MEXICO’S CLIMATE.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1921, Page 6

MEXICO’S CLIMATE.

HER HOPE IN THE SOUL It wa.3 an old wonder of the geographies that Mexico, helped by its varieties of altitude and soil, possessed an assortment of climate permitting vegetation native from the equator to the poles. This long-known fact (says ■the Springfield Republican) Is assured a revival of interest in the present prospect that the country may be on the threshold of a peaceful era of economic as well as political growth. Settlement upon a stable and reasonably liberal policy encouraging foreign capital in the development of the mineral resources, especially petroleum, should mean also the opening up of the still more neglected possibilities of field and forest. It is probably not generally known that Mexico is even now raising in commercial quantities cotton, rubber, tea, sugar, and vegetable fibres, and that the natural conditions of the growth of these commodities are favorable for their production on a scale and of a quality compa.TM.ble with, those of the World’s greau est plantations. The present situation, as noted by a correspondent of the New York Evening Post, is that cotton production is being hindered by the presence of the boll weevil and the pink worm; ruber culture has developed until already one plantation has 3,000,000 plants at bearing age and 5,000,000 more due to bear within five years; sugargrowing in handicapped by transportation difficulties, labor troubles, an unstable market, and the fact that the richest plantations have been wiped out by the chronic revolution. There has been a degree of prejudice against some Mexican products, .particularly cotton arid rubber, but this prejudice appears to have been due rather to imperfections in preparation for market than to real inferiority of quality. Assuming that an era of comparative peace has begun, there are still, of •course, the formidable obstacles of poverty and ignorance, of political backwardness and uncertainty, to contend with. But these conditions cannot be permanent. “Economic determination ’ is against them. That the undeveloped mine and garden of limitless wealth at the very doors of a rich, resourceful, and friendly country shall be developed is too Obviously to the advantage of both countries, as, indeed, to the whole world- If Mexico were a desert its permanent decline might with some assurance be forecasted. It is quite the contrary, and though the road be long and weary the prospect ahead, in the nature of things, is bright.