AGRICULTURE: Fresh from Old Monterrey

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As top economic-affairs adviser in the U.S. State Department from 1944 to 1947, calm, courtly William Lockhart Clayton preached the gospel of freer world trade and the responsibility of U.S. businessmen to finance industrial development abroad. Last week, as boss of Anderson, Clayton & Co., world-trading cotton brokers, Will Clayton showed just what he meant. In Mexico, alongside the highway from Saltillo to Monterrey, rimmed by 12,000-ft. peaks of the Sierra Madre, he opened a new $3,000,000 food-processing plant. Square, squat and red brick, it looked much the same as any other plant from the outside. But inside, 5,000 opening-day visitors last week found the most mechanized food factory south of the Rio Grande.

The plant has a yearly capacity of 50 million pounds of margarine, cooking and salad oil, peanut butter, mayonnaise and salad dressing. It is staffed by fewer than 70 Mexicans (and one American production superintendent). All raw materials will come from Mexican farms; the food products will be marketed within Mexico.

To Will Clayton, the plant was the logical outgrowth of doing business in Mexico. Anderson, Clayton has been buying Mexican cotton for 27 years, has helped push the nation's annual output from 200,000 to over 800,000 bales by crop loans to farmers. Since the company owns 22 cotton gins, five edible-oil mills and an oil refinery in Mexico, the food business is the natural outlet for its oil production. With $4,000,000 allotted for expansion of his Mexican business in 1950, Clayton hopes to see Mexico's cotton crop grow to 1,000,000 bales a year, expects his food business to grow right along with it.