Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/232

214 protected and, at least comparatively, personal liberty was assured.

The change, of course, was not due to any one new element introduced into the national life. It was the product of a complex of influences, which, whatever its shortcomings, was bringing about in Mexico a transformation of the old into something better. Among these influences, on the whole beneficent, that of foreign commerce was constant and important. It operated both as cause and effect.

The growing imports gave greater resources through customs taxes to the government. They stimulated the people to new wants, and brought in the machinery and raw materials for new industries and for the expansion of old ones. They made possible better protection of life and property and encouraged the investment of capital, both foreign and national, in lines that would have been impractical before.

As exports expanded new areas were brought under exploitation, not only for their mineral resources but for the vegetable and animal products. The exports, in turn, made increase of imports possible and gave an aspiration toward a standard of life that was impossible before. Few influences, indeed, worked more clearly for the broadening of the national life of Mexico than did the development of her foreign commerce. Few seemed to carry, to a greater degree, the assurance that the industrial development of the country, which it helped to make possible, would gradually bring about a social as well as an economic reconstruction and assure in the republic the continuance, by less arbitrary means,