Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/250

232 the limit of 2,500 hectares, which former legislation had allowed to be granted to one person.

As time went on free land could no longer be secured in the United States, order was established in Mexico, and commerce was freed from its former limitations. These circumstances, which, it was thought, explained failure of immigrants to come to the republic, disappeared but settlers did not turn their steps southward. Foreign capital went to Mexico and with it the managers who would supervise the industrial undertakings, which order within the republic made possible. But the laborer who, by performance and the example he would give the native, was to transform its entire economic structure did not come in great numbers.

A few scattered colonies have come into existence that have had some prosperity. The Mormon colonies in the northwest are the most important. Two Italian colonies of specially chosen, vigorous men are reported to be prospering and there are groups of foreign nationality in other parts of the republic, which are, however, not as a rule "colonies" in the sense in which that word has been used in Mexico. In fact real agricultural colonization in the extensive way in which the republic had hoped to secure it has never had a single example.