Rio Blanco. The power rights at Nexaca Falls are owned by the Mexican Light and Power Company, a British interest.[1]
The development of industry has been hindered in Mexico, as it is in many other countries, by lack of a good supply of coal. What industrial development has occurred has had to depend largely on the great forests of the country for fuel. As those lying within easy reach of the railroads have been exhausted, the price of wood has naturally risen and efforts to obtain substitutes have been increased. Imported coal continues to be expensive. Some advance has been made in the utilization of water power, especially in the textile industries but the country's rivers are not of sufficiently steady flow to make reliance on that resource satisfactory. Fortunately, the development of the oil regions along the Gulf coast has now placed Mexico in a favorable position, so far as the fuel requirements of her industries are concerned, a factor in which the republic is now as favored as it was formerly unfortunate.
Indirectly, the progress of the local industrial development is reflected in the foreign trade returns of the two decades preceding the revolution. Imports of manufactures ready for consumption increased but little. The total value, for example, of such articles as cloth, chemicals, liquors, paper, vehicles, arms, and explosives was $17,157,000 in 1896. In 1906 it had risen to $25,982,000, but, while the first figure was 40 per cent of the total, the latter was but 24 per cent. In the same
- ↑ Ibid., p. 179.
