Part 11 (2/2)
The first working of the rice fields after the transplanting, as we saw it in j.a.pan, consisted in spading between the hills with a four-tined hoe, apparently more for loosening the soil and aeration than for killing weeds. After this treatment the field was gone over again in the manner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his bare hands to smooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to eradicate every weed, burying them beneath the mud, and to straighten each hill of rice as it is pa.s.sed. Sometimes the fingers are armed with bamboo claws to facilitate the weeding. Machinery in the form of revolving hand cultivators is recently coming into use in j.a.pan, and two men using these are seen in Fig. 14. In these cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to revolve as the cultivator is pushed along the row.
Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest attention everywhere by these three nations and in no direction more than in maintaining the store of organic matter in the soil. The pink clover, to which reference has been made, Figs. 99 and 100, is extensively sowed after a crop of rice is harvested in the fall and comes into full bloom, ready to cut for compost or to turn under directly when the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tons of this green clover are produced per acre, and in j.a.pan this is usually applied to about three acres, the stubble and roots serving for the field producing the clover, thus giving a dressing of six to seven tons of green manure per acre, carrying not less than 37 pounds of pota.s.sium; 5 pounds of phosphorus, and 58 pounds of nitrogen.
Where the families are large and the holdings small, so they cannot spare room to grow the green manure crop, it is gathered on the mountain, weed and hill lands, or it may be cut in the ca.n.a.ls. On our boat trip west from Soochow the last of May, many boats were pa.s.sed carrying tons of the long green ribbon-like gra.s.s, cut and gathered from the bottom of the ca.n.a.l. To cut this gra.s.s men were working to their armpits in the water of the ca.n.a.l, using a crescent-shaped knife mounted like an anchor from the end of a 16-foot bamboo handle. This was shoved forward along the bottom of the ca.n.a.l and then drawn backward, cutting the gra.s.s, which rose to the surface where it was gathered upon the boats. Or material for green manure may be cut on grave, mountain or hill lands, as described under Fig. 115.
The straw of rice and other grain and the stems of any plant not usable as fuel may also be worked into the mud of rice fields, as may the chaff which is often scattered upon the water after the rice is transplanted, as in Fig. 168.
Reference has been made to the utilization of waste of various kinds in these countries to maintain the productive power of their soils, but it is worth while, in the interests of western nations, as helping them to realize the ultimate necessity of such economies, to state again, in more explicit terms, what j.a.pan is doing. Dr.
Kawaguchi, of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, taking his data from their records, informed me that j.a.pan produced, in 1908, and applied to her fields, 23,850,295 tons of human manure; 22,812,787 tons of compost; and she imported 753,074 tons of commercial fertilizers, 7000 of which were phosphates in one form or another. In addition to these she must have applied not less than 1,404,000 tons of fuel ashes and 10,185,500 tons of green manure products grown on her hill and weed lands, and all of these applied to less than 14,000,000 acres of cultivated field, and it should be emphasized that this is done because as yet they have found no better way of permanently maintaining a fertility capable of feeding her millions.
Besides fertilizing, transplanting and weeding the rice crop there is the enormous task of irrigation to be maintained until the rice is nearly matured. Much of the water used is lifted by animal power and a large share of this is human. Fig. 169 shows two Chinese men in their cool, capacious, nowhere-touching summer trousers flinging water with the swinging basket, and it is surprising the amount of water which may be raised three to four feet by this means. The portable spool windla.s.s, in Figs. 27 and 123, has been described, and Fig. 170 shows the quadrangular, cone-shaped bucket and sweep extensively used in Chihli. This man was supplying water sufficient for the irrigation of half an acre, per day, lifting the water eight feet.
The form of pump most used in China and the foot-power for working it are seen in Fig. 171. Three men working a similar pump are seen in Fig. 150, a closer view of three men working the foot-power may be seen in Fig. 42 and still another stands adjacent to a series of flooded fields in Fig. 172. Where this view was taken the old farmer informed us that two men, with this pump, lifting water three feet, were able to cover two mow of land with three inches of water in two hours. This is at the rate of 2.5 acre-inches of water per ten hours per man, and for 12 to 15 cents, our currency, thus making sixteen acre-inches, or the season's supply of water, cost 77 to 96 cents, where coolie labor is hired and fed. Such is the efficiency of human power applied to the Chinese pump, measured in American currency.
This pump is simply an open box trough in which travels a wooden chain carrying a series of loosely fitting boards which raise the water from the ca.n.a.l, discharging it into the field. The size of the trough and of the buckets are varied to suit the power applied and the amount of water to be lifted. Crude as it appears there is nothing in western manufacture that can compete with it in first cost, maintenance or efficiency for Chinese conditions and nothing is more characteristic of all these people than their efficient, simple appliances of all kinds, which they have reduced to the lowest terms in every feature of construction and cost. The greatest results are accomplished by the simplest means. If a ca.n.a.l must be bridged and it is too wide to be covered by a single span, the Chinese engineer may erect it at some convenient place and turn the ca.n.a.l under it when completed. This we saw in the case of a new railroad bridge near Sungkiang. The bridge was completed and the water had just been turned under it and was being compelled to make its own excavation. Great expense had been saved while traffic on the ca.n.a.l had not been obstructed.
In the foot-power wheel of j.a.pan all gearing is eliminated and the man walks the paddles themselves, as seen in Fig. 173. Some of these wheels are ten feet in diameter, depending upon the height the water must be lifted.
Irrigation by animal power is extensively practiced in each of the three countries, employing mostly the type of power wheel shown in Fig. 158. The next ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 174, shows the most common type of shelter seen in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces, which are there very numerous. We counted as many as forty such shelters in a semi-circle of half a mile radius. They provide comfort for the animals during both suns.h.i.+ne and rain, for under no conditions must the water be permitted to run low on the rice fields, and everywhere their domestic animals receive kind, thoughtful treatment.
In the less level sections, where streams have sufficient fall, current wheels are in common use, carrying buckets near their circ.u.mference arranged so as to fill when pa.s.sing through the water, and to empty after reaching the highest level into a receptacle provided with a conduit which leads the water to the field. In Szechwan province some of these current wheels are so large and gracefully constructed as to strongly suggest Ferris wheels. A view of one of these we are permitted to present in Fig. 175, through the kindness of Rollin T. Chamberlin who took the photograph from which the engraving was prepared. This wheel which was some forty feet in diameter, was working when the snap shot was taken, raising the water and pouring it into the horizontal trough seen near the top of the wheel, carried at the summit of a pair of heavy poles standing on the far side of the wheel. From this trough, leading away to the left above the sky line, is the long pipe, consisting of bamboo stems joined together, for conveying the water to the fields.
When the harvest time has come, notwithstanding the large acreage of grain, yielding hundreds of millions of bushels, the small, widely scattered holdings and the surface of the fields render all of our machine methods quite impossible. Even our grain cradle, which preceded the reaper, would not do, and the great task is still met with the old-time sickle, as seen in Fig. 176, cutting the rice hill by hill, as it was transplanted.
Previous to the time for cutting, after the seed is well matured, the water is drawn off and the land permitted to dry and harden. The rainy season is not yet over and much care must be exercised in curing the crop. The bundles may be shocked in rows along the margins of the paddies, as seen in Fig. 176, or they may be suspended, heads down, from bamboo poles as seen in Fig. 177.
The thres.h.i.+ng is accomplished by drawing the heads of the rice through the teeth of a metal comb mounted as seen at the right in Fig. 178, near the lower corner, behind the basket, where a man and woman are occupied in winnowing the dust and chaff from the grain by means of a large double fan. Fanning mills built on the principle of those used by our farmers and closely resembling them have long been used in both China and j.a.pan. After the rice is threshed the grain must be hulled before it can serve as food, and the oldest and simplest method of polis.h.i.+ng used by the j.a.panese is seen in, Fig.
179, where the friction of the grain upon itself does the polis.h.i.+ng.
A quant.i.ty of rice is poured into the receptacle when, with heavy blows, the long-headed plunger is driven into the ma.s.s of rice, thus forcing the kernels to slide over one another until, by their abrasion, the desired result is secured. The same method of polis.h.i.+ng, on a larger scale, is accomplished where the plungers are worked by the weight of the body, a series of men stepping upon lever handles of weighted plungers, raising them and allowing them to fall under the force of the weight attached. Recently, however, mills worked by gasoline engines are in operation for both hulling and polis.h.i.+ng, in j.a.pan.
The many uses to which rice straw is put in the economies of these people make it almost as important as the rice itself. As food and bedding for cattle and horses; as thatching material for dwellings and other shelters; as fuel; as a mulch; as a source of organic matter in the soil, and as a fertilizer, it represents a money value which is very large. Besides these ultimate uses the rice straw is extensively employed in the manufacture of articles used in enormous quant.i.ties. It is estimated that not less than 188,700,000 bags such as are seen in Figs. 180 and 181, worth $3,110,000 are made annually from the rice straw in j.a.pan, for handling 346,150,000 bushels of cereals and 28,190,000 bushels of beans; and besides these, great numbers of bags are employed in transporting fish and other prepared manures.
In the prefecture of Hyogo, with 596 square miles of farm land, as compared with Rhode Island's 712 square miles, Hyogo farmers produced in 1906, on 265,040 acres, 10,584,000 bushels of rice worth $16,191,400, securing an average yield of almost forty bushels per acre and a gross return of $61 for the grain alone. In addition to this, these farmers grew on the same land, the same season, at least one other crop. Where this was barley the average yield exceeded twenty-six bushels per acre, worth $17.
In connection with their farm duties these j.a.panese families manufactured, from a portion of their rice straw, at night and during the leisure hours of winter, 8,980,000 pieces of matting and netting of different kinds having a market value of $262,000; 4,838,000 bags worth $185,000; 8,742,000 slippers worth $34,000; 6,254,000 sandals worth $30,000; and miscellaneous articles worth $64,000. This is a gross earning of more than $21,000,000 from eleven and a half towns.h.i.+ps of farm land and the labor of the farmers' families, an average earning of, $80 per acre on nearly three-fourths of the farm land of this prefecture. At this rate three of the four forties of our 160-acre farms should bring a gross annual income of $9,600 and the fourth forty should pay the expenses.
At the Nara Experiment Station we were informed that the money value of a good crop of rice in that prefecture should be placed at ninety dollars per acre for the grain and eight dollars for the unmanufactured straw; thirty-six dollars per acre for the crop of naked barley and two dollars per acre for the straw. The farmers here practice a rotation of rice and barley covering four or five years, followed by a summer crop of melons, worth $320 per acre and some other vegetable instead of the rice on the fifth or sixth year, worth eighty yen per tan, or $160 per acre. To secure green manure for fertilizing, soy beans are planted each year in the s.p.a.ce between the rows of barley, the barley being planted in November.
One week after the barley is harvested the soy beans, which produce a yield of 160 kan per tan, or 5290 pounds per acre, are turned under and the ground fitted for rice, At these rates the Nara farmers are producing on four-fifths or five-sixths of their rice lands a gross earning of $136 per acre annually, and on the other fifth or sixth, an earning of $480 per acre, not counting the annual crop of soy beans used in maintaining the nitrogen and organic matter in their soils, and not counting their earnings from home manufactures. Can the farmers of our south Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, which are in the same lat.i.tude, sometime attain to this standard? We see no reason why they should not, but only with the best of irrigation, fertilization and proper rotation, with multiple cropping.
XIII
SILK CULTURE
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