Miscellaneous. 310 [May 1907. 



in Maritzburg, which means that the commission of the middleman, 

 rail carriage from district to Maritzburg and back again, have to 

 be added to cost of mealies. A combination of local growers could 

 thus easily tender at a rate more remunerative to themselves than 

 that received from the middleman, and yet at a figure which would 

 place the middleman out of the runniug.) 



(e) Co-operation for the storage of mealies in tanks or granaries so as not 

 to be forced to sell on an unfavourable market. 



(f) Co-operation, in dairying districts, for the establishment of dairy 

 factories, or— where the immediate formation of such a factory is 

 scarcely justifiably or too risky— for the establishment of temporary 

 cream separating stations from which the cream so separated can 

 be sold to one of the dairy factories. 



(g) Co-operation, in fruit growing centres, for the collecting and for- 

 warding simultaneously, in uniform packages, of fruit so as to 

 reduce cost of transit ; also, for the formation of fruit canning and 

 jam factories. 



(h) Co-operation, in poultry centres, for the collecting, grading, and 

 simultaneous forwarding of eggs in one laige crate instead of, as 

 at present, each farmer sending in his own small consignment. 



(i) Co-operation for the formation of ham and bacon curing establish- 

 ments. 



Detailed information in regard to any of these suggested forms of co-oper- 

 ation will, as previously stated, be readily supplied on application to the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, Maritzburg.— Department of Agriculture, Natal. Bulletin VIII. 



THE EMIGRATION OP LABOUR FROM MEXICO. 



One must have lived on the northern frontier of the country for long years 

 and have seen the interminable exodus of poor people who fill our trains, and who are 

 constantly going on foot along the railway tracks and roadways toward the north 

 to appreciate the importance of this imigration which should have given us much 

 concern. One must have voyaged in the trains and have been in contact with these 

 people to form an idea of the causes of this phenomenon and to realise that the 

 people have made great errors in judging them. To all our frontier villages and 

 towns there are arriving thousands of poor men who have abandoned ranches and 

 villages where they lived to go to work in the United States. They arrive in groups 

 of five, ten or more persons ; and the first thing they do is to select clothing of grey 

 or brown duck, thus abandoning their traditional apparel, that they may thus more 

 easily deceive, in collusion with the labour agents who have engaged them, the 

 restrictive regulations of the emigration laws of the neighbouring nation. 



To lie to the emigration agents or inspectors, and say that they know some 

 house in some city in the United States, that they have been in towns in Arizona or 

 New Mexico, that they have worked on such and such railways, etc., is a lesson that 

 they readily learn enough ; and with duck clothing, hob-nailed shoes, a few dollars 

 in their pockets, and the help of the labour agents, who work for the end and are 

 not particular about the means, the busiuess is carried through, and they enter for 

 the first time into the neighbouring nation in search of work. In speaking of the 

 desires of European and Asiatic emigrants to enter the United States, a Mexican has 

 called this the first stroke of good fortune. For our emigrants it is also the first 

 stroke of good fortune, 



