Diaz régime.[1] The adoption of the gold standard in 1905 still further stabilized the financial system.
The public finances, however, were still far from a satisfactory condition from a social point of view. The balances were made favorable only by neglect of some of the greatest social needs of the republic. Education was still backward, sanitation, outside the big towns, was poor, and transportation facilities, in spite of the great advance over the pre-railroad period, were still inadequate. The taxes were not adjusted in such a way as to give proper impulse to national industrial development nor to stimulate the exploitation of the country's agricultural resources. A system of land taxation that would fall upon unproductive holding of large estates was still lacking. There was need of a large amount of social legislation so adjusted that the republic would become a truly modern nation throughout her national life. This was a task immensely greater than the financial rehabilitation which the government, under the dictatorship, had so successfully carried out. It was a task in which but little progress had been made and which the government, in spite of the evidence so clearly presented in the reports of many of its officials, had never resolutely faced.
Whether the old régime could have carried through the great socialization program that was needed may be doubted. The dictatorship had not shown itself capable of encouraging the broadening of privileges and
- ↑ See tabulation in Memoria de hacienda y crédito público, correspondiente al ano económico de 1 de Julio de 1907 a 30 de Junio de 1908, Mexico, 1909, p. 5.
