duction has not been great enough to supply the demand of the Mexican mills and increasing supplies have had to be drawn from the United States.
From the Mexican point of view the two tariff classes, minerals, and machinery and apparatus with the allied class, chemical products, are the ones that show the most interesting development in the national import trade. In the old days quicksilver went into Mexico and metal products went out. Except for quicksilver, imports of mining products were negligible. Machinery was conspicuous in Mexican trade by its unimportance, so also were chemical products. But the Diaz régime brought these unimportant factors to the forefront. They displaced textiles as the outstanding feature of Mexican imports. They were important for the development of the country because they represented the goods drawn from abroad for its economic regeneration. The first two classes together increased almost fourfold between 1893-4 and 1912-13. Chemical and pharmaceutical imports increased six fold. These were figures that reflected the purchases abroad of the iron and steel, tin, copper, coal, coke, electrical goods, agricultural and other machinery, and railway equipment, which were so important a factor in creating the new Mexico.
One of the most interesting features of a country's foreign commerce is brought out by the study of the source of supply of its imports and the destination of its exports.[1] Since before the beginning of the Diaz
- ↑ The comparisons that follow are not exact because transhipment trade is not satisfactorily shown in Mexican statistics.
