Assessing the Obstacles to Industrialisation: The ... - Innovation

14 Stephen H. Haberit owned and operated its own haciendas, where the trees were grown, ranits own mechanical wood-pulp plant, generated its own hydroelectricpower, and operated its own railroad. The total number of workers in allof these operations is unknown, but in its two paper mills alone 2,000operatives were employed. The total paid-in capital was 7 million pesos,and annual production was roughly three times that of all its smallcompetitors combined - roughly I 2 tons of paper per day. In fact, withina decade of its founding, San Rafael eliminated almost all of its domesticcompetition.31In other capital-intensive industries, like cement, beer, dynamite andexplosives, and glass, a similar process occurred: large, highly capitalisedfirms producing for the national market replaced the numerous smallshops which had preceded them.32 They also began to drive foreignproducedgoods out of the market. In beer production, for example, thenation's newer, larger, firms (the Cervecerias Cuauhtemoc andMoctezuma) not only began to challenge the numerous local beerproducers, but also replaced foreign beer imports. Beer imports fell fromapproximately 3 million kilos in fiscal 1889-90 to just over joo,ooo kilosin 1910 1I, while demand for beer was rising. The CerveceriaCuauhtemoc's production alone in I 91 o was over 2 j times that of the totalvolume of imports.33In more labour-intensive manufacturing, especially in consumer nondurable~,asimilar transformation was underway. Data from the twolargest of these industries, cotton textiles and cigarettes, illustrate thischange best.One of the most obvious indicators of this change in the textile industrywas the tremendous growth in the number and size of factories. At the endof the earlier period (1877) there had been 92 cotton mills in operation,each employing on average 2,7j 3 spindles, 98 looms and I 28 workers. ByI 89j the mills were both more numerous and larger : there were now I 10mills in operation, employing an average 3,741 spindles, I 12 looms and207 workers. By 1910 they were more numerous and larger still: therewere now 123 active mills, employing j ,714 spindles, 203 looms and 260workers on average. In other words, not only were there now roughly31The ,\lexzcan ?.earbook, 1908 (London, 1909), p. 539; Thhtfexican l'earbook, 1909-10(London, 191 I), p. 416; The ~tfexican I-earbook, 1912 (London, 1913), p. I 13, 126; Lenzand Gomez de Orozco, La industria paprlera, p. 83." For a more con~plete discussion of the transformation of these industries see StephenH. Haber, Industry and Cnderdei'elopment: The lndustriali~ation of L\fexico, 1890-rpqo(Stanford, 1989), chs. 4 and 6." Calculated from data In El Economista ,\lr.uisano, 24 Ilec. 1898, p. 249; El Economista,Ifexicano, 27 July 1907, p. 360; Fernando Rosenzweig, Comercio exterior de L\fe'xico,~ X ~ ~ - I ~ I I : estaCjljticas econo'nzicas del Porjriato (Ilexico, 19ho), p. 208.