The history of Mexican revolutionary government has been marked by the steady suction of business into the maelstrom of political horror. This began in the earliest years of the rule of Carranza (1914-1920). For five years Carranza carried on a deliberate campaign to destroy the banks, as the representatives of the capitalists. He succeeded, despite all the magnificent resiliency of business. He swamped the country with paper currency; he withdrew the metallic reserves of the banks until their bank notes reached almost the degradation of his own issues. He made Mexico into a land of thieves, and gave their thievery the cloak of government sanction--as of one thief underwriting the ventures of another. When her banks were gone, Mexico had nothing left but her mines and her oil, for Mexico creates virtually no wealth. She manufactures nothing and exports nothing save the ultimately exhaustible resources of her soil. Mining flourished during the war, with allied governments supporting the lead and silver markets, and oil has flowed on and continues to flow, giving Mexico herself only the curse of incalculable unearned wealth for the personal loot of her government officials. Credit was Mexico’s great asset under Diaz--he spent years in establishing it and upon it he built the nation. To-day in Mexico there is no credit. There is gold in circulation and the sight of gold is encouraging to the business man. But the gold in Mexico circulates because there is no credit; no man trusts another and none trusts the promises of the government. Mexico cannot to-day issue paper money, and her heavily alloyed silver coin is on a par with her gold only because an artificial scarcity is maintained in order to increase the value of silver as the change needed in business. Mexico is one of the great potential markets of the world. The American manufacturer can justly look to it for an outlet for his wares. But a market is useless until the buyer can pay for his goods. Mexico is not yet a place to dispose of what we make until she can pay for what she takes. The credit situation is the crux of Mexico, and the crux of the credit situation is the political chauvinism which, eight years ago, set out deliberately to destroy that credit, because credit was capitalism and capitalism was unfriendly to the self-appointed leaders of the proletariat and, more important still, was said to be the enemy of that world radical movement to which the Mexican revolutionary leaders look so smugly to save them from interference in their orgy of loot and glory. When Diaz left the presidency in 1911, there were $35,000,000 in the national treasury, and Mexico’s credit was such that she could float at par a national bond issue drawing 4¹⁄₂ per cent. To-day the unpaid interest on her public obligations exceeds $150,000,000 and she cannot at any price borrow a cent on any security less than the indorsement of the government of the United States of America.