had however wrought evils too serious to be quickly remedied, and whilst some industries had been abandoned, of others the knowledge had been entirely lost.[1] The statutes and ordinances of most of the different guilds were antiquated and inappropriate; the instruction of apprentices was generally very poor. Of the total yearly product of manufactures, valued at about $7,000,000, the greater part consisted of articles of prime necessity.[2] It was only, as we have seen, when war in Europe hindered communication with Spain, that some activity prevailed, but it always subsided, and the ground thus gained was soon lost.
The mining interest was, of course, a very prominent one, though its importance has been so greatly exaggerated as to cause the assertion that New Spain was of little value except as a mining territory. What the country under another form of government did accomplish, is a subject which I shall treat later.[3]
- ↑ 'Habiendo entonces-varios oficios. . . de los cuales aun apenas queda otra noticia.' Id.,
- ↑ Such as soap, leather, ordinary textures of cotton, of wool, and others. The industrial products of Querétaro in 1793 have been estimated at $1,000,000. Soc. Mex. Geog., Boletin, iii. 199. Zamacois, Hist. Méj., v. 715, gives a glowing description of the industrial achievements of New Spain in 1799; according to him they were not to be surpassed by European products.
- ↑ My observations made in a preceding part about the scarcity of authorities on the mining history of New Spain find still more application to this chapter. This want of information has obliged me to gather any material in the form of numerous items, scattered through a vast range of books; in addition, however, I have been aided by a variety of treatises, dwelling only on special subjects. Among writers of the latter class, a prominent place belongs to the scientist Alzate, who has endeavored to diffuse useful knowledge through essays in the different series of his Gacetas de Literatura, Mexico, 1788-95. A separate edition has appeared of his memoir on the cultivation of the cochineal, the Memoria. . . del Insecto Grana ó Cochinilla, Madrid, 1795, pp. 226, of which I have before me a manuscript copy in 280 folios, with the writer's autograph. Of similar color, only embracing one subject, is Payno's Memoria sobre el Maguey Mexicano, Mexico, 1864, pp. 132, and another work of the same title, Mexico, 1865, pp. 32, by Pedro and Ignacio Blasquez. Both, as their title implies, dwell exclusively on the maguey plant and its use, and the first contains much curious information, part of which, however, is of little or merely of local interest. Different in form and arrangement is a treatise on sericulture, written by order of Viceroy Revilla Gigedo, under the title of Compendia. . de las Moreras y Morales, Mexico,
against $18,353,821 for the follo'wing decade. Revilla Gigedo, Instruc., 101-2.
