AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF MEXICO. 157 



fected on the backs of donkeys or of men ; that the roads in Mexico, 

 as a general thing, are hardly deserving of the name ; * and that, even 

 with good, ordinary roads and good teams and vehicles at command, a 

 ton of corn worth twenty-five dollars at a market is worth nothing at 

 a distance of a hundred and twenty miles remembering these things, 

 one can readily accept the statement that, in many sections of Mexico, 

 no effort is made to produce anything in the way of crop products, 

 except what has been found necessary to meet the simplest wants of 

 the producers ; and for the reason that experience has proved to them 

 that it was not possible to obtain anything in exchange for their 

 surplus. 



The plow generally in use in Mexico is a crooked stick, with 

 sometimes an iron point. American plows are beginning to be intro- 

 duced to a considerable extent ; but the Mexican peasant on coming 

 into possession of one generally cuts off one handle, in order to make 

 it conform, as far as he can, to his ancient implement. A bundle of 

 brush constitutes the harrow. " Their hoes are heavy grub-hoes, and 

 grass is cut by digging it up with such a hoe." 



Nothing exhibits more strikingly the present poverty of Mexico, 

 and the present inefficiency of her agriculture notwithstanding the 

 natural advantages claimed for this industry, and that it is undoubt- 

 edly the principal occupation and support of her people than a brief 

 comparison of some of the results which have been recently reported 

 for Mexico and the United States. According to a report published 

 in 1883, by M. Bodo von Glaimer, an accepted Mexican authority, and 

 other data, gathered and published by Senor Cubas, United States Con- 

 sul-General Sutton, and the Agricultural Bureau at Washington, the 

 value of all the leading agricultural products of Mexico corn, wheat, 

 sugar, tobacco, beans, coffee, and the like for the year 1882 was esti- 

 mated at about $175,000,000. But the present estimated value of the 

 oat-crop alone of the United States is $180,000,000. Again, corn con- 

 stitutes the staple food of the Mexican people, and its product for 

 1882 was estimated at about 213,000,000 bushels ; which, with an as- 

 sumed population of ten million, would give a product of 21^ bushels 

 per capita. But for the United States for the year 1885 the product 

 of corn was about thirty-three bushels per capita. 



Although much of the soil of Mexico is undoubtedly well adapted 

 to the cultivation of wheat, it is as yet a crop little grown or used 

 wheat-bread being eaten only by the well-to-do classes. Its product 



* One of the most noted routes in Mexico is from the capital to Acapulco, the best 

 Mexican port on the Pacific, a route that was traveled, and constituted a part of the 

 transit for convoys of treasure and rich tropical products between the Indies and Old 

 Spain, a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. And yet a journey over 

 this route, a distance of three hundred miles, consumes ten days on horseback under the 

 most favorable auspices ; and the path or trail followed has in great part so few of the 

 essentials of a road that, in popular parlance, it is spoken of as " bum camino de paja- 

 ros" (a good road for birds). 



