It is impossible now to predict when and how Mexico will become an agricultural country in fact as well as in potentialities. Irrigation must come, for only when it does will agriculture and the prosperity of agriculture fill the land. In one section where irrigation has been carried out on a large scale--the Laguna district near Torreon, Coah.--cotton is grown in quantity. This product feeds into the native industry of cotton weaving which flourishes near Orizaba and in other sections where local, direct water-power is available. It seems inevitable that the increase in irrigated lands will add to the acreage of cotton and also to the number and importance of agricultural products of the class of raw materials. The country which irrigation will water in Mexico is of vast extent, and is safely comparable, even at its worst, with what the lands of Utah and California and the Imperial Valley were before water was brought to them. Again, however, we wait on peace and on the great works of modern scientific irrigation. And, however enthusiastic we may be as tradesmen, our capital will not be rushing to seek Mexican investments of this sort until civilized government again rules, with a promise of relative permanency. The desert character of the country in the north was responsible for the establishment of a great cattle-raising industry, for the land was cheap and the ranges were vast. This has to-day been virtually wiped out, and Mexico imports meat from the United States--all the result of revolution, so that when peace comes the cattle industry will surely be revived. But always the cattle of northern Mexico have been of the range, still unfit for profitable slaughter, and sections suitable for their fattening have been badly needed. There was, in other days, much shipment of range cattle into the United States, and to the better watered southern sections of Mexico. But although peace will bring a revival of the ranges, Mexico cannot look forward to becoming a great meat-producing country until the irrigation problem is solved. There are rich, well-watered sections of Mexico--this must not be overlooked--but these have resulted in a crowding of population on the plateaus and through the rich valleys such as that of the Lerma river in Jalisco state, and have contributed but little toward the broad development of the country. In fact, one of the characteristics of Mexico’s population distribution has been the tendency to gather into groups, so that a great city like the capital or like Guadalajara or Puebla will have a dozen cities and villages of considerable size close about it--and then stretches of sparsely populated country for leagues until another group is found. This is essentially climatic--and geographical.