To the members of the American Chambers of Commerce on tour in Mexico, to the American manufacturers who are invited to ship goods to Mexico to-day, offers of privilege are made, privilege without graft or price, now. But the price is there, and is clearly worked out in the subtle Mexican mind. These American business men, pleased with their reception, are to become boosters of the Mexican government, demanding its recognition and scouting the great financial interests who are their traditional enemies at home. That is price enough to the Mexican mind. But when recognition is gained, and when those same individuals seek to do business in Mexico under “normal” conditions, the laws which ensconce privilege and give it into the hands of petty and high officials for dispensation, will reap their toll. One way only remains--the removal of privilege, the establishment of rights. Insistence on these issues alone will almost solve the Mexican problems politically and commercially. But the Mexicans are wise indeed when they seek to divide the counsels of this country, to place the small American business man and manufacturer in a position of antagonism to the issues that are set clear in Washington, the issues of political privilege versus political rights, the issues of the business privileges which those individual Americans seek to gain for themselves versus the business rights that will include them and all their fellows. The call is again for clear foresight and not for sentimentalism, for a social conception of business and not for a selfish, individualistic hope of getting in ahead of the next fellow. The Americans who have been longest in Mexico are begging to-day for rights in exchange for privilege. They know, as those who look upon Mexico from outside or as newcomers do not know, that until Mexico mends her ways with business, business can never rescue Mexico from the slough of her present unhappiness. They know that no business in any nation can long prosper without the prosperity and the good sense of the government of that nation. They are not pirates, and they know that piracy, in government or in business, leads but to the destruction of both. What they know we may have for the listening. If we do not take it, we, too, must learn, as they learned, in the costly school of experience. CHAPTER II NATURE AND THE MEXICAN MARKET[2]