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144 which is found between the equator and the Arctic Circle, may be said to exist within her borders. Nor is this all. Besides having yielded one half of the existing stock of silver in the world, her mines are still believed to be the richest on the face of the globe. Her deposits of iron are unsurpassed in quantity and quality. To these are to be added every other metal which science has enumerated.

How, then, shall the matchless vegetable and mineral resources of the Republic be developed? That Northern enterprise, industry, and capital will become important factors in the solution of the problem there is little room to doubt. The introduction of the most approved agricultural implements and processes, as well as of the most approved methods of treating the ores, will, of course, increase many fold the productions in both departments of labor. Yet, under existing circumstances, such a result would be neither useful nor profitable. Indeed, without the opening of new fields of industry, and of new avenues for placing the surplus products in the markets of the world, an increase of production might even prove disastrous. In his recent elaborate publication entitled Railways in Mexico, Señor Romero, the Mexican Minister at Washington, pertinently remarks: “A year of good crops in Mexico is a real calamity in many of the agricultural districts, as the production in that year far exceeds the consumption of the immediate neighborhood; and grain can not be sent to any distance on account of the high cost of transportation."

Happily, the first and most essential step has already been taken to provide adequate means of transportation for all the surplus products of the country. The great lines of railway which are now rapidly approaching completion, together with those which have been begun under the auspices of General Grant, Mr. Gould, and other experienced railroad managers, connecting, as they do, with the roads of this country, will become an integral part of a