10 BULLETIN 211, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF STOCK RAISING. 



Manufacturing in the Territory is still in its infancy. The mining of coal, copper, 

 gold, and silver are of considerable importance, but the principal pursuits are stock 

 raising and agriculture. 1 



It is somewhat difficult to get reliable statistics concerning the 

 relative economic importance of stock raising in New Mexico, because 

 the summaries made in most reports do not have their component 

 factors combined in the same manner and are therefore not com- 

 parable. The Territorial and State auditors' annual reports have 

 been compiled from the county assessors' reports and show only the 

 property returned for taxation. This showing is confessedly inac- 

 curate, being always less than the actual facts, especially as to the 

 number of range animals, which are almost never counted, the 

 returns being based upon an estimate. And taxation values are 

 always based upon some percentage less than 100 of the current 

 selling price at the time of making up the returns. 



The figures collected by the United States Census Bureau for the 

 Thirteenth Census are, in the opinion of the present State auditor, 

 probably slightly in excess of the actual facts. These figures, however, 

 are perhaps the most accurate of any available, and in so far as they 

 are usable for our present purpose they will constitute our most reliable 

 data. * Unfortunately, the system adopted in the grouping of some of 

 the items is not designed to bring out the comparisons we wish to make. 

 This report does not differentiate between the range lands and the 

 agricultural or cultivated lands. All patented lands are referred to as 

 "Land in farms," and the subdivisions "Improved land in farms," 

 "Woodland in farms," and "Other unimproved land in farms" do not 

 assist in separating the areas of land used as actual farming land from 

 the proper range lands. 



There is evidently some difference in the classification of the lands 

 given in the census report and the Territorial auditor's report for the 

 same year, 1909, since the latter shows a larger acreage under the 

 heads of grazing and agricultural lands together than all the "Land 

 in farms" as given in the former, and there can be no doubt that the 

 auditor's report is not in excess of the actual taxable acreage, since 

 taxes were assessed on all the lands so listed. There can hardly be 

 any doubt, either, that the group "Land in farms" of the census 

 report is intended to include agricultural and grazing lands, though 

 some of the lands used for grazing may have been reported to the 

 census taker as mineral or timber lands, or part of the proper timber 

 or mineral lands may have been returned as grazing land in the 

 ■ auditor's report in order to benefit by a lower rate of taxation. 



Since practically all timber and mineral lands are used as grazing 

 lands and since there is very little opportunity to falsify the returns 

 of land acreage, the figures given in the auditors' reports are probably 

 very close to the truth regarding the division of the patented lands 

 between the grazing and agricultural industries. 



1 United States 13th Census, 1910, v. 9, Manufactures, Reports by States, p. 7S7. 1912. 



