Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1907 — INVADING MEXICO. [ARTICLE]

INVADING MEXICO.

American Farmers Are Benefiting Themselves and the Greasers. More than a hundred families from the United States have gone into the republic of Mexico during the last thirty days to develop farming lands along the northern border. They took their household effects and went to live just like they have been living in the United States. This is something of a departure from the plan heretofore followed with but indifferent success by people from the States who have gone to live on farms in Mexico. The old plan was to form colonies. The colony proposition was not a great success. It was due more to the failure of the colonists to agree and adapt themselves to their environment than to any other cause that the colonies were not successful. It has been discovered by the pioneer Americans on farms of Mexico that conditions in the republic are stable and there is no need for colonies. So individual American families are now locating themselves on haciendas in Mexico just as they used to do in the West. They are becoming neighbors to the Mexican families and each is learning something to advantage from the other. So far as the experiment of individual effort at farming in Mexico by Americans has gone, it has proven successful. The cotton-growing possibilities of the republic have never been appreciated by the people beyond the Rio Grande, and in this one line there promises to be great profit for the American farmers who understand growing the staple. The high price of cotton is an inducement to these farmers to plant cotton. The Mexicans are learning the American style of agriculture from their neighbors from the States, and the general result of immigration of families of farmers from the United States to occupy the cheap lands of Mexico promises to be very good.