10- BULLETIN 211, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF STOCK RAISING. 
Manutacturing in the Territory is still in its infancy. The mining of coal, copper, 3 
gold, and silver are of considerable importance, but the principal pursuits are stock 
raising and agriculture. . 
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. AU patented lands are referred to as 
‘‘Tiand 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. 787, 1912. 
