acquired in that country by our citizens have been bought at a price which represented the full value of the land to the owners; and if, under the management of the foreign owner, the lands became worth more than was paid for them, as they undoubtedly did in most cases, this increased value was attributable entirely to the energy and intelligence of the foreign owner.
This success of the foreign owner, while producing some profit to him, has necessarily been of great economic value to the people and nation, because it has furnished employment for labour at rates in every instance greater than the Latin-Mexican landowner paid; it has increased by millions the taxable property of the country; and it has afforded an object lesson in improved methods of management and cultivation which should have been of great value to the people of the country. Yet, the American investor, who has thus added to the prosperity of Mexico, is denounced by the element now in power as a robber of the people. We shall see in another chapter how these foreigners have been deprived of their properties, their homes wrecked and ruined, and many of them, with their families, murdered. In nothing more than in the treatment, by the people now in power, of the foreigner who has acquired landed interests in Mexico, as contrasted with the treatment of the foreigner who has acquired land in our
