E. N. Brown, president of the National Railways of Mexico and a satellite of H. Clay Pierce and the late E. H. Harriman, is a member of the board of directors of the Banco Nacional, which is by far the largest financial institution in Mexico, a concern that has over fifty branches, in which all the chief members of the Diaz financial camarilla are interested and through which financial deals of the Mexican government are transacted.
Finally, the Southern Pacific Railroad and allied Harriman heirs, despite the much vaunted government railway merger, own outright or control by virtue of near ownership, three-fourths of the main line railway mileage of Mexico, which enables it today to impose as absolute a monopoly in restraint of trade as exists in the case of any railway combination in the United States.
These are merely some of the largest aggregations of American capital in Mexico. For example, the Harriman heirs own two and one-half millions acres of oil land in the Tampico country, and a number of other Americans own properties running into the millions of acres. Americans are involved in the combinations which control the flour and meat trades of Mexico. The purely trade interests are themselves considerable. Eighty per cent of Mexican exports come to the United States and sixty-six per cent of Mexican imports are sent to her by us, the American trade with Mexico totaling some $75,000,000 a year.
So you see how it is in Mexico. The Americanization of Mexico of which Wall Street boasts, is being accomplished and accomplished with a vengeance.
It were hardly worth while to pause at this juncture and discuss the question why Mexicans did not get in on the ground floor and control these industries. It is not, as numerous writers would have us believe, be-
