454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



States.* They are slow, but pay their bills, make few business comprom- 

 ises, and still fewer failures. From actual inspection of books of large 

 houses in Mexico, exhibiting accounts of a series of years, I found that 

 eighty-five to ninety per cent of long credit sales were paid in* full. 

 Not one American business man in five hundred will succeed in Mexi- 

 co, for the sole reason that he attempts to force his own ways and 

 methods upon a people whose habits and ways are the antipodes of his 

 own. Our manners are not in accord with the extreme politeness and 

 consideration to be found in Mexico. Business is largely done on the 

 basis of feeling and sentiment, and established acquaintance. Neither 

 has time nor money the transcendent value that it has with us." It 

 is also interesting to note here, that for these, or some other reasons, 

 there are comparatively few Jews in Mexico, and that as a race they 

 do not seem to fancy the country, either as a place of residence or for 

 the transaction of business. 



But, notwithstanding all these obstacles to the extension of trade, 

 the advantages from commercial intercourse with Mexico are all on the 

 side of the United States. Commerce, in establishing a course between 

 any two points, always follows the lines of least resistance. And to- 

 day, through the establishment of railway lines, which furnish ample, 

 rapid, and comparatively cheap facilities for transportation between the 

 interior of Mexico and such great commercial and manufacturing cen- 

 ters as Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Kansas City, the easiest 

 movement for the commerce of Mexico is by and through the United 

 States. One demonstration of this is to be found in the fact that the 

 Mexican Central Railroad now carries considerable freight that comes 

 to New York by European steamers, and is thence transported, in bond, 

 by rail directly through to Mexico; to which it may be added that some 

 8300,000 of this freight, during the past year, is understood to have 

 been English agricultural machinery, which has been bought in pref- 

 erence to the world-wide famous American farm machinery and imple- 

 ments, and carried past, as it were, the very doors cf the American 

 competing factories ! For such a singular result there are two ex- 

 planations. One is, that not only in Mexico, but in all the Central and 



* Consul-General Sutton, of Matamoras, tells the following story illustrative of the 

 good faith in a mercantile transaction of the rancheros of Northern Mexico, the particu- 

 lars of which were detailed to him by the parties concerned : "A German house in interior 

 Mexico contracted for the purchase of two hundred mule-colts, to be delivered a year fol- 

 lowing ; and payment, at the rate of twenty dollars a pair, was made in advance. A year 

 elapsed, and the mules were not delivered. The head of the house would not, however, 

 allow any message of inquiry or reminder to be sent, but remained quiet. A year after 

 the stipulated time, the rancheros came in with the mules. There had been a disease 

 and a drought, which had killed the colts the first year, and this was the reason assigned 

 for not coming according to agreement. They sent no word, because it was so far, and 

 they did not remember the name." When the firm counted the mules, they found that 

 three had been brought for each pair stipulated and paid for ; which was the way the 

 rancheros quietly settled for their unavoidable breach of contract. 



