goes with it." At the same time the less sanguine Mexicans stiffened their opposition to railway enterprise and especially American railway enterprise. Many illustrations of these prejudices might be cited. A contract was arranged by the Mexican executive with the International Railroad Company of Texas in 1873, which provided that all the capital, shareholders, employees, and all persons connected with the company should be considered Mexicans in all that related to the enterprise within the republic and could not maintain claims as foreigners "even when alleging denial of justice." The charters of the pre-Diaz period had similar clauses. But though companies could be formed on such a basis, getting the money to put through the project under such conditions was found impossible. Capital was wary. As the American Minister reported, American contractors would not forswear their nationality for the sake of building a railroad in foreign lands, nor renounce the right to appeal for protection to their own government, a right recognized by international law.[1]
Whenever railroads were under discussion in the Mexican Congress, the more timid showed themselves
- ↑ Ibid., p. 639. A contract of November 12, 1877, similar to the one cited above, was presented to the Congress in which, in addition to forswearing their rights as Americans, the builders were required to build the branch to the American border northward from a point in Mexico instead of southward from the Rio Grande. The project was defeated because it was too favorable to the foreigner. The conditions as to nationality above cited, in their revival in recent legislation, have caused widespread protest. They are, in fact, no new thing. They were already a familiar feature of railway contracts early in the Diaz régime. Ibid., 1879, pp. 776-80.
