PREFACE
These articles on the "Mexican Problem," by Mr. C. W. Barron, are to my mind a clear and wise economic picture of Mexico, beyond any others that I have read — and there is very little of the recent literature of Mexico which I have not read or examined.
Not one so grasps the clear, strong fact that Mexico is a hell on earth because Mexico has no law, save here and there for the brief season that some man keeps law and order to feed his own ambition to be an irresponsible ruler and possess present power and the possibility of future wealth.
It is forty years, to a few weeks, since, as the correspondent of the New York Sun at Washington, I walked one night into the house of the Mexican Minister at Washington, and told him — he had n't had the final news— that all was over with Lerda, the new successor of Juarez, who had sent him to Washington, and that Diaz was in control. I saw once more the most bitter sorrow, the most bitter pang of hopeless grief a man's face can mirror despair for the future of
