WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 175

men who have been here can not be wrongfully taken away from us
and shoved across the river and left there. We would never have
had the scarcity of labor that we have had if it had not been for that.
Mr. Scunemer. Have you a scarcity of labor?
Mr. CanarLes. We have. This year is one of the most extraordinary
 years we ever had. Since 1899 we have never had a freeze.
Up to 10 days ago nur crops were all right. It had been cold; but
last week, unfortunately, the greatest cold we ever had came in, and
practically destroyed most of our crops, and our citrus fruits have
been seriously injured and our vegetable farming has also been injured,
 and that is the reason we can not have labor now, because
there is nothing to gather. But if it had not been for that, we would
have had need for some two or three thousand people altogether, on
our lettuce and turnips and cabbages. and nearly tomatoes later on
and strings beans.
There is another cause for change. The country south of San
Antonio was practically all ranches up to 1891. In 1890 I went to
Austin, to attend a private school there, and I saw only a very few
Mexicans. Most of them were south of that country. I will tell you
how they came to be up there. About 1890 they began to break up
these ranches into smaller farms. In 1892 we had the most dreadful
calamity that has ever been in that section, the drought of 1892.
My father lost all his cattle, and he had to start all over again. My
father was a considerable ranchman in there, with 4.000 or 5.000 head
of cattle. The cattle all died.
American citizens, by right of this treaty that I read to you, had
to move farther up north for subsistence, because the drought was
worse down below and in the northern part of Mexico. It was just
as if God had grabbed those people, 60 per cent of the people there,
by their necks, and removed them for 200 miles. That is what
happened there. Sixty per cent of our people moved in order to
find work. It was at the most psychological moment for those people,
because they were breaking up their ranches. It was good for them,
because they fitted right into a condition that was almost prepared
for them by Almighty God. So that you find a large number of our
population were taken out of there and they never came back, because
the Mexican adapts himself to farming very readily. All that is
necessary is that he shall be taught a little by the American, or those
of Anglo-Saxon descent, and they become efficient farmers.
They have bought their own homes, because they were successful
in farming. But in 1904, the railroad started to Brownsville, to open
up our country, and also a road over here findicating on map], which
1s in southern Texas.
Then these big ranches of ours began to be settled by people
coming from the North. Formerly vou did not find peovle there. or
workers.
Talk about getting hands from the north, they would not come
there because the condition would not encourage their going. When
we began to break up these ranches and plant cotton, then we had to
draw from our neighbors below, and they would come of their own
accord; come early in the spring and plant cotton and then gather
the crop. They could come and go as they pleased, anywhere, and
they would plant and gather our cotton, and they would buy goods
there. and everything, and they would fix themselves the best they