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Nowhere have these interests disputed with the government, or refused their due taxes or cooperation with the local and national authorities. The only complaint against them was that they raised wages from less than twenty cents a day to a minimum of one dollar a day and made native Mexicans into blacksmiths, carpenters, shipbuilders, and engineers at three dollars and fifty cents a day in gold.

It has been a new economic era. It has been a development. It has not been a conquest or an exploitation either of peoples or of governments, and the same may be said of all the other interests, British and American, in mining and in agriculture, in Mexico. The fighting in Mexico has not been with or concerning American or foreign interests. The fighting has been between local factions, leading families, political parties, the ins and the outs.

The strife has been for the possession of the citadel and the reins of government at Mexico City. There has been danger to the American interests only by reason of their location at times between the conflicting forces, but neither the American nor the foreign interests have so much