tion to small native farmers. It may be that this plan, or one like it, is the only possible solution of the Mexican land problem. Climate and Agriculture: Aside from the personal effect of these rainfall conditions, they have determined, with imperative insistence, the type of agriculture which is followed in Mexico. They have made corn (maize) the staple food of the country, as wheat is the staple of lands where there is winter snow and regular rainfall throughout the year. They have allowed the development of only the tropical products in the rich districts of Vera Cruz and Oaxaca which were partially developed by foreign stock companies under Diaz. They have, more than all, enthroned, as the chief agricultural export of Mexico, the sisal hemp of Yucatán. This desert product, which requires slow growth for the maturing of the long, stout fibers out of which are made rope and binder twine, is the greatest item of export of Mexico which is the combined product of nature's bounty and human enterprise. Coffee and some rubber and tobacco and a little sugar Mexico has raised for export in other days, but only sisal hemp, the product of the desert henequen plant, and cotton in a few favored localities have become wealthproducers in any great quantity. Mexico has long been an importer of foodstuffs, for before the days of modern commerce famine came with terrible regularity. Under Diaz, food was imported in increasing quantities, and since his fall, Mexico has been utterly dependent on the outside world for a large portion of the nutriment of her people. It is impossible now to predict when and how Mexico will become an agricultural country in fact as well as in potentialities. Irrigation must come, and only when it does will agriculture and the prosperity of agriculture fill the land. In one section where irrigation has been carried through-the Laguna district near Torreon, Coahuila-cotton is grown in quantity. This product supplies the native industry of cotton weaving which flourishes near Orizaba and in other isolated sections where water-power development has been possible. The desert character of the country in the north was responsible for the development of a great cattle-raising industry, for the land was cheap and the ranges vast. This has today been virtually wiped out, and Mexico imports meat from the United States all the result of revolution, so that when peace comes the cattle industry will surely be revived. But always the cattle of northern Mexico have been of the range, still unfit for profitable slaughter, and sections suitable for their fattening have been badly needed. There was, in other days, much shipment of range cattle into the United States, and to the better watered southern sections of Mexico. But although peace will bring a revival of the ranges, Mexico cannot look forward to becoming a great eat-producing country until the irrigation problem is solved. There are rich, well-watered sections of Mexico-this must not be overlooked-but these have resulted in a crowding of population on the plateaus and through the rich valleys such as that of the Lerma River in Jalisco, and have contributed but little toward the broad development of the country. In fact, one of the characteristics of Mexico's population distributions has been the tendency to gather into groups, so that a great city like the capital or Guadalajara or Puebla, will have a dozen cities and villages of considerable size close about it-and then stretches of sparsely populated country for leagues until another group is found. This is essentially climatic-and geographical. Mineral Resources: The mountainous character of Mexico has upturned great mineral riches, and this has naturally had its effect on the nation. Mining camps and groups of mining camps dot the country, and distinct territories are devoted to the mining, here of silver, there of gold, here of copper, lead, etc. Indeed, the geography of Mexico has had a tremendous effect in the creation there of a country primarily rich in minerals as she is poor in agriculture. Oil is today the greatest single source of wealth of Mexico, but the other minerals still have their important bearing on her development. The mineral wealth (oil as well as metals) has been the chief attraction which has brought foreign capital to Mexico. The Spaniards and to a lesser extent the Indians before them, mined. the mountains of Mexico, but it remained to foreign enterprise in the time of Diaz to open up the great bonanza sections to scientific development. In the train of this development came more foreign capital of every sort, for agriculture, for industry, for oil, for public service investment. This foreign capital, developing Mexico's latent resources, opened her to the world, and brought forth her great promise of the future-it also gave the revolutionists who overthrew Diaz a handy battle-cry of antiforeignism. It seems unlikely that without the geographical and geological conditions which offered the wealth of minerals to the development of capital, Mexico would or could have entered upon the modern stage of her development. In that was the hope of the past and in it, too, is the hope of the future regeneration of Mexico. The tempting possibilities of such development are the only bait which will bring back to Mexico the stream of foreign capital to which alone she can look for her prompt salvation, when peace becomes permanent. Industries: The geography and climate have had their hand, too, in the industrial situation. Mining, in the time of Diaz, drained the available labor away from the farms and away from the small factories which then existed. The oil fields have more recently taken a large proportion of the available workers. The supply of labor in Mexico is astonishingly small-the development of the latent labor supplies in the Indian communes waits on peace and on education. Temperamentally (and in this we find the hand of climate) the Mexican is not a good factory worker. The raw products which the land produces, sisal hemp, cotton, rubber, etc., all demand for their profitable manufacture large and intricate plants, such as Mexico has not built and for whose operation she has never trained her people. Therefore, save for the cotton factories (which produce only the coarser staples), there is today in Mexico almost no industrial development. The list of industries of which such a manufacturing town as Monterrey boasts, include, for instance, candle and match factories employing thirty or forty people, brass bed "factories," where the products of American foundries are put together, soda water factories the industries which no city in any other land would find worth mentioning. Mexican industry, indeed, waits surely upon the development of raw materials, upon the education of her laboring classes, and upon the solution of the problems of irrigation and water power. Development of Natural Resources: Geography and climate have been cruel to Mexico-of this we need not deceive ourselves. But throughout the list of unhappy conditions which has been set down here there runs a promise of advancement and of better things when peace is assured and when foreign enterprise shall again be welcomed. All of the advance which Mexico has made in her long fight against an unkind nature has been made with the help of foreign energy. First was Spain, and the three hundred years in which she built the colony up to a semblance of a modern state, creating great cities and peace and prosperity. Then, after fifty years of destructive revolution, Diaz, and his wise invitation to and use of foreign enterprise and foreign money. Only in these two periods has Mexico been prosperous. The greatest advance was under Diaz, when in thirty years Mexico rose from the ashes of her revolutions and attained the heights of commercial advancement. In that time her railways were almost all of them built, all the water power which she now has, developed, the great and productive irrigation sectionthe Laguna cotton district-reclaimed from the desert, the sisal hemp industry created, the factories, such as they are, built and set in operation. Virtually all of these advances were made with foreign capital and under the control of foreign engineers and managers. Success crowned the faith and the efforts of all who devoted themselves to these developments, and it was their conquering of the great natural handicaps of Mexico which made possible the glowing tales of her "treasure-house." When such times as those come again, and only when they come, will the battle against Nature be resumed, and in its resumption, the gigns of man's great conquest reappear. |