Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/127

Rh, very curiously, is often the loss of any power of sale by those actually remaining in possession. Thus, in Northern Mexico, according to Consul Sutton, there are persons whose only claim to use the general grazing-lands belonging to the community, and to cut wood upon the same, is the ownership of ten seconds of water per month, and yet even this small right entitles them to hold for their exclusive use such land as they may have under fence, and to live on community land so long as they can build themselves a house and make their ten seconds of water answer their purpose. In such communities agriculture is paralyzed, and, as the only person affected by this pernicious system is the small farmer, the very foundation of progressive cultivation of land is undermined wherever it exists.

Added to all this, there is a marked indisposition on the part of the large owners of real estate in Mexico to divest themselves of such property; and this for various reasons. Thus, in the heretofore almost permanently revolutionary condition of the country, the tenure of movable or personal property was subject to embarrassments from which real estate, or immovable property, was exempt. Under the system of taxation which has long prevailed in Mexico, land also is very lightly burdened. And, finally, from what is probably an