Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/171

Rh their work in a haphazard manner and received very large grants in return for very small services. The government sold large areas at very low prices. Subsequent writers have been unsparing in their criticism of the policy that allowed such things to occur to the disadvantage of the public treasury.

It is doubtful whether the real abuse lies in the rate at which the lands were sold. After all, the settler who goes into a rough, undeveloped country creates all but a small portion of the value of the land he occupies and it is at least open to doubt whether a country in the position in which Mexico found itself might not well afford to give generously of her public land to actual settlers. The increase of the national wealth caused by their industry would be more important than the payments for the land.

The real abuses lie in the other circumstances sketched. The rights of those in possession were ineffectually guarded. The purchasers were not, as a rule, themselves settlers. Often their contracts provided that they must bring in families who would exploit the land, but these provisions were not enforced. In other words, though Mexico could have given her public land to settlers for small payments and still be considered fortunate, what happened was that many of her small farmers were dispossessed, and she sold her lands for negligible amounts and did not get the settlement that would have been her chief reward.

Under 79 contracts for colonization entered into between 1878 and 1889—about one-half of the total being made in 1883-4—only some 6,000 colonists had been