70 



NEW MANUFACTUBING POPULATION. 



been obliged to abandon their enterprises from the fact that their 

 laborers speedily deserted under the plea that they were not used 

 to such occupations, and, with less toil, had ample food and rai- 

 ment in their goats and gardens at home. The reasoning of the 

 Indians is quite natural and even wise under the peculiar circum- 

 stances of their actual life. Money is no object to them, for they 

 have no object upon which to expend it, and their isolated exist- 

 ence affords them no comparative scale of society in which they 

 might advance to a higher degree of civilization by the possession 

 of wealth. Why then should they toil to acquire that which to 

 them has not even the value of a counter ? Possessing without la- 

 bor all that is needed for mere existence, their toil can only be bene- 

 ficial to their employers. In this, they perceive by their native 

 sagacity, that there is no recompense and no equality of interests. 



Whilst such are the reasons why a new agricultural population 

 cannot be created in Mexico, the reverse is precisely the case with 

 regard to a new manufacturing population. Factories are gener- 

 ally erected in the neighborhood of large towns, or in populous 

 districts where the surplus of females is continually in the greatest 

 indigence. These people have neither pieces of land, nor gardens, 

 nor goats, nor means of livelihood except beggary or the prison, and 

 consequently they flock with eagerness to every factory that affords 

 the hope of employment and support. Thus, whilst the tendency 

 of the agriculture of Mexico is to produce servitude, that of its 

 manufactures is to create a feeling of honest independence. 



These speculations seem to indicate clearly, first, that the fixed 

 policy of Mexico is to establish a national system of manufactures ; 

 and, secondly, that the cultivation of the staple which is to supply 

 these factories will not be largely increased ; or if it be increased 

 at all, its augmentation will not be proportionate to the number and 

 demand of the factories. 



The connexion between the production of cotton and its use is 

 so close that we have been unable in the preceding passages to 

 avoid anticipating some statements which will be more amply set 

 forth in our section on Mexican manufactures. We shall now 

 turn our attention to the cultivation and annual production in the 

 republic. 



Throughout the cotton growing districts of the United States the 

 cotton plant is of annual growth. Frost destroys it, and the plan- 

 ter is obliged to renew the seed for every crop. But, in the tierra 



