Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive/Revenue and its Application
CHAPTER XII
REVENUE AND ITS APPLICATION
There is no danger that for many years to come, if ever, the prediction of Baron von Humboldt will be fulfilled,—that, with the advantage of good roads and free commerce, the Mexicans will one day undersell us in bread corn in the West Indies and other markets. Mexico has not yet good roads nor free commerce, nor, unless the tariff policy of the country shall be radically changed, can she have either. It is true that road-making in Switzerland is naturally no more difficult than in Mexico, if we omit the water-supply,—a very important factor in all industry. But the Romans and migratory Celts began making roads in Switzerland before, we may assume, Mexico had sent a sail out on the ocean; and the services which war rendered to peace in the Alps have been continually supplemented by the enlightened selfishness of a people who are animated in the cultivation of their soil by that highest incentive to industry, — ownership. No one who has travelled through Holland, over the bleak and all but sterile passes of the Juras, and across the Alps, can fail to realize that this incentive has made the agriculture of these countries what it is; while Ireland and Mexico, through millions of unused acres, and other millions under only slight cultivation, testify to the effect which landlordism, idle and oppressive, exercises over the most beneficent and indispensable among human industries.
Yet, without free commerce, and with roads, except the railroad lines, perhaps the worst in the world, and without machinery until within very recent times, the agriculture of Mexico under the republic has made extraordinary progress. In the portions of the valley which the Central Mexican traverses, there are regions with sufficient water. As a rule, irrigation is every-where necessary. This fact should be remembered always in judging the Mexican people. The tenant who works land rents, not so many acres, but the right to so much water. In spite of this difficulty, the valley literally blossoms; and along the river-beds, few and not uniformly reliable, two, and sometimes three, crops a year are produced. The condition of the tenant, compared with what it was in the beginning of the century, has considerably improved. His lot then was like that of tenants elsewhere. The Mexican landlord got the tiller into debt, and then, giving him a little land for his own use, barely enough to raise the corn essential to life, made him and his family work out the debt in labor on the farm or hacienda.
It is a relief to find the Spaniards attempting to improve the status of these victims of imported feudalism. Las Casas and others drew the attention of the Spanish court to their sufferings : —
"The first attempt at amelioration was the repartimientos de Indios, by which they were divided among the Spaniards, who had the profits of their labor without a right to their persons; next the encomiendas, by which they were placed under the superintendence and protection of the Spaniards. The encomendero was bound to live in the district which contained the Indians of his encomienda, to watch over their conduct, instruct and civilize them, to protect them from all unjust persecutions, and to prevent their being imposed on in trafficking with the Spaniards. In return for these services, they received a tribute in labor or produce."[1]
These protectors, like the zemindars over the ryots in India, did precisely what might have been expected. No men can safely be intrusted with absolute power over the liberty or labor of other men. "The abuse of these protecting regulations followed closely their institution." The peonage, which existed legally in New Mexico until abolished by our Congress, was a relic of the "protecting" encomiendas. It actually exists in some parts of Mexico now; it must practically continue to exist, with varying degrees of enormity and oppression, until the idle-landlord system is abolished.
Over the greater part of the country under cultivation, the mode of farming is primitive. Near the larger cities, and especially on the lines of the railways, English and American machinery is coming into use, chiefly the reaper. But this can be true only of the rich haciendas. The tiller who has no capital, and receives for his share only a small fraction of the harvest, will neither buy machinery, nor, except along the railroads, can he rent it, since its transportation otherwise is next to impossible. Nor are the natives quick in using the railroads for local exchange of commodities. They continue to gaze upon the locomotive with awe, and they cling to old customs with a tenacity not free from disdain of the new ones. The men carry extraordinary burdens on their backs, and the small donkey is the favorite draught animal. The idea of raising foods for export has not yet crossed the brain of the vast bulk of the people. They undertake to raise enough for each year's local use; and so rigorous is the calculation, that, if a bad season come upon them, famine will be the consequence, unless the deficiency is supplied from the public granaries. It is to the credit of the Government that no appeals for aid are sent over the world. That distinction remains the undisputed dishonor of Great Britain. Poor as Mexico is, she has some sense of national decency.
If Nature has treated the country ill in failing to furnish roads, and in heaping up obstacles against their construction, thus impeding internal commerce, she has been no less parsimonious in indenting the coasts of Mexico with harbors for foreign trade. An official communication to our Government describes her coasts as broad belts of intolerable heat, disease, and aridity. On the whole coast-line there are but two natural harbors available for first-class modern merchant-vessels. But harbors can be made; whether natural or artificial, they do not create commerce. If the farmers of Mexico owned the tillable land; if the burden of taxation were shifted off industry upon land, proportionately to other property; if the tariff were so modified that commerce might freely seek Mexico, — harbors would not be wanting.
It is her mines that have kept up the foreign trade of Mexico in spite of her lack of harbors. The total value of her exports of precious metals annually from 1879 to 1884 averaged about twenty-five million dollars. But her total exports in 1885 have been estimated as high as forty-five million dollars, the increase being due in large measure to the closer relations brought about between our country and the sister republic by the new rail-road lines. It is estimated that we received about fifty-five per cent of the total. The remainder was divided about as follows: England, 32.9; France, 4.8; Germany, 3; Spain, 2.6. The import trade of Mexico is the confession of her organic weakness. Its total value is about thirty-five million dollars, and consists of manufactured articles, which, for the most part, might be produced at home.
The Spaniards discouraged manufactures in Mexico for the benefit of their home industry; they did not prohibit them. But the want of steam or water power necessarily kept domestic manufacturing within small limits. Mayer records fifty-three cotton factories in 1844, running something more than one hundred and thirty thousand spindles. Mr. Wells found eighty-four factories returned by the tax-collectors in 1883, running something more than two hundred and forty thousand spindles. Mr. Titus Sheard, another of our pioneer party, himself a manufacturer, informed us, that, owing to the crude chemistry and rude methods, cotton costs nearly twice as much a yard in the Mexican mill as in the United States factories. The laborers employed are compelled to work from daylight to dark for little pay. Improved machinery and more modern processes would lower the cost of production materially. Meanwhile, a considerable quantity of manufactured cotton is imported, in spite of the excessive tariff. It was imported from Great Britain more largely in the past than from the United States. The railroads will probably alter that in time; but at present raw cotton may be carried by water from the Gulf to Liverpool, manufactured in Manchester, sent back to Vera Cruz, and thence by expensive rail to the capital, cheaper than from the United States to the same point. Another curious circumstance is, that although the cotton factories in Mexico have quadrupled in twenty years, and although the land around Queretaro and Orizaba, the chief cotton-making centres, is well suited to the growth of the plant, and it is actually grown there. New Orleans cotton is used exclusively at Orizaba, and one-half of that manufactured at Queretaro is also American. There is no reason why Mexico should not grow and manufacture all the cotton it requires.
The other manufactures of the country are trifling. The pottery, which has a reputation in excess of its merits, is at least adequate for the common uses of the people, whose culinary and Other house habits are extremely primitive. Each family can be its own potter. The sewing-machine has given some impetus to the leather trade; but although the Mexican saddle is famous the world over, Mexico pays the United States nearly thirty thousand dollars a year for saddles, notwithstanding a duty of fifty-five per cent. This fact is accounted for in the superior mechanical appliances used by the American manufacturers.
It would appear at first sight that the devisors of the Mexican tariff had sought to rival Nature in producing artificial obstacles to match the physical ones. From the moment labor touches any article in Mexico, until it passes to the actual use of the consumer, it has hitherto been taxed. There was a time when it cost Spain forty-four per cent to collect the Crown revenues; her pernicious example has left this tradition of excessive taxation, and imposed the support of an army of tax-collectors upon the commerce of the country. Take a yard of calico. The land that produced the cotton pays nothing. The landlord has been the law-maker for Mexico, as he has been for Great Britain, Ireland, and India; as he was for Germany, until Stein and Hardenberg released the soil; as he was in France, until the Revolution. The land that produces the raw material pays nothing; but the instant labor touches it, cotton begins to pay taxes. Everything used in transforming the boll into material is taxed: the dyes used in coloring it are taxed; the sale of each of them is individually taxed; the wagon that carts it from the field to the factory is taxed; the wheel that softens it is taxed; the animal that turns the wheel is taxed; the chemicals that enter into its composition are taxed; its transfer from the factor to the jobber is taxed; its transfer from the jobber to the retailer is taxed; its sale to the purchaser is taxed. Is it wonderful that cotton costs more at Orizaba and Queretaro than in Lowell or Manchester? It is not strange that more is not grown in Mexico. The merchant finds it more convenient to pay all his burdens at the custom-house, than each of the lot to the internal-revenue collectors.
This example may be slightly exaggerated, if taken literally. But the principle of Mexican taxation is fairly represented in it. The marvel is that so many blows in succession upon the arm of industry have not paralyzed it. A study of the Mexican tariff, with the phenomenon of trade increasing in spite of it, justifies the high expectations which sanguine Mexicans hold of the industrial future of their country. They say that this mode of raising national revenue must in time be remedied. They point out that remedial changes have already taken place. It was formerly the practice of the States to collect toll on everything passing their borders, no matter what national taxes had already been paid. This interstate impost was prohibited a few years ago by Congress; but some of the States continued to enforce it, on the ground of necessity. It has been abolished by constitutional amendment.
The diminution of the national debt to a total of about one hundred and fifty million dollars, and the reduction of the number of civil servants, with a reduction also of the salaries of those retained, have put the national finances upon a safer and more hope-inspiring basis. The reduction of the tariff, both domestic and foreign, has followed quickly upon these happy achievements of the Diaz administration. The following articles are now on the free list at the customhouses, where hitherto nearly every thing paid high duty:—
Even the cockpit has paid a portion of the national revenue; and to the smiling cynic who may think too little of the politicians who condescend to this lowly and vicious source of moneymaking for national necessities, the reminder may be opportune, that to make the brutal who indulge in such sport pay for their pastime[2] is more tolerable to civilization than some methods of the governments of the Old World. Mexico raises revenue also by lotteries. The most pious of governments raised money in the same way to help carry on the American war; it was only in 1823 that Great Britain went out of the gambling business. Every nation in Europe has indulged in it, with the exception (I think) of Russia. Paris resorts to a lottery to raise money for the illuminations on the national fête. States of the American Union derive revenue from gambling; and at least one American city swells its coffers from this source.
In the uses of the national revenue under the republic lies the clearest proof of the silent revolution. In 1808 Spain collected a total revenue of about twenty million dollars. Among the sources, by the way, were the monopoly of the sale of playing-cards, the tobacco monopoly, one-ninth of the tithes, the monopoly of gunpowder, sporting, gambling, the transfer of all kinds of commodities, a tax on the mines, a tax on papal dispensations, a tax on incomes of the inferior clergy, on stamps, and on ice. The portion nominally spent in Mexico, and not conveyed into the hands of the officials of the Crown, was probably one-fourth of the whole. It was expended chiefly on the army. Not a dollar appears to have been devoted to elementary education or useful public works. Marine docks were built one year, but they were reserved as arsenals. There were subsidies sent out to other Spanish colonies, and there were pensions for Crown favorites. This amount of revenue from a wretched population of about four millions and a half is amazing.
The revenue of the republic, with a population of at least ten millions, was in 1870, in round numbers, sixteen million dollars. In 1886-87 it reached thirty-two million dollars. The expenditures have kept pace with it, and in fact must have exceeded it, and must continue to exceed it for some years, until great public works are constructed, such as the drainage scheme already under contract, canals, bridges, roads, and harbors. The expenditure by departments presents a gratifying picture of national order and growth. The executive is the smallest item in the budget, only $49,252. Railway subventions have been liberally made; not as prodigally as in the case of our Pacific railways, but with a certainty of corresponding national benefit. Ten years ago Mexico had only four hundred miles of railway. There are now almost ten times as many. New York is distant from the ancient Aztec capital only six and a half days' journey. With the exception of the portion of the national debt which may have been unjustly assumed by the republic, every dollar of the revenue of Mexico is now applied to the development of the country. Progress is visible everywhere; and in every thing that enters into it, moral, political, and industrial, the influence of neighborhood is manifest.
It is true that the British bondholder is more successful in collecting interest on Mexican obligations than on Southern Confederacy paper, which he did so much to float for the sake of the interest; and it is true also that the capital invested in banking and in a considerable share of the mining enterprises of Mexico is English. But every day brings the sister republics closer. Every year effaces more of the old antagonism. English is supplanting French in the schools. In time it will make its way through the mountains with Spanish. It is certain that the war with Mexico was fought on a misunderstanding which the calmer sense of a later and more humane period would not repeat. The instincts of national self-interest prompt a policy of kindness and sincerity; a policy which shall respect the worthy traditions of an ancient and severely tried people, while it will promote a commercial communion certain to be mutually advantageous. Such a policy will hasten a commercial treaty just to both countries. The noble sentiment which should animate the nation of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant ought moreover to emphasize the approval of such a treaty by an act of grace, — the restoration of the flags and cannon captured by us in 1847. Nations not familiar with the precepts of Christianity were wont to make their war trophies, not of marble or metal, but of wood, that they might the more speedily perish. Why should we perpetuate the story of the defeat and humiliation of our sister republic?
- ↑ Notes on Mexico. 1824. London and Philadelphia.
- ↑ I smile to recall that we were invited to occupy front seats, as a mark of honor, upon a certain Sunday evening, to witness this cruel and shocking spectacle. We were too timid or too super-refined to go. But when I read the other day the story of the evictions of Bodyke, Ire., where bedridden old women and half-naked children were thrown out into ditches; the roofs that sheltered them—in many cases built by their kindred—torn down, lest they should reclaim their own; and all this to extort by terror from others rents land and labor combined could not pay if the labor lived, the lottery, the bull-fight, and the cockpit, as means of making money, became civilized by comparison.