i 5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for 1882 was estimated at 12,500,000 bushels, or at the rate of about 

 1-j^g- bushel per capita ; while for the year 1885, with a very deficient 

 crop, the wheat product of the United States was in excess of six bushels 

 per capita. Mexican coffee is as good as, and probably better than, the 

 coffee of Brazil, and yet Mexico in 1883-84 exported coffee to all coun- 

 tries to the value of only $1,717,190, while the value of the exports of 

 coffee from Brazil to the United States alone, for the year 1885, was in 

 excess of 830,000,000. Much has also been said of the wonderful adap- 

 tation of a great part of the territory of Mexico for the production of 

 sugar, and everything that has been claimed may be conceded ; but, 

 at the same time, sugar is not at present either produced or consumed 

 in comparatively large quantities in Mexico, and, in common with 

 coffee another natural product of the country is regarded rather as a 

 luxury than as an essential article of food. Thus the sugar product of 

 Mexico for the year 1877-'78, the latest year for which data are readily 

 accessible, amounted to only 154,549,662 pounds. Assuming the prod- 

 uct for the present year (1886) to be as great as 200,000,000 pounds, 

 this would give a Mexican per capita consumption of only twenty 

 pounds as compared with a similar present consumption in the United 

 States of nearly fifty pounds. The further circumstance that Mexico 

 at the present time imports more sugar than it exports ; and that the 

 price of sugar in Mexico is from two to four times as great as the 

 average for the United States coarse-grained, brownish-white, unre- 

 fined sugar retailing in the city of Mexico for twelve and a half cents 

 a pound (with coffee at twenty-five cents) is also conclusive on this 

 point. With the present very poor outlook for the producers of cane- 

 sugars in all parts of the world, owing mainly to the bounty stimulus 

 offered by the governments of Europe for the production of beet-sugar; 

 and the further fact that the only hope for the former is in the use of 

 the most improved machinery, and the making of nothing but the best 

 sugars at the point of cane production, the idea so frequently brought 

 forward that labor and capital are likely to find their way soon into 

 the hot, unhealthy coast-lands of Mexico, in preference to Cuba and 

 South America, and that the country is to be speedily and greatly 

 profited by her natural sugar resources, has little of foundation. 

 And, as additional evidence on these matters, the writer would here 

 mention, that a statement has come to him from a gentleman who has 

 been long connected and thoroughly acquainted with the Vera Cruz 

 and City of Mexico Railroad, which runs through the best sugar and 

 coffee territory of the country, that not a single acre of land more 

 is now under cultivation along its line than there was at the time the 

 road was completed, thirteen years ago. 



Whatever, therefore, may be the natural capabilities of Mexico for 

 agriculture, they are certainly for the future rather than of the present. 



Manufactures. Apart from handicrafts there is very little of 

 manufacturing, in the sense of using labor-saving machinery, in Mex- 



