CHAPTER III
BUSINESS AND NOT POLITICS CAN REDEEM MEXICO
The United States can never take its proper attitude in cooperative democracy toward its sister republic until two popular, yet absolutely false, impressions of Mexico are removed. These popular fallacies are: —
First, that the natural wealth of Mexico has furnished a base for contending business interests from the United States to promote Mexican quarrels.
Second, that the land question is at the bottom of the Mexican troubles.
The writer must frankly confess that for many years he believed these popular superstitions, and only his recent trip into Mexico dissipated them.
The history of the Standard Oil Company as popularly presented has been that of a record of oil monopoly checked intermittently by courts and legislatures,—a monopoly overriding individual and popular rights and promoting peace or war for financial ends.
