Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/139

Rh Its product for 1882 was estimated at 12,500,000 bushels, or at the rate of about 1$3/10$ bushel per capita; while for the year 1885, with a very deficient crop, the wheat product of the United States was in excess of six bushels per capita. Mexican coffee is as good as, and probably better than, the coffee of Brazil, and yet Mexico in 1883-'84 exported coffee to all countries to the value of only $1,717,190, while the value of the exports of coffee from Brazil to the United States alone, for the year 1885, was in excess of $30,000,000! Much has also been said of the wonderful adaptation of a great part of the territory of Mexico for the production of sugar, and everything that has been claimed may be conceded; but, at the same time, sugar is not at present either produced or consumed in comparatively large quantities in Mexico, and, in common with coffee—another natural product of the country—is regarded rather as a luxury than as an essential article of food. Thus the sugar product of Mexico for the year 1877-'78 the latest year for which data are readily accessible, amounted to only 154,549,662 pounds. Assuming the product for the present year (1886) to be as great as 200,000,000 pounds, this would give a Mexican per capita consumption of only twenty pounds as compared with a similar present consumption in the United States of nearly fifty