In this chapter I am, as already mentioned, intentionally avoiding taking these “potential damages” into consideration. I feel that we must have, as a starting point, a comprehensible picture of what has already actually happened to American investments in Mexico. Most of the American money in Mexico went to that country during the thirty-four years of Diaz rule. This period was marked not by blind adoration of the foreigner, as the revolutionists now state, but by a sane and far-seeing realization that foreign capital must come to Mexico if her national and economic potentialities were to be developed. Foreigners were encouraged generously by laws recognizing the privileges of pioneers in protection and in assistance in the form of exemption from taxes during their development period (the term was usually for ten years). The idea was to allow them to import machinery without duties and get on their feet as quickly as possible. Practically none of these companies was given land, for there is no vacant Mexican government land worth having. The first and the greatest American corporations to enter Mexico were the railroads. These held concessions, made according to law, but Mexico had profited by the American government’s experience with its trans-continental lines, and the subsidies and grants were small indeed compared with those given to our Union Pacific, for instance. It is worth noting also that there have never been such scandals as our great railroads reveled in, and that virtually every cent was invested in the lines themselves. The Mexican railway companies which were consolidated in 1907 into the National Railways of Mexico were never paying ventures for the builders, and until the merger few dividends had ever been paid by any of the lines. For about four years following the merger conditions improved greatly, but in 1912 troubles began, and by 1913 all was chaos and destruction. From then on to to-day, the story of the railways of Mexico has been a tragic romance. It can be reduced to figures, necessarily cold in the telling, but every figure the result of dramatic and crushingly realistic incident. The National Railways of Mexico, a property worth over $250,000,000 as a physical plant alone, was taken over by the Carranza government on December 4, 1914, and since that time the bondholders have received no cent of interest and the physical property has been crushed and battered and all but destroyed. On January 1 of 1921 over $75,000,000 of back interest was unpaid and the defaulted payments on fixed charges is still piling up at the rate of $1,000,000 a month, while the Mexican government is collecting from the operating commission $1,500,000 a month--a sum set by Carranza for the commission to turn in by any means available, as higher rates, scrimping on repairs, deterioration in upkeep.