and fifteen barrels of rice at the average, $3, is $45, leaving 
 $30 net. 
 
 Cost of raising ten barrels, about $10 ; value of ten bar- 
 rels i9 $30, leaving $20 net. 
 
 The total rice crop along the Atlantic Coast, 
 1889, w^as 190,000 sacks. Louisiana raised 642,053 sacks. 
 
 Our imports were about 500,000 sacks, 225 pounds of 
 clean rice each. The total consumption of domestic and 
 foreign rice ( Times- Democrat^ September 1,) is as follows : 
 
22 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 Domestic Foreiga 
 
 Sacks. Sacks. 
 
 1884 '. 490,000 333,000 
 
 1885 600,000 246,000 
 
 1886 615,000 208.000 
 
 1887 448,000 410,000 
 
 1888 465.000 491,000 
 
 1890 500.000 450,000 
 
 1891 600,000 500.000 
 
 1892 6n0.0<0 620.000 
 
 1896 500,000 700,000 
 
 1897 700,000 1,000,600 
 
 " Domestic sacks weigli or represent one hundred and 
 sixty lbs. of rough rice, while foreign sacks represent two hun- 
 dred and twenty-five of clean product. That rice will retain its 
 present price is usually the best opinion of the best men in 
 the market." If so, then can the Louisiana planter compete 
 with the old established planters in Carolina and on the 
 Mississippi? I believe that Louisiana has the field, for many 
 reasons: peculiarity of soil, heavy clay, supporting with ease 
 the best agricultural machinery. One man with a machine 
 and four mules has the working power of forty with a sickle. 
 We have an abundant rainfall, supplemented JDy steam pumps 
 and engines on hand, and numerous rivers and lakes to draw 
 from, also a very long season in which to operate — from 
 November to July for plowing and preparing ground and 
 levees; March, April, May and June for seeding; August, 
 September, October and November for threshing and market- 
 ing. Rice can be grown and marketed at a cost of $1.00 per 
 barrel of 162 pounds of rough. All above is a clear profit. 
 Wheat, oats and corn are grown North and sold at actual cost 
 of growing, and lands are sold at $30 to $100 per acre where 
 those conditions exist. I hear it rumored that our competi- 
 tors are out of the race at $2 a barrel. I do not hesitate to 
 say that Southwestern Louisiana, with her improved 
 machinery, her generous soil, wonderful climate and easy 
 conditions, her splendid peo[)le, will be able still to let out a link 
 or two and grow rice at a good round' profit for $1 a sack. I 
 do not expect to see prices that low ; at the same time I 
 believe the day of high prices for all manufactured products 
 is past and I am glad of it. The day is near when eight 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 23 
 
 hours' work will give each one a lull day's rations. A large 
 part of the rice grown should be consumed on our farms. 
 There is no better feed for stock, and none cheaper at present 
 prices. Its uses will broaden with low prices. The good 
 rice land is limited in quantity, and as population increases 
 and its value as a food plant is made known, the tendency 
 will be to stimulate prices and production. 
 
 Egyptian or soft rice is best feed for stock, and some 
 claim better yields and with less water. The country has 
 been flooded not only with water but with machinery, ytt 
 notwithstanding the low prices collections are much better 
 than elsewhere. The lirst receipt of new rice in 1891 w^as 
 August 31; 1890, July 31; 1889, August 1 ; 1888, July 29. 
 Canals, artesian wells, pumps, engines, windmills, and im- 
 proved machinery are wanted, and fortunes await the indus- 
 trious men of genius and enterprise. Labor and intelligence 
 are at a higher premium here than elsew^here. The crop of 
 Louisiana for 1 892 will reach 2,000,000 of sacks— 400,000,000 
 pounds of rough rice — 250,000,000 pounds of clean rice, at 
 four cents a pound — $10,000,000. If Louisiana grows 260,- 
 000,000 pounds of clean rice, then the balance of the Gulf 
 States will grow about one-third as much, giving for the 
 domestic product 333,000,000 pounds of clean, so we will 
 have to import as much to equal consumption. 
 
 The crop of 1898 has been cut 50 per cent, by rains. 
 Prices have improved as much. The uses have broad- 
 ened and now rice is being fed to all kinds of stock largely. 
 There is little waste land in Southwestern Louisiana — low 
 lands to rice and higher lands for cane, corn, oats, jDota- 
 toes, truck and fruits. 
 
 Better and cheaper methods of production are being 
 adopted each year. But the broadening uses and increasing 
 population wnll doubtless keep pace with production. Rice, 
 sugar and cotton are the three mystic links that bind Louis- 
 iana to the greatest prosperity. 
 
24 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 Writ en for Louisiana Farmer and Rice Journal. 
 
 IS THERE A UniT? 
 
 Where is the limit to profitable rice-growing in South- 
 west Louisiana? I say southwest Louisiana, because there 
 is no other field in the United States that can compete with 
 this. Brick Pomeroy, on his return from China, filled the 
 Chicago papers with the possibilities of rice-growing in the 
 great Northwest, but the article received no further attention 
 after Brick left the city. 
 
 Now and then we see in some paper an inquiry for 
 upland rice seed. Some one may get a good price for a 
 little white Honduras rice, but that customer never comes 
 the second time. No rice-growers in the United States 
 compete successfully with the growers of flooded rice in 
 Southwest Louisiana. During the World's Fair at Chicago, 
 while distributing books, maps and circulars, about Southwest 
 Louisiana, I took occasion during six months to enquire of 
 all foreign rice-growers the cost of growing and the selling 
 prices in their different provinces. I became well assured 
 that none of these can undersell us with the same standard 
 of value. We will not be troubled with imported rice after 
 the orientals adopt the genuine single gold standard (Japan's 
 gold standard is not genuine.) 
 
 The New York Grocer is authority for the statement that 
 we import double the quantity that we grow. Taking that to 
 1)0 about correct, then we have the question : How long will 
 it take to grow three times the present amount, and also 
 provide for its broadeninar uses and the ever-increasing popu- 
 lation.^ How easy my question could be answered now by 
 the rule of three? If in one hundred years we have been 
 able to grow one-third of our consumption, how many years 
 will it take to grow it all ? Such a solution would be very 
 pleasant and desirable to me, for I find myself on very uncer- 
 tain ground. Each morning we are told of another canal 
 project, and it looks to-day as if the domestic supply in 
 Southwest Louisiana might l)e increased fifty per cent in one 
 season, 
 
 I have been a resident here fifteen years, and am entirely 
 familiar with the industry, and especially its modern growth. 
 So I thought I had chosen a subject that would prove an easy 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 2$ 
 
 one. But, instead, I find that there are no precedents or 
 facts to base arguments upon, and in the place of facts the 
 field is full of speculations and of uncertain quantities. 
 
 While there is plenty of available land well adapted to 
 rice, and nearly everything else, the question of the water 
 supply presents itself. Rice must be flooded about sixty days. 
 Will the rivers, lakes and bayous furnish suflicient water ta 
 Hood beyond the amount now in contemplation? Will there 
 be some way of reaching the large prairies far away from 
 water? Will deep wells successfnlly flood these lauds, for 
 in Southwest Louisiana all lands are rice lands that can be 
 flooded? Wells twenty feet deep will supply plenty of water 
 for domestic use, stock, etc., and it appears at a depth of a 
 170 to 200 feet there is a supply of water that is inexhaust- 
 ible. This is beneath alternate layers of clay and quick sand 
 into a coarse gravel. The present outlook, after sinking 
 many wells, is that all these lands can be supplied with water 
 profitably to the owner. Then if rice can be flooded profit- 
 ably, what about simple irrigation of sugar cane, corn, oats^ 
 potatoes, and similar crops' from the same sources ? The cost 
 would be merely nominal. 
 
 Will the increase in consumption keep pace with tli6 
 increase in production? The direction in which there can 
 be the largest immediate increase will be the feeding of rice 
 to stock to compete with corn, oats, wheat and bran, now put 
 on our markets at three-quarters to one cent a pound. Rice 
 can be grown pound for pound cheaper than wheat, corn and 
 oats here, and I believe as cheaply as they can be grov.u 
 anywhere north of us. Rice is a better feed stuff than any 
 of the others alone, and rice bran, polish and sweet potatoes 
 make a feed that excels anything I have tried, especially for 
 dairy stock. Take good sound rice to the feed mill, grind it 
 and feed your horses, jnules and cattle, and they will soon 
 get fat and sleek. We have tried this five years. It beats 
 corn or oats for milk or work. The field is almost unlimited. 
 
 Rice-growing will be limited by the price. If the price 
 is below cost, then the farmer will become a planter. Sugar 
 cane will supersede the rice industry, as these rice lands are 
 generally well adapted to cane-growing. The sugar cane of 
 our prairies, for some good reason, is fifty per cent, sweeter 
 than that of alluvial districts, and the tonnage equally as 
 great. With our better facilities for irrigation the yield can 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 27 
 
 be increased fifty to 100 jDer cent. Thirty tons per acre will 
 be a small average with plenty of water. Only think of thirty 
 tons per acre at the present price, $3 to 83.50 a ton, equal to 
 $90 at least! And this, too, at an average cost of $40 per 
 acre, leaving !|50 profit, I am not talking in the air, as 
 some may think, but good practical horse sense. I have 
 fijrown forty tons an acre on the prairie and at less cost than 
 |40 Moreover, it tested seventeen and a half per ci^it. 
 sucrose. Others have done as well, and, during this diy 
 season witliout irrigation, a number have said to me that 
 they grew thirty to thirty-five tons per acre. It would be 
 entirely possible to grow forty to fifty tons per acre with our 
 coming system of irrigation. 
 
 Then what is the conclusion of the whole matter? If 
 my premises are correct tiie logical conclusion is that as 
 long as wheat, oats and corn can be grown profitably nortli, 
 rice will be profitably grown in Southwest Louisiana. As 
 that result is so very important and so many are asking the 
 question — will you not overdo the rice business ? I will go 
 into detail, 
 
 Rice with water will average ten sacks, say 2,000 pounds 
 per acre. It costs $10 per acre to grow, and is worth, say 
 one cent a pound, which makes $20. Wheat gives an average 
 yield of ten bushels, 600 pounds to the acre, at a cost 
 of about $7. This gives a cost of ^21.00 to grow ],800 
 pounds. 
 
 Corn gives an average yield of thirty bushels, 1,800 
 pounds to the acre, at a cost of about $11. 
 
 Oats give an average yield of forty bushels, 1,280 pounds 
 per acre. It takes one and one-half acres to make 1,800 
 pounds to equal rice. The average cost of an acre of oats, 
 is, say S7, making one and a half acres of oats cost $10.50. 
 
 From these conservative figures the comparative profit 
 in rice can be readily seen. We meet the inquiry on every 
 hand, and especially from every homeseeker — will there not 
 be overproduction? And I must confess our answers have 
 been very indefinite and not assuring. But I am sure that 
 anyone who will read this article carefully, will come to the 
 same conclusion that the writer came to, that there is room 
 for a great growth in the rice industry, and that it is profit- 
 able. In addition to being profitable, it is, with flooding, an 
 
28 
 
 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 almost absolutely sure crop, and the water is a fertilizer, so 
 that no more is needed for successful rice-growing. 
 
 The limit to profitable rice-growing will not be reached 
 as long as there is stock to fatten or people to feed. Or, in 
 other words, there can be no overproduction in this world as 
 long as there is a hungry man in it. We are only a speck 
 in the grand old universe of God, and we can't overstock it. 
 
 Partial List of Canals and Pumping Plants for 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Name. Acres Ir. 
 
 Duson & Abbott, Canal and Pumping- Plant 12,000 
 
 J. R. Roller & Co., " " " 8,000 
 
 A. Kaplan, " " •' 
 
 Morris & Miller, '• " " 8,000 
 
 Abbott Eros , " '' " 7,000 
 
 W. W. Dusop, " " " 6,000 
 
 Wa tfertown Canal and Pumping- Plant 800 
 
 Hurd ct Wrigrht, " " " 500 
 
 S, L Peck, Pumping Plant 300 
 
 Cary & Bibbins. Canal und Pumpin«r Plant 500 
 
 Maig-naud Canal, " " " 500 
 
 McFarlain Ir. Co., Canal and '• " 6,000 
 
 A. D. McFarlain< " '- " 3,000 
 
 Wilkinson Canal and Pumping- Plant 3,000 
 
 Jenning-s Ir. Co., Canal and Pumping- Plant 3,000 
 
 C.L.Shaw, " " " 500 
 
 Riverside Ir. Co., " " " 4.500 
 
 Gauthier & Sons, " " " 500 
 
 Lacasine Ir. Co., " " " 2 500 
 
 Lakeside Ir. Co., " " " 3,500 
 
 Williams & Cooper, " " " 1.500 
 
 P J. Unkel, " " " 500 
 
 Nor-wood Ir. Co., •' " " 500 
 
 EckJes, " " " 300 
 
 W. R. Conklin, " " " 500 
 
 A A. Call, " " " 1,000 
 
 D. Dfrouen, " " " 250 
 
 William Spurg-in, " " " 1,500 
 
 Q. B Spencer, " " " 300 
 
 Mayvill- Canal Co., " " " 4.000 
 
 Holton & Winn, Canal and Pumping- Plant 1,000 
 
 J. H. Bloee, Pumping- Plant.. 200 
 
 Pomeroy & Sons, Canal and Pumping Plant 500 
 
 C.A Lowry & Co., •' " " 7,000 
 
 Stafford «fe Links-weiler, " " " 3, GOO 
 
 J. H. Houck, Canal and Pumping Plant 400 
 
 D.Herbert, " " - 400 
 
 J.B.Foley. ' " " 1,100 
 
 French & Ward, " " " . 500 
 
 Laurents & Broussard, Canal & Pumping Plant 200 
 
 H. C Clay, Cans! and Pumping Plant 2.000 
 
 E I. Hall, Canal and Pumping Plant 1,000 
 
 Bridgford & Crow, Canal and Pumping Plant. .. 400 
 
 Frazer & Nason, " " " 2,500 
 
 Lake .Bros., " " " .. 3 500 
 
 H.C.Drew, " " •' .. 6,000 
 
 W.Allen, " " " .. 200 
 
 Felix Perkins, " " " .. 160 
 
 Lake Benton Canal (projected) 
 
 Villere & Duhan, " " " 160 
 
 Ed Morris " " " 1,000 
 
 Midland Canal Company 5,000 
 
 O E Moore, " " " 1-000 
 Bradford Canal, " " " ..(projected) 
 
 S. A Robertson, Canal and Pumping Plant 2,000 
 
 Xlaywood Rice, Canal & Milling Co 
 
 Flooding Rice 
 
 Post Office. 
 Cro-wl«y, La. 
 
 Mermentau, La. 
 
 Jennings, La. 
 
 Lake Arthur, La- 
 Shell Beach, La. 
 Lakeside, La. 
 Lake Charles, La. 
 
 Lake Charles, La. 
 
 Lacasine, La. 
 Midland, La. 
 Kinder, La. 
 Rayne, La. 
 Sulphur City, La. 
 Ray-wood, Texas. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 29 
 
 Canals. — Continued. 
 
 Estimateil 
 Acres Ir. 
 
 Walker & Underwood, Canal and P. Plant 
 
 Trinity Canal & Irrig^ation Co 
 
 L. E. Kobinson, Canal and Pumping Plant 1 000 
 
 Hall & Stutts, '' " •• .... 5,000 
 
 Farmer's Canal & Irrigrating' Co 20,000 
 
 Moss '• '• " 2,500 
 
 Verkins Pumping- Plant 800 
 
 Vermillion Development Cc, C and P Plant.. 22,000 
 
 R. U. Mills, Canal and Pumping- Plant 2,500 
 
 S. S. Hunter, " " " (proiected) 
 
 20 Canals built in 1900 in rice belt. 
 
 Post Office. 
 Terry, Texas. 
 Trinity, Texaci, 
 Welsh, lia. 
 Abbeville, La. 
 
 Post Office 
 Address. 
 
 PARTIAL LIST OF WELLS FOR FLOODING RICE. 
 
 No. Size 
 
 Name. Wells. Wells. 
 
 Maurice Brien 2 6 inches. Jennings. 
 
 S. L. Cary & Son 2 6" 
 
 Edward Bucklin 16" " 
 
 V. M.Twitchell 2 6" 
 
 T. H. Roberts 2 6" 
 
 A. Barber (flowing) 18" 
 
 y^ ttr -n W» • ( 1 6 inches.) " 
 
 G. W. Remage rr. "/ 1 8 " I " 
 
 G. H. Morse (flowing) 10 2 " 
 
 C.H.Dunham 16" " 
 
 J, W. Roberts 18" 
 
 Albert Anderson 18" " 
 
 Cook & Snyder...' 2 6" " 
 
 F. R. Jaenke 18" 
 
 Q^ Wendling & Son 2 6" Crowley. 
 
 Joseph i:*'leish 16" " 
 
 I.H.Robinson 2 4" 
 
 Fenton Bros 1 6 " Fenton. 
 
 A.E.Ellis 16" 
 
 Winsted Jones 4 8" " 
 
 John Robinson 2 8 " " 
 
 Landers & Donnelly ■. ,-, o u '[ Gueydan. 
 
 Booze & Hutcheson 2 6" Roanoke, 
 
 W. C.Gragg 16" 
 
 Mr. Dunham 1 8 " Welsh. 
 
 F. Peabody 16" " 
 
 E. S. Abbo'.t J 18" " 
 
 Mr. Williams 4 8" Prairie Hays. 
 
 Mr. Cambean 4 8" 
 
 TT m 1 (26 inches.) , ,, 
 
 Horace Taylor ] 9 o u h 
 
 M. V. Marsh 16" Whitehouse. 
 
 George Bult 16" Basile. 
 
 L. Viterbo, Kaufman & Bel 50 6 " Beaumont, Tex. 
 
 200 Wells 6 to 12 inches in rice belt. 
 
 A MODEL PLANTATION. 
 
 J. F WELLINGTON. 
 
 As the years roll by and the rice industry in Southwest 
 Louisiana is accorded its Just measure of credit, as a wealth 
 producer, more or less interest will be taken in its history. 
 When the historians of the future turn back the pages of the 
 
30 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 past they will discover that the most important epoch in the 
 history of rice culture comprises the last three months of 
 1897 and the first three of 1898. Those "Golden Days" of 
 prosperity witnessed a phenomenal increase in the number 
 and size of pumping plants and canals throughout the rice 
 region. 
 
 Two years of drouth in succession, for the first time in 
 our history, had demonstrated the impossibility of raising 
 rice without water. During those two years, the few rice 
 planters who owned and operated pumping plants, produced 
 at least seventy-five per cent of all the rice raised in the 
 prairie region. After the Providence crop of 1897 was 
 known to be a failure and the magnifi,cence of the irrigated 
 crop was assured, a stampede occurred to the pump lands. 
 I speak particularly of eastern Calcasieu parish, as I am 
 thoroughly familiar with the situation in that locality. 
 Engineers were employed and levels were taken over thou- 
 sands of acres, sites for pumping plants were examined and 
 the capacity of lakes and rivers estimated by experts. 
 
 From the 15th of October to the 15th of March, one 
 real estate firm in Jennings sold 19,000 acres of rice land. 
 Of this amount, 925 acres were purchased by northern or 
 western men. All the remainder went to men who live in 
 this vicinity and have made their money by raising rice. 
 Within a radius of fifteen miles of Jennings, twelve new 
 plants are now under construction and will be ready for 
 operation in time to insure the crop for 1898. 
 
 Each of these plants is a monument to the wealth pro- 
 ducing qualities of rice industry. 
 
 Among these monuments are many that deserve more 
 than a passing notice. One of the most complete and up to 
 date plants with which I am familiar is that of the Lakeside 
 Irrigation Co. L't'd, whose home office is at Shell Beach, La. 
 In November, 1897, E. F. Rowson and Dr. E. 1. Hall of 
 Jennings, purchased 4,000 acres of raw prairie, on the south 
 side of Lake Arthur and twelve and one-half miles from 
 Jennings. 
 
 January 1, 1898, the above company was formed, S. B. 
 Carpenter, of Cresco, la., Geo. A. Sundberg and John Boyum, 
 of Mayville, N. D., becoming stockholders. 
 
 It was then decided to immediately put in a pumping 
 plant, construct canals and operate the entire tract upon the 
 tenant system. 
 
 June 1, 1898, at the beginning of the pumping season, 
 this company will have in operation five miles of navigable 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 31 
 
 canal through which busy tugs will tow barge loads of rice 
 to market and bring in coal, groceries and other supplies. 
 
 In addition to this canal, tliere will be eight miles of irri- 
 gating canals, varying in width from sixty to one hundred 
 feet. Thirteen new houses have been built, containing from 
 four to eight rooms each, for the use of the tenants. They 
 are all occupied, and a more contented looking lot of agricul- 
 turalists would be hard to find in any country. Barns, fences 
 and out-buildings are all new and modern ; graded roads are 
 found at convenient distances throughout the plantation, with 
 good bridges wherever necessary. The pumping plant consists 
 of two 100 horse power boilers, two 80 horse power engines and 
 two six foot McStravick pumps. The capacity of the plant 
 is G,000 acres. 3,000 acres of rice will be raised this year. 
 All complete and ready to operate, the entire property repre- 
 sents the investment of .|^75,000. Every tenant is an equal 
 partner with his landlord. The company furnishes laud, 
 water, buildings, fence and seed. The tenant furnishes the 
 teams, machinery, feed and labor. The crop is divided at the 
 threshing machine, each getting one-half. A conservative 
 estimate of results may not be out of place in this connection. 
 The yield from irrigated lands in that vicinity has never been 
 as low as eight barrels per acre. For absolute safety, we 
 will place it at that figure. This would give the company 
 12,000 barrels as its share of the crop. Good rice sold last; 
 year at from $2.75 to $4.25 per barrel, if only $2.50 should 
 be realized this year, the company would still have |30,000 
 of an income from which to pay running expenses and divi- 
 dends upon the stock. 
 
 To would-be investors, I will say that this statement will 
 stand investigation. The other side of the question will also 
 bear thorough examination. One man and a team can handle 
 one hundred acres of rice, except in harvest, one extra man 
 is all that is required at that time. 
 
 When we consider that the tenant has no expense 
 except his living, horse feed and labor, with a practically 
 sure income of $1,000 for each man and team that lie 
 works, that he has no possible show to lose anything and 
 that he is only required to work as much as in the noithern 
 states, it really looks as though a tenant on a rice plantation 
 is ill a fair way to make as much money as his northern 
 brother, who does well if he makes expenses on a rented 
 farm, extra well if he clears $200.00 on a quarter section 
 that he owns, gets gay and moves to town if the fates smile 
 upon him and he makes as mucli as $600.00 in one year. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 33 
 
 RICE=QROWINQ 
 
 IS A RECENT DEVELOPEMENT IN AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 
 
 Written for the Sunday St. Louis Republic, May, 1899. 
 
 The recent organization in St. Louis of the Trinity Rice- 
 land and Irrigation Company with a capitalization of $200,000 
 has called attention to the fact that a new departure in agri- 
 culture is now being developed in Texas — the culture of rice. 
 The Trinity Company is officered by C. F. Blanke of St. Louis, 
 as president, W. C, Moore of Houston, Tex., as vice president, 
 F. W. Schwettmann of Lincoln, Mo., as secretary, and Charles 
 L. Heitzeberg of St. Louis as treasurer. It is stated that over 
 half the stock was promptly subscribed by Missouri people. 
 
 St. Louis money was not invested in Texas ricelands 
 until a careful investigation had been made. A committee 
 was sent from here to view the situation and so satisfactory 
 was its report that 15,000 acres of land in the northeastern 
 part of Chambers County, Texas, was purchased. 
 
 Vice President W. E. Moore of Houston, Tex., the first 
 to call the attention of local capitalists to the opportunity 
 offered by the Texas ricelands, was in St. Louis a few days 
 ago. He gave some details of the innovation: 
 
 " The developement of this crop," said Mr. Moore, " in 
 certain sections of Texas and Louisiana is marvelous, and an 
 investigation is only necessary to create enthusiasm as to the 
 profits of this crop. The great trouble, is, the American peo- 
 ple always associate Chinamen and rice as being of the eame 
 family, and not caring to cultivate the former, they manifest 
 little interest in the latter. The investigation, however, re- 
 veals a startling comparison, for while one is associated with 
 the idea of cheapness, the other opens up avenues for riches. 
 Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas is recognized as the 
 best section of America for the culture of this crop. This 
 territory extends inland from the coast a distance of about 
 50 miles running east and west for probably 200 miles. 
 
 " For the growing and successful maturity of rice it re- 
 quires a peculiarity of soil and climate. The land is prepared 
 the same as for wheat or other small grain, and the seed then 
 sown broadcast or in drills, about one and one-fourth bushels 
 being used to the acre. When the crop comes up it resem- 
 bles nothing so much as a wheat field, the blades when first 
 appearing being identical in shape and color with wheat. 
 
34 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 Level land, or that as nearly so as possible, is selected for the 
 rice farm. Before the crop is planted levees are thrown up 
 around the fields for the purpose of holding water on them. 
 This work is usually done with large levee plows, made for 
 the purpose. When the rice is from six to twelve inches in 
 height, it is flooded with water. In the early history of the 
 industry the natural rain fall was depended upon for this pur- 
 pose, and rice was only planted on the lowest lands, using the 
 higher lands for water sheds, from which the water was 
 drained into the rice fields; but as rice raising depends upon 
 a supply of water, there was always a degree of uncertainty 
 that rendered the possibility of a failure or partial failure not 
 improbable. Especially was this so in view of the large profits 
 that were being made and the consequent temptation on the 
 part of the planters to encroach upon higher lands in order to 
 raise more rice. 
 
 "Rice is flooded from two to twelve inches and kept flooded 
 during all of the growing season, until the heads have become 
 filled and the crop begins to ripen, when the levees are cut 
 and the water allowed to run off, thus giving the ground time 
 to dry and harden before harvesting time. The harvest sea- 
 son does not differ from the harvesting of wheat or oats in the 
 Northern States. After cutting, the rice is allowed to stand 
 in a shock from two to three weeks before staking, as, owing 
 to the excessive amount of moisture in the straw, it takes 
 longer to dry out than other grain. The crop is harvested at 
 the same expense and in the same manner with self-binding 
 harvesters as other small grain. The yield is about three 
 times that of wheat. It is threshed by the steam tresher and 
 is put in large sacks holding about four bushels, when it is 
 ready for market. Under favorable conditions, it produces 
 from twelve to eighteen barrels per acre, the average price for 
 the past ten years being ^2.00 per barrel. 
 
 " Probably the greatest element in the transformation of 
 the industry from a small and insignificant beginning to what 
 is recognized to-day as one of the leading and best-paying in- 
 dustries in the Southern States may be found in the extensive 
 system of irrigation that has been established in the last few 
 years. The most sanguine believers in rice culture never ex- 
 pected to see the many inexhaustible streams and bayous with 
 which this prairie region abounds and which connect the large 
 bodies of fresh water lakes and bays lying clcse to the Gulf 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 35 
 
 coast, utilized for irrigation purposes, on account of the high 
 lift from these streams, which, in many instances, is from 
 twenty to sixty feet. In consequence, thousands upon thou- 
 sands of acres of high laud that was supposed to bo inacces- 
 sible for the purpose have proven to be a 'bonanza' to their 
 owners. They have on this account suddenly developed an 
 intrinsic value that readily places them by the side of the 
 most valued agricultural lands in the United States. 
 
 These large canals are always kept on the highest ridges 
 of land and are built by throwing up parallel levees from the 
 outside, making what might be termed an overland canal, in- 
 stead of cutting below the surface, thus keeping the water 
 supply above all lands to be supplied. This system of irriga- 
 tion, on a large scale, has completely revolutionized rice-rais- 
 ing. It has eliminated many of the disagreeable features from 
 the industry, not the least among which was an uncertainty 
 attached to the planting of the crop, and depending for its 
 success upon the rainfall. It has placed it upon a solid and 
 profitable basis, when men of means engage in it upon a large 
 scale without prejudicing the advantages of the man with less 
 capital who farms on a small scale; and more than this, it 
 insures to him a degree of success both as to quality and 
 quantity of the product that cannot be obtained where a lim- 
 ited supply of water is at hand. The raising of rice under 
 the present system of irrigation is reduced to a simple busi- 
 ness proposition, on which any man of fair business ability 
 ought to be able to figure iutelligently and arrive at a conclu- 
 sion as to the profitableness or unprofitableness of rice raising. 
 
 The cost of the water, which Is one of the most expens- 
 ive items connected with the rice industiy, under this system 
 has been reduced to a minimum, as a hundred plantations can 
 be supplied from one plant at 50 per cent of what it would 
 cost if supplied by separate plants for each farm. One end 
 of these rice irrigation canals begins at the bank of some in- 
 exhaustible stream of water or its tributary, and immense 
 pumping plants at this point lift the water to the necessary 
 elevation. It requires two and three complete pumping out- 
 fits, the first of which carries the water to a certain height, 
 where it is emptied into a portion of the lower canal or reser- 
 voir, thence it is relifted by another pump, and so on until the 
 necessary elevation has been attainedo The water is then 
 sent through the main canal and laterals built through prairie, 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PAai-IC 37 
 
 feeding the rice farms with water, which is drawn from these 
 canals by plank flumes going through the levees and letting 
 it into the fields at the will of the farmer by the use of flood- 
 gates. The pumping capacity of these plants varies in ac- 
 cordance with the laud to be irrigated. Some of them reach 
 the enormous amount of 90,000 gallons of water per minute, 
 and these pumps run day and night, beginning in June and 
 stoppiug the latter part of August. You will readily perceive 
 that this is a very great volume of water, and where several 
 of these pumping plants are located on a large tributary of 
 the greater streams, the current is changed, and were it not 
 fed from an inexhaustible source, it would be dry in very- 
 short order. 
 
 As to the profits of this class of farming, Mr. Frank M. 
 Hammou writes from Port Arthur, Tex., April 4, 1899: "Our 
 canal will carry water for 5,000 acres of land. We had last 
 .year under our canal 700 acres in rice. We will have this 
 year 1,400 acres. There is no improved land under our canal 
 for sale, to my knowledge. I made a crop last year of #22,- 
 000 on 500 acres of land. You can form your own idea re- 
 garding the value of this land after one year's crop, as it 
 would simply be a matter of opinion with me to place a price 
 upon it. Our company last year, from the profits of our crop 
 and canal, paid the interest on $50,000 in bonds and declared 
 a dividend of 6 per cent on $100,000 in stock, and still had 
 a profit left. 
 
 George H. Easte of Beaumont, Tex., says he was a ten- 
 ant in 1898, and from 234 acres in rice that year he received 
 $8,579.46 as his share, which was three-fourths of the entire 
 crop, the other fourth having gone to the land owner as rent. 
 
 The Raymond Rice Canal and Milling Company, an Iowa 
 concern, write that their rice land in Louisiana has more than 
 doubled in value in the last eighteen months, while of their 
 Texas rice plantation of 15,000 acres just purchased not an 
 acre is for sale even at 100 per cent advance. They fully 
 expect it to pay a rental of $8 per acre as well as f 5 per acre 
 for water." 
 
 No people are more prosperous than the rice farmers 
 along these irrigating canals. They have the best and can af- 
 ford the best. They do not fear competition or overproduc- 
 tion, for the reason that the territory in which this crop is 
 
38 SOUTHWF STERN LOUISIANA 
 
 grown is limited and when it is all put into cultivation the> 
 United States will still import rice, upon which there is a 
 duty of 2 cents a pound. Mr. Moore said that a great num- 
 ber of settlers from Iowa, Illinois and Missouri had located 
 in the rice districts, and in the past six months a million 
 and a half dollars had been invested in these lands for fut- 
 ure developement. 
 
 RICE CULTURE IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 BY S. A. KNAPP. 
 
 We are rapidly approaching the area of a universal 
 density of population. To the people of the United States it 
 has hitherto seemed a remote problem. The revelations of 
 the last census show that within the present century we shall 
 be confronted with the problem of a sufficient home food 
 supply, instead of sending an enormous surplus to the old 
 world. Thus far we have paid no attention to the economic 
 value of food nor its digestibility in our efforts to gratify the 
 appetite. In fact, fifty years ago such values were unknown 
 to the scientific world. Now we realize the amazing waste 
 resulting from the selection of food on the basis of tastes 
 instead of the amount of nourishment contained. As seven- 
 eighths of the food consumed is on an average expended in 
 the production of energy, the value of foods should largely 
 be based on the amount of energy they will produce in the 
 human body. It is interesting to note what a revolution in 
 prices this would produce. On the basis of the amount of 
 energy a food will impart, taking wheat flour as a standard 
 at 2 J cents per pound: good beef steak (round) should be 
 sold at 1 1-10 cents per pound; porterhouse at 1 66-100 
 cents; turkey — the edible part — at 2 cents; chickens 
 — broilers — at J of a cent; Irish potatoes at 3 1-10 of a 
 cent; butter at 6| cents; cream cheese at 3 1-10 cents; 
 red snapper at 4 1-10 of a cent ; corn meal at 2 47-100 cents ; 
 oat meal at 2 80-100 cents; invalid food, such as malted 
 milk, at 1 6-10 cents, and rice at 2 52-100 cents. 
 
 Three articles on this list are superior to rice, to-wit, 
 oatmeal, butter and cheese, but their superiority is due solely 
 to the large portion of fat in each. The consumption of fat 
 in the body is like burning pitch pine under a boiler. It 
 makes steam, but it soon burns out the shell. Fat makes toe 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 39 
 
 liot a fire for warm countries. If perfect consumption and 
 slight tax upon the system be considered rice again takes rank 
 among the first of foods in value. Where rice is the principal 
 food, dyspepsia and other forms of indigestion are rarely 
 found, and there is perfect health and great endurance. 
 
 In Japan it is a common saying among resident Ameri- 
 can women, " I could do that if I had a Japanese back," 
 referring to the strength of loin possessed by the native 
 women. Every traveler in that distant land has noted with 
 surprise the ease with which a jiurickishaw boy will draw a 
 man six miles an hour along the streets of Tokio. In the late 
 rapid advance upon Pekin it was found that the Japanese 
 could outmarch all the armies of the Occident. With full 
 equipment they advanced all day at double-quick and repeated 
 it till even the Russians fell behind exhausted. These women 
 with backs, these jinrikishaw boys with the speed of a horse, 
 and these double-quick soldiers, live on rice, bean soup and 
 fish. The Chinese coolie works in the rice marshes of Siam, 
 under a tropical sun, breathes malaria, drinks stagnant water, 
 and remains in perfect health. He lives on rice. 
 
 In selecting food for dense population, certainty of the 
 crop is an important consideration, especially where any con- 
 siderable failure is significant of the death of a portion of the 
 people. Rice, when properly cultivated, is the most certain 
 crop of all the cereals. In the Orient it has been bred and 
 trained to withstand the sweeping monsoon and the furious 
 tornado. Last spring a farmer on the lower Colorado river, 
 in Texas, planted 150 acres with imported Japan seed rice. 
 The Galveston tornado destroyed all of his cotton, but his 
 lice successfully withstood the storm and yielded seventeen 
 l)arrel9 per acre. Given a suitable eoil, plenty of water and 
 intelligent husbandry, and the rice crop may be depended 
 upon with a greater regularity than bank dividends. 
 
 A third reason for adopting rice as a staple food supply 
 in countries of dense population, is that annual crop does not 
 exhaust the soil as rapidly as other cereals, the water of irri- 
 gation furnishing a material amount of plant food, and in 
 some countries a winter renovating crop, as clover in Egypt, 
 is used, making it possible to continuously crop a field in 
 lice for an indefinite period. Further, a staple food for a 
 warm climate must be one that can be easily preserved from 
 one season to another. In the tropics corn and wheat cannot 
 
40 
 
 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 constitute the staple food except in sparsely settled sections^ 
 where corn can be held in the shuck. Corn meal and wheat 
 flour are soon spoiled, weevil and must speedily make them 
 unfit for use ; but rice can be stored with reasonable safety^ 
 It can be prepared and cooked with the crudest implements^ 
 and is a healthful food for people of all ages and all condi- 
 tions. It is fair, therefore, to assume that the consumption 
 of rice in the United States will increase more rapidly than 
 the population, all other things being equal. A dense popu- 
 lation will demand it. 
 
 Fifteen years since it appeared highly improbable that rice 
 would ever occupy any commanding position in the food mar- 
 kets of this country. Wheat and corn imperially controlled 
 the situation and were dominating the markets of the world. 
 The spinning jenny and the power loom did not do more to 
 enthrone the cotton industry than the machine seeder, the 
 twine binder and the steam thresher did to make wheat chief 
 of cereals. Rice, in all this period of the evolution of wheat,, 
 remained stationary. Fifty years ago it was planted, har- 
 vested and milled the world over precisely as it w as 2000' 
 years before America was discovered, and to all appearances; 
 there would be no improvement for the ensuing twenty cen- 
 turies. One day some bold optimists conceived the idea that 
 improved farm machinery could be adjusted to the rice 
 industry. After many trials and failures it was a success. 
 The gang plow, the horse drill and the twine binder and the 
 steam thresher took possession of the rice fields. This involved 
 a revolution, to-wit, the Southern States would become in the 
 near future large contributors to the world's food supply as; 
 well as to her fiber supply. 
 
 I have digressed somewhat from the topic assigned me, 
 " Rice Culture in the South," to discuss some of the general 
 propositions relating to rice but necessary to a full under- 
 standing of the situation. It is needless to enter into an 
 account of the introduction of rice into the United States. It 
 is sufficient to state that its cultivation until recently was 
 along old lines and that its production appeared likely to 
 decrease, owing to the stronger competion from India and 
 Siam, due to the construction of the Suez canal and the 
 employment of larger steamships in the Oriental eervice, 
 greatly reducing the cost of transportation. Until 1885 rice- 
 production in the United States was practically limited to 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 41 
 
 the alluvial lands of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and 
 Louisiana, and it then appeared that the industry could not 
 successfully meet the competition of the bonanza wheat farms 
 of the northwestern prairies on the one hand and the low- 
 price labor of India on the other, but when machinery was 
 adjusted to rice production and it was discovered that the 
 prairie lands of Southwestern Louisiana and Southern Texas 
 with their impervious subsoils, would dry out before the rice 
 harvest sufficiently to hold up machinery, rice began to assert 
 tje supremacy which she held as a world's food while the use 
 of machinery in the fields of husbandry was unknown. 
 This coast rice belt in Louisiana and Texas includes over 
 12,000 square miles of fairly level, and very fertile prairie. 
 Prior to the invasion of this territory by rice, the land was 
 regarded as almost worthless, except for stock range. Sub- 
 S3queutly it was ascertained that the soil was rich in plant 
 food, and that its non-productive condition was due solely to 
 the lack of drainage. This rice belt is bisected by ten navig- 
 able rivers and by many smaller streams, all conveying fresh, 
 soft water, comparatively free from silt. Prices of land were 
 barely above the cost of government entry. Settlers from 
 many sections of the country began to camp upon this terri- 
 tory with improved machinery. Some people shook their 
 heads, but they shook out their plows, their drills and their 
 binders, and went to work. 
 
 In nearly every town there are one or more ridges 
 slightly above the surrounding land. On these surfaces 
 canals were built from 20 to 150 feet wide, according to the 
 area to be watered. The sides of the canals were raised 
 from 4 to 5 feet with plows and scrapers, or with grading 
 machinery. Laterals were run from the main canal to 
 accommodate remote farms. Powerful pumping plants were 
 located on the banks of the river at the head of the surface 
 canals. These canals, when well constructed and operated, 
 proved entirely successful and made the rice crop a practical 
 certainty over a large section of country. 
 
 Scarcely had the surface canals been accepted as a success 
 when Southwest Louisiana was startled by the announcement 
 that there were strata of gravel at 125 to 200 feet under the 
 surface of the entire section, containing unlimited supply of 
 water, which would, of its own pressure, come so near the 
 surface that it could be easily pumped. This was received 
 
42 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 with considerable incredulity at first, but repeated tests 
 proved that there is a bed of gravel nearly fifty feet in thick- 
 ness underlying this section of Louisiana which carries a large 
 amount of soft water. Pipes of 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 10 inches in 
 diameter have been sunk to the gravel and pumped continu- 
 ously for months without diminution of supply. The water 
 is soft, at a constant temperature of about 70 degrees, 
 and absolutely free from all seeds and injurious minerals. 
 Such is the facility with which these wells are made that a 
 6-inch tube has been put down to the full depth required — 
 200 feet — in 14 hours. 
 
 The total cost of a well or wells and pumping outfit suf- 
 ficient for 200 acres of rice is from $1500 to $2000, and for 
 600 acres about $3500, or $7 per acre. It is probable that 
 over 50,000 acres of rice will be irrigated by wells the ensu- 
 ing season. The cost of such irrigation is from $1 to $2 per 
 acre for the season, depending upon the cost of fuel and 
 other conditions. Where plantations are remote from timber 
 and the railroad, the gasoline engine will be used. Since it 
 has been found possible to transmit electricity with very small 
 loss to distant motors, the plan has been in contemplation to 
 equip ten or twenty thousand acres with wells and electric 
 motors, and furnish power from a central plant, using the 
 same power for milling the rice, when not in use for pumping. 
 
 The evolution in milling rice has been as great as the 
 production. 
 
 PRIMITIVE RICE MILLING. 
 
 The primitive method of milling rice was to place a small 
 quantity in a hollow stone or block of wood and pound it with 
 a pestle. The blow with the pestle cracked the hull, and the 
 friction created by the sliding motion of the rice under the 
 blow removed the hull and the cuticle. The bran and hulls 
 were then removed by winnowing. The first advance upon 
 this piimitive mechanical process was to take the receptacle 
 for the rice out of a short section of a hollow log, using a 
 heavy wooden pounder, bound to a horizontal beam six to 
 eight feet long, resting on a fulcrum four to five feet from the 
 pounder. The pounder was raised by stepping on the short 
 end of the beam, and by suddenly removing the weight, the 
 pounder dropped into the rice tub and delivered a blow. 
 
 As one passes along the street in an oriental city, a 
 peculiar sound is brought to the ear as of a blow delivered 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 43 
 
 upon some yielding substance. Looking to tho right or left 
 one sees a rice mill, consisting of a one-man power, jumping 
 on and off the beam of the pounder, and one-woman power at 
 a crude fanning mill cleaning the grain. Such a mill cleans 
 about 11 bushels (a trifle over three barrels) of paddy rice 
 per day, at a cost of six cents (gold) per barrel. 
 
 Where practicable, water power is used to turn an over- 
 shot wheel, which is geared to a long horizontal shaft, with 
 arms at distances apart equal to that of the rice pounders. 
 
 In every mountain village in Japan such mills may be 
 found preparing the rice for local consumption. They usually 
 have about eight pounders and mill 96 bushels daily, or 
 "26 2-3 barrels of paddy rice, at a cost of about 2 cents per 
 barrel, which is more than paid for by the offal. In cities 
 steam power is used, and the number of pounders greatly 
 increased, but the process is practically unchanged. 
 
 Our modern rice mill is an automaton of complicated 
 machinery, into which the rough rice passes and finally 
 appears ready for market, graded, sacked, and weighed, at the 
 rate of 20,000 to 200,000 pounds per day, according to 
 capacity. 
 
 Thus far the evolution of rice in its production and mill- 
 ing processes have gone forward with perfect success upon 
 Southern soil. The problem now widens, It is one of 
 economic distribution. The producer of wheat in Dakota 
 receives within a third of a cent per pound of the sum the 
 consumer in Louisiana pays for the flour. In case of wheat, 
 transportation, milling and profits are kept within a third of a 
 cent per pound. Revising it, the consumer of rice in Dakota 
 pays five cents per pound more than the farmer in Louisiana 
 receives at his home market. That is, it costs fifteen times 
 as much to mill and market rice as it does to mill and market 
 wheat. When I was a boy I held my atlas on an incline in 
 front of me, and somehow the idea took possession of me 
 that it was always uphill toward the north pole. Transporta- 
 tion lines must have arrived at some such conception, and 
 are charging for heavy grades in moving freights towards the 
 north. However, the battle of the toiling millions for cheap 
 food will soon arbitrate the question in favor of rice, and 
 the two great staples, wheat and rice, will be placed upon 
 the same footing commercially. With transportation and 
 other questions o! economic distribution adjusted, the 
 
44 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 producers of rice will enter on a battle royal with the pro- 
 ducers of wheat. With what result? In India, China and 
 Japan, which contain about one-half the population of the 
 world, wheat and rice have been produced for decades of cen- 
 turies under similar conditions. Both are cultivated and 
 harvested by the crudest hand processes. There, under 
 similar conditions, the result has been favorable to rice. In 
 the United States both are machine products, upon a parity. 
 Rice has against it the greater cost of irrigation and of 
 cutting. It has in its favor a larger yield per acre, a 
 more certain crop, and an adaptation to rich low lands 
 unsuited to wheat. The bi-products of rice are fully as valu- 
 able as those of wheat. The straw is superior as a stock 
 food. Thousands of tons of rice straw have been sold this 
 year in Louisiana for $4 to $6 per ton to stockmen. Rice 
 bran and rice polish rank for food with wheat bran and wheat 
 middlings. 
 
 It should be noted that wheat production in the United 
 States has passed the meridian of its vigor. Many States 
 that were once large contributors to the wheat supply do not 
 now produce enough for home consumption. Wheat was for- 
 tunate in finding wonderfully favorable conditions on the 
 prairies of the Northwest, but it exhausts the soil rapidly ; 
 ten to fifteen years continuous cropping reduces the annual 
 yield per acre to scarcely paying quantities. The center of 
 wheat production is moving steadily to the North. There is 
 little remaining territory for it to devastate. Already it is «». 
 giant with paralyzed limbs. 
 
 Another question to be considered. Can the rice farmers 
 of the United States, with their improved agricultural machin- 
 ery, compete with the cheap labor of the Orient ? On the 
 prairie rice lands of Louisiana and Texas, one man with a 
 four-mule team can plant and harvest one hundred acres of 
 rice. He will require an additional man in harvesting and 
 stacking, and, of course, help for two or three days in thresh- 
 ing. Well tended, his crop will net him 1000 barrels. He 
 may do much better than this, and he may do worse. In 
 Japan, one-third of an acre is a reasonable rice farm for a 
 man. In China and India, the water buffalo is used in pre- 
 paring the land, which enables one man to cultivate one-half 
 an acre to two acres, depending upon the amount of additional 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 45 
 
 help employed. With our improved machinery, there is no 
 known country where a dollar will produce as many bushels 
 of rice as in the United States. The indications are that 
 rice production in India and Japan will decrease. These 
 countries show remarkable progress in textile manufactures. 
 This indicates that much land in the near future will be 
 devoted to the production of fiber. Every acre devoted to 
 fibre must be withdrawn from the cultivation of rice or wheat, 
 for every available acre in China, India and Japan is now 
 under cultivation. It should be noted that the increased 
 production of rice in southern Europe, especially in Italy and 
 Spain, has been considerable within the past thirty years, and 
 wheat, oats and barley have yielded ground. 
 
 The increase of the world's population in the next thirty 
 years will not be less than four hundred millions, and the 
 food for this immense number of people must be drawn from 
 new fields. Before the expiration of that period, India, China 
 and Japan will become importers of rice, and the rice of Siam 
 will find market at neighboring ports. The markets of 
 Europe must then be supplied by American rice, and the 
 American consumption in the United States in the meantime 
 will have more than doubled. 
 
 Let us take account of stock. Suppose our product last 
 year to have been tAvo hundred million pounds of cleaned 
 rice (this is above the general estimate). We imported two 
 hundred and five million pounds, and Porto Rico, with an 
 annual demand for about seventy-five millions has been added 
 to our markets. Cuba, just at our door, will soon require 
 one hundred million pounds annually, and the Philippine 
 demand will be about one hundred and thirty-five million 
 pounds. These islands are all importers of food products, 
 because they find other crops more profitable under their 
 conditions. The Hawaiian islands formerly sent to this 
 country about five million pounds annually, now they import 
 from us large amounts. With an annual production of about 
 two hundred million pounds, we have present and prospect- 
 ive markets demanding seven hundred and twenty-five million 
 pounds, with the probability that the demand will be more 
 than doubled in thirty years and the markets of Europe 
 added. 
 
 Some will ask ''if such is the rice situation in the South 
 
46 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 what is the necessity of any tariff on it ? " For several 
 reasons. First. The question of economic distribution has 
 not yet been settled. Second. Many things are yet to be 
 learned about rice in connection with machine production. 
 As yet it does not take as high a polish as hand-produced 
 rice. It has what is known as the chalky edge, which re- 
 duces the price of the finished product fifty cents per hun- 
 dred. The price of rice at present is based on fashion and 
 not on food value. It is the problem of finish or shine it takes 
 and not on what it is. This chalky edge is due to careless man- 
 agement in producing large crops, and will soon be remedied. 
 Credit is due to the United States Department of Agriculture 
 for prompt and valuable assistance in overcoming some very 
 serious obstacles in the way of economic rice production. 
 Another thing to be learned is better cultivation, as neces- 
 sary to quantity and quality of product. Third. Rice farm- 
 ing on our system is in its infancy. Many farmers have 
 recently commenced with small means, and are not in cir- 
 cumstances yet to make a crop at the greatest profit, which 
 requires ready capital. Fourth. The greatest danger from 
 Oriental competition is what is known as dumpage, i. e.. after 
 home consumption has been supplied the remainder is sold for 
 what it will bring, regardless of cost of production. This occa- 
 sional dumping of a surplus on our markets utterly demoral- 
 izes home prices. In the United States, when an enormous 
 crop of grain gives us a cheap surplus it is fed to cattle and 
 hogs. In Oriental countries it must be sold, because they do 
 not have the stock to which it can be fed, and hence is ex- 
 ported at any price it will command. It is like eggs, the 
 surplus is sent to market, whether the price is four cents or 
 forty cents per dozen. These are the reasons for a tariff. 
 
 I have thus far discussed rice almost entirely from its 
 commercial standpoint. This is not its most substantial and 
 attractive feature for the South. The paramount demand of 
 the South is for some good, small grain crop, which will 
 furnish food for the people and a profitable surplus for export, 
 leaving upon the farm abundant and nutritious biproducts for 
 the maintenance of stock, and thus utilizing the luxuriant 
 pasture lands now classed as waste. Cotton and pasture do 
 not co-operate. The sole biproduct of cotton is worth too 
 much commercially to be generally left upon the farm The 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 47 
 
 full resource of the average farm can never be developed with 
 cotton as the main crop. Corn is a grand grain, but its 
 stalk is too woody, and has lost much of its value before it is 
 required as a food for cattle. The plant that meets these 
 requirements is rice. It has a wide habitat, and can safely be 
 planted from equator to the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude. 
 South of this line most farms have a creek or river bottom, 
 easily Hooded, which might be devoted to rice. One hundred 
 acres of rice furnishes at least 100 tons of straw superior to 
 native prairie hay, and twenty-five tons of bran and polish. 
 This provides for the wintering of 100 head of stock. Some 
 plan will soon be devised for the use of agricultural machin- 
 ery on bottom land, as well as on the firmer soils of the 
 prairie. The future of this industry is full of interest. 
 
 The chief interest, however, in the general planting of 
 rice in the South lies in the fact that it will make the South- 
 ern States resourceful and independent. In the nature of 
 tilings there will ever be a struggle for empire, and the sur- 
 vival of the most powerful. The decisive battles of the future 
 will be won, not by serried battalions with emblazoned ban- 
 ners amid the rattle of the rifle and the roar of the canon, but 
 by the industrious millions on the farms and in the factories. 
 It is a battle to the finish for the most economic production 
 and distribution of the world's food supplies. War has become 
 a problem of the exchequer, based upon industrial resources. 
 A bread line 1500 miles long is improvident if safe. Econ- 
 omic forces are opposed to it ; especially when we have a 
 cereal at home, hardy, enormously productive, better suited 
 to our requirements and can be milled upon the farm for 
 home use at trifling expense. 
 
 I have heard with pleasure in this convention speeches 
 and resolutions in favor of establishing cotton mills iu the 
 South until every pound of cotton produced within her fair 
 domain shall be transformed by the magic of spindle and loom 
 into fabrics of value for the marts of trade. Did it occur to 
 the eminent speakers that, however desirable such a result, 
 its achievement is impossible under present conditions. Why? 
 Because we now import from the North immense quantities 
 of wheat, beef, pork, butter, cheese and other food products. 
 The question is simply this : Is it cheaper to transport the 
 food for the operatives in cotton mills from its Northern 
 base to the cotton centers of the South, or to ship the cotton 
 
48 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 bale to the food centers of the North. Cotton ia the cheap- 
 er freight. If, however, we shall become 
 
 A GREAT FOOD PRODDCING 
 
 people, the whole problem will be changed. General culti- 
 vation and use of rice in the South will solve the factory- 
 problem. 
 
 To affirm that rice in the South can occupy the vant- 
 age ground of wheat in the North, both in extent and econo- 
 my of production, is equivalent to a commercial declaration 
 of independence. It means that we shall feed our own people 
 with a home-grown cereal, and that with bi-products we shall 
 produce the pork, the beef, the butter and the cheese required 
 for home consumption. It means a better grade of cattle and 
 horses, better beef and stronger teams. The substitution 
 of rice for corn and wheat as the principal food for Southern 
 people will tend to the development of a hardier race. 
 It will decrease dyspepsia, malaria, and mortgages. It 
 will strengthen and fortify every line of industry and give 
 us support at our weakest point, a lack of a proper ratio be- 
 tween the food and the fiber products. By general consent cot- 
 ton is recognized as the best material to clothe the nations, and 
 iron occupies a peerless position in all mechanical and struct- 
 ural works. In both these world necessities, the South has 
 no successful rival. With the home production of food her 
 commercial independence will be complete, and her con- 
 quests in the domains of industry will be a series of brilliant 
 triumphs. 
 
 FOUNDRIES AND FACTORIES 
 
 will come to her unsought ; her cities will broaden to meet 
 the demands of an increasing commerce, and her marts of 
 trade will teem with merchants from every land. 
 
 Thus far it appears to me that this convention, from an 
 industrial standpoint, has been apologetic and penitential for 
 the neglect of its past opportunities with promises of reform 
 and good resolutions for the future. I do not think Louisiana 
 and Texas require any apology. For the past fifteen years 
 they have embraced every opportunity for industrial improve- 
 ment and have gone into every battle for the commercial and 
 industrial advancement of their people with the flags of their 
 States spiked to the staff. 
 
 Speaking for the rice section, fifteen years since there 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACiFIC. 49 
 
 -was scarcely a barrel of commercial rice produced in what 
 is now known as the prairie rice section, which extends 400 
 miles along the gulf coast, and contains some of the most fer- 
 tile lauds on this continent. These lands were then valued 
 at 25 cents to $1.50 per acre. There were few settle- 
 ments and no rice mills. Today it is the rice-producing 
 center of this continent. Unimproved lands are worth on 
 an average of $12.50 per acre. There are thousands of im- 
 proved farms and happy homes. Within the territory are 
 twenty- seven rice mills, with a daily capacity of over 20,000 
 barrels of rice. A score of young cities have sprung from the 
 prairies, are clamoring for harbors and public buildings, and 
 are heralding themselves as the future urban centers of the 
 South. 
 
 To illustrate the momentum of progress, it may be stated 
 that one firm has sold in a retail w ay over 20,000 acres of land 
 for actual settlement since last July. Within the past ninety 
 days over $10,000,000 of new capital have been invested in 
 the rice industries of Louisiana and Texas. I can not say we 
 are exactly in line, but we shall be when the rest double- 
 quick for a few years. 
 
 A FEW RICE POINTERS. 
 
 n. B. MILLIARD. 
 
 In Times-Democrat, June 8th, 1899. 
 
 I judge that there are, or soon will be, enough rice mills 
 in the country to mill all the rice raised. There may be room 
 for a few more, and they are certain to be built. Crowley 
 has lost three, I believe it is, and has three left. Estherwood 
 and Gueydan are to have a rice mill each. Here is a partial 
 list; Acadia Rice Milling Company, Rayne, La., 800 barrels 
 capacity every tw^enty-four hours; Mermentau (estimated), 
 300 barrels; Jennings, 500 barrels; Welsh's, (estimated), 400 
 barrels; Fenton. (estimated), 200 barrels; Lake Charles Rice 
 Milling Company, 3000 bags ; Westlake Rice Mill, 300 sacks. 
 There is another mill at Lake Charles, 500 barrels per day, 
 I conjecture that it is safe to assume the aggregate capacity 
 of Crowley mills at 4000 bags every twenty-four hours. I am 
 not sure that I have given a complete list of rice mills in 
 Southwest Louisiana. Upon reflection there is or was one at 
 Opelousas. Bat I have not traversed the whole territory and 
 don't pretend to accuracy. Aggregating, however, the capa- 
 
50 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 city of rice mills mentioned I find them to be able to dispose 
 of about ] 0,000 bags of rice per day of twenty-four hours' 
 run. This would only take about seven months' run to absorb 
 a crop of 2,000,000 bags. In point of fact some rice mills 
 are yet running, or were up to a short time ago, but most are 
 closed down. 
 
 In the very first letter I wrote on my recent trip I made 
 the point that I expected to see the day coming when matters 
 would be worked down to the finest point, and that would be 
 for the land owners (rice raisers) to own the irrigation plant 
 and the rice mill. To my utter amazement and delight I 
 found that at least one demonstration was extant in Crowley 
 of the practicability and its profitableness monumental. A 
 number of rice raisers and owners and stockholders in irriga- 
 tion plants made up their minds to build a rice mill in sheer 
 self-protection, so that they could get what they deemed a 
 fair price for rice. The stock was subscribed. The subscri- 
 bers gave their notes for the amount of their subscriptions. 
 The notes were discounted (I believe in New Orleans) and 
 upon failing due were renewed. Before they were due the 
 second time the mill had earned enough to pay the notes and 
 a handsome surplus. Recently some shares of stock in this 
 mil] were sold in the interests of a deceased shareholder: One 
 hundred shares, par value f 100 per share. These shares 
 brought $3,500, and the gentleman who settled the estate told 
 me that the purchaser would not take ^'5,000 for the 100 
 shares. For an investment that did not call for a cent of 
 cash and only involved the use of credit, and that was not 
 entered into with any motive of direct profit this is a remark- 
 able and impressive instance. The moral is that these rice 
 raisers have solved all this once vexations problem as to how 
 to get fair prices for their rice. The mill buys the rice of its 
 own shareholders and pays a fair price, and they set more or 
 less the price for other mills. 
 
 As a fact these country rice mills have revolutionized 
 the rice business in Louisiana, so far as markets for sale, 
 localities in milling, markets for the cleaned rice, modes of 
 payment, etc., are concerned. Everybody knows that little 
 or no rough rice now comes to New Orleans except such as is 
 bought by the ricemill man or dealer here. Formerly it all 
 came here, or so nearly so as to be not worth consideration. 
 The rice business in the country is done on a cash basis. In 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 51 
 
 New Orleans not (no need to explain this to the well-inform- 
 ed). Next, 90 per cent of the head rice, or finished product, 
 goes West — mainly to grocery trade — Chicago, St. Louis, 
 Knnsas City, Los Angeles, Cal., and other Western cities. 
 Tliis is all of a few late years, or since the fairy-developed 
 result of rice mills in the country. No need to comment on 
 this revolution. 
 
 It is another interesting thing to know how the demand 
 for rice polish is growing in Europe. You could see at some 
 of the large mills (even as late as two or three weeks ago) 
 quite a number of cars loading with this polish. I suppose 
 the day will come when it will be billed through from the 
 mill. . Now it is shipped to New Orleans, but goes to Europe 
 in the same packages. It is put up at the country mills in 
 double bags. Antwerp is a leading consumer or market. 
 Liverpool takes a great deal of it. In Belgium it is bolted. 
 The flour is made into bread, and the "offals" or residuum 
 makes stock feed. Indeed, it sells very readily in this coun- 
 try for stock feed. Mr. Daboval of the Rayuo rice mills, told 
 me that he had letters of inquiry from Hamburg and else- 
 where about rice polish. 
 
 In my mind I have evolved a good deal what could be 
 done in the way of creating new uses for rice. I am told by 
 a rice miller that there is 46 per cent of starch in rice polish 
 or flour. And it is suggested that it would pay better to 
 make starch of it than to sell it as polish. If this be so the 
 rice millers ought to have a starch factory at Crowley or 
 Lake Charles or some "live town." In fact, rice raisers and 
 rice millers ought to set their heads to work to build up a 
 larger demand for rice. A starch factory would be an im- 
 pressive addendum to Southern progress in Southwest Louisi- 
 ana. Rice raising, as large as it has grown to be, is destined 
 to be much larger. Its immense profits are almost staggering. 
 I have a number of thoroughly authentic figures to illustrate 
 its profitableness, but I need not give them here. What is 
 the latest and greatest feature about rice-raising is that 
 capital is creeping out of its timidity, and is touching irriga- 
 tion plants 60 firmly and persistently that it looks as though 
 rich men will be eagerly hunting them soon as a favorite in- 
 vestment. The future of rice-raising is portentous with great 
 auguries for Southwest Louisiana. I shall not be surprised 
 to find eligible rice land there held at .^50 per acre and above 
 in five years or less time. 
 
52 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 RICE IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 
 
 One of the most important food products of the archi- 
 pelago is rice. This grain forms the staple food, not only of 
 the native population, but also of the numerous Chinese in- 
 habitants. Owing to its general use, a scarcity of rice 
 always causes great hardship to the people of the islands. 
 
 The varieties of rice grown in the Philippines number 
 more than one hundred, distinguished by the size, color and 
 flavor of their grains. The best of these is the Mismis, a 
 rice with a white, almost transparent grain of agreeable odor 
 and flavor. There is also a variety, called Malagquit that 
 has an unusually glutinous quality, and is therefore muck 
 used in the manufacture of cakes and pastry. Certain 
 kinds of Philippine rice, the Quinamalig among others, ma- 
 ture very early, producing a crop within three months of 
 planting. It thus happens that by planting alternately, an 
 early and a late variety, two crops can be obtained in one 
 year. 
 
 The ordinary price of rice in the husk, called by the 
 Philippines, Palay, is about 60 to 65 cents per bushel, while 
 that of shelled rice is about 90 cents to |1 per bushel. 
 
 The annual production of rice in the Philippines aver- 
 ages about 36,000,000 bushels. This amount, even when 
 supplepiented by maize, mongo (a kind of lentil), sweet 
 potatoes, bananas and other edible fruits and tubers, is far 
 below the actual food requirements of the population. It 
 seems singular that an almost exclusively agricultural coun- 
 try should not produce enough food for the consumption of 
 its own inhabitants, but such is at present the case as re- 
 gards the Philippines. In order to supply the home de- 
 mand it has been the custom to draw upon the product of 
 other rice-growing countries. The French colony of Cochin- 
 China, on account of its proximity to the islands, is the 
 principal source of supply. In some years the quantity of 
 rice imported into Manila, from Saigon, has exceeded 3,200,- 
 000 bushels, the value reaching nearly $2,000,000. The 
 Philippine trade is therefore a source of large income to the 
 rice planters of Cochin-China. — Ficayime. 
 
1 
 
SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 ANOTHER WITNESS. 
 
 ALL TALK LIKE THIS AFTER THEY VISIT SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA. 
 
 The New Orleans Picayune has this to say " F. H. 
 Thompson, of New York, a representative of one of the larg- 
 est machinery establishments of the eastern metropolis, who 
 met Capt. C. A. Lowry, of Lowry, La , and C. A. Spencer, of 
 Jennings, at the Cosmopolitan Hotel last week, and who 
 went out to the rice country with them to see about putting 
 in some extensive irrigating machinery, returned from the 
 Lake Authur country yesterday and put up at the Cosmopoli- 
 tan." 
 
 "A great country," he declared to the lobby rounder. 
 *'A great country. Captain Lowry has as fine a place as I 
 ever saw. It is on the Mermentau river, at the intersection of 
 three parishes, and set down in the midst of a mammoth 
 grove of live oaks. His 7,000 acres of rice land lap over on 
 the parishes of Vermilion, Calcasieu and Cameron. It is 
 near Lake Arthur, one of the most beautiful bodies of water I 
 ever saw. When he gets his plant in he will have 15,000 
 acres of rice land under his pumps, and I verily believe it 
 will be the finest rice plantation in southwest Louisiana." 
 
 Mr. Thompson went over to Captain Lowry's place to 
 conduct some tests in the efficiency of engines and machin- 
 ery in order to get at the horse-power needed, etc. Mr. Low- 
 ry had a lot of new machinery to put in last year, but it 
 proved to be of too light capacity for the big tracts of land to 
 be irrigated, and the power will be increased. 
 
 A BIG FARM. 
 
 A SIGNAL REPRESENTATIVE VISITS THE ABBOTT BROS. 1,500 ACRE RICE 
 
 PLANTATION. 
 
 A representative of the Signal made a trip to the Abbott 
 Brothers farm northwest of Crowley Wednesday, and was 
 well repaid for the trip by what was seen. There is probably 
 no better rice farm or plantation in the country than the 
 Abbott Brothers. They are farming 1,500 acres this year, 
 and already have as fine a stand of rice as one could wish to 
 see. Something like 150 men are employed about the place. 
 The Abbott Brothers have their own pumping plant and flood 
 their land through a canal built and owned by themselves. 
 
'^ 
 
56 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 The. pumping plant was started May 15. But two of the 
 pumps were running when the writer saw the place, but 
 these two throw out an immense amount of water, and the 
 long flume which runs out to the canal was almost full to the 
 top. 
 
 It is a big thing when one stops to think of it. Fifteen 
 hundred acres of land, at a very modest estimate, will 
 produce ten bags of rough rice to the acre. It is generally 
 estimated that there are four bushels of rice to the bag. 
 This would make 60,000 bushels of rice, and if a good 
 season is had, it will come nearer 70,000 bushels. It takes 
 money to seed all this land, to keep it in shape, supply water 
 and harvest the crop, and the amount paid out for labor and 
 supplies reaches a big figure. It will be worth the time of 
 anyone to drive out and see this big plantation. 
 
 WORK ON THE BIG RICE FARfl. 
 
 LOUISIANA SYNDICATE LOSING NO TIME ON ITS HARRIS COUNTY 
 
 ENTERPRISE. 
 
 Galveston, Tex,, May 5. — It was announced last week 
 that W. E. Jones, son of the late M. T. Jones, of Houston, 
 has leased 4,000 acres of laud near Deepwater to a Louisiana 
 syndicate comdosed of Messrs. Bel. Kaufman and Viterbo 
 Bros., of Lake Charles, whose purpose it was to sink 50 
 eight-inch artesian wells, and put the entire tract into rice. 
 
 This morning J. Wharton Terry and Major R. B. Baer 
 informed a reporter that work on this big undertaking had 
 already begun. 
 
 "The derricks are up, the engines are at work and they 
 are already boring," said Major Baer. "There is an 
 enormous amount of pipe on the ground. Teams are out 
 with plows and rollers and they are cutting out cotton stalks. 
 The rice seeders are running and the work is in full blast. 
 The wells that are being sunk now are about a quarter of 
 a mile north of the depot." 
 
 Major Baer was asked if he thought the syndicate 
 would have any trouble getting water. 
 
 "No," he replied. "Even if they do not get as much 
 water as they expect, they will not have far to go to tap the 
 bayou. With a pumping station there they could get all 
 they want." 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 57 
 
 SULPHUR CANAL COMPLETED. 
 
 SEVERAL THOUSAND ACRES OF RICE "WILL BE SURE OF WATER. 
 
 The work on the irrigating canal at Sulphur under the 
 direction of S. A. Robinson ias been completed. 
 
 The successful solution of this project means much for 
 Lake Charles and the western part of the parish. The water 
 is pumped from the west of the Calcassieu. The main 
 canal extends south and crosses the S. P. tracks near Sul- 
 phur. North of the track is a small prairie, which lies in a 
 pocket of the woods. The canal runs through this land, and 
 much of it that was uncultivated last year is now green with 
 growing rice. 
 
 On the South side of the Southern Pacific track is the 
 large plantation belonging to Fred Lock. On this place are 
 nearly 1,800 acres which are planted in rice. It is due to 
 Mr. Lock's push and energy that the canal was built. 
 
 When it is known that there are at least 3,000 acres 
 on the north side of the track available for rice it can be 
 seen how large the plant really is. The location and 
 general surroundings are among the best to be found any- 
 where. The lift is not great and there is water in abundance. 
 
 The rice, when ready for market, can be loaded on 
 barges at the river, or on the cars at Sulphur, and the 
 haul to the other points is not great. 
 
 The products from the farms and plantations tributary 
 to the canal will naturally gravitate to Lake Charles, and the 
 mills here will profit by them. 
 
 QOVERNHENT RICE. 
 
 The U. S. department of agriculture has shipped to this 
 city 2500 pounds of Japanese rice, which has been donated 
 to planters whose lands are tributary to the Lake canal. 
 
 The planters have agreed to plant the rice under certain 
 conditions of fertilization, soil and irrigation. The govern- 
 ment reserves the privilege of buying all the product at $3 a 
 bag. 
 
 A number of rice growers have taken quantities of this 
 imported rice and next season there will no doubt be much of 
 this seed planted here. The government officials are taking 
 a deep interest in the rice growing in this country. When 
 the crop is growing it is expected that some of the officials 
 from Washington will visit this part of the country. 
 
58 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 DEEP WELLS. 
 
 THE ONE PUT DOWN AT JENNINGS PRONOUNCED A SUCCESS. ' 
 
 The Jennings Times has the following to say of the 
 deep well put down there last summer : 
 
 Great interest was manifest last summer in the deep 
 well put down on the farm of Dr. G. W. Remage, uod the 
 Times takes pleasure in publishing the results, which were 
 highly satisfactory, even though the well was not finished 
 until after the irrigating season was well advanced. Eighty- 
 five acres of rice was planted on the farm. Of this amount, 
 40 acres was very late and is only partly harvested yet. The 
 bulk of the crop has been threshed and will yield 600 sacks. 
 Over $1,000 worth of rice has already been sold and there is 
 iully 81,000 worth on hand. Dr. Remage is well satisfied 
 with the results, and he may well be, for without the deep 
 well the 85 acres of rice would not have yielded a sack of 
 grain. 
 
 DEEP WELL TEST. 
 
 A. Brecher made a test to-day of the two 6-inch deep 
 wells recently sunk on S. L. Gary & Sons' land in the west 
 part of town, and a crowd of people went out to see the sight. 
 The two wells are connected with a T joint, the Van Wei 
 pump being set half way between the two. The pump has 
 6-inch suction and 5-inch discharge, and is driven with ease 
 by a 6 h. p. engine. Speeded to 600 revolutions per minute, 
 the pump throws a strong stream of clear water, estimated 
 at between 1,200 and 1,400 gallons per minute. With an 
 elbow attached at the discharge, the stream of water was 
 thrown out to a distance of 12 feet, the stream running away 
 6 inches deep, 3 feet wide, and moving at the rate of 8 miles 
 per hour. Pump men and farmers who were present ex- 
 pressed the belief that these two wells will furnish water 
 sufficient to properly irrigate 200 acres of rice. This set of 
 deep wells is certainly a success. After noon the elbow of 
 the pump was removed and the water shot straight up 8 feet. 
 Owing to the rain the belt slipped and normal speed could 
 not be attained. It was freely admitted that with a* dry belt 
 the water would be shot up at least 12 feet. — Jennings 
 Times. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 5^ 
 
 WELLS. 
 
 We are often asked : " What do you think of wells for 
 flooding rice and for general irrigation ? " 
 
 The subject is an old one, hut here in the prairie re- 
 gion of Southwest Louisiana the general conditions are new. 
 Canals for flooding have proved successful, and so far as we 
 can see, wells will be a still greater success. There have 
 been serious difficulties to overcome, but as we are assured, 
 success has been reached. The wells can be dug, water in 
 great quantities is reached, a constant stream is sure and 
 a system of wells can be put down, say 10 to 20 feet apart 
 and united at the top for one pump and engine. These 
 plants can be located at the highest prairie at less cost than 
 grubbing timber, dredging and building canals from river, 
 lake or bayou to the dividing ridge. The lift is less from 
 wells than from rivers and may be reduced to zero by best 
 pumping devices. Contracting parties are on the ground 
 offering to put in wells and pumps with guarantee of plenty 
 of water in one week. A. Barber, of Jennings, has an eight- 
 inch flowing well put in by the Andrews Well Co., of New 
 Orleans, from which he pumps a six-inch stream constantly 
 with a second-hand 10-horse power engine. 
 
 We estimate that five 8-inch wells, a 16-inch pump, 
 50-horse power engine and 75-horse power boiler will cost 
 say $4,000, Six percent, equals $240. This can be run 60 
 days at about $20.00 a day. 20 multiplied by 60 equals 
 1200, and interest $240, equals $1,440, and will flood 1000 
 acres or $1.44 per acre. 
 
 Larger plants would give much better results. Ditches 
 to carry the water would be comparatively inexpensive. 
 Evaporation, generally one-fourth inch per day, is less with 
 cool water and possibly cooler water may increase the yield 
 or may improve the quality of rice. 
 
 Flooding any crop improves the soil. Rice growing 
 never injures the land. Rice is the most nutritious of all 
 the cereals. Three quarters of the world lives on rice al- 
 most entirely. So that besides our home market requiring 
 almost ten million dollars to fill, we have the great hungry 
 world for a market, and we are well assured that we can 
 not be beaten by cheap labor or low prices. 
 
 We are assured that from Crowlev west to Iowa water 
 
6o 
 
 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 is iu strata and not confined to veins as is the case north and 
 west of this territory, and here we can grow everything that 
 requires water and can sell it in the best markets as "WELL" 
 watered stock. 
 
 The Andrews Well Co., New Orleans, have put in sixty 
 8-inch wells here in Southwest Louisiana, A. Brechner, sixty- 
 five 6-inch, J. H. Ritter & Co. the same, all ready to work 
 and guarantee plenty of water in the prairie region. — S. L. 
 Caryy in The Record. 
 
 L, fcrfWlHSS^ 
 
 1-LoW FKOM IvVo u-liicli wtLl..i :j,^ h/M\M .Jt- .1. L. GARY, JENNINGS, LA. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 6l 
 
 THE VALUE OF WELLS. 
 
 WHAT A SIX-INCH WELL AND 120 ACRES WILL PRODUCE. 
 
 [Written Expressly for Jennings Times by S. L. Cary.] 
 
 In the childhood of the old century (just passed away) 
 a famous writer, one Horace Greeley, of agricultural memory, 
 wrote a famous book entitled " Five Acres Enough." Another 
 writer, after a hard, practical trial, wrote a humorous article 
 entitled " Five Acres Too Much," in which he seemed to have 
 the better of the man who said, " Go West, young man, and 
 grow up with the country." And now, in the early infancy 
 of the twentieth century, we are telling young and old to go 
 south and get a farm in the rice belt, and a very common 
 question is, "What can be done with 120 acres of rice land 
 to support a family and a home ? 
 
 The 120 acres cost $20 per acre ; buildings and fencing, 
 1600 ; one 6-inch deep well, 180 feet, $360 ; 5-inch pump, 
 $125, making a permanent investment of $3,485, at 6 per 
 cent, $209.10 ; taxes, $20 ; seed, $125 ; and sacks, $70; 
 $600 for fuel and engineers for pumping would represent the 
 cash outlay, to which must be added the use of machinery 
 and labor to put in, care for, harvest, thresh and market the 
 crop. 
 
 Now, what can be reasonably expected from a rice crop 
 of 120 acres, well put in w4th good clean seed and plenty of 
 water at the proper time ? There should be harvested in 
 good condition at least ten sacks per acre of good grade clean 
 rice, making 1200 sacks, which for the past 18 years has 
 averaged $3,50 per sack — say $3 per sack ; from this deduct 
 $1024 for interest, seed, taxes, fuel, engineers, sacks and 
 twine, leaving for labor and profit $2576 ; from this deduct 
 for plowing, f 120 ; seeding, $60 ; watching levees, $50.; 
 harvesting, $250 ; threshing, $300; marketing, $120, making 
 a total for labor of $1000, leaving $1576 to the profit side of 
 the account, being over 40 per cent on the permanent capital 
 invested, which, it land is worth all it pays, 5 per cent, will 
 be 5 per cent upon $250 per acre. 
 
 .Such a home, with this climate and the most favorable 
 conditions, would not be on sale. Homes can be made in the 
 rice belt more attractive and profitable than elsewhere, more 
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ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 63 
 
 humanity is at its best. It is the last best work of the 
 great Creator of all things, and to be a land-owner, a free- 
 holder, with such surroundings, is a position to be proud of ; 
 and such is the position of hundreds of families in the rice 
 belt at the beginning of the twentieth century, to be followed 
 by thousands more. 
 
 MORE ABOUT WELLS. 
 
 WHAT AN EIGHT-INCH WELL AND 200 ACRES WILL PRODUCE. 
 
 [Written expressly for Jennings Times by S. L. Cary.] 
 
 In a former letter I told of a few things made easy to 
 the farmer in the rice belt by the help of a 6-inch irrigation 
 well. In this letter the 8-inch well, which is more popular, 
 will be described. 
 
 First, select your farm of about 200 acres of level, beau- 
 tiful prairie land, with a stiff clay soil, as near to a station 
 on the S. P. as possible. "A good location is a fortune of 
 itself." Then find an expert Well man ; he must go through 
 a layer of clay and quicksand alternately till at 150 to 200 
 feet he reaches gravel (coarse sand); in this he puts a 
 screening casing 40 to 60 feet. The length of screen makes 
 the capacity of the well. Forty feet gives a capacity for 
 flooding 200 acres. When this is in the water rises to or 
 near th'e surface. Suction pumps require submerging ]ust 
 below water level, or an injector on the engine. One 6-inch 
 centrifugal suction pump and a 20 h. p. stationary steam 
 eno-ine will do the work. Levees are so easily made that the 
 tenant on new land makes them free. 
 
 Cost of such land is now |20 per acre, |2000; for fenc- 
 ing and buildings, $1200 ; for pumping plant, well, $600 ; 
 pump, $150 ; engine, $600; permanent investment, $4550, 
 at 6 per cent, net, $273 ; taxes, $27 ; |300a charge annually 
 u{)on the crop ; then water, seed, plowing, seeding, caring 
 for, harvesting, threshing, sacking and marketing. In fact, 
 all expenses can be included in $10 per acre, $2000. The 
 present average crop is placed at 10 barrels per acre, 2000 
 barrels ; an average price $3, 2000, twice three, $6000, less 
 interest, taxes and expense of crop ; $6000, less $2300, 
 $3700 profit on one season's crop on 200 acres. 
 
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ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 61; 
 
 These figures have beeu realized by hundreds of farmers 
 in Southwest Louisiana the past year. Do you realize it? 
 And what do you think of it? Would it be good to take as 
 a medicine? I assure you there's not a sick man among the 
 lot. As my friend, John Watt, said years ago : " Any man 
 w^ho will invest in Southwest Louisiana, and keep it, will 
 wear diamonds. 
 
 Don't forget that conditions have changed and that our 
 people change conditions. No farmers in the States have as 
 much control of the elements that make a successful crop as 
 those in the rice belt. 
 
 A TEN INCH WELL. 
 
 WHAT IT WILL ACCOMPLISH IN IRRIGATING RICE. OUR EXPERIMENTS 
 ON A PAYING BASIS. 
 
 Prosperity comes from the ground you may buy and sell 
 (labor or play). Your real wealth comes from real estate. 
 The condition of the farmer governs all, and the prosperity 
 of the farmer is made by the length of his growing season, 
 the amount and value he grows per acre, and the control 
 he has of the elements that make his crop. The greatest 
 of these is water. Soil, moisture and heat are the three 
 great necessities for successful agriculture. 
 
 These conditions are more nearly perfect in the rice belt 
 than in any other part of the union. 
 
 After writing about the six and eight inch wells I will 
 conclude with the ten and twelve, as the larger wells seem to 
 be growing in favor. They cost a little more, but the cost 
 of a successful well is a mere trifle compared with the benefits 
 derived. It's only the failures that cost, and there have been 
 very few failures, and those were with the makers and not 
 with the water supply, which seems to be unlimited. 
 
 The cost of a ten-inch well is, say, $3.50 a foot, the usual 
 average depth being 200 feet, and its capacity is about 300 
 acres. The cost of the well would be $700; the pump, $250 ; 
 the engine and boiler, $1000, making a total of $1950 for the 
 plant. The land would cost $6000, seed rice $400, water 
 $1000. The seed and water would therefore cost $1400, 
 and adding the interest on the cost of land and plant, $8000, 
 at six per cent, amounting to $480, making the cost to the 
 owner $1880, which entitles him to one-half the crop, the 
 renter getting the other half. 
 
66 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 Au average crop under the present outlook is ten barrels 
 to the acre and the average price for good rice is $3.00 per 
 barrel. The crop of 3000 barrels would therefore yield 
 $9,000, one-half of which would be $4,500. After deducting 
 the cost from this amount there would remain $2,620, or 
 enough to support a family in good style in the rice belt. 
 
 These wells so far have been put down about 20 feet 
 apart, then united just below water level, making a crib deep 
 enough to submerge the pump to save priming. Then a 
 stationary or other engine completes the outfit. The dis- 
 tance apart of these wells is experimental as yet. Three 
 8-inch, wells, 20 feet apart, when tested on Gary & Son's 
 plant, gave the following result : Pumping from end well low- 
 ered the one 20 feet away J feet, and the one 40 feet away 
 only 5 feet. Another experiment is uniting the wells. Would 
 it be better to have a pump for each well, and the best way to 
 connect them to the engine ? And another very important 
 experiment is the kind of pump to use. 
 
 The experimental stage has progressed to a paying basis, 
 which makes the future exceedingly interesting. Southwest 
 Louisiana will be honeycombed with wells. Those boring for 
 water will strike oil, and those boring for oil will strike 
 water, and yet some say there is no such thing as luck. We 
 find that all well owners are lucky, for any man owning a 
 home is in great luck, and wells make the best homes, schools, 
 society, churches, roads, markets, in fact all modern improve- 
 ments are made by a hardy, home-making, home-loving yeo- 
 manry. The hope of the world, the highest order in heaven. 
 The best prices for lands and the best general condition, will 
 be in the " well " districts. 
 
 Prices for land so far have been so low as to ruin the 
 reputation of any country, and made it very dangerous to 
 the good name of anyone telling the truth about crops, climate 
 and general conditions, to which the price of land gave the 
 lie. When the price corresponds with the advantages, then 
 sales will be better, prices higher and more satisfactory. 
 
 The problem of cheap fuel has been solved as satisfac- 
 torily by the oil wells of Beaumont, Texas, as the water 
 supply by the digging of wells. The old saying, " When it 
 rains it pours," or "To him that hath shall be given,'' is 
 emphatically true of the rice belt. It's a lucky belt. 
 
68 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 riEXICAN EVER-BEARING STRAWBERRIES 
 
 Three years ago A. C. Brainard, of Jennings, La., intro- 
 duced the Mexican Ever-bearing Strawberry. They are a 
 native of Mexico and grow very large. He says : "I have 
 ten other varieties, but the Mexican stands at the head for 
 size, quality, quantity, and every other feature that goes to 
 make up a first- class berry, both for home use and as 
 a shipper. They grow very deep, therefore will stand a 
 long continued drought." Mr. Brainard says, "I am 
 confident that 10,000 quarts can be raised on one acre of 
 land." 
 
 The Jennings Times has the following to say of them : 
 "A. C. Brainard brought the TIMES several samples of 
 Mexican Everbearing Strawberries, a new variety intro- 
 duced by him. They are a large berry, of a tart flavor. 
 The strong point is their keeping quality. This fruit, unlike 
 the usual strawberry, begins to ripen at the^ tip. When 
 half ripe the berries were picked and laid away. The 
 samples had been picked 123 hours and were ripe and 
 sound. Mr. Brainard claims that they can be shipped to 
 New York and we see no reason why the claim is not 
 entirely reasonable. As a shipper they will be an especially 
 valuable shipper." 
 
 A PARADISE FOR THE IMMIGRANT. 
 
 This Article was Written by Request of the City Editor of the New 
 Orleans Picayune, for its Trade, September, ist, 1898, 
 By S, L. Cary. 
 
 Immigration, as related to Louisiana, is a very broad and 
 popular subject. A few years ago an ingenious writer in the 
 popular newspaper, Alexandria Town Talk, took the following 
 unpopular view of a popular question: *'Why is it that we, a 
 prosperous people, with the best country on earth, are not 
 satisfied and are striving to bring in here among us people we 
 know nothing about, and care less, and for what? To raise 
 more cotton? What for? To raise more corn? What for? 
 To make a garden of our luxuriant clover fields? For what? 
 To enrich us? Oh, no; people who have the energy to make 
 fortunes, generally make them for themselves and not for 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 69 
 
 others. * * * We have a good thing ; for the Lord's sake 
 let us keep it. If a few hundred acres are idle it's the owners' 
 fault and nobody's business. There are too many acres now 
 to the plow. We need more hogs (and coco will raise them), 
 we need horses and cattle, and above all we need contentment 
 enough to go slow and hold onto our lands. 
 
 *' Instead of having Dutch, Irish, and the devil knows 
 what, for too close a neighbor, I for one, would rather have 
 the clover field, the brook .of trout, the wooded hills, with 
 luxuriant grass, and my dear good neighbor over yonder, who 
 probably still carries the stone in one end of the sack, but who 
 is honest and a true, tried friend. He is better than forty 
 Dutch, who care for nothing but themselves and theirs." 
 
 This is a very pleasant picture, well painted, well finish- 
 ed, and all said that can be said upon that side of the question. 
 But is it true; does it represent the interest of the race? 
 Does it represent the best interest of the people of the great 
 state of Louisiana? We have an object lesson in the great 
 Northwest. Look at the once great American desert. See 
 its teeming millions. See the great highways of commerce, 
 its mighty cities, its business blocks, its palatial homes, its 
 wonderful system of education, its million churches, its open 
 mines of silver, gold, iron, coal and copper, the most valuable 
 on earth. Its fields of grain can be fed the world. Its 
 people from all lands excel them all. Then turn to a more 
 pleasing picture to a Louisianian, Southwest Louisiana. A 
 field adjacent to our friend, of Rapides. Fifteen years ago it 
 would have answered for a background for our friend's 
 beautiful picture. Millions of acres of prairie and timber in 
 beautiful proximity (as nature adorned). To-day, after an 
 immigration of fully 15,000 people from this same Northwest, 
 what a picture of home, of fertile-fields, of growing cities, of 
 smiling villages, of model farmhouses, of active business, no 
 idle men or tramps around our homes. But the fair prairies, 
 made fairer still by the skilled hand of labor, are made to 
 yield to their happy owners millions of wealth to supply their 
 ever-returning wants. Men of Louisiana. Which picture 
 suits you best? Civilization, prosperity, progress, come as 
 handmaids of immigration, in its immediate wake are advanc- 
 ing prices and general prosperity. Is it desirable? Not 
 always. It depends very largely upon the character of the 
 people brought in. The vicious criminal classes are worsQ 
 
70 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 than useless. Families of moderate means, of good character, 
 active and intelligent, are the best. Honest people willing to 
 work (with or without means), are very desirable. Specula- 
 tors we do not want. In a new country of undeveloped, cheap 
 lands, we fear the man with a pocketful of money. Capital 
 is needed to develop, but it comes best as in Southwest Louis- 
 iana; it comes from the the proceeds of our own industries. 
 
 In all frankness we want the best farmers of the North. 
 We have succeeded remarkably well with such as we could 
 get, such, often, who had made failures, who had experiment- 
 ed too long with a long winter. We shall not go to Europe 
 or to Africa, and will find them at home as soon as they learn 
 the facts as they exist. Going South we are no longer com- 
 petitors, but consumers, sending North our barrels of sugar 
 and rice for barrels of pork and flour. It's a relief to the 
 labor market of the North. 
 
 What have we to offer to would-be immigrants? Health,, 
 good climate, cheap lands, prairie and timber, sure and most 
 valuable products, a home market for our principal crops and 
 a seaboard market for all. Sixty inches of rainfall and sixty 
 irrigating canals. A long growing season. Always remem- 
 ber that the largest factor in your prosperity is the length ot 
 your growing season. Each degree south adds ten days to 
 the season, and a greater variety of crops. 
 
 But there are two that have a home market taking 
 $150,000,000 to fill. In other words we send nearly that 
 amount to Europe and Asia for sugar and rice, selling our 
 wheat, corn, oats and cotton at a small price, to exchange for 
 articles of an inferior quality, that could be grown in Louisi- 
 ana at four times the profit and of superior quality. Time 
 for social and literary pursuit. We can earn more money 
 in the same time with less expense to live, have more time 
 for pleasure. Railroads are best adapted to carry on this 
 business, and, very fortunately, are most directly benefited, 
 I am greatly surprised that they do not push the business to 
 the very front. 
 
 There is a great amount of prejudice and ignorance of 
 the South. Continual advertising such as the World's Fair 
 and the present great trans-Mississippi Exposition affords are 
 exceedingly beneficial and will largely increase immigration 
 south. At Omaha there is in the Louisiana exhibit of red 
 cypress (the best on the ground) sections of trees and moss. 
 
72 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 from them. Doors finished equal to veneering, fire-place and 
 mantel finishings in three patterns of latest designs and most 
 exquisite finish, a table and a large section of a parlor, in 
 cypress (labor on this cost $400 over material), a plank 42 
 inches wide, 2| inches thick and 12 feet long, beautifully 
 done in oil and varnish. Mr. Chas. McDowell, Secretary of 
 the Cypress Lumber Association, in charge, has it well 
 arranged to attract attention. For fifteen years the Southern 
 Pacific Company have had an agent in the Northwest, the 
 very best field to select immigrants from, and with such suc- 
 cess that southwest Louisiana, along its line, has 15,000 
 northern people capturing the great industry, using 4,000 
 twine-binding harvesters, and all machinery " up-to-date," 
 each harvester doing the work of forty men with the old 
 sickle. 
 
 The Southern Pacific Company has an exhibit of the 
 leading products of the state, sugar cane, rice, fruits, salt, 
 sulphur and ornamental trees (by kindness of Prof. W, C. 
 Stubbs) . This makes a good foundation for the distribution 
 of literature that has already done much for the state- — 
 Louisiana will, at this exhibition, be the best advertised state 
 in the Union. She has the richest soil, the most valuable 
 products, the best all-around climate, the best markets, good 
 people, and, better than any other state, "double irrigation." 
 Only let the Northwest know and we will get our full share. 
 Th^re is a vast field to work and a great amount to do. 
 
 Farmers are the gods of this world; "they feed and 
 clothe us all." We would all go to heaven in a month if the 
 farmer should go on a strike. It is very wonderful what 
 nature has done for southern Louisiana (level clay soil) clay 
 sub-soil, plenty of rivers and lakes, always full of fresh waters, 
 sky and earth full also. All rivers and lakes are skirted with 
 heavy timber, just where wanted, by pumping plant or for 
 market. And a prairie of such rare beauty and utility, noth- 
 ing on the surface to mar the picture, naught but a waving 
 expanse of green grass and many colored flowers, no wreck 
 of tree, no stone, no woodman's ax nor grubbing hoe to pre- 
 pare these most fertile lands for the farmer's use. All the 
 conditions seem to have been carefully met so as to return to 
 man the greatest possible benefit with the Least labor; no 
 waiting for the sod to rot, no water to escape through leaking 
 Bands. The. very winds seem tempered to the shorn lamb,. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 73 
 
 «,nd, with a very reasonable amount of labor, all our wants 
 are well supplied. 
 
 Longfellow has well-placed words of welcome on our 
 lips: 
 
 " Welcome once more to a home, better, perchance, than the old one. 
 
 Here no hungry winter congeals the blood like the river. 
 
 Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer ; 
 
 Smoothly the plow-share runs through the soil as a keel through the water. 
 
 All the year round the orange groves are in blossom , 
 
 And the grass grows more in a single night than a whole Canadian summer. 
 
 Here, too, numberless herds run wild and unclaimed on the prairies ; 
 
 Here, too, land may be had for the asking, and forests of timber. 
 
 Beautiful is the land with its prairies and forests of fruit trees. 
 
 Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens bending above 
 
 and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. 
 They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana." 
 
 TRUCK FARMING. 
 
 Truck farming according to the census of 1890, is most 
 remunerating, paying an average of $150 per acre, and over 
 $250 for every man, woman and child employed in the busi- 
 ness. The very early and late season, without frost, give to 
 our products a peculiar value. For instance, it costs no more 
 to grow a strawberry in February that sells at fifty cents to 
 one dollar a quart, than it does to grow strawberries iu June 
 that sell at five to ten cents per quart. Climate is of great 
 value, but costs you nothing, but its operations are often very 
 expensive or the reverse. Truck raised South has good keep- 
 ing qualities, can be shipped long distances. One hundred 
 miles nearer the Gulf of Mexico may give you thirty days 
 earlier products, while the time for transportation will be 
 only a matter of two or three hours. We want expert truck- 
 men by the hundred at all our villages, that cars may be 
 loaded at any one point. The advantages of truck farming 
 over general farming are very many. It requires less land ; 
 it is much easier to get help, and you do not need to keep 
 laborers when not needed. You need not burden your wife 
 
74 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 with the care of help. Your location is iu or near town. 
 Schools, churches, lectures, and the circus, doctors, stores,, 
 shops, are all near by. Your property, kept in order, is al- 
 ways attractive and salable. Your business is surer than the 
 fruit grower's, better than the farmer's, as good as the bank. 
 
 LOUISIANA WEATHER SERVICE. 
 SOUTH LOUISIANA. 
 
 Spring has a normal mean temperature ranging between 
 66° in west and north portions, to nearly 70° in southeast 
 portion; the highest temperature ranges between 93° in 
 southeast portion to 98° in west-central portion, the lowest on 
 record ranges between 20° in west-central portion to 30° in 
 southeast portion, and 35° along the east Gulf coast. The 
 sunshine averages 64 per cent. The rainfall averages between 
 9 and 14 inches, the former in southwest portion, and latter 
 in the extreme north portion, with the east portion having a 
 uniform fall of 12 inches. 
 
 Summer has a normal mean temperature of 80°, being 79° 
 in west portion, and 81° in extreme east portion. The high- 
 est temperatures on record range between 97° in southeast 
 portion and 101° in west portion ; the lowest ranges between 
 50° in west portion to 58° in southeast portion. The sunshine 
 averages 53 per cent, in east portion and 47 to 50 per cent, 
 in west portion. The rainfall varies between 16 inches in 
 eastern half to less than 19 inches in western half. 
 
 Autumn has a normal mean temperature between 65° and 
 70°, the former in west portion, and latter in southeast por- 
 tion. The highest temperatures on record range between 94° 
 and 98°; the lowest between 22° and 25°. The sunshine 
 averages 55 per cent, and is greatest in southeast portion. 
 The rainfall averages from 10 to 13 inches. 
 
 Winter has an average temperature of 55°, being 54° in 
 west and north portions and 56° in southeast portion. The 
 highest temperature on record ranges between 82° and 88°, 
 the latter in west portion; the lowest, between 10° and 15°; 
 the former in, west and north portions. The sunshine gives 
 a general average of 47 per cent. The rainfall ranges from 12 
 to less than 16 inches ; the latter in northeast portion, and 
 former in southwest. 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF CLIMATE. 
 
 In order to provoke discussion and diffuse knowledge of the 
 
^ 
 
 1 
 
76 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISUNA 
 
 utmost importance to man, I give a few suggestions derived 
 mainly from experience. My first suggestion is that extremes 
 are injurious to the best interests of man. The life of man, 
 beast or vegetable is dwarfed, shattered or killed outright by 
 our cold climate, and is injured to some extent by torrid heat, 
 the exceptions being the superior development of vegetable 
 and animal life in the tropics. In the struggle for life, na- 
 ture's greatest effort, her largest expenditure of force, is to " 
 counteract the vicissitudes of climate. Then it follows, the 
 polar region is most unfitted for the abode of man and the 
 temperate zones most favorable to life and its proper develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Now, man having power of choice and means of transpor- 
 tation should fairly consider these conditions and place him- 
 self where he will receive most benefit from climate, seeing 
 that the climatic condition cannot be changed, but man's con- 
 dition may be. Then comes the question what part of the 
 temperate zone is the most favorable; and for present pur- 
 poses let us say the United States. 
 
 Then I say, (other things being equal), where you can 
 have most of life's blessings, with the least expenditure of 
 labor; also where we require least protection from extremes, 
 and where most of the necessities and comforts of life can be 
 produced on the spot; where we can raise the greatest variety 
 and where we have best markets and means of exchange. 
 
 Where have we the most even climate and the cheapest 
 protection against extremes? I answer, confidently, the coast 
 line of the Gulf of Mexico. One season merges almost im- 
 perceptibly into another; extreme heat and cold, about 70°, 
 and climatic changes very gradual, about 20°, covers the 
 changes of the twenty-four hours, and 5° to 10° from month 
 to month. Corn can be planted from February to July, and 
 gardens made from January to November, and fuel and lum- 
 ber had at nominal prices; wool and cotton at lowest price; 
 stocks of all kinds roam over the prairies at will and are 
 never fed by the hand of man. 
 
 The cereals here require same labor as further north, but 
 at a more seasonable time. Fall-sown crops mature and are 
 harvested in May, while sugar, cotton, hay and rice are har- 
 vested from August to January. There is little to do during 
 the heated term; and fruits, delicious fruits, luxuries of •life, 
 necessities of health, solace our leisure hours. Where are our 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC ^^ 
 
 orchards to-day? Follow the coast line, and you will see 
 nearly all. The peach king of tho world, Parnell, of Georgia; 
 and for pears, Thomasville, of it anie State ; for tropical and 
 semi-tropical fruits the coast lii e alone, while figs, apricots, 
 prunes, olives, grapes, pomegranates and berries are in abun- 
 dance. Go to the coast for fish, oysters, game, sugar, rice, 
 cotton, tobacco, corn and textile fabrics. 
 
 Here flourish walnuts, pecans, almonds and most nut- 
 bearing trees. It's eminently a tree bearing country — a 
 prairie only by accident. 
 
 But, says the Northern man, living comes too easy ; you 
 will loose energy, your vigor will abate, and ignorance and 
 indolence will be your inheritance. Does it follow, or is it 
 not a fact that success induces energy, and failure brings de- 
 spondency and sloth? When my efforts are successful, will 
 I not renew them? When I plant a successful orchard, will 
 I not enlarge it? 
 
 The results of unfavorable conditions are often mistaken 
 for results of climate (slavery for instance). That the very 
 highest degree of success has been attained in a similar cli- 
 mate, all will admit. (I refer to Greece and Rome.) The 
 successful raising of fruits is one of the fine arts; a good 
 orchard is the work of an able man. Does chilling the body 
 improve the mind? Does freezing improve the quality of 
 man, beast or vegetable? Does the heat of a tropical sun 
 give energy or ambition? Neither extreme is favorable. But 
 give me a genial clime, a generous soil, clouds laden with 
 moisture and skies sparkling with dew — a land where human 
 effort me.ets a kind return; where fruit trees grow to maturity 
 in shortest time and where returns are made with largest 
 liberality. 
 
 Men are only thankful for favors received and always re- 
 spond promptly to the touch of plenty. Pinching cold, chat- 
 tering teeth, frost-bitten limbs awake neither intelligence, en- 
 terprise, thankfulness or genius in man. We love to work in 
 comfort — neither hot nor cold, but on the middle plane ; no 
 cold to freeze or heat to burn. And this most favorable place 
 and these most favorable conditions we find ii] Southwest 
 Louisiana, the future home of the orchards of America, where 
 the finest quality of fruits are raised without irrigation, with 
 little care, on a clay soil, which gives highest flavor and best 
 success in raising trees from cuttings, thereby avoiding the 
 
78 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 expense of budding and grafting, insuring more abundant 
 •crops of the finest varieties, and so situated that fruit picked 
 by day can reach a seaboard market by the next morning, and 
 the home of its most enterprising and prospeious peoj)le. A 
 land of grass, a land of fruit, a land of easy conditions and 
 ;great natural advantages? 
 
 WHY THEY NEVER FEEL THE COLD. 
 
 'Yes," remarked the St. Paul man to a friend from Chi- 
 cago, as he stood arrayed in his blanket suit and adjusted a 
 couple of buckskin chest protectors : "Yes, there is something 
 about the air in this Northwestern climate which causes a 
 person not to notice the cold. Its extreme dryness," he con- 
 tinued, as he drew on a pair of extra woolen socks, a pair of 
 Scandinavin sheep-skin boots, and some Alaska overshoes — 
 "it's extreme dryness makes a degree of cold, reckoned by 
 the mercury, which would be unbearable in other latitudes, 
 simply exhilarating here. I have suffered more with the cold 
 in Michigan, for instance," he added, as he drew on a pair of 
 goat-skin leggings, adjusted a double" fur cap, and tied on 
 some Esquimaux ear muffs — "in Michigan or Illinois, we will 
 say, with the thermometer at zero or above, than I have Iiere 
 with it at 45 to 50 below. The dryness of our winter air is 
 certainly remarkable," he went on, as he wound a couple rods 
 of red woolen scarf about his neck, wrapped a dozen news- 
 papers around his body, drew on a fall cloth overcoat, a win- 
 ter cloth overcoat, a light buffalo skin overcoat, and a heavy 
 polar bear skin overcoat; "no, if you have never enjoyed our 
 glorious Minnesota winter climate with its dry atmosphere, 
 its bright sunshine, and invigorating ozone, you would scarce- 
 ly believe some things I could tell you about it. The air is 
 so dry," he continued, as he adjusted his leather nose protec- 
 tor, drew on his reindeer skin mittens, and carefully closed 
 one eye hole in the sealskin mask he drew down from his cap 
 ■ — "it's so dry that actually it seems next to impossible to feel 
 tlie cold at all. We can <8carcely realize in the spring that 
 we have had winter, owing to the extreme dryness of the at- 
 mosphere. By the way," he went on, turning to his wife, 
 "just ])ring me a couple of blankets and those bed quilts and 
 throw over my shoulders, and hand me that muff with the hot 
 soapstone in it, and now I'll take a pull at this jug of br^Cndy 
 and whale oil, and then if you'll have the girl bring me my 
 
° ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 79 
 
 snow shoes and iceberg scaling sticks, 111 step over and see 
 them pry the workmen oif the top of the ice palace who were 
 frozen on yesterday. I tell you we wouldn't be going out this 
 way, 500 miles further south, where the air is damp and 
 chilly. Nothing but our dry air makes it possible." — Chicago 
 Tribune^ 
 
 Healthfulnkss.— -If the same care was exercised in Lou- 
 isiana to keep the system in order as in the Northern States, 
 the average health of the family would be much better here 
 than there. There is very little malaria in the prairie region 
 of Southwestern Louisiana, and that is easily managed by or- 
 dinary care. 
 
 Topography, Etc. — Along the entire Gulf Const, and 
 from thirty to seventy miles northward, it is prairie, intersect- 
 ed by rivers and interspersed with picturesque lakes and wood- 
 land. North of the prairie is a vast forest of yellow pine, oak, 
 hickory, beech, gum, magnolia, etc., of great value for lum- 
 ber. The surface is quite rolling near the streams, but more 
 remote rises into slightly undulating table lands. 
 
 Roads. — These are easily and quickly made with clay 
 that packs well and is easily handled, fall, winter or spring; 
 can be made first class for fifty to seventy five dollars per 
 mile. Calcasieu Parish has a large fund for road purposes 
 and is letting contracts for grading and bridging wherever 
 right of way has been obtained. The old custom of forty feet 
 wide is passing away with long-horned stock and sixty feet is 
 the coming fashion. 
 
 Other parishes are adopting modern methods of road 
 work, one man to oversee and graders and teams to be kept 
 at it all the season. 
 
 Water. — We have an abundant supply, fify-five inches 
 annual rainfall, divided quite evenly among the months of the 
 year as follows: 
 
 Average for seventeen years. — January, four and nine- 
 tenths; February, four and nine-tenths; March, four and 
 six-tenths ; April, five and sixth-tenths ; May, four and eight- 
 tenths; June, three and five-tenths; July, three and nine tenths; 
 August, two and one-tenth; September, four and four-tenths; 
 October, four and four-tenths; November, four and eight- 
 tenths ; December, five and two-tenths ; average yearly fifty- 
 two and four-tenths inches. 
 
30 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 A small cistern costing twenty to twenty-five dollars 
 Avill keep a good family supply of the sweetest, purest water, 
 ^always cool enough and always handy. Well water in abun- 
 dance at fifteen to twenty-five feet, through a clay soil, gen- 
 'erally soft, and about at the best temperature for drinking 
 safely summer or winter, 65° to 70° Fahrenheit. 
 
 For people living near rice fields the cistern is perfectly 
 safe and to be recommended. We have rivers and lakes with 
 an abundant supply of good water so much needed for all 
 growing crops. Hundreds of engines and pumps are lift- 
 ing the water twenty to thirty feet high into flumes which 
 carry it for miles to be used over thousands of acres of grow- 
 ing rice and by and by over our fields of sugar cane, fifteen 
 to twenty-five tons per acre without irrigation. What yields 
 will be made when an abundant supply of water is given dur- 
 ing the dryest time — no more short joints in our canes. 
 There are times in every season when irrigation would pay. 
 
 For house use, rain water is the best, but most of the 
 farmers use well water, wiiich is abundant and of good quality 
 generally. The springs, creeks and rivers afford abundant 
 stock water. 
 
 Spanish Moss. — Grows along all the rivers and bayous of 
 Southwestern Louisiana. In its green state its color is grey 
 (not as bad as a green blackberry, which is red.) It is an 
 aereophyte attached to trees, feeds upon air. It grows in 
 great abundance, is easily gathered and cured. It blooms 
 annually and reproduces itself when gathered from the trees. 
 Can be gathered for thirty cents per hundred pounds. Cured 
 and cleaned for one cent a pound and sells at three to four 
 cents per pound in market. Is used like hair in upholstering 
 and saddlery. No one need to starve near a moss field. It 
 reproduces in six months ; is said by some to be more profit- 
 able than a cotton field ready grown. 
 
 Insects — There are fewer flies than upon the Northern 
 prairies, and about the same number of mosquitoes and harm- 
 ful snakes. 
 
 Schools, Society and Politics. — Schools are not as numer- 
 ous in the country as in the North, but there are good school 
 laws, and as fast as the country settles schools can be 
 secured. There are many Northern people in Southwestern 
 Louisiana, and more are coming every day. The native pop- 
 ulation are kind and friendly. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 8l 
 
 Property is safe. There are fewer locks and keys in the 
 rural districts than in any country of equal extent in America. 
 You can vote as you please and every vote will be fairly 
 counted 
 
 SPEECH OF SECT'Y OF AGRICULTURE, JAS. WILSON, 
 
 DELIVERED AT JENNINGS, LA., MAY 15, 1899, 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen j 
 
 " I came down to the State of Louisiana to learn my du- 
 ty towards you ; to see what it might be possible for me to do 
 to serve you and make the Department of Agriculture do you 
 some good in connection with the cultivation of these mag- 
 uiticent prairies down here. 
 
 The President of the United States requires me to make 
 the Department useful and serviceable to all localities of the 
 country. He is just as anxious that the people of Louisiana, 
 and this part of Louisiana, should prosper and be happy as 
 he is that the people of his own home, iu Ohio, should pros- 
 per and be happy. Therefore, in order to live in peace with 
 the President, I have to be on the go and see what the Agri- 
 cultural Department can do for the people throughout the 
 country, here and there. (Applause.) 
 
 I have known nothing of the South, except by reading, 
 until within the last year when I visited most of the Gulf 
 States east of you to study the conditions of Agriculture there. 
 
 This is not a typical Southern town I know. If you 
 were to drop a Northern man down here in the night, when 
 daylight came, he would say ' Well, I happened to fall upon a 
 Northern village.' Everything looks so much like what I 
 have seen in the North, Those homes look like Northern 
 homes. Those people look like Northern people. 
 
 But you have come here to build up homes and make 
 the most of your opportunities. You have shown a rapid 
 growth. I have seen your beautiful school house and church- 
 es. But you are doing what all other localities in the North 
 are doing — building too many churches. When I was a boy, 
 I remember that we built six or seven churches more than we 
 needed, but we supported them all and probably it was the 
 wisest thing to do any way. You have made a good start, 
 however ; a good start. 
 
82 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 My business is to study production ; PRODUCTION I 
 My visit to the South is for that purpose. 
 
 If you wiU stop to consider for a moment, you will see 
 the humor of putting a stranger on the stand either for the 
 purpose of entertaining or instructing you ; in fact, you 
 should all be up here telling me something about yourselves, 
 because it is very evident I will not be able to tell you any- 
 thing that you don't know. 
 
 Let me tell you one thing that has astonished me — sur- 
 prised me. I had supposed that the animal industries would 
 never be successful in the South as they are in the North. 
 That idea was based on the impression that you could not 
 produce grasses, legumes, etc. as we produce them up there, 
 and for that reason your efforts in that direction must be 
 limited. All the states east of you, bordering on the Gulf, 
 grow some of the legumes we have in the North that are nec- 
 essary for the support of the domestic animal. But when I 
 come here to Louisiana, I find everything that grows in the 
 North growing here. It is true they do not grow in this 
 neighborhood; possibly, the seeds may not have reached this 
 neighborhood. I did think that the climatic conditions were 
 such that the various legumes such as red clover, white clov- 
 er, in fact all the varieties would not grow down here, but 
 when I come to Louisiana I find them growing everywhere 
 in the settled portions of your state and so I have come to 
 the conclusion that it is not climatic conditions but soil con- 
 ditions that make the distinction ; that this magnificent stretch 
 of country between here and New Orleans will grow all these 
 things simply because it has the proper soil which is not the 
 case in the Gult states east of here. 
 
 You see the conditions between Louisiana and Iowa, we 
 will say for illustration, are very different. There you are 
 frozen up half the year and are forced to do all your work in 
 the summer time, while in Louisiana you have practically, no 
 winter. 
 
 Another distinction between Louisiana and Iowa I may 
 make is, we have in Iowa thirty inches of rainfall and you 
 have sixty. 
 
 You have certain conditions of heat and we have also. 
 It may occur to some people who come here for the first time 
 that the great objection to Louisiana is the amount of heat 
 you have down here, and I have no doubt July and August 
 
i54 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 are a little warmer than is comfortable, but take all the con- 
 ditions as they exist here and they are much more favorable 
 than they are in Iowa. 
 
 I have mentioned the value of the legume. No country 
 can succeed without it. It is impossible to go on year after 
 year producing any crop without legumes — that is without 
 clovers ; or in their stead cow peas. And why? Because 
 there is no other way under the sun by which nitrogen gets 
 into the soil and when you exhaust the nitrogenous matter 
 from the soil you cannot produce enough on it to make a liv- 
 ing. 
 
 Twenty years ago we were growing wheat. For ten to 
 fifteen years we exhausted the soil and we could not grow a 
 crop any longer. The questiou arose, what are we going to 
 do? The answer was, you must either milk cows and make 
 dairy products or starve; so take your choice. It was a des- 
 perate alternative left to a proud, spirited people who had 
 been in the habit of riding on a plow with a spring seat be- 
 neath them and a canopy over them to have to get down on a 
 milking stool and milk cows for a living. But Ladies and 
 Gentlemen, we have come to it, and I will tell you, people 
 will milk cows before they will starve. We have today, in 
 the state of Iowa over a thousand Creameries, and we sell 
 thirty millions pounds of butter. That is how we got out of 
 the difficulty. 
 
 You sent one man to Congress last winter, General Mc- 
 Enery who stood by your interest, and you have a protective 
 tariff on your rice. But in raising this one crop you ere in 
 danger. It always comes to the people who confine them- 
 selves to one crop instead of diversifying. 
 
 Two years ago the state of Iowa raised so much corn it 
 only brought 10 cts. a bushel. 
 
 It is true that the United States of America does not 
 produce more than one third of the rice it consumes, so you 
 have some time to get ready for the diversification of your 
 crops. 
 
 Now I am only going to talk a few minutes, but permit 
 me to turn in another direction in my efforts to entertain you. 
 You have heat, moisture and an open winter. You can pro- 
 duce fine horses down here in the South. We sold fifty 
 thousand head of horses last year to Europe, and the demand 
 is growing all the time and the price increasing. But there 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC <S^ 
 
 is a horse we do not produce in the North, and that is the 
 high-spirited saddle horse which is only found in the South. 
 Whether you have them here or not I do not know. When 
 you produce fine hunting horses, you can get your own price 
 for them. 
 
 I have seen as fine Jersey cows since coming here as I 
 have, seen anywhere. I have eaten as good butter in the 
 South as I have eaten anywhere and what one man has done 
 another can do. 
 
 You can grow Alfalfa, the crimson clover and twenty 
 other things in the winter. You have green food for your 
 cows and can make as fine butter as is produced in the 
 North. 
 
 You can raise the early lambs. I have seen them in 
 Louisiana today, and what one man has done another man 
 can do. • The early lamb is wanted as much in the North as 
 your early strawberries and they are not produced in suffi- 
 cient numbers to supply the demand. We have to send to 
 Europe for them. 
 
 And when you have the dairy started, you can produce 
 what the South has been famous for for years — the Southern 
 Ham ; a ham which sells from twenty-five to forty-five cents 
 a pound, and we want the very finest in Washington. It is 
 produced away from the cornfield. In the great cornfields 
 of the North we produce hogs and have to send them to Chi- 
 cago for fat. 
 
 We buy seventy one millions pounds of tea and pay over 
 ten millions of dollars for it. I propose to have a garden es- 
 tablished in every Southern state. There was one in South 
 Carolina where it has been demonstrated we can grow tea 
 and grow it as fine as anywhere in the world. 
 
 Do you know that Easter Lilies (the Bermuda Lily) cost 
 forty cents each last Easter? My business is that whenever 
 I find Uncle Sam buying things outside, to stop it. So I 
 bought five hundred dollars worth of those bulbs and put 
 $125.00 worth of them in North Carolina, $125.00 worth in 
 Mississippi, $125.00. worth in Louisiana and $125.00 worth in 
 L'^ew Mexico, and we will find out from some of those four 
 Southern states where our people can get their Easter Lilies. 
 
 I am very glad to have had the opportunity to meet you 
 here tonight. We just stopped off, as it were, so I might 
 look you in the face and make your acquaintance, and tell 
 
S6 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 you of our good intentions, and to say that anything that can 
 be done will be done by the present Administration to help 
 you along in all your undertakings. 
 
 I might add one thing more. You grow sugar down 
 
 here. From New York all the way to the Pacific Coast, the 
 states are beginning to make sugar from the sugar-beet, and 
 in future, when Congress meets and considers the wisdom of 
 keeping the duty on foreign sugar, or taking it off, you will 
 see the Northern people there to fight your battles for you. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 There is something here I think you could not see un- 
 der much finer auspices, and which we did not see in the ear- 
 ly days in the Northwest. I refer to the railways. In the 
 Southern Pacific you have one of the finest railways in the 
 world and its roadbed is one of the best I have ever, ridden 
 over in my life. (Applause.) 
 
 In the early days, those who managed railroads were 
 not very civil, but the gentlemen managing your railroads 
 are gentlemen to begin with. So I see your lot is placed in 
 pleasant places. 
 
 I thank you for listening to me and bid you good night. 
 
 PROF. W. C. STUBBS 
 
 on diversified farming. 
 
 Sugar Experiment Station, 
 Audubon Park, New Orleans, La., June 14, 1899. 
 Mr. S. L. Cary, Jennings, La. 
 
 My Dear Sir: — In expressing an opinion as to the adapta- 
 bility of Southwestern Louisiana to diversified agriculture, it 
 is easier to tell what it connot grow than what it can. Bx- 
 perimentfj have demonstrated that, on account of the level 
 contour of your soil and the easy availability of water through 
 your numerous streams, bayous, coolies or artesian wells, rice 
 growing has temporarily monopolized your farmers. I am in- 
 formed that there are over 350 miles of canals now flooding 
 the rice fields with water and your people with wealth. To 
 these can be added nearly one hundred artesian wells which 
 are irrigating from fifty to one hundred acres each annually. 
 This great rice industry in Southwest Louisiana has almost 
 revolutionized the rice industry in the United States. South 
 Carolina was once the leader in the growing of rice, and 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 87 
 
 Louisiana was second best. At that time the hulk of the rice 
 grown in this State was upon the banks of the Mississippi 
 River and its outlying bayous. Now the largest quantity is 
 grown upon the prairies of Southwest Louisiana where exten- 
 sive irrigation plants, improved implements and excellent and 
 numerous rice machines are fully utilized for the purpose of 
 making this crop intelligently and cheaply. 
 
 But rice is not the only thiug that can be grown in this 
 section. If your lauds be well drained and your soils thor- 
 oughly broken, thrown into ridges, quarter-drains and ditches 
 properly established, and planted in cane, it is doubtful 
 whether any portion of this State can exceed yours in the pro- 
 fitable growing of this crop. It has been demonstrated that 
 your soil produces cane exceedingly rich in sugar, and that 
 the ease with which your soil can be cultivated, the presence 
 of a large number of central factories eager to purchase the 
 same by the ton, are all strong inducements for the substitu- 
 tion of this crop, at least in part, for the rice industry now 
 engaged in by nearly every citizen in Southwest Louisiana. 
 Again, if your lands be thoroughly drained, which can 
 easily be done, whenever parochial or State authority inter- 
 venes for the establishment and condemnation of drainage 
 canals and ditches, there is hardly any crop, either subtropical 
 or temperate, that cannot be successfully grown in this sec- 
 tion. Pears of the oriental type, oranges of the Japanese 
 type, grafted upon citrus trofoliata, figs of every variety, Ja- 
 panese persimmons, and other fruits, can be grown here to 
 perfection. Oats of the Rust-proof variety, sown in the fall 
 will produce an enormous crop. We have every assurance 
 that tobacco of the cigar type, now being grown upon the 
 bluff lands of Central Louisiana, can be grown upon the prai- 
 ries of this section on account of the similarity of soil and 
 climate conditions. 
 
 ' I need not say anything of cotton or corn. It goes with- 
 out saying, that every portion of Louisiana can grow both cot- 
 ton and corn profitably. 
 
 Another industry, which once flourished in an uninteli- 
 gent manner upon these pr'airies before they were peopled, 
 is the growing of stock, which can again, under intelligent 
 direction, be made far more profitable than in former years. 
 With the present price of beef, and the introduction of some 
 of 1 he improved breeds of beef cattle, I know of no section 
 
88 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 of the country that has such possibilities before it in the 
 growing of beef cattle for market, as yours. 
 
 With "cotton seed meal" so available around you, and 
 with "rice bran and polish" right at your door, all, at what may 
 be en lied initial prices, supplementing the superior grazing 
 of your section of the country, beef cattle can be grown 
 at large profits. 
 
 Leguminous crops of all kinds, when properly planted 
 and intelligently inaugurated, will materially add to the 
 success of this industry when established. Alfalfa, now such 
 a wonderful success in all the alluvial lands of this State, 
 can by proper preparation of the soil, fertilization and in- 
 ocul&tion, be made a success in your section, and when a 
 field is once established the numerous crops that can be 
 cut therefrom amply repay the labor and expense involved 
 in establishing it. 
 
 I sincerely trust that your efibrts which have accom- 
 plished so much in peopling this section, may in the near 
 future reach such a degree of success as to overflow South- 
 west Louisiana, and aid us in developing the other fertile 
 sections of this State. Very truly yours, 
 
 Wm. C. Stdbbs, Director. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 WHAT MACHINERY HAS DONE FOR SOUTH^VESTERN LOtTISIANA. 
 
 It has made it possible for a few men from the Northwest 
 to capture the rice industry. It has enabled one man with a 
 machine and four mules to do the work of thirty to forty men 
 in harvest which lasts three months of the year. The 3,000 
 twine binding harvesters in use, represent for three months 
 an unseen population of 100,000 men, who never strike, ask 
 for no holidays, never hunger, thirst, or get tired. It gives to 
 one man the productive capacity of thirty. A good machine 
 is the laboring man's best friend. It at first displaces labor, 
 educates, and gives the power to earn better wages. There 
 is very little or no prejudice against machinery in South wes- 
 f^ern Louisiana. Threshing is done by the same machine 
 ^(slightly modified) that is used for wheat North, using a 
 traction engine of ten to twelve horse power, about 150 in 
 use. The large rice fields are supplied with pumps and 
 engines. A pump of large capacity, driven by a fifty horse 
 power engine, will flood successfully 300 to 500 acres. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 89 
 
 depending upon the season (wet or dry). The same engines 
 for running threshing machines are largely used for pump- 
 ing on smaller fields. Plows, harrows, cutaways, rollers and 
 pulverizers of most improved pattern are used. Plowing by 
 steam is being done experimentally, it's true ; but the nature 
 of the soil, the lay of the land, and the enterprise of the 
 people warrant success, 
 
 A very large amount of machinery has been sold, and 
 yet the agents say collections are much better here than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 SAFE AND PROFITABLE INVESTMENTS. 
 
 Southwestern Louisiana offers a clear field. Few mort- 
 gages, and land titles very short direct from the Government. 
 Besides, these lands are capable of earning more than ordi- 
 nary lands, as they grow the most valuable crops — sugar and 
 rice. All northern products are grown and mature earlier 
 and later than the usual season, making them particularly 
 valuable. For instance, Irish potatoes ripen in May, straw- 
 perries in February, grapes in July, dewberries in April^ 
 peaches in May, pears in July, oats in June, corn in July. 
 The first thirty days of the market is worth more than all the 
 rest of the year. We have the benefit of climate which costs 
 nothing and adds ninety per cent to values. At this time, 
 March 1, fruit trees are in full bloom, vegetables of most 
 kinds at and near maturity; those things saved, are of 
 immense value. The average date of last killing frosts for 
 the past thirty years, for Louisiana, is March 5, and the 
 nearer the coast the less the danger. Now, along the line 
 of the Southern Pacific Railroad, we have passed the great 
 danger line, while fifty to one hundred miles north, both fruit 
 and vegetables have been killed. If our products are killed 
 sometimes by late frosts, still we have earlier seeding than 
 anywhere north of us, as we are only liable to same freezes in 
 March that Iowa and Illinois have in May, so that in every 
 way Southwestern Louisiana is a safer place fi)r investment 
 than elsewhere. 
 
 WHAT WE WERE TOLD BY "WE TOLD YOU SO," AND HOW IT 
 
 CAME OUT. 
 
 We were told that Southern people had no enterprise^ 
 lacked vigor, were indolent, and that we would become lazy 
 and lose all our energy within two years. Our sufficient 
 
90 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 answer is to point to what we liave done in the rice crop. 
 We have outgrown the capacity of the rice mills and com- 
 mission men of New Orleans, have raised to the full extent of 
 the ability of the great Southern Pacific Railroad to handle. 
 Commencing a few years ago with a shipment of 2,000,000 
 pounds, next season 4,000,000, then 8,000,000, then 16,000,- 
 000, then 63,000,000, then 180,000,000 1891 and 1892, and 
 now 1892 and 1893 over 300,000,000 pounds, show that our 
 Southern 1)rethren have not been behind us in the race. We 
 were told that we should be ostracised for opinion's sake 
 Answer, not so. We were told that we' would be more sup- 
 ject to epidemics. Answer, not so. We were told that the 
 climate was enervating. Answer, if so, how is it that all 
 civilizations have sprung from warm countries. " Climates 
 that grow oranges have grown all civilizations.'" Yellow 
 fever was the great "scare crow." Answer, yellow fever 
 does not originate in the Southern States, is controlled l)y 
 quarantine, and is more easily cured than many Nortliern 
 diseases that cannot be quarantined. Even the gentle grippe 
 has more victims North than yellow fever in same length of 
 time South. Diphtheria is more fatal, and does nearly all 
 his deadly work north of the Ohio River. Diphtheria, a 
 Northern disease, is more fatal than any Southern disease. 
 Smallpox is mainly a Northern disease. We were told that 
 roses had no fragrance, fruits no flavor. Both are untrue. 
 We were told that the country was a marsh. Our prairies 
 are not boggy. Our lands, some are low, and some are high 
 and rolling, wet and dry on nearly every quarter section, 
 making each farm the more valuable on account of this 
 variety. The value of the land is enhanced by its varieties, 
 its ])eculiarities. If I had the only farm that could grow any 
 particular crop of general use, ils value would be immense. 
 
 SOUTHERN HOMES. 
 
 The folhjwing letter from Mr. W. J. Randolph, of Millers- 
 ville, Louisiana, to a friend in Dakota, is quite interesting, 
 and especially so to hundreds of families in the Northwest 
 now looking southward for Southern homes. Millersville is 
 only 8 miles north of Jennings, on the celebrated Calcasieu 
 prairie, that is being settled almost exclusively by Northern 
 people : 
 
ON LINE- OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 91 
 
 MlLLERSVILLE, La., 
 
 Dear Brother Fasset. — The Neios still conies to me, 
 forwarded from Spottswood. Now facts are, I am not able to 
 take all the news — I am abundantly able to take, but am not 
 able to pay for them. If you are so interested in my know- 
 ing the capacity of the average Dakota newspaper man for 
 expanding the naked truth, you better send the paper here, 
 but for your own safety, and financial success, you better 
 "stop-her." I stayed in the banana belt too long to have dol- 
 lars around loose. When I read of 30^ below zero and no 
 coal, I shudder and wonder if I really was ever there. We 
 have had a few frosts, the grass is green and cattle and 
 horses on the range are fat and sleek. I am writing in a 
 room without fire and doors open. We don't fear a coal 
 famine ; we can go and get enough fuel to last a week in an 
 hour's time, and it won't cost a cent. We live on as beauti- 
 ful prairie as ever lay out of doors. Magnificent timber of all 
 kinds on either side within a mile and a half. Good fence 
 lumber costs $7 per thousand feet, and health is as good or 
 better than in Dakota. Abundance of wild fruit from March 
 to August. Peaches, nectarines, apricots, figs, Japan persim- 
 mons are propagated from cuttnigs and come into bearing in 
 two years. Pears begin to bear in from 3 to 5 years and this 
 is the home of the best. These prairies produce grass to beat 
 the world ; will average more to the acre than ten acres in 
 Dakota. There have been thousands of tons of hay shipped 
 this fall at prices that net more cash than a Dakota wheat 
 crop. These are some of the things that strike a Dakota man 
 favorably ; could tell you some things not quite so pleasant, 
 but nothing to compare to a straw fire. This country is fill- 
 ing up with Northern people, property is advancing in price 
 every day, and I have the first Northern settler yet to see 
 who wants to spend the winter in Michigan. Horace Greely 
 said, "it is easier to raise a steer in Texas, than to raise a hen 
 in Maine," and I am not sure but it is cheaper to raise a 
 whole herd of cattle here than to pull one old cow around by 
 the horns, hunting for water and fresh grass in Dakota. Do 
 you hear me shout? 
 
 You better stop and put in some more straw, and I will 
 hitch up and take a buggy ride, just for fun, and think of 
 you poor fellows up there, pressing your nose against the 
 window glass wondering when the storm will let up, the 
 

 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 93 
 
 weather moderate and the cars will come laden with coal. 
 
 Nothing but extreme poverty drove me out of Dakota, and 
 how I do thank the good Lord for one spell of ])overty and 
 that by contrasting this with Dakota, I can the more enjoy 
 the glorious weather, the beauty of the landscape, etc. How 
 we can laugh at the storm and the coal dcdlers and the straw 
 pile ; how we can luxuriate on the sweet potato, rice, poultry, 
 eggs, sugar and syrup, corn bread, beef at 5 cents per pound, 
 etc., all of home production. 
 
 Here, if we can't buy shoes, we can be independent and go 
 bare-foot and never think of freezing. 
 
 This is not for publication, and I am not booming the 
 country. If I were, what a story I could tell. If the aver- 
 age Dakota newspaper man was down here and should give 
 rein to his imagination as at home, he would be looking for 
 the Great White Throne and the River of Life, the Streets of 
 Gold and the Pearly Gates. It would be necessary to swathe 
 him in a suit of Dakota winter clothes to keep him from 
 bursting and to put imported ice on his head to remind him 
 of home and enable him to call in his ideas, take his bearings 
 and find out where he really was. If you don't believe it 
 come down and try it. 
 
 Yours, W. J. Randolph. 
 
 A REMARKABLE FACT. 
 
 Providentially the Southern Pacific holds the key to the 
 situation as regards the sugar, rice and hay industries of the 
 State. Only twelve years since the Carolinas raised the rice 
 of the United States. At that time the delta of the Mississip- 
 pi raised the rice of Louisiana. All done by colored labor. 
 
 At that time the vSouthern Pacific Railroad Company put 
 an agent in the field to attact emigration to the prairies of 
 Southwest Louisiana. We induced the men of the Northwest 
 to come, and these men brought with them the improved farm 
 machinery, with which they cultivated their lands and made 
 a living — "labor saving machinery." 
 
 There were vast quantities of grass rotting annually. 
 The mower, stacker, gatherer and hay press were brought 
 into use, and to-day thousands of tons find their way over 
 the Southern Pacific to Texas and Mexico. 
 
04 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 These men saw the rice cro23 secured with a hook or 
 sickle, for a harvester. They put a twine-binding harvester 
 into the iield, and this season 4,000 machines, capable of 
 harvesting 30,000 to 40,000 acres per day, are in the rice 
 fields of Southwestern Louisiana. The industry is revolution- 
 ized by machinery handled by white men ; so that the great 
 rice crop which twelve years ago was grown by the Carolinas 
 and the Mississippi Delta, is now grown in Southwestern 
 Louisiana. 
 
 And now the outlook is the same for the great sugar in- 
 dustry. The tendency is to leave the low bottoms, subject 
 more or less, to overflow, and take the higher lands that are 
 much easier to cultivate and handle. The first move of im- 
 portance was made in 1892, when the agent of the company 
 took samples of prairie-grown cane to Audubon Park for 
 analysis, and Professor Stubbs announced that these samples^ 
 contained 30 to 50 per cent, above the average Louisiana 
 cane in sugar, or from 14.4 to 16.4 per cent, sucrose. Then 
 thousands of circulars telling these facts were printed by the 
 company and circulated through the Northwest. 
 
 The next great step is the erection of a diffusion sugar 
 house at Lake Charles, by a student of Prof. Stubbs, after 
 learning these facts. It is proven that cane grows as well 
 on the prairies as on the bottoms, and is sweeter, lands are 
 cheaper, and white men and machinery will make this indus- 
 try as successful as they do the rice. And the Southern Pa- 
 cific Company feel the vast importance and value of these in- 
 dustries to the whole country ; having inaugurated this great 
 change, involving questions of national importance, will en- 
 deavor to carry it forward to complete success. 
 
 The United States supplies of sugar and rice are involved 
 in this experiment, and all indications point to success. 
 
 There is enough good prairie land along the line of the 
 Southern Pacific Railroad in Louisiana t3 furnish hay to the 
 State, and sugar and rice for the United States. 
 
 The price of undeveloped land is $5 to $20 per acre; 
 improved land $15 to $50. 
 
 Will you come and help solve the problem, and develop 
 this new and most valuable country, with the assurance of 
 large profits and of unusually favorable general conditions? 
 
 Successful farming is reduced to stock-raising even in 
 the Northwest. Grass is the best form, and warm weather 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC- 95 
 
 the best time in wliich to feed stock. "Go South, young 
 man, go South." And when you go south, GO SOUTH ! 
 
 READ THIS. 
 
 The value of advice is measured mainly by experience. A 
 man who has traveled from ocean to ocean and from Grand 
 Forks, North Dakota, to the Gulf of Mexico, who has lived 
 North in three states fifty-six years and in Southwestern 
 Louisiana fifteen years, and w^ho has crossed every belt of 
 production, every month of the year for ten years, should be 
 able to give intelligent and therefore valuable advice to land 
 and home seekers. And be says, that while there is no para- 
 dise on earth, Southwestern Louisiana comes nearer filling 
 the bill for an ideal home than any other country he has ever 
 seen, and if you read carefully the opinions of the many writ- 
 ers in this book, all being experts in the lines written about, 
 that you need not go astray in making your selection of the 
 kind of business to follow and the place to locate your 
 home. 
 
 The great w^ants of this country are : Banking capital, 
 which can be safely and profitably invested, and the better 
 classes of farmers. I know of no place where intelligent 
 farming, assisted by capital, will pay such dividends as here. 
 Cash, labor and brains are at a premium here and will enrich 
 the owner beyond a doubt. 
 
 COTTON. 
 
 Cotton is raised to some extent in Southwestern Louisi- 
 ana, but is not a favorite crop, and of late years, owing to low 
 prices, did not pay. 
 
 The Northern immigrant does not take kindly to cotton 
 growing; perhaps he may when cotton picking is done by 
 machinery. It undoubtedly pays better than wheat, oats or 
 corn raising iu the North. The yield is a half-bale per acre 
 planted in March, cultivated like corn, picked in September, 
 October and November, costing to grow same as corn until 
 harvesting, which costs fifty cents to one dollar per 100 lbs. 
 The seed is becoming more valuable year by year, is the best 
 feed for stock and a good fertilizer. 
 
 One thousand pounds of seed with each 500 pounds of 
 lint cotton seed is worth |12 to $20 a ton. Its uses are 
 numerous ; competes with oleo for supremacy in making 
 good dairy butter. 
 
96 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 TIMBER. 
 
 Large bodies of excellent timber occupy fully one-half of 
 Southwest Louisiana. The varieties are almost endless. The 
 quality the very best. Hard pine, cypress, oak, ash, gum 
 and hickory are leading. A very large business in lumber 
 and shingles is done the year round. Men from Michigan 
 are leading. The timber is well located along the rivers, 
 lakes and bayous, is accessible, and lumbering on a large 
 scale goes on summer and winter. 
 
 • LAKE CHARLES. 
 
 BY PROF S. A. KNAPP. 
 
 On the Calcasieu River is the metropolis of Southwestern 
 Louisiana and destined to be the great central city between 
 New Orleans and Houston, Texas, a distance of 360 miles. 
 Look at facts : 
 
 1. It has an admirable location on one of the most beau- 
 tiful lakes in America and upon a river broad, deep and navi- 
 gable at all times of the year. 
 
 Lake Charles (the lake) is two miles wide by two and 
 one-half miles long and through it flows the Calcasieu River. 
 The waters of the lake are clear and its banks are bold, except 
 on the north and southwest, where giant semi-tropical forests 
 do battle with the waves. The Calcasieu River, one thousand 
 feet broad and sixty feet deep, flows from the northeast till 
 within one-fourth of a mile of the lake, where it makes a 
 graceful curve to the west and enters the lake on the western 
 shore. The city of Lake Charles extends from the river upon 
 the north along the eastern shore of the lake to the river 
 upon the south. For beauty of location Lake Charles sur- 
 passes every city upon the Gulf coast. 
 
 2. It is upon the Southern Pacific Railroad, 218 miles 
 west of New Orleans. The Calcasieu, Vernon & Shreveport 
 Railroad, now under construction, will give an air line to 
 Kansas City. 
 
 3. It is a city of 7000 inhabitants, manufactures 650,- 
 000 feet of lumber, 320,000 shingles daily; has three banks; 
 four newspapers ; nine sawmills; one sugar refinery; the lar- 
 gest rice mill in America; car shops; waterworks; street 
 railways ; electric lights, etc. It is increasing in population 
 at the rate of two thousand per year. 
 
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98 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 4. Appropriation has been made to improve the harbor 
 at the mouth of the Calcasieu, which will give Lake Charles 
 one of the best harbors on the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 5. It is positively the best location in the South to es- 
 tablish the following lines of manufacture : 
 
 First, furniture ; second, wagons ; third, chairs ; fourth, 
 agricultural implements; fifth, cotton or woolen factories; 
 sixth, iron works, engine building, etc.; seventh, it is a place 
 where investments pay ; eighth, it is one of the best winter 
 resorts on the Gulf, and has many Northern visitors every 
 season. 
 
 6. Lake Charles is essentially a Northern city, wide 
 awake, progressive and modern. 
 
 7. Much of the growth of Lake Charles is due to the 
 advantages afforded by the vSouthern Pacific Railroad and its 
 superior service in passenger and freight traffic. 
 
 WELSH, LA. 
 
 S. L. Cary, Esq. 
 
 Dear Sir: — "In the bend of the bayou she sits snugly 
 ensconsed.'' This is the first line of an article from the pen 
 of a well-known writer, and can be most fully appreciated by 
 the stranger as he approaches the town from the north or 
 northeast. It is a growing town of about 350 inhabitants, 
 and was incorporated under the laws of the State. Situated 
 on the Southern Pacific Haikoad in Calcasieu Parish, 195 
 miles west of New Orleans, 110 east of Houston, and twenty- 
 three miles east of Lake Charles, the parish seat. Located 
 in the forks of two lovely wooded streams which afford ex- 
 cellent drainage, and in the center of large timber areas and 
 rich prairies extending many miles in each direction, it is cer- 
 tainly an ideal site, considered both from commercial and 
 picturesque points of view. From a simple railway station 
 with two small stores and a blacksmith shop, Northern emi- 
 gration has developed in four years, three large dry goods and 
 grocery stores, one hardware and furniture store, two drug 
 stores, one restaurant, a meat market, a livery and feed stable, 
 two neat little churches (Methodist and Congregational) and 
 a public school building of modern design, thirty by sixty 
 feet, two stories high. And all this has come about with rice 
 as the only money-making farm crop. What it will be when 
 sugar cane, fruit and live stock have been given the same at- 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 99 
 
 tentioii, is a matter of conjecture. Men of experience and 
 close observation do not hesitate to predict for the town and 
 country a very bright future. Along both sides of the larger 
 bayou that runs past the town on toward th'^ Gulf is a strip 
 of magnificent hardwood timber, including several of the 
 oaks, hickory, white holl}', cypress, sweet gum, and others. 
 From the church belfry, lines of timber can be seen in the 
 east, the north, and the west, but in no case are they less 
 than twelve miles distant, the prairie like a grand panorama 
 spn-ading out before you. These prairies that in early spring 
 time are covered with lovely white flowers, and latter with 
 luxuriant waving grass, formerly supported large herds of 
 horses and cattle. But as the laud has settled up and the 
 farmer fenced in the best grazing lands, and on them planted 
 rice, the stock industry has grown less and less each year. 
 Many high-grade and thoroughbred short-horn cattle have 
 been brought in by Northern settlers. Most of them live, 
 and of these, many take well to their new pastures, while 
 others do not seem to thrive. The Galloways and polled 
 Angus do the best of all the noted beef cattle brought here. 
 They will l)e fat in a pasture of native grasses, where on the 
 same feed a short-horn will be poor. There is very little at- 
 tention given on the part of farmers, at present, to improving 
 their beef cattle, but there is the most urgent need for better 
 milch stock. Thoroughbred Holsteins or Jerseys are just as 
 easily acclimated as any cattle, and are sure of producing a 
 handsome revenue for their owners. The time is coming when 
 hogs will be raised here in considerable numbers, but it is 
 not advisable, at present, for a man going on to a new place 
 to bring hogs with him. This is a good place for chickens. 
 Either Egytian or red rice is a cheap and excellent feed. 
 With a small amount of this feed and a sufficient grass range, 
 hens will lay the whole year, except a short time in midsum- 
 mer. More liberal rations will fatten them nicely for market. 
 The acreage in rice for the season of 1892 is at least fifty 
 per-cent larger than the year before, and the yield much above 
 an average. Some experiments this season have shown that 
 $2.50 worth of fertilizer has aided in producing full crops on 
 lands heretofore considered too high for rice. One man in 
 this vicinity has just threshed over 2,000 barrels from 200 
 acres of such land. Corn is grown in a small way, mostly 
 by Creole farmers for their own use. The average yield is 
 
lOO SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 about twenty bushels per acre. As most of the farmiiio- at 
 present is done with oxen, farmers generally buy cotton seed, 
 which is better and cheaper feed. Two small pieces of oats 
 were sown near town last fall. The yield w^as twenty-two 
 bushels per acre and the quality very good. The result, 
 though not large, shows that, with proper management, much 
 better can be done, and that eTcry farmer can raise his own 
 horse feed. The cultivation of sugar cane has been carried 
 on in a small way for many years. To make syrup and a 
 little sugar for home use has long l^een thought to be the 
 most that would ever be done in that line. On the 16th of 
 November, 1892, the first car of cane w^as shipped from this 
 station to tlie Calcasieu Sugar Co. Without doubt this marks 
 the beginning of an industry that will add very largely to the 
 wealth and prosperity of this section. In fruit raising, little 
 or nothing has been done, except to supply the home table. 
 One man, living within a half mile of the depot, has set out 
 over five hundred trees, and will plant more each year, intend- 
 ing, eventually, to make it a special business. The thrift and 
 vigor of the trees, the color and flavor of the fruits that are 
 grown, is proof that the soil and climate favors horticulture 
 in its highest forms. Most prominent in the large and grow- 
 ing list are figs, pears, peaches and plums. Of the latter, the 
 Japanese varieties are very promising. They are larger in 
 size and better flavored than many of the California plums 
 that have retailed here at five cents apiece. Oranges are a 
 success under proper conditions. Six miles south of town is 
 an orchard that is now supplying the home market with ex- 
 cellent fruit. Keep an eye on the fruit industry at Welsh. 
 
 Yours truly, C. M. Field. 
 
 JENNINGS, LA. 
 
 Jennings received its name and location from tlie building 
 of the Southern Pacific Railroad, its name from a builder of 
 the road, Jennings McComb, and its location by virtue of a 
 divide on the high rolling prairie, giving the town a high, 
 dry and commanding position on the largest prairie in the 
 State. The first station agent was S. L. Cary, from Howard 
 County, Iowa, who came to Jennings Feb. 7, 18S3, and took 
 the office April 1 . Jennings then consisted of four buildings, 
 depot, section house, one dwelling house and store, owned l)y 
 A. D. McFarlain. The prairie around in all directions was 
 either United States or State land. The station business was 
 from $250 to $400 a month. This w^as the beginning of an 
 immigration from the North and Northwest, amounting to fully 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC lOI 
 
 10,000 people at this time. Gary was station agent about 
 four years, putting in all his spare time in advertising this 
 counfry by sending letters, circulars and books to his Northern 
 friends, and was so successful that the Southern Pacific Com- 
 pany promoted him to Northern Immigration Agent tor the 
 company, with headquarters at Manchester Iowa. He has 
 given tun information, has accompanied all excursions dis- 
 tributed millions of circulars, maps and books has seen all the 
 prairie region taken by home seekers, most of whom are troni 
 lowa,givi^ng the settlement the name of the "Iowa Colony 
 of which he is president. Jennings to-day has ne^riy 2,()00 
 inhabitants, a freight and passenger business of $1^ 000 to 
 SU,000 monthly. Will ship 1,000 carloads of rice of 20,000 
 pounds each, 1895-90 (see table published herewith). Has 
 two banks with $100,000 capital. Two newspapers, graded 
 high school, eight churches, two sawmills, (capacity 20,000 
 feet daily), two planing and two shingle mills, four rice mills, 
 sash and door factory and novelty works, feed mill two 
 druo--stores, two shoe stores, restaurant, three millinery 
 stor^'es, three butcher shops, two liveries, three variety 
 stores three groceries, three general stores, five hotels, 
 and over three hundred buildings of all kinds. More atten- 
 tion has been paid to fruit growing here than elsewhere m 
 Southwestern Louisiana. 10,000 pear trees and as many 
 more divided among figs, peaches, plums, oranges, olives, per- 
 simmons, and many nut bearing trees, pecans, English wa- 
 nut3, as well as berries and fine gardens. The city is head- 
 quarters for the Iowa Colony, being a Northern village on 
 Southern soil. It puts on Northern. style, and on its streets 
 you can shake hands with people from every and any state 
 north of Mason and Dixon's line, and they like to meet you, 
 and are, if possible, more agreeably social since breathing 
 Southern air. They seem to be on better terms with (rocl 
 and themselves since landing in this genial clime of easy 
 conditions. The history of Jennings is the history ot bouth- 
 western Louisiana. All its towns and cities have partaken 
 of the same general thrift and spirit. There has been^ no 
 boom, and we hope there will be none. The country is a 
 marvel of success, and wherever our hands have touched has 
 prospered. The assessed value of our Calcasieu Parish has 
 risen from $1,000,000 to $10,567,433, and a large industry has 
 
102 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 been secured to this Southwestern Louisiana by the introduc- 
 tion of a twine-binding harvester to the rice fields, by an 
 Iowa-Jennings farmer, Maurice Bryne. The health of the 
 place is remarkable, as a visit to our beautiful cemetery will 
 show. We are a church-going people, enterprising, wide 
 awake, progressive. Our wants are capital, a sugar mill, 
 cannery, a wagon factory, furniture factory. 
 
 LAKE ARTHUR, LA. 
 
 The Lake Arthur region deserves special mention. Four 
 years ago it was only a wide prairie, covered with stock, not 
 a single Northern man south of Jennings. To-day the town 
 has inhabitants enough to incorporate, and will do so this 
 winter. It has good schools and churches, will build a high 
 school building at once, has good business houses, a live news- 
 paper and the best hotel in Southwestern Louisiana. A rail- 
 road is all they need to make it a splendid town, and their 
 prospects for that are very encouraging. Large farms have 
 been opened up all along the lake, clear to Bayou Lacacine, 
 and for miles north and west large orchards of pears, plums 
 and peaches have been planted and are doing extremely well. 
 Beautiful homes, surrounded with all kinds of fruit trees and 
 shrubbery, that would take from eight to ten years to build 
 up in the North, now cover the praiiie, the effort of only from 
 three to four years. This year there have been raised within 
 a radius of ten miles from the lake, over 10,000 acres of rice, 
 averaging twelve barrels to the acre. Sugar cane is being 
 cultivated to a considerable extent. Corn, Irish and sweet 
 potatoes do well. Land is selling at from $15 to $20 per acre, 
 Parties visiting the South should not return without going to 
 Lake Arthur and looking over this beautiful section. 
 
 Your truly, E. L, Lee, Lake Arthur, La. 
 
 GUEYDAN, LA. 
 Gueydan is situated in Hamilton Parish, and is the cen- 
 ter and shipping point of that most fertile prairie region 
 bounded on the North by Bayou Queue de Sortue, whose wa- 
 ters serve to irrigate the rice fields on the south by the open 
 sea-marsh whence comes the salubrious salty Gulf breeze, on 
 the east by the deep and navigable Vermilion River that 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 103 
 
 empties into the Gulf, and on the west by the most beautiful 
 Lake Arthur. This section of Southwest Louisiana is about 
 35 miles in length by about 10 miles in width and forms part 
 of the famous Bayou Teche country whose lands raise bounti- 
 fully sugar caue, rice, corn, oats, potatoes, tobacco, vegetables 
 of all kinds and a great variety of fruit. Shade trees do very 
 well. 
 
 The prairie, still uncultivated, is well adapted to stock 
 raising. Rice is a good paying crop and is the one most ex- 
 tensively raised. The lauds are suitably level and are easily 
 irrigated by surface canals. A sure crop is thus assured. 
 
 The Vermilion Development Co,, Ltd., is the most im- 
 portant rice-irrigating concern in operation here, in fact the 
 largest in the United States. In 1897 this Company irrigated 
 10,000 acres of rice lands 5 in 1898, 15,000 acres, and 1899 
 is irrigating 22,000 acres. The supply of water is inexhaust- 
 ible, and the area of the lands that can be reached with these 
 canals runs into the hundreds of thousands of acres. A con- 
 servative estimate of the rice crop for 1899, around Gueydan, 
 places it at 200,000 sacks. 
 
 The town of Gueydan is the terminus of the Midland 
 Branch of the Southern Pacific R. R., and has mail, express, 
 telegraph and telephone facilities. Although as a new town 
 it is fast increasing, and now counts with two large hotels, a 
 wide-awake newspaper (Ihe Gueydan News), two large rice 
 warehouses, one of which is 300 feet long, two lumber yards, 
 several general merchandise stores, a public hall, feed store, 
 saloons, blacksmith shops, livery stable, butcher shops, etc. 
 The high school is located on its own block and is well at- 
 tended. The public park is fenced and was planted last year 
 with umbrella china trees well laid off. The Gulf breeze 
 makes this one of the most healthy of locations. 
 
 A paper mill would find rice straw for the hauling. Lands 
 range from $ 1 5 to $50, according to location. 
 
 J. P. Gueydan. 
 
I04 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 ACADIA PARISH, LA. 
 
 SOME FACTS ABOUT ACADIA PARISH, THE CENTER OF THE GREAT RICE-RAIS- 
 ING DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA, AND ITS BUSTLING, BUSY AND GRO^WING 
 CAPITAL, CRO"WXEY, THE TOAVN THAT IS KNO^WrN ALL OVER THE 
 UNITED STATES AS THE "QUEEN CITY OF SOUTITWEST LOUISIANA." 
 IT HAS EARNED THIS DISTINCTION AND -WILL KEEP IT. 
 
 Seldom iii the history of any state outside of a mining 
 district has a town had such a rapid, substantial and sure 
 growth as this town has experienced. Seldom in the history 
 of any agricultural section has a country or parish made such 
 rapid strides as Acadia Parish in the last five years. Seldom 
 in the history of any country has its residents found them- 
 selves so suddenly and surely lifted from poverty to affluence 
 as have the people of Acadia Parish and the residents of 
 Crowley, La. 
 
 To one who has not marked its progress, step by step, the 
 results of five years of labor by its founders, W. W. Duson & 
 Bro., in developing this country and building up this town 
 seems almost beyond belief. Fourteen years ago the parish 
 of Acadia had never been heard of, having been created from 
 the undeveloped portion of St. Landry Parish in October, 
 1886, and not until two or three years after did its founders, 
 W. W. and C. C. Duson, conceive the idea of building what 
 is the present city of Crowley. How well they have suc- 
 ceeded is shown by the following facts: 
 
 Previous to the founding of the new parish this section of 
 the country was held in very poor repute. Lands were of no 
 value — from twelve and one-half cents to one dollar per acre 
 — and money was almost an unknown quantity, groceries and 
 supplies being purchased by cypress pieux, Creole ponies, etc. 
 
 The native settlers here lived in small houses built from 
 logs or lumber split from the trees by their own hands, and a 
 stove or window in the house was never heard of. A man 
 that owned 500 acres of land was considered to be worth 
 $250. 
 
 But a wonderful change has taken place in five years, and 
 a still more wonderful transformal ion will be seen in the next 
 five years to come. These same people whom you saw living 
 in houses with mud chimneys and board shutters for win- 
 dows, many ot them to-day have modern residences, produc- 
 tive farms under a high state of cultivation and supplied with 
 all modern improved machinery, ride in their carriages, have 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 105 
 
 money in the bank and yearly dispose of from one to four and 
 five thousand dollars worth of products from their farms. 
 
 , You ask: What has brought about this change, and what 
 is it that will enhance the possession of these people and 
 make them the envy of a continent in the next live years? 
 AVhat is it that has raised the value of lands in and around 
 Crowley from twelve and one-half cents to fifteen and twenty 
 dollars per acre? We answer, the culture of rice. And why 
 should the farmer of Acadia Parish who raises rice receive so 
 much larger returns for his labor than the farmer of Dakota 
 who raises wheat and oats? The question is answered, by the 
 law of supply and demand. 
 
 Why are diamonds so valuable? Because they are scarce 
 and are produced in a very limited section of country. Rice 
 also can only be produced in a limited area of the United 
 States. Few diamond fields and few rice fields. The demand 
 for this cereal is constantly on the increase, and will be for 
 the next fifty years. Compared to wheat, oats, barley, beans, 
 potatoes, meat, or any other staple article of food, rice at the 
 present price is 33 J per cent, cheaper than any other food, 
 and as its value as an article of food becomes known, so will 
 its consumption and its demand increase. 
 
 But never, until the Gulf stream changes its course and 
 runs up the Mississippi river, will the extent of countr}^ in 
 which it can be raised be extended, so we need never fear an 
 overproduction of this cereal. 
 
 Facts taken from the most carefully compiled statistics 
 bear us out in saying that if every acre of land in the United 
 States that will produce rice was planted with this cereal and 
 an average crop raised and milled, with fair milling and ship- 
 ping expenses added, and then the product placed on the 
 markets of the United States on a basis of three dollars per 
 barrel for rough rice, it would not be as much as we consume ; 
 in other words, the United States can never supply its own 
 demands. 
 
 Now, when the consumption of this article doubles, does 
 it not stand to reason that if the supply is not increased the 
 article itself must increase in value, and at a corresponding 
 rate the lauds that produce the rice will be enhanced in value? 
 Hence we say that Acadia's lands are bound to keep increas- 
 ing in value, and the man who buys these lands at from seven 
 
06 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 to twenty dollars per acre, their present price, has bought a 
 gold mine that he knows not the value of. 
 
 If lands in the State of Illinois that produce fifteen bush- 
 els of wheat per acre, valued at f 1.00 per bushel, are worth 
 $45 per acre, they have produced 33J per cent, of their val- 
 ue. Then the lands of Acadia Parish that produce fifty dol- 
 lars' worth of rice per acre are worth, according to the same 
 figures, $150 per acre, instead of from seven to twenty; but 
 this is the difference in farming in Acadia Parish and some 
 of the Middle and Northern States. 
 
 In the State of Ohio they raise wheat on lands that are 
 worth from fifty to sixty dollars per acre, and get from twelve 
 to fifteen dollars' worth of wheat, while we in Acadia raise 
 rice on lands that are worth from fifteen to .fifty dollars, and 
 get from fifty to sixty doUars'worth of rice. With one-fourth 
 of the capital invested we get four times the returns. While 
 they are frozen up six months in the year, eating up what 
 they earned the other six months, we work the whole year 
 round with no Iol^s of time, under the most genial skies and 
 balmy climate known' to man. It is a fact that lands are 
 worth whatever they will pay a reasonable rate of interest on 
 after the expenses of raising the crop is taken off. 
 
 The American people are not slow to take advantage of a 
 good thing when they see it; neither are they slow in catch- 
 ing the spirit of the times, and it has just dawned upon them 
 that in these rice lands of Southwest Louisiana lies the great- 
 est honanza in the way of agricultural lands on the American 
 continent to-day. In no section of the United States can a 
 man buy land and engage in farming with so small an outlay 
 and reap such large and sure returns as here. In no section 
 of the United States can the capitalist find so promising a 
 field for the investment of his money as here. 
 
 Men of capital and energy are needed to develop the won- 
 derful resources and industries of this country. Men with 
 business experience and energy are needed to carry out the 
 good work already begun. Factories and manufacturing 
 establishments are wanted to work up the raw material that 
 is produced in abundance liere and will some day prove a 
 mine of wealth to the party establishing such industries ; and, 
 above all, farmers witli brains, muscle and money are needed 
 to buy up and till our vacant lands, and they are coming to. 
 Realizing that the earlier they come, the better chances they 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 107 
 
 will have for invpstmeiits, they are coming from the North, 
 the East, the West — coming faster than t'hey ever poured into 
 any agricultural section before. 
 
 As an index of how rapidly this country is filling up it is 
 only necessary to say that five years ago there was hardly a 
 farm fenced in in the parish. In the year 1889 Crowley 
 shipped 12,000 barrels of rough rice, at an average value of 
 three dollars per barrel, making $36,000, Of the year 1890 
 we are uimble to furnish the exact amount, but it' was more 
 than doubled. In 1891 Crowley shipped 80,000 barrels of 
 rice, or 420 carloads, valued at $240,000. For the first four 
 months of the shipping year of 1892 Crowley's shipments of 
 rice were as follows; September, 4,999 barrels; October, 
 36,925 ; November, 60,793 ; December, 53,859. Total num- 
 ber of barrels shipped to January 1, 1893, 156,576, or 740 
 cars. A conservative estimate places the balance of this 
 year's crop still on hand and ready to be shipped at 100,000 
 barrels, making a grand total of 1,240 cais, or 256,576 bar- 
 rels. At an average of three dollars per barrel this would 
 give the enormous sum of $769,728; and this from Crowley 
 alone, which five years ago was an unbroken prairie. The 
 town of Rayne, six miles east, has shipped about half as 
 much. This wonderful increase in the rice industry is fully 
 equaled by every other branch of l)usiness. 
 
 The following careful and liberal estimate will show some- 
 thing of the profits to be derived from rice culture : 
 
 • Take, 160 acres of land, at say $15 $2 400 
 
 House and stable '5OO 
 
 55 barrels of rice seed at $3.. 165 
 
 A hired man, say six months, at $20 120 
 
 Two spans of mules and harness at $275 550 
 
 Machinery an J wagon, say 250 
 
 Feed for team 125 
 
 Board for hired man, 6 months 72 
 
 Fencing 250 
 
 2,240 empty sacks for rice, at 10 cents 224 
 
 Threshing, 2,240 sacks, at 10 cents 224 
 
 Other expenses, threshing, etc 100 
 
 Making a total cost for land, fencing, expenses, etc. ..$4,980. 
 
 Now as to the results, 160 acres of rice at fiiteen barrels 
 to the acre would be 2400 barrels, at $3.00 per barrel, this 
 would be worth $7,200. This would leave the farmer, after 
 paying for the land and fencing it, building his house and 
 buying his team and machinery, paying for his seed, and all 
 other expenses possible on a farm of thi^s size, $2,220 in clear 
 
Io8 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 money. This is not farming on paper but is actual results as 
 shown hy hundreds of different men who have come here and 
 engaged in this industry in the past five years. 
 
 A few words in explanation of how rice is raised would 
 not bo amiss. We know so many living in the North the 
 words riee farming conveys tlie idea of living in a swamp or 
 marsh; this is far from true, and could they see some of our 
 rice plantations with rice growing in one field, and just across 
 the fence, or pei'liaps the road, another field of cotton, sugar 
 cane, corn, or perchance an orchard of peaches, figs or 
 oranges, this idea would no longer exist. 
 
 Rice is raised on any level land, the land is plowed and 
 fitted as for wheat or any other small grain, after the rice is 
 sown, then commences the work of leveling the land, which 
 is done with team, and large plows having long mould-boards 
 with wdiich the land is thrown up in ridges from one to two 
 feet high all the way around the field ; this is done to hold 
 the Waaler on the young rice while growing. In ordinary 
 seasons the rainfall is sufficient for this purpose, but farmers 
 usually provide against a drouth by storing up a supply of 
 water in the gully, streams and ponds. When rice is fully 
 grown and maturing, these levees are cut and the w^atei- allow- 
 ed to run off, so land will become dry and hard by harvest. 
 Rice is harvested with self-binding machines, and 
 threshed with steam threshers, the same as other grain ; it is 
 then sacked and shipped to the rice mills. Rice is always 
 sold and handled by the barrel — 162 pounds makes a barrel 
 of rice, From twelve to tw^enty barrels are usually raised on 
 an acre ; the average price for the past four years has been 
 $3.00 per barrel, oftentimes going as high as $4.50 to $5.00 ; 
 thus it may be seen that an acre of rice will, under favorable 
 conditions, produce from $35 to $80, say an average of $50. 
 We have known a great many instances where men have raised 
 twenty barrels to the acre and sold at $5.00 per barrel, thus 
 producing $100 per acre, and that, too, where the land was 
 valued at only $5.00 per acre ; but these cases are exceptions. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 109 
 
 Freight and passenger receipts at Crowley, not including 
 prepaid freight that was delivered at Crowley, or rice that 
 was shipped away, was as follows : 
 
 September $7,602.47 
 
 October i 5,732.94 
 
 November 5,571.71 
 
 December 5,941..34 
 
 $24,848.46 
 
 If we add the freight on rice 78,288.00 
 
 156,576 sacks shipped during these four months gives, 
 
 not including prepaid lots $103,136 46 
 
 Below we give some crop statistics of Acadia Parish for 
 the year 1892: 
 
 700,000 barrels rice, valued at $2.50 per barrel $1,750,000 
 
 500 acres in sugar cane, making 1008 barrels of molasses, 
 
 valued at 15,120 
 
 410 hogsheads of sugar, valued at 3,075 
 
 Cotton, 1,500 bales, valued at 67,.500 
 
 Corn, 299.600 barrels, valued at.. 149 800 
 
 Oats, 15,000 bushels, valued at 7.500 
 
 Potatoes, 200,000 bushels, valued at .'. 10(1000 
 
 Acadia Parish has a population of 15,000 people ; Crow- 
 ley a population of 4,500. 
 
 As we have said before, this wonderful advancement has 
 nut been confined to rice culture alone ; the town of Crowley 
 has kept even pace with the country surrounding it, and 
 grown in five years from merely a thought in the minds of its 
 promoters to a busy, thriving, bustling little city, that from 
 its size, its l)eauty, its notoriety, and the volume of business 
 it does, can well afford to be envied by towns five times its 
 age. 
 
 The rapid growth of Crowley, in fact the wonderful de- 
 velopment oi Southwest Louisiana has been augmented by 
 and is largely due to the efforts of Messrs. W. W. Duson & 
 Bro. who founded the town, and have for the past five years 
 heeu conducting one of the largest real estate businesses of 
 any firm in the South. Contrary to the average real estate 
 man, they have pursued an open, liberal policy in the man- 
 agement of the growth of the town and parish; they are men 
 of broad ideas and views, and consider nothing in the way of 
 advancement too good for their town ; they have established 
 a reputation for square and lionest dealing in every State in 
 iJie Union. 
 
no SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 To the home seekers and capitalists we say, if you are 
 contemplating a change in your location, we can recommend 
 Acadia Parish, La., as a place where your brightest dreams 
 and your most sanguine hopes will come nearer being fulfilled 
 and realized than in any other spot on earth, and we can 
 recommend the town of Crowley as one of the brightest and 
 most progressive towns of the South to-day. Here you can 
 find good public schools, churches, a college, and good society, 
 a kind and intelligent people, made up largely of your own 
 people from Northern and Western States, and you will come 
 nearer getting a fair return for your labor and capital than in 
 any place we know of. If you wish any information about 
 the lands of Acadia Parish, or the many chances of investing 
 money in the thriving town of Crowley, where every dollar 
 that has been put in has doubled every year, write to W. W. 
 Duson & Bro. They will tell you facts just as they exist; if 
 you wish to go South they can get you as low railroad rates, 
 cheaper board and better accommodations for less money than 
 any one else. 
 
 If you visit Southwest Louisiana, call on them and they 
 will show you all over the country in good conveyances, free 
 of charge, and make your stay in that beautiful country a 
 pleasant one indeed; and if you invest in their real estate 
 you will never regret it, and if you do not you cannot help 
 but say that you saw the finest country on the American 
 Continent, and that you met gentlemen, and were well treated. 
 
 Respectfully, C. L. CRIPPEN. 
 
 MIDLAND BRANCH RAILROAD. 
 
 A great deal has been said and written about Southwestern 
 Louisiana in general, and many localities have had particular 
 attention bestowed upon them, but up to the present time, 
 with all of the descriptions, and many good things that have 
 been said of the State, and the southwestern portion in par- 
 ticular, one of the most beautiful and most productive sections 
 of the entire State has received little or no attention. We 
 refer to the western portion of Acadia Parish, or those lands 
 lying on either side of the "Midland Branch Railroad." 
 
 This line of road is a feeder to the Southern Pacific Rail- 
 road, and branches off from the main line at a point just one 
 hundred and seventy-four miles west of New Orleans, and 
 eight miles west of Crowley, the county seat of Acadia Parish. 
 
~:jj 
 
112 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 Running north from this point a distance of three miles, it 
 crosses the Plaquemine River on what is, at the present time, 
 one of the Longest wooden bridges on the line of the Southern 
 Pacific Railroad between New Orleans and San Praneisco, 
 being 1,700 feet long. From the timber bordering this 
 stream the road emerges into a beautiful prairie known as 
 " Prairie Hayes," which extends in a northeasterly direction 
 as far as the eye can reach. 
 
 As the train emerges from this timber it is a pleasing 
 sight that meets the traveler's eye. On the right of the road 
 stretches this beautiful undulating prairie, dotted here and 
 there by the homes of the prosperous settlers, and as we look 
 at the evidences of prosperity on every hand, as is shown by 
 the rapid improvements these people have made during their 
 stay here, we have an index to the possibilities of this prairie. 
 On the left, or west of the line, a distance of from two to four 
 miles, runs the river DesCannes (or Bayou, as commonly 
 called). This stream has a magnificent belt of timber run- 
 ning its entire length on both sides, which is from one to 
 three miles in width, and which forms a beautiful and fitting- 
 background to a scene which is already enchanting. Among 
 the timbers to be found bordering this stream are the Oak, 
 Ash, Hickory, Gum, Cypress and Pine ; we mention these as 
 being timber of the most commercial importance. At almost 
 every point along tliis timber is offered excellent opportuni- 
 ties for establishing sawmills for working up these timbers 
 into wagons, plow beams, harrows, harvester frames, and in 
 fact any kind of commercial commodity that requires timber 
 of the best quality. After thoroughly examining this timber 
 and testing its quality for manufacturing purposes and com- 
 mercial use, one wonders why it is that the Southern wagon- 
 maker sends to Michigan and Ohio and gets his wagon timber 
 sawed out and shipped a distance of 1,200 miles to be set up 
 into wagons and sold, possibly, to the same party who owns 
 hundreds of acres of timber equally as good as any that ever 
 grew in the North. Whoever can answer the question will 
 probably have solved the problem of why the South raises the 
 cotton for the United States and sends to Massachusetts for 
 its cotton fabrics, when they should be made at home. 
 
 The Midland Branch runs a distance of eighteen miles 
 across this Prairie Hayes country, where nature has been so 
 generous in the bestowal of her gifts, in the way of healthy 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. II3 
 
 climate, beautiful scenery aud fertility of soil. The soil of 
 this prairie is a rich dark loam underlaid with a heavy clay 
 subsoil, which prevents any fertilizer applied from seeping 
 through. It is entirely free from stone, easily broken up and 
 cultivated — one span of mules, oxen or horses being all that 
 is necessary to break the soil. These prairies are generally 
 broken up in January or February, and an excellent crop 
 raised the first season, either of sugar cane, rice, cotton, 
 corn, oats, sweet and Irish potatoes and all kinds of vege- 
 tables. 
 
 At a distance of eighteen miles from the crossing of the 
 Plaquemine River, the Midland Road again strikes the tim- 
 ber, this time on the Bayou Mallet. This stream is a branch 
 of the DesCanues River, and, like the DesCannes, it has along 
 its borders an abundant supply of the best of timber, which at 
 the crossing of the railroad is about three miles wide. Emerg- 
 ing from the timber new beauties meet the eye, and the al- 
 ready enthusiastic prospector, as he looks back at the mag- 
 nificent forests, "God's first temples," still untouched by the 
 hand of man, and then looks at the billowy, rolling prairie, 
 covered with, its sea of grasses, the monotony in color of 
 which is relieved by the many different colored flowers that 
 are so lavishly scattered over the prairie, while he is being 
 fanned by (he balmy zephyrs from the Gulf of Mexico, and 
 inhaling the perfumes of the flowers from wood and prairie 
 which are being wafted to him like the breeze from some far- 
 off spice-laden land. 
 
 A feeling of satisfaction conies over him as he exclaims, 
 "Eureka ! " Here is the place for an ideal home ! Here is 
 the place where we can escape the blighting frosts of a long 
 and dreary winter, and which is a stranger to the deadly cy- 
 clone. Possessing, as it does, all the natural beauties to sat- 
 isfy any poet or artist, yet it is no dreamer's country ; al- 
 ready the hum of industry can be heard in the land; al- 
 ready the progressive yankee and the industrious and thrifty 
 German are here, and these prairies, which are now covered 
 by a luxuriant growth of native grasses and flowers, will soon 
 be transformed into fields of sugar cane and ripening grain. 
 The thick uudergjowth along these timber belts will soon 
 give place to orchards of peaches, pears, oranges and figs; 
 these prairies, that for the past ages have knowai no other 
 nnlody than that of the lark or the mocking bird, will soon 
 
114 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 be pierced by the steam-whistle of the "Midland Branch," 
 and the hum of the busy saw mill as it provides lumber for 
 the buildings sure to be needed in this section in the near 
 future. This prairie is known as Prairie Faquetique, an In- 
 dian name given to it many years ago. Although twenty-five 
 miles from any market, with no shipping facilities whatever, 
 this section is quite thickly settled by people who could not 
 resist its beauty when once seen. Some ten or twelve years 
 ago quite a number of Germans located in this favored sec- 
 tion. All of them are prosperous, and many of them have 
 become wealthy. The natives of this section are a generous, 
 hospitable, pastoral people, with but little ambition to better 
 their condition. But as an evidence of what a man who has 
 energy, pluck and some business ability about him can ac- 
 complish in this section, hampered as it has been by being 
 isolated from the markets of the world without transportation 
 facilities, we mention the name of Gustav Fusilier, who lives 
 on Faquetique Prairie and keeps a small country store. He 
 began there five years ago as a peddler with a stock of $150, 
 hauled his goods from Opelousas, a distance of twenty- five 
 miles, and out of the profits has been increasing his business 
 from year to year, until this man this past fall and winter 
 hauled and shipped from Crowley and Opelousas 23,000 bar- 
 rels of rice (the hauling costing him from twenty-five to forty 
 cents per barrel), this rice alone bringing him the snug sum 
 of $63,000. What Mr. Fusilier can accomplish in the way 
 of success any man can achieve with the same amount of en- 
 ergy and thrift. 
 
 On this very prairie is where the success of rice-raising 
 in Southwestern Louisiana was first demonstrated. Here you 
 will find the first field of rice that ever was planted in South- 
 western Louisiana, some seventeen years ago, and has been 
 in continuous cultivation ever since, without fertilizing, and 
 last year gave the largest yield of any in the seventeen years. 
 To be sure, the field was small, but large enough to demon- 
 strate the lasting qualities of the land. Four miles north of 
 where the Midland Road crosses the Bayou Mallet, and just 
 twenty-five miles from the Southern Pacific mam line, is the 
 present terminus of the road, and here will be established a 
 new and thriving town as soo^i as the rails have been laid to 
 this point, which will not bo latter than July 1, 1894. The 
 name of this new town has already been selected and is to be 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC II5 
 
 "Eunice." The fact that the lajiDg out and biiildino- ot this 
 town will be under the personal supervision and management 
 of ex-Senator C. C. Duson and his brother, W. W. Duson, the 
 founders and promoters of Crowley, La., is sufficient evidence 
 and assurance of its success. The grading on this line is all 
 completed, the bridges are mostly built and track-laying is 
 progressing as rapidly as possible. 
 
 On both sides of this road, the entire distance of twenty- 
 five miles, the Pacific Investment Company have many fine 
 large tracts of land suitable for the culture of cane, rice, cot- 
 ton, corn or for other general farming purposes, at reasonable 
 prices and on the most favorable terms to actual settlers. 
 They own, along this line of road, some 50,000 acres, which 
 may be divided up as follows : 25,000 acres of perfectly flat, 
 level rice lauds that can easily be flooded from the natural 
 rainfall and by damming up the many small gullies, which 
 wall act as a drain for the surplus water when it is desired to 
 drain the lands when the crops are ready for harvesting; 10,- 
 000 acres of high, dry and rolling sugar lands that are also 
 suitable for corn, cotton or general farming purposes ; 5,000 
 acres of fruit and garden truck lands, the soil of which is of 
 a lighter, quicker or more sandy nature than those lands 
 suitable for rice culture; 10,000 acres of these valuable tim- 
 ber lands, on which can be found timber of every variety 
 known in the South — timber for fencing purposes, for all 
 kinds of hard and soft-wood lumber, and for any and all 
 manufacturing purposes. These lands range in prices from 
 $7 to $12 per acre and can be purchased in tracts of any size 
 from 40 to 1,000 acres, giving a person as much prairie and 
 as much w^oodland on his farm as he may w^ant. This is made 
 possible on account of the timber lying en both sides of the 
 streams and the prairies between. These lands were pur- 
 chased by this Company for the purpose of disposing o( them 
 to actual settlers at reasonable prices, and to keep them from 
 falling into the hands of speculators who would neither sell 
 or improve them, it being their desire to have these lands 
 settled up at once by prosperous farmers and planters, and 
 thus insure a paying business for the "Midland Branch," in 
 preference to holding them for the large increase in value, 
 which this new outlet will surely give them. 
 
 If a man wishes to engage in the culture of rice, the crop 
 that has made that section around Crowley, La., famous all 
 over the United States, here are lands suited to his needs, on 
 
Il6 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 wliich be can laise from twelve to twenty barrels per acre, 
 the average price for which for" the last five years, has been 
 $3 per barrel, and is raised at the same cost of wheat in the 
 North. With plenty of water for irrigating purposes which 
 can be pumped from the inexhaustible streams which traverse 
 this section, with a clay sub-soil that prevents the water 
 from being absorbed by the land or seeping through his 
 levees. 
 
 If he wishes to raise sugar cane, here are sugar lands that 
 will produce from twenty to thirty tons per acre, worth $4 
 per ton at the station. If he wishes to engage in fruit cul- 
 ture, these lands are the natural home for the peach, the fig 
 and the plum, while pears, oranges, nectarines, pomegranates 
 and all the smaller fruits, such as grapes, blackberries, rasp- 
 berries and strawberries grow to their highest state of perfec- 
 tion with proper cultivation. If you are interested in finding 
 II location v/here agricultural pursuits are rewarded beyond 
 the most sanguine expectations, if you wish to find a home 
 in a new, and yet an old country, where nature has exhausted 
 herself in the bestowal of her gifts, a country of easy condi- 
 tions and circumstances where every day's toil will bring 
 forth its reward, we know of no better investment you could 
 make than a trip over the Southern Pacific and Midland 
 Branch Railroads and investigate these lands for yourself. 
 Then you could assure yourself of the healthfulness of this 
 climate, the fertility of the soil of these lands, the abundant 
 supply of pure wster and the indescribable charms of these 
 two gems of this south land of ours, Prairie "Hayes" and 
 "Faquetique." 
 
 Any inquiries regarding these lands will be cheerfully an- 
 swered and all information given by addressing either Judge 
 J. G. Parkerson, Lafayette, La.; C. C. Duson, Opelousas, La.; 
 S. L Carey, Jennings, La., or C. C. Carey, Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 LA FAYETTE, LA. 
 
 "La Fayette, La., is situated on the Southern Pacific 
 Railroad, 144 miles west of Noav Orleans, and makes an im- 
 portant division of that gigantic railway trunk line. Con- 
 nection is here made witli what is known as tlie "Alexandria 
 Tap," a feeder of the Southern Pacific System that communi- 
 cates with the Texas & Pacific Railroad at Cheney ville. La. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 
 
 117 
 
 The Southern Pacific Company has located at this point 
 an extensive railroad yard, as also one of its principal round- 
 houses, besides a workshop, a capacious freight depot, a 
 storehouse and other minor buildings and conveniences; all 
 of which gives to La Fayette more than ordinary importance 
 as a railroad center, present and prospective. 
 
 The subject of this article is the county seat of La Fay- 
 ette Parish, the acknowledged garden spot of Southwestern 
 Louisiana. Previous to 1880, when the Morgan Railroad 
 (now forming a division of the grand Southern Pacific Rail- 
 way System) was constructed through this country, the town 
 of La Fayette, with its handful of population, remained prac- 
 tically unknown to the outside world. However, the wonder- 
 ful natural resources of the country tributary to La Fayette 
 were soon effectually stimulated and developed under the 
 beneficial influence of the railroad until it has gained its 
 present creditable and enviable position and importance in 
 the business world, without having had at any time a single 
 agency or circumstance to "boom" it. 
 
 The population of La Fayette now numbers 3,000 souls, 
 and a continuation of the natural and healthy growth that 
 has characterized the progress of this little city in the past 
 is assured for the iuture. 
 
 Among a large number of business houses and other in- 
 stitutions that would do credit to a community of greater pre- 
 tensions than L:i Fayette may be mentioned a substantial and 
 attractive brick and iron bank, regularly chartered aod doing 
 a prosperous business ; the handsome and capacious railroad 
 hotel, operated by the Crescent News & Hotel Co., that jnstly 
 enjoys the reputation of being one of the very best houses of 
 its kind in the state ; a commodious and well-appointed high 
 school building, awaiting completion, to be launched in the 
 good work of education ; Mount Carmel Convent, a Catholic 
 educational institution, occupying a whole square of grouiui, 
 arranged and distributed so as to make it one of the attrac- 
 tions of the place ; substantial and imposing public buildings. 
 Church edifices are ov^ned by the following denominations : 
 Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, (Episcopalians worship in 
 this church), Israelites. The negroes worship in separate 
 churches of their own. La Fayette also possesses several 
 mercantile establishments doing a business of from $50,000 
 to $100,000 a year, and three exiensive lumber yards. The 
 
Il8 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 La Tayette Advertiser, one of the oldest newspapers in the 
 South, was purchased in the beginning of this year by a syn- 
 dicate of home business men and occupies the front rank in 
 liberal and progressive journalism. 
 
 Three of the largest manufacturing concerns of agricul- 
 tural implements in the United States (Osborne, McCormick, 
 Deering), recognizing the value and importance of La Fay- 
 ette as a distributing point for Southwestern Louisiana, have 
 established general agencies or depots here. The- Waters- 
 Pierce Oil Co., for the same reason, \\ni>, had erected ar oil 
 depot at this place. 
 
 Of the fertility and general desirability of the lands of 
 the Parish of La Fayette too much can not be said, and the 
 climate and health of the country is most excellent. The soil 
 is extremely rich, as a rule, and has remarkable depth. The 
 principal products of the country are cane, cotton, rice, corn 
 and potatoes (sweet and Irish). Many other things could 
 be profitably raised. Jute, ramie, barley, and tobacco grow 
 well here, as also such varieties of the domestic grasses as 
 clover, red- top, millet, alfalfa and Japan clover. All of the 
 esculents grow to perfection and could be cultivated with 
 profit if truck farming were engaged in to a great enough ex- 
 tent to justify the railroads in making special preparations 
 for handling this particular line of traffic. Such fruits as 
 peaches, pears, plums, apricots, figs, etc., do well, and a vari- 
 ety of berries grow wild in abundance. 
 
 A business men's association has recently been or- 
 ganized in La Fayette for fuithering manufacturing and 
 other enterprises and advance the general condition of the 
 country. One of the first undertakings of this association 
 will be to secure the building of a railroad from La Fayette 
 to Abbeville, La., and from thence to deep w^ater in Vermil- 
 lion Bay. Forming a part of this railroad project, also, is the 
 erection of two important manufacturing industries, viz., a 
 central sugar refinery and a cotton factory that shall employ 
 no less than 150 operatives, and to this end a bonus of $10,- 
 000 and $20,000, respectively, will be offered for the estab- 
 lishment of these enterprises. 
 
 La Fayette offers an excellent opening for an ice factory, 
 a furniture factory, and a sash, door and blind factory. Out- 
 side capital would find ready and profitable investment here 
 and a hearty welcome. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 119 
 
 Will the loss of tlie bounty ou sugar and the duty on rice 
 and sugar ruin these industries? 
 
 Every industry stands best on its own merits, and "ne- 
 cessity is the mother of invention." The cost of growing 
 both cane and rice has been lessened in the past two years to 
 correspond with the losses sustained, and to-day there is a 
 wide margin of profit in both. In rice, the King Harvester 
 and Binder does double the work of the old harvesters suc- 
 cessfully and cuts ten feet instead of five; and still further, 
 the same machine will be used as a header, materially lessen- 
 ing the cost and labor of the harvest. 
 
 The cost of growing an acre of cane is put m this 
 hook at $44, May, 1893, and April 1898, it can safely be 
 placed at $25. These improvements and inventions place 
 Southwestern Louisiana beyond all danger of loss by rivals, 
 competition or ordinary contingencies. So you can safely 
 put your labor and capital in either business and live in the 
 best pleasure and health resort in America, 
 
 JEANERETTE, LA. 
 
 S. L. Cary, Esq. 
 
 Dear Sh^ : — ^The second largest town in the parish of 
 Iberia is situated on the Bayou Teche and also on the South- 
 ern Pacific Railroad, nearly equi-distant between New Orleans 
 and Lake Charles. It has a population of 2,000. Twelve 
 miles to the west is the parish seat. New Iberia, and fourteen 
 miles east is the parish seat of St. Mary's County, Franklin. 
 It is also surrounded by numerous small towns and villages 
 adjacent. A fine line of passenger and freight steamers ply 
 regularly to New Orleans, and the Southern Pacific Railroad 
 in connection has several steamers of its own plying to Mor- 
 gan City, there connecting with the Gulf ports. The place is 
 also connected by telephone with all surrounding towns and 
 sugar refineries, being situated iji the heart of the sugar belt, 
 and only eight miles direct to the Gulf of Mexico. During 
 the grinding season the whistles of twenty-seven sugar houses 
 and refineries can be heard any morning. Within the town 
 the large Vaufrey Refinery is situated, producing this year 
 (1892) nearly 3,000,000 pounds of sugar, and in sight of the 
 town are three other large refineries of Linden, Right Way and 
 Union, producing upwards of another 4,000,000 pounds. Out- 
 side of the cities of New Orleans and Shreveport, we have the 
 
120 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 finest and largest foundry in the State, and ice works. There 
 is more freight handled here than any other place in propor- 
 tion in the State. The railroad company, with its already hirge 
 depot, was compelled to put up another addition of 100 feet 
 to handle its fast-increasing business. It has three churches, 
 Catholic, Methodist and Presbyterian; the former predomi- 
 nates. Two schools, one convent and public schools, a sys- 
 tem of water works, a fine fire department, steamer, hose reels, 
 hook and ladder companies with good engine building, neat 
 little opera house, and good markets. What this place and 
 surrounding country needs js immigration. A national bank 
 would be quite a necessity, also a newspaper and job printing 
 establishment, and it would be a good opening for wood work- 
 ing machinery. It has two large saw and shingle mills and 
 cooperage works. ^ ^ ^^^^^ 
 
 VERMILLION PARISH. 
 
 ■THE MOST -WONDERFUL AGRICULTURAL PARISH OF LOUISIANA. PRODUCING 
 
 ABUNDANTLY THE FOUR GREAT STAPLES OF CANE, CORN, COTTON 
 
 AND RICE. AN IDEAL PARISH FOR PLANTING AND 
 
 RAISING DIVERSIFIED CROPS." 
 
 Seldom in the career of man's lile does he find an abode 
 that fulfills all the functions of his existence. It is either too 
 hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too high or too low, or 
 . some incentive that prompts him to leave his present surround- 
 ings to look for more inviting fields, to better his condition in 
 life, and to provide more abundantly for those he has to pro- 
 vide for. To him, whoever he may bo, we point him to Ver- 
 million Parish to fi.nd his ideal of an earthly habitation. In 
 it he will not be confronted by any of the objections or 
 hindrances above mentioned, but will find a country that gains 
 the admiration of all who examine into its resources. We 
 quote from a letter written by a well posted gentleman, to 
 The Neio Orleans Picayune^ in which he compared Ver- 
 million Parish to other Parishes in the stale. He saj's ; 
 
 '•The brightest, the most realistic and fadeless dream, born 
 of youthful hope and faith, notwithstanding Dr. Johnsons 
 "Rasselas," to the contrary, may be concreted and realized 
 in Vermillion Parish, when organized and directed by the 
 force of intelligent energy, without reference to what chan- 
 nels mature age would seek its complete and perfect consum- 
 mation. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 121 
 
 "The field of realization is so ample and varied that 
 whether in the multiplied paths of southern agriculture — to 
 include equal results in corn, cane, cotton and rice as the 
 great staples of commercial life, or in the immense and fruit- 
 ful walks of pastoral life, as represented in all grades and 
 classes of live stock-raising and breeding, or devoted to truck- 
 farming and fruit-growing of an endless variety, including 
 from the smallest berries to the most luscious peaches, pears, 
 quinces, apricots and oranges, or if the dream be in the direc- 
 iion of game and piscatoral pleasures and mode of living, 
 then, indeed, will he have found his paradise; or if it be in 
 merchandising, manufacturing, practicing of law, medicine, 
 teaching or in the pulpit, or in the artisan's line, or in the 
 field of speculation, for quick, brilliant and substantial re- 
 turns; in all of these varied avenues of fortune making, Ver- 
 million offers the most tempting and fairest promises, with an 
 absolute certainity of no disappointments, to those who seek 
 and settle within her fertile borders. 
 
 "If it be health and comfort as secured by soft, balmy gulf 
 breezes, mild winters and delightfully cool summers whicli he 
 seeks, they can be had to his heart's content. 
 
 ^'If his dream be of an epicurean character, then can he 
 feast on bll that is early and late which garden culture af- 
 fords, or the choicest fish, oysters, shrimps or ducks, papa- 
 bots, snipe, partridges, appetizing and refreshing fruits and 
 berries of great variety and of almost perpetual supply. 
 
 "If the dreamer would engage in vast schemes of develop- 
 ment and colonization, enlarging population, building factor- 
 ies for sugar- making, rice -cleaning, cotton seed oil mills and 
 cotton factories, ice factories, brick-making, planing and 
 dressing lumber, then indeed, would there be a colossal op- 
 opportunity for his dash, his intelligence and his energy, to 
 bring him a harvest of unimaginable results. 
 
 "The great question of commercial and home-made fertili- 
 zers has long since been settled in this parish by nature's 
 lavish supply in the natural soil of all the elements which 
 germinate agricultural and horticultural life and stimulate it 
 in to its fullest development. No expense and care is needed 
 in this line. 
 
 "The further and possibly greater question of a diversified 
 agriculture is most perfectly and amply exemplified by Ver- 
 million's four staple crops, cane, corn, cotton and rice, neither 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 123 
 
 doininatiiig and overshadowing the other, and each having a 
 ready cash market io: its annual yield. 
 
 "The third and possibly the greatest of the entire agricul- 
 tural problems of the day, 'small farmers doing their own 
 work,' is typified in Vermillion better than anywhere in 
 Louisiana. This is made plainer by the census returns of 
 1880y in which the Louisiana average for farm improvements 
 was nearly 57 acres to the farm, while in Vermillion it was 
 only 32| acres to each farm, as at that time the entire popu- 
 lation, white and colored, was only 8,788, though there were 
 1,024 farms with an improved acreage (not cultivated) of 
 33,347. 
 
 "As the population, like vegetation, here is prolific, this 
 w^ould probably represent nearly eight to the family, parents 
 and six children, or a farm to each family. The many merits 
 of this large and fertile parish are unknown to most of our 
 home people, as well as those of other states, who are seek- 
 ing a new home and will require frequent efforts through the 
 press to throw the search-light of detailed investigation on 
 its many interests to bring the parish to the front as one of 
 Southwestern Louisiana's leading interests. 
 
 "The parish possesses every advantage any other section 
 of Louisiana enjoys, with not one of the ills or disadvantages 
 ot any other portion of the State, and must ere long be the 
 most prosperous and happy section of our fair and fertile 
 country." 
 
 Vermilion Parish, the banner parish of Louisiana, is 
 located in the extreme Southern portion of the state in the 
 section of country generally termed Southwest Louisiana. It 
 has a front of seventy miles on the Gulf of Mexico and Ver- 
 milion Bay. It has a rich and fertile soil consisting of a grey 
 sandy loam on the rivers and bayous and a black, mellow, 
 sandy loam on the praries. Vermilion is a semi-prairie 
 patish— fine bodies of timber skirt the streams and the Gulf 
 coast averaging in width from two to five miles, the remainder 
 of the parish prairie. Vermilion is almost self-supporting and 
 a great many of the necessaries of life are raised within its 
 borders. We will cite a few products of the parish to the 
 reader, and then leave him to be judge. There are raised in 
 Vermilion us a food and money making product : Corn, rice, 
 sugar, molasses, oats, rye, peanuts, peas, potatoes, cotton, 
 jute, tobocco, ramie, indigo, alfalfa, clover, hay, melons, 
 
124 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 peaches, pears, plums, persimmons, apricots, nectarines, figs, 
 grapes, oranges, lemons, pecans, walnuts, blackberries, dew- 
 berries, strawberries; vegetables of all kinds; horses, cattle, 
 hogs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, etc. The 
 prairies abound in game and the streams teem with fish. 
 Timber is plentiful consisting of pine, oak, cypress, hickory, 
 ash, gum and magnolia. The Eastern part of the parish con- 
 tains a deposit of rock salt that is inexhaustible. 
 
 The parish is steadily climbing to the top of the ladder 
 in development, the Western part of the parish, however, is 
 more progressive than the Central or Eastern part, which is 
 due mostly to the population. From Abbeville, the parish 
 seat, going West can be seen numbers of rich well improved 
 farms owned and operated by progressive and prosperous 
 Western men, who have been driven by cold from their homes 
 in the West, and attracted here by the beautiful country 
 backed up by the easiness and simplicity of earning a liveli- 
 hood. Ten years ago this same country, that is now blossom- 
 ing like a rose, was a vast unimproved and almost worthless 
 prairie. But the wave of progress struck it and to-day the 
 evidence of the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of doll- 
 ars Is to be seen on every hand. Large irrigating canals, 
 pumping plants, substantial dwellings, graded roads, fine 
 stock and up to date farming machinery has taken the place 
 of the open prairie, the creole pony and the home made plow 
 stock. If the reader will bear with us we will enumerate a 
 few of the improvements; Starting at Abbeville on the Ver- 
 milion river we first find the irrigating canal and magnificent 
 pumping station of Mr. R. H Mills. This canal is about three 
 and one-half miles long and forty feet wide. It runs through 
 one of the finest rice sections in the state and will irrigate 
 some ten thousand acres of land. Next comes the Hall- 
 Slutz Irrigating Canal located on Vermilion river ten miles 
 South of Abbeville. This canal is about seven miles long and 
 forty feet wide and irrigates five thousand acres of rice. 
 Then we will look West about twenty-five miles, and we find 
 the Vermilion Development Company with their twenty-five 
 or thirty miles of irrigating canals, irrigating some twenty- 
 five thousand acres of rice. These canals are the largest in 
 the parish being one hundred feet wide. This company has 
 two pumping stations. At one they operate six fifteen-inch 
 pumps and at the other they operate four thirty-six-inch and 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 125 
 
 two eigliteen-iiieh pumps, this latter station discharges two 
 hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water per minute. 
 Still further West ou Lake Arthur we find numerous canals 
 and pumping plants that furnish water to irrigate thousands 
 of acres of land. There are other canals projected— the most 
 important of which is the S. S, Hunter Canal which is to be 
 built from the Vermilion river and to run West some twenty 
 miles. This canal is to be built in time to furnish water for 
 the 1900 rice crop. It is to be two hundred feet wide, and 
 will have a capacity of irrigating one hundred thousand acres 
 of land. The survey and preliminary work has been finished 
 and the work of constructing the leeves will be started at an 
 early date. 
 
 ABBEVILLE. 
 
 Abbeville, the parish seat, is situated on the East bank 
 of the Vermilion river about twenty-five miles from the Ver- 
 milion Bay. The town contains 2,000 inhabitants, and is a 
 thrifty and growing town where a large volunin of business is 
 transacted. Being located in the midst of a most fertile farm- 
 ing country with a large territory to draw from its trade and 
 advantages are second to none of double its size in the state. 
 It has both railroad and water facilities for shipping. The 
 Southern Pacific Railroad taps Abbeville with the I, & V., 
 branch of that huge system which connects with a regular 
 line of steamers plyiug the Vermilion. Abbeville has church 
 and school advantages and many of the secret orders have 
 organizations here. 
 
 QUEYDAN, 
 
 Gneydan, one of the most thriving towns in the state, is 
 situated about 25 miles West of Abbeville and about 18 miles 
 Southwest of Crowley in Vermilion Parish. It is now three 
 years old, having been founded three years ago by Mr. J. P. 
 Gueydan and named for that gentleman. Its growth has 
 rapidly increased at all seasons of the year since it wag first 
 laid out, and being located in the heart of the finest rice 
 country in the United States and surrounded by large irriga- 
 ting rice canals its future cannot be comprehended. It 
 counts 14 business houses including a hardware and imple- 
 ment store and feed store; it has two hotels, two large rice 
 warehouses and two lumber yards. A company has been 
 formed there to erect a $10,000 rice mill. The town has 
 about 500 inhabitants and rapidly growing, having doubled 
 
126 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 its population within the last twelve months. It has a high 
 school and offers splendid educational advantages. The Paci- 
 fic Railroad taps Gueydan with a branch running out from 
 Crowley, La. The town of Gueydan and the country sur- 
 rounding is settled up by thrifty Northern and Western people, 
 who have greatly bettered their condition by coming here. 
 
 The health of Vermilion parish is Al, the water supply is 
 quite sufficient for stock raising purposes and the rain fall 
 which is about 60 inches a year, is quite adequate for general 
 farming purposes. We invite all who wish to better their 
 condition financially to come to Vermilion. For further in- 
 formation concerning this country, write to D. L. McPherson, 
 Abbeville, La. 
 
 WATER. 
 
 Is the foundation of agriculture. Southwestern Louisiana has 
 an abundant rainfall — sixty inches — many lakes, bayous and 
 rivers, and the earth under our feet is all full of water (at a 
 depth of twenty feet). The earth yields a bountiful supply of 
 pure water for family and stock. At sixty to eighty feet 
 enough is found to supply our railroad engines at stations, 
 and 200 feet through clay will likely give enough to flood 
 each farm in Southwestern Louisiana With this assurance 
 rice would be as sure a crop as cane, which has not failed 
 in 100 years. 
 
 VALUE AND PRICE OF LAND. 
 
 In Southwestern Louisiana, the value, and price of land 
 has borne no proper comparison. Up to .this date the United 
 States and the State have both large bodies of laud to be 
 given as homesteads, and the State land being held at the 
 nominal price of 12 J to 75 cents per acre has, to a large ex- 
 tent, governed prices. Now the prairie lands are all in second 
 hands, timber lands only remaining with the Government. 
 Notwithstanding these conditions, prairie lands have ad- 
 vanced in price to an average of $8 per acre, uninipro\ed, 
 and $12 per acre, improved, with a range of $5 to $100 per 
 acre, dependent upon location and condition. These prices 
 are believed to be lower, considering climate, products and 
 general conditions, than elsewhere, and must, in the very 
 nature of things, go much higher in the immediate future. 
 Grass, fruit, sugar, rice and products of the temperate and 
 semi-tropical climates, an abundant rainfall, early and late 
 
ON LINF OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC- 1 27 
 
 seasons, sea board markets by rail and water, healthfiilness, 
 volume of timber, enterprise and prosperty of its people — all 
 point to much higher prices for real estate. It requires but a 
 glance to see that present prices are far below the value. 
 First, the percentage they will pay (other things being equal) 
 should determine the price. Lands paying $5 net per acre 
 the price would be $100 per acre. 
 
 In England Government securities pay two per cent, at 
 par or <£2 per ^100; land paying £i per acre brings j£'100 
 and the ownership of land carries the higher position. The 
 landlord is the aristocrat of Europe ; but in America govern- 
 ment bonds at three per cent, are par, while lands in some 
 States paying $5 bring $100 and in other States the price is 
 littlb different from the annual rental Cominir from a State 
 where land, selling at $100 per acre rented for $4 to $5, just 
 imagine the feelings of a man, v/ho in Southwest Louisiana 
 ten years ago was offered land ac 12 J cents to $L25 per acre 
 that grew $20 to $100 per acre in ric3 and $50 to $100 in 
 sugar, at a profit of $10 to $50. It fairly took a man's breath 
 and the effect in many cases was just the reverse of the 
 natural. Do you wonder that the first question was: "What's 
 the matter?" That question is in part answered by the great 
 prosperity of the people and by enhanced prices, and will be 
 fully answered when these lands take their proper position in 
 price with other countries. 
 
 DOUBLE IRRIGATION. 
 
 This book would be incomplete without a partial list of 
 the canals and pumping plants completed and under way. 
 
 These plants were begun at Crowley and are extending 
 west to cover the wliole Prairie Region. The point of greatest 
 activity now is at and near Jennings. 
 
 Taking water from the Mermentau river. Lake Arthur, 
 Lacasine, Bayou Chene, and Bayou Nez Pique. There are 
 over sixty such plants. A brief description of a few will 
 give a correct idea of all. 
 
 The idea of irrigating by canals and deep wells (170 to 
 200 feet) a country of heavy rainfall, level and near the gulf 
 coast could only arise from the necessity of flooding the 
 principal crop, rice. Still there is no doubt that the yield of 
 most crops would be doubled l>y artificial or double irrigation. 
 The subject is unique. Double irrigation being impossible in 
 
128 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 the arid region aud impracticable elsewhere. Anywhere 
 under southern skies rolling lands are liable to drouth and 
 very many to wash. Our level Prairie Region holds the 
 moisture and fertility, being clay soil and sub-soil, and can 
 be bought for less money than it takes to clear timber away 
 or to restore washed fields, if, indeed, that can be done. I 
 know of no other country having such great advantages, and 
 at the same time low prices for real estate. This we owe to 
 the circumstance of a stigma early cast upon the country as 
 an " unhealthy swamp, the home of barbarians, alligators and 
 fevers." This is entirely incorrect. But we should not 
 complain of what has been to us a great advantage. There 
 is no other advantage equal to an abundant supply of water. 
 It is here in earth, in skies, in river, lake, bayou and now in 
 canals. 
 
WHICH IS BEST? 
 
 CiiOQK Pctl^O averages twenty tons per acre. Averages 
 Oll|[9r UdOu 200 pounds of sugar per ton. Costs the 
 
 farmer $40 per acre. Costs $2 per ton of Cane. Costs $2 pei 
 ton to manufacture. Then one ton of cane costs to grow and 
 manufacture $4, and gives the manufacturer 160 to 200 
 pounds of sugar, depending upon the quality of the machin- 
 ery and intelligence of the laborer. Present price of sugar 
 on plantation three to four cents. 
 
 Q* gives an average of forty bushels per acre. Costs an 
 
 nibC average of $10 per acre Sells at a little more than 
 wheat and gives an average crop of four times as much. 
 
 W host; U3!S BflU Lorn $7 per acre; average 
 
 value of crop $5 to $10 per acre. 
 
 has an abundant rainfall — water is the foun- 
 dation of all agriculture. Has not lost a 
 general field crop in 100 years — seed time and harvest last 
 all the year. Offers health to the sick, wealth to the poor, an 
 easy living to the over-worked people of severe climates. 
 Offers good timber lands at 75 cents per acre; good prairie 
 lands can be bought on terms at $5 to $10; good rice lands 
 at $5 to $15; sugar lands at $10 to $50, orange lands 
 at $5 to $50. Grows the finest qualities of oranges on cheap 
 lands; no irrigation necessary. Season of ripening October 
 to February. Has the first thirty days of the market — worth 
 all the rest of the year. 
 
 " Go West, young man," means to unify your crops. 
 
 " Go South, young man," means to diversify your crops 
 
 When the great Northwest and the silver mines all forsake 
 you, then Louisiana will take you up. 
 
 For further information, books, maps, circulars, and ratee 
 of transportation, ajjply to 
 
 C. C. GARY, S. L. GARY, 
 
 NORTHWESTERN PASSENGER *nd EMIGRATION AQEI.T. EMIGRATION AGENT, 
 
 EXOHANGE Bu'LDiNQ, KANSAS CITY. MO- JENNINGS) LA. 
 
Are You Thinking of Going 
 
 TO. 
 
 CALIFORNIA, 
 
 Mexico, Texas or Arizona? 
 
 >-——< 
 
 The Southern Pacific Co. 
 
 (SUNSET ROUTE.) 
 
 OFFERS THE >''^7m^\ ^'^ 
 
 T.DPrr S^^ New Orleans. 
 
 UIKCV^I IH SUNSET \01 Tourist 
 
 MEANS OF Vr ^ ^ / V Car7'"^ 
 
 REACHING THESE X^,S^^^^y ThrougTwithout 
 
 SECTIONS ^Crirl^^ Change. 
 
 Best First and Second Class Service 
 
 TO 
 
 Los Angeles, San Francisco, and points in 
 
 Louisiana, Texas, Arizona 
 
 and New Mexico 
 
 For maps, time tables, and further information pertaining to rates, 
 route and service, apply to 
 
 S. F. B. MORSE, EDWIN HAWLEY, 
 
 Asst, Pass'rTraffic Mgr., Ass't Geu'l Traffic Mg'r, 
 
 Houston, Tex. 349 Broadway, 
 
 New York. 
 
 L J. PARKS, W. G. NEIMYER, 
 
 Gen. Pass. & Tkt. Agt., Ceu'l Westtrii Agent, 
 
 Houston, Tex. Chicago, Ills. 
 
IINDEX, 
 
 Page, 
 
 Introduction, 1-2 
 
 Southwest Louisiana up to date, 3 
 
 Southwest Louisiana's Wonderful Development, - - - 7 
 
 Present Outlook, Southwest Louisiana, - - - - 14 
 
 Rice — Does it pay ? 20 
 
 Is there a Limit ? 24 
 
 Canals and Pumping Plants, 28 
 
 A Model Plantation, 29 
 
 Rice Growing, - - - - 33 
 
 Rice Culture in the South, 38 
 
 A Few "Rice Pointers, 49 
 
 Rice in the Phillipines, 52 
 
 A Big Farm, 54 
 
 The Value of Wells, 61 
 
 Wells for Irrigating, 63 
 
 Mexican Strawberries, 68 
 
 Paradise for the Immigrant, 68 
 
 Truck Farming, 73 
 
 Weather Service, 74 
 
 Why They Never Feel the Cold, 78 
 
 Health, Water, Schools, etc., - - - - - - 79 
 
 Speech of Secretary of Agriculture, Wilson, ... 81 
 
 Prof. W. C. Stubbs, 86 
 
 Machinery, 88 
 
 We Told You So, 89 
 
 A Remarkable Fact, 93 
 
 Cotton, 95 
 
 Lake Charles, 96 
 
 Welsh, 98 
 
 Jennings, 100 
 
 Gueydan, - - 102 
 
 Acadia Parish, - - - - 104 
 
 Midland Branch R. R., - no 
 
 Lafayette, 116 
 
 Jeanerette, " -119 
 
 Vermillion Parish, 120 
 
 Value and Price of Land, 126 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 133 
 
 TEXAS LANDS! 
 
 J. S. DAUGHERTY, 
 
 ORGANIZER AND MEMBER OF "THE BEAUMONT OIL EXCHANGE." 
 Refer to any Texas Bank or Banker. 
 
 , HOUSTON, . 
 OPPiCES: ] BEAUMONT, i texas, 
 ' RICHMOND, ^ 
 
 Have ■bought, sold and located millions of acres of land in differ- 
 ent portior^s of TEXAS, and if you wisli to buy or sell Lands in 
 any part of Texas, I am in position to serve you. 
 
 RICB LrAIVDS 
 
 If you wish to engage in Rice Culture, send for my Pamphlet giving 
 details as to mode of cultivation, money required, and results obtained 
 
 01 U UAINDS 
 
 Before investing, write me, enclosing Post Office Order for $25, and state 
 the amount which you wish to invest, and I will furnish you my opinion as to 
 how best to invest; or if you have invested, will advise you whether to hold 
 or sell. To enable me to intelligently advise my clients, I am having the 
 property owned by each Company located as fast as I can, and abstract of 
 titles to their lands made, so as to be able to determine whether or not they 
 are good— some 1 know now have disputed titles, and it is important to avoid 
 such Companies — or, if you have already invested in them, to sell before the 
 public in general becomes aware of the true situation. 
 
 I own stock in no Oil Company, to bias my judgment. I believe that 
 for one to invest in an industry, and lose money, damages the industry and 
 the State at large; and will use my best endeavors to protect the interests of, 
 and make money for those who entrust their busmess to me. 
 
 Post Office Box 71, HOUSTON, TEXAS. 
 
 " 14, BEAUMONT, TEXAS. 
 " B, RICHMOND, TEXAS. 
 
SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 
 
 135 
 
 
 GAAIl-SCOTT OUTFIT OF ABBOTT BROS., CROWLEY, LA., WHO AV-V. AMONG THE 
 LARGEST KICK GROWERS IX THE STATE. 
 
 "QUEEN OF THE RICE FIELD" 
 
 More sold in Louisiana and Texas last year than all other threshers combined ! 
 
 WERE FIRST IN THE RICE FIELD! 
 
 Perfectly adapted to Threshing the several kinds of Rice in all conditions! 
 The least Cracking of the Eice grain 
 and the Greatest Capacity! 
 
 Our Rice Self- Feeder and "Wind Stacker are 
 especially built for handling KICE. 
 
 GAAR-SCOTT ENGINES— Plain and Traction 
 
 LEAD ALL OTHERS IN THE RICE COUNTRY 
 FOR PUMPING AND THRESHING. 
 
 Our Special Rice Thresher Circular is sent Frte, on request. 
 
 SCOTT &, CO., 
 
 Factory : Richmond, Ind. Rice Field Branch : Crowley, La. 
 
 We have just finished a large Warehouse at Crowley, La., where we carry a 
 full liae 01 Threshing Machinery. We Invite you to call. 
 
 A BIG SETTING JUST UNisllJiD iJV Til. (.AGNi-AL fc G A A li-.'-i, UTT UIG, < iC(.WLK\, 
 
136 
 
 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 THE RICE FIELDS 
 OF LOUISIANA 
 
 Are best reached through New Orleans 
 by through cars of the 
 
 Double Daily Trains of Through 
 Coaches and Pullman Drawing Room 
 Sleeping Cars between 
 
 Chicago, 
 St. LfOUis, 
 Loiiis'ville and 
 Cincinnati; and 
 
 IVashville, 
 
 Birmingliam, 
 
 A\ot>iIe, 
 
 •Jad^sonville, 
 
 Pensacola, 
 
 INew Orleans and 
 
 Gulf GoBLst Roints. 
 
 DINING CAR SERVICE 
 
 On Through Day Trains Between 
 New Orleans and Birmingham. 
 Double Daily Trains carrying through 
 coaches and Pullman Sleeping Cars 
 between Memphis and Louisville and 
 Cincinnati. 
 
 The Finest and Fastest Service 
 
 IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 C. B. COMPTON, 
 
 Trahic Manager, 
 
 Louisville, Ky. 
 
 C. L. STONE, 
 Oea'l Passenger Ageat, 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 137 
 
 COOK'S 
 FLAKED RICE 
 
 Is Louisiana and Texas Rice which has been 
 thoroughly and scientifically cooked so that it' s 
 ready to eat as a brealrfast food without any 
 cooking whatever by simply pouring on a 
 little boiling salted water, only to soften and 
 heat the flakes. See directions, page 5 J, in 
 Rice Cook Book. 
 
 Ji Delicious 
 
 BreaKfast Dl$b 
 
 Rccds J1bso!utc1y 
 Do Cooktn::;. 
 
 Break'® 
 
 w 
 
 "Qood for Baby 
 Coo.*' 
 Saves many 
 Precious Cives* 
 
 EASffiST FOOD TO DIGEST. 
 New Born Infants : 
 
 One cup of Cook's Flaked Rice, one quart water, boil ten 
 minutes, add a pint of milk, pinch of salt, and a very little 
 sugar, and strain. 
 
 Three Months Old Child : 
 
 Use double the quantity of Cook's Flaked Rice (two cups) 
 and do not strain. 
 
 In buying Flaked Rice from your grocer be sure to get COOK'S. 
 There are wortMess imitations on tbe market. 
 
SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 People's Independent Rice Mill, Crowley, La. 
 
 WE ARE THE LARGEST °'-°"^-" """ 
 
 c======r=====^^^=============^=^= Millers of Rice 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 We own and operate Five Irrigating Mills, comprising over 125 
 Miles of Canals and Watering 40,000 Acres of Rice. 
 
 We own and operate Five Mills in Louisiana with a capacity 
 for Milling 6,500 Bags of Rice daily. 
 
 Mill No. I.— 
 
 PEOPLE^S INDEPENDENT RICE MILL CO., 
 
 Limited. CROWLEY, LA. 
 
 Mill No. 2 — 
 
 THE GUEYDAN RICE MILL, Limited, 
 
 GUEYDAN, LA. 
 Mill No. 3.— 
 
 THE EUREKA RICE MILL, 
 
 ESTHERWOOD, LA. 
 Mill No. 4 — 
 
 ABBEVILLE RICE MILL, Limited, 
 
 ABBEVILLE, LA 
 
 Mill No. 5.— 
 
 DONALDSONVILLE RICE MILL, 
 
 DONALDSONVILLE, LA. 
 
 Correspondence is Solicited. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 139 
 
 Crowley, Louisiana, 
 
 IS THE CENTER OF THE 
 
 RICE INDUSTRY, AND 
 
 W. W. Duson 5c IBro., 
 
 Are HEADQUARTERS for Rice Lands. 
 
 We have thousands of acres of land for sale at 
 from Twenty to Forty Dollars per acre, that are yield- 
 ing an annual return of from Twenty to Thirty-five 
 dollars per acre after all expenses of the crop have 
 been paid. 
 
 These lands are not swamps, being high and dry 
 prairies, located in the most delightful and healthy 
 climate in America. 
 
 You should write us at once for maps and 
 printed matter descriptive of this wonder- 
 ful country. 
 
 W. W. DU50N & BRO., 
 
 CKOWLEY, LA. 
 
 P. S5. LOVELL, Pres't. MIIION ABBOTT, Vice-Pres't. W. E. ELLIS, Cashier. 
 
 Crou^Iey State Bank, 
 
 PAID UP CAPITAL $50,000.00. 
 SURPLUS $25,000.00. 
 
 Capital and Surplus, 0row1ey, Ca* 
 
 $75,000, ^^ 
 
 Do a general banking business. 
 Special attention to collections from commercial firms. 
 
 B. E. BLACK, CROWLEY. J. P. BLACK, JENNINGS. 
 
 BLACK BROS. & CO., 
 
 Wholesale and Retail Dealers in 
 
 Farm Machinery, Wagons, 
 Buggies and Harness. 
 
 We have tiie largest stock of the best machinery for this country. Irrigate 
 lag Pumps and Stationary Engines a Specialty. 
 
 Correspondence solicited. 
 
 BLACK BROS. & CO., - - • JENNINGS, and CROWLEY. LA. 
 
140 
 
 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 20 TO 30% INVESTMENT 
 
 THE past three years experience has 
 proven that rice lands in this locality 
 under the present system of irrigation 
 give returns of 20 to 30 per cent, net 
 on the investment. 
 
 For further information write, 
 
 "p SIbT E. F. ROWSON & CO., 
 
 JENNINGS, LA. 
 
 F. R. JAENEE. T. O. MAHAFFSY. 
 
 JAEINKE; <& MAHAPFEV, 
 
 REAL ESTATE 
 
 JEIVINirVOS, - = = = .. UOUISIAINA. 
 
 IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR INVESTMENT OR A HOME DON'T 
 FAIL TO CALL, OR WRITE US, 
 
 ^- — ^CITY AND FARM PROPERTY.~-~~-^'^ — 
 
 LEWIS & ROSS 
 
 Rice Lands ^^estate 
 
 GENERAL LAND AGENTS: 
 
 We protect the interest of our clients, pay taxes and 
 collect rents. 
 WRITE US. JENNINGS, LA. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC 14I 
 
 For RiCCt Oil or 
 
 SEE 
 
 I W- J. B. MOORE, GEORGE J. McMANlS, | 
 
 360 PEARL ST., 
 
 BEAUMONT, TEXAS. 
 
 WE REFER TO ALL OUR OLD CUSTOMERS. <» 
 
 Perkins & Miller Lumber Co. 
 
 (L«imit:ecl.) 
 
 CALCASIEU LONG LEAF PINE. 
 
 WESTLAKE, LA. 
 ^,^,^ WBSTUAKB RICE AlIUL, ^^^ 
 
 C. B. LAKE & CO., LIMITED, Props. 
 
 WESTUAKE, LA. 
 
 MILLERS and GROWERS of FINE JAPAN and HONDURAS RICES 
 
 WE WANT YOUR TRADE. 
 
 ^Vrite for Samples and Prices Now. 
 
 Assessor Acadia Parish. RICE LAND DEALER. Titles Examined. 
 
 LAND 
 
 AGENT 
 
 Office INean Court Mouse, CROWLEY, LOUISIAINA. 
 
 Dealer in large ami small tracts of Rice Lands, on canals and flowing wells, as desired. Have a 
 list of Crowley resident and business properties for sale. Terms given on all deals. 
 Inq\iire For Snap T^argaiiis. 
 
 Judge Jl. €. Coritiand 
 
142 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 look:, imooue «& oo. 
 
 LIMITED 
 
 MANUFACTURERS OF ROUGH 
 AND DRESSED 
 
 Calcasieu Long Leaf 
 Yellow Pine Lumber. 
 
 ALSO HAVE FOR SALE 
 
 50,000 Acres of Grazing and Farming Lands. 
 WESTLAKE, LA. 
 
 A. S. LASCELLES & CO. 
 
 New York and New Orleans. 
 
 General Commission Merchants. 
 
 IN. Y. OFFICE 
 
 Coffee Exchange, Hanover 
 
 Square. 
 
 Store, 23 Bridge Street. 
 
 IS. O. OFFICE 
 
 619 Common Street. 
 
 EMILIANO MARTINEZ, Mgr 
 
 AGEMCIES 
 
 E. A, dc Pass & Co., 
 
 DIXON HOU8K. 
 
 Fenchurch Street, LONDON, E. C. 
 ENGUND. 
 
 Lascelles, de Mercado & Co. 
 
 12 Port Royal Street, 
 
 KINGSTON, JA. 
 
 B. w. I. 
 
 L. T. BERNSTEIN, Port of Spain, TRINIDAD, B. W. I. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 143 
 
 GEO. LOCK, President. 
 
 L. KAUFMAN, Vice President. 
 
 A. L. WILLIAMS, Cashier. 
 N. E. NORTH, Ass't Cashier. 
 
 #% 
 %# 
 
 OF? L,AKt3 CHA.RL,E:S 
 
 7 -^ ^1 ] ' 
 
 Capital, $50,000.00 
 Surplus and Undivided Profits, $40,000.00 
 
 SAVINGS DEPARTMENT. LAKE CHARLES, UA 
 
 The Largest Rice Milling Plant in America. 
 
 Incorporated Under the Laws of the State of New York, 
 
 CHRISTIAN M. MEYEE, Presiaeut. 
 J. HENRY DlOK, Vice-President. 
 
 GEORGE G. BAUER, Treasurer 
 BEUNABD SUYDAM, Secretary. 
 
 ■VA^.J'DotLW. 
 
 Lake Charles Rice Milling Co. 
 
 OF LOUISIANA. 
 LAKE CHARLES, LA. 
 
144 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 The Morth American Land and 
 
 5 1-iasaE^L.^Vij 
 
 OF LONDON, ENGLAND. 
 
 Offer For Sale on easy Terms of payment 
 25,000 Acres of Rice Land 
 
 in Calcasieu Parish, Southwest Louisiana, at Prices ranging from$ioto$25 
 per acre, depending upon location. All these lands can be irrigated either by 
 the system or from deep wells. 
 
 The Company will rent 10,000 ACRES OF RICE LAND, subject to 
 irrigation, to good farmers who are not prepared to purchase outright. To 
 first class farmers the Company will furnish buildings and seed rice, also 
 fence the land. 
 
 This Company also owns over 50,000 acres in a solid body, which show 
 almost conclusive proof of being oil lands. Tli^se lands can also be purchased 
 at a moderate figure. Address, 
 
 A. V. EASTMAN, Manager, 
 
 LAKE CHARLES, LA. 
 
 Attention Investors I 
 
 Consult Your Best Interests. How ? By conferring with me before 
 you invest. Why ? 
 
 Because I am located in the geographical centre of the best rice lands in the United 
 States and have unsurpassed facilities for keeping in close touch with the property 
 holders and al-wrays endeavor to gi'^e my clients the best bargains obtainable. 
 
 i have a large and well selected list of fine rice lands at very moderate prices. 
 Call in person, or write me, [ 
 
 O. S. DOLBY, Real Estate Dealer. 
 
 LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA. 
 
 J. A. Bel, Pres. and Manager. W. W. Flanders, Sec'y and Treas. 
 
 W, S. Goes, Vice-President. W. G. Mocling, Ass't Sec'y and Treas. 
 
 J. A. BEU UUMBBR CO., uim'td. 
 
 Paid up Capital, $100,000. 
 ... MANUFACTURERS AND DEALERS IN ... 
 
 CALCASIEU LONG LEAF 
 
 YELLOW PINE LUMBER. 
 
 RAILROAD TIMBER 
 And Extra Lengths and Sizes a Specialty. 
 
 •-AKE CHARLES, LA. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 145 
 
 H. C. DuEW, President. 
 
 C.KO. HORRIDGE, Vice-President. 
 
 i'RANK Roberts, Casiuer. 
 
 J, W. Gardiner, Assistant Cashier. 
 
 Capital, $100,000.00. Surplus, $20,000.00. 
 
 LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA. 
 
 ''■'^ -^''- <§^ This Bank respectfully solicits 
 
 '^^ixr "" business with the assurance 
 
 ^.^ to new and old customers of 
 
 the prompt and satisfactory 
 
 . service that comes from 
 
 ^thorough equipment in all 
 
 departments. 
 
 ««« 
 
 LADIES' DEPARTMENT 
 
 SAFE DEPOSIT BOXES 
 SAVING DEPARTMENT 
 
 'yp^egeiC^ci 
 
 RIGE! 
 
 RICE! 
 
 The Question of the Hour! 
 
 Rice Lands, Rice Farms, Fruit and Truck Farms, 
 Louisiana Long Leaf Yellow Pine Timber Lands. 
 Improved and unimproved Lake Charles property. 
 Taxes paid, rents collected, investments made for non-residents. 
 
 For full particulars call on or write 
 
 FRANCIS CHAVANNEl, 
 
 Real Estate. Rental and Investment Broker, 
 Calcasieu Parish: The Rice Center- LAKE CHARLES, LA, 
 
 OIL, RICE, TIMBER, 
 
 Grazing and Agricultural Lands. 
 
 We are old in the business and are prepared to supply the wants 
 of any and all -who -want land. 
 Terms can be made to suit. 
 
 Special inducements for colonization or investment. 
 Have some excellent rice propositions. 
 
 C. W. HAHL & CO. 
 
 330 Main Street, 
 
 HOUSTOrM, TEX. 
 
146 
 
 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 The natural stepping stone to the great South American Continent, 
 QUAINT HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS, 
 
 The /New St. Charles Hotel 
 
 The 
 
 Latest, 
 Largest 
 and 
 Best, 
 
 
 ^ SS^^i " ^ „^ -»^ . 
 
 ^ 
 
 Only 
 
 Absolutely 
 Fireproof 
 Hotel 
 
 
 Accommodations for 700 Ouests. 150 Private Bath Rooiiis» 
 
 Turkish, Russian and Roman Baths. 
 
 Filtered, Distilled, and Aerated Drinking: Water. 
 
 A MODERN FIRST-CLASS HOTEL., 
 
 Kept on both American and European plans at moderate prices. 
 
 A. R. BLAKEUY «& CO., Uimited, 
 
 "Write for plans and prices. IProprietors. 
 
 Dan Talmage's Sons Co., 
 
 NEW YOKK. 
 
 Dan Talmage, 2nd, 
 
 CHARLESTON, S. C. 
 
 JOHN S. TALMAGE, 
 
 NEW ORUEANS, 
 
 RICE 
 
 In Jobbing Quantities 
 —Only— 
 
 Selections from Every Mill 
 in the State. 
 
 Chas. E. Cormier, 
 
 209 N. Peters St., New Orleans, La., 
 
 Dealer in Domestic, Japan and Native Louisiana 
 
 and Texas Rice, 
 
 SAMPi-ES FORNA/ARDED ON REQUEST. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 
 
 147 
 
 A. K. Seago ^ Co., 
 
 521 Conti Street, 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA., 
 
 BROKERS AND COMMISSION MERCHANTS. 
 
 Sugar, Molasses ?=^ Coffee 
 
 WRITE FOR SAMPLES AND QUOTATIONS. 
 
 Established 1881. 
 
 MARTIN J. WYNNE. 
 
 213 North Peters St, NEVS^ ORLEANS, LA. 
 
 SAMPLES AND QUOTATIONS SENT. 
 "Charges Prepaid" ["la Jobbing 
 
 on Applicatioa. Quantities Oaly." 
 
 Gko.T. Drank, 
 
 Wholesale ^^ 
 
 Rice 
 
 217 North Peters Street, 
 NEW ORLEANS, LA. 
 
148 SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 THERE ARE MORE 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 FOR THE HOME-SEEKER AND INVESTMENTS THAT 
 
 WILL YIELD A SURE AND STEADY 
 
 INCREASE IN 
 
 a^d Southern Texas 
 
 THAN IN ANY OTHER PART OF THE WORLD. 
 
 RICE 
 
 Is the surest and most profitable 
 crop grown. If you are interested 
 and wish to 
 
 KNONV MORB 
 
 Send $1.00 for One Year's Subscription to the 
 
 "RICE INDUSTRY." 
 
 OSWALD WILSON, Editor, Houston, Texas. 
 
 It will tell the truth, and is the leading technical Rice Journal of the World 
 
 XHP Pfr*P flSJnilQTDV Wi^J te'J aJJ about the wonder- 
 
 inC fvlwC IllLIUolKl ful advancement that is making 
 
 the Gulf Coast Country the richest section of the United States, and is 
 
 The Best Advertising Medium in the South, 
 
 SEND FOR RAXEIS. 
 
ON LINE OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 149 
 
 The Southern Pacific 
 
 SUNSET ROUTE 
 
 IS THB 
 
 RICE BELT LINE 
 
 The only Railroad traversing 
 the great Rice Fields from 
 end to cnd%H^^%H^%H%M%M%H 
 
 Covering Louisiana and Texas 
 
 "Write for Information Concerning LanclSy 
 L,ocatIon» etc* to 
 
 S, F. B. MORSE, L. J. PARKS, 
 
 Aas't Pa«»'t Traffic Hgt. G*n'l Pais't and Ticket Agt. 
 
 JOHN HOWARD, 
 
 Inuntgration Agent. 
 
 HOUSTOIS, TEXAS. \ Jk 
 
I 90 , SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA 
 
 . r HOME SEEKER'S RATES 
 
 From the OLD STATpS to the 
 
 Ric^ Fields 
 
 . . OF . 
 
 APPLY OVEI^ ... 
 
 The Southern Pacific 
 Sunset 
 
 PULLMAN EXCURSION SLEEPERS 
 
 OPERATE REGULARLY BETWEEN 
 
 Cincinnati, Chicago, Washington to Texas 
 and Louisiana -Points on 
 
 SUNSET ■ ROUTE. 
 
 Write for Information, Etc. to 
 
 ■O'-iA ••• . .. . '■•. 
 S. F. B. MORSE, L. J. PARKS, 
 
 Ass't Pass'r Traffic Hang'r, Qen'l Pass'r & Tkt. Agt., 
 
 V tiOUSTOIN, TEXAS. 
 
ATLANTA, fiA., 
 
 CHOICE LANDS IN TEXAS. 
 
 The railroad system of Texas, having brought into easy access the lands origin- 
 ally granted the Houston & Texas Central ; Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio; 
 Texas & New Orleans, and Gulf, Western Texas & Pacific Railway Companies, they 
 are now offered to the public on terms and at prices such as to put them in reach 
 of every person desiring to own his own homestead. 
 
 Lands for the farmer, the planter, the gardener, the stock-raiser and millman, 
 which will be sold at reasonable price, on long time and at low rate of interest. 
 
 Theie is a wide field here from which to select, embracing such a variety of 
 lands, that there is no reason why all should not obtain locations suitable to their 
 particular ideas and desires. There is ample room for an almost unlimited num- 
 ber of energetic people, as Texas is a State that cannot be equalled in the pro- 
 portion of acreage adopted to the highest degree of cultivation ; all it needs is 
 population. The low price of lands, great fertility of soil, low rates of taxation and 
 munificent educational endowments, are inducements that no other state can offer. 
 
 For detailed terms of sale, prices, information, maps and pamphlets, address 
 
 C. C._GIBBS, Land Commissioner, San Antonio, Tex 
 
 AGENCIES. 
 
 H. W. NATHAN Commercial Agent 
 
 W. R. FAGAN Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 uLiimnivT TLV S F. A. LEOVY Division Passenger and Freight Agent 
 
 BtAinWBI, lEA., j J p RYAN Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 lULTlMOKE, MB, 209 East German Street B. B. BARBER, Agent 
 
 {B. E. CURRIER New England Agent 
 E.C.CAMPBELL Traveling Passenger Agent 
 FRANK PATRICK Traveling Passenger A|ent 
 W. F. HILL City Passenger Agent 
 
 BROWXSVllLE, TEX M. B. KINGSBURY, Agent 
 
 ( W.G. NEIMYER.. .General Western Freight and Passenger Agent 
 
 CHICA«0, ILL., 2S8 (lark Street, R. D. WILLIAMS Passenger Agent 
 
 ( B. H BULLARD Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 CINCINNATI, OHIO, No. 5a East Fourth Street j '^: ?! &?.^?§S:::;V.--- V/Z.-.-.-.V/Traveling p'Sfn'^^^r ^pll^ 
 
 CITY nv MEXICO, 13 S:in Jirn De lelian G. R. HACKLEY, General Agent, Traffic Department 
 
 ItANVlLLE, VA A. E. WOODELL, Traveling Freight Agent 
 
 DALLAS, TEX A. G. NEWSUM, Division Passenger Agent 
 
 niKi I » cfti 111") I'TJh sfr^of S WM. K. McAllister General Agent 
 
 DfcNl LK, lOL. , UU IJtn Street, j G. F. KUHNS Traveling Freight and Passenger A|ent 
 
 DIIKANGO. MEX A. GREGORY, Commercial Agent, Mexican International R. R 
 
 EAKLE PASS, TEX. C. K. DUNLAP, General Freight and Passenger Agent Mexican International R. R 
 
 i?i DtGA Tcv ( Division Passenger and Freight Agent 
 
 tLFASO,ltX. J J. A. SPELLICY Passenger and Ticket Agent 
 
 DurGiiin pn S S. F. BOOTH District Freight and Passenger Agent 
 
 mtSUO, lAL j WM. B.MAY Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 i.iivrsTftiii rfPY i J. R.CHRISTIAN, T.& N.O.,G. H.&S. A Commercial Agent 
 
 «.AL\ES10fl,lti., I j.H. MILLER, T. & N. O., G. H.&S. A Division Passenger Agent 
 
 HAVANA, CUBA, 36 San iK„aci Street \ v -y:": :::;:::::: ^ I ^^^^^c^^'i^!:^^/^^ 
 
 HELENA, MONT E. I. STIEFEL, Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 uftiifiTftK Tfv j H.C. REESE, T.&N.O., G. H.&S. A Ass't Gen. Frt. Agent 
 
 HOlSlOfl, IfcA,, I JOHN HOWARD Pass, and Immigration Agent 
 
 JENMNdS, LI S. L. CAR Y, Immigration Agent 
 
 KEYWEST.FLA LAFLIN & CO., Agents 
 
 KANSAS CITY, MO.. Exchange BuildinR .. C. C. CAR Y, Northwestern Passenger and Immigration Agent 
 
 inGimrirs rii -loa s^nti, fibrin- fit S G.W.LUCE Ass't General Passenger and Freight Agent 
 
 LOS AN«ELES,eAL., 229 South Spring St. j n. R. MARTIN Traveling Passenger A|ent 
 
 MO^TEKEV. MEX H. N. GIBSON, Commercial Agent, Mexican Internat onal K. R 
 
 MONTKOMERY, ALA G. W. ELY, Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 KICHVIIIF TFKIV Xr. i Nnpl RInffc i R. O. BEAN, Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 NASH\lLLfc, lb»JI.,ft0.4 floelBlocR | G. WALDO, Traveling Freight A|ent 
 
 NEYV IBERIA, LA., CHAS. B. ELLIS, Division Passenger and Freight Agent 
 
 viru ARlfl\'<i 11 \ H.B.ABBOTT City Passenger Agent 
 
 SEH ORLEANS, U., j L. YAM SAN Chinese Passenfer A|ent 
 
 HIKWVIIRK \ Y '!4<» Rrntidwav .mil I RattPFT PlafA I E. HAWLEY.. .Assistant General Traffic Manager 
 JlfcV\ lURK,*. J.,diJBroaQwayana 1 Battery riace, I l H. NUTTING Eastern Passenger Agent 
 
 PASADENA, CAL I. N. TODD, Commercial Agent 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, PA., 109 South Third Street, I a! M^LiN^ACRE ■..\\\\\\:::.TVaC4iing>assenger Apnt 
 PITTSBURG, PA., 711 Park Building, | j^l^^^i^y^™.''.''.;. ........ •.Traveiin. Passenger Apnt 
 
 „«,.™,...,i. Ann »nEi.. u- . o^ * S C.H.MARKHAM General Freight aud Passenger Agent 
 
 PORTLAND, ORE., 265 Washington Sfreet, \ j. b. KIRKLAND, 3rd & Alder Sts., District Passenler Alent 
 
 PORT TAMPA. FLA JNO. BRADLEY, Agent 
 
 RIVKKSIDE, CAL G. F. FORS YTHE, Commercial Agent 
 
 SACRAMENTO, CAL S. S. FULTON, Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 SALT LAKE CITY, ITAH, 214 Dooly Block D. R. GRAY, General Agent 
 
 B»K .^Tftitin Trv \ J. McMillan, G. H. & S. A Division Passenger Agent 
 
 SAN ANTONIO, TEX., j C. FAHEY, G. H. & S. A Division Freight Alent 
 
 SAN DIEGO, CAL., 869 Fifth Street G. H. McMILLAN, Commercial Agent 
 
 r G. W. FLETCHER General Agent 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., 613 Market Street, J 7^'- L- KNIGHT Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 I I. B. LAUCK .. Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 [ E. B. McCORD City Passenger Agent 
 
 SANTA BARBARA, CAL F. M. FRYE, Commercial Agent 
 
 SAN LUIS OBISPO, CAL J. L. BUELL, District Freight and Passenger Agent 
 
 SAVANNAH, GA., 18 East Bryan Street C. W. MURPHEY, Traveling Passenger Agent 
 
 ST LOUIS, MO.. 421 Olive Street, (Bank of Commerce Bldg.) L. E. TOWNSLEY, Commercial Agent 
 
 SYRACUSE, N. Y., 129 South Franklin Street F. T. BROOKS, New York State Agent 
 
 SEATTLE, WASH., 619 First Avenue E.J. STEEPLE, District Passenger Agent 
 
 TACOMA. WASH.. 1108 Pacific Avenue E.J. STEEPLE, District Passenger Agent 
 
 WACO. TEX T.J. ANDERSON, District Passenger Agent 
 
 WASHINGTON. D. CSll Pennsvlvanla Avenue A.J. POSTON, General Agent Sunset Excursions 
 
 HyUfURG. GERMANY, 6 and 8 "Karlsburg. . . ^ 
 LONDON. ENGLAND 49 Ladenhall Street and I 
 
 LlVERPOoir ENGLAN**d"1 WaterStreet: ^ RUDOLPH FALCK. General European Passenger Agent. 
 
 ROTTERDAM. NETHERLANDS,92 Wynhaven,SS; l