The decrees and laws put into effect by the Mexican government in its effort to raise money have had a serious effect on mining. There have been new export taxes on metals, for instance, 5 per cent on lead, copper and zinc, where before nothing was assessed, and in some cases, as in that of copper, definite sums per pound have been assessed, with the result that the falling copper prices caused the closing of great properties like that of Cananea (American) and El Boleo (largely French). Silver and gold were taxed 10 per cent as against 2¹⁄₂ per cent in the old days; during the war the export of gold was prohibited and half of the value of the silver exported had to be returned to Mexico in gold. Taxes on mining claims also have been increased tremendously, so that in 1916 a group of forty-five American companies estimated for the American-Mexican commission sitting in Atlantic City that where in 1912 they paid $96,000 in taxes on a group of claims the new laws would have collected $569,000 and where in 1912 the export taxes were $1,726,000, the export taxes on the same quantity of metal (if it had been taken out, which it was not) would have been $7,000,000. During the war, only high metal prices kept any mining business going in Mexico. After the armistice, hundreds of mines and all but a few smelters were closed down, and only the high price of silver, as long as it continued, allowed those that were left to keep running. Even during the era of high prices it was impossible for the mines which were operating to do the development work which alone makes possible the continued operation of mines under modern conditions. Due to taxation, heavy freight costs, scarcity of materials and of labor, bandit raids and uncertain supplies, the science of mining in Mexico thus slipped back thirty years. This, in a phrase, sums up the reason for the losses and the conditions which make it impossible for mines to operate to-day where in times of ordered, intelligent government, they were running and supporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in comfort and peace. Figures presenting the case of the land and cattle companies are almost impossible to obtain, for these interests have never organized as the oil and mining men have, and the only possible sources of such information have not been able to collect figures enough to cover the situation. Roughly, however, it is estimated that $50,000,000 of actual American money has been invested in land in Mexico, and although the titles to the properties still remain (always subject to the proposed confiscation of foreign property), the loss in capital invested, of live stock and crops, can probably be placed at over $10,000,000. The land companies and individual American holders of lands have, however, been the greatest sufferers, perhaps, of all the interests, for the actual worth of the land they occupied was infinitesimal compared with the value which their very presence and industry created for it.