First in cotton and pecans Texas is also first among the States in cattle, sheep and goats. The United States estimates for 1918 are 1,128, 000 dairy cows valued at $64,038,000; 4,660,000 other cattle at $179,667,000; 1,212,000 horses at $93,324,000; 808,000 mules at $86,456,000; 2,188, 000 sheep at $16,410,000 and 3,068,000 swine at $43,259,000. Sheep and goat raising is largely confined to southwest Texas. Since 1890 the population of Texas has doubled, the number of mules and goats has more than trebled, the number of horses, swine and milch cows has remained nearly stationary, the number' of sheep has decreased 50 per cent and the num ber of "other" cattle has decreased nearly as much.
Plants fall into two fairly well-marked divisions— (a) numerous small plants widely scattered but chiefly in the west, which use the water from rivers, springs and waterholes to raise a wide variety of crops and (b) large plants, chiefly along the lower parts of the rivers, which irrigate thousands of acres under one management and sell water to indi vidual farmers. In the southeast these large plants are almost exclusively rice producing; along the Rio Grande they raise everything but rice. The Elephant Butte Dam on the Rio Grande in New Mexico above El Paso is the only United States reclamation project directly affecting Texas where it will irrigate about 100,000 acres. Perhaps 5,000,000 acres in Texas are irrigable. About a million acres are under ditch and 600,000 acres irrigated an nually, half in rice. Most of the water is pumped to the fields, the total capacity of the pumps being over 6,000,000 gallons per minute. Rice irrigation on a large scale is scarcely 15 years old and the acreage irrigated for other crops has quintupled since 1900. Farms irrigating for rice numbered 73 in 1900 and 1,088 in 1910; farms irrigating for other crops num bered 1,252 in 1900 and 4,150 in 1910. In arid Texas small irrigating plants have existed for centuries. Irrigation development has been particularly rapid since 1910 in the lower Rio Grande Valley but has not been without its backsets. The recently finished Medina Dam near San Antonio renders 60,000 acres ir rigable. Between Hereford and Lubbock lies an area where irrigation water may be ob tained from shallow wells. Similar but small areas exist elsewhere. There is an Artesian Belt in South Texas and various wells are sources of water for domestic uses.
Overflow lands amounting to 3,000,000 acres and swamp lands amounting to 5,000,000 acres exist. Drainage districts covering 2,000.000 acres have already been organized and 150 miles of levees have been built under a recent law authorizing community action in such matters.
This industry is making great progress. The production of petroleum,
which practically began at Corsicana in 1895, owing to the discovery of the rich Spindle Top field in 1901 and of other great fields in the succeeding years, has increased immensely but has been subject to considerable fluctuations. In the last two years the production of the older coastal and north Texas oil fields has increased and immense quantities of oil have been found in the central carboniferous region. Produc tion leaped from 27,644,605 barrels in 1916 to 60,000,000 barrels in 1919. Oil and gas prospect ing has been going on vigorously, stimulated by frequent successes. The production of most of the other minerals has had a slow but fairly uniform growth. In 1914 the total mineral production was $30,363,426, including 20,068,184 barrels of petroleum at $14,942,848; 2,247,773 tons of coal and lignite at $3,922,459; 12,433, 639 M. cubic feet natural gas at $2,469,770; 2,100,341 barrels of cement at $1,947,016. Clay products, lime, gypsum, cinnabar, salt, sulphur and various other minerals amount to the re maining $7,081,333.
Manufacturing.— Since 1900 the °value added by manufacturing° to the Texas raw products has nearly trebled. In proportion to population, in 1900 Texas manufactured a sixth, in 1915 a fourth, as much as the United States as a whole. Manufacturing has arisen chiefly in response to demands made by the immense raw products but has been retarded by scarcity of fuel and skilled labor. The major manu facturing industries are naturally based upon the major raw products. The large cotton crop supports nearly 4,000 gins (some very large) and 200 cotton-seed oil mills but only 20 cotton spinning establishments. Flour, grist and rice mills handle the entire crop of cereals but canning and preserving are far behind the opportunities offered by the large fruit and vegetable crops. There are a few large meat packeries slaughtering close to 1,500,000 animals a year. A few large petroleum refineries with a total capacity of 250,000 barrels per day are handling also much Oklahoma and Louisiana oil transported by pipe lines. The lumber area in the east, chiefly southeast, of over 50,000 square miles, upon which there is an estimated stand of 40,000,000,000 board feet of yellow pine and 20,000,000,000 hardwoods, supports about 400 sawmills and 400 other woodworking plants. About 2,000,000,000 feet of the yellow pine is being cut annually but the hardwood cut is scarcely 5 per cent of this amount. The major industries just listed include about two-thirds of the total manufacturing which, in general, is of a kind that involves only simple processes which may be done by machinery.