Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/225

Rh Other house habits are extremely primitive. Each family can be its own potter. The sewing-machine has given some impetus to the leather trade; but although the Mexican saddle is famous the world over, Mexico pays the United States nearly thirty thousand dollars a year for saddles, notwithstanding a duty of fifty-five per cent. This fact is accounted for in the superior mechanical appliances used by the American manufacturers.

It would appear at first sight that the devisors of the Mexican tariff had sought to rival Nature in producing artificial obstacles to match the physical ones. From the moment labor touches any article in Mexico, until it passes to the actual use of the consumer, it has hitherto been taxed. There was a time when it cost Spain forty-four per cent to collect the Crown revenues; her pernicious example has left this tradition of excessive taxation, and imposed the support of an army of tax-collectors upon the commerce of the country. Take a yard of calico. The land that produced the cotton pays nothing. The landlord has been the law-maker for Mexico, as he has been for Great Britain, Ireland, and India; as he was for Germany, until Stein and