ur
conditions, but we have cheap labour. The Texans have large paddies
because their land is cheap, but ours is dear. In these big paddies
the water cannot be kept at two or three inches, as with us. It is
necessarily five inches or so, too deep, and the soil temperature
falls and they lose on the crops what they gain by the use of
machinery. Further, it must be remembered that we are not producing
our rice for export. It is a special kind for ourselves, which we
like;[291] but foreigners would just as soon have any other sort. We
have no call, therefore, to develop our rice culture in the same
degree as our sericulture, which rests mainly on a valuable oversea
trade."

"On this general question of improvement of implements and methods,"
said another member of our company, "we must use machinery and
combine farming management when industrial progress drives us to it;
but why try to do it before we are compelled? Concerning horses, the
difficulty which some farmers have in using them is the difficulty of
feeding them economically. Concerning cereals, our consumption is not
less than that of Germany, but Germany imports more than twice the
cereals we do, so there would seem to be something to be said for our
system."

[Illustration: CUTTING GRASS]

"Some revolutionising of Japanese farming is necessary, in combined
threshing, for instance," the expert who had opened our discussion
said. "This combined threshing is now seen in several districts, and
combined threshing will be extended. But there is the objection to the
threshing machine that it breaks the straw and thus spoils it for
farmers' secondary industries. It should not be impossible to invent
some way of avoiding this, but the threshing machine is also too heavy
for narrow roads between paddies. It is difficult to deliver the crops
to the machine in sufficient bulk. Necessity may show us ways, but
small threshing machines are not so economical. Of course we must have
much more co-operative buying of rural requirements, and certainly
there is room in some places for the Western scythe made smaller, but
our people, as you have seen, are dexterous with their extremely
sharp, short sickle, and fodder is often cut on rather difficult
slopes, from which it is not easy to descend loaded, with a scythe.
Some foreigners who speak so positively about machinery for paddies,
and for, I suppose, the sloping uplands to which our arable farming is
relegated, do not really g