Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/139

Rh quintals of cotton, allowing fairly for waste, will yield, 183,420 lbs. of twist and filling, and that the weekly product of cotton cloth will be 8479 pieces of 32 varas each, from 2609 looms, each loom averaging about three and one quarter pieces per week. But allowing this correction of the above table of the Junta de Fomento, and adhering to its data in other respects in which it appears to be entirely faithful, we attain some important results. By comparing the number of spindles actually in Mexico at that epoch, with the number known to be there in 1842, viz: 131,280, and adding to the number now stated 8050 which are in the various factories closed in the interval but whose machinery is still in existence, we show an increase of 2132 according to the most accurate accessible information. Since the war the number has been no doubt largely augmented if we may judge by the numerous shipments of machinery to Mexico from Europe and North America.

In order to show the importance to Mexico of allowing the liberal importation of cotton from the United States, inasmuch as it is not likely she will become a cotton growing country in proportion to the increase of her manufacturing population, we have prepared the following comparative estimates. In our chapters on the agriculture of the republic we have endeavored, and we hope successfully, to demonstrate the impracticability of inducing the Indians to produce sufficient for present purposes, or to devote themselves to the labor of extensive cotton plantations for the benefit of the future.

Working by day alone the Mexican factories consume yearly 105,976 quintals, or 10,597,600 lbs. of raw cotton, whilst the whole cotton crop of the republic according to recent estimates, is not more than 60,000, or, 70,000 quintals, equal to 7,000,000 lbs.; but if they worked by day and night, they would use 18,545,800 lbs. of the raw material, allowing three-fourths of the day consumption for night work. From these calculations we derive the following imtant results, as to deficiency: