The intensive cultivation employed in growing rice may be judged I from the table on the next page showing an estimate of the work needed to raise an acre of rice in the Himalayan district of India.
The most significant thing about this table is the great number of people who work on a single acre of land,—a result in part of the density of population,—and the number of days of work needed to produce a relatively small amount of food. If these people worked 10 hours a day, and they probably work more, each bushel of rice would require about 36 hours of work, or 12 times as much as was needed to produce a bushel of wheat in the United States previous to the invention of modern machinery, and about 200 times as much as is now needed. Obviously people who produce so little in proportion to their time cannot have large surplus, and cannot demand much from the outside world. Hence the rice raisers' part in the world's business is very slight.
The prices in the rice table apply to the time before the Great War because present prices are still too unstable to use. They seem sc ridiculously low that one.wonders how the rice-growers can live. Reck oned in purchasing power, which is the best way to reckon wages, th Indian farmer before the Great War was receiving less than one-sixt; of a bushel of rice per day for his own work or that of his wife, and half as much for the capital represented by each bullock. At the same time, the real pay of the American farm laborer was then and is now perhaps twelve times as great in purchasing power as that of the rice farmer. In other words, because of his greater racial capacity, better climate, and the other advantages belonging to his geographical location, the American farm laborer was worth approximately twelve times as much as the tropical rice farmer. The need of the farmers for food for themselves and their families was about the same, but the rice farmer could scarcely satisfy his need, while the American had enough surplus so that he could afford to exchange it for a great variety of foods brought from widely separated places; he added to the world's business by spending much money on clothing, rent, fuel, and simple luxuries. On the other hand the rice farmer and his family
made most of their own clothing and house, gather the few sticks that they needed for fuel, and contributed only the most meager surplus to the business life of their own community.
Plantations: The New Type of Tropical most essential features of tropical plantations are: (1) they are almost invariably owned and managed by men from the more stimulating climates, chiefly Europeans, North Americans, and men of Spanish descent, but sometimes Chinese or Japanese; (2) they usually raise products whose main use is not to supply food locally, and which are con sumed far from where they are produced; (3) they are subject to the dif* ficulties of the one-crop type of agriculture; (4) they are often highly profitable and are perhaps increasing more rapidly than any other type of agricultural community. The chief products raised on plantations are as follows: (A) Spices and Condi inents: vanilla, pep per, cloves, nut megs and mace, ginger, allspice or pimento, cinnamon and cassia, carda mom; (B) Fruits: banana, pineapple, avocado or alli gator pear; (C) Drinks: coffee, tea, cocoa; (D) Other Foodstuffs: sugar, palm oil; copra and cocoanut oil; (E) Drugs and Seda tives: quinine, coca, tobacco; (F) Fi bers: cotton, sisal, Manila hemp; (G) Other Raw Materi als: rubber. Other minor products might also be men tioned, for the num ber and abundance of plantation products is increasing rapidly. Sugar and to a less extent bananas are the only two products which form really important arti cles of food, and as these contain little or no proteid, an attempt to live oil them would quickly produce ill health. The other foodstuffs, spices, fruits, and drinks, although important in business, could all be dispensed with without seriously impairing the value of the ordi nary diet of any part of the world. In the same way tobacco fills no "important need and is entirely a luxury. Thus, in addition to sugar and bananas, the only plantation products that are really essential are the three fibers, quinine as a remedy for malaria, and rubber.