almost for the asking, but of what use is an acre or a hundred acres to a peasant without plough, animal power, or machinery, and, above all, without transportation or near-by markets?
In the oil regions of California, rich in soil and markets, the underground wealth is reckoned at just twenty times the value of the soil wealth.
From Tampico to Tuxpan is a tropical jungle but not, as often assumed, a miasmatic marsh. It is a jungle of luxurious foliage over soil that can grow anything in the world; but where are the markets and where the incentives for the native population to labor?
The beginnings of markets, the beginnings of transportation, the beginnings of incentive, the beginnings of accumulation, are in the uncovering of large natural or planetary wealth. Outside capital will take the risk for the prize, will employ the labor, will create the transportation, the markets, and the interchange of commodities that make foundations for modern civilization. Natural wealth outside the path of development has no value. The Mexican petroleum fields had absolutely no value in 1900 and, undeveloped, will have the same value in two thousand years that they had two thousand years ago.
To him who would study fundamentals, the
