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 530 Trescott who were appointed in 1882 to negotiate a commercial treaty with Mexico, in conjunction with the Hon. Matias Romero, Mexican minister to Washington and the Hon. Estanislao Cañedo, concluded their labors 23rd January. Though signed by the presidents of both countries the committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives at Washington reported upon the treaty adversely. No further legislative action having been taken upon it, its provisions became imperative in 1887 through efflux of time, notwithstanding the insistent demands made by the English bondholders for the issue of £20,000,000 sterling of "three per cents" to meet Mexico's accumulating foreign indebtedness. The government rejected the proposition offering as a compromise £18,000,000 which was as flatly refused. Meanwhile marked evidences of industrial progress were almost universal. Railway extension had opened up the coal fields of Michoacan, the Pennsylvania of Mexico, and the locomotive had at last reached the skirts of the cedar forests of Chihuahua, the border line of the great pine region. Eighteen thousand miles of telegraph wire were in profitable operation, sixteen hundred telephone instruments in the capital attested to the expansion of urban trade, startling reports of extraordinary discoveries came from the gold fields of Sonora, and from the Cerro del Mercado at Durango, the growing exportation of tin to the United States warranted the prediction of extraordinary trade possibilities.

Between 1879 and 1884 the average annual value of exports of all the precious minerals amounted to $25,000,000. The annual output from all the mines