pounds. The further circumstance that Mexico at the present time imports more sugar than it exports; and that the price of sugar in Mexico is from two to four times as great as the average for the United States—coarse-grained, brownish-white, unrefined sugar retailing in the city of Mexico for twelve and a half cents a pound (with coffee at twenty-five cents)—is also conclusive on this point.[1] With the present very poor outlook for the producers of cane sugars in all parts of the world, owing mainly to the bounty stimulus offered by the governments of Europe for the production of beet-sugar; and the further fact that the only hope for the former is in the use of the most improved machinery, and the making of nothing but the best sugars at the point of cane production, the idea so frequently brought forward that labor and capital are likely to find their way soon into the hot, unhealthy coast-lands of Mexico, in preference to Cuba and South America, and that the country is to be speedily and greatly profited by her natural sugar resources, has little of foundation. And, as additional evi-
- ↑ Sugar at La Paz, Lower California, sells for twenty-five cents a pound. In Sonora, where the sugar-cane grows naturally, a dark, coarse sugar is manufactured, but not in quantities sufficient for home consumption, about two thirds of the quantity consumed being imported from the United States or Central America. At Guerrero the price of white American is reported at twenty-five cents and of brown Mexican at five cents.
