Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/274

242 Just one more of Mr. Lewis' all-embracing blunders in that article. Said he:

"Search where you will, in every Mexican corner, from the Pacific to the gulf, from Yucatan to the Arizona line, you will meet no sugar trust to cheat the government with false scales, no coal trust to steal the fires from the poor man's chimney, no wool or cotton trust to steal the clothes off his back, no beef trust to filch the meat from his table, no leather trust to take the shoes off his feet. *** The trusts do not exist in Mexico."

Which proves that Mr. Lewis does not know the first principle upon which Mexican finance and Mexican commercial life is based. Not only does the same financial ring which monopolizes the great industries of the United States monopolize those same industries in Mexico—I shall presently enumerate some of them—but every state and locality has its minor trusts which control the necessities of life in their field a great deal more completely than such necessities are controlled in this country. Mr. Lewis does not seem to know that the Mexican government is openly in the trust business, that by sale and gift of special privileges known as "concessions" it creates and maintains trusts of high and low degree. Personally, Mr. Lewis knows as much of Mexico and Mexicans as any!

Just a slip or two from Mr. Stevens, taken almost at random.

"There is no terrifying labor question to make the investor hesitate. A strike is unknown, and there is no danger of a shortage of labor, skilled or unskilled."

And another:

"No bank in Mexico can fail, no bank-note can be worthless, and no depositor can possibly lose his money, no matter what fatality may befall the bank with which he has his account."