No man who would face truth in Mexico can ignore these potent facts. And the reason is not revolution, nor even mere radicalism, but the cynical application of political control to economic needs for the aggrandizement of individual leaders whose power is in the market for all who will buy the privileges which they have to offer. It is in this condition that the importance and the menace of radical Mexican government are found. What it has seemed well to call bolshevism in Mexico has its greatest power in its mere threat against capital and business. That threat, the mere presence of the anti-capitalistic constitution and laws, has probably far greater power than their actual application would have. Once the blow of confiscation fell, the answer from the world of business and civilized government would be quick and sure--Mexico cannot be ignored as Russia can be, for Mexico lies in the center of the trade-routes of the globe, and we in the United States would feel the menace of her anarchy too strongly to remain passive. But the static power, the threat of laws which are never enforced--there is the menace and there the great influence which creates the graft and cynicism of Mexican officials. So long as those laws remain, business, if it would survive in Mexico, must buy immunity. And it does buy it, for business is ever timid, and no single business organization and seldom a group of business organizations, will ever go to the stake for a principle. Its duty to its stockholders and to its employees makes it buy its way, not always by direct graft, but in submission to vast taxes, to unwarranted extortions, to the riding of official annoyances--rather than accept the shut-down and fight with its own great power, its inertia of movement or of the silence which ruins empires.