Trading with Mexico

The book whose pages follow is the result of a conviction, firm-rooted in observation and experience, that the American business man prefers to judge for himself. He wishes the facts, and beyond all the fundamental facts, and when he has them his judgment is sure, quick and final. It is to men who think in this way that this book is addressed. It is the story, told as concisely as the facts permit, of conditions as they truly exist in the great land which, like a cornucopia, stretches to the south of us. It is written for the business man of the United States, definitely, with such limitations as exist for such a book—its value to the European may be the greater because it does not seek to straddle the national issue.

I have written other books on Mexico. One has seen the light of publication before this volume was written.[1] I have sought, in these other volumes, one upon the people of Mexico and one upon the psychology which governs their actions in social and in business life, to lay a solid ground for the understanding of the country and its people. In the book which is offered here I give, freely, openly, without apology, the facts of a commercial situation which to me is the most astounding condition in the business world to-day. I picture, with the simplicity of truth, a country of vast natural mineral resources, but virtually no agricultural wealth, a country with almost no consuming population, a country of radical governments which have sought, frankly, to destroy capital and the machinery of Mexico’s own wealth. I have told but little of the famous resources of Mexico—those are described elaborately in many works. I have told little of the labor of Mexico, for this is yet to be harnessed. I have described none of the great industrial needs of Mexico, because those are obvious to all who run.

I have sought, rather, to set down those phases of Mexican life to-day which are the background of Mexican business. I have dared—what no man with less faith in the American business man would dare to do—to set forth honestly the truth about Mexicans of to-day, the secrets of Mexican government, the facts of Mexican “bolshevism,” the horrors of Mexico’s degeneration under the rule of her predatory caciques. These to me are the fundamentals of Mexican trade, just as they are the fundamentals of Mexican politics and of the life of the Mexican people to-day. I have sought to set them forth in their relation to the grave issues of world trade, to set them in their relationship with the ways of men in business and with the ways of business in its relationship to human life.

I am a friend of Mexico. Few who have written of her life have been more deeply interested in her welfare. I should like to lay here the foundations for a solution of the Mexican business problem by setting forth the unhappy picture, ignoring no detail, seeking no self-deceit, as is too often the practice of those who write on Mexico. I believe that more will be gained, more business of a solid sort won, by those who realize and recognize the truth of conditions in Mexico, than by those who deliberately close their eyes to those conditions.

Let us have the truth, then! Let us face the Mexican trade problem as it is, with its vast potentialities balanced, as they actually are, by the sinister elements of ignorance, bitter poverty and racial conservatism. Let us see the problem while we see the golden goal. For this problem is no mere issue of beating the British or the Germans to a thriving market. It is an issue of bringing into being the purchasing power of a populous nation, which is bowed down to-day by the horrors of revolution, of unthinking radicalism, of national degeneracy. He who shall solve that problem will win the trade of Mexico when she has trade. That is all which is to be known, and the only issue to be faced.

This book is not a radical document. It does not seek to explain the problems of to-day in terms of to-morrow. The author finds in the radical movements of the present the leaven of the future—little else. He sees in the upheavals of our day a searching for some essential truth which will be a clarifying factor in this time of chaos and distrust. He does not see in them the final solution of any of the difficulties which hatched them out into a too ready world.

Nor is this book reactionary. The author believes that the day of Diaz is long past in Mexico, that the day of the dreamer of utopian visions—Madero—is past in Mexico. He seeks in the present and in the future the sane, firm grasp of actualities which to the watcher on the tower is the only hope of true progress. He sees in the orgies of Carranza and his immediate successors not the upsurgence of mighty ideals, but of personal ambitions and crass disregard of the bases of all human progress. He seeks, in the whirling chaos of the present, a firm footing. He seeks to give the direction of such understanding as he may have to those who think with him. He believes that if he gives such a direction to them, it will enable them to go forward to the winning of some of the vast profits which await them in the Mexican market.

One word more I would add. There rules to-day in Washington a government one of whose mighty maxims is the protection and encouragement of those Americans who to-day go forth, as their fathers went forth before them, to carve their way in the wilderness. The Washington government knows, as we all know, that the only wilderness left to us is the open field of the vast undeveloped lands to the South. I believe that Washington plans definitely to support the American pioneer to the fullest in his new conquest of the New World. That his weapons of conquest are dollars and brains and energy matter not, and that he battles in lands over which the flag shall never fly matters less. The fact that he is an American, that he is honest, that he is patriotic and sincere—these matter much in Washington.

This book, then, goes upon its way, its record clear and envisioned in deep frankness and in deep faith in the American business man and in the American government of to-day. I offer it to those who must go forth, to those who must perforce place the funds at the disposal of those who go, and to those who, in the councils of our government, are quietly, without ostentation or political apology, placing firm hands to the backs of those who dare and who give.

Wallace Thompson.

New York,
August 5, 1921.