Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/90

 comer is, 'How much can we make out of him?' They want pay for permitting him to do something for them. There is no public spirit, no local pride. What they want is exorbitant gains."

He went on to tell of an application for a charter by an American company, which was absolutely refused. They were afterward approached and told that the privilege would be granted to a committee of Mexican senators, who would in their turn transfer it to the company for a handsome consideration. The go-betweens in this negotiation declared that the personages who were to have the final voice in the granting of the charter, as well as themselves, would require to be paid, which might have been true, and might not. A liberal share of the subsidy to be voted for the railway was to be exhausted in this way.

I do not know whether this be anything more than political "striking," or black-mailing, with which we are familiar at Albany and elsewhere, and whether the corruption ever really reaches to head-quarters. At any rate, it was said that some part of the aid devoted to each several enterprise was diverted in this way to private benefit. The drainage of the valley had been offered in the United States at a reduction of forty per cent, from the amount voted by the appropriation bill, the difference to be retained by the purveyors of the opportunity. One hundred thousand dollars in cash was demanded, again, as a preliminary, for the opportunity to fill in the works of a certain harbor with stone at a reasonable rate. Such accounts may be worth looking into by Mexican authority, with the interest of good and economical work and the abatement of scandal at heart. There is probably no better form of patriotism for Mexico just now than a strict and uncompromising honesty of administration.