Mexican affairs. From the viewpoint of patriotic Mexicans the outlook is melancholy indeed.
Let us cast our eyes over Mexico and see what some of that $900,000,000 of American capital is doing there.
The Morgan-Guggenheim copper merger is in absolute control of the copper output of Mexico.
M. Guggenheim Sons own all the large smelters in Mexico, as well as vast mining properties. They occupy the same powerful position in the mining industry generally in Mexico as they occupy in the United States.
The Standard Oil company, under the name of the Waters-Pierce, with many subsidiary corporations, controls a vastly major portion of the crude oil flow of Mexico. It controls a still greater portion of the wholesale and retail trade in oil—ninety per cent of it, so its managers claim. At the present writing there is an oil war in Mexico caused by an attempt of the only other oil distributing concern in the country—controlled by the Pearsons—to force the Standard to buy it out at a favorable price. The situation predicts an early victory for the Standard, after which its monopoly will be complete.
Agents of the American Sugar Trust have just secured from the Federal and State governments concessions for the production of sugar beets and beet sugar so favorable as to insure it a complete monopoly of the Mexican sugar business within the next ten years.
The Inter-Continental Rubber company—in other words. The American Rubber Trust—is in possession of millions of acres of rubber lands, the best in Mexico.
The Wells-Fargo Express company, the property of the Southern Pacific Railroad, through its partnership with the government, holds an absolute monopoly of the express carrying business of Mexico.
