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FRANCE.

LYONS.
(From United States Consul Covert, Lyons, France.)

MACARONI WHEAT.

The great French manufacturers of edible.pastes are pleased and
surprised to learn that the yield of hard wheat will be very large in the
United States this year. As they have heretofore depended for this
article entirely upon Russia and Algeria, its production in large
quantities in the United States is looked upon as a factor of prime
importance in their business. The manufacturers in Lyons are of
the opinion that this new factor will result in a greatly increased
consumption of macaroni. Heretofore its consumption has been
almost entirely confined to Italy, France, and Spain and the South
American nations that are largely peopled from those countries.
That it has not been previously introduced on a large scale among
other peoples is probably due to the limited supply and to the strong
aversion to changing dietary habits.
I would suggest that a small quantity of the best hard wheat
grown in the United States be sent to the presidents of the chambers
of commere and to the United States consuls throughout France,
Italy, and Spain. The president of the chamber of commerce into
whose hands the wheat falls may be in the business of growing and
selling Russian or Algerian wheat and would therefore not be disposed
 to glut the market with his own goods or to push a competing
product, in which case a consul could find some one to take charge of
the business. If our wheat is as good as the Taganrog wheat it will
certainly find purchasers. Possibly it is of a better quality. If so, it
will run the Russian wheat out of the market. The Algerian wheat
will continue to be imported on account of its admission free of duty.
There are importers of the different special kinds of wheat from
whom manufacturers obtain the quality they want. Some industrials
simply grind the wheat into semoule, which they sell to paste makers.
Others are occupied in producing macaroni of a special shape, the
business being thus divided among them.
About 550,000 pounds of hard wheat are sold daily in Marseilles,
practically all of it coming from Algeria and Russia. A gentleman
of whom I sought some information on this subject writes me from
Marseilles :

If the American hard wheat is as good and as rich in gluten as the Russian
wheat—that is, if it contains from 40 to 45 per cent of that article—there will certainly
 be a large demand for it. This hard wheat can not be grown in France.
Russian wheat containing 45 per cent of gluten has been planted in France many
times, but the yield from it never contained over 20 per cent of gluten. The
dealers here are surprised to learn that hard wheat is to be grown in the United
States in large quantities, though some of them say they were prepared for it from
the samples of Texas wheat sent them from the Lyons consulate some four years
ago.