Rice is milled at New Orleans, Crowley, Abbeville, Gayden, Jennings and Lake Charles. Ramie fibre and jute are available for coarse cloth; cotton weaving is almost non-existent. The lumber industry is centred chiefly in Calcasieu parish. Lake Charles, Westlake, Bogalusa, Bon Ami, Carson, Fisher, Fullerton, Leesville, Oakdale and Pickering were the leading sawmill towns of the state in 1908. Of the rarer woods particular mention may be made of curly pine, yielding a wood of beautiful figure and polish; magnolia, hard, close-grained, of fine polish and of great lasting qualities; and cypress, light, strong, easily worked and never-rotting. The timber cut of 1900 was officially stated as 1,214,387 M. ft. B.M., of which two-thirds were of yellow pine and most of the remainder of cypress. In some localities, especially in the "Florida parishes," small quantities of rosin and turpentine are taken from the long-leaf pine, but this industry was unimportant in Louisiana before 1908. Sawdust, slabs, stumps and large quantities of logs are wasted. Other manufactures with a product value in 1905 of between $4,000,000 and $1,000,000 were: bags (not paper); foundry and machine-shop products; planing-mill products; railway cars, construction and repairs; malt liquors; men's clothing; cooperage; food preparations; roasted and ground coffee and spice; fertilizers; cigars and cigarettes; cotton goods; and manufactured ice. _Communications._--The length of railway in the state was 1740 m. in 1890 and 4943.55 m. at the end of 1908. By the state constitution of 1898 and by amendments of 1902 and 1904 tax exemptions for ten years were granted to newly-built railroads completed before 1909. The principal roads are the Missouri Pacific (St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern, New Orleans & North-western and St Louis, Watkins & Gulf), the Southern Pacific (Morgan's Louisiana & Texas Railroad & Steamship Co. and the Louisiana Western), the Texas & Pacific, the Kansas City Southern, the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific, the Louisiana Railway & Navigation Co., the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, the Illinois Central, and the Louisiana & Arkansas. The Illinois Central, the first railway giving Louisiana connexion with the north, and of immense importance in the trade of New Orleans, has only about 100 m. of double track in the state. The problem of inland waterways has always been a most important one in northern, eastern and southern Louisiana, where there are systems of improved bayous, lakes and canals which, with the levees, make this region something like Holland, on a greater scale. Many bayous are convertible by improvement into excellent drainage and irrigation canals. The canal system is especially well developed in the parishes of the Mississippi delta, where, at the close of 1907, there were about 50 m. of these waterways of decided commercial importance.