dressed, and with more or less indications of competency, but whose incomes are meager and uncertain.
Those who have accumulated large fortunes are, after all, at a loss how to find suitable investments. A distinguished Mexican statesman has estimated that an uninvested capital of $50,000,000 exists in the City of Mexico to-day, a sum large enough to build and equip a railway to some extreme point of the republic.
This is the case in every large city. Immense sums of money are in the hands of the rich in absolute bulk, without any outlet or means of investment.
Stock companies and co-operative plans do not strike, as tangible, the popular fancy. The best thing generally is for this class to build houses and rent them, or lend their money at very high rates.
Banking privileges are not usually resorted to by either the trades people or the merchant princes. The "Bank of London, Mexico and South America" has been established for twenty-one years, yet even now the majority of people do not avail themselves of it. Merchants use it for exchange, and also as a means of safety for large sums in silver dollars, this last sometimes for a very short time, perhaps for one day and night, after which their mozos may be seen carrying it back in meal-bags. Perhaps a prejudice may attach to mere bits of paper as the representatives of big silver dollars, but checks are not used after our method, nor is banking resorted to except as a means of commercial convenience. For the mechanic or tradesman no facilities whatever exist in the way of savings banks for the deposit of their small earnings. Consequently more or less extravagance is indulged in, or the money is hidden away without profit to themselves or to the country.
Notwithstanding the rainy season, success in agriculture in Mexico depends almost solely on the facilities for irrigation. Every drop of water is skillfully utilized. Often, indeed, the entire body of water is turned from its legitimate course, and employed in irrigating a large and otherwise profitless region. If a river runs near to or through several haciendas, the proprietors unite in constructing a dam across
