Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/562

556 The difficulty of transportation remains a serious drawback to every enterprise to be carried on in the republic. This is so obvious as to render credible the statement that an over-crop is as detrimental as an insufficient one. When there is a large surplus, much waste must ensue for lack of the means of transportation. If the crop is a short one, the natives must go on foot and carry "corn from Egypt." In any case it is the masses of pobres who suffer, and the need for not only more railways, but also for wagons and roads, is a real one. If only the hoarded wealth of the country were thus applied, Mexico would not long be in the rear of other countries.

Under the present land tenure, the owners almost escape taxation, while the peon, or the man who takes the products to market, must pay enormous taxes, at the gates of the cities, where the tax gatherers are located. A barrel of flour may be taxed a dozen or twenty times before it reaches the market. Every State, city, and municipality through which it passes has its own laws of taxation. Every page of a merchant's ledger or cash-book must have a stamp. Every receipt must have one at the rate of one cent for every $20. Tickets of all sorts—even to the theater—contracts, bills, and a number of other things must have stamps. But the man who owns houses pays no taxes except when they are rented. This, it may be added, is the reason of the high rents.

The lack of water naturally limits and impedes manufacturing, and the scarcity of fuel places a dead incubus upon it. The government has nurtured and given all the aid and encouragement in its power to such enterprises, but it is difficult if not impossible to rise superior to such great natural obstacles. Wood commands from $15 to $18 per cord, which is, of itself, enough to interdict the use of steam. But there is a solution in the future to this question of fuel. There is no wider field for enterprising capitalists than the opening up of the vast coal deposits that exist in the various States. In Durango there are very fine deposits of hard coal. In other places many varieties are to be found; and the States of Oaxaca and Puebla abound in coal of a fine quality. Surely this will prove a great blessing to the country,