Retail trade goes on, throughout Mexico, but the sales are greatly curtailed and the prices are out of reach of the masses, being twice to five times those of the last normal period, 1912. Stocks are hopelessly depleted, for no merchant will keep a large supply of goods on hand, for fear not alone of the long-promised drop in the world market, but of what will happen in Mexico to-day or to-morrow or next week. Moreover, all business is on an absolutely cash basis, and for “hard” money--gold and silver--alone, whether the trade be wholesale or retail. In Mexico to-day credit is practically unknown, either amongst Mexicans or between Mexican houses and those with whom they deal abroad. There is a stringency of currency, due to the destruction (for various reasons soon to be noted) of all forms of paper money. Mexico is spending literally her economic life blood, gold and silver, and her great resources are wasting and rotting because there is no money with which to develop them or to move them. Those are simple conditions, patent to any observer who stays longer than the few hours or a day allowed the busy junketer on his trip through “prosperous Mexico.” Back of these conditions, however, are facts which are as incontrovertible and menacing. The closing of the smelters has back of it the conditions of mining, in a country which for centuries has depended on its mines for its existence as an economic entity. Even through the war, with war prices for metals, the mines which were producing were only those with high grade ores, which could bear the risks of banditry, the cost of ponderous freight rates, or could maintain their private railway trains to transport ore which the run-down government rolling stock could not handle. Moreover, even war time prices did not make possible the proper development of the properties, and when the bottom dropped out of the lead and copper markets, many of the richest mines closed, because they had not been able or had not dared do enough normal development to keep ahead of the work on the rich veins. Back of the hand-to-mouth operation of factories and wholesale and retail stores is the situation with regard to currency and banking. Money in Mexico is worth, at legal interest, 1 per cent per month (12 per cent per year) but if you have money, and will take a chance, you can get 5 per cent a month and even more on as good security as the country affords. So few are the men who believe enough in Mexico to take the chance that there is not enough capital even to satisfy the needs of speculators. And can legitimate business expand or even carry its normal load when the money it ought to borrow, the money it has already invested, is worth so much as that? The only form of business which thrives in Mexico is speculation, and I think I am safe in saying that virtually every sign of business activity which any visitor to Mexico sees to-day is speculative at its source or dependent upon speculation.