Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/202

184 continues to be the degree to which the capital is its center, in spite of the facilities introduced by the railroads for its decentralization. Mexico City, the metropolis of the country, by a wide margin is the center of Mexican commerce to an even greater degree than Paris is the center of French trade. The railroads that converge at the capital have helped to continue the habit of the provincial commercial interests to look upon it as the source of supply. In it are the chief banks and from it much of the industrial activity is directed.

The harm done to industry in Mexico during the years of the revolution is much smaller than it would have been had the country had greater development of local manufactures. Agriculture, the chief industry of the republic, suffered severely. In some states, like Vera Cruz, the farming population flocked into the towns. As a result the sugar crop of the state fell from 170,000 tons in 1911 to 40,000 tons in 1917-18. The Cordoba coffee crop dropped off in the same period from 50,000,000 pounds to 20,000,000. In other areas the people, though they stayed on the land, did not plant crops which they felt no assurance they would be allowed to harvest and market. The cattle industry of the northern states steadily declined. That in Chihuahua was reported in 1918 to be only about five per cent as important as before the revolution. In other states legislation for dividing up the large estates threatened to make stock raising impossible.

The effect of the revolution on some of the