Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/237

Rh of the revolutionary governments. The total production in 1912 was 14,051,643 barrels; in 1918 it was 63,828,327 barrels; and in 1919, 87,072,955 barrels. These items alone, due to the increased value per unit in the one case and to the increased yield in the other, brought about by conditions over which the Mexican government had no control, explain the greater part of the nominal increase in the value of Mexican export trade in 1918 and 1919 as compared with 1912.

The larger customs income also is deceptive since it reflects not so much an increased volume of general trade as higher rates on a number of lines of imports. In fact, as noted above, the actual value of imports was considerably less in 1918 than in 1910-11. The customs returns, moreover, include the yield from the new export taxes on petroleum shipments.

However welcome the greater money values of exports and of the customs income is, they are not to be taken, therefore, as a reflection of a reestablished capacity for production in the country. The degree to which the latter has come about can be better judged by the way in which Mexico will be able to weather the deflation of the values of all her export commodities, which has set in after the war boom. For this period no statistics have yet been published.