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Rh or State frontiers, that few are willing or able to pay them. Hence few American mechanics find their way into the country, unless in accordance with special contract."

This practice of locally taxing interstate commerce is in direct contravention of an article in the Mexican Constitution of 1857, and it is said also of express decisions of the national Supreme Court. Several of the leading States of Mexico have at different times tried the experiment of prohibiting it by legislative enactments; but the States and municipalities of the country are always hard pressed to raise money for their current expenditures, and find the taxing of merchandise in transit so easy a method of partially solving their difficulties that the Federal authorities have not yet been able, or, speaking more correctly, willing to prevent it.