"The Mexican Problem." Seeking its solution, where I had failed to find it in railroad, agricultural, or mining development, I found it in oil, because oil at the seacoast could give development from high wages without making sudden upset of the economic structure of the country. The United States had the first Mexican problem when it acquired from Mexico the Pacific Coast. It found the solution in gold; "gold at foot of tree," in the river-beds and banks and valleys. Gold paid high wages to him who could wash it out. It returned high wages for supplies. It invited roads across the continent, knitting this old Mexican territory into civilization and the Union.
The solution was Business with a big B. Agriculture followed. Agriculture is not business. Agriculture is just existence. Business is expanding wages all around, wages to labor, wages to capital; incentive to labor to accumulation, to luxury — luxury of freedom in body and mind — freedom to move the body from place to place and exercise the mind by human touch and contact!
Economic production is production in quantity. Exchange of surplus follows. This is commerce. But the fruit of commerce must not be
