AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF MEXICO. n 



the number of votes, and not simply with the value of the argument 

 by which those votes have been influenced. Each year's failure to 

 adopt any measure of national control probably increases the number 

 of votes which would be cast in favor of government ownership. 



It can not be denied that government ownership furnishes the best 

 theoretical solution of the railroad problem, if we could only assume 

 that the Government were possessed of infinite wisdom and virtue. 

 But practically this condition is far from being realized in the United 

 States. The question is a practical rather than a theoretical one. In 

 countries like Germany, where the civil service represents the best ele- 

 ments of the nation, state railroads have been a success, simply because 

 of that fact. Whatever system will give you the best administrative 

 talent is likely to prove most successful. But it would be a bold 

 thing to say that the best administrative talent of the United States 

 found its way into the civil service, or was likely to do so for the 

 present. 



A state railroad system may be relied upon to do one thing to 

 check local discrimination. But this is not due so much to any con- 

 siderations of public policy as to the complete monopoly which takes 

 away all inducements to discriminate. Where a state road comes into 

 conflict with private roads, it makes discriminations of the worst form. 

 Where it has a monopoly, there is danger that it will avoid them by 

 leveling up. The Italian investigating commission of 1878, after a 

 careful comparison of the actual experience of different countries, 

 came to the conclusion that state railroads did not, as a rule, do so 

 much for industry as private railroads ; that in general their rates 

 were higher, their facilities worse, their responsibility less ; that the 

 state railroad management was more apt to tax business than to foster 

 it ; while political considerations were brought into matters of rail- 

 road construction and management in a way which was disastrous 

 alike to railroads and to politics. It may be that these conclusions 

 were in some respects overdrawn ; but they are sufficient to show the 

 wide difference between the popular ideal of state railroad manage- 

 ment and the reality as seen in actual practice. 



++* 



AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF MEXICO. 



By Hon. DAVID A. WELLS. 



II. 



THE Spanish rule over Mexico lasted for just three hundred years, 

 or from 1521 to 1821 ; and, during the whole of this long period, 

 the open and avowed policy of Spain was, to regard the country as an 

 instrumentality for the promotion of her own interests and aggrandize- 

 ment exclusively, and to utterly and contemptuously disregard the de- 



