Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/218

214 cultivation of their soil by that highest incentive to industry, — ownership. No one who has travelled through Holland, over the bleak and all but sterile passes of the Juras, and across the Alps, can fail to realize that this incentive has made the agriculture of these countries what it is; while Ireland and Mexico, through millions of unused acres, and other millions under only slight cultivation, testify to the effect which landlordism, idle and oppressive, exercises over the most beneficent and indispensable among human industries.

Yet, without free commerce, and with roads, except the railroad lines, perhaps the worst in the world, and without machinery until within very recent times, the agriculture of Mexico under the republic has made extraordinary progress. In the portions of the valley which the Central Mexican traverses, there are regions with sufficient water. As a rule, irrigation is every-where necessary. This fact should be remembered always in judging the Mexican people. The tenant who works land rents, not so many acres, but the right to so much water. In spite of this difficulty, the valley literally blossoms; and