MEXICO 143 



for successful stockraising and cheap-meat production. About 

 three-fourths of the whole area is considered suitable only for 

 grazing and agriculture, and the bulk of it is chiefly valuable for 

 grazing. American ranchers, who have been crowded out of 

 their own country by the encroachment of settlers and the 

 handicap of the now almost prohibitive land values in the United 

 States, have realised the great field awaiting them in Mexico, the 

 richness, the vast extent, and the low cost of the splendid pas- 

 tures, and so it has come to pass that enterprising men, with 

 money and experience, have been migrating from their own 

 country to where they can obtain land at a fifth of the price per 

 acre similar land would command in Texas. 



Although the quality of Kexican livestock is at present in- 

 ferior to that produced by the United States and Canada, rapid 

 progress is being made, and there is an increasing percentage 

 of cattle suitable for export as refrigerated meat, while for the 

 tinned-meat trade there is an ample supply. When it is borne 

 in mind that Mexico is equal in area to the United Kingdom, 

 France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, and that the greater 

 part of it can be most profitably utilised by the production of 

 livestock, it can easily be seen that there are marked possibilities 

 of a big trade. The rainfall over a greater part of the territory 

 is sufficient to ensure the growth of nutritious grasses, and the 

 quality of fat produced by these grasses compares favourably 

 with the production on the prairies of Canada, the United States, 

 and Argentina. 



The Mexican National Packing Company, Limited, is about 

 the most favoured meat company in the world. Mexico was 

 noted as the possessor of the most faulty and out-of-date system 

 of dealing with meat that existed in any country of equal impor- 

 tance, and in order to place it on a more sanitary footing, and 

 to enable the people to be provided with wholesome meat, the 

 Mexican Government granted the packing company very exten- 

 sive and valuable concessions. The people of Mexico now can 

 purchase clean refrigerated meat, and they can purchase it at 

 a lower price than they formerly paid for a poorer quality of 

 meat handled in an insanitary manner. 



Taking everything into consideration, the improving quality 

 of the cattle, the favourable climatic conditions, and the short 

 average rail haul to the packing houses, it is tolerably certain that 

 before long Mexico will be counted as one of the world 's big meat 

 suppliers. It only awaits a more settled government, which 



