The Mexican Problem Clarence W Barron 1917 175pgs POL

7/27/2019 The Mexican Problem Clarence W Barron 1917 175pgs POL

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( a t e 0 1 3 f r ; i b e p r e $ #

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTSU S . A



A PETROLEUM CAMP IN MEXICO



THE MEXICANPROBLEMBy

CLARENCE W . BARRON

WITH INTRODUCTION BY

TALCOTT WILLIAMS, LL. D

.

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY( d t b e t l i b e r f i b e l D r e s # E a m b r i h g e

1917



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY CLARENCE W. BARRON

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

P u b l i s h e d J u l y l g i 7



" A AMERICA LOCA"

By SANTOS CHOCANOP e r u v i a n , a n d C o l o n e l i n t h e C o n s t i t u ti o n a l i s t A r m y i n M e x i c o

( L a t e 1 9 1 3 )

Peoples tu multuous . F e v e r i s h c o u n t r y s i d e s .

Latin America, sunstruc k and m ad .

( P r e h i s t o r i c )

E m p i r e s d e c k e d i n t h e p o m p o f t h e w a r r i o r , b l i n d e d w i t h

l u x u r y , d e a f e n e d b y s o u n d ,

Stolid priests hacking out entrails and viscera -w i l d

s a c r i f ic e s t o G o d s o f t h e m o u n d .

M a r t i n e t m a s t e r s w h o d r a g o u t t h e h o u r s i n l o w s e n s u a l i -

t i e s f o r e i g n t o L o v e ,

F a t u o u s p e o p l e s a l l , l i k e t o t h e i r p o s t s : h e a r t l e s s , w h o m

o n l y t h e i r f a n c ie s c a n m o v e .

( 1 5 2 0 )

T h e n a r r i v e s S p a i n w i t h h e r c r o s s a n d h e r s o r r o w s , a f t e r

h e r c en t u r i e s s e v e n o f s t r i f e .

Phantomlike multitudes (fair gods on horses) lay waste

t h e A n d e s a n d s t r i p t h e m o f l i f e .

P i z a r r o a n d A l m a g r o c r o s s t h e i r k e e n r a p i e r s i n f r a t r i c i d e

s t r i f e t h a t ru n s o n t i l l t o - d a y -H e r n a n C o r t e z i n t h e a r m s o f M a r i n a , m i n g l e s t w o b l o o d s

t h a t a r e m a r k e d f o r d e c a y .

O f f s p r i n g , a G r y p h o n ; f u t i l e , i n s a n e -

E a g l e o f f e a t h er , a n d l i o n o f m a n e .

M o o r i s h d e p r e s s i o n c o m e s o u t o f t h e d e s e r t , c l i n g i n g a l l

t i m e t o t h e s t r a n g e S p a n i s h h o r s e .

W a i l i n g , i t s s a d n e s s f i n d s e c h o i n A n d e s , m o u n t a i n s n o w

silent and dumb with remorse .



v i A AMERICA LOCA

B a c k o f t h e p r ie s t a n d h i s f u r i o u s r i t u a l , I n q u i s i t o r i a l p h a n -

t o m s a r i s e .

T h e n , a m i d s u f f e r i n g , h u n g e r a n d m i s e r y , f l o u r i s h e s C a s t e ,

b u i l t o n t e r r o r a n d l i e s .

( 1 5 8 0 )

Fray de las Casas by mad lib eratio n loads on America

b u r d e n s m o r e g r e a t ;

B l o o d o f t h e A f r i c a n n o w i s c o m m i n g l e d w i t h t h a t o f t h e

G r y p h o n , t h e c u r s e o f t h e S t a t e .

T h i s n e w d e c a d e n c e g i v e s f l o w e r s a n a e m i c , r i c h i n t h e i r

c o l o r , b u t o d o r l e s s , s t a l e ;

Women inspiring b ut sensual agonies ; b a r d s w h o i n a l l

b u t t h e i r f a n t as i e s f a i l .

( 1 5 2 0 - 1 8 1 0 )

C y c l e s o f h i s t o r y r e a d i n g l i k e f a ir y t a l e s ; v i c e r e g a l b r i l -

l i a n c e o f c o l o r a n d t o n e .

0 t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f s i l v e r y e v e n t i d e s ! S i l k e n r o p e - l a d d e r

and Moorish balcon -

F a l s e s t o f v o w s g i v e n -f u r t i v e s t c o q u e t r y -heads nod-

d i n g " Y e s " t o t h e t r y s t o f t h e s l a y e r -S w o r d s s a c r i l e g i o u s l y h i s s f r o m t h e i r s h e a t h e s i n t h e v e r y

C a t h e d r a l a n d b r e a k o f f t h e p r a y e r .

A l l t h e v i l e e l e g a n c e , t h e n o f D o n J u a n -P i e t y , d e c e n c y , s a n i t y , g o n e .

( 1 8 1 0 )

P r o p h e t s , s e l f - s t y l e d , r a i s e t h e g ri t o o f L i b e r t y . Over one

c e n t u r y , l o s t a r e t h e ir c r i e s .

( 1 9 1 3 )

Comes, now, this meaningle ss, bloodletting orgy, from

w h i c h o u r L o r d G o d t u r n s h i s p i t y i n g e y e s .

Peoples tumult uous . L a n d s o f h o t f e v e r .

Latin Ameri ca, suns truc k and mad .



FOREWORDTHIS o l d g l o b e i s n o w b e l t e d w i t h b a t t l e , i n t h e

g r e a t e s t w a r t h a t e v e r w a s o r e v e r c a n b e , t o

s e t t l e t h e p r o b l e m o f t h e b r o t h e r h o o d o f m a n

a n d o f n a t i o n s.

When th e smoke shall have cleared away,

t h e r e w i l l b e a n e w d a y f o r t h e w h o l e w o r l d , a n d

a new meaning to Christian b rotherhood, as

t h e r e w i l l b e a b r o t h e r h o o d o f n a t i o n s f o r t h e

f i r s t t i m e i n h u m a n h i s t o r y .

I n t h e f u t u r e , n a t i o n a l d i s o r d e r m u s t n o t b e

a l l o w e d a n y w h e r e i n t h e w o r l d , f o r i t l e a d s t o

i n t e r n a t i o n a l d i s o r d e r .

T h e i d e a t h a t M e x i c o i s a l a n d t o b e e x p l o i t e d

b y f o r e i g n p r i n c e s p a s s e d a w a y w i t h M a x i m i l i a n .

T h e i d e a t h a t i t i s t o b e e x p l o i t e d f o r t h e b e n e -

f i t o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s m u s t s o o n g o b y t h e

b o a r d s , i f i t h a s n o t a l r e a d y g o n e .

W h a t i s w a n t e d i s a c l e a r p a t h t o e x t e n d h e l p

to Mexico -M e x i c o i n i t s n o r m a l d i s o r d e r ,

m o r a l , s o c i a l , f i n a n c i a l , a n d p o l i t i c a l .

A s a s t u d e n t o f t h e w a r a n d h u m a n p r o g r e s s ,

I w e n t t o M e x i c o t o s t u d y t h e o i l s i t u a t i o n . I

came back with something more important -



v n i FOREWORD"The Mexic an Prob lem . " S e e k i n g i t s s o l u t i o n ,

w he r e I h a d f a i l e d t o f i n d i t i n r a i l r o a d , a g ri cu l -

t u r a l , o r m i n i n g d e v e l o p m e n t , I f o u n d i t i n o i l ,

b e c a u s e o i l a t t h e s e a c o a s t c o u l d g i v e d e v e l o p -

ment from high wages without making sudden

u p s e t o f t h e e c o n o m i c s t r u c t u r e o f t h e c o u n t r y .

T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s h a d t h e f i r s t M e x i c a n p r o b -

l e m w h e n i t a c q u i r e d f r o m M e x i c o t h e P a c i f i c

Coast . I t f o u n d t h e s o l u t i o n i n g o l d ; " g o l d a t

f o o t o f t r e e , " i n t h e r i v e r - b e d s a n d b a n k s a n d

v a l l e y s . G o l d p a i d h i g h w a g e s t o h i m w h o c o u l d

w a s h i t o u t . I t r e t u rn e d h i g h wa g e s f o r s u p p l i e s .

I t i n v i t e d r o a d s a c r o s s t h e c o n t i n e n t , k n i t t i n g

t h i s o l d M e x i c a n t e r r i t o r y i n t o c i v i l i z a t i o n a n d

the Union .

T h e s o l u t i o n w a s B u s i n e s s w i t h a b i g B . A g r i -

c u l t u r e f o l l o w e d . A g r i c u l t u r e i s n o t b u s i n e s s .

A g r i c u l t u r e i s j u s t e x i s t e n c e . B u s i n e s s i s e x -

p a n d i n g w a g e s a l l a r o u n d ,-a g e s t o l a b o r ,

w a g e s t o c a pi t a l ; i n c e n t i v e t o l a b o r t o a c c u m u -

l a t i o n , t o l u x u r y - l u x u r y o f f r e e d o m i n b o d y

and mind -freedom to move the body from

p l a c e t o p l a c e a n d e x e r c i s e t h e m i n d b y h u m a n

t o u c h a n d c o n t a c t !

E c o n o m i c p r o d u c t i o n i s p r o d u c t i o n i n q u a n -

t i t y . E x c h a n g e o f s u r p l u s f o l l o w s . T h i s i s c o m -

merce . B u t t h e f r u i t o f c o m m e r c e m u s t n o t b e



FOREWORD i x

w h o l l y s o r d i d a c c u m u l a t i o n . Ther e must b e

f r u i t a g e a n d i n t e r c h a n g e d i d e a s a n d c u s t o m s .

T h e r e m u s t f o l l o w m e n t a l d e v e l o p m e n t .

M a n i f a l o n e o n t h e g r o u n d i s b e l o w t h e b r u t e .

H e i s s l a v e t o t h e s o i l , w h ic h wi l l y i e l d h i m f o o d

o n l y b y t h e s w e a t o f h i s b r o w . Then he m ust

s t o r e i t a n d c o o k i t a n d c l o t h e a n d s h e l t e r h i m -

s e l f . N a t u r e c l o t h e s a n d s h e l t e r s a l l o t h e r a n i -

m a l s a n d s a t i s f i e s t h e i r t a s t e w i t h r a w f o o d .

W h y s o c r u e l t o m a n ? O n l y t o b e k i n d .

Man m u s t w o r k . God w ork s ; a n g e l s w o r k ;

d e v i l s w o r k . T h e r e i s n o r e d e m p t i o n f o r m a n ,

t h e r e i s n o p r o g r e s s f o r m a n o r w o m a n , e x c e p t

b y l a b o r -l a b o r o f h e a r t , m i n d a n d h a n d . L a -

b o r o f t h e h a n d m u s t b e f i r s t ; i t p u r i f ie s t h e

b l o o d c o u r s i n g t h r o u g h b r a i n a n d h e a r t . Labor

o f t h e m i n d m u s t f o l l o w t h a t t h e h a n d m a y b e

d i r e c t e d ; a n d l a b o r o f t h e h e a r t m u s t c o m e i n

t h a t h a n d a n d m i n d , b y c o m m e r c e a n d t h o u g h t ,

m a y r i g h t l y t o u c h i t s f e l l o w . O n l y t h u s m u t u -

a l l y c a n t h e r e b e h e a l t h , h e l p , a n d p r o g r e s s .

N o o t h e r a n i m a l h a s l u x u r y , b e t t e r f o o d , o r

b e t t e r s h e l t e r , w h e t h e r t h e r e a r e t h o u s a n d s o r

m i l l i o n s m o r e . But man may hav e progr ess by

e v e r y o t h e r m a n . T h e m o r e t h o u s a n d s t h e b e t -

t e r e a c h m a y b e , a n d t h e m o r e m i l l i o n s i n h u -

m a n i t y t h e g r e a t e r a n d t h e m o r e i m p o r t a n t t h e



x FOREWORDi n d i v i d u a l m a n . N e g a t i v e t h i s p r o p o s i t i o n a n d

t h e u n i v e r s e o f m a n , o f h u m a n i t y , i s e n d e d .

A l l o t h e r a n i m a l s i n p a ir s , f a m i l i e s , o r g r o u p s

may be independent ; m e n a n d l i k e w i s e n a t i o n s

n e v e r c a n b e . T h e c h i c k c h i p s i t s s h e l l a n d i n -

s t a n t l y p i c ks i t s f o o d . Man mu st b e led a nd

t a u g h t . A n i m a l s h a v e i n s t i n c t . M e n a r e d e n i e d

i t t h a t t h e y m a y k n o w t h e i r f e l l o w m e n.

I n d e p e n d e n c e , i n d i v i d u a l l y a n d n a t i o n a l l y , i s

p a s s i n g a w a y . T h e i n v e n t i o n s , t h e m e c h a n i s m ,

t h e a r t s , f o r m a n ' s p r o g r e s s a r e a l l h e r e . The

way is now open . Human s lave ry, serf dom,

p e o n a g e , a r e p a s s i n g . D e m o c r a c y i s r i s i n g . The

l a s t g re a t s t r u g g l e i s o n a n d f o u r t e e n n a ti o n s a n d

f o r t y p r o b l e m s a r e in i t . B u t it i s a l l o n e , -h u -

m a n f r e e d o m t h a t m a n m a y k n o w h i s f e l l o w a n d

t h a t m u t u a l h e l p f u l n e s s m a y a r i s e , i n d i v i d u -

a l l y , c o l l e c t i v e l y , n a t io n a l l y .

I n d e p e n d e n c e D a y m u s t t a k e o n a n e w m e a n -

i n g . N a t i o n a l i n d e p e n d e n c e i s h e r e a f t e r p o s -

s i b l e o n l y b y n a t i o n a l i n t e r d e p e n d e n c e .

A m e r i c a w a s o p e n e d i n t h e d e s i r e f o r m e n t a l

freedom . He r e wa s b o r n p o l i t i c a l f r e e d o m , d e s -

t i n e d t o e n c i r c l e t h e w o r l d i n l i t t l e m o r e t h a n a

h u n d r e d y e a r s . H e r e , t o o , w e r e s t r u c k d o w n t h e

s h a c k l e s f r o m h u m a n h a n d s l a b o r i n g i n s l a v e r y .

From freedom of hand and mind America must



FOREWORD x i

g o f o r w a r d , i s g o i n g f o r w a r d , i n f r e e d o m , w i t h

h e a r t p u l s a t i n g f o r u n i v e r s a l p o l i t ic a l f r e e d o m .

Human liberty can b e maintained on th is

p l a n e t o n l y b y c o o r d i n a t i o n o f h a n d , o f m i n d ,

o f h e a r t .

T h e h e a r t o f A m e r i c a i s n o w e x p a n d i n g , e a s t ,

w e s t , a n d n o r t h ; J a p a n a n d A u s t r a l i a , w e s t ;

Canada a nd the British Isles to t he no rth ;

F r an c e , I ta l y , R u s s i a , o u r A l l i e s , e a s t ! Can we

f o r g e t M e x i c o , o u r n e a r e s t b r o t h e r s o u t h ? A n d

s h e h a s s o m u c h t o g i v e u s ; f r u i t o f t h e t ro p i c s ,

m i n e r a l a n d o i l , w e a l t h o f a c o n t i n e n t c o m p r e s s e d

i n t o a n i s t h m u s , c a p a c i t y f o r t h e h a p p y , h e a l t h -

f u l , h e l p f u l l a b o r o f , n o t f i f te e n m i l l i o n , b u t fi f ty

m i l l i o n p e o p l e ! A n d w e s o m u c h t o g i v e h e r ,

t h e f r u i t o f o u r p o l i t i c a l , s o c i a l , m e n t a l , a n d

m a c h i n e r y p r o g r e s s ; o u r a r t s , c h e m i s t r y , a n d

f i n a n c i a l a n d c o m m e r c i a l s y s t e m s ! O f n a t u r a l

w e a l t h s h e h a s a b u n d a n c e . O f h e l p i n g h a n d s ,

k i n d l y d i r e c t i o n , a n d o r g a n i z a t i o n s h e h a s w o e -

f u l n e e d . A n d w h o i s n e i g h b o r t o h i m t h a t h a t h

need ?

A f t e r s t u d y i n g o n b o t h s i d e s o f t h e A t l a n t i c

t h e f o u n d a t i o n c a u s e s f o r t h e w a r b e g i n n i n g i n

1 9 1 4 , I p r e s e n t e d t h e e c o n o m i c t r u t h i n T h e A u -

d a c i o u s W a r : t a r if f c au s e s , d e s i r e fo r t e r r i to r y a n d



x u FOREWORDs p h e r e s o f i n f l u e n c e , d o m i n i o n o f o v e r l a n d a n d

w a t e r r o u t e s t h a t t r a d e m i g h t e x p a n d ; l a c k o f

n a t i o n a l m o r a l i t y , a n d " T h e W i l l t o P o w e r . "

I t h o u g h t I k n e w a n d u n d e r s t o o d i t a l l .

L a t e i n 1 9 1 6 I d r o p p e d i n u p o n D r . Ta l c o t t

W i l l i a m s , a s h e s p o k e a t t h e c i v i c f o r u m i n

B r o o k l i n e .. M a s s a c h u s e t t s . I w a n t e d t o g e t h i s

m e a s u r e a n d d i v i n e w h a t l i n e o f t a l e n t h e m i g h t

b e t u r n i n g o u t a t C o l u m b i a f o r f i n a n c i a l j o u r -

n a l i s m . T o m y a s t o n i s h m e n t I g o t a n e w a n g l e

f r o m w h i c h t o v i e w m y o w n i g n o r a n c e a s t o t h e

c a u s e s o f m o d e r n w a r s . I h a d t h o u g h t t h a t ,

w h i l e e c o n o m i c c o n d i t i o n s w e r e b a s a l u n d e r G e r -

m a n y ' s m o s t a u d a c i o u s w a r a n d R u s s i a ' s l o n g -

c o n t i n u e d p r e pa r a t i o n f o r d e f e n s e , c e rt a i n l y r a c e

a n d r e l i g i o n w e r e a t t h e r o o t o f t r o u b l e s i n t h e

B a l k a n s , i n T u r k e y , a n d t h e F a r E a s t . B u t h e r e

a g a i n w a s t h e e v e r l a s t i n g " b r e a d - a n d - b u t t e r

p r o b l e m " o r b r e a d , e v e n w i t h o u t b u t t e r , p r o b -

lem .

Dr. W i l l i a m s s h o w e d f r o m f i r s t - h a n d k n o w l -

e d g e , a n d f i f t y y e a r s ' r e f l e c t i o n t h e r e o n , t h a t

o u r b o a s t e d C h r i s t i a n c i v i l i z a t i o n , w h a t e v e r i t

m i g h t b e i n i t s e n d i n g s , w a s i n i t s b e g i n n i n g s

t h e d i s r u p t e r o f s t a t e s a n d n a t i o n s ; t h a t w h e r e

v i l l a g e s a n d c o m m u n i t i e s i n t h e B a l k a n s , i n T u r -

k e y , i n A f r i c a , a n d i n t h e F a r E a s t h a d e x i s t e d



FOREWORD K i l l

i n c o m p a r a t i v e p e a c e f o r c e n t u r i e s a n d h a d t h e i r

p a r c h m e n t r e c o r d s a n d t i t l e d e e d s o l d e r t h a n

any in modern Europe, their whole economic

b r e a d - a n d - b u t t e r f a b r i c h a d b e e n u p s e t b y g o o d s

"m a d e i n Ge r m a n y" ; c h e a p e r m a n u f a c t u r e s

f r o m V i e n n a ; t h e Ar m e n i a n h a d l e t i n t h e C h r i s -

t i a n b a n k e r a n d o u t w e n t t h e h o m e - c u r r e n t w a r e s

t o f o r e i g n m a r k e t s , w h i l e b a c k c a m e t h e f o r e i g n

g o o d s d e s t r o y i n g l o c a l h a n d i n d u s t r i e s , w i t h n o

e c o n o m i c s u b s t i t u t i o n g i v i n g l o c a l e m p l o y m e n t .

The Mohammedan tra ced the trade connection

a n d s t a r t e d t o k i l l t h e A r m e n i a n s , w h o s e C h r i s -

t i a n f r i e n d s h a d t a k e n a w a y t h e i r l i v e l i h o o d .

V i e n n a a n d B e r l i n g o o d s a l s o u p s e t t h e b u s i n e s s

b a s e i n t h e B a l k a n s . T h e p e o p l e c o u l d n o t p a y

t h e T u rk i s h t a x e x a c t i o n s . O n c a m e t h e l a s h ; a n d

G e r m a n y f o u n d p r o f i t i n s e l l i n g t h e g u n s t h a t

responded . The outs ide wor ld opened Man-

c h u r i a , a n d w h e r e p e a c e h a d r e i g n e d f o r h u n -

d r e d s o f y e a r s n o b o d y h a d s i n c e b e e n a b l e t o

m a i n t a i n l a w o r o r d e r . T h e B o x e r R e b e l l i o n w a s

a s i m i l a r e c o n o m i c p r o t e s t .

T h e r e w a s o n l y o n e p o s s i b l e r e m e d y . T h e o l d

o r d e r c o u l d n o t b e p u t b a c k . T h e n a t i o n s m u s t

u n i t e a n d g o f o r w a r d . T h e y m u s t i n s u r e d e v e l o p -

m e n t b y o r g a n i z a t i o n , c a p i t a l , a n d m o d e r n m a -

c h i n e r y , w h i c h c o u l d e x i s t o n l y w i t h c o u r t s o f



x i v FOREWORDj u s t i c e e n f o r c i n g l a w s , o r d e r , a n d c o n t r a ct s . No

o t h e r r o u t e wa s v i s i b l e f o r e i t h e r n a t i o n a l o r i n -

t e r n a t i o n a l p e a c e .

When th e demand became emphatic that my

a r t i c l e s o n M e x i c o , i t s o i l f i e l d s , a n d i t s s o -

c i a l , p o l i t i c a l , a n d e c o n o m i c p r o b l e m s t a k e b o o k

f o r m , I n a t u r a l l y t u r n e d t o D r . Wi l l i a m s t o a s k

i f h e w o u l d s e t t h i s f o r t h i n a p r e f a c e w i t h t h e

conclusions he had reached for the problem

M e x i c o p r e s e n t s t o - d a y b e f o r e t h e w o r l d .C . W. BARRON

BOSTON, J u l y 4 1 9 1 7



PREFACETHESE a r t i c l e s o n , t h e " M e x i e a n P r o b l e m , " b yMr . C . W . Barron, are to my mind a cle ar

a n d w i s e e c o n o m i c p i c t u r e o f M e x i c o , b e y o n d

a n y o t h e r s t h a t I h a v e r e a d -a n d t h e r e i s v e r y

l i t t l e o f t h e r e c e n t l i t e r a t u r e o f M e x i c o w h i c h

I h a v e n o t r e a d o r e x a m i n e d .

N o t o n e s o g r a s p s t h e c l e a r , s t r o n g f a c t t h a t

M e x i c o i s a h e l l o n e a r t h b e c a u s e M e x i c o h a s n o

l a w , s a v e h e r e a n d t h e r e f d r t h e b r i e f s e a s o n

t h a t s o m e m a n k e e p s l a w a n d o r d e r t o f e e d h i s

o w n a m b i t i o n t o b e a n i r r e s p o n s i b l e r u l e r a n d

p o s s e s s p r e s e n t p o w e r a n d t h e p o s s i b i l i t y o f

f u t u r e w e a l t h .

I t i s f o r t y y e a rs , t o a f e w we e ks , s i n c e , a s t h e

c o r r e s p o n d e n t o f t h e New Yor k Sun at Wash -

i n g t o n , I w a l k e d o f e n i g h t i n t o t h e h o u s e o f t h e

M e x i c a n M i n i s t e r a t W a s h i n g t o n , a n d t o l d h i m-h e h a d n ' t h a d t h e f i n a l n e w s -t h a t a l l w a s

o v e r w i t h L e r d a , t h e n e w s u c c e s s o r o f J u a r e z ,

w h o h a d s e n t h i m t o W a s h i n g t o n , a n d t h a t D i a z

w a s i n c o n t r o l . I s a w o n c e m o r e t h e m o s t b i t t e r

s o r r o w , t h e m o s t b it t e r p a n g o f h o p e l e s s g r i e f a

m a n ' s f a c e c a n m i r r o r -d e s p a i r f o r t h e f u t u r e o f



x v i PREFACEo n e ' s o w n l a n d . I n m y l i f e I h a v e s e e n t h is l o o k

i n t h e f a c e o f H u n g a r i a n , I t a l i a n , P o l e , C u b a n ,

t h r o u g h a l o n g l i s t o f l a n d s , d o w n t o a M e x i c a n

o n t h e d a y I w r it e t h e s e l i n e s .

I n t h e f o r t y y e a r s s i n c e I s a w S e n o r M a r i s c a l

g r i p t h e a r m s o f h i s c h a ir , h i s k n u c k l e s w h it e n i n g

a n d h i s d a r k f a c e t u r n i n g a p a l i n g g r a y , I h a v e

n e v e r i n a l l t h e m a n y p a g e s I h a v e w r i t t e n o n

M e x i c o , a n d m a n y a n o t h e r t r o u b l e d l a n d , h a d a

shadow of doub t that Mexico would be where

M ex ic o i s t o - d a y , a s t h e s e l e t t er s t e l l , w i th c a r-

t r i d g e s f o r c u r r e n c y , b e c a u s e m y b o y h o o d a n d

t h e d a w n i n g f a c t , t h o u g h t , a n d w r i t i n g w h i c h l e d

t o j o u r n a l i s m w e r e p a s s e d i n s o u t h e r n T u r k e y

b e t w e e n t h e T i g r i s a n d E u p h r a t e s , w h e r e t h e

g r i m p r o b l e m , w h i c h h a s w r a p p e d t h e w o r l d i n

u n i v e r s a l w a r , w a s a t i t s b e g i n n i n g o f t h e m a n i -

f o l d h o p e s w h i c h h a v e l e f t b u t a s h e s .

I w a s a m i s s i o n a r y ' s s o n a n d m y f a t h e r , t h e

Re v e r e n d W . F . W i l l i a m s , s e n t f o r t h b y t h eA. B . C . F .M . , h a d t h a t u n u s u a l t h i n g i n a m i s -

s i o n a r y , a n e n g i n e e r ' s t r a i n i n g w i t h t h e k n o w l -

e d g e o f t h e m i n e r a l o g i s t . . The w ide worl d was

f u l l o f t h e r o s y b e l i e f t h a t , a s i n t h e U n i t e d

S t a t e s a n d i n E u r o p e w e s t o f t h e V i s t u l a , t h e

e c o n o m i c b a s i s o f l i f e w a s v i s i b l y r i s i n g l i k e a

n e w c o n t i n e n t o f h u m a n c h e e r a n d h a p p i n e s s ,



PREFACEl i f t e d b y t h e f o r c e s o f i n v e n t i o n , s t e a m p o w e r ,

a n d i n d i v i d u a l i n i ti a ti v e , s o a l l t h e w o r l d w a s t o

r i s e i n l i k e m a n n e r a n d m e a s u r e . Whe n in our

l o n g r i d e s o v e r t h e m o u n t a i n s w h i c h r i m M e s o -

p o t a m i a n o r t h a n d e a s t , w h o s e v a l l e y s f e e d i t s

b o u n d a r y r i v e r s , b o y - l i k e , I b r o u g h t h i m a s p l i t

p e b b l e o f m a l a c h i t e , t h e r h o m b o f c a r b o n a t e

o f i r o n , t h e s h i n i n g b l a c k c u b e s o f g a l e n a , t h e

s h o r t s t a p l e o f a co t t o n b o l l b o r n e b re a s t h i gh a s

w e c a m p e d b y a r u s h i n g s t r e a m , a n d h e w o r k e d

o u t i t s p o s s i b l e w at e r p o w e r , o r I t o o k l e s s o n s a t

a v i l l a g e l o o m - h e w a s p r o p h e s y i n g t h e e c o -

nomic expansion to come . I d o n o d e s p i t e t o

h i s f l a m i n g z e a l f o r s o u l s w h e n I r e c o r d t h a t I

n e v e r s a w h i s f a c e b e a m a s w h e n h e t a u g h t o n e o f

h i s c o n v e r t s h o w t o m a k e s u l p h u r i c a c i d w i t h t h e

u n m i n e d s u l p h u r d e p o s i t o f M o s u l , a n d t h e m a r l

i m p r o v e d o n t h e p r o c e s s i n U r e ' s D i c t i o n a r y ,

t h a t c o m p e n d o f f i f t y y e a r s a g o .

T h e c o p p e r a n d t h e l e a d , h e p o i n t e d o u t t o m e ,

t h e o i l w h i c h r a i n b o w e d s o m e s t r e a m s o n w h a t i s

n o w t h e e d g e o f t h e K e r k u k o i l f i e l d s , a r e s t i l l

undeveloped . This convert's tiny plant was

s t o p p e d b e c a u s e i t m i g h t l e a d t o t h e e a s i e r

m a k i n g o f e x p l o s i v e s . B u t t h e g o o d m a n ' s t w o

s o n s a r e t h r i v i n g b u s i n e s s m e n -n o t i n M o s u l

opposi te Ninev eh, but i n Providenc e, Rhode



x v i i i PREFACEI s l a n d . M y f a t h e r ' s e c o n o m i c v i s i o n h a s n e v e r

t a k e n s o l i d s h a p e . L i ke v i s i o n s , t h e wo r l d o v e r ,

h a v e b e e n b l a s t e d . Why? Beca use e con omi c

d e v e l o p m e n t n e c e s s a r i l y r e s t s o n c o u r t s t h a t

e n f o r c e c o n t r a c t s a n d o n o r d e r t h a t m a k e s s a v -

i n g s s a f e a n d p r o v i d e s b e t t e r c u r r e n c y t h a n

c a r t r i d g e s , M e x i c o ' s p o p u l a r l e g a l t e n d e r t o -

day . C r e d i t s a r e o n l y p o s s i b l e w h e n c o n t r a c t s

a r e e n f o r c e d . Men will w ork with industr y

o n l y w h e r e w a g e s a n d p r o p e r t y a r e p r o t e c t e d .

Se e ho w Mr . B a r r o n d e s c r i b e s t h e f a s h i o n i n

w h i c h t h e b r i e f a n d u n c e r t a i n e c o n o m i c p r o t e c -

t i o n o f a n A m e r i c a n p l a n t h a s t u r n e d t h e p e o n

i n t o a s t e a d y o i l - p r o d u c e r , s e l f - d i r e c t e d , i n a

g r e a t a n d c o m p l e x p l a n t .

I f t h e r e ar e n o c o u r t s t h a t m e n c a n t r u s t , t h e r e

c a n b e n o c r e d i t s o r c o n t r a c t s . I f t he s e a r e n o t ,

n e i t h e r c a p i t a l n o r w a g e s c o m e . O n c e , i n t h e

s e v e n t e e n t h a n d e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y , e v e n f o r a

t h i r d o f t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y , b e f o r e s t e a m o n

s e a a n d l a n d s w ep t s p a ce a s i d e , i t wa s p o s s i b l e i n

i s o l a t i o n f o r s o m e i n d u s t r ia l c o m m u n i t y t o g a t h e r

s t r e n g t h , a s i n i s l a n d e d E n g l a n d o r i n e a r l y o r -

ganized France, and this development gave

s t r e n g t h a n d p o w e r t o t h e E n g l i s h K i n g ' s B e n c h

w r i t a n d t o t h e F r e n c h K i n g ' s " Parleme nt . "

A p a r t , C h i n a h a d , a c e n t u r y a g o , a s o u n d i n -



PREFACE s i x

d u s t r i a l s y s t e m , n a r r o w b u t s t a b l e , w i t h a p o p u -

l a t i o n o v e r c r o w d e d o n t h e c o a s t , b u t p o s s e s s i n g

i n t h e i n t e r i o r p e a c e a n d c o m f o r t , a s A b b e H u e

h a s t e s t i f i e d . Alone, this dev elopme nt mig ht

h a v e g o n e o n . W h e n s t e a m b r o u g h t E n g l i s h a n d

Ameri can . c o m p e t i t i o n , C h i n a w o u l d h a v e r e o r -

g a n i ze d i t s i n d u s t r ia l s y s t e m i f it h a d h a d c o u r t s

a n d a j u d i c i a l s y s t e m p o s s e s s i n g i n t e g ri t y a n d a n

e f f ic i e n t g o v e r n m e n t t o e n f o r c e j u d i c i a l d e c r e e s ;

b u t c o m p e t i t i o n d e s t r o y e d i t s i n d u s t r ie s , a n d t h e

a b s e n c e o f t h e f o u n d a t i o n o f a l l e c o n o m i c s y s -

t e m s , j u s t i c e , p r e v e n t e d C h i n a f r o m a d v a n c i n g .

F i r s t , i n t h e s o u t h o f C h i n a , e a r l i e s t a f f e ct e d b y

E u r o p e a n c o m p e t i t i o n , c a m e t h e T a i P i n g R e -

b e l l i o n , a n d t h e n e w E u r o p e a n a r m s o f p r e c i s i o n

g a v e t h e c e n t r a l t y r a n n y o f t h e M a n c h u a n e w

power. Later, North China broke out i n the

B o x e r r e v o l t , e c o n o m i c i n o r i g i n . F o r f i f t e e n

y e a r s p a s t , t h e i n t e r i o r h a s b e e n a f l a m e , r i s i n g

f i r s t w h e r e th e g r e a t r iv e r s b r i n g c l o s e r E u r o p e a n

t r a d e . C h i n a i s t o - d a y a d e r e l i c t , a h u l k a d r i f t

o n t h e o c e a n o f h i s t o r y , w h e r e i t h a s w e a t h e r e d

s o m a n y s t o r m s , i t s i n d u s t r i e s , t w o c e n t u r i e s

a g o g i v i n g l e s s o n s t o E u r o p e , t o - d a y d e t e r i o -

r a t e d o r d e s t r o y e d .

T hi s i s t h e hi s t o r y o f a l l A s i a an d o f a l l N o r t h

A f r i c a , o f m u c h o f L a t i n A m e r i c a . S o l o n g a s t h e



x x PREFACETurkish Sultan an d the Moslem co mmonalty

h a d t h e s a m e a r m s , d e s p o t i s m c o u l d n o t g o m o r e

t h a n s o f a r . W h e n t h e T u r k i s h a r m y , a c e n t u r y

a g o , w a s n e w - a r m e d a n d o r g a n i z e d o n t h e E u r o -

p e a n m o d e l , n a u g h t c o u l d s t a y t h e d e s p o t i s m o f

C o n s t a n t i n o p l e . T h e r u g s o f A n a t o l i a a n d t h e

w a r e s o f K u t a i y e h , n i n e t y y e a r s a g o t h e b e s t

f a i e n c e o f t h e W e s t , h a v e f a l l e n f r o m o l d s t a n d -

a r d s . S o w i t h t h e s o l i d c o l o r s o f P e k i n g w a r e s ,

a n d t h e p o r ce l a i n s o f t h e i n t er i o r . P er s i a i n t h e

l a s t f if t y y e a rs h a s s e e n t h e a rt o f f o u r c e n t u r i e s

c ea s e a s a l l i t s g r e a t c a ra v a n r o a d s f e l l i n t o d i s -

o r d e r a n d t h e c a r a v a n s c a r r i e d E u r o p e a n g o o d s

t o t h e u n d o i n g o f n a t i v e i n d u s t r i e s u n a b l e t o

d e v e l o p f o r l a c k o f c o u r t s .

T h i s h a s b e e n a w o r l d m o v e m e n t . T h e i n e x o -

r a bl e p ri n c i p l e t h at y o u c a n n o t b u i l d a s o u n d e c o -

n o m i c s t r u c t u r e u n l e s s c r e d i t a n d c o n t r a c t s a r e

s u s t a i n e d b y c o u r t s t h a t c a n b e t r u s t e d , w o r k s

a s p i t i l e s s l y a s t h e a t t ra c ti o n o f g r a v i t a ti o n o n

t h e b o w i n g w a l l a n d t h e t o t t e r i n g f e n c e , t h e

a r c h o f u n t e m p e r e d m o r t a r a n d t h e d o o r j a m b s

w h o s e s i l l i s h e a v e d b y f ro s t . S i x t y y e a r s a g o I

s a w th e p r o c e s s b e g i n n i n g i n T u rk e y , f ir s t o n t h e

c o a s t , l a t e r i n t h e i n t e ri o r . T h i r t y y e a r s a g o I

s a w t h e s a m e f o r c e s a t w o r k i n M o r o c c o , i n t h e

m e d i a e v a l c a p i t a l o f F e z , w h o s e o l d A n d a l u s i a n



PREFACE x x i

p o t t e r s a n d p a t t e r n s w e r e b e i n g r u i n e d b y G e r -

man crockery .

Latin America h as faced the same drastic

p r e s s u r e . A century ago all the w orld, when

C a n n i n g c a l l e d a n e w w o r l d i n t o b e i n g t o r e d r e s s

t h e b a l a n c e o f t h e o l d , l o o k e d t o s e e th e ec o n o m i c

d e v e l o p m e n t o f t h e r e v o l t e d c o l o n i e s o f S p a i n

a n d P o r t u g a l . B a d a s S p a n i s h a d m i n i s t r a t i o n

w a s a n d r e l e n t l e s s a s w a s t h e c e n s o r s h i p o f

t h e I n q u i s i t i o n , t h e p r i n t i n g - p r e s s e s o f M e x i c o

t u r n e d o u t , r e l a t i v e t o t h e m e c h a n i c a r t o f t h e

d a y , b e t t e r w o r k t w o h u n d r e d y e a r s a g o t h a n

t o - d a y . I t i s t h e o l d e r p o t t e r y o f M e x i c o t o

w h i c h o n e t u r n s f o r t h e f a r - f l u n g i n f l u e n c e o f

t h e f a i e n c e o f S p a i n f a s h i o n e d o u t o f t h e l i g h t

v o l c a n i c c l a y s o f M e x i c o . I t i s n o t t h e r e c e n t

e d i f i c e s o f M e x i c o o u r a r c h i t e c t s s t u d y t o g i v e

u s w h a t w e c a l l " M i s s i o n " a r c h i t e c t u r e . Let

C o u r t s b e a b s e n t a n d j u s t i c e d u b i o u s , a n d t h e

s u r e e n d o f t h e i n v e s t m e n t o f $ 1 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0

wh ich Mr . B a r r o n s k e t c h e s w a s p r e d e t e r m i n e d .

W h e n " B o s t o n p e o p l e h a d g r e a t h o p e s o f t r a f f i c

i n t h e M e x i c a n C e n t r a l l i n e t h e y b u i l t f r o m E l

P a s o t o c o n n e c t w i t h t h e C i t y o f M e x i c o , " t h e y

w e r e t h e m s e l v e s s o f a m i l i a r w i t h t h e c o u r t s o f

M a s s a c h u s e t t s t h a t t h e y l o o k e d o n t h e j u s t i c e

m e n t r u s t a s a n o r m a l n a t u r a l p r o d u c t o f s o -



x x u PREFACEc i e t y . T h e y f o r g o t t h a t r a i l s m u s t r e s t o n m o r e

t h a n r o c k ba l l a s t t o b e s a f e f o r p r o f i t s .

C u b a , u n d e r t h e P l a t t A m e n d m e n t , i s s e c u r e

a n d p r o d u c e s , y e a r a ft e r y ea r , a s u g a r cr o p n e a r l y

t r e b l e t h e b e s t o f t h e S p a n i s h p a s t , w i t h r i s -

i n g w a g e s b e c a u s e w e i n s i s t e d on o r d e r , c o u r t s

t h a t e n f o r c e d c o n t r a c t s , a n d a s a n i t a t i o n w h i c h

e x c l u d e d p e s t i l e n c e . E c o n o m i c p r o s p e r i t y , r a i l -

r o a d s t h a t p a y d i v i d e n d s , f a c t o r i e s w h o s e p r o d -

u c t s m e e t c o m p e t i t i o n , a n d a g r o w i n g p o p u l a -

t i o n c a n o n l y c o m e w h e r e co u r t s a r e j u s t l y t r u s t e d

a n d e n f o r c e c o n t r a c t s ; w h e n p u b l i c h e a l t h a n d a

l o w d e a t h - r a t e m a i n t a i n t h e v i g o r o f t h e l a b o r e r ,

a n d h i s l i f e , h i s p r o p e r t y , a n d t h e s c h o o l i n g o f h i s

c h i l d r e n a r e pr o t e ct e d b y a s o u n d a n d e f fi ci e n t a d -

m i n i s t r a t i o n . L e t t h e s e b e a b s e n t a n d r u l e w i l l

b e c o m e a g a m b l e f o r p o w e r a n d m o n e y , m e n w i l l

b u y c o n c e s s i o n s f i r s t a n d p r o t e c t i o n f o r t h e m

l a t e r , pe r en n i a l d i s e a s e w il l s a p i n d u s t r y , an d y o u

c a n n e i t h e r s e c u r e c a p i t a l f r o m a b r o a d n o r p r o -

v i d e l a b o r a t h o m e .

J a p a n , i s l a n d e d a n d l o n g a b l e t o s h u t o u t f o r -

e i g n c o m p e t i ti o n , f i r s t b y a p o l i c y o f g e n e r a l e x -

c l u s i o n a n d l a t e r b y a d r o i t i n t e r n a l a d m i n i s t r a -

t i o n , w a s a b l e t o r e o r g a n i z e it s i n d u s t r i e s b e f o r e

t h e y w e r e s a p p e d a n d d e s t r o y e d . I t s r u l i n g c l a s s

c r e a t e d a n e w j u d i c i a l s y s t e m w h i c h c o m m a n d e d



PREFACEs u c h r e s p e c t t h a t e x t e r r it o r i a l i t y a n d i t s c o u r t s

w e re a b o l i s h e d a t t h e o p e n i n g o f t h i s c e n t u r y a n d

n a t i v e a n d f o r e i g n e r t r u s t e d t o t h e s a m e j u s t i c e .

I n o t h e r A s i a t ic l a n d s s p e c ia l c o n s u l a r c o u r t s g i v e

t h e f o r e i g n m e r c h a n t a s t a n d i n g a d v a n t a g e w h i c h

d e s t r o y s n a t i v e c r e d i t a n d p a r a l y z e s n a t i v e e n -

t e r p ri s e . J a p a n i s a s i g n a l p r o o f o f t h e w a y a n

A s i a t ic l a n d , i f i t b e fo r a s e a s o n p r o t e c te d , c a n

r e o r g a n i z e i t s i n d u s t r y a n d c r e a t e s t a b l e c o n d i -

t i o n s o u t o f w h i c h a n e w s y s t e m c a n c o m e , s a f e -

g u a r d e d a n d f o s t e r e d b y p u b l i c o r d e r , c o u r t s

c r ea t i n g c o n f i d e n c e , a n d e f f ic i en t s a n i t a t i o n .

I t i s n o a n s w e r t o s a y t h a t t h e J a p a n e s e h a v e

s p e c i a l p o w e r s a n d a p e r s o n a l a p t i t u d e . A s k a n y

m a n w h o k n o w s t h e F a r E a s t a s t o t h e p e r s o n a l

c r e d i t o f C h i n e s e a n d J a p a n e s e . Com pa re Per-

s i a n a n d J a p a n e s e a r t w h e n b o t h w e r e a t w o r k

u n d e r s i m i l a r c o n d i t i o n s i n t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n -

t u r y . I h a v e k n o w n , b o y a n d m a n , c l o s e l y a n d

i n t i m a t e l y , a w i d e r a n g e o f h u m a n b e i n g s . I h a v e

h a d a t m y t a b l e a n d b e e n h o n o r e d b y t h e c l o s e

p e r s o n a l f r i e n d s h i p o f m e n b l a c k , y e l l o w , r e d ,

w h i t e , a n d m a n y s h a d e s b e t w e e n . T h e N e a r E a s t

I k n o w a s d o o n l y t h o s e w h o s p e a k i t s t o n g u e s ,

h a v e k n o w n i t i n c h i l d h o o d , a n d m a t u r e y e a r s ,

r e a d i t s l i t e ra t u r e , t h r i l l t o t h e g e n i u s o f i t s v a -

r i o u s a r t s , a n d h a v e t h e o p e n h e a r t a n d m i n d f o r



x x i v PREFACEi t s f a i t h s . A t b o t t o m , m e n a r e a l i k e . Huma n be -

ings make Humanity . Un d e r l i ke c o n d i t io n s , a l l

a c t a l i k e . G i v e a n y l a n d a n d a n y r a c e a f a i r

c h a n c e a n d i t wi l l b e a s o t h er s a n d n o t o t h e rw is e .

B u t a f t e r o l d s y s t e m s , i n d u s t r i a l a n d e c o n o -

m i c , a r e u n d e r m i n e d a n d o v e r t h r o w n , t h i s c h a n c e

c a n o n l y c o m e b y b u i l d i n g a n e w u n d e r p r o t e c t e d

c o n d i t i o n s . S e e h o w E n g l i s h c o u r t s a r e b r i n g i n g

I n d i a c l o s e r a n d c l o s e r t o s e l f - g o v e r n m e n t . W h e r e

woul d Cuba b e but for o ur aid? Give Mexico

p r o t e ct i o n f o r o r d e r , c o u r t s , c o n t r a c t s , i n d u s t r ie s ,

a n d s a n i t a t i o n f o r a b r ie f s p a c e , -o n e , t w o , o r

t h r e e d e c a d e s , a n d w h a t i s t h i s s p a n i n t h e l i f e

o f a n a t i o n ? -a n d t h e s p l e n d i d q u a l i t i e s o f t h e

M e x i c a n p e o p l e w o u l d d o t h e r e s t . K e e p o r d e r ,

c r e a t e c o u r t s , e d u c a t e a g e n e r a t i o n , t u r n o u t

t y p h u s a n d t r o p i c a l d i s e a s e s w h i c h s c o u r g e t h e

M e x i c a n h o m e ( s o m e o f t h e w o r s t m a l a d i e s a r e

n o t t r o p i c a l ) , a n d t h e c o u r a g e , t h e l o y a l t y , t h e

p a t i e n t i n d u s t r y , t h e q u i c k t e a c h a b l e n e s s o f t h e

M e x i c a n c a n b e t r u s t e d t o m a i n t a i n w h a t i t s e -

c u r e s u n d e r t u t e l a g e , a n d t o a d d t o i t .

M e x i c o i s t o - d a y l i k e t h e g r e a t o i l w e l l s o f

wh ich Mr . B a r r o n g i v e s s o v i v i d a p i c t u r e , a

f a t h o m l e s s r e s o u r c e f o r t h e l i g ht a n d p o w er o f t h e

w o r l d , a n d n e e d i n g o n l y t h e m e c h a n i s m w h i c h

w i l l e n a b l e i t t o s e t a t h o u s a n d k e e l s a n d t e n



PREFACE x x v

t h o u s a n d w h e e l s i n m o t i o n a n d l i g h t m i l l i o n s o f

happy homes .

H o w c a n t h e n e c e s s a r y o r d e r , e f f e c t i v e c o u r t s ,

a n d n a t i o n a l s a n i t a t i o n b e p r o v i d e d f o r s u c h

g r ea t e n d s o f j u s t i ce ?

T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s b r o u g h t t h e s e t h i n g s t o

C u b a a n d s e e t h e r e s u l t , p e a c e a n d p r o s p e r i t y

w i t h o u t a n n e x a t i o n a n d w i t h c o m p l e t e a u t o n o -

m o u s i n d e p e n d e n c e f o r t h e C u b a n p e o p l e . G i v e

t h e M e x i c a n p e o p l e t h e s a m e c h a n c e , t h e s a m e

o p p o r t u n i t y , a l i k e p e r i o d i n w h i c h n e w i n s t i t u -

t i o n s , n e w c o u r t s , n e w s e c u r i t y , n e w s a n i t a t i o n

c o m e i n t o b e i n g , a n d M e x i c o w i l l s h o w t h e s a m e

m a r v e l o f a b o u n d i n g p r o g r e s s .

T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s j u s t a h a l f - c e n t u r y a g o

s a v e d M e x i c o f r o m t h e f o r e i g n i n v a d e r . T o - d a y

Mexico must be sav ed from th e internal de-

s t r o y e r . One task w as accomplished without

i n v a s i o n . The ot her m ay be . A c c o m p l i s h e d i t

m u s t b e . M o r a l r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s k n o w n o b o u n d -

a r y l i n e s .

TALCOTT WILLIAMS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITYNEW YORK J u l y 1 , 1 9 1 7



CONTENTSI. THE CONTRAST . . . .

XII . DOHENY-ORD OF OIL

1

. NO

II. AMERICAN INTERESTS NO BASE OF DISORDER 15

III. BUSINESS AND NOT POLITICS CAN REDEEM

MEXICO 27

IV. WHO SH ALL HELP THE ENGULFED PEOPLE? 39

V. WHY No AID FOR MEXICO? . . . . 5 2

VI . THE F INANCIAL BENEFITS OF DISORDER . 60

VII . THE LAW OF COMPENSATION 67

VIII. THE "EF F ECTIVOS" IN MEXICO 77

IX. OIL EXPANSION6X. PIONEER WORK F INISHED . . . . 94

XI. WHY T HE PAN-AMERICAN COMPANY CONTROLSMEXICAN PETROLEUM04



ILLUSTRATIONS

A PETROLEUM CAMP IN MEXICO . . . F r o n t i s p i e c e

CLEARING JUNGLE FOR PETROLEUM CAMP . .

CHRISTMAS DAY AT EBANO . UNVEILING STATUE OF

JUAREZ4THE GUSHER PO TRERO 4, BEF ORE BEING CAPPED . 36

STORAGE RESERVOIR AT POTRERO-,500,000 BAR-

RELS . .

20

48

SOME OF THE 55,000-BARREL STORAGE TANKS, MEXI-

CAN EAGLE OIL COMPANY8VIEW OF TUXPAN, SHOWING STORAGE TANKS AND

STEAMER LOADING CARGO O F MEXICAN OIL FROM

DEEP-SEA LOADING LINES 58

A BARBECUE WITH AMERICANS WAITING ON THE

MEXICANS .

HUASTECA PETROLEUM COMPANY SUPPLYING NATIVES

WITH FO OD BROUGHT BY ITS TANKERS F ROM THE

UNITED STATES, DURING WAR TIMES IN MEXICO . 132

MAP SHOWING LANDS OF MEXICAN PETROLEUMCOMPANYt end o f book

70

TwoBRITISH DESTROYERS - ONE RUNNING ON COAL,

THE OTHER ON OIL8PEON HOUSES BEFORE OIL DEVELOPMENT BEGAN 96

RESIDENCES OF PEONS00NEAR TRES HERMANOS24



THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

CHAPTER ITHE CONTRAST

APPEALS i n b e h a l f o f M e x i c o h a v e b e e n b e f o r e

t h e p e o p l e o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s f o r m o r e t h a n

o n e g e n e r a t i o n .

F i f t y y e a r s a g o t h e a p p e a l s w e r e f r o m r e -

t u r n e d m i s s i o n a r i e s c o l l e c t i n g m o n e y t o h e l p

s p r e a d t r u t h a n d l i g h t b e f o r e o u r f e l l o w m a n

a n d b r o t h e r o v e r o u r s o u t h e r n b o r d e r .

N e a r l y f o r t y y e a r s a g o c a m e t h e a p p e a l f o r

r a il r o a d s . T h e g o o d p e o p l e o f t h e N o r t h , a n d

e s p e c i a l l y o f N e w E n g l a n d , r e s p o n d e d w i t h m i l -

l i o n s a n d d e c l a r e d : " W e t h i n k t h e i n v e s t m e n t

w i l l b e p r o f i t a b l e , b u t w e t a k e p l e a s u r e i n t h e

t h o u g h t t h a t t h e r a i l r o a d s w i l l b e t h e b e s t m i s -

s i o n a r i e s . T h e y w i l l o p e n o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r m u -

t u a l a n d p r o f i t a b l e d e v e l o p m e n t i n t r a d e , c o m -

merce, mining, and manuf acturing . There is

much t hat w e can do f or Mexico, and much

t h a t s h e c a n d o f o r u s . "

T h e n i c k e l s a n d d i m e s o f m y e a r l y s a v i n g s

t h a t h a d n o t g o n e t o t h e M e x i c a n m i s s i o n a r y i n



2 THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

r e s p o n s e t o B i s h o p B u t l e r ' s h e a r t - m o v i n g a p -

p e a l s w e r e n o w t a k e n f r o m t h e s a v i n g s b a n k a n d

s u b s c r i b e d f o r b o n d s o f t h e M e x i c a n C e n t r a l a n d

Sonora Railw ays - t h e o n e t o o p e n u p t h e g r e a t

t a b l e l a n d o f M e x i c o f r o m E l P a s o t o M e x i c o C i t y

a n d t h e o t h e r t o c a r r y t h e A t c h i s o n d e v e l o p m e n t

o f t h e S o u t h w e s t t o t h e b e a u t i f u l m o u n t a i n -

l o c ke d p o r t o f G u a y m a s o n t h e G u l f o f C a l i f o r n i a .

H e r e o p e n e d v i s t a s f o r N e w E n g l a n d c a p i t a l a n d

C a l i f o r n i a e n t e r p r i s e d o w n t h e P a c i f i c C o a s t a n d

t h r o u g h t h e h e a r t o f M e x i c o .

SOU THERN CALIFORNIA AND MEXICO

I n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h T h o m a s N i c k e r s o n , t h e

g r e a t p i o n e e r b u i l d e r o f t h e A t ch i s o n a n d t h e ra i l -

r o a d s o f M e xi c o , I j o u r n e y ed t o C a l i f o r n i a ; a n d a t

S a n D i e g o l i s t e n e d t o o n e o f t h e b e s t a d d r e s s e s

I e v e r h e a r d , a n d f r o m a m a n w h o n e v e r m a d e

a d d r e s s e s . T h o m a s N i c k e r s o n t o l d t h e C h a m b e r

o f C o m m e r c e a t S a n D i e g o t h a t h e w a s n o t i n

a g r e e m e n t w i t h t h e S o u t h e r n a n d C e n t r a l P a c i f i c

p e o p l e w h o m h e h a d v i s i t e d i n S a n F r a n c i s c o a n d

w h o h a d d e c l a r e d t h a t t h e r e w a s n o t h i n g i n S a n

D i e g o o r S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a e x c e p t i n v a l i d s ,

"one-lung ers," and bees, and that the only

p r o s p e c t i v e t r a f f i c f r o m t h e h a r b o r o f S a n D i e g o

w a s a f e w b o x e s o f h o n e y i n t h e c o m b . N i c k e r -



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND MEXICO 3s o n d e c l a r e d h i s f a i th a n d t h e fa i th o f t h e p e o p l e

o f N e w E n g l a n d i n t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f S o u t h e r n

C a l i f o r n i a a n d c l o s e d b y s a y i n g t h a t h e w a s s u r e

o f o n e t h i n g : t h a t i f t h e r o a d d i d n o t p a y , t h e

p e o p l e w h o h a d p u t i n t h e m o n e y c o u l d a f f o r d t o

l o s e i t .

T h e r e w a s n o s u c h d o u b t r e g a r d i n g t h e r a i l -

r o a d s o f M e x i c o . In Mexico w ere m ines with

l o n g r e co r d s o f p r o d u c t i o n , f e rt i l e s o i l s , t r o p ic al

f ru i ts , m i l l i o n s o f p e o p l e . I n S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r -

n i a t h e r e w e r e n o m i n e s , f e w p e o p l e , a n d o n l y

s u n s h i n e a n d h o n e y b e e s a s a b a s i s f o r A m e r i c a n

e n t e r p r i s e .

A l t h o u g h T h o m a s N i c k e r s o n w a s w e l l a l o n g i n

y e a r s , w e t o o k t o t h e s a d d l e a n d r o d e u p t h r o u g h

T e m e c u l a C a n o n a n d t h e T e m e s c a l V a l l e y o v e r

t h e l i n e o f t h e p ro p o s e d S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a R a i l -

w a y a n d o n t o t h e i r ri g a t e d g a r d e n s o f R i v e r s i d e ,

w i t h n o t a h o u s e o r h a b i t a t i o n b e t w e e n t h a t

t o w n a n d t h e s e a c o a s t , a l t h o u g h s h e e p g r a z e d

p e a c e f u l l y i n t h e b r o a d v a l l e y o f T e m e s c a l .

A f e w d a y s l a t e r I w a s i n S o n o r a , j o u r n e y i n g

towar d Guaymas . We m ad e " Uncl e Tho mas,"

a s w e af fe c ti o n a t e l y c a l l e d h i m , a p a l l e t o f s t r aw

i n t h e s t a b l e o f t h e r a n c h o f J e s u s M a r i a , a n d

t h e n o u t s i d e , b e f o r e w e s a i d g o o d - n i g h t t o t h e

s t a r s a n d r o l l e d u p b a c k t o b a ck i n o u r b l a n k e t s



4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMo n b u f f a l o r o b e s , I i n t e r r o g a t e d t h e e n g i n e e r s ,

n o t o n l y c o n c e r n i n g m i n e s a n d m i n i n g h i s t o r y ,

b u t a s t o h o w t h e y k n e w t h e v o l u m e o f w a t e r t h a t

m i g h t o n e d a y , i n S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a , s e e k t o

p a s s t h r o u g h t h a t s e v e n t e e n - m i l e n a r r o w g o r g e

known as th e Temecula Canon . T h e y e x p l a i n e d

i n d e t a i l h o w t h e y d e t e r m i n e d t h e w a t e r s h e d

a r e a i n t h o s e h i l l s a n d t h e p r o b a b l e r a i n f a l l a n d

t h e n b u i l t t h e b r i d g e s a n d t r a c k s a t e l e v a t i o n s

i n t h e v a l l e y w e l l a b o v e f u t u r e wa t e r s .

DISASTER AND RECOVERY

N o t l o n g a f t e r o u r l i t t l e p a r t y r e a c h e d h o m e

t h e r a i n y s e a s o n b e g a n i n S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a ,

a n d t h e b e a u t i f u l v a l l e y w h e r e t h e s h e e p h a d

b e e n s o p e a c e f u l l y g r a z i n g w a s a l a k e , s e v e r a l

f e e t d e e p a n d t w e n t y m i l e s l o n g ; o u t o f w h i c h

roared throug h th e Temecula Canon a riv er,

t w e n t y a n d f o r t y f e e t d e e p , v o m i t i n g f o r t h t i e s ,

s p i k e s , r a i l s , a n d b r id g e s , a s m a n ' s p o i s o n t o b e

c a s t f o r t h u p o n t h e p l a i n s b y t h e s e a c o a s t .

T h e C a l i f o r n i a S o u t h e r n R a i l r o a d w a s g o n e ,

b u t t h e e n e r g y o f t h e w h i t e m e n w h o b u i l t i t r e -

mained . M o r e r a i l s w e r e o r d e r e d , a n e w l o c a -

t i o n , o r p a s s , t h r o u g h t h e m o u n t a i n s f o u n d , a n d

t o - d a y t h e S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a i s t h e b r i g h t g e m

o f t h e g r e a t A t c h i s o n s y s t e m .



GREAT EXPECTATIONS 5

In Sonora we shot blackbirds and jackrab-

b i t s , w h e r e g r a s s e s w a v e d h i g h a s c o r n f i e l d s a n d

t h e h i l l s s h o w e d m i n e r a l v a l u e s . The p eople a t

Hermosil lo and Guaymas wel comed us as op en-

i n g f o r t h e m a n d t h e i r c o u n t r y t h e o p p o r t u n i t i e s

o f a b r o a d e r c i v i l i z a t i o n . T h e r a i l s w e r e a l r e a d y

l a i d f o r f o r t y m i l e s f r o m G u a y m a s , w h i c h h a s a

h a r b o r m o r e b e a u t i f u l t h a n C a l i f o r n i a ' s G o l d e n

Gat e .

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

A f e w d a y s l a t e r w e w e n t o u t o n t h e M e x i c a n

C e n t r a l f r o m E l P a s o t o t h e e n d o f t h e t r a c k ,

w h i c h w a s j u s t t h e n s t a r t i n g o n i t s p a t h t o w a r d

t h e C i t y o f M e x i c o , t o l i f t t h i s g r e a t l a n d o f

t h e A z t e c s a n d i t s p e o p l e i n t o f e l l o w s h i p a n d

c o m m e r c i a l l i f e w i t h t h e " B i g B r o t h e r " o f t h e

Nor th . The f uture of Mexico seeme d as clear

a s t h e s u n s h i n e , a l t h o u g h S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a

s e e m e d a d o u b t f u l p r o p o s i t i o n .

R e t u r n i n g t o B o s t o n , I p u b l i s h e d a s f o l l o w s ,

F e b r u a r y 1 5 , 1 8 8 2 , t h i r t y - f i v e y e a r s a g o :-N o o n e r e a l i z e s w h a t g o v e r n m e n t , o r t h e a b -

s e n c e o f g o v e r n m e n t , c a n d o f o r a p e o p l e u n t i l

h e s e e s M e x i c o , i n c o m p a r i s o n w i t h t h e U n i t e d

S t a t e s . A r i z o n a a n d t h e S o u t h w e s t , u p o n a n

a l m o s t w a t e r l e s s a n d c o m p a r a t i v e l y b a r r e n s o i l ,

a r e p r o s p e r o u s f r o m e x t e n s i v e g r a z i n g a n d m i n -



6 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMi n g i n te r es t s , w h i l e S o n o r a , j u s t a cr o s s t h e bo r -

d e r , f a r r ic h e r i n w a te r a n d s o i l a n d m i n e r a l , h a s

s l u m b er e d f o r y e ar s , d e v a s t a te d b y i n cu r s i o n s o f

I n d i a n s f r o m t h e N o r t h , a n d t h e n r e n t w it h i n -

t e r n a l p o l i t i c a l d i s s e n s i o n s , y e t a l l t h e w h i l e h o p -

i n g f o r t h e m o r r o w t o b r i n g f o r t h p ea c e an d p r o s -

p e r i t y . N o w o n d e r t h e M e x i c a n s l o v e t h e wo r d

m a n a n a , f o r i n t o - m o r r o w h a s l a i n t h e ir h o p e f o r

y e a r s . B u t S o n o r a a n d M e x i c o a r e r a p i d l y p a s s -

i n g i n t o a n e w d a y w h e n c e a l l t h a t h as b e e n wi l l

b e a s y e s t e r d a y , a n d t o - m o r r o w w i l l b e b r i g h t

w i t h p r o m i s e .

Th e w o r l d n o w t o u c h e s t h e s u n s h i n e o f

Southern Calif ornia, e a t i n g i t s s u n - k i s s e d

o r a n g e s , i t s s u n - d r i e d f i g s , i t s n e w s e e d l e s s r a i -

s i n s , a n d t h e f r u i t o f i t s a l l i g a t o r p e a r t r e e s ,

transplanted from Mexico . I t s d e e p v a l l e y s a r e

r a i s i n g t h e f i n e s t c o t t o n ; its motor highways

a r e j e we l s i n t h e c r o w n o f a S t a t e p r o m o t i n g i n -

t e r c o u r s e o v e r w i d e r e a c h e s b e t wi x t i t s p e o p l e s .

HONEY AND THISTLTr . S

T h e h o n e y o f h u m a n b e e l i f e i s i n C a l i f o r n i a .

I n M e x i c o a r e y e t t h e t h i s t l e , t h e n e t t l e , a n d

t h e h o r n e t , t h e p r i c k l y c a c t u s , s h e l t e r i n g t h e

s e r p e n t , t h e p o i s o n o u s h e r b s h a d i n g t h e c e n t i -

pede-n d t h e p o l i t i c a l c e n t i p e d e .

I w a s s u r p r i s e d a f e w y e a r s a g o t o b e n o t i f i e d

t h a t t h e M e x i c a n C e n t r a l f o r t y - y e a r b o n d s , t o



RESTRICTED BUSINESS 7

w h i c h I h a d s o e a r l y s u b s c r i b e d , w e r e c o m i n g

d u e . They had b een scaled down f rom seven

p e r ce n t i n t e r e s t t o f i v e p e r c e n t , t h e n t o a l o w e r

r a t e , a n d n o w w h a t e v e r h a s s u c c e e d e d t h e m i s a

wanderer in Europe with no return, and the

p r o p e r t y t h e y a r e s u p p o s e d t o r e p r e s e n t i s s l i d -

ing backward . I t s r o l l i n g - s t o c k g o e s i n t o t h e

m i re , a n d b a n d i t s t e a r u p th e r a i l s , s h o o t i n g t h e

s o l d i e r s o f C a r r a n z a a n d l o o t i n g a n d s h o o t i n g

t h e n a t i v e a n d f o r e i g n p a s s e n g e r s .

S c a r c e l y a d a y p a s s e s t h a t r e p o r t s d o n o t

reach my desk from personal and sometimes

c o n f i d e n t i a l s o u r c e s , o f b a n d i t r y , l o o t i n g , a n d

s h o o t i n g , c o n c e r n i n g w h i c h n o t a l i n e c a n b e

f o u n d i n t h e g e n e r a l p r e s s o f t h e d a y . T h e a l -

m o s t d a i l y o c c u r r e n c e s i n M e x i c o w o u l d b e s e n -

s a t i o n a l a n d c a l l f o r g l a r i n g h e a d l i n e s i f t h e

h a p p e n i n g s w e r e n o r t h o f t h e R i o G r a n d e ; b u t

n o b o d y w i l l b u y a p a p e r t o r e a d a b o u t l a w l e s s -

n e s s i n M e x i c o .

RESTRICTED BUSINESS

I t i s g e n e r a l l y k n o w n t h a t t h e c o p p e r m i n e s

a n d s m e l t e r s a r e o n l y p a r t i a l l y o p e r a t i n g i n t h e

n o r t h , t h a t t r a v e l i s n o w h e r e s a f e i n t h a t c o u n t r y ,

a n d t h a t o n l y i n t h e o i l f i e l d s a r o u n d T a m p i c o

a n d s o u t h i s t h e r e a n y r e a l b u s i n e s s p r o g r e s s .



8 THE MEXICAN PROBLEME v e n a t T a m p i c o e v e r y o i l r e f i n e r y h a s t h i s

s p r i n g b e e n c l o s e d d o w n f o r a g r e a t e r o r l e s s

n u m b e r o f d a y s , i n t e r f e r i n g w i t h o i l s u p p l i e s

n o w s o n e c e s s a r y i n t h e w o r l d ' s p r o g r e s s t h r o u g h

w ar .

I t i s d i f f i c u l t t o p l a c e t h e b l a m e a s b e t we e n

I .W.W. agitators drawing pay from German

a g e n t s a n d p e t t y M e x i c o a u t h o r i t i e s , s o m e o f

whom do and some of whom do not recognize

a n y n a t i o n a l a u t h o r i t y .

Washing ton a nd Mexico City do not w ant

t h e s e d i s t u r b a n c e s r e p o r t e d ; n o r d o t h e bu s i n e s s

i n t e r e s t s d e p e n d e n t u p o n A m e r i c a n c r e d i t , a n d

w h a t e v e r p r o t e c t i o n m a y b e a f f o r d e d M e x i c o , i n -

v i t e p u b l i c i t y c o n c e r n i n g M e x i c a n d i s t u r b a n c e s .

A s k a n y d i r e ct o r o r o f f i c ia l o f a fo r e i g n e n t e r -

p r i s e i n M e x i c o c o n c e r n i n g t h e s i t u a t i o n a n d h e

w i l l g i v e e v i d e n c e o n l y b e h i n d l o c k e d d o o r s o r

w i t h t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h a t h i s s t a t e m e n t s a r e

c o n f i d e n t i a l a n d h i s c o m p a n y i s n o t t o b e m e n -

t i o n e d . H e k n o w s t h a t h e i s m a n a g i n g t h e p r o p -

e r t y o f o t h e r s i n a c o u n t r y wh e r e t h e r e i s t o - d a y

n o c o n s t i t u t i o n a n d n o l a w ; b u t h e d a r e n o t s a y

s o p u b l i c l y , f o r t h e re a re s e v e r a l a l l e g e d c o n s t i -

t u t i o n s i n M e x i c o , m a n y a l l e g e d l a w s , a n d v e r y

m a n y d e c r e e s , a n d t h e r e i s t o - d a y t h e p o w e r

t o s u s p e n d e v e r y c o n s t i t u t i o n , l a w a n d d e c r e e .



A SIMPLE PROPOSITION 9

Taxation has be come only a matter of pres sure

t o ge t s o m e t h i n g fr o m a n yb o d y w h o ha s i t .

A SIMPLE PROPOSITION

Yet, aside from the question of order and jus-

tice, Mexico is a simple proposition . The n a -

tion al expenses are less than $100,000,000 Amer-

i c a n g o l d , y e t a l i t t l e m o r e t h a n h a l f m u s t g o t o

the national defense . Th e r e v e n u e s h a v e b e e n

but seventy-five per cent of the expenses, and

b e c a u s e i t n e v e r h a d a n y c r e d i t i t n e v e r p i l e d u p

any outside debt. Diaz n ot on ly bu ilt up Mex-

ica n fo rei gn t rad e fr om $15,000,000 Amer ica n

gold to $950,000,000, but he bui lt up the na-

tion al tr easu ry fr om em ptin ess t o $30,000,000

Am e r i c a n g o l d .

Mor e t h a n t h i r t y y e a r s a g o Jo hn Bi ge l o w

w a r n e d u s t h a t, n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g t h e a p p a r e n t

peace and pr osperity in Mexico und er Diaz, it

was a republic only in name, a slumbering v ol-

c a n o wi t h a go v e r n m e n t by gu n p o w d e r o n l y . At

t h a t t i m e I r e f u t e d m a n y o f Mr. B i g e l o w ' s e r -

r o r s i n h i s c i t a t i o n o f f a c t s , b u t h i s t o r y p r o v e d

his main indictment . The peo ple of Mexico ha ve

n e v e r h a d a c h a n c e , a n d t h e m o m e n t Di a z a t -

tempted to'broaden th e governing bas e in Mexico

h e w a s o v e r t h r o w n . The people h ave ever since



1 0 THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

b e e n g r o u n d b e t w e e n p o l i t i c a l a n d s o c i a l t h e o -

r i s t s b o t h i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s a n d t h e i r o w n

c o u n t r y .

T h e r e a r e s e v e n t e e n m i l l i o n p e o p l e i n M e x i c o-e n m i l l i o n p u r e A z t e c s , f i v e m i l l i o n o f p a r -

t i a l l y S p a n i s h o r i g i n , a n d t w o m i l l i o n p u r e S p a n -

i s h a n d o t h e r f o r e i g n e r s . W h e r e f o r m e r l y i t w a s

e s t i m a t e d t h e r e w e r e f i f t y t h o u s a n d A m e r i c a n s

t h e r e a r e n o t n o w f i v e t h o u s a n d .

T h e f a c t t h a t t h e S p a n i s h i n v a d e r m a r r i e d t h e

A z t e c w o m a n i s n o t t h e c u r s e o f M e x i c o . The

c u r s e o f M e x i c o i s t h e f a i t h t h a t m i g h t m a k e s

r i g h t. Every schoolb oy has he ard the ph rase

"Conq uest of Mexico . " T h e i d e a o f c o n q u e s t s ,

n a t io n a l l y a n d i n d i v i d u a l l y , i s s o s t r o n g l y r o o t e d

i n t h e w o r l d t h a t E u r o p e i s n o w b a t h e d i n b l o o d

t o u p r o o t i t .

THE RULE OF MIGHT

Wh en Dr . D e r n b e r g , f o r m e r l y C o l o n i a l M i n -

i s t e r i n G e r m a n y , w a s i n N e w Y o r k a f t e r t h e

b r e a k i n g - o u t o f t h e G r e a t W a r , h e t r i e d t o c o n -

v i n c e m e o f t h e i n j u s t i c e o f d e n y i n g t o G e r m a n y

t h e r ig h t o f c o n q u e s t i n f o r e i g n p a r t s . H e s a i d :

" What d id England do a hundred years ago?

What hav e th ey all done? Because Germany

c o m e s l a t e i n t o t h e f a m i l y o f n a t i o n s , a r e w * e t o



GOVERNMENT BY JUSTICE 1 1

b e d e n i e d o u r p a r t i n c o n q u e r i n g t h e ea r t h , i n t h e

a c q u i s i t i o n o f n e w t e r r it o r y , i n c o l o n i a l e m p i r e ?"

T h e i d e a w a s s o b a r b a r i c t o m y f r e e b o r n A m e r -

i c a n b l o o d t h a t I c o u l d o n l y l a u g h a t D r . D e r n -

b e r g a n d r e f e r h i m t o t h e d a r k a g e s . Y e t t h e o n l y

a r m y i n E u r o p e t h a t h a s n i n e t y - n i n e p e r c e n t o f

i t s s o l d i e r s a b l e t o r e a d a n d w r i t e s u p p o r t s t h e

r ig h t o f c o n q u e s t a n d t e rr it o r i a l e x p a n s i o n . Hav e

n o t P a r i s a n d L o n d o n w i t h i n t h r e e y e a r s b e e n

p r o m i s e d a s c o m p e n s a t i o n t o a f i g h t i n g p e o p l e ,

t h a t t h e y m i g h t p o s s e s s t h e m o r h o l d f o r r a n s o m ?

W h a t i s t h e d i f f e r e n c e w h e n V i l l a p r o m i s e s l o o t

a s c o m p e n s a t i o n t o t h o s e w h o w i l l a t t a c k u n d e r

h i s l e a d e r s h i p ? S o u n d g o v e r n m e n t i s b y c h a r -

a c t e r a n d n o t b y i n t e l l e c t . The redemption of

M e x i c o c a n n e v e r b e a c c o m p l i s h e d b y c o n q u e s t

o r l o o t .

GOVERNMENT BY JUSTICE

I n d i a i s t a x i n g h e r s e l f a n d f i g h t i n g f o r E u r o -

p e a n j u s t i c e b e c a u s e t h i s a l o n e h a s g i v e n h e r

s e c u r i t y w h e r e b e f o r e i n a h u n d r e d y e a r s a h u n -

d r e d d i f f e r e n t d y n a s t i e s r o s e u p a n d a t t e m p t -

e d r u l e b y m i g h t . That country was redeemed

o n l y w h e n g o v e r n m e n t b y j u s t i c e c a m e i n .

I t i s s a i d t h a t b e t w e e n 1 8 2 1 a n d 1 8 6 8 m o r e

t h a n f i f t y r u l e r s a t t e m p t e d t h e g o v e r n m e n t o f



1 2 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMMexi co . M e x i c o i s t o o l a r g e a t e r r i t o r y t o b e

h a n d l e d b y l e g i s l a t i v e e n a c t m e n t f r o m o n e c i t y .

D i a z h i m s e l f n e v e r r e a l l y r u l e d t h e w h o l e o f i t .

M e x i c o i s l a r g e l y c o m p o s e d o f t e r r i t o r i e s m i s -

n a m e d s t a t e s . I n t h e s e d i s t a n t t e r r i t o r i e s , o f l a t e ,

e s p e c ia l l y i n t h e n o r t h , r e v o l u t i o n s s t a r t a n d g e t

u n d e r w a y b e f o r e t h e y c a n b e r e a c h e d o r d e a l t

w i t h b y t h e c e n t r a l a u t h o r i t i e s .

A j u s t a n d l a w f u l g o v e r n m e n t s h o u l d b e e s -

t a b l i s h e d i n t h e h e a r t o f M e x i c o w i t h i n s u r e d

s a f e c o n n e c t i o n w i t h t h e s e a c o a s t . F r o m t h i s ,

g r o u p s o f s t a t e s c a n b e k n i t t e d i n a n d d i s t a n t

p a r t s s h o u l d b e t r e a t e d a s M e x i c a n t e r r i t o r y

u n t i l i t s p e o p l e c a n b e e d u c a t e d a n d t r u s t e d w i t h

l o c a l s e l f - g o v e r n m e n t a n d s h o w c a p a c i t y t o d e a l

w i t h t h e l a r g e r p r o b l e m s o f n a t i o n a l i t y .

THE MEXICAN CHARACTER

A t t h e pr e s e n t t i m e t h e l a r g e r pa r t o f t h e g o o d

p e o p l e o f M e x i c o a r e c h i l d r e n w h o w a n t t o b e i n

d e b t a n d a t t h e s a m e t i m e c a r e - f r e e . They wan t

t o w o r k l a u g h i n g . I f t h e y c a n n o t l a u g h a s t h e y

w o r k , f i g h t in g i s t h e n e x t b e s t t h i n g . The y hav e

n o o t h e r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f a r e v o l u t i o n t h a n t h a t

i t is a s p o r t y l a r k . T h e y a r e e x a c t l y i n t h e s t a g e

o f t h e A m e r i c a n c o u n t r y b o y w h o o n a t t e n d i n g

a n e w s c h o o l m u s t f i r s t f i n d o u t w h o a m o n g t h e



DEBT AND CITIZENSHIP 1 3

p u p i l s c a n " l i c k t h e t e a c h e r . " I f t h e t e a c h e r i s

t h e s t r o n g e r -sometimes by moral force and

s o m e t i m e s b y b r u t e f o r c e - t h e r e i s o r d e r a n d

d i s c ip l i n e . But if the teach er enters a con-

t e s t a n d i s d o w n e d , h e i s n o l o n g e r h e a d o f t h a t

s c h o o l a n d , i f h e i s t o r e m a i n , s o m e " b i g b o y "

m u s t k e e p l a w a n d o r d e r f o r h i m .

O n m a n y a h a c i e n d a i n M e x i c o , a n d o v e r m a n y

y e a r s , a s k i r m i s h , e v e n w i t h p i s t o l s , b e t we e n t h e

m a n a g e r a n d h i s p e o n w o r k e r s w a s r e g a r d e d a s

a p r o p e r l a r k . I f t h e m a n a g e r g o t t h e b e t t e r o f i t ,

t h e b e l l i g e r e n t s w e n t p e a c e f u l l y b a c k t o w o r k

a n d e v e r y b o d y w a s h a p p y b e c a u s e t h e b o s s h a d

s u s t a i n e d h i s p o s i t i o n .

M e x i c o i s n o t a d i f fi c u l t p r o p o s i t i o n w h e n o n c e

y o u u n d e r s t a n d t h e M e x i c a n c h a r a c t e r . H e i s

the same c h i l d l i ke , d e p e n d e n t , t r u s t i n g f e l l o w

w h e t h e r a t w o r k , p l a y , o r r e v o l u t i o n . He is

s i m p l y i n n e e d o f a s t r o n g h e l p i n g h a n d .

DEBT AND CITIZENSHIP

T h e M e x i c a n p e o n i s n o t t h i r s t i n g f o r l a n d o r

r u l e . There nev er yet were twenty thousand

v o t e s c a s t i n M e x ic o f o r a p r e s i d e n t . T h e b a l l o t

w i l l n o t r e d e e m t h e M e x i c a n f r o m t h e p e o n a g e

s y s t e m i n w h i c h a l o n e h e h a s c o n f i d e n c e . S i n -

g u l a r a s i t m a y a p p e a r , h i s i n d e p e n d e n c e a n d



1 4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMh i s s e l f - r e s p e c t h e f in d s i n t h i s s y s t e m . I f y o u

t r y t o g i v e h i m f i n a n c i a l i n d e p e n d e n c e , h e i s

f ea rf u l a n d r e be l l i o u s . H e i s a f r a i d t h a t y o u a r e

g o i n g t o d i s c h a r g e h i m ; t ha t h e w i l l l o s e h i s j o b

w i t h o u t b e i n g t r a n s f e r r e d t o a n o t h e r .

I n b r i e f a Me x ic a n p e o n i n a g r i c u l t u r e , o r o n a

h ac ie n d a , i s a s e l f - s o l d s l a v e . H e w i l l n o t a c c u -

m u l a t e a n d s p e n d h i s m o n e y . He must borr ow

o f h i s e m p l o y e r a n d s p e n d ; a n d w h e n h i s m o n e y

i s g o n e h e i s c o n t e n t e d a n d h a p p y t o w o r k u n d e r

d e b t . B u t i f y o u d e n y h i m c r e d i t o r t r y t o g e t

h i m o u t f r o m u n d e r t h e d e b t s y s t e m , h e b e c o m e s

s u s p ic io u s , w il l n o t w o r k, a n d l o s e s h i s o w n s e l f -

r e s p e c t ; y o u h a v e n o t t r u s t e d h i m , y o u h a v e

no confidence in him ; you are not his real

f r i e n d , a n d h e w o u l d l i k e t o b e t r a n s f e r re d w i t h

h i s " a c c o u n t " t o s o m e o t h e r h a c i e n d a o r e m -

p l o y e r w h e r e h i s c r e d i t w i l l b e u n q u e s t i o n e d .

W h i l e t h e p e o n a g e s y s t e m m a y b e t h e s a f e t y

o f a g r i c u l t u r a l M e x i c o , i t c a n n e v e r p r o d u c e i n -

d e p e n d e n c e , c i t i z e n s h i p , a n d s e l f - g o v e r n m e n t .

T h e r e d e m p t i o n o f M e x i c o m u s t b e f r o m t h e

i n v a s i o n o f b u s i n e s s , f o r c i n g u p o n t h e n a t i v e s -the g ood people of Mexico -t e c h n i ca l t r a i n -

i n g , h i g h e r w a g e s , b a n k a c c o u n t s , f i n a n c i a l i n -

d e p e n d e n c e , a n d t h e r i g h t s o f c i t i z e n s h i p a n d

a c c u m u l a t i o n .



CHAPTER IIAMERICAN INTERESTS NO BASE OF DISORDER

THE M e x i c a n p r o b l e m c a n b e s t u d i e d b e t t e r a t

Tampico t han els ewh ere in Mexico . Here the

c i v i l i z a t i o n a n d b u s i n e s s f o r c e s o f E u r o p e a n d

A m e r i c a h a v e o p e n e d t h e j u n g l e a n d t h e p r a i r i e ,

t a p p e d t h e g r e a t e s t o i l b a s i n i n t h e w o r l d , h a r -

n e s s e d i t , p i p e d i t t o t h e G u l f c o a s t , a n d h e r e

l i g h t a n d e n l i g h t e n m e n t , w o r k a n d w a g e s , i n v i t e

human development . Here i s th e Amer ican

b o o m t o w n o f M e x i c o , g r o w n t o f i f t y t h o u s a n d

p o p u l a t i o n , w i t h a s p h a l t - p a v e d s t r e e t s , b u s i n e s s

b l o c k s , m a r k e t s , a n d p a r k s .

H e r e i n t u r n t h e w a r r i n g f a c t i o n s o f M e x i c o

f i g h t f o r t h e p r i v i l e g e o f p r o t e c t i n g a n d t a x i n g

t h e d e v e l o p i n g p r o p e r t i e s a b o u t T a m p i c o . H e r e

t h e n e w o r d e r m e e t s t h e o l d . T h e n a t i v e M e x i c a n ,

m o r e t h a n t w o - t h i r d s t h e p o p u l a t i o n o f t h e c o u n -

t r y , g l a d l y a c c e p t s t h e e x t e n d e d h e l p i n g h a n d .

The Angl o-Saxon, the Europ ean a nd th e

American, are wel come th rough out Mexico .

" G r i n g o " i s o n l y a b o r d e r t e r m .

W h a t , t h e n , i s t h e M e x i c a n p r o b l e m ?



1 6 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMI t i s t h e p r o b l e m o f o n e c i v i l i z a t i o n a n d o n e

o r d e r , o n e r u l e a n d p r o c e d u r e , i n c o n t a c t w i t h

a n o t h e r c i v i l i z a t i o n , a n o t h e r o r d e r , p r o c e d u r e

a n d m o r a l i t y .

A WORLD PROBLEMT h i s i s t h e p r o b l e m b e l t i n g t h e w o r l d . I t i s

the prob lem of China, it is the problem in

E g y p t , i t i s t h e w h o l e o f t h e s o u t h e r n - e a s t e r n

q u e s t i o n . I t i s t h e i s s u e t h at b l a z e s i n n o r t he r n

Euro pe .

H e r e t h e i s s u e i s c o m p l i c a t e d b e c a u s e t h e o n -

c o m i n g o r d e r fi n d s n o t o n l y o n e b u t t wo c i v i l i z a -

t i o n s a l r e ad y i n t h e fi e l d a n d m o r e o r l e s s i n c o n -

f l i c t f o r f o u r h u n d r e d y e a r s .

Governm ents in Europe ar e brea king u p .

G o v e r n m e n t s i n M e x i c o a r e o n e a f t e r a n o t h e r

breaking down ; b u t t h e b r e a k d o w n i n M e x i c o

h a s n o m o r e r e l a t i o n i n i t s c a u s e s t o t h e U n i t e d

S t a t e s t h a n h a s t h e E u r o p e a n w a r , a s t h e f a c t s

w h e n u l t i m a t e l y p r e s e n t e d b e f o r e t h e A m e r i c a n

p e o p l e m u s t c l e a r l y d e m o n s t r a t e .

B u t i t wa s n o t w it h a n y p u r p o s e t o t h e o r i z e o n

t h e M e x i c a n p r o b l e m t h a t t h e w r i t e r t o o k a t r i p

a c r o s s t h e c o u n t r y a n d t h e G u l f t o T a m p i c o a n d

s t u d i e d t h e r e s o u r c e s o f M e x i c o i n t h e T a m p i c o -

T u x pa n o i l f i e l d t o g e t t h e f ac t s o f t h e e x i s t i n g



THE AMERICAN PIONEER 1 7

s i t u a t i o n a n d n o t e t h e f a c t o r s s p r i n g i n g t h e r e -

f r o m r e l a t e d t o A m e r i c a n i n v e s t m e n t s .

T a m p i c o h a s a b r o a d e r m e a n i n g i n t h e A m e r i -

c a n i n v e s t m e n t f i e l d t h a n i s y e t g e n e r a l l y r e a l -

i z e d . T h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f t h e g o l d f i e l d s o f S o u t h

A f r i c a h a s b e e n i m p o r t a n t , n o t b e c a u s e o f t h e

S o u t h A f r i c a n w a r c o s t i n g E n g l a n d $ 1 , 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 , -

0 0 0 , b u t b e c a u s e t h e o u t p u t o f S o u t h A f r i c a n

g o l d a f f e c t e d t h e c i v i l i z a t i o n a n d t h e e c o n o m i c

a n d s o c i a l o r d e r o f t h e w o r l d .

V e r a C r u z , M e x i c o C i t y , a n d t h e w e s t c o a s t o f

M e x i c o a r e t o - d a y a s M e x i c a n a s e v e r -b o t h i n

o r d e r a n d d i s o r d e r . But Tampi co a nd Tuxpan

a r e i n t e r n a t i o n a l a n d a r e b a s i c i n t h e e c o n o m i c

a n d s o c i a l p r o g r e s s o f b o t h E u r o p e a n d A m e r i c a ,

a n d p o s s i b l y o f A s i a .

H e re i s t h e B r i t i s h n a v a l o i l b a s e . H e re , b e f o r e

t h e w a r , w e r e t h e G e r m a n e x p e r t s s t u d y i n g t h e

f u t u r e r e l a t i o n s o f G e r m a n c o m m e r c e t o t h e o i l

s u p p l y o f t h e w o r l d , w h i c h l a t e r m a y c e n t e r i n

Mexico .

THE AMERICAN PIONEER

A m e r i c a n p i o n e e r s , h o w e v e r , w e r e f i r s t i n t h e

f i e l d a n d A m e r i c a n b u s i n e s s t a l e n t a n d A m e r i c a n

c a p i t a l h a v e m a i n t a i n e d l e a d e r s h i p w i t h o u t g o v -

e r n m e n t i n v i t a t i o n , s u p p o r t o r e v e n r e c o g n i t i o n .



1 8 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMI t i s a p o p u l a r m i s c o n c e p t i o n i n t h e U n i t e d

S t a t e s t h a t t h e p e o p l e o f M e x i c o h a v e b e e n , a r e ,

o r a r e a b o u t t o b e e x p l o i t e d i n t h e i n t e r e s t o f t h e

S t a n d a r d O i l r e f i n e r i e s , t h e G u g g e n h e i m s m e l t e r s ,

o r t h e H e a r s t r a n c h e s . N o t h i n g c o u l d b e f u r t h e r

f r o m t h e f ac t s a s r e l a t e d t o t h e p re s e n t s i t u a t i o n ,

a l t h o u g h b o t h i n T e x a s a n d M e x i c o , S t a n d a r d

O i l i n t e r e s t s a t t e m p t e d y e a r s a g o t o a r r e s t t h e o i l

development .

T h e w e a l t h o f t h e w o r l d i s p l a n e t a r y w e a l t h

u n t i l i t i s l i f t e d b y h u m a n d i s c o v e r y , h u m a n

f o r c e s , a n d h u m a n h a n d s i n t o h u m a n u s e s . The

a g r i c u l t u r a l w e a l t h o f t h e w o r l d g i v i n g f o o d t o

m a n i s f r o m t h e s u n t h r o u g h t h e s o i l b y l a b o r .

The mineral and oil wealth of th e world is

b y h u m a n d i s c o v e r y , e n g i n e e r i n g , m a c h i n e r y ,

f i n a n c e , a n d c o m p l e x f o r m s o f h u m a n l a b o r . Al -

m o s t u n i v e r s a l l y h a v e t h e n a t i o n s o f t h e e a r t h

r e c o g n i z e d r i g h t b y d i s c o v e r y i n u n d e r g r o u n d

w e a l t h , a n d t h u s i n v i t e d i t s d i s c o v e r y a n d d e -

velopment .

U n d e r t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i o n o f P r e s i d e n t D i a z

M e x i c o w a s o p e n e d t o t h e o u t s i d e w o r l d , w h i c h

w a s i n v i t e d t o p o u r i n i t s t a l e n t , m o n e y , a n d s k i l l

t o l i f t t o t h e s u r f a ce t h e u n d e v e l o p e d r e s o u r c e s o f

t h e co u n t r y , t e a c h t h e u n s k i l l e d l a b o r o f t h e l a n d , ,

a n d p u t M e x i c o , i t s p e o p l e a n d i t s r e s o u r c e s ,



THE AMERICAN PIONEER 1 9

i n t h e w a y o f m o d e r n d e v e l o p m e n t a n d c i v i l i -

z a t i o n .

W h a t a r e n o w t h e o i l f i e l d s o f M e x i c o w e r e

f o r m e r l y t h e " b a d l a n d s " o f t h e j u n g l e a n d t h e

p l a i n . T h e b l a c k a s p h a l t o o z e s s o f t e n e d t h e s o i l

a n d e n m e s h e d a n d s w a l l o w e d u p c a t t l e , h o r s e s ,

a n d w i l d a n i m a l s . T h e y w e r e i n 1 9 0 0 , a s t h e y

h a d b e e n f o r n i n e t e e n h u n d r e d y e a r s , w o r s e t h a n

v a l u e l e s s .

Edw ard L . D o h e n y , A m e r i c a n e n g i n e e r - p r o s -

p e c t o r , m i n e r , a n d p i o n e e r d e v e l o p e r i n t h e o i l

f i e l d s o f L o s A n g e l e s , C a l i f o r n i a , w a s m o r e t h a n

m i l l i o n a i r e , a n d s o a l s o w a s h i s p a r t n e r C a n -

fiel d, when they entere d Mexico in 1900 to

p r o s p e c t f o r p e t r o l e u m . T h e y w e r e n o t f r e e b o o t -

e r s , s e e k i n g c o n q u e s t o r t h e e x p l o i t a t i o n o f

p e o p l e , l a w s , o r g o v e r n m e n t . T h e y w e r e l o o k i n g

t o d o i n M e x i c o w h a t t h e y h a d d o n e i n C a l i f o r -

n i a a n d w i t h t he i r o w n f o r t u n e s l i f t v a l u e s o f t h i s

o l d p l a n e t t o t h e s u r f a c e , u n d e r M e x i c a n l a w s ,

t r e a t i e s , a n d c u s t o m s a n d w i t h t h e a i d o f M e x i ca n

l a b o r . D i a z a n d M e x i c o h a d i n v i t e d o u t s i d e t a l -

ent and money ; Boston money had b uilt the

r a i l r o a d f r o m A r i z o n a t o t h e p o r t o f G u a y m a s o n

t h e G u l f o f C a l i f o r n i a a n d f r o m E l P a s o t o t h e

C i t y o f M e x i c o , w i t h a b r a n c h t o T a m p i c o .

Into th e jung le fr om Tampico to Tuxpan



2 0 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMw e n t D o h e n y a n d C a n f i e l d b y f o o t a n d o n h o r s e -

b a c k . They located the oi l seepages . Th ey

s o u g h t o u t t h e o w n e r s o f t h e l a n d s . F i r s t t h e y

b o u g h t 4 5 0 , 0 0 0 a c r e s t h i r t y - f i v e m i l e s w e s t o f

T a m pi c o a n d l a t e r 1 7 0, 0 0 0 a c r e s i n v a r i o u s t r a c t s

south tow ard Tuxpan . They pa id fr om sixty

c e n t s p e r a c r e u p w a r d a n d a s t o n i s h e d t h e M e x i -

c a n p e o p l e b y t h e p r i c e s p a i d f o r s u c h u n p r o d u c -

t i v e l a n d s . T h e y w e r e a d v i s e d a g a i n s t s u c h l a r g e

p r i c e s b y t h e M e x i c a n l a w y e r s , l a n d o w n e r s , a n d

s t a t e s m e n .

B u t t h e A m e r i c a n s r e t o r t e d t h a t t h e p r i c e w a s

i m m a t e r i a l i f t h e y f o u n d w h a t t h e y w e r e a f t e r ;

t h e y w o u l d n o t h e s i t a t e o r h a g g l e . T h e M e x i c a n s

n a m e d t h e i r o w n t e r m s , t o o k t h e c a s h a n d d e -

l i v e r e d t i t l e d e e d s r u n n i n g b a c k t h r o u g h g e n e r -

a t i o n s , s o m e t i t l e s m a k i n g a h e a v y v o l u m e .

T h e A m e r i c a n s c l e a r e d t h e j u n g l e a n d m a d e i t

a ranch . T h e y b u i l t b l a c k s m i t h s h o p s , w a r e -

h o u s e s , w a t e r l i n e s , a n d h o s p i t a l s . The y bor ed

f o r o i l , d e v e l o p e d t h e M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m C o m -

p a n y , a n d b r o u g h t f o r t h t h e b i g g e s t o i l g u s h -

e r s i n t h e w o r l d . P i p e l i n e s a n d r a i l w a y s p r e -

c e d e d a n d f o l l o w e d t h e g u s h e r s . B r i t i s h , D u t c h ,

Water s-Pierce, and some Standa rd Oil and

S o u t h e r n P a c i f i c i n t e r e s t s c a m e i n , b u t t h e

A m e r i c a n i n t e r e s t s s t a n d a t t h e h e a d .



CLEARING JUNGLE FOR PETROLEUM CAMP



NO DISPUTE WITH GOVERNMENT 2 1

NO DISPUT E WITH THE GOVERNMENT

N o w h e r e h a v e t h e s e i n t e r e s t s d i s p u t e d w i t h

t h e g o v e r n m e n t , o r r e f u s e d t h e i r d u e t a x e s o r c o -

o p e r a t i o n w i t h t h e l o c a l a n d n a t i o n a l a u t h o r i t ie s .

T h e o n l y c o m p l a i n t a g a i n s t t h e m w a s t h a t t h e y

r a i s e d w a g e s f r o m l e s s t h a n t w e n t y c e n t s a d a y

to a minimum of one dollar a day and made

n a t i v e M e x i c a n s i n t o b l a c k s m i t h s , c a r p e n t e r s ,

s h i p b u i l d e r s , a n d e n g i n e e r s a t t h r e e d o l l a r s a n d

f i f t y c e n t s a d a y i n g o l d .

I t h a s b e e n a n e w e c o n o m i c e r a . I t h a s b e e n a

development . I t h a s n o t b e e n a c o n q u e s t o r a n

e x p l o i t a t i o n e i t h e r o f p e o p l e s o r o f g o v e r n m e n t s ,

a n d t h e s a m e m a y b e s a i d o f a l l t h e o t h e r i n t e r -

e s t s , B r i t i s h a n d A m e r i c a n , i n m i n i n g a n d i n

a g r i c u l t u r e , i n M e x i c o .

T h e f i g h t i n g i n M e x i c o h a s n o t b e e n w i t h o r

c o n c e r n i n g A m e r i c a n o r f o r e i g n i n t e r e s t s . The

f i g h t i n g h a s b e e n b e t we e n l o c a l f a c t i o n s , l e a d i n g

f a m i l i e s , p o l i t ic a l p a r t i e s , t h e i n s a n d t h e o u t s .

T h e s t r i f e h a s b e e n f o r t h e p o s s e s s i o n o f t h e

c i t a d e l a n d t h e r e i n s o f g o v e r n m e n t a t M e x i c o

City . T h e r e h a s b e e n d a n g e r t o t h e A m e r i c a n

i n t e re s t s o n l y b y re a s o n o f t he i r l o c a t io n a t t im e s

b e t w e e n t h e c o n f l i c t i n g f o r c e s , b u t n e i t h e r t h e

A m e r i c a n n o r t h e f o r e i g n i n t e r e s t s h a v e s o m u c h



QQ THE MEXICAN PROBLEMa s p o s s e s s e d a r m s f o r t h e i r o w n d e f e n s e . No

g u n s a r e a l l o w e d o n a n y o f t h e s e o i l p r o p e r t i e s

n o r a r e t h e y d e s i r e d . T h e i r p o s s e s s i o n w o u l d b e

a m e n a c e , b e c a u s e t h e y w o u l d b e d e s i r e d a n d

f o u g h t f o r b y t h e p o l i t i c a l l y c o n t e n d i n g f o r c e s

and the roving bands that at times overrun

M e x i c o f r o m n o r t h t o s o u t h a n d e a s t t o w e s t .

TAMPICO HARBORWhen a g enerati on ago t he Boston pe ople

p l o u g h e d t h e r a i l r o a d l i n e f r o m A t c h i s o n t o S a n t a

F e a n d a c r o s s t h e g r e a t A m e r i c a n d e s e r t i n t o

C a l i f o r n i a , t h e y h a d g r e a t h o p e s o f t r a f f i c f r o m

t h e M e x i c a n C e n t r a l l i n e t h e y b u i l t f r o m E l

P a s o t o c o n n e c t w i t h t h e C i t y o f M e x i c o , a t h o u -

s a n d m i l e s d i s t a n t . T h e y b e l i e v e d i t w o u l d b e a

g r e a t f e e d e r t o t h e A t c h i s o n .

In t h i s t h e y we r e d i s a p p o i n t e d , b u t t h e y s t i l l

h a d t h e c o u r a g e t o b u i l d a b r a n c h t o T a m p i c o ,

h o p i n g t h e r e f r o m t o m a k e a n e w p o r t f o r t h e d e -

v e l o p m e n t o f t h e i n t e r i o r o f M e x i c o . They ha d

n o t h o u g h t o f o i l a n d n o o t h e r t h o u g h t t h a n t h e

w e a l t h o f t h e g r e a t h ig h p l a t e a u i n t h e c e n t e r o f

Mexico .

F o r y e a r s t h e A t c h i s o n f o l d e r s p r i n t e d t h e

M e x i c a n l i n e s a l m o s t a s t h e i r o w n . T o - d a y o n

t h e At c h i s o n f o l d e r s c o n n e c t i o n s n o r t h e v e n i n t o



TAMPICO HARBOR 2 3

C a n a d a m a y b e t r a c e d , b u t M e x i c o i s a f o r e i g n

c o u n t r y u p o n w h i c h t h e r a i l r o a d s n e e d n o t w a s t e

paper in maps or time-tables . A thum b-nail

c o r n e r i n t h e S a n t a F e m a p s h o w s M e x i c o , a n d

o n i t f r o m M e x i c o C i t y t o t h e R i o G r a n d e o n t h e

c o a s t i s a w i l d e r n e s s b r o k e n o n l y b y t h e h a r b o r

of Tampic o .

T o a l l A m e r i c a n l i n e s m e e t i n g a t E l P a s o t h e

b u s i n e s s i n a n d o u t o f M e x i c o h a s b e e n f o r m o r e

t h a n t h i r t y y e a r s a d i s a p p o i n t m e n t .

I t i s n o w c l e a r t h a t t h e g r e a t e s t d e v e l o p m e n t

i n M e x i c o m a y t a k e p l a c e f r o m t h e c o a s t a n d

t h r o u g h h e r o i l w e a l t h . F r o m t h e R i o G r a n d e t o

T a m p i c o t h e G u l f c o a s t o f M e x i c o i s l a r g e l y a n

u n p e n e t r a t e d j u n g l e , r i c h i n n a t u r a l r e s o u r c e s

a n d c a p a b l e o f m a i n t a i n i n g a p o p u l a t i o n o f m a n y

m i l l i o n s .

T a m p i c o h a r b o r i s s i m p l y t h e m o u t h o f t h e

P a n u c o R i v e r a n d t h e c i t y i s n i n e k i l o m e t e r s f r o m

t h e j e t t i e s , w h i c h d e f e n d t h e r i v e r m o u t h f r o m

t h e l a s h i n g s o f t h e G u l f w a v e s . T a m p i c o i s c a -

p a bl e o f i n d e f i n i t e d e v e l o p m e n t a s a p o r t . I t h a s

a l a r g e w a t e r b a s i n t o t h e s o u t h a n d a n o t h e r t o

t h e n o r t h w e s t , w h i l e f r o m n e a r t h e m o u t h o f t h e

r i v e r r u n s a g o v e r n m e n t c a n a l a l m o s t d u e s o u t h ,

d e f e n d e d f r o m t h e G u l f b y a n a r r o w s t r i p o f l a n d .

T h i s C h i j o l C a n a l e n t e r s t h e g r e a t l a g o o n o f



2 4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMT a m i a h u a , w h i c h i s c o n t i n u e d b y a n o t h e r w a t e r -

w a y n e a r t h e c o a s t a l m o s t t o T u x p a n . T h e r e -

f o r e , f o r a l m o s t t h e e n t i r e o n e h u n d r e d m i l e s

between Tampico and Tuxpan there is inland

w a t e r t r a n s p o r t a t i o n f o r b a r g e s a n d s h a l l o w

s t e a m e r s j u s t i n s i d e t h e c o a s t l i n e .

Betwee n th e Chijol Canal and th e Panuco

R i v e r a r e t h e t e r m i n i o f t h e M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m

p i p e l i n e s " t a n k f a r m " a n d T a n k v i l l e , w i t h

a l t o g e t h e r o n e h u n d r e d a n d t h r e e t a n k s , e a c h

f i l l e d w i t h 5 5 , 0 00 b a r r e l s o f o i l . T h e r e i s a l s o a

s t o r a g e b a s i n c a r r y i n g m o r e t h a n 8 0 0 , 0 0 0 b a r r e l s

o f o i l . H e r e a r e t h e m a c h i n e s h o p s , c a r p e n t e r

s h o p s , a n d s h i p b u i l d i n g p l a n t , p i e r s t h at wi l l a u -

t o m a t i c a l l y l o a d t h e l a r g e s t s t e a m e r s i n a f e w

h o u r s , a n d a t o p p i n g pl a n t t o t a ke t h e g a s o l e n e o r

d i s t i l l a t e fr o m t h e c r u d e o i l . A b o u t t e n p e r c e n t

o f t h e o i l i s g a s o l e n e a n d i t s r e m o v a l d o e s n o t

i m p a i r t h e f u e l q u a l i t i e s o f t h e n i n e t y p e r c e n t

r e m a i n i n g .

H er e a l s o o n t h e e as t s i d e o f t h e r i v e r ar e t h e

S t a n d a r d O i l a n d R o y a l D u t c h w o r k s a n d a r e -

f i n e r y a n d t o p p i n g p l a n t o f t h e M e x i c a n E a g l e

Comp any . On t h e o t h e r s i d e o f t h e r i v e r a r e t h e

P i e r ce O il r e f in e r y , t h e r a i l r o a d t e r m i n a l , a n d a

m a g n i f i c e n t g o v e r n m e n t w h a r f .

T h e m o u t h o f t h e r i v e r i s b e i n g d r e d g e d b y c o -



CHRISTMAS DAY AT EBANO . UNVEILING STATUE OF JUAREZ



PICTURESQUE EBANO 2 5

o p e r a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e C a r r a n z a g o v e r n m e n t i n

c o n t r o l a t T a m p i c o a n d t h e o i l i n t e r e s t s , m o r e

t h a n a d o z e n A m e r i c a n c o m p a n i e s c o o p e r a t i n g

t o a d v a n c e t h e m o n e y , t h e s a m e t o b e r e p a i d

f r o m t a x e s o n a p a r t o f t h e in c r e a s e o f t h e ir b u s i -

n e s s . U n d e r t h i s a r r a n g e m e n t t h e M e x i c a n E a g l e

Company, Lord Cowdr ay's compan y, advance s

t w e n t y - f i v e p e r c e n t a n d t h e M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m

C o m p a n y t h i r t y - t h r e e a n d o n e - t h i r d p e r c e n t .

PICTURESQUE EBANOT h e f i r s t o i l d e v e l o p m e n t s b e g a n a t E b a n o ,

t h i r t y - f i v e m i l e s w e s t o n t h e r a i l r o a d f r o m T a m -

p i c o . H e r e t h e M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m C o m p a n y h a s

n o w 4 5 0 , 0 0 0 a c r e s b o u n d e d o n t h e n o r t h b y t h e

T a m e s i n R i v e r , a n d r e a c h i n g a l m o s t d o w n t o t h e

P a n u c o R i v e r , t h e g e n e r a l d i r e c t i o n o f w h i c h i s

p a r a l l e l w i t h t h e T a m e s i n R i v e r . H e r e i s t h e

h ea v i e s t o i l , w h il e a s o n e g o e s s o u t h t h e o i l i s

l i g h t e r a n d i n c r e a s e s i n c o m m e r c i a l v a l u e .

E b a n o i s o n e o f t h e m o s t p i c t u r e s q u e t o w n s

i n M e x i c o , a n A m e r i c a n c r e a t i o n , o f M e x i c a n

a r c h i t e c t u r e , c o v e r i n g a b e a u t i f u l m o u n d r i s i n g

n e a r l y t w o h u n d r e d f e e t a b o v e t h e p l a i n , n o w a

f e r t i l e r a n c h , t h e w h o l e r e m i n d i n g o n e o f t h e

b e a u t i f u l I t a l i a n v i l l a g e s s e t o n a h i l l ; but

r a n c h a n d h i l l w e r e s e v e n t e e n y e a r s a g o a j u n g l e



~ s THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

t h i c k e t w i t h n o l i f e b u t t h a t o f t h e p a n t h e r , t h e

s e r p e n t , t h e pa r ro t , a n d a l l t h e o t h e r a n i m a l a n d

b i rd l i f e o f t h e j u n g l e .

From th is point the National Railways of

M e x i c o a r e f u r n i s h e d t h e i r f u e l o i l . W i t h t h e

r a i l r o a d s w o r k i n g a t t h e i r c a p a c i t y i n a s e t t l e d

c o u n t r y t h e y w o u l d b e c o n s u m i n g t w e l v e t h o u -

s a n d b a rr e l s a d a y , b u t a t p r e s e n t l e s s t h a n s i x

t h o u s a n d b a r r e l s i s t a k e n a n d t h e p r o c e e d s a r e

c r e d i t e d o n t h e c o m p a n y ' s t a x b i l l . T h e t a x i s

a b o u t f i v e c e n t s p e r b ar r e l f o r e x p o r t e d o i l .

U n t i l M e x i c o h a s s e t t l e d d o w n , i t i s n o t w o r t h

w hi l e t o d w e l l u p o n t h e o i l o r a g r ic u l t u r a l w ea l t h

o r t h e f e w m i l l i o n s h e r e f i r s t i n v e s t e d , f o r t h e

w e l l s f a r t h e r s o u t h a r e a b u n d a n t l y s u f f i c ie n t t o

f i l l f o u r t i m e s t h e p r e s e n t p i p e l i n e s a n d f o u r

t i m e s t h e a v a i l a b l e o c e a n t o n n a g e .



CHAPTER III

BUSINESS AND NOT POLITICS CAN REDEEM

MEXICO

THE U n i t e d S t a t e s c a n n e v e r t a ke i t s p r o p e r a t t i-

t u d e i n c o o p e r a t i v e d e m o c r a c y t o w a r d i t s s i s t e r

r e pu b l i c u n t il t wo " p o p u l a r , y e t a bs o l u t e l y f a l s e ,

i m p r e s s i o n s o f M e x i c o a r e r e m o v e d . T h e s e p o p u -

l a r f a l l a c ie s a r e :-F i r s t , t h a t t h e n a t u r a l w e a l t h o f M e x i c o h a s

f u r n i s h e d a b a s e f o r c o n t e n d i n g b u s i n e s s i n t e r -

e s t s f r o m t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s t o p r o m o t e M e x i c a n

q u a r r e l s .

S e c o n d , t h a t t h e l a n d q u e s t i o n i s a t t h e b o t t o m

o f t h e M e x i c a n t r o u b l e s .

T h e w r i t e r m u s t f r a n k l y c o n f e s s t h a t f o r m a n y

y e a rs h e b e l i e v e d t h e s e p o p u l a r s u p e r s t i t io n s , a n d

o n l y h i s r e c e n t t r i p i n t o M e x i c o d i s s i p a t e d t h e m .

T h e h i s t o r y o f t h e S t a n d a r d O i l C o m p a n y a s

p o p u l a r l y p r e s e n t e d h a s b e e n t h a t o f a r e c o r d o f

o i l m o n o p o l y c h e c k e d i n t e r m i t t e n t l y b y c o u r t s

a n d l e g i s l a t u re s , -a m o n o p o l y o v e r r i d i n g i n d i -

v i d u a l a n d p o p u l a r r i g h t s a n d p r o m o t i n g p e a c e

o r w a r fo r f in a n c i a l e n d s .



2 8 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMS u s p i c i o n s c o n c e r n i n g t h e S t a n d a r d O i l C o m -

pany in Mexico have b een prevalent on both

s i d e s o f t he At l a n t i c .

M a n y t i m e s t h e r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s o f A m e r i c a n

o i l i n t e r e s t s a t M e x i co h a v e b e e n i n t e r r o g a t e d a t

W a s h i n g t o n a s t o t h e i r r e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e S t a n d -

a r d O i l C o m p a n y , a n d e a c h t i m e t h e r e s p o n s e h a s

b e e n e m p h a t i c t h a t t h e S t a n d a r d O i l C o m p a n y

w a s n e i t h e r o p e n l y n o r s e c r e t l y p r o m o t i n g t h e o i l

d e v e l o p m e n t i n M e x i c o o r b e h i n d a n y i m p o r t a n t

i n d e p e n d e n t p r o d u c i n g c o m p a n i e s .

THE POSITION OF THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY

T h e f a c t i s t h a t t h e S t a n d a r d O i l C o m p a n y

h a s a i m e d a t a m o n o p o l y o f m a r k e t s , a m o n o p o l y

o f t r a n s p o r t a t i o n , a n d a m o n o p o l y o f r e fi n i n g . I t

h a s a l w a y s a v o i d e d o w n e r s h i p i n t h e p r o d u c i n g

f i e l d . T h e l a t e H. H . R o g e r s u s e d t o d e c l a r e t h a t

t h e S t a n d a r d O i l C o m p a n y w a n t e d n o m o r e t h a n

a n e i g h t y -f i v e p er c en t m o n o p o l y i n o i l ; b u t t h a t

i t s f i f t e e n p e r c e n t i n t e r e s t i n t h e p r o d u c t i o n

w a s m o r e t h a n i t d e s i r e d i n t h a t l i n e . Th e

S t a n d a r d O i l C o m p a n y h a s p r o s p e c t e d o r m i n e d

f o r o i l o n l y w h e r e o t h e r s c o u l d n o t b e i n d u c e d

t o t a k e t h e r i s k . The h azard of mining the

Standar d Oil Company has alwa ys endeav ored

t o a v o i d .



STANDARD OIL COMPANY 2 9

The Amalg amate d Copper Compan y wa s a

f a i l u r e u n d e r M r . R o g e r s b e c a u s e h e w a s n o t a

m i n e r a n d h e s i t a t e d t o t a k e a m i n e r ' s r i s k i n

o p e n i n g t h e B u t t e c o p p e r d i s t r i c t a t d e p t h .

T h e m e n w h o o p e n e d t h e M e x i c a n o i l t e r r i -

tory were prospectors and miners and never

s o u g h t t h e m a n u f a c t u r i n g o r d i s t r i b u t i o n e n d s

o f t h e b u s i n e s s . E v e n t o - d a y E . L. D o h e n y b o t h

i n C a l i f o r n i a a n d i n M e x i c o d e c l a r e s h e p r e f e r s

t h e pr o f i t s o f p r o d u c t i o n o n a l a r g e s c a l e t o t h e

d e t a i l s o f m a n u f a c t u r i n g o r t h e b u s i n e s s o f r e -

t a i l i n g , w h i c h h e r e g a r d s a s d i s t i n ct f i e l d s f r o m

o i l p r o d u c t i o n .

T h e S t a n d a r d O i l p e o p l e a r e b u y e r s o f o i l a t

T a m p i c o a n d a r e b u i l d i n g a r e f i n i n g p l a n t t h e r e

t o b e c o m e l a r g e r b u y e r s o f o i l , a n d t h e y h a v e

s o m e p r o d u c i n g i n t e r e s t s s o u t h o f T u x p a n . The

P i e r c e O i l C o m p a n y a l s o h a s a r e f i n e r y a t T a m -

p i c o a n d t h e B r i t i s h , o r L o r d C o w d r a y , i n t e r e s t s

ship f rom both Tampico and Tuxpan and re-

f i n e a t T a m p i c o a n d T e h u a n t e p e c .

T h e M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m C o m p a n y i s t h e l a r g -

e s t p r o d u c i n g i n t e r e s t i n M e x i c o , w i t h a p r e s e n t

p r o d u c ti o n o f f i f ty - fi v e t h o u s a n d b a rr e l s p e r d a y .

T h e C o w d r a y i n t e r e s t s a r e s e c o n d w i t h a b o u t

t h i r t y t h o u s a n d b a r r e l s a d a y o n p r e s e n t r e -

s t r i c te d s h i p p i n g f a c i l i t i e s . Ot h e r i n t e r e s t s r e p -




r e s e n t e d a t T a m p i c o a r e t h e P i e r c e O i l C o m p a n y

and th e Royal Dutch o r Shell i ntere sts and

t h e S t a n d a r d O i l C o m p a n y o f N e w J e r s e y . The

o u t l o o k i s t h a t t h e S h e l l i n t e r e s t s w i l l s o o n b e

t h e t h i r d l a r g e s t p r o d u c e r s . B u t t h e m a j o r i n -

t e r e s t s o f t h e P i e r c e O i l C o m p a n y a n d t h e S t a n d -

a r d O i l c o m p a n i e s h e r e a r e in t h e r e f in i n g o f o i l .

A WORLD MAGNET IN MEXICO

I t i s b e c a u s e o f t h e s e i n t e r e s t s , A m e r i c a n a n d

E u r o p e a n , i n t h e T a m p i c o f i e l d , b o t h a s p r o -

d u c e r s a n d r e f i n e r s , a n d b e c a u s e s u c h e v i d e n c e s

o f u n d e r g r o u n d w e a l t h c a n c o m m a n d t h e c a p i t a l

o f b o t h E u r o p e a n d A m e r i c a a n d b e c a u s e p e t r o -

l e u m f u e l i s w o r k i n g r e v o l u t i o n s o n b o t h l a n d

a n d s e a , t h a t t h e d e v e l o p m e n t , t h e r e g e n e r a t i o n ,

and th e hope o f Mexico and of the Mexican

p e o p l e m u s t h a v e t h e i r b a s e a t T a m p i c o , a n d

n o t i n t h e c o m m e r c e o f V e r a C r u z o r t h e i n l a n d

p r o d u c t i o n s o f M e x i c o , m i n e r a l o r a g r i c u l t u r a l .

N o r e d i v i s i o n o f l a n d s i n M e x i c o , n o p a rt i t i o n

o f h a c i e n d a s o r r a n c h e s , c a n s o l v e t h e p r o b l e m s

o f M e x i c o o r b r i n g h e r f o r w a r d t o t h e p o s i t i o n

s h e i s e n t i tl e d t o o c cu p y b y re a s o n o f h e r n at u r al

w e a l t h a n d m i l l i o n s o f h u m a n h a n d s r e a d y f o r

work .

Land is che ap i n Mexico and is t o be h ad



A WORLD MAGNET IN MEXICO 3 1

a l m o s t f o r t h e a s k i n g , b u t o f w h a t u s e i s a n

a c r e o r a h u n d r e d a c r e s t o a p e a s a n t w i t h o u t

p l o u g h , a n i m a l p o w e r , o r m a c h i n e r y , a n d , a b o v e

a l l , w i t h o u t t r a n s p o r t a t i o n o r n e a r - b y m a r k e t s ?

I n t h e o i l r e g i o n s o f C a l i f o r n i a , r i c h i n s o i l a n d

m a r k e t s , t h e u n d e r g r o u n d w e a l t h i s r e c k o n e d a t

j u s t t w e n t y t i m e s t h e v a l u e o f t h e s o i l w e a l t h .

F r o m T a m p i c o t o T u x p a n i s a t r o p i c a l j u n g l e

b u t n o t , a s o f t e n a s s u m e d , a m i a s m a t i c m a r s h .

I t i s a j u n g l e o f l u x u r io u s f o l i a g e o v e r s o i l t h a t

c a n g r o w a n y t h i n g i n t h e w o r l d ; b u t w h e r e a r e

t h e m a r k e t s a n d w h e r e t h e i n c e n t i v e s f o r t h e

n a t i v e p o p u l a t i o n t o l a b o r ?

T h e b e g i n n i n g s o f m a r k e t s , t h e b e g i n n i n g s o f

t r a n s p o r t a t i o n , t h e b e g i n n i n g s o f i n c e n t i v e , t h e

b e g i n n i n g s o f a c c u m u l a t i o n , a r e i n t h e u n c o v e r -

i n g o f l a r g e n a t u r a l o r p l a n e t a r y w e a l t h . O u t -

s i d e c a p i t a l w i l l t a k e t h e r i s k f o r t h e p r iz e , w i l l

e m p l o y t h e l a b o r , w i l l c r e a t e t h e tr a n s p o r t a t i o n ,

t h e m a r k e t s , a n d t h e i n t e r c h a n g e o f c o m m o d i t i e s

t h a t m a k e f o u n d a t i o n s f o r m o d e r n c i v i l i z a t i o n .

N a t u r a l w e a l t h o u t s i d e t h e p a t h o f d e v e l o p m e n t

has no value . The Mexican petroleum fields

h a d a b s o l u t e l y n o v a l u e i n 1 9 0 0 a n d , u n d e v e l -

o p e d , w i l l h a v e t h e s a m e v a l u e i n two thousand

y e a r s t h a t t h e y h a d t w o t h o u s a n d y e a r s a g o .

To him w ho w ould study fundamentals, the



SQ THE MEXICAN PROBLEMfuture of Mexico is already on the map at

Tampico because there is here exactly what

Europea n and America n civil izatio n are de-

m a n d i n g f o r t h e w o r l d ' s p r o g r e s s , a n d w h a t e v e r

comes, wheth er the dev elopment is by Great

B r i t a i n o r G e r m a n y o r b y N o r t h o r S o u t h A m e r -

i c a , t h e w e a l t h t h a t t h e n c e c a n g i v e l i g h t a n d

p o w e r t o t h e w o r l d w i l l n e v e r b e s u r r e n d e r e d

b a c k t o t h e c h e m i s t r y o f M o t h e r E a r t h .

T h e wr i t er t r a v e l e d t h i rt y - f iv e m i l e s w e s t i n t o

t h e o i l f ie l d s a n d n i n e t y m i l e s s o u t h : b e s i d e p a r-

a l l e l p i p e l i n e s c a rr y i n g o i l , g a s , a n d w at e r ; v i s -

i t e d t h e t e r m i n a l s , m a c h i n e s h o p s , c a r p e n t e r

s h o p s , t a n k s , r e s e r v o i r s , a n d s h i p p i n g w h a r v e s ,

and saw the Mexicans with work and w ages

n e v e r d r e a m e d o f h a l f a g e n e r a t i o n a g o .

THE CONTRASTB o s t o n p e o p l e p u t t h e M e x i c a n C e n t r a l R a i l -

r o a d i n t o T a m p i c o m o r e t h a n t h i r t y y e a r s a g o ,

a n d b e t w e e n t h a t r a i l r o a d a n d t h e b a n k s o f t h e

P a n u c o R i v e r a r e s t i l l t h e h a l f - n a k e d M e x i c a n

b a b i e s , t h e w a n m o t h e r s , t h e l i s t l e s s b o y s a n d

g i r l s , w i t h o u t o p p o r t u n i t y , a n d t h e f a t h e r s w it h -

o u t a m b it i o n t o k e ep i n r e pa i r t h e r o o f s o f t h e ir

l o w h u t s .

A d u g - o u t c e d a r l o g f o r a c a n o e w i t h a r e d



FAITHFUL MEXICANS 3 3

b l a n k e t f o r a s a i l i s p i c t u r e s q u e , b u t n o t i n d u s -

t r ia l l y e x p a n s i v e . Th e fi s h i n g i s g o o d , a n d e x i s t -

e n c e ca l l s f o r b u t l i t t l e e n e rg y . On t h e o t h e r s i d e

o f t h e r i v e r a r e w e l l - d r e s s e d M e x i c a n f a m i l i e s

w i t h c o m f o r t a b l e h o m e s , p u r e w a t e r , e l e c t r i c

l i g h t s , m o v i n g p i c t u r e s , w a g e s , a n d o p p o r t u n i t y

f o r m o r e . T h e r e a r e g r e a t p o s s i b i l i t i e s o f s a v i n g s

in these wages and of personal development

t h e r e f r o m ; b u t t h r o u g h o u t a l l M e x i c o t h e r e i s

n o t y e t a s a v i n g s b a n k .

The Mexicans are good workers w hen tools

a n d i n s t r u c t i o n c o m e t o t h e i r h a n d . S o f a r a s

o p e r a t e d , t h e r a i l r o a d l i n e s o f t h e c o u n t r y a n d

t h e r a i l r o a d r e p a i r s h o p s a r e m a n n e d e n t i r e l y b y

Mexica ns . T h e r e a r e s e v e r a l i n d e p e n d e n t T a m -

p i c o s h i pb u i l d i n g a n d r e p a i r y a r d s a l l o w n e d a n d

o p e r a t e d b y M e x i c a n g r a d u a t e s f r o m t h e r e p a i r

plants o f th e Mexican Petroleum Company on

t h e o t h e r s i d e o f t h e r i v e r .

FAITHFUL MEXICANSW h e n i n 1 9 1 3 a l l t h e A m e r i c a n s w e r e c a l l e d

out of Mexico, the nativ e employees of the

Mexica n Petro leum Compa ny, wh o had b een

a s s i s t i n g i n t h e p u m p i n g s t a t i o n s a n d i n t h e

s h o p s , s a w t o i t t h a t n e v e r a s t r o k e w a s m i s s e d ,

n o r w a s t h e re a b a r re l l e s s o i l p r o d u c e d , n o r a n y



3 4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMdamage or harm to th e company's property

e n t r u s t e d e n t i r e l y t o i t s o w n f a i t h f u l M e x i c a n

w o r k m e n .

W h e n i n J u n e , 1 9 1 6 , t h e m i l i t a r y g o v e r n o r o f

T a m p i c o d e c l a r e d w a r o n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s a n d

t h e M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m C o m p a n y t o o k o u t n i n e

h u n d r e d A m e r i c a n s o n t w o o i l s t e a m s h i p c a r r i e r s

a n d t h e y a c h t C a s i a n a , a g a i n t h e p u m p s n e v e r

m i s s e d a s t r o k e a n d t h e M e x i c a n e m p l o y e e s i n

a b o u t t e n d a y s p u t 4 6 1 , 0 0 0 b a r re l s o f o i l i n t h e

t a n k s a n d a l s o l o a d e d t w o s t e a m e r s f o r e x p o r t ;

n o r w a s t h e r e a n y t h o u g h t o f i n t e r f e r e n c e o r o f

a t t a c k u p o n t h e p r o p e r t y .

S u p e r i n t e n d e n t G r e e n d e c l a r e d t h a t a f t e r s u c h

f a i t h f u l n e s s t h e M e x i c a n s s h o u l d c o n t i n u e t o

r u n t h e p u m p s a n d t h e m a c h i n e r y .

I t i s n o w o n d e r , t h e r e f o r e , t h a t t h e p a r t y o f

Americans vi siting Tamp ico in Marc h, 1917,

w e r e e v e r y w h e r e w e l c o m e d w i t h s m i l e s o r t h a t a

M e x i c a n y o u t h i n s a n d a l s , m i s t a k i n g t h e w r i t e r

f o r a c o m p a n y m a n a g e r , a p p l i e d i n S p a n i s h f o r

w o r k , d e c l a r i n g t h a t h e h a d a w i f e a n d b a b i e s

a n d t h a t h e n e e d e d f o o d a n d c l o t h i n g .

T h a t i s t h e n e e d o f M e x i c o t o - d a y -o p p o r -

t u n i t y t o l a b o r , o p p o r t u n i t y f o r t h e f a m i l y , o p -

p o r t u n i t y f o r f o o d , c l o t h i n g , b e t t e r s h e l t e r , a n d

b e tt e r s o c i a l c o n d i t i o n s .



INTO THE JUNGLE 3 5

A n d t h i s i s e x a c t l y w h a t A m e r i c a n a n d E u r o -

p e a n c a p i t a l a n d o r g a n i z a t i o n h a v e b r o u g h t t o

T a m p i c o , a t t r a c t e d b y i t s u n d e r g r o u n d w e a l t h ,

a n d t h i s i s w h a t w i l l u l t i m a t e l y r e d e e m M e x i c o

a n d f o r w a r d h e r p e o p l e b y i n d u s t r i a l o p p o r -

t u n i t y .

INTO THE JUNGLE

N o w h e r e i n t h e t r o p i c s c a n o n e m a k e a m o r e

i n t e r e s t i n g t r i p t h a n t o t a k e a s w i ft l a u n c h o r a

l a z y s t e r n - w h e e l b a r g e a n d a t d a y b r e a k s t i r t h e

f l y i n g - f i s h a n d t h e j u n g l e p a r r o t s o f t h e C h i j o l

C a n a l , p a s s o n t h r o u g h s h a l l o w T a m i a h u a L a k e ,

w h e r e t h e w a t e r f o w l s b e f o r e t h e i r m i g r a t i o n m a y

b e s e e n s p r e a d o u t i n a l l d i r e c t i o n s f o r t w e n t y

m i l e s , n o t e t h e e l e c t r i c l i g h t o f t h e o i l p u m p i n g

s t a t i o n s , c o n t r a s t i n g w i t h t h e d i s t a n t d a r k m o u n -

t a i n p e a k s , a n d g l i m p s e t h r o u g h t h e j u n g l e t h e

c l e a r e d h i l l s i d e f i e l d s w h e r e t h e B r it i s h o i l i n -

terest s, repres ented by Lord Cowdr ay, hav e

p l a n t e d t h e m a r k o f E n g l i s h t h o r o u g h n e s s i n

f i e l d a n d b u i l d i n g c o n s t r u c t i o n .

T h e w a t e r t r i p n o w t e r m i n a t e s s i x t y m i l e s

south at San Geroni mo, but l ater may re ach

Tuxpan, forty miles beyon d . H e r e a t a s m a l l

i n l e t d i v i d i n g t h e B r i t i s h a n d A m e r i c a n d e v e l o p -

m e n t s y o u m o u n t m o t o r h a n d c a r s a n d f l y l i k e



86 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMt h e w i n d t h r o u g h t h e c a n e b r a k e a n d t h e b a m b o o

o f t h e j u n g l e u p h i l l a n d d o w n a n d a r o u n d s h a r p

c u r v e s . B e f o r e y o u c a n g e t y o u r b r e a t h y o u a r e

a m i d t h e o i l d e r r i c k s o f s e v e r a l A m e r i c a n a n d

E n g l i s h c o m p a n i e s d r i l l i n g o n t h e i r b o r d e r l i n e s

a s i n T e x a s a n d C a l i f o r n i a .

B u t h e r e t h e c o n t e s t s b e t w e e n c o n t e n d i n g i n -

t e re s t s m u s t b e s h a r p e r , f o r n o m a n k n o w s i n t h i s

c o u n t r y t o w h a t e x t e n t a t t w o t h o u s a n d f e e t i n

d e p t h a n e i g h b o r i n g o i l w e l l m a y e x h a u s t h i s

l a n d .

The Mexican Petroleum Company woul d ap-

p e a r t o h a v e t h e a d v a n t a g e a t t h i s p o i n t , a s n o

o t h e r A m e r i c a n c o m p a n y h a s y e t a p i p e l i n e .

MEXICAN GUSHERS

P a u s i n g b e f o r e C h i n a m p a N u m b e r 1 , t h e o i l

w a s f o u n d b u b b l i n g u p a r o u n d t h e d r i l l , a n d

o r d e r s w e r e g i v e n b y M r . D o h e n y t o e n t e r t a i n

t h e A m er i c a n p a r t y i f po s s i b l e o n t h e r e t u r n t r i p

i n t h e a f t e r n o o n w i t h t h e b ri n g i n g i n o f t h e we l l .

A f e w m o r e s t r o k e s o n t h e d r i l l a n d t h e g a s a n d

o i l b u b b l e d h i g h e r , b u t i t d i d n o t f l o w t h a t d a y .

I n t h i s e n t i r e t e r r it o r y t h e r e i s n o p u m p in g o f

w e l l s a s i n C a l i f o r n i a . E v e r y we l l f l o w s o r g u s h e s .

Two days later, or Fr iday, Marc h 16, Chi n-

ampa Numbe r 1 "came i n" and f lowe d fo r two



THE GUSHER POTRERO 4, BEFORE BEING CAPPED



MEXICAN GUSHERS 8 7

a n d a h a l f m i n u t e s o v e r t h e c r o w n p u l l e y , e i g h t y -

t w o f e e t h i g h . T h e n t h e y s h u n t e d t h e f l o w i n t o

t h e p i p e l i n e a n d t h e l a t e r r e p o r t w a s t e n t h o u -

s a n d b a r r e l s p e r d a y f r o m t h i s w e l l , w i t h e x p e c -

t a t i o n t h a t s h e w o u l d l a t e r " d r i l l h e r s e l f i n . "

T h i s m e a n s t h a t w h e n c l e a r e d f o r a c t i o n s h e

m i g h t b e a t h i r d g r e a t ; w e l l f o r t h e M e x i c a n

Petroleum Company with capacity of several

t i m e s t e n t h o u s a n d b a r r e l s p e r d a y .

A s t h i s i s t h e o n e w e l l i n c o m p e t i t i v e t e rr i t o r y ,

t h e s u p p l y a t o t h e r w e l l s o f t h i s c o m p a n y m u s t

b e s t i l l f u r t h e r s h u t i n t o p e r m i t f u l l f l o w h e r e .

O n t h e h i l l t o p , h i g h a b o v e t h e s u r r o u n d i n g

c o u n t r y , b l a z e d a y a n d n i g h t t we l v e g i g a n t i c g a s

f l a m e s r e l i e v i n g t h e p r e s s u r e o n t h e f a m o u s

Casiano wel l of the Mexican Petroleu m Com-

p a n y w h i c h i s i n t h e v a l l e y b e y o n d , w i t h b e a u t i -

f u l s u r r o u n d i n g h i l l s , a n d p r o b a b l y g e o l o g i c a l l y

i s o l a t ed i n t h i s o i l c o u n t r y .

Y o u c l i m b i n a n d o u t o f t h i s v a l l e y b y t e a m

o r i n s a d d l e a n d a c l e a r e r p i c t u r e o n e w o u l d g o

f a r t o s e e-u l t i v a t e d f ie l d s , n e a t h o u s e s , p u m p -

i n g m a c h i n e r y m o v i n g l i k e c l o c k - w o r k , b u t s e t

i n a t r o p i c a l f r u i t a n d f l o w e r g a r d e n .

"Casi ano Numb er 7 " c a m e i n S e p t e m b e r 1 0 ,

1 9 1 0 , a t s e v e n t y - f i v e t h o u s a n d t o e i g h t y t h o u -

sand barrels a day and is now shut down to



3 8 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMt w e n t y - f i v e t h o u s a n d b a r r e l s a d a y u n d e r t w o

h u n d r e d a n d s i x t y - f i v e p o u n d s p r e s s u r e ; b u t

m o r e t h a n d o u b l e t h i s a m o u n t c o u l d b e t a k e n

f r o m t h e w e l l w e re t h e r e s h i p p i n g f a ci l i t i e s f r o m

Tampi co . "Casia no Numb er 6" was f low ing

fifteen thous and barrels a day when it was

c l o s e d i n a m o n t h b e f o r e N u m b e r 7 c a m e i n .

I t i s p o s s i b l y i m m a t e r i a l f r o m w h i c h w e l l t h e

C a s i a n o d i s t r i c t i s t a p p e d , f o r n o m a n k n o w s t o

w h a t e x t e n t i n t h i s v a l l e y N u m b e r 7 i s d r a w i n g

f r o m t h e t e r r i t o r y o f N u m b e r 6 , a s t h e g e o l o g y

i n t h e s e o i l f i e l d s i s n o t a n a l o g o u s t o a n y t h i n g

e l s e k n o w n o n t h e c o n t i n e n t . Numb er 7 can not

b e s h u t i n m o r e c l o s e l y w i t h o u t d a n g e r , f o r a n y

i n c r e a s e d r e s t r a i n t c a u s e s t h e g r o u n d t o b r e a k

f o r t h w i t h o i l a f e w h u n d r e d f e e t d i s t a n t .

N e a r l y t w e n t y m i l e s f a r t h e r s o u t h b y t h e M e x -

ican Petroleum Company's railw ay and pipe,

w at e r a n d g a s l i n e s i s t h e g re a t es t o i l w e l l i n t h e

w o r l d t o - d a y , - C e r r o A z u l , w h i c h m e a n s " b l u e

h i l l , " a n d w h i c h " b l e w i n " F e b r u a r y 9 , 1 9 1 6 ,

a n d s h o t 1 , 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 b a r r e l s o f o i l i n t o t h e a i r

b e f o r e i t c o u l d b e c a p p e d . O n e h a l f o f t h i s w a s

s a v e d b y a q u i c k l y c o n s t r u c t e d r e s e r v o i r . The

c o l u m n o f o i l m e a s u r e d s i x h u n d r e d f e e t , a n d

w h e n i t w a s s h u t i n t h e d e l i v e r y w a s a t t h e r a t e

o f m o r e t h a n 260,000 b a r r e l s p e r d a y .



CHAPTER IV

WHO SHALL HELP THE ENGULFED PEOPLE?

WHEN y o u h a v e t r a v e l e d n e a r l y t w e n t y - f i v e

h u n d r e d m i l e s b y l a n d a n d w a t e r t o r e a c h a t

C e r r o A z u l t h e g r e a t e s t o i l w e l l i n t h e w o r l d ,

y o u s e e i n t h e j u n g l e o n l y a c l e a r e d f i e l d , n e a r

t h e c e n t e r o f w h i c h i s a m o u n d o f e a r t h n o t

t w e n t y f e e t h i g h , s e t a g a i n s t " m o u n t a i n s o f

b l u e , " a n d t h e o n l y e v i d e n c e o f h u m a n i n t e r e s t

i s a n o r d i n a r y p r e s s u r e g a u g e e m b e d d e d n e a r

t h e t o p o f t h i s e a r t h m o u n d .

B u t y o u s t a n d o n t h e t o p o f t h i s l i t t l e m o u n d

a n d f e e l t h e p u l s a t i o n o f s o m e t h i n g a l m o s t h u -

m a n b e n e a t h y o u r f e e t -a c r a t e r o f e n e r g y t h a t

t a x e d t h e i n g e n u i t y o f m a n f o r d a y s t o h a r n e s s

i t a n d c a p d o w n a g a s a n d o i l p r e s s u r e m e a s u r -

i n g a b o v e o n e t h o u s a n d p o u n d s p e r s q u a r e i n c h ,

a n d f l o w i n g o i l a t a r a t e e q u a l i n g a b o u t o n e

q u a r t e r o f t h e o i l p r o d u c t i o n o f t h e wh o l e w o r l d .

POSSIBILITIES OF DEVELOPMENT

O n e c a n b u t r e f l e c t t h a t t h e A l m i g h t y p e r -

m i t t e d t h e t a p p i n g o f h i s r e s e r v o i r s o f o i l o n l y



4 0 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMw h e n t h e w h o l e w o r l d w a s c o m i n g i n t o l i n e t o

r e c e i v e t h e b e n e f i t s .

T h e C i t y o f M e x i c o i s o n e h u n d r e d a n d s e v -

e n t y m i l e s d i s t a n t s o u t h w e s t . W i t h t h e c o u n -

t r y a t p e a c e a n d h o l d i n g t h e c o n f i d e n c e o f t h e

c r e d i t m a r k e t s o f t h e w o r l d , a n e a s i l y c o n -

s t r u c t e d p i p e l i n e c o u l d b e d e l i v e r i n g d a i l y s e v -

e r a l m i l l i o n c u b i c fe e t o f g a s i n M e x ic o C i t y f o r

w a r m t h , l i g h t a n d p o w e r t o q u i c k l y o b l i t e r a t e

t h e r a v a g e s o f i n t e r n a l w a r s . B u t t h e r e t h e t w o

m i l l i o n d o l l a r ga s p l a n t i s s h u t d o w n a f t e r l o s i n g

o n e h u n d r e d t h o u s a n d d o l l a r s a y e a r f o r f o u r

y e a r s , a n d t h e t h r e a t c o m e s f r o m t h e C a r r a n z a

g o v e r n m e n t t h a t t h i s p l a n t w i l l b e c o n f i s c a t e d

u n l e s s i t i s p u t i n o p e ra t i o n . C o n f i d e n c e w i t h

c r e d i t i s n o t c o m m a n d e e r e d o v e r n i g h t . T h r o u g h -

o u t t h e w h o l e o i l r e g i o n , a n d f o r t h e s a f e t y o f

t h e c o u n t r y a n d i t s i n h a b i t a n t s , t e n m i l l i o n

c u b i c f e e t o f g a s a r e d a i l y b u r n e d i n h i g h f l a m -

i n g t o r c h e s .

I t i s n o t w h a t M e x i c o i s n o w d o i n g , b u t t h e

w o r l d p o s s i b i l i t i e s i n i t , t h a t o n e m a y s e e a n d

p r ac ti c a l l y f e e l a s h e s t a n d s w it h h i s f e e t o n t h e

C e r r o A z u l m o u n d o f e a r t h a n d n o t e s t h e f o r c e

b e n e a t h t h a t i s d e l i v e r i n g i n t o t h e p i p e l i n e

t we n t y -f i v e t h o u s a n d b a r r el s o f o i l p e r d a y a n d i s

p u l s a t i n g t o d e l i v e r t e n t i m e s t h i s a m o u n t .



OIL VERSUS COAL 4 1

T h e w o r l d n o w n e e d s i t a s n e v e r b e f o r e , a n d

M e x i c o n e e d s , a s n e v e r b e f o r e , t h e o u t s i d e h e l p

t h a t t h i s m a g n e t o f w e a l t h c a n b r i n g t o i t .

OIL VERSUS COALThe English have t horough ly experimented

w i t h f u e l o i l a n d d e m o n s t r a t e d t h a t , u s e d i n

a D i e s e l e n g i n e , o n e t o n o f o i l , o r 6 . 8 b a rr e l s ,

d o e s t h e wo r k o f s i x t o n s o f c o a l ; a n d t h e n o r m a l

p r i c e i n E n g l a n d i s a b o u t f i v e d o l l a r s p e r t o n

f o r e a c h , a l t h o u g h p r e s e n t w a r p r i c e s a r e n e a r l y

d o u b l e . B u r n e d u n d e r b o i l e r s t h r e e t o n s o f o i l

e q u a l s i x t o n s o f c o a l .

T h e d e m o n s t r a t i o n w a s c l e a r t h a t t h e D i e s e l

e n g i n e s h i p c a n b e o p e r a t e d a t f i f t y p e r c e n t o f

t h e c o s t o f t h e c o a l b u r n e r . T h e w a r h a s i n t e r -

r u p t e d t h e c o n v e r s i o n o f t h e w o r l d ' s o c e a n t o n -

n a g e f r o m c o a l t o o i l , b u t t h e f u t u r e o f o i l o n

l a n d a n d s e a h a s b e e n p r o v e d a n d c a n b e s e e n

from th e pressure g auge on Cerro Azul ; a n d

f r o m t h e s a m e p o i n t c a n b e s e e n t h e r e d e m p t i o n

and reg eneratio n of Mexico, the mome nt a

b r o t h e r l y h a n d c a n b e e x t e n d e d t o h e r .

Englan d and Germany b oth s ee it, for in

t h e s e c o u n t r i e s b u s i n e s s a n d g o v e r n m e n t w o r k

t o g e t h e r f o r n a t i o n a l d e v e l o p m e n t a n d t h e u p -

l i f t o f t h e p e o p l e . In ti me Mexico and th e



4 2 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMU n i t e d S t a t e s a l s o s h o u l d s e e i t , a n d d e m a n d

that government and business cooperate and

t h a t M e x i c o a n d t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s b e m u t u a l l y

h e l p f u l .

W e h a v e n o r i g h t t o s t r i k e d o w n t h e g o v e r n -

m e n t s o f M e x i c o o n e a f t e r a n o t h e r a n d r e f u s e

t o t h e g o v e r n m e n t a n d p e o p l e f i n a n c i a l , b u s i -

n e s s , a n d p o l i t ic al a s s i s t a n ce.

The only assistance th e people of Mexico

h a v e h a d f r o m t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s h a s b e e n b u s i -

n e s s a s s i s t a n c e i n r a i l r o a d , m i n i n g , a n d o i l d e -

velopment .

THE GERMAN POSITIONI s i t a n y w o n d e r t h a t M e x i c o r e a c h e s o u t f o r

n a t i o n a l a s s i s t a n c e , f i rs t t o J a p a n a n d l a s t l y t o

Germany? Since return ing, I hav e ha d con-

f i r m a t i o n f r o m E u r o p e a n s o u r c e s o f t h e r e p o r t

t h a t t w o l a r g e d e p o s i t s o f G e r m a n m o n e y h a v e

b e e n m a d e f o r t h e a c c o u n t o f C a r r a n z a . T h i s

d o e s n o t m e a n w a r u p o n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s b y

t h e p e o p l e o f M e x i c o .

I t i s d i f f i c u l t t o p r e d i c t r e g a r d i n g G e r m a n y .

I s a w t h e G e r m a n w a r m a c h i n e a f t e r S e d a n a n d

G r a v e l o t t e . I v i s i t e d t h e c o u n t r y a f e w y e a r s

ago and printed that Germany was preparing

f o r a E u r o p e a n w a r a n d t o s t r i k e b o t h R u s s i a



THE GERMAN POSITION 4 3

and France . F e w A m e r i c a n s w o u l d b e l i e v e i t .

I r e t u r n e d t o G e r m a n y a g a i n i n 1 9 1 3 , n o t e d t h e

m i l i t a r y a n d f i n a n c i a l m e a s u r e s , t h e d e c r e e s f o r -

b i d d i n g a n y n e w e n t e r p r i s e s , a n d t h e n d e c l a r e d

that Germany could not afford a w orld war .

G e r m a n y g o t h e r w a r , b u t s a y s E n g l a n d i s t o

b l a m e , b e c a u s e i f E n g l a n d h a d d e c l a r e d h e r i n -

t e n t i o n t o c o m e i n , G e r m a n y w o u l d n e v e r h a v e

t h r o w n d o w n t h e g a g e o f b a t t l e .

A l t h o u g h p l a n s h a v e m i s c a r r i e d , i t s h o u l d

n o t b e f o r g o t t e n t h a t G e r m a n y i s o n e v a s t b u s i -

n e s s o r g a n i z a t i o n , i n t e r t w i n e d w i t h t a r i f f , g o v -

ernment and military power . The Ger ma ns

w e r e e x p e r t i n g t h e C e r r o A z u l o i l f i e l d a n d c o n -

t e m p l a t e d m i l l i o n s o f i n v e s t m e n t t h e r e i n b e f o r e

the war . I t i s g o o d b u s i n e s s f o r G e r m a n y t o

g i v e C a r r a n z a f i n a n c i a l a s s i s t a n c e w i t h a v i e w

t o a s t a n d i n g a f t e r t h e w a r . I t w o u l d b e p o o r

b u s i n e s s f o r e i t h e r G e r m a n y o r M e x i c o t o l a y

the g age of batt le on th e Rio Grande, for

thereby the business aims of both w ould be

d e f e a t e d .

Germany looks ahead and wants business

a f t e r t h e w a r . M e x i c o n e e d s f i n a n c i a l a s s i s t a n c e

a n d w i l l n e e d b u s i n e s s d e v e l o p m e n t f o r m a n y

y e a r s t o c o m e .



4 4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMOUR GOVERNMENT' S WOBBLES

T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s h a s h a d n o s t e a d y b u s i n e s s

o r p o l i t i c a l p o l i c y t o w a r d M e x i c o . I t h a s b e e n

"Go i n!" "Com e o ut !" "Go b ac k!" "Stay

out!" The Washingt on declarat ion h as been,

" D o w n w i t h t h e t a ri f f a n d i n t o t h e e x po r t f i e l d , "

and when hands have been uplifted from

M e x i c o , o u r n e a r e s t a n d m o s t n e e d y f i e l d f o r

e x p o r t , M r . B r y a n h a s r e s p o n d e d , " W h y d o n ' t

y o u s t a y a t h o m e ? "

I h e a r d i t d e c l a r e d i n M e x i c o , " E v e r y W i l s o n

p o l i c y t o w a r d M e x i c o h a s b e e n w r o n g . Nev er

h a s t h e r i g h t t h i n g b e e n d o n e a t t h e r i g h t t i m e ;

b u t i n e x t e n u a t i o n o f M r . Wi l s o n i t m u s t b e a d -

mitted that nobody can now say what would

h a v e b e e n t h e c o r r e c t p o l i c y t o w a r d M e x i c o . "

T h e s t r o n g p o l i c y w a s w h e n E v a r t s w r o t e t o

our Minister Foster in Mexico in Augus t,

1 8 7 8 :-T h e f i r s t d u t y o f a g o v e r n m e n t i s t o p r o t e c t l i f e

a n d p r o p e r t y . Th i s i s a p a r a m o u n t o b l i g a t i o n .

F o r t h is g o v e r n m e n t s a r e i n s t i t u t e d , a n d g o v e r n -

m e n t s n e g l e c t i n g o r f a i l i n g t o p e r f o r m i t be c o m e

w o r s e t ha n u s e l e s s . T hi s d u t y t h e g o v e r n m en t o f

t h e Un i t e d S t a t e s h a s d e t e r m i n e d t o p e r fo r m t o

t h e e x t e n t o f i t s p o w e r t o w a r d i t s c i t i z e n s o n t h e

b o r d e r . I t i s n o t s o l i ci to u s , i t n e v e r h a s b e e n ,



THE WILSON REVERSE 4 5

a b o u t t h e m e t h o d s o r w a y s i n w h i ch t h a t p r o t e c -

t i o n s h a l l b e a c c o m p l i s h e d , w h e t h e r b y f o r m a l

t r ea t y s t i p u l a t i o n , o r b y i n fo r m a l c o n v e n t i o n ;

w h e t h e r b y t h e a c t i o n , o f j u d i c i a l t r i b u n a l s o r

t h a t o f m i l i t a r y f o r c e s . P r o t e c t i o n i n f a c t t o

A m er i c a n l i v e s a n d p r o p e r t y i s t h e s o l e p o i n t

u p o n w h ic h t h e U n i t ed S t a t es a r e t e n a c io u s .

T h i s p r a c t i c a l o r d e r f r o m t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s

e n a b l e d D i a z t o k e e p t h e p e a c e i n M e x i c o f o r

t h i r t y y e a r s . H e w a s a b l e t o t e l l h i s g e n e r a l s ,

" Y o u w i l l m a i n t a i n o r d e r a n d p r o t e c t l i f e a n d

p r o p e r t y o r s o m e b o d y e l s e w i l l . "

THE WILSON REVERSE

Then b oth Taft and Wilson, by words a nd

a c t s , r e v e r s e d t h e E v a r t s p o l i c y . "As long as

I a m P r e s i d e n t , n o b o d y s h a l l i n t e r f e r e w i t h

t h e m , " s a i d W i l s o n a t I n d i a n a p o l i s .

The national government in Mexico became

p o w e r l e s s . Wilson' s words w ere poste d over

Mexico . I t w a s " o p e n s e a s o n " f o r a l l w h o c o u l d

g e t t h e g u n s .Mr . Wilson announced that it would take

more than four hundred thousand men from

o u t s i d e t o r e s t o r e o r d e r .

I h a v e r e a s o n t o b e l i e v e t h a t t h e m i l i t a r y r e -

port to Mr . W i l s o n w a s , " F o u r h u n d r e d t h o u -

s a n d m e n c a n n o t d o i t i f d i r e c t e d f r o m W a s h -




i n g t o n . B u t f o r t y t h o u s a n d m e n w o u l d b e t o o

m a n y i f d i r e c t e d b y t h e a r m y o f f i c e r s a l o n e . "

H a v i n g b l u n d e r e d i n a n d o u t o f M e x i c o , i t i s

n o w c l e a r l y t h e d u t y o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s t o

r e f l e c t u p o n t h e s i t u a t i o n a n d d e t e r m i n e u p o n

w h a t ba s i s i t c a n e x t e n d a c o o p e r at i v e a n d e f f e c-

tive helping h and to that unhappy country .

I f w e d o n o t d o i t , s o m e b o d y e l s e w i l l .

T h e r e i s n o p o s s i b l e r e a d i n g o f t h e M o n r o e

Doctrine that forb ids Germany or Englan d

m a k i n g t h e b u s i n e s s d e v e l o p m e n t o f M e x i c o o r

r e n d e r i n g f i n a n c i a l a s s i s t a n c e t o t h e M e x i c a n

g o v e r n m e n t a n d p e o p l e . But w he n Mexic o ha s

t o t u r n f r o m h e r n a t u r a l g u a r d i a n a n d p r o t e c -

t o r t o E u r o p e a n p o w e r s , t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s w i l l

b e d e s e r v e d l y " c o u n t e d o u t , " b o t h n o r t h a n d

s o u t h o f t h e P a n a m a C a n a l .

THE MAN WITH THE HOEN o c o u n t r y i n t h e w o r l d n e e d s c l o s e r r e l a -

t i o n s w i t h t h e o i l d e v e l o p m e n t o f M e x i c o t h a n

t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s . The f uture dem ands not

only redemption of the Mexican man of the

s o i l , b u t t h e r e d e m p t i o n o f t h e A m e r i c a n f a r m e r

a s w e l l .

A g r i c u l t u r e i s b a s a l i n t h e w o r l d ' s p r o g r e s s .

A l l i n d u s t r i e s , i n b o t h p e a c e a n d w a r , r e s t u p o n



THE REDEMPTION OF AGRICULTURE 47i t . B u t " t h e m a n w i t h t h e h o e " s t i l l i n d i c t s

C h r i s t i a n c iv i l i z a t io n .

H e h a s n o e i g h t - h o u r d a y ; h e c o m p e t e s w i t h

w o m e n a n d c h i l d r e n w h o p u t n o p r i c e o n t h e i r

l a b o r ; h i s s u r p l u s p r o d u c t s a r e d u m p e d , a l m o s t

a s r e f u s e , h i s m i l k t o t h e m i l k c o n t r a c t o r , h i s

p o t a t o e s t o t h e s t a r c h f a c t o r y . H e h a s n o s t o r -

a g e f o r a p p l e s w h e n , i n a n a b u n d a n t s e a s o n ,

t h e y a r e n o t w o r t h t h e p r i c e o f t h e b a r r e l .

H e a v e n ' s s u n i t s e l f a p p e a r s t o c o m p e t e w i t h

h im . H e h a s n e v e r b e e n t a u g h t t h a t t h e r e i s

o n l y o n e we a l t h f o r t h e fa r m e r , a n d t h a t i s l a r g e

s t o r a g e b a c k e d b y b r o a d a c r e s , q u i c k l y c u l t i -

vated by machinery . H i s g r e a t m a c h i n e , t h e

h o r s e , f o r s p r i n g a n d f a l l p l o u g h i n g , " e a t s h i s

h e a d o f f " i n a n i d l e w i n t e r .

THE REDEMPTION OF AGRICULTURE

H i s r e d e m p t i o n c a n n o t c o m e t h r o u g h t h e p a r -

c e l p o s t o r o i l - s m o o t h e d r o a d s f o r c i t y m o t o r s ,

o r b y s t a t e a n d n a t i o n a l a g r i c u l t u r a l b u r e a u s .

The redemption of "the man with th e hoe"

w i l l c o m e t h r o u g h t h e g a s o l e n e m o t o r t h a t w i l l

p l o u g h s p ri n g a n d f a l l , c u l t i v a te a l l s u m m e r , ch o p

w o o d i n t h e w i n t e r , a n d n o t " e a t i t s h e a d o f f . "

The ambition of Henry Ford is a gasolene

t r a c t o r w i t h i n r e a c h o f t h e f a r m e r . S u c c e s s h e r e



48 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMw o u l d m e a n m o r e f o r t h e w o r l d t h a n a l l g a s o -

l e n e m o t o r d e v e l o p m e n t t o d a t e .

I t w o u l d s o l v e t h e l a b o r p r o b l e m o n t h e f a r m ;

e n a b l e t h e in d i v i d u a l f a rm e r t o h o l d b r o a d a c re s ,

b y q u i c k c u l t i v a t i o n a n d c r o p s q u i c k l y s t o r e d .

T h e r e s u l t f r o m s u c h p r o s p e r i t y f o r t h e f a r m e r

w o u l d b e g r e a t s t o r e s o f f o o d , s t e a d y i n g p r i c e s

f o r t h e w o r l d .

The farm power, the food power, the sea

p o w e r , t h e w o r l d p o w e r , c r y o u t f o r g a s o l e n e

a n d f u e l o i l . T h e P e n n s y l v a n i a a n d I n d i a n a o i l

f i e l d s a r e f a i l i n g . C a l i f o r n i a i s e x h a u s t i n g p o c k e t

a f t e r p o c k e t . T h e g r e a t o i l a r e a o f t h e w o r l d

t o - d a y s t r e t c h e s f r o m K a n s a s t o T e h u a n t e p e c .

T h e l i g h t e s t o i l i s a t b o t h t h e s e e x t r e m e p o i n t s .

T h e a p p e a r a n c e i s t h a t t h e g r e a t c e n t r a l r e s e r -

v o i r s a r e i n t h e M e x i c a n f ie l d .

T h e i r c o n s e r v a t i o n i s a w o r l d - w i d e n e c e s s i t y .

T h e ir p r o t e c t i o n i s t h e d u t y o f a l l n a t i o n s .

NO OIL SANDS IN MEXICO

V e r y f e w p e o p l e i n t h e w o r l d k n o w t h e g e o l o g -

i c a l s t r u ct u r e o f t h e s e o i l f i e l d s . N o o n e i n t h e

w o r l d t o - d a y k n o w s i t p e r f e c t l y . Noth ing yet

u n c o v e r e d i n . t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s r e s e m b l e s t h e

u n d e r g r o u n d f o r m a t i o n i n M e x i c o . I n C a l i f o r n i a

y o u p u m p f r o m w e l l - d e f i n e d a r e a s o f o i l s a n d s



STORAGE RESERVOIR AT POTRERO-2 ,5 00,000 BARRELS

SOME OF THE 5 5 ,000-BARREL STORAGE TANKS, MEXICAN EAGLE

OIL COMPANY



THE DOS BOCAS CATASTROPHE 49t w o t o t h r e e t h o u s a n d f e e t d e e p . T h e p o r o s i t y

o f o i l s a n d i s f o u r t e e n p e r c e n t , a n d t h o s e w e l l s

d o n o t a v e r a g e t w o h u n d r e d b a r r e l s a d a y .

Y e t t h e r e a r e n o o i l s a n d s i n M e x i c o . Abou t

t w o t h o u s a n d f e e t b e l o w t h e l e v e l o f t h e s e a t h e

o i l d r i l l s s t r i k e t h e b e d o f a n c i e n t o c e a n s a n d

f r o m c o r a l r e e f s w i t h s i x t y p e r c e n t o f p o r o s i t y

s p u r t t h e g r e a t e s t o i l w e l l s i n t h e w o r l d . No

p i p e l i n e y e t c o n s t r u c t e d h a s b e e n a b l e t o r e -

c e i v e t h e f u l l m e a s u r e o f o n e o f t h e s e g u s h e r s .

S o u t h o f C e r r o A z u l i s t h e g r e a t P o t r e r o o i l

w e l l o f t h e M e x i c a n E a g l e o r E n g l i s h c o m p a n y .

I t g i v e s t h e e n t i r e f o r t y t h o u s a n d b a r r e l s p e r

d a y t h a t t h i s c o m p a n y c a n e x p o r t o n p r e s e n t

s h i p pi n g f a c i l i t i e s , b u t t h i s i s n o t h a l f i t s c a -

p a c i t y . L o r d C o w d r a y i s g i v i n g h i s w h o l e t i m e

t o h i s c o u n t r y a t t h e h e a d o f t h e B r i t i s h a v i a -

t i o n d e p a r t m e n t , s o e s s e n t i a l o n l a n d a n d s e a

i n w i n n i n g t h e w a r , a n d h i s p i p e l i n e s a n d r e -

f i n e r ie s w o r k a u t o m a t i c a l l y o n t h i s c o a s t . When

t h e w a r i s o v e r t h i s f i e l d m a y c o m p e t e f o r h i s

g r e a t o r g a n i z a t i o n a n d e n g i n e e r i n g t a l e n t .

THE DOS BOCAS CATASTROPHE

A b o v e t o t h e n o r t h , n e a r t h e t e r m i n u s o f t h e

M e x i c a n P e t r o l e u m C o m p a n y ' s r a i l r o a d a t S a n

Geronimo , on the b orders of the Tamiahua



5 0 THE MEXICAN PROBLEML a g o o n , s t i l l r i s e s a c l o u d o f , s t e a m f r o m t h e

r u i n s o f t h e f a m o u s o i l w e l l D o s B o c a s .

Here, in 1909, came i n un expe cte dly t he

w o r l d ' s g r e a t e s t g u s h e r . T h r o u g h a n e i g h t - i n c h

p i p e l i n e s h o t a c o l u m n i n t o t h e a i r fi f t ee n h u n -

d r e d f e e t h i g h b y a c t u a l t h e o d o l i t e m e a s u r e -

m e n t ; t h e n t h e e a r t h h e a v e d a n d b e l c h e d t h r e e

h u n d r e d m i l l i o n b a r r e l s o f l i q u i d p e r d a y . How

m u c h o f i t w a s o i l n o b o d y c o u l d s a y . T h e t o r -

r e n t i a l f l o o d r e a c h e d t h e b o i l e r f i r e s a n d s o o n

i n p l a c e o f t h a t e i g h t - i n c h p i p e w a s a h e a v i n g ,

s e e t h i n g m a s s , o n e h u n d r e d a c r e s i n e x t e n t .

S o l d i e r s a s w e l l a s c i v i l i a n s f o u g h t t h e f l o w a n d

f l a m e s t o r e s t r i c t t h e a r e a o f d a m a g e , b u t f o r

many nig hts Dos Bocas lit up se a and sho re

f o r o n e h u n d r e d a n d f i f t y m i l e s a r o u n d .

THE HUMAN CATASTROPHE

W a s t h i s a n a d v a n c e d f l a s h p i c t u r e o f t h e

Mexico to fo llow? At Dos Bocas they worked

e v e n t o s a v e t h e f i s h o f t h e r iv e r a n d t h e l a g o o n ;

b u t M e x i c o , a b a n d o n e d b y i t s f r i e n d s a n d w i t h

n o t i c e t o e v e r y b o d y e l s e t o k e e p o u t , w a s t o

b e c o m e a p o l i t i c a l l y h e a v i n g m a s s , w i t h M e x i -

c a n s , A m e r i c a n s , a n d C h i n e s e m a s s a c r e d i n t h e

M e x i c a n w a r f l a m e s .

China got p r o m i s e s . Amer ica ns, Germ ans,



THE HUMAN CATASTROPHE 5 1

a n d E n g l i s h f i l e d c l a i m s a n d t h e s t r o n g e s t n a -

t i o n s o f t h e w o r l d f i l e d t h e i r s a t W a s h i n g t o n ;

b u t w h e r e w i l l t h e m i l l i o n s o f t h e g o o d p e o p l e

of Mexico wh o want wo rk, wag es, and hum an

p r o g r e s s l o d g e t h e ir c l a i m s o r c r ie s ?

I s h a l l n e v e r f o r g e t t h e s i n c e r e , e a r n e s t e m -

p h a s i s o f E d w a r d L . D o h e n y , c o n t r o l l i n g o w n e r

in th e Mexica n Petroleu m Compa ny, as on

M a r c h 1 6 , 1 9 1 7 , h e d e c l a r e d , o n h i s y a c h t C a s i -

a n a h e a d i n g i n t o t h e " n o r t h e r s " o n t h e G u l f o f

Mexico : " I w o u l d s i n k a l l m y i n t e r e s t o n t h i s

c o a s t t e n t h o u s a n d f e e t d e e p i n t h e s e a t o g i v e

t h e g o o d p e o p l e o f M e x i c o r i g h t , j u s t i c e , a n d

f r e e d o m i n a m o d e r n s y s t e m o f c i v i l i z a t i o n . "



CHAPTER VWHY NO AID FOR MEXICO?

I T i s d i f fi c u l t t o i n t e r e s t t h e p e o p l e o f t h e Un i t e d

S t a t e s i n t h e s u f f e r i n g s o f t h e p e o p l e o f M e x i c o

w h e n o u r s y m p a t h i e s a n d p o c k e t b o o k s a r e e n -

g a g e d i n b e h a l f o f f i v e m i l l i o n m e n i n t h e h o s p i -

t a l s o f E u r o p e , s i x m i l l i o n i n p r i s o n c a m p s , a n d

s e v e n m i l l i o n w a r c r i p p l e s , a t o t a l o f e i g h t e e n

m i l l i o n d a i l y s u f f e re r s , a l l m a ki n g t h e s t r o n g e s t

a p p e a l s t h r o u g h w a r - r e l i e f m o v e m e n t s o r g a n -

i z e d i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s .

T h i s i s a n a p p a l l i n g n u m b e r o f s i c k , m a i m e d ,

a n d i n p r i s o n , a g g r e g a t i n g m o r e t h a n t h e t o t a l

p o p u l a t i o n o f M e x i c o . T h e r e a r e f o r t y m i l l i o n

m o r e h e a d e d i n t h e s a m e d i r e c t i o n a n d b e h i n d

t h e r e m u s t b e t w o h u n d r e d m i l l i o n i n s u f f e r i n g

f a m i l i e s .

T h i s i s t h e o n l y e x p l a n a t i o n I c a n g i v e f o r t h e

d u l l e d a n d d e a f e a r s u p o n w h i ch f a l l t h e a p p e a l s

i n t h e n a m e o f h u m a n i t y t o g i v e s y m p a t h e t i c

a i d t o t h e p e o p l e o f M e x i c o n o w a d r i f t i n p o l i t i -

c a l , f i n a n c i a l , a n d s o c i a l s e a s w i t h n o c h a r t o r

c o m p a s s a n d n o d i r e c t i n g v o i c e e x c e p t t h a t o f



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 5 3

Preside nt Wilson, wh o d eclare s, "They must

f i g h t i t o u t a m o n g t h e m s e l v e s . "

GERMAN TROUBLESN o b o d y i n t h i s c o u n t r y d e s i r e s a n y m i l i t a r y

i n t e r v e n t i o n i n M e x i c o , a n d t h e o n l y t h i n g t h a t

c a n a t t h e p r e s e n t t i m e i n v i t e i t w o u l d b e t h e

G e r m a n a c t i v i t i e s . A l l g o v e r n m e n t s a n d f o r m s

o f g o v e r n m e n t i n M e x i c o m u s t u n d e r s t a n d t h e

d a n g e r i n t h i s . Germa n dynami te wo uld do

m o r e d a m a g e t o r u l e r s a n d w o u l d - b e r u l e r s i n

M e x i c o t h a n i t w o u l d t o t h e m i l i t a r y f o r c e s o f

t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s .

I t i s s a i d t h a t t h e n e w C a r r a n z a c o n s t i t u t i o n ,

w i t h i t s c o n f i s c a t o r y m e a s u r e s , i n e f f e c t M a y 1 ,

1 9 1 7 , i s p r i m a r i l y a n a t t a c k u p o n S p a n i s h , B r i t -

i s h , F r e n c h , a n d B e l g i a n i n t e r e s t s i n M e x i c o a n d

o n l y i n c i d e n t a l l y a n a t t a c k u p o n t h e i n t e r e s t s

o f c i t i z e n s o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s i n t h a t c o u n t r y .

W h i l e t h e n e w c o n s t i t u t i o n d e c r e e s t h a t t h e r e

s h a l l b e n o r e t r o a c t i v e m e a s u r e s i t d e c l a r e s t h a t

a l l w e a l t h b e n e a t h t h e s u r f a c e , m i n e r a l a n d o i l ,

i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f t h e S t a t e .

THE NEW CONSTITUTION

T h e r e a r e a l s o p r o v i s i o n s i n t h e n e w c o n s t i -

t u t i o n d e a l i n g w i t h t h e a m o u n t s o f l a n d a n y



5 4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMone individual or corporation may own . No

f o r e i g n c o r p o r a t i o n m a y a c q u i r e l a n d o r p r o p -

e r t y o r w a t e r r i g h t s w i t h i n f i f t y k i l o m e t r e s o f

t h e s e a c o a s t o r w i t h i n o n e h u n d r e d k i l o m e t r e s

o f t h e b o r d e r . A n y o u t s i d e c o r p o r a t i o n d e s i r -

i n g t o a c q u i r e p r o p e r t y i n M e x i c o m u s t u n d e r

t h e n e w c o n s t i t u t i o n r e n o u n c e a l l f o r e i g n c i t i -

z e n s h i p i n r e l a t i o n t o t h a t p r o p e r t y a n d a g r e e

t o b e s u b j e c t t o t h e c o n s t i t u t i o n a n d l a w s o f

M e x i c o w i t h o u t r i g h t o f a p p e a l .

I t w i l l t h u s b e s e e n t h a t u n d e r t h e n e w c o n -

s t i t u t i o n t h e wa y i s o p e n f o r t h e r e ig n i n g p o w e r s

i n M e x i c o t o d e a l w i t h f o r e i g n i n t e r e s t s p r e t t y

much as they please . There a re unli mited

p o w e r s o f t a x a t i o n , r e g u l a t i o n , a n d o f d e c r e e s

c o n c e r n i n g o w n e r s h i p , a n d t h e p e n a l t y f o r n o n -

c o m p l i a n c e i s c o n f i s c a t i o n .

T h e re s u l t t o B r i t i s h , F r e n c h , B e l g i a n , U n i t e d

S t a t e s , a n d a l l o t h e r f o r e i g n i n t e r e s t s m u s t b e

s t e a d i l y e x e r t e d " p r e s s u r e , " a n d i t m a y b e a s -

s u m e d t h a t t h i s " p r e s s u r e " w i l l b e e x e r t e d f a r

enough to produce revenues and regulations

l o o k i n g t o w a r d n a t i o n a l i z a t i o n o f p r e s e n t f o r -

e i g n - o w n e d p r o p e r t i e s .



WAR ALLIANCES 5 5

WAR ALLIANCES MAY HELP IN MEXICOB u t s e l f - i n t e re s t s o r t h e l a w o f s e l f - p r e s e r v a -

t i o n w i l l c a u s e a h a l t w h e n t h e " p r e s s u r e " f a c e s

d a n g e r i n t h e p o w e r s o f r e s i s t a n c e .

T h e s a f e t y f o r f o r e i g n i n t e r e s t s i n t h e p r e s e n t

s i t u a t i o n i s t h e e n t r y o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s i n t o

t h e w a r a s a n a l l y o f G r e a t B r i t a i n . A l l t h e

a l l i e s a r e , t h e re f o r e , n o w j o i n e d i n t h e p r o t e ct i o n

o f t h e B r i t i s h n a v a l o i l b a s e i n M e x i c o .

G e n e r a l J o f f r e a n d t h a t c a l m l y p o i s e d , w e l l -

b a l a n c e d b r a i n o f s t a t e s m a n s h i p i n B a l f o u r ,

w i t h t h e i r m i l i t a r y a n d e c o n o m i c a s s o c i a t e s , o n

t h e s o i l o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s , m e a n v e r y m u c h

f o r M e x i c o . J o f f r e , t h e h e a r t o f F r a n c e t o u c h -

i n g t h e h e a r t o f A m e r i c a , a n d B a l f o u r , t h e f a r -

s i g h t e d , e c o n o m i c s t a t e s m a n , l i n k t h e c i v i l i z a -

t i o n s o f t w o c o n t i n e n t s i n a w a y t h a t m e a n s n o t

o n l y p e a c e f o r E u r o p e , b u t p e a c e f o r M e x i c o .

B a l f o u r d e c l a r e d t w o y e a r s a g o , w h e n I w a s

in England : " T h e w o r l d n e e d s i n d u s t r i a l G e r -

m a n y ; t h a t m u s t n o t b e c r u s h e d , b u t P r u s s i a n

m i l i t a r i s m m u s t b e b l o t t e d o u t t h a t t h e t r u e

Germany may liv e . " T h i s w i l l s o o n b e t h e s e n -

t i m e n t o f t h e e n t i r e g l o b e , a n d M e x i c o w i l l n o t

b e n e g l e c t e d i n t h e e n f o l d i n g a r m s o f a f u t u r e

u n i v e r s a l p e a c e .



56 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMMEXICAN PRESSURE

H o w M e x i c o " i s p r e s s i n g f o r e i g n i n t e r e s t s "

i s i l l u s t r a t e d i n a d e c r e e f r o m M e x i c o C i t y m o r e

t h a n d o u b l i n g a l l t h e t a xe s o n o i l . T h e b i g E n g -

l i s h c o m p a n y a n d t h e O i l F i e l d s o f M e x i c o C o m -

p a n y , i n c o r p o r a t e d i n N e w J e r s e y , b u t s e l l i n g

i t s o i l t o L o r d C o w d r a y ' s c o n c e r n , h a v e e a c h i n

t h e i r c o n c e s s i o n s t h e p r o m i s e o f i m m u n i t y f r o m

e x p o r t t a x f o r f i f t y y e a r s . T h e y a n d a l l o t h e r

c o m p a n i e s a r e n o w p a y i n g a b o u t f i v e c e n t s p e r

b a r re l A m e r i ca n g o l d a s a n e x p o r t t a x, a n d b y n a -

t i o n a l d e c r e e m u s t f r o m M a y 1 , 1 9 1 7 , p a y a b o u t

e l e v e n c e n t s p e r b a r r e l e x p o r t t a x , o r n e a r l y

t w e n t y p e r c e n t o f t h e g r o s s v a l u e o f t h e c r u d e

o i l a s e x p o r t e d . T h e a v e r a g e p r i c e o f e x p o r t e d

o i l a t t h e co a s t I f i g u re i s a b o u t s i x t y c e n t s p e r

b a r r e l . Many contrac ts are hig her an d many

a r e l o w e r . M a n y i n t e r i o r o i l w e l l s w o u l d b e

g l a d t o s e l l a t t e n c e n t s p e r b a r r e l t o a n y b o d y

w h o w o u l d b u i l d a p i p e l i n e t o t h e m .

T h e d e c r e e a l s o p l a c e s a n e x p o r t t a x o f o n e

c e n t a g a l l o n o n c r u d e g a s o l e n e a n d o f o n e h a l f -

c e n t a g a l l o n o n r e f i n e d g a s o l e n e . S o m e o f t h e

l a t e c o n t r a c t s f o r e x p o r t , n o t a b l y t h o s e o f t h e

Mexican Petroleum Company, have a prov iso

t h a t t h e b u y e r s u n d e r c o n t r a c t m u s t p a y a n y

i n c r e a s e d t a x e s .



THE PEACE OF CARRANZA 5 7

T h e B r i t i s h i n t e r e s t s h a v e p a i d t h e i r t a x e s

u n d e r p r o t e s t a n d w i l l p r o b a b l y c o n t i n u e s o t o

do . This is another claim mounting up at

M e x i c o C i t y a n d W a s h i n g t o n , f o r i t w i l l b e f i l e d

a t b o t h p l a c e s .

THE PEACE OF CARRANZA

The cl aim is constantly made from Mexico

C i t y t h a t C a r r a n z a h a s q u i e t e d M e x i c o e x c e p t

i n m o u n t a i n r e g i o n s o r d i s t a n t p l a c e s a n d s h o u l d

h a v e f i n a n c i a l s u p p o r t f r o m t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s .

W i t h o u t d e s i r i n g t o m a k e t r o u b l e , l e t m e n a r -

r a t e s o m e i n s t a n c e s t h a t r e f u t e t h i s c l a i m .

R i d i n g o n a f l a t c a r t o w a r d C e r r o A z u l i n

M a r c h , 1 9 1 7 , a n d w i t h i n t w o h u n d r e d m i l e s o f t h e

C i t y o f M e x i c o , t h e t e l e g r a p h p o l e s w e r e n o t e d

u p o n w h i c h , a f e w d a y s p r e c e d i n g , t h e a n t i -

C a r r a n z i s t a s h a d h a n g e d s i x I n d i a n s i n r e p r i s a l

f o r t h e r a id o f t h e ir t r ib e u p o n a v i l l a g e n e a r by .

T h e c l a i m w a s t h a t t h e C a r r a n z i s t a p e o p l e h a d

g i v e n t h i s I n d i a n t r i b e a r m s a n d e n a b l e d t h e m

t o r a i d , p i l l a g e , a n d b u r n t h e v i l l a g e o f A ma t l a n ,

t h e r u i n s o f w h i c h w e r e v i s i b l e o n t h e m o u n t a i n

s i d e a s w e p a s s e d o n t h e r a i l r o a d a f e w m i l e s

a w a y .

T h i s a p p a r e n t l y h a d b e e n t h e l a r g e s t n a t i v e

c i t y o r v i l l a g e b e t w e e n T a m p i c o a n d T u x p a n .



S 8 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMI h a v e n e v e r b e e n a b l e t o f i n d a n y a c c o u n t i n

t h e p a p e r s o f i t s d e s t r u c t i o n , b u t t h e r e p o r t a t

the railroad stat ion was th at Amatlan con-

t a i n e d t h r e e h u n d r e d a n d f i f t y M e x i c a n f a m i l -

i e s , n e a r l y o f a l l w h o m p e r i s h e d . Thos e wh o

w e r e n o t s h o t w e r e b u r n e d i n t h e f i r i n g o f t h e

v i l l a g e .

Y e t o n t h i s t r i p I m e t o n l y t w o s o l d i e r s a n d

t w o r i fl e s ; o n e a n a n t i - C a r r a n z i s t a g u a r d a t a

r a i l r o a d s t a t i o n , a n d t h e o t h e r a p i c t u r e s q u e

anti-Carranzista general who r ode with our

p a r t y t hr o u g h t h e h i l l s a f t e r w e l e f t t h e r ai l r o a d

t r a i n . I t w a s s a i d t h a t h e h a d a s s o c i a t e d w i t h

h i m t h o u s a n d s o f a n t i - C a r r a n z i s t a s .

When th e gove rnment tro ops appear, the

r e b e l s a r e j u s t p l a i n M e x i c a n p e o p l e w i t h n o

arms and no organization . When the army

d i v i d e s i n t o s m a l l b o d i e s , t h e p l a i n M e x i c a n

p e o p l e a r e s u d d e n l y i n t h e b u s h w i t h p l e n t y o f

c a r t r i d g e s a n d t h e g o v e r n m e n t s o l d i e r s a r e a m -

b u s h e d o r p e r h a p s g i v e n o p p o r t u n i t y t o c h a n g e

s i d e s .

S i m i l a r l y , w h e n t h e s o l d i e r s s u r r o u n d t h e

o p p o s i t i o n , t h e a n t i - C a r r a n z i s t a s a r e e i t h e r r e -

c r u i t e d o r s h o t . It is astonish ing h ow many

M e x i c a n p r i s o n e r s , w h e n t h e q u e s t i o n i s a s k e d ,

" C a r r a n z i s t a o r a n t i - C a r r a n z i s t a ? " w i l l r e s p o n d



VIEW OF TUXPAN, SHOWING STORAGE TANKS AND STEAMER LOADING CARGO OF

MEXICAN OIL FROM DEEP-SEA LOADING LINES



THE PEACE OF CARRANZA 5 9

" a n t i - C a r r a n z i s t a " a n d r e c e i v e t h e i r d o s e o f

c o l d l e a d w i t h o u t a m u r m u r . T h o s e w h o r e s p o n d

" C a r r a n z i s t a " a r e h a n d e d a m u s k e t .

. I n t h e l a t t e r p a r t o f Ap r i l , 1 9 1 7 , 1 r e ce i v e d w o r d

t h a t a p e r s o n a l f r i e n d o f m i n e , t h e m a n a g e r o f

o n e o f t h e o i l c o m p a n i e s i n M e x i c o , h a d t h a t

m o n t h h a d a t e r r i b l e e x p e r i e n c e . He started

f r o m t h e c o a s t f o r t h e C i t y o f M e x i c o , g o i n g

f i r s t n o r t h t o M o n t e r e y , a s t h e s o u t h e r n r a i l -

r o a d r o u t e w a s i n t e r r u p t e d b y d i s o r d e r . O n t h e

main l ine, and nearer Mexico City th an th e

n o r t h e r n b o u n d a r y , t h e e s c o r t e d t r a i n w a s a s -

s a u l t e d b y o n e h u n d r e d b r i g a n d s , a n d t h i r t y o f

t h e p a s s e n g e r s a n d t h e i r d e f e n d e r s w e r e k i l l e d .

There can be no denial of my report . But I

h a v e a g a i n h a d t h e n e w s r e c o r d s o f t h i s c o u n t r y

s e a r c h e d o n l y t o f i n d t h a t n o o n e h a s n o w a n y

i n t e r e s t t o g a t h e r o r p r i n t s u c h n e w s .

C a r r a n z a i s s t i l l a p pe a l i n g f o r f i n a n c i a l h e l p

n o r t h , s o u t h , e a s t , a n d w e s t w h e n h e s h o u l d a s k

t h e m i l i t a r y c o o p e r a t i o n o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s .



CHAPTER VI

THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF DISORDER

WASHINGTON n o t e s , w o r d s , s e n t i m e n t s , a n d a c -

t i o n s h a v e p r o d u c e d q u i c k e r r e s u l t s i n M e x i c o

t h a n i n a n y o t h e r c o u n t r y i n t h e w o r l d .

F r o m v a r i o u s p a r t s o f M e x i c o , b e t w e e n t h e

b o r d e r a n d M e x i c o C i t y , c o m e s w o r d t h a t s i n c e

C o n g r e s s v o t e d b i l l i o n s o f m o n e y f o r w a r e x -

penditure and began plans for an enormous

a r m y , a l l t h e " g e n e r a l s " i n M e x i c o h a v e s u d -

d e n l y b e c o m e v e r y p o l i t e t o f o r e i g n e r s , e s p e -

c i a l l y A m e r i c a n s . A l l t h e t h r e a t e n i n g s f r o m

G e r m a n s o u r c e s i n M e x i c o l i k e w i s e s u d d e n l y b e -

c o m e n o n - e x p l o s i v e .

T h e re i s o n e t h i n g t h a t t a l k s i n i n t e r n a t i o n a l

r e l a t i o n s h i p s a n d t h a t i s t h e l o a d i n g u p o f t h e

guns . I t d o e s n o t m a k e a n y d i f f e r e n c e i n w h i c h

d i r e c t i o n t h e g u n s a r e a i m e d . Uncl e Sam ha s

n o t a t h o u g h t a b o u t M e x i c o a t t h e p r e s e n t t i m e ;

h i s g u n s a r e a l l a i m e d f o r G e r m a n y . B u t f o r t h e

f i r s t t i m e a l l t h e M e x i c a n g e n e r a l s a n d w o u l d - b e

g e n e r a l s k n o w t h a t U n c l e S a m h a s g o t a g u n ,

h a s s t a r t e d t o l o a d i t , a n d i s p u t t i n g s o m a n y

m i l l i o n s o f m e n b e h i n d i t t h a t n o b o d y c a n n o w



NATURE' S RESERVES 6 1

s a y w i t h s a f e t y h o w m u c h o f a s q u i n t h e m a y

t a k e a r o u n d t h e h o r i z o n w h e n h e g e t s r e a l l y

f i g h t i n g m a d i n t h e i n t e r e s t o f u n i v e r s a l p e a c e .

M e a n w h i l e , i t m a y b e w e l l t o p o i n t o u t f o r

f i n a n c i a l i n t e r e s t s t h e b e n e f i t t o o i l p r o d u c e r s

i n t h a t c o u n t r y o f t h e A m e r i c a n p o l i c y t o d a t e

o f n o n - i n t e r v e n t i o n a n d o f g e n e r a l d i s o r d e r .

T h e g r e a t o i l g u s h e r s o f M e x i c o a r e n e a r t h e

c o a s t . T h e y a r e t h u s o f w o r l d - w i d e v a l u e , b u t

t h e r e i s n o s t o r a g e c a p a c i t y i n t h e w o r l d t h a t

m i g h t n o t b e q u i c k l y e x h a u s t e d b y a f u l l r u n

f r o m o n e o f t h e s e g u s h e r s . T h e M e x i c a n P e t r o -

l e u m C o m p a n y h a s s t o r a g e f o r n i n e m i l l i o n b a r -

r e l s , a n d i t i s f u l l. T h e C o w d r a y i n t e r e s t s l i k e -

w i s e a r e f u l l u p t o t h e i r s i x m i l l i o n s t o r a g e

c a p a c i t y .

NATURE' S RESERVES

N a t u r e i s w o n d e r f u l i n c o n c e a l i n g h e r n a t u r a l

r e s o u r c e s u n t i l t h e w o r l d i s p r e p a r e d f o r t h e m .

T h e n i t i s d i s c o v e r e d t h a t s h e h a s a l l t h e wh i l e

b e e n h a n g i n g o u t i n v i t a t i o n s i g n s f o r m a n t o d i g

a n d p r o d u c e .

T o - d a y , h o w e v e r , t h e w o r l d c a n s e e a n d s c i e n -

t i fi ca l l y f i g ur e t h e po s s i bi l i t i es o f b o t h c o a l a n d

o i l e x h a u s t i o n f o r a l l k n o w n s o u r c e s o f s u p p l y

o n t h i s p l a n e t .



6 9. THE MEXICAN PROBLEMW h e n p e t r o l e u m w a s f i r s t d i s c o v e r e d i n P e n n -

s y l v a n i a t h e ri v e r s c a r r ie d i t t o w a s t e . Rocke-

f e l l e r l a i d t h e f o u n d a t i o n f o r t h e b ig g e s t f o r t u n e

i n t h e w o r l d b y b o r r o w i n g m o n e y t o s t o r e o i l

when oil had no value b ut was running to

w a s t e .

B u t R o c k e f e l l e r , s e e k i n g a n e w s t o m a c h t o

b e a r u p t h e b u r d e n o f h i s h u n d r e d s o f m i l l i o n s ,

m u s t t r u s t t o " e x p e r t s " a n d t o " e x p e r t " r e p o r t s

o n T e x a s a n d M e x i c a n o i l s . T h e r e s u l t w a s t h a t

T e x a s o i l s w e r e o f f i c i a l l y c o n d e m n e d b y t h e

S t a n d a r d O i l p e o p l e u p o n e x p e r t t e s t i m o n y a n d

the oil g ushing f rom Spindle Top sold be-

l o w t h r e e c e n t s a b a r r e l , w i t h f e w p e o p l e h a v i n g

t h e R o c k e f e l l e r c o u r a g e t o b u y s t o r a g e c a p a c i t y

f o r i t .

T h e p o p u l a r s u p e r s t i t i o n i s t h a t t h e S t a n d a r d

O i l i n t e r e s t h a s s o u g h t t o g r a b t h e o i l w ea l t h o f

Mexi co . I f a n y o n e , h o w e v e r , h a d o u t s i d e k e y s

to 96 B r o a d w a y , h e c o u l d f i n d t h e r e i n t h r e e

successive "expert" reports condemning the

e a r l y s a m p l e s o f M e x i c a n o i l a s f a k e s .

T h e S t a n d a r d O i l c h e m i s t s r e p o r t e d t h a t t h e

o i l s e n t f r o m M e x i c o c o u l d n o t b e n a t u r e ' s c o m -

pound ; somebody was attempting to impose

u p o n t h e m b y i n j e c t i n g g a s o l e n e a n d s u l p h u r

i n t o w o r t h l e s s b i t u m e n o r a s p h a l t , b u t t h e y



THE SHUT-IN OIL WELLS 6 3

h a d n o t b e e n c h e m i c a l l y c o m b i n e d a n d t h e f r a u d

w a s e a s i l y d e t e c t a b l e .

M e x i c a n a s p h a l t u m h a d n o v a l u e a n d M e x i c a n

o i l s a s f i r s t d i s c o v e r e d a n d a n a l y z e d w e r e l a r g e l y

M e x i c a n p i t c h o r a s p h a l t a n d w e r e o f f i c i a l l y

d e c l a r e d g o o d f o r n e i t h e r k e r o s e n e n o r g a s o l e n e .

I t w a s w i th d i f f ic u l t y t h a t t h e r a i l w a y s o f M e xi c o

c o u l d b e i n d u c e d t o c h a n g e t h e i r e n g i n e s f r o m

h i g h - p r i c e d c o a l t o c h e a p M e x i c a n f u e l o i l .

THE SHUT-IN OIL WELLS

W h e n f a r t h e r s o u t h t h e g a s o l e n e v a l u e s o f

Mexican oils were proven, the compound w as

shown to b e just another new one of Mother

E a r t h w i t h t h e g a s o l e n e a n d s u l p h u r m o r e d e -

t a c h e d . W h e n t h e d a y o f t h e o i l g u s h e r a x r i v e d ,

o n e c a n o n l y c o n j e c t u r e t h e r e s u l t t o t h e w o r l d

h a d t h e r e b e e n t r a n q u i l l i t y i n M e x ic o a n d c a p i t a l

a n d s h i p p i n g e a s i l y a v a i l a b l e . It mig ht hav e

b e e n t h e s t o r y o v e r a g a i n o f " t e n t h o u s a n d t o n s

o f g o l d " t o b e d u m p e d i n t o t h e o c e a n t o s a v e

t h e i n v e s t m e n t b a s e o f t h e w o r l d .

T o - d a y t h e r e i s a p r o v e n d a i l y c a p a c i t y o f

o n e m i l l i o n b a r r e l s o f o i l b e t w e e n T a m p i c o a n d

M e x i c o C i t y a n d t h e r e a r e n e i t h e r p i p e l i n e s n o r

s h i p s t o t a k e a wa y o n e - s i x t h o f i t . A y e a r ' s d r i l l -

i n g w o u l d m u l t i p l y t h e p r e s e n t d r i l l e d c a p a c i t y ,



6 4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMa n d w i t h t h e h i g h p o r o s i t y i n t h e " r e e f s " e v e r y

o i l l a n d o w n e r w o u l d h a v e t o q u i c k l y d r i l l h i s

b o u n d a r i e s f o r s e l f - p r o t e c t i o n .

A f ew g u s h e r s m i gh t b e in p o s i t io n t o s e l l t h e ir

o i l t o a p i pe l i n e a t t h re e c e n t s a b a r r el a n d m a k e

a m i l l i o n a y e a r . I t w o u l d b e a w i c k e d w o r l d -

waste . T h e T a m p i c o o i l f i e l d s c o u l d e q u a l t h e

t o t a l p r o d u c t i o n o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s o n a b o u t

f o r t y - e i g h t h o u r s ' n o t i c e o f f a c i l i t i e s f o r s t o r -

i n g t h e p r o d u c t .

B u t M e x i c o , p o l i t i c a l l y u n s e t t l e d , w i t h o n l y

t w o p i p e l i n e s i n o p e r a t i o n , h a s h e r o i l w e a l t h

c o n s e r v e d , a n d L o r d C o w d r a y c a n r e p o r t t o t h e

E n g l i s h s h a r e h o l d e r s o f t h e M e x i c a n E a g l e C o m -

p a n y t h a t e a r n i n g s a r e t e n m i l l i o n d o l l a r s p e r

a n n u m M e x i c a n g o l d , o r f i v e m i l l i o n d o l l a r s p e r

annum United States g old ; and th e Mexican

P e t r o l e u m C o m p a n y c a n r e p o r t t o i t s A m e r i c a n

s h a r e h o l d e r s n e t e a r n i n g s o f a b o u t t h e s a m e

amount -s i x m i l l i o n s f o r t h e $3 9 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 c o m -

m o n s t o c k t h e p a s t y e a r .

THE SHUT-IN EARS

A l w a y s h o p i n g f o r t h e be s t , I c a n s e e p o s s i b l e

b e n e f i t s a r i s i n g f r o m t h e " s h u t - i n " p o l i c y f o r

Mexi co -t h e s h u t ti n g -i n o f i t s o i l w e l l s a n d t h e

s h u t t i n g - i n o f t h e e a r s o f P r e s i d e n t W i l s o n t o



THE SHUT-IN EARS 6 5

a l l a p p e a l s f o r h e l p . T h e o i l f o r c e s o f n a t u r e

h a v e b e e n c o n s e r v e d n o t o n l y i n t h e i n t e r e s t o f

w o r l d d e v e l o p m e n t b u t o f M e x i c o ' s s l o w e r a n d

m o r e s u b s t a n t i a l p r o g r e s s .

P r e s i d e n t W i l s o n h a s s o t u r n e d h i s b a c k u p o n

t h e M e x i c a n s i t u a t i o n t h a t h i s m o s t i n t i m a t e

p o l i t ic a l a d v i s e r s w i l l n o t m e n ti o n t h e s u b j e ct o f

M e x i c o i n h i s p r e s e n c e . His mind appear s to

t h e m a b s o l u t e l y c l o s e d o n t h e s u b j e c t . T h e r e i s

n o " w a t c h f u l w a i t i n g " p o l i c y a b o u t i t . Tha t

wa s Mr . B r y a n ' s p h r a s e a n d p o l i c y .

W h e n o n e l o o k s a t t h e f l a m i n g w a r f i r e s i n

E u r o p e , h e m a y s e e a r e a s o n o r a P r o v i d e n c e i n

t h e W i l s o n a t t i t u d e t o w a r d M e x i c o .Mr. W i l s o n m a y h a v e b e e n b e t t e r i n f o r m e d

c o n c e r n i n g t h e s e r i o u s n e s s o f t h e E u r o p e a n s i t -

u a t i o n t h a n t h e p u b l i c h a s b e e n l e d t o b e l i e v e .

T h e p e o p l e w h o h a v e h a d h i s c o n f i d e n c e o n t h i s

s u b j e c t h a v e n o t h a d h i s c o n f i d e n c e a s r e s p e c t s

Mexico, and it may b e well doubted if any-

body kno ws exact ly Mr . W i l s o n ' s r e a l p o s i t i o n

t o w a r d o u r s u f f e r i n g n e i g h b o r t o t h e S o u t h .

T h e r e i s j u s t o n e A m e r i c a n f i n a n c i a l i n t e r e s t

w i t h m i l l i o n s i n M e x i c o t h a t i s i n t h o r o u g h

a g r e e m e n t w i t h t h e W i l s o n p o l i c y , w h i c h i s t h a t

o f n e w s s u p pr e s s i o n a n d t h e q u ie t i n g o f a l l a g it a -

t i o n c o n c e r n i n g M e x i c a n a f f a i r s . But I do not



6 6 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMt h i n k it j u d i c io u s a t t h e p re s e n t t i m e t o f u r t h e r

e n t e r t h a t p h a s e o f t h e s u b j e c t .

T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s c a n h a v e n o w e l l - d e f i n e d

p o l i c y t o w a r d M e x i c o t h e p u b l i c a n n o u n c e m e n t

o f w h ic h wo u l d b e h e l p f u l a t t h e pr e s e n t t i m e . I t

s h o u l d b e s u f f i c ie n t f o r o n e t o r e f l e c t t h a t t h e

U n i t e d S t a t e s h a s g i r d e d o n i t s a r m o r i n a n

A n g l o - F r e n c h a l l i a n c e , t h e e n d o f w h i c h c a n n o t

b e i n s i g h t w h i l e e i t h e r t w o o f t h e s e t h r e e g re a t

n a t i o n s r e m a i n a l i v e .



CHAPTER VII

THE LAW OF COMPENSATION

THEproblem of value with any investment is

determined according to the aim of the manage-

ment, otherwise the soul of the proprietor,

owner, or manager .

An elephant and a jackass were born on the

same day in the same stable, drank from the

same spring of water, and ate from the same

bale of hay . At the end of several years every

physical fiber of each had come from the same

water and the same hay, but the elephant was

s t i l l more of an elephant and the jackass more

of a jackass -because one was born with the

soul of an elephant and the other with the soul

of a jackass .

One of my newspaper associates was recently

en route from Winnipeg to meet me in Montreal .

"What did you learn?"

He replied : "I visited all the smoking-cars

en route to mingle with the people . They were

jovial and light-hearted in the third-class smoker,

but in the first-class smoker sullen, morose,




thoughtful . I believe that of all my friends in

Winnipeg the war has slain four out of five .

"In the first-class smoking compartment a

Canadian asked: `What is the compensation to

Canada for all her sacrifice?'

"And a British officer growled, `There is in

this world no compensation in sacrifice . " '

"Did you refute him?"

"How could I, with eighty per cent of my

friends in Winnipeg dead in the war and my own

memories of a -struggle when as a youth of ten

to protect my school-books, snatched from my

hand by a little negro girl, I rolled in blood and

dirt, for she buried her teeth in my flesh to the

cheek-bone, and I carry the scar to-day? What

compensation to me or to Canada?"

I had to respond : "I have never forgotten the

slow, solemn words of Ralph Waldo Emerson in

the Old South Meeting-House at Boston, as he

drawled forth : `The Sandwich Islanders have

a proverb that the strength of the slain enters

into the arm of the conqueror . '

"Was your arm weakened or your fighting

soul for right shrunken by your youthful com-

bat? Did I not tell you two years ago that the

war had rejuvenated France and raised in her a

new soul? Is she not to-day the proud treasure



CARTRIDGES ARE CURRENCY 69

of the world? There are many rich men in the

United States who would like to swap their

money and position with the men of England

who have given up their fortunes in defense of

their country but have found their souls .

"The sum of human happiness to-day is

greater in the British empire united and at war

for liberty and humanity than ever before ; and

it will increase with the sacrifice . "

Then I went down into Mexico and studied

an empire of natural wealth and resources, but

a nation that has never yet found its soul, or a

flag which represents service to humanity .

CARTRIDGES ARE CURRENCY

When the Mexican soldier finds Carranza

money will not buy food, he or his woman takes

the government cartridges and buys their provi-

sions. Cartridges are currency in Mexico .

Zapata has maintained himself supreme in his

state against six administrations in the City of

Mexico and never imported arms or munitions .

He holds a rich territory, the food of which can

buy the arms and cartridges of his opponents .

Seventeen million people on the richest min-

eral territory of the world, that can grow any-

thing in the world and produce food in abun-



70 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMdance every month of the year, use their cart-

ridges for currency; and their national soul can

never be born under that miserable motto of self-

interest, " Mexico for the Mexicans," which

means Zapata for Zapata, Carranza for Car-

ranza, Pelaez for Pelaez, Villa for Villa, until

every part is for itself and nobody for the whole .

Returning north, I find Canada, seven mil-

lion of people, on a soil that works only three or

four months of the year, sacrificing state and

national treasure to develop national transporta-

tion, and until this war dependent upon foreign

credit, now summoning all her resources, not for

Canada, which needs :no defense, but for civili-

zation and the empire of which she is a part ;

giving more than four hundred thousand of her

best men to the battle line and over a billion of

her treasure and earnings for the funds of war ;

and men, women, and children working every

possible hour of the twenty-four .

Mexico is still seeking compensation for some-

thing she never knew she had until American

enterprise developed it and with it lifted her

labor toward modern civilization .

Canada, like France and Britain, has found

her soul, not in the motto, "Canada for the

Canadians," but in Canada for world defense .



A BARBECUE WITH AMERICANS WAITING ON THE MEXICANS



OUR CRIME AGAINST MEXICO 7 1

Canada is young but has the soul of an ele-

phant.

Mexico will never be for the Mexicans or for

humanity until American and European enter-

prise has had fair play in that country and been

permitted to pay fair wages to her willing people

who are longing for light, enlightenment, and

education . Without education leading to useful-

ness there can be no patriotism .

OUR CRIME AGAINST MEXICO

Carranza is in a difficult situation . We of the

United States have struck down all credit for

Mexico .

Had we deliberately gone about a diabolical

scheme to wreck a billion of foreign capital in

Mexico, to give forty thousand foreigners over

to plunder, and to decree misery, poverty, and

sorrow for more than fifteen million Mexi-

cans, we could have conceived of no more effec-

tive plan than that which we have executed

toward her without ever planning anything

against her .

Because the Guggenheim smelting interests

could make some millions of dollars more a year

with peace in Mexico, nobody must speak a

word for peace in Mexico, for the Guggenheims




represent capital and the securities of their com-

panies are in Wall Street . Because the Standard

Oil people with peace in Mexico might build pipe

lines therein and buy Mexican oil and make

money refining it, it is better to have anarchy in

Mexico than that the Standard Oil Company

should have any more capital, wealth, or earn-

ings .

Therefore, Mexico must be cut asunder, Car-

ranza must rule or tumble down in Mexico City ;

Villa may overrun Chihuahua and even raid

into the United States ; Pelaez may govern in

the oil fields, Felix Diaz may operate from Vera

Cruz, Zapata may rule to the south of Mexico

City, and Cantu may run Lower California .

If we had meditated a diabolical plan to ruin

Mexico, and all the friends of Mexico, how suc-

cessful would have been the most wicked machi-

nation if it could have accomplished the present

disunited and hopeless situation!

If Mexico had been permitted to be truly free

by an assisting hand from the United States,

what a power to-day would be her food and min-

eral resources in health and help for the whole

world !

We have declared ourselves brother-keeper of

Mexico and have imprisoned her; and as she



THE COMPENSATION OF LOOT 73

tears herself within her own prison walls, we stuff

cotton in our ears and give her over to the I.W.Wand the crazy, illogical brains of such as Lincoln

Steffens .

With many of the richer states in Mexico cut

off from support to the central d e f a c t o govern-

ment, where shall Carranza raise revenue to pay

his soldiers and maintain law and order?

THE COMPENSATION OF LOOT

It is a mystery to everybody in and out of

Mexico how Carranza can exist . I have very re-

liable reports from abroad that some German

money has come into his hands . Only recently

he took $38,000,000 Mexican silver from the

banks in Mexico City, and it was figured that

this would last him only so many weeks and

that then Villa would again be raiding over the

country . When Carranza has troops and money,

Villa takes to the hills, but when the money is

gone and his soldiers clamor for pay, Villa ap-

pears on the scene and promises the compensa-

tion of loot ; and our Mr. Wilson says that these

good patriots, both of whom have been his allies,

must fight it out as did our forefathers .

I wonder if Mr. Wilson's forefathers would

really have sat up on the top rail of a fence and




cheered on the Indian tribes against the Ameri-

can pioneer bringing the white man's civilization

into the jungle? Would they have called out,

"Bully for you, old Puritan, over goes your

meeting-house and some children in the flames!

Buck up there, old Sioux, there are more scalps

for you! more women to torture! more fields to

burn! more plunder ahead! fight it out!"

Now, individual reader, please don't blame

Mr. Wilson ; he represents you, calloused andhard to the sufferings of your neighbor, rejoicing

in the sacrifice of your fathers and the prosperity

of your present position . You have not and you

do not take any more interest in Mexico than

you do in a famine in India . You think Mexicois a good joke on the Guggenheims, the Standard

Oil Company, and Wall Street, but when a long

war in Europe, where you are now to take the

forefront of the battle, has softened your heart

and the income taxes have come down to the

smallest savings, you will be less of an Indian,

less of a savage, less of a Mexican, yourself . You

will be more thoughtful, more tender of heart,

and a more worthy son of the men who first

brought freedom and true democratic govern-

ment into the American jungle .

The pity about it all is that Mexico was



THE DUZ RECORD 75

brought so near to modern civilization under

Diaz ; then an explosion and a political and

social catastrophe, the like of which no man in

or out of Mexico had ever dreamed! Yet I don't

believe there were ever two hundred thousand

men under arms in Mexico . As to any invasion

by the Gringos, there were never fifty thousand

Americans in the whole of Mexico, and to-day

there are only about five thousand .

THE DIAZ RECORD

I first met Porfirio Diaz nearly forty years ago

when he was inviting New England capital into

the railroad development of Mexico . He ruled

Mexico with an iron hand and invited the capital

of the world into its development . His policy

never varied. It was to promote in Mexico every

enterprise that would give his people opportu-

nity for work, wages, and education . I havetalked with all interests that ever had to deal

with him and I have never heard a charge that

he had the taint of graft or personal ambition .

Every business interest that ever appealed to

him for support found him fair and forceful for

the right .

I was pleased to learn on this trip to Mexico

that when he died, an exile in France, he was not



76 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMthe absentee ruler with treasured or hidden mil-

lions at his command . He left seventy million

dollars in the Mexican government treasury, but

died a pauper, as befits an exiled patriot ; and

his funeral expenses were paid by sympathetic

American friends who still hope that the native

blood of Mexico will produce more of his kind .



CHAPTER VIII

THE "EFFECTIVOS" IN MEXICO

NEITHER oil, mineral wealth, nor concentrated

land ownership has been responsible for the

break-up in Mexico . Outside capital and out-

side engineers built first-class steel railroads

throughout Mexico, opening up her natural re-

sources to the world . Talent enough in Mexico

has been developed to operate them with fair

efficiency when the rifle bullets are not ringing

over the rails .

All attempts to give land on shares or in fee

simple to natives who would cultivate it have

been failures. The mineral resources have de-

veloped a fine middle-type Mexican labor, com-

petent to run stationary engines and do second-

grade engineering work . But the Mexicans will

not work well under their own countrymen .

Whether it is native jealousy or desire to learn

from the Anglo-Saxon race, or whether it is that

innate recognition, universal over the world, of

superior leadership, one cannot as yet clearly

declare .




THE MEN WITH THE "SWING" AND THE "BING"

I was surprised at the high type of Americans

directing affairs in the oil fields . They are the

big fellows of the physical and mental stamp of

our pioneer western railroad builders . They love

the life, the climate, the excitement and the op-

portunity to do things in an expansive way .

They must be quick, resourceful, and diplo-

matic, and they are . The natives admiringly

call them the "effectivos"- the people who do

things .

One could readily see that Edward L. Doheny

was the driving force of the Mexican Petro-

leum Company, and he is this whether on the

Atlantic or the Pacific, in California or New

York; whether planning expansion at Tam-

pico or expressing himself forcefully in Mexico

City .

Later I shall write of this remarkable Amer-

ican pioneer, but at present I wish only to

say that he and John D. Rockefeller share in

common the one transcendent quality that

makes a business strong and great . It is said

that Rockefeller in his judgment of men never

selects a round peg for a square hole . His men

always fit their places. In this respect his judg-



THE " SWING" AND THE " BING " 79

ment is almost uncanny. Doheny shows thesame remarkable quality in his selection of men .

Is there a new engineer just located somewhere

on the work : Doheny must run across him, ask a

couple of questions, learn the correct spelling of

his name, and it is all over in two minutes. He

will tell General Manager Wylie a little later the

seven qualifications of that engineer and his two

deficiencies which are to be watched .

And Wylie is the man with the "go" and the

"swing" and the "bing ." He inspires and fires

the whole line . His eye will detect a misplaced

culvert on a railroad, a small leakage, or a large

wastage . He knows his cost sheets in detail ; but

Doheny knows the round result in every quarter .

No long letters and no correspondence are

wanted by these head men . Results only are

asked for, and the correspondence is telegraphic

at a cost of somewhere between ten thousand

and twenty thousand dollars a year .

Americans are not born for position ; they

make them. The ambitious young man shouldseek his opportunity near the left-hand of power .

The right-hand man of Wylie is Paddleford, but

he began on his left as physician . He demanded

activity and Wylie sent him down the line-" Flick is the boss driller, but you can help in




detailed reports." The result was Paddleford

as General Superintendent, building railroads,

pipes lines, and pumping stations .

Captain Green, the local superintendent at

Tampico, is rightly titled . He was formerly with

our army in the Philippines, where he mastered

Spanish, and, therefore, in Mexico he can talk

two languages at once-olite Spanish to the

court and officials, and forceful English at the

same time to the men under him. He is two

hundred and fifty pounds of effective dynamite

and a jaw that means fight if necessary .

MINTING OIL

The expanding part of the Mexican Petroleum

Company's property at the present time is the

topping plant at the Tampico terminal of the

pipe line, said to be the largest topping plant in

the world . Smith, at the head of it, was formerly

with the Waters-Pierce refinery . He is several

inches over six feet and the Mexicans under him

look like children . Of the more than fifty thou-

sand barrels produced daily half goes through

the topping plant, which, without impairing the

value of the oil fuel, takes a half-dollar's worth of

gasolene-holesale price of distillate at Tam-

pico-ight out of the crude oil barrel and at



DINING OR REFINING 8 1

ninety per cent profit . This plant should soon

be topping all the oil production . It is better

than a gold mine so long as gasolene keeps up

in price; it is a mine with the gold minted as a

by-product. Yet the buyer who transports it,

further refines it and makes distribution, gets

almost as much more out of it . Doheny believes

in division as the proper way to attain results in

addition .

Nevertheless, the Mexican Petroleum Com-

pany is completing a two-million-dollar refinery

at New Orleans, which should soon be in opera-

tion .

MINING OR REFINING

And, speaking of oil refining, my mind is still

working over the problem of where the wealth

from oil in the future is to be, whether from the

mining or the refining end .

The Standard Oil people, operating only in

American territory and desiring to mine only

ten or fifteen per cent of the oil they transport

and refine, have taken in dividends, and created

in value, more than five billion dollars from the

transportation, refining, and marketing of oil .

This is a sum five times our recent national debt .

It is also the sum of the cost of prosecuting our




Civil War. It would dig a dozen Panama Canals,

and it represents more than one-third of the

values that legislation has permitted to remain

in the entire transportation system of the United

States. But where are the "Coal Oil Johnnies,"

the original diggers for oil and their early mil-

lions?

The Standard Oil Company made its mil-

lions where millions are always made, in material

service to the widest number of consumers . The

"independent producer in the United States

formerly had one main customer . He never had

half a dozen people bidding for his oil. The pro-

ducer of fuel oil to-day has the world for his cus-

tomer so far as he can reach the world by pipe

lines or ships. Still his customer must be a refiner

or a fuel oil burner . But it is a wicked waste to-

day to burn the unrefined crude oil from any oil

field in the world .

A forty-two gallon barrel of crude Mexican oil

is worth only about sixty cents on the Gulf of

Mexico. Ten per cent of it is gasolene and there

are many Mexican oils from which a good deal

more than ten per cent in gasolene can be taken .

In the topping plant at Tampico it is separated

at a cost of less than one cent a gallon for the

gasolene, and the wastage in handling this gallon



SHIPPING 83

is only one-half of one per cent . Gas from the oil

wells heats the oil to a temperature of three

hundred and twenty-five degrees, and in the

condensation the gasolene is drawn off . Somecontracts with the Mexican Petroleum Com-

pany have run below sixty cents, but the average

received at Tampico for a barrel of oil can be

brought up to above ninety cents by the topping

plant, which, when finished to top all the oil, will

have cost far less than one million dollars. Across

the river the Pierce Oil refinery takes in crude

oil from the Mexican Petroleum Company and

gets two per cent in beautiful paraffin cakes . In

all there are thirty-five commercial products in

petroleum, and they sub-divide into many more

commercial uses .

There is a great future for Mexican oil in the

refining business . There is yet more money now

in the transportation and refining and merchan-

dising of Mexican oil than there is in the value

of the oil itself at the seaboard .

SHIPPING

The Mexican Petroleum Company has putmore than twenty millions in cash into devel-

opment within Mexico, and with its majority

owner, the Pan-American Petroleum & Trans-




port Company, will soon have a like sum in

shipping . Building plans at present under way

will round out a fleet of twenty-two ships with

two hundred thousand total tonnage, costing

about seventeen million dollars, and the whole

could be sold to-day, lock, stock, and barrel,

completed and uncompleted, for a good deal

more than thirty million dollars . There are, be-

sides, five chartered ships abroad promised for

the close of the war, bringing the fleet up to

twenty-seven ships .

The Mexican Petroleum Company does not

own its ocean-going oil carriers, but has put more

than three million dollars into refining and

storage plants in the United States .

Such is the demand for ships in oil transpor-

tation that the Union Oil Company of Cali-

fornia is relieving the situation by filling its

South American contracts at Tampico instead

of Southern California, as the Panama Canal

so shortens the shipping distance .

DIVIDENDS

The demands upon the Mexican Petroleum

Company for expansion, for increased shipping

facilities, for storage, and for refining are so tre-

mendous that in my judgment the stockholders



DIVIDENDS 85

ought to be fully informed of the rich possibilities

before them and invited to forego all dividends

until these can be declared as Standard Oil divi-

dends have always been declared-rom over-

flowing treasuries . Money in oil ships, oil refin-

ing, and oil storage facilities will in the end return

to the patient holders from twenty-two to fifty

per cent per annum. When competition in trans-

portation and refining has lowered this return,

Mexican Petroleum stockholders should take

their dividends . Meanwhile, the profits will be

added to the value of the shares. There is only

one place in the world where a gold dollar is

worth and is quotable at two gold dollars, and

that is in the treasury of a profitably expanding

company .



CHAPTER IXOIL EXPANSION

THEsubmarine, the aeroplane, the modern war-

ship, the pleasure automobile, the motor truck

and the oncoming farm tractor are all possibili-

ties from petroleum development .

War is a tremendous consumer of oil and gaso-

lene and is drawing down the stocks of oil above

ground throughout the world. War's demand

has doubled the retail price of gasolene this side

of the water and multiplied it three- and four-

fold on the other side, where it is permitted to be

used in peaceful pursuits only to a limited extent

and under government regulation .

In England no oil is permitted to lay the

dust on the highways . If you have official busi-

ness, you are permitted a limited amount of

gasolene at seventy-five cents per gallon . It

should thus be measurably clear that industrial

development from oil is held back by the war .

The world has use, outside the war area, for all

the oil that can be produced and transported for

a long time after the arrival of peace .

Nevertheless, it may be useful to note a few



NAVAL OIL DEVELOPMENTS 87

facts concerning naval development under oil

supplies, because such development opens the

way to tremendous merchant shipping develop-

ments from oil after the war . Without fuel oil the

United States government could never have de-

signed for its first line battle cruisers a boiler in-

stallation with one hundred and eighty thou-

sand horse-power .

NAVAL OIL DEVELOPMENTS

The projected battle cruisers of the United

States could not be reproduced if required to use

coal nor can they be remodeled for burning coal .

One of the modern monster war cruisers may

use fourteen thousand barrels of oil in twenty-

four hours. Although the United States Navy

is now using but a million and a half barrels per

annum, the estimate of the Navy Department

is that it will be using nearly seven million bar-

rels within six years . It was declared six months

ago at Westminster : "If we could describe what

the recent push has meant in the way of petrol,

it would stagger Parliament."

Assistant Secretary of Navy Roosevelt has

declared : "It may be set down as a definite con-

clusion that the navy cannot revert to coal-

burning vessels . "




Fuel oil for the navy, he says, has given in-

creased speed and cruising radius, control of

smoke-screens, reduced fire-room forces by

f i f t y - f i v e per cent, increased the efficiency of

refueling at sea twenty-five per cent, given abil-

ity to sustain maximum speed for long periods

of time without clogging the furnaces, flexi-

bility in speed, and finally greater safety from

submarines, as in modern American ships the

fuel oil is disposed along the bottom to cushion

the blow of exploding torpedoes .

Considering this subject, the United States

naval consulting board has reported that "the

Mexican oil fields are probably the most ex-

tensive deposit of oil anywhere in the western

hemisphere, if not in the world. To-day Great

Britain renews her oil fuel from Mexico, and is

assured thereof only so long as she maintains

undisputed control of the seas . "

OIL STATIONS FOR SHIPS

Some economists and financiers figure that

the development of the oil industry is measur-

ably dependent upon the development of oil

supply stations throughout the world, notably

at the great shipping ports .

You may contract in London for annual sup-



TWO BRITISH DESTROYERS-ONE RUNNING ON COAL, THE OTHER ON OIL



EXPANSION IN MEXICO 89

plies of coal at any shipping port in the world,

and the price before the war was not far from

five dollars per ton .

Coincident with the building of Diesel engine

ships must be the establishment of oil supply

stations around the globe, so that steamship

owners and shipping agents may contract for

oil supplies as they now contract for coal .

The Daniels idea of an oil base in California

for the United States is an absurdity . What is

wanted for our navy is American commercial oil

stations. No navy can use oil in amount com-

parable with the uses of commerce, and only

commerce can sustain oil stations around the

globe .

EXPANSION IN MEXICO

Before the European war the eyes of the world

outside of the United States were focused upon

the Panama Canal and the nearest oil base

thereto for ships .

The United States has officially opened its

eyes a bit to the question of oil for its naval

ships, and not long ago appropriated sixty thou-

sand dollars to investigate fuel oil and gasolene

for naval requirements and naval storage ; but

while the United States now is, and has been



90 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMfrom the beginning, the biggest oil producer in

the world, nobody seems to have taken the

slightest interest in building up a mercantile

marine for the United States on the basis of the

cheapest and largest oil supplies on our side of

both oceans .

While the British government announces in

Parliament that its mercantile shipping is within

five or ten per cent of what it was at the begin-

ning of the war, except so far as it is comman-

deered for war service, and at the same time

declares that its naval forces are so rapidly ex-

panding that at the close of this war it will have

a tonnage equaling the entire naval tonnage of

the rest of the world, it is not unmindful of the

future in its mercantile shipping, especially in

relation to improvements and developments in

connection with oil supplies .

While the British navy is probably taking

twenty thousand barrels a day from the Mexi-

can Eagle Company, a British steamship com-

pany is negotiating with the Mexican Petroleum

Company for a very considerable part of its

production in the future .

The Mexican Petroleum Company may elect

to deliver the oil at Tampico or elsewhere

around the world on six months' notice . Of



EXPANDING SHIPMENTS 91

course no producing company would now con-

tract to ship around the world . When peace

relieves the shipping situation, the development

in oil shipping and in fuel oil ships will be tre-

mendous .

EXPANDING SHIPMENTS

The Pan-American Company now has twelve

steamers working for the Mexican Petroleum

Company, and nine more are due this year .

Six should be delivered this summer and ten

thousand tons a month should be steadily added

to the company's shipping facilities . Three

ships aggregating thirty-two thousand tons are

due next year .

The Union Oil Company has seven steamers

taking Mexican Petroleum Company oil through

the Panama Canal to South America, and the

Standard Oil Company of New Jersey has five

ships taking its oil north .

In 1916 the Mexican Petroleum Company

produced 12,400,000 barrels of oil and sold

10,600,000 for $8,825,000, or a little above

eighty-three cents per barrel . The cost, includ-

ing bond interest, taxes, and depreciation, was

twenty-five cents per barrel . The production

for 1917 should equal fifty thousand barrels a



92 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMday, or 18,250,000 barrels and it should realize

not far from one dollar per barrel .

If I were writing a financial article, I should

immediately figure that, deducting the interest

on Mexican Petroleum eight per cent preferred

stock, there should remain for the $40,000,000

Mexican Petroleum common stock, and United

States government war taxes, not far from

thirty per cent ; but as I am not writing a finan-

cial article, but on the Mexican situation in gen-

eral, I give the following as the best estimate I

could get in Tampico of the probable movement

of Mexican Petroleum Company's oil in 1917 :-4,000,000 barrels to South America by the Union

Oil Company .

3,000,000 barrels into New England .

3,000,000 barrels to the Standard Oil Company of

New Jersey .

2,500,000 barrels to the Magnolia Oil Company (a

Standard Oil subsidiary in Texas) .

2,000,000 barrels to New Orleans and Florida .

2,000,000 barrels to the Atlantic Refining Company .

1,000,000 barrels to the Prudential Company .

1,000,000 barrels in "tops . "

I give the above table to show the wide dis-

tribution of this expanding company, whose

production i s , in my judgment, only in its be-

ginnings .



EXPANDING SHIPMENTS 93

The contracts for the "tops" or distillate call

for barrels of fifty-gallon capacity .

To date the Mexican Petroleum Company has

produced about eighty million barrels of oil, of

which more than fifty-five million barrels have

come from the Casiano well at a pressure of

two hundred and sixty-five pounds and with

the valve unchanged during the seven years of

its operation and the pressure undiminished-

and Cerro Azul is younger and greater, but can

be more closely shut in .



CHAPTER X

PIONEER WORK FINISHED

THEexpansion of the Mexican Petroleum Com-

pany in its beginnings was by land acquisition .

Such expansion may now be considered as

ended . Some people figure that more than

three-quarters of the oil values in this Mexican

field are under the Mexican Petroleum Com-

pany's six hundred and twenty thousand acres

and that they represent a potentiality of at

least five billion barrels in production, a sum

ten times the world's annual consumption . But

no man can set limits or boundaries upon this

oil territory .

Doheny truthfully says, "Geology is a joke

in Mexico ; values are where you find them . . . . "

And Doheny has led in finding values both in

California and Mexico .

His first purchases in Mexico were in August,

1900, although prospecting was begun by Do-

heny and Canfield in the May and June pre-

ceding . They were American pioneer inventors

and soon found a cheaper method of prospect-



EXPANDING ENGINEERING 95

ing than in crawling and cutting their way

through the jungle . They announced they

would pay five pesos to anybody pointing out

the location of "tar spots ." They were inun-

dated with "tar spots" and readily took leases

on thousands of acres . So pressing were the

Mexicans to realize money that royalties were

sometimes paid several years in advance, and

when they would no longer pay extended ad-

vance royalties, titles were forced upon them .

EXPANDING ENGINEERING

The same forces that engineered the construc-

tion are still engineering the company's expan-

sion in and out of Mexico. How successful this

engineering has been to date may be illustrated

by the fact that Manager Wylie estimated for

the first eight-inch pipe line a capacity of twelve

thousand five hundred barrels a day, with

pumping stations twenty miles apart . By put-

ting the pumping stations fourteen miles apart,

the pipe line capacity was advanced to twenty

thousand barrels a day ; then the pumping sta-

tions were improved and the oil was a little thin-

ner than expected and the eight-inch pipe line'

was soon carrying thirty-five thousand barrels a

day. But improvements and expansion continued .




Now the two pipe lines carrying oil are de-

livering seventy-five thousand barrels a day

at the Tampico terminal, and sixty thousand

barrels a day are being exported, along with

more than one hundred thousand barrels of

gasolene per month . Orders have just been

given to burn oil at the pumping stations and

the topping plant, releasing the third pipe line,

which is now used as a gas line, so that it can

be used to t ansport oil . This may bring the

company's capacity for delivery at Tampico to

above one hundred thousand barrels per day .

The engineering enterprise in the Mexican

Petroleum Company resembles the history of

our western railroad pioneers, who laid their

rails on the prairies in advance of the settlers .

The Mexican Petroleum people actually had

the audacity to build railroads and pipe lines

in advance of their wells and upon the basis

only of the oil seepages .

A million and a half dollars went into the

first pipe line and two million and a half dollars

into the railroad and pipe lines to Cerro Azul,

all in advance of any oil well .

When the great Casiano well came in, Sep-

tember 11, 1910, a million and a half barrels of

oil had to be burned to keep it from the rivers,



PEON HOUSES BEFORE OIL DEVELOPMENT BEGAN



EXPANDING ENGINEERING 97

where it might have done incalculable damage,

but the company's engineering forces put up

fifty-five thousand barrel tanks at the rate of

one every four and a half days . Last year Cerro

Azul shot a million and a half barrels into the

air before it could be controlled . But here again

the company's forces saved, by earth dams,

more than half of this, and then for safety

burned the overflow . There is no evidence as

to the number of oil gushers that may burst

forth in the future, but knowledge of how to

handle them has increased .

And speaking of the standard fifty-five-thou-

sand-barrel steel oil tanks, the reader may be in-

terested to know that they are thirty feet high

and one hundred and fifteen feet in diameter,

are usually surrounded by an earth dam to save

the oil in case of accident, and have usually a

bottom valve through which the oil may be

drawn off if a bolt of lightning fires the tank .

The Mexican Petroleum Company on itsthousand acres of ground at "Tankville" and at

its Tampico terminal has one hundred and three

of these tanks, but the eye will meet them at

almost any railroad shipping point in the United

States .

The first complete monthly shipments were



98 THEMEXICAN PROBLEMin January, 1913, when two hundred and forty-

seven thousand barrels left the wharf at Tam-

pico. By October, 1916, the shipments had

reached eight hundred and ten thousand barrels .

Now they are above a million and a half barrels

a month .

PIPE LINES, RAILROADS, MOTOR WAYS, ANDWATERWAYS

This American concern has nearly half the

pipe-line mileage in the country. It has three

eight-inch pipe lines from Tampico to the

Casiano well, sixty-five miles distant . Thence

two eight-inch lines to Cerro Azul, twenty-two

miles, and an eighteen-mile line to Tres Her-

manos, a total of two hundred and sixty-four

miles. The oil is kept moving by seven pump-

ing stations operated by gas from a line to the

Casiano well, but the stations are equipped with

oil-burning apparatus, now to be put in com-

mission as already noted above . The oil gushes

at such a temperature that it flows without

reheating .

There are one hundred and nineteen miles of

four- and six-inch water mains, and the com-

pany is opening other water supplies .

Over these lines, well buried in the earth, runs



PIPE LINES AND RAILROADS 99

the company's fenced-in private motor road,

for eighty miles, with surveyed right of way to

the Tuxpan River, one hundred and twenty-

five miles in all .

There is no speed limit on a private line and

the company's officials claim their trucks and

motors do business over this road cheaper than

the business could be handled on a railway ; but

be it remembered this company makes its own

gasolene of sixty-three specific gravity, at a cost

of less than a cent a gallon .

The company also parallels this highway most

of the distance, or to San Geronimo, by its own

motor boat line and water route . From San

Geronimo south it operates a thirty-five mile

railroad to Cerro Azul, and has nineteen miles

further surveyed for construction . It has also

five miles of standard gauge road at Ebano ; but

not a passenger coach on any line . I t i s a l l b u s i -

ness. The pleasurable way of travel in this

country is by the company's motor boats, for

it has a very complete line of marine equipment,

including the yacht Casiana, usually at hand

to take out all Americans when so ordered by

the United States or Mexican de facto govern-

ments .

The company has been as far-sighted and



100 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMahead of its rivals in its Tampico terminals as

.in its oil land acquisitions . In tanks, storage,

river-frontage shops, machinery, and loading

equipment it holds the ground and leadership .

I figure it has more oil in pipe lines and storage

than it sold last year, and perhaps as much as

its 1916 production-welve million four hun-

dred thousand barrels .

The great pioneer work of acquisition, pro-

duction, construction, finance, and organization

has been accomplished in seventeen years, and

the patient owner should reap handsome re-

wards in the next seventeen years .

A CAUTION

But there is one caution I may give him, and

that is not to be alarmed concerning reports

from Mexico and Tampico, whence there is

very little reliable news in the despatches of

the day . Indeed, the two worst informed coun-

tries concerning each other's affairs are those

countries lying either side of the Rio Grande .

The American hears little that is good or true

concerning Mexico, and the Mexican hears little

that is good or true concerning the United

States. The governments of both countries

seem equally interested in suppressing the real



RESIDENCES OF PEONS



A CAUTION 101

news. All the foreigners interested in Mexico

and its development are afraid to speak con-

cerning their properties or their operations for

fear of misconstruction either at Washington

or Mexico City, and harmless, inane, or weakly

stupid news reports are allowed to pass censor-

ship . We have all sorts of "frightful" German

reports ; now it is Villa moving on Tampico and,

as I write, comes the report that shipping is

tied up at Tampico by a strike of oil handlers .

One would think, to read the press reports, that

there was a similarity between the work of long-

shoremen loading ships in New York harbor

and thousands of Mexicans loading oil ships at

Tampico .

I stood at the loading-station on the east side

of the Panuco River at the Mexican Petroleum

Company's terminal opposite Tampico and wit-

nessed one of the big oil ships slowly draw up

to the wharf for its load of oil . There must have

been a very large party on the pier, for it con-

sisted of myself, two Mexicans, and Dr . W. WHills and his wife . The doctor was explaining

to me his remedies for resuscitating the men at

Cerro Azul when in the fumes of that gusher

the American engineers were working day and

night to shut in the torrent of oil,-ow as fast




as a man began to stagger he was grabbed by

the doctor's assistants and quickly dragged away

from the well so that the doctor might promptly

restore him by gas antidotes,-nd before he

had finished his explanation the two Mexicans

had moved a giant hose to the ship's side and

the ship was being filled by gravity from a tank

on the hill, some fifteen hundred feet away .

The next day the ship departed with her sixty-

five-thousand-barrel load .

But what is the poor newsman to do with a

press report when it arrives . It may or may

not be true. In this case there was no strike of

oil ship loaders, but for a few days there was

trouble and a labor strike at the Pierce Oil re-

finery and at the Mexican Eagle refinery, but

the true news could not be given . Now, if you

were a newsman on the firing line, would you

send forth a report, if permitted, indicating de-

lays in some oil shipments from Tampico, or

would you wait till order had been restored, the

censorship lifted and then telegraph a history of

no value?

NORMAL DISORDER

The point, however, I wish to make for in-

vestment interests should be clear . Mexico as



NORMAL DISORDER 103

a country is not in a state of normal peace, but

of normal disorder -disorder that has prevailed

more or less for a hundred years, except during

the reign of Porfirio Diaz . Correct news reports

are not readily available, and the business in-

vestor should know his risks, should understand

that he cannot be guided by newspaper reports,

and should fully understand that Mexican values

are selling at large discounts in the world mar-

kets, but that in the end they will be properly

demonstrated and properly protected by Ameri-

can or European interests, and will some day

be properly quoted .



CHAPTER XI

WHY THE PAN-AMERICAN COMPANY CONTROLSMEXICAN PETROLEUM

AMERICAN financial interests are now more

keenly alive than ever before as respects their

responsibilities toward investors . The opening-

up in Alaska of the greatest copper bonanza the

world has ever seen sent Kennecott Copper

mining shares into the fifties and made a wide

distribution . J . P . Morgan & Company and their

associates might have been tempted to dispose

of all their shares to the public and let the public

take the risk of a continuation of the bonanza

ore, which could be mined and marketed at less

than five cents per pound when it was being sold

at above twenty-five cents a pound .

Morgan & Company, however, realized their

responsibilities and sought insurance for Kenne-

cott's future by acquisition of the Braden Copper

mines of South America, which, when developed,

will insure a large copper output at low cost, and

also by acquisition of more than one-third of the

shares of the Utah Copper Company, the world's



CONTROL OF MEXICAN PETROLEUM 105

greatest copper mine, whether measured by out-

put or by earnings . It is no longer considered

sound American finance for shareholders as

partners to run away from each other, especially

when the partners are the managing owners .

The Mexican Petroleum Company has a bo-

nanza in Mexico, the life of which no man can

limit, but insurance of property in Mexico, and

especially insurance of stability in political,

social, and government conditions would carry

a high premium rate .

Mr. Doheny believed the best way to attainthe desired insurance for an investment future

for his associated interests in Mexican Petro-

leum was to merge the control of the company

in a new organization, which could open up a

broad base of oil production in California and

supply ships and shipping facilities for both

California and Mexican oil around the world .

It was also in contemplation at the time the

Pan-American Company was organized to make

combination with other oil companies that their

oil distribution might be combined . At present,

however, the proposed union with the Union

Oil Company, the Associated Oil Company, and

other oil interests has been laid on the shelf, and

the Pan-American Company has started a very



1 0 6 THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

extensive development in California, opening up

two big properties there, the Bell Ranch of

ten thousand acres and the Ojai Ranch of eight

thousand acres .

THE INVESTMENT BASE

While the Mexican Petroleum Company has

$12,000,000 non-cumulative eight per cent pre-

ferred stock, about $40,000,000 of commonstock, and about $4,000,000 of bonded indebted-

ness, the Pan-American Petroleum & Transport

Company is organized with a large outline for

expansion as occasion warrants .

It has outstanding $10,500,000 seven per cent

preferred stock, convertible into common at the

rate of $115 par value for $100 par value of com-

mon stock, but the amount of authorized pre-

ferred stock is $25,000,000 . It has an authorized

common stock (par $50) of $125,000,000, but at

present there is outstanding only $30,494,750.

The Pan-American Company is the part of

the enterprise expanding by ocean transporta-

tion, California development, etc ., and has in its

treasury seventy-five per cent of the eight per

cent preferred stock of the Mexican Petroleum

Company and forty-five per cent of the Mexican

Petroleum Company's common stock .



THE PAN-AMERICAN IN CALIFORNIA 107

With its shipping interests it is in position to

pay dividends upon its common stock without

waiting for dividends upon Mexican Petroleum

common. It will thus be seen that the invest-ment basis in this combined oil enterprise is in

Pan-American and the speculation is in Mexican

Petroleum. Indeed, it is figured that for Mexi-

can Petroleum to pay more dividends than Pan-

American, Pan-American must first pay sixteen

per cent, or eight dollars upon its fifty-dollar

shares . There is present expectation that Pan-

American will begin dividends upon its common

stock this year. The Pan-American Company

has three sources of revenue and the Mexican

Petroleum Company substantially one.

THE PAN-AMERICAN COMPANY IN CALIFORNIA

In southern California gasolene is used with

great liberality. The broad state highways and

asphaltum roads invite it . To visit the Bell

Ranch of the Pan-American Company I took a

little motor trip of two hundred and sixty-five

miles, going from Los Angeles to Los Alamos,

which is on the Bell Ranch property, and back

to Santa Barbara in a day . I learned that four-

hundred-mile motor trips for a single day were

not uncommon in southern California. The




ladies think nothing of going fifty or one hun-

dred miles as a morning drive for a distant noon

luncheon .

Doheny bought the Bell Ranch for $1,800,000

and turned it over to the Pan-American Com-

pany. Boston people previously had an option

on two thousand acres of this property at $1666

per acre and forfeited on it . Doheny bought the

whole for less than the previous price of a part .

This was the largest untouched oil property

in the State of California . Derricks are being

erected here one thousand feet apart, or one der-

rick to twenty-five acres . There are known to be

four thousand acres of oil lands in the property

and oil has been proven the full width at one end .

The balance has not yet been proven . The whole

is two and a half to three miles wide and seven

and a half to eight and a quarter miles long .

The Union Oil Company is on the west, the

Standard Oil Company on the east, and on the

north the Palmer Union brought in a fifteen-

thousand-barrel gusher, for which, of course,

they were unprepared, as gushers in California

are not common. They shut it in and later found

that it had departed as a gusher. Most of the

California oil is obtained by pumping . It is

expected that the wells here will do two hundred



CALIFORNIA OIL STATISTICS 109

barrels a day . Number 3 well was visited, which

is down twenty-nine hundred feet and is doing

one hundred and fifty barrels a day. Eleven

derricks have been started . Oil sands here have

about fourteen per cent porosity. The Union

Oil Company pays eighty-five cents per barrel

on the ground for oil and takes it into its own

pipe line .

SOME CALIFORNIA OIL STATISTICS

The cost of a well and equipment here is fig-

ured at fifteen thousand dollars, and at present

prices for oil it may net forty-five thousand

dollars the first year. Figures have been made

that show possibilities of four hundred wells

drilled on this property in two years to cost six

million dollars, but to earn three times this sum

per annum. This would be more wells than were

ever drilled on any one property in the State .

The Ojai Ranch, several miles farther south,

cost about seven hundred and fifty thousand

dollars. Oil was discovered in California in 1859,

and Thomas A. Scott, of the Pennsylvania Rail-

road, was interested in this property about 1865,

but he was looking for kerosene, and the heavy

oil found here was not then of value . Scott was

interested in the first projected railroad from




San Diego, and construction was begun there in

the sixties, but no rails were ever laid by that

railroad enterprise. When the Boston people

came to build the Southern California road they

avoided litigation by keeping outside the old

Scott right of way .

Senator Bard of California was interested in

this Ojai property, and it is from the Bard Oil

Company that the Pan-American now gets title

to about two thousand acres of surface and all

the mineral rights of the valley, about seven

miles long and two and a half miles wide . Onthe Sulphur Mountain side of this valley are oil

seepages that are declared to be the greatest in

the State . On the other side of the valley the

cleavage of the hills reveals the entire geological

formation so that it can be followed for many

miles. The oil in this territory varies from four-

teen to thirty-four gravity and the wells are

from four hundred to four thousand feet deep .

PRODUCTION COSTS IN CALIFORNIA

The average California oil well will yield from

one hundred to two hundred barrels per day, and

six hundred barrels is a big well. Oil wells run-

ning from five to fifteen barrels have been auto-

matically pumping in southern California for



PRODUCTION COSTS IN CALIFORNIA 111

many years - something of a contrast to what

one sees in the Mexican oil field . Old oil wells

are being remade here and new machinery will

be installed and new wells driven . Well number

36 on the side of Sulphur Mountain already fur-

nishes a beautiful lubricating oil with gasolene

and no asphalt . It is thirty-four gravity and is

worth at the present time about two dollars per

barrel, although most of the heavy oil in this

district is worth about seventy-five cents a

barrel .

Whether an oil well is large or small, the cost

of oil production at the well cannot be over ten

cents per barrel; and oil can be pumped one hun-

dred miles at a cost of one cent a barrel .

The Pan-American people are at work on

experiments to make a cheaper gasolene motor

oil and also on improvements to the "cracking"

process . Cracking oil is not a new invention but

it is the basis of all the reports and promises from

Washington for cheapening gasolene . A heavy

crude oil is cracked by being heated to a tem-

perature of eight hundred degrees under pres-

sure with hot steam . Oil of eight and a half

gravity is thus converted into an oil of sixteen

gravity and will flow like water . In the process

oxygen and hydrogen are separated and new



112 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMchemical compounds are formed so that in re-

ality a new combination produces a new and

lighter oil . It is said that oil can now be cracked

at a cost of three and a half cents per barrel .

The Pan-American people realize the obliga-

tion resting upon them to expand the market for

oils in every possible direction .

The report of the Federal Trade Commission,

that found Standard Oil interests still dominat-

ing the price of gasolene, should again emphasize

how so-called anti-trust laws are responsible for

the abolition of competition and really prevent

the lowering of prices .

The Washington report shows the division of

gasolene marketing into eleven territorial areas,

nine of which are said to be dominated by vari-

ous Standard Oil companies, which produced

more than sixty per cent of the gasolene in 1915

and made sixty-five per cent of the total sales .

I have always been annoyed in shifting my

motor gasolene purchases from one oil company

to another to find that very soon the price for

my gasolene was regulated by the Standard Oil

price and that, notwithstanding any market

conditions or supplies, when the independent oil

man had hooked me on as a customer he was

very shortly giving nothing but Standard Oil



PRODUCTION COSTS IN CALIFORNIA 113

prices, yet claiming no connection with Standard

Oil .

I noted that in California gasolene had fluctu-

ated from twenty-two to twelve and back to

twenty, and in southern California I declared,

"Here I shall find the truth," as gasolene is sold

on street corners by more than a dozen inde-

pendent producing and refining companies com-

peting with more than one hundred Standard Oil

stations .

Yet when I inquired as to prices and conditions

of competition, I found that prices were uniform

and that competition was geographical- man

bought his " gasolene at the nearest gas corner .

Gasolene users do not, as in the East, maintain

underground gasolene tanks in or out of the

garage to any considerable extent . They buyat the gas corner and it does not pay to run a

car very far to buy its fuel .

Throughout California, and most notably in

Los Angeles, the most conspicuous store is the

gasolene supply store. It is almost always on a

corner vacant lot, often set in a small attractive

garden, into which the car moves for its supply,

the curbstones being cut down on both sides of

the corner . These houses are one-story buildings

of glass and wood, similar to the headhouse or




potting-room of a green house. Roof and sides

are painted conspicuously - the Standard Oil

Company's always in red, white, and blue colors

and other companies' in uniform trade-mark

colors . All kinds of oil supplies are attractively

arranged on the shelves within, and polite at-

tendants in white suits remind you of a combi-

nation between a certified milk dairy and a well-

kept green house .

COMPETITION BY SERVICE

What interested me most was the problem of

how all these corner oileries could compete with

the Standard Oil Company, with its organiza-

tion, system, and unlimited capital . I promptly

found the answer-hey did not compete at all .

The Standard Oil Company fixed the prices and

everybody else made the same price . There is no

difference in gasolene of the same specific grav-

ity, whether made by the Standard Oil Company

of California or the Ventura Oil Company of

Boston and Los Angeles . The California people

brought up in the oil regions know the fraud of

any advertiser who declares that his gasolene

will carry a car more miles than the gasolene of

his neighbor, if it is of the same gravity .

The competition was entirely in the service



INDEPENDENTS AND OIL PRICES 115

and by location, and I was astonished that the

Ventura and a dozen other companies could

maintain oil supply stations over so wide a terri-

tory in competition with unlimited capital . I t i s

a matter of enterprise in management ; but the

prices are fixed by Supreme Court decisions

and anti-trust legislation, both practically for-

bidding price competition .

Every oil producer and every oil seller knows

without any argument what he is up against-that the Standard Oil Company can sell oil in as

large quantities, as well refined, and at as low a

price as he can afford and if need be a little

lower .

INDEPENDENTS NOW HOLD UP OIL PRICES

The safety of the independent, therefore, is

the umbrella price of the Standard Oil Company .

He cannot hope to cut out the Standard Oil

Company business. He has neither the capacity,

the supply, nor the capital for a contest of endur-

ance . Self-interest requires that he sell at the

same price. He cannot get more. He may there-

fore hold his own by the location of his supply

stations. If he attempts to get less he only lowers

the general price and hurts himself and every

other independent producer, and does not bring




a frown or a wrinkle upon the face of smiling

Standard Oil .

The "trust octopus" is seconded and sup-

ported in price and service by all the independ-

ents . Any one of them can put the price down if

he wishes . In that case, his enemies would be

the suffering independent producers and not the

Standard Oil Company, which usually finds a

still larger profit in lower prices and broader

markets .

The position of the Standard Oil Company is

exactly that of the big copper producer, the big

steel producer, or any other large vendor of a

raw article . The producer knows, if he knows

anything about business economics, that the

advancing price restricts the consumption and

a lower price enlarges it. What he wishes is

the largest possible distribution consistent with

profits. Distribution is governed by the minor-

ity and the accumulation of supplies lowering

the price which all producers are mutually inter-

ested to sustain . At the lower price consump-

tion is broadened, the supply is decreased, and if

the leading producer does not advance the

quotation, exhausting supplies will do it auto-

matically .

On an advancing market producers accumu-



DON'T ROCK THE BOAT 117

late supplies which automatically check the

advance .

There is perfect action of the law of supply

and demand at top and bottom, but intermedi-

ately there is the law of self-interest placing the

so-called trust and the independent upon ex-

actly the same basis - mutual maintenance of

price and profits; with competition only in

service.

"DON'T ROCK THE BOAT"

The Supreme Court decisions, the regulations

by state and United States governments and

"anti-trust" laws, all pressing from the outside,

force all producers into absolute mutual under-

standing without any agreement written or

oral .

They absolutely boycott the government de-

cree and that without conspiracy or combina-

tion. They understand the law, "Don't Rock

the Boat . "

When the government shakes its finger at the

large company and tells it to compete and de-

stroy the smaller companies and decrees aid and

comfort to the smaller producing company to de-

stroy the larger one, it makes impossible the com-

petition which under the law it seeks to enforce .




COMPETITION BOYCOTTED

There is little difference in human action

either side of the world . On the western side of

the Pacific the Japs have attempted to dictate

to unarmed China. The Chinaman does n't so

much as wink. He just lays down his chopsticks

and refuses to buy, serve, or eat a piece of Jap-

anese fish, and the Japs see the point of distress

and starvation before the Chinese feel it. The

Japs threatening the Chinese make them a unit

without other understanding than that of mu-

tual self-interest .

Throughout the United States the oil pro=

ducers and selling agencies boycott the govern-

ment edict and refuse to cut each other's throats

in price competition . The Standard Oil Com-

pany can laugh at all Supreme Court decrees .

They continue to live under the law which by

the same breath demands that they compete

and destroy the small man and go to jail for

doing it .

The result throughout the United States is

higher prices for oil ; for when the Standard Oil

Company had a monopoly, it had a responsi-

bility concerning rising prices, and would con-

serve supplies, pass them from surplus territories



COMPETITION BOYCOTTED 119

to exhausted territories, stimulate production to

prevent erratic movements, and balance the

markets to prevent wide fluctuations .

Now the government has stepped in as a reg-

ulator, and the Standard Oil Company has no

responsibilities ; its valuations have multiplied

fivefold, and Mr . Rockefeller is worth more

hundreds of millions than he ever dreamed of,

and this by legislative and Supreme Court de-

cree and his own helplessness .

Washington has decreed in the oil business,

the copper business, and the steel business a

capital socialism-here the weak protect the

strong and the strong must permit it .



CHAPTER XII

DOHENY-ORD OF OIL

MOREthan sixty years ago two boys were born

about twenty miles and three years apart in the

State of Wisconsin . They were destined to be

thoroughly American boys, but the parents of

both were born in Ireland . One became Lord

Shaughnessy, the head of the Canadian Pacific,

and the greatest power for good to-day, both in

war and peace, in the northern half of the North

American continent. The other was Edward

L. Doheny, lord of oil in the southwest of NorthAmerica. Shaughnessy and Doheny, although

born in the same State and so near each other,

and of parents from the Emerald Isle, never

met until within a year . Yet for many years

Shaughnessy had watched Doheny's progess in

the Southwest, for Shaughnessy wants oil in the

future for one hundred Canadian Pacific ships .

I pen these lines in absolute independence of

both, for if they had any power over me or any

knowledge that I am writing this, the full limit

of censorship against any personal encomiums



DEVELOPED BY PLAINS AND HILLS 121

would be placed upon me. I asked Doheny in

Mexico what I might say concerning the situa-

tion, and he replied : "Nothing about me or

especially about my properties . We can take

care of ourselves, but help the people of Mexico

if you can . "

DEVELOPED BY THE PLAINS AND THE HILLS

Edward L. Doheny is of public interest be-

cause he spans in his life and activities the

western pioneer, bivouacking on the prairies

and seeking the development of wealth from

the mountains and the plains, and the new era

of heat, light, and power which is coming from

mineral oil .

When Doheny graduated from the high school

in Wisconsin, he knew his botany and his miner-

alogy like the American youth of advanced edu-

cation; but to-day he knows it as do few people

in the world . His life on the plains taught him

to know the sage brush of the desert for its roots

holding the sands against the winds and its

blossom yielding up to the bees the most deli-

cious honey. He knows all the flowers of the hills

and the mountain side and he knows the rocks

and the minerals they cover as do few men . He

knows how these minerals were deposited, their




dips, the sedimentary deposits, shales, and sands,

and the basaltic and volcanic upheavals .

He dwells in a garden with one of the largest

collections of palms that any man ever gathered .

He knows every palm whether he sees it in his

garden or on the desert . Somehow he respects

the botanical names of more than a hundred

palms, probably because they have no common

names, but he manifests a contempt for the

geological names as applied to minerals . Hedeclares that geological names never yet found

minerals or oil, nor have the geological professors

been very successful in directing any one how to

find them .

INDEPENDENT OF MAN OR BEAST

For many years Doheny slept on the plains and

in the mountains with his rifle by his side, and

he always knew exactly where his boots were,

where every piece of his pack lay and what were

his resources and the journey before him . Henever carried water or timber if he knew where

t o f i n d i t . But he carried the tools in his kit that

could cut or file a piece of steel, mend a rifle, and

insure him independence of any man or beast on

top of Mother Earth .

He believes that the minerals were originally



INDEPENDENT OF MAN OR BEAST 193deposited almost universally on the earth's sur-

face and were then ploughed by glaciers and torn

by upheavals and leached and redeposited into

cracks or deposits of various forms ; yet you get

them where you find them . But when you reach

the end of the deposit, don't gamble too much

money in looking for a continuation of that de-

posit or for the next one . He says that when you

dig a well and get water, you won't find oil, and

when water comes in, that is the end of your oil .

Frank A. Vanderlip, of the National City Bank,

about a year ago paid a million and a half, or

one hundred dollars an acre, for fifteen thousand

acres covering the San Pedro mountain, an ocean

point on the Pacific not far from Los Angeles . It

has beautiful views from the hilltop into valleys

both sides and out over the ocean. But Doheny

had first looked at it for several days and paid

one thousand dollars a day for the privilege . He

found there were some oil seepages on the prop-

erty, but the district did not indicate to his

practiced eye that he could get his money back

with a profit from either oil or land sales . But

Doheny could slip over the mountains to the

northeast and buy the beautiful Ferndale Ranch

for another summer home for Mrs . Doheny, with

its running waters, palms and orange groves,



i%4 THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

and consider it a good investment because it was

worth it without regard to the oil derricks loom-

ing on the hillside in the distance .

SUPREME FAITH IN OIL

Between the Ferndale Ranch and Sulphur

Mountain we rested for a few moments to note

the oil-bearing shale on the face of both moun-

tains at the head of Ojai Valley ; one dipping

south and the other dipping north . Some of the

party looked for trout in the brook, but Doheny

noted a ten-inch curl of black oil ooze out from

the spring by the brookside and flow down

stream .

"Look at that," he shouted . "That is worth

more than all the trout in all the springs and

streams in America . You can put trout in the

stream, but you can't put oil in the ground . "

Then we passed on through the cypress and

the yew trees and filled our pockets and mouths

with sun-kissed oranges, and then down thevalley of the Santa Clara, noting the oil derricks

on the south mountains across the valley, some

of them belonging to the Ventura Oil Company

and some of them to Doheny, for Doheny's in-

terests in California about equal his interests in

Mexico.



NEAR TRES HERMANOS



SUPREME FAITH IN OIL 1 9 1 5

The main ranch or home farm of Doheny is

ten miles out of Los Angeles, eight hundred acres

on the mountain side, and still it is not the ex-

tensive gardens, orange groves, fish hatchery,

duck ponds, cemented driveway up the moun-

tain, or his developed underground river, or the

beautiful blue lilac bushes, that interest Doheny

to the greatest extent ; nor yet the opportunity

here for a vigorous outing, a seven o'clock break-

fast, and a beautiful view across the valley . I t i s

the little seepage of oil in the sidewalk that in-

dicates that again Doheny sits atop of wealth

that he can sometime at his good pleasure mint

into gold and human uses .

Doheny not only knows men, but he believes

in men of the right sort. T. A. O'Donnell, a

director of the Pan-American Oil Company,

Doheny declares to be the best oil operator in

California . He says he will get twice as much oil

out of a well as other operators. When an oil

well stops with O'Donnell it is going again in an

hour. With some other people an oil well may

be going again within two or three days, but

the fellow that keeps his oil well going will get

the oil, because the oil is all the time flowing

toward him .




YOUTH AND ENTHUSIASM STILL WITH HIM

Doheny is an enthusiast . When he goes into

a thing, he is in all over, hands and feet . He will

travel longest with the swiftest and the strongest,

swim or ride with the youngest, and sleep more

or less in any part of the twenty-four hours . He

will absorb more and his interest and his sym-

pathies will be of the broadest because his stud-

ies and his sympathies reach from the stars of

heaven to the lowest mineral deposits and his

interest is all the while in humanity and its on-

ward progress .

In the forenoon, over on the side of Sulphur

Mountain, he dipped his fingers in the thirty-

four gravity oil oozing from well Number 36 and

exclaimed enthusiastically : "Is n't that fine?

Is n't it better than soup or something to eat?

Just smell it! It is a soft, lubricating oil with no

asphaltum." And he dipped up a pan of it and

we all had to note it, smell it, and admire it .

Then he took a wisp of oil waste from the auto-

mobile and wiped his hands as clean as those of

a woman and was off in the motor to dip into

another oil well and note its color, its thickness,

and its gravity .

As I write this in the East, comes the report



EARLY IN BUSINESS 127

from that Number 36 oil well that its flow has

increased to twenty-five barrels a day ; and it is

just what Doheny said it was, -pure, lubricat-

ing oil, with no asphaltum, but a little higher

grade at thirty-seven gravity .

EARLY IN BUSINESS

At seventeen years of age Doheny was with a

United States government surveying party in

the Indian Territory . As a side line, he took

to trapping wild animals. Many a wolf-skin

he cashed in at the trading-post, but he early

showed his independence . When trapping one

winter with a friendly Indian, one of Doheny's

pelts was claimed as taken from a wolf nearest

the Indian's trap . Doheny protested . He said

the hunting law might well be that a dead ani-

mal belonged to the nearest trap, but snow on

the ground showed that that animal came from

his, Doheny's, trap .

The Indian stood by the law and Doheny

stood by the fact and they separated . Dohenydeclared that no rule of the hunt could give his

kill to another trap when it was clearly shown

by the snow tracks it did not belong there .

Doheny was soon again in business for himself .

With a partner he bought at auction over sev-




enty head of government horses for about five

dollars each and drove them into Kansas ; and

all through the summer months he was break-

ing in the horses and selling them to farmers

at twenty-five dollars a head . Doheny and his

partner felt sure they had done the greatest

stroke of their lives . Each then thought that if

he could get an income of one thousand dollars

a year he would be rich .

But the lure of the mines followed the lure of

the forest, and Doheny was soon up north pros-

pecting for gold, and for many years he mined

and prospected through the Rocky Mountains,

especially in New Mexico and Arizona. He was

running a good sized mine in New Mexico and

making ten dollars a ton when the McKinley

tariff put him out of business .

His ore had a value of about fifteen dollars a

ton, and he could smelt it at El Paso at five

dollars a ton and get ten dollars a ton profit .

The McKinley tariff put a duty on lead ores and

made Monterey in Mexico the greatest smelting

center in the world . The El Paso people could

not get their lead flux except at heavy duty and

therefore had to charge Doheny fifteen dollars

a ton .

This sent Doheny to southern California . His



NOGAMBLING 129

quick eye detected some black stuff being

hauled over the streets to a furnace . He made

investigation, and soon he and Canfield had

leased ground and with shovel and hand wind-

lass were opening the Los Angeles oil field . It

was hard work and there was a long fight ahead

of them, but they won out and the Los Angeles

oil field proved up exactly what Doheny had de-

clared it would yield ; and many of Doheny'sold Los Angeles wells are still automatically

pumping .

INTO OIL

This was Doheny's first venture in oil, and oil

has been in his blood and bone ever since .

Doheny is distinctively a prospector and not

a gambler . He would not play a game of cards

for a ten-cent piece . He never took a drink in

his life, and he never smokes . But as a prospector

he will hit the rock and do his drilling to the end

of the lead ; but when he reaches the end, the

prospect is determined and no blind gambling or

groping in the dark follows - he quits .

NO GAMBLING

I could take you to one place in California

where the Standard Oil Company has spent



130 THE MEXICANPROBLEM$2,500,000 with not a cent to show for i t .

Doheny was previously in that district and it

cost him just $8000 to put down his well and

learn that any further expense would be gam-

bling . He had paid his $8000 and gotten his

information . The Standard Oil Company put

$2,500,000 in the same district later and still

has no further information .

But just afterwards Doheny heard of a prom-

ising piece of oil land offered for option . He in-

quired and learned that an adjoining property

was known to be better . He took a third ob-

servation and learned that the cream of the

district was held for $2,250,000, while the poorer

part could be had for one or two hundred thou-

sand dollars . He promptly took the option on

the best part, paid down his ten per cent, drove

his wells and paid the balance, $2,000,000, out of

the product from the wells . He quit that district

$8,000,000 to the good .

Then he opened another district and took out

another $8,000,000 . He was the pioneer in the

Bakersfield district, drilling the first well and

selling the first product from the district . In the

early days of Bakersfield he was selling oil at

$1 . 2 5 a barrel to twenty-one other drilling out-

f i t s . With the two oil fields he is now opening up



STANDING BY 1 3 1

for the Pan-American, Mr. Doheny will have

opened up eight oil fields in California .

STANDING BY

From the Fullerton and other districts in

California he got the money to make his start

in Mexico, where at the beginning he had only

an eight per cent interest, but assessments of

$750,000 from 1902 to 1905 did not trouble him .

When the Texas oil gushers made Mexican oil

practically worthless for a few months, Doheny

stood by, just as Rockefeller did in Cleveland,

and bought when nobody else would buy, believ-

ing that the future would demonstrate the val-

ues . Doheny's Mexican Petroleum interest went

up to nearly forty per cent as his associates sold

out .

Doheny has always stood by . In the panic of

1907 he kept millions on deposit that his prop-

erties might be protected against any accident .

Five years ago he disposed of some properties for

more than $10,000,000, and half of the money

went into Mexican Petroleum . I don't think that

he values his Mexican interests financially as

high as his California interests, but the social

problem in Mexico interests him more and takes

greatest hold upon his sympathies .

i

1




Tampico was a cattle shipping point with less

than twenty thousand people when he began

operations there . To-day it has a population of

fifty thousand, and wages that were twelve and

one-half cents are now one dollar for ordinary

labor and three dollars and fifty cents gold for

skilled labor. When in June, 1 9 1 6 , nine hun-

dred refugees were taken from Tampico on two

tank steamers and the yacht Casiana, the ex-

pense was sixty-seven thousand dollars and the

American government offered to repay, but

Doheny refused to accept . From October 14,

1915, until April 1 5 , 1 9 1 6 , there was famine in

that land for the native population . The war-

ring forces had taken all the food out of the

country and sent it to Vera Cruz, whence it had

been shipped to Texas and sold for war supplies .

Doheny bought it in Texas and shipped it

back in the same packages to Tampico and fed

the native Mexicans with it so far as the Ameri-

can consul certified they had need for food .

Doheny is a delver in statistics, and these

ground him in his faith in the great future for oil

in the uses of the world . He believes that the

time will arrive when coal locomotives can be

used profitably only in the coal regions . It has

been demonstrated that an oil-burning engine



HUASTECA PETROLEUM COMPANY SUPPLYING NATIVES WITH FOOD BROUGHT BYITS TANKERS FROM THE UNITED STATES, DURING WAR TIMES IN MEXICO



STUDIES PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 133

can carry a train from New York to the Pacific

Coast and back to New York without refueling .

Of course the expected railroad development

in the oil line cannot take place during the war

time, when the American oil reserves are being

drawn down two million barrels a month . Never-

theless, oil-burning locomotives are operating

in twenty-one States on fifty-three roads, and

on thirty-two thousand miles of road, and con-

suming forty-two million barrels of oil per an-

num

STUDIES PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

It is not only oil in the future and the man in

the future that interest Doheny, but the oil of

the past, the man of the past, and the animal

and mineral life of the past .

Five years ago Doheny and Canfield used to

note deposits of bones in asphalt about eight

miles out from Los Angeles, whence tons of

asphalt had been taken for road making. " What

a fool rancher to lose so many sheep in tar beds,"

they said ; "why did n't he fence out the sheep?"

Then somebody noted that there was not a

sheep bone in the lot. In came the scientists

to solve the riddle .

Now bones of the elephant, the ground sloth,



134 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMthe mastodon, the bison, the horse, the camel,

the bear, the coyote, and the giant wolf are

mounted or are being mounted for the Museum

of History, Science and Art in the Exposition

Park of Los Angeles, and there are fifteen thou-

sand boxes of bones still unassorted. As many

as thirty skulls of the saber-tooth tiger or cat,

together with fifty skulls of the giant wolf,

were found in a space of less than four cubic

yards .

Mother Earth here hermetically sealed up

the animal life of many hundred years ago, and

the museum and the ranch La Brea, of twenty-

five acres, now the property of the State, will

be of interest to the scientist and the student for

many hundred years to come. From this place

came the skull and skeleton of a woman eight

thousand years old . Many animal contests

must have occurred about this water and tar

hole, for animal bones are found chewed, and

some partially healed .

To Doheny, the man of the plain and the

mountain, deep and broad delver in Mother

Earth, these bones, the life of the past they re-

veal for man,-east and vegetable life,-ave

the deepest interest ; for Doheny seems to have

the genius's insight into the history of the past,



WATCHMAN! WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 135the meaning of the present, and the hope of the

future .

Yet Doheny does not work altogether by eye-

sight. His associates note that he will not make

important moves on the chessboard of business

until the time or something within him seems

to be right, and then he moves swiftly, surely,

and independently. But until the spirit moves

within him, nothing can stir him .

WATCHMAN! WHAT OF THE NIGHT?

Working within his soul at the present time

is the question of the future of Mexico . He can-

not see it clearly . He can see Los Angeles, in

the center of the uncounted wealth of southern

California, reaching toward a million popula-

tion, and note the meaning of an automobile to

every five people in the town . He can rejoice

as telegrams come from Tampico reporting that

the dredging and the river current in the three

months this spring have deepened the bar chan-

nel from seventeen feet to over twenty-six feet .

He is pleased that men of Tampico are now

getting more than ten times the wages per

day they received before he went there . He is

happy to note that every one of them was so

well cared for at the Mexican Petroleum Com-



136 THE MEXICAN PROBLEMpany terminal that, when in April the I .W.W .

workers stirred up revolt in four oil refineries at

Tampico, there was not a whisper of trouble

among his men. They told me at the Tampico

terminal that under proper direction, with good

food and care, the Mexican workers could be

relied upon for anything, and in an emergency

would work thirty-six hours or forty-eight hours

on a stretch with their meals brought to them,

and that they were loyal and true .

What troubles Doheny is how these good peo-

ple of Mexico, speaking one hundred and fifty-

three tongues, can be merged into a nation,

with soul life, prosperity, and family and na-

tional happiness .

That is the Doheny problem! That is the

United States problem! That is the Mexican

problem l

THE END



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Documents

The Mexican Problem Clarence W Barron 1917 175pgs POL