The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946 Page: 187

Book Reviews

dependent upon a uniformly practiced non-commercial agricul-
ture; today, dependency is diversified. Only 30 per cent of
the population are dependent upon farm operation; the rest
depend upon various forms of wage and relief work, salaries, and
private incomes derived from outside the Valley.
The Middle Valley has only two urban centers of importance -
Albuquerque and Santa Fe. These two cities are predominantly
part of the national economy, with only a limited depend-
ency upon the resources of the Middle Valley. The problems,
fundamentally economic and physical in character, which have
arisen from man's efforts to exploit the natural resources of the
Middle Rio Grande Valley for his economic benefit are difficult.
The authors discuss various proposals that have been made to
solve them and report the aims and progress of constructive
programs under way, emphasizing throughout the study that
fundamentally these problems are not racial, but are derived
from economic and physical resource causes.
OHLAND MORTON
Edinburg Junior College
Silk Raising in Colonial Mexico. By Woodrow Borah. Berkeley
and Los Angeles (University of California Press), 1943.
Pp. viii+170. Bibliography, illustrations, and maps. $2.00.
This is the first full study of the silk inductry in Mexico and
includes an account of its origin, geographical extension, systems
of labor and management, technical processes, adjustments to
peculiarly Mexican conditions, and the reasons for its disappear-
ance. General histories of Mexico devote at most a single para-
graph to the industry. Two short essays and a couple of
pamphlets complete the list of available material prior to Borah's
study, which was written originally as a doctoral dissertation
at the University of California.
The discovery of America opened the New World to European
plants, animals, and crafts. Silk raising demands unusually
intricate adjustments to climate and labor supply, adjustments
which, among all Spain's American dominions, were made in
Mexico alone. Cortes made a beginning in 1523. Within eight
years several other attempts to introduce silk culture had been
made, and some, at least, had been successful. Within a decade
silk culture had become one of the country's most important

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