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Rh With the view of encouraging outside investors the stringent and practically prohibitive laws governing the acquisition of property by foreigners, were canceled, the government decreeing that "foreigners should no longer be required to reside in the republic in order to acquire waste, or public lands, real estate or ships." This provision did not apply to mining lands, which had always been exempt from the exactions regulating the purchase of real estate. Of the $187,700,000 of English capital invested in Mexico at this time, $56,500,000 was in railways, $50,000,000 in plantations and cattle, $20,000,000 in banks and kindred institutions, and $5,200,000 in city realty, besides the $56,000,000 constituting the public debt, and the limit was not reached, for the Tuxpan railway and a new mortgage company were demanding $30,000,000 additional, and a syndicate headed by Baron Rothschild was waiting to put up the purchase money for 200,000 acres of farming lands in the state of Chihuahua.

While these and other enormous sums were being invested in Mexican securities by Englishmen and other foreigners, who monopolized the field for investment, the fact that an estimated $50,000,000 of native capital was lying idle in the city of Mexico alone, presented a striking commentary on the degree of business enterprise engrafted in the average Mexican. Mexican co-operation entered but little into the financial control of the country. The family strong-box was the native capitalist's bank, a bequest of trade philosophy inherited from Spanish progenitors whose modern lack of desire for business expansion has become a national characteristic.