suming a healthful tone, and in 1843 there were 62 factories, with 106,718 spindles and 2,609 looms, in operation, making weekly 8,479 pieces of sheeting. The cotton produced being insufficient, leave was granted in May 1844 to import 100,000 quintals. Those efforts to build up the industry[1] were abandoned in 1848. The government, on the ground that home manufactures could not compete with the foreign, discontinued the prohibitive system, and foreign fabrics were allowed to come in by paying duties. At the end of 1850 there were in operation 55 factories of cloth and twist in Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Mexico, and the federal district, Puebla, Querétaro, and Vera Cruz, besides no less than 10,000 looms scattered throughout the country.[2] The fabrics were plain, worked, and print, the quality gradually improving. The price had been lowered, so that poor people could be clothed seventy per cent cheaper than prior to 1831.[3]
After the fall of the dictator Santa Anna, the new rulers were disposed to afford every possible aid to home manufactures.[4] By the law of August 4, 1857, a tax of 37½ cents a year was set on each spindle, the states being forbidden to tax factories or their products. In 1856 there were bitter complaints, because cotton thread of low numbers and common cloths and textures were allowed to be imported at lower duties than had been intended in 1850. The factories, it was said, were losing money; at any rate, their owners clamored for a return to the prohibitive system,[5] denying
- ↑ It had not been invariably nurtured tenderly. Some administrations, for the sake of getting a few millions, had disregarded it.
- ↑ The value of factories, looms, etc., was $29,000,000, supporting 42,900 families, equivalent to 214,500 persons.
- ↑ There were already made seven varas of manta for each one of the 7½ million inhabitants. Had there been a demand, three times that quantity could have been made with the machinery on hand. Observ. Fab. y Agric., 17-18.
- ↑ Santa Anna had in 1853 levied a tax of 37½ cents on every spindle, promising it should be the only burden; but the political troubles forced several state governments to lay on more taxes, which increased the general depression, and this, added to the difficulty of procuring raw material, compelled many factories to close.
- ↑ According to Lerdo de Tejada, the annual value of manufactures was estimated at 90 to 100 million dollars. Butterfield's U. S. and Mex., 63.
