The first oil well in Mexico was brought in in 1900; production began on a commercial scale in 1903; about 1904 a British company secured its first “concession” for oil drilling; in 1905 the status of petroleum as belonging to the owner of the surface land was definitely settled, and development began on a large scale; in 1912 the Madero government established, over the mild protests of the producing companies, the principle of special taxation on the oil business; in 1914 President Huerta extracted 200,000 Mexican pesos from an American oil representative in Mexico City, and the oil company, under advice of the Department of State, repudiated his draft and paid the money to Carranza; in 1914 the principle of “shaking down” the oil companies was originated by Candido Aguilar (later son-in-law of Carranza), who made a mild $10,000 collection; in 1915 Manuel Pelaez made his first call for tribute, some $1,500, under the exchange conditions of the day, which the companies paid with the advice of the American State Department and the American Ambassador, a precedent which later netted Pelaez a regular $30,000 a month; in 1915 Carranza began to devote the brains of his finance minister, Luis Cabrera, to devising oil taxes, with the result that to-day the foreign oil companies pay a total of nearly $4,000,000 a month, derived from export taxes on the product, stamp taxes on their business, occupation taxes on their offices, harbor taxes on their ships, customs duties on their supplies, etc.; in 1916 Carranza issued the decree requiring foreigners who did business in Mexico to renounce their rights of recourse to their home government; in 1917 came the new Mexican constitution declaring all petroleum in the subsoil the property of the nation; in 1919 the drilling of new wells was stopped unless the companies agreed to accept this principle of nationalization; in 1919 the second of the big oil pools went to salt water and the need of new drilling to keep up the supply of oil (and the Mexican taxes) became imperative; in January, 1920, temporary drilling permits were issued by Carranza; in May, 1920, Carranza was overthrown and murdered in the revolution of Obregon, said to have been financed by certain oil interests; in 1921 Obregon doubled the oil taxes, bringing about a shutdown, temporary but salutary; in 1921 drilling is going on, however, and the shipment of oil continues. While drilling is going on in small sections in spite of obstacles, the full development of the petroleum fields of Mexico waits on the final decision of the confiscatory provisions of Carranza, whose dead hand still guides the policies of his successors along the road of anti-foreignism. In 1921, then, the oil companies are still uncertain of their status, still the objects of astonishing taxation, still subject to government annoyance and graft, still buying, in taxes and annoyances, the “privilege” of working their properties.