The Mexican Problem (1917)/Who Shall Help The Engulfed People?
CHAPTER IV
WHO SHALL HELP THE ENGULFED PEOPLE?
When you have traveled nearly twenty-five hundred miles by land and water to reach at Cerro Azul the greatest oil well in the world, you see in the jungle only a cleared field, near the center of which is a mound of earth not twenty feet high, set against "mountains of blue," and the only evidence of human interest is an ordinary pressure gauge embedded near the top of this earth mound.
But you stand on the top of this little mound and feel the pulsation of something almost human beneath your feet a crater of energy that taxed the ingenuity of man for days to harness it and cap down a gas and oil pressure measuring above one thousand pounds per square inch, and flowing oil at a rate equaling about one quarter of the oil production of the whole world.
POSSIBILITIES OF DEVELOPMENT
One can but reflect that the Almighty permitted the tapping of his reservoirs of oil only when the whole world was coming into line to receive the benefits.
The City of Mexico is one hundred and seventy miles distant southwest. With the country at peace and holding the confidence of the credit markets of the world, an easily constructed pipe line could be delivering daily several million cubic feet of gas in Mexico City for warmth, light and power to quickly obliterate the ravages of internal wars. But there the two million dollar gas plant is shut down after losing one hundred thousand dollars a year for four years, and the threat comes from the Carranza government that this plant will be confiscated unless it is put in operation. Confidence with credit is not commandeered overnight. Throughout the whole oil region, and for the safety of the country and its inhabitants, ten million cubic feet of gas are daily burned in high flaming torches.
It is not what Mexico is now doing, but the world possibilities in it, that one may see and practically feel as he stands with his feet on the Cerro Azul mound of earth and notes the force beneath that is delivering into the pipe line twenty-five thousand barrels of oil per day and is pulsating to deliver ten times this amount. The world now needs it as never before, and Mexico needs, as never before, the outside help that this magnet of wealth can bring to it.
OIL VERSUS COAL
The English have thoroughly experimented with fuel oil and demonstrated that, used in a Diesel engine, one ton of oil, or 6.8 barrels, does the work of six tons of coal; and the normal price in England is about five dollars per ton for each, although present war prices are nearly double. Burned under boilers three tons of oil equal six tons of coal.
The demonstration was clear that the Diesel engine ship can be operated at fifty per cent of the cost of the coal burner. The war has interrupted the conversion of the world's ocean tonnage from coal to oil, but the future of oil on land and sea has been proved and can be seen from the pressure gauge on Cerro Azul; and from the same point can be seen the redemption and regeneration of Mexico, the moment a brotherly hand can be extended to her.
England and Germany both see it, for in these countries business and government work together for national development and the uplift of the people. In time Mexico and the United States also should see it, and demand that government and business cooperate and that Mexico and the United States be mutually helpful.
We have no right to strike down the governments of Mexico one after another and refuse to the government and people financial, business, and political assistance.
The only assistance the people of Mexico have had from the United States has been business assistance in railroad, mining, and oil development.
THE GERMAN POSITION
Is it any wonder that Mexico reaches out for national assistance, first to Japan and lastly to Germany? Since returning, I have had confirmation from European sources of the report that two large deposits of German money have been made for the account of Carranza. This does not mean war upon the United States by the people of Mexico.
It is difficult to predict regarding Germany. I saw the German war machine after Sedan and Gravelotte. I visited the country a few years ago and printed that Germany was preparing for a European war and to strike both Russia and France. Few Americans would believe it. I returned to Germany again in 1913, noted the military and financial measures, the decrees forbidding any new enterprises, and then declared that Germany could not afford a world war. Germany got her war, but says England is to blame, because if England had declared her intention to come in, Germany would never have thrown down the gage of battle.
Although plans have miscarried, it should not be forgotten that Germany is one vast business organization, intertwined with tariff, government and military power. The Germans were experting the Cerro Azul oil field and contemplated millions of investment therein before the war. It is good business for Germany to give Carranza financial assistance with a view to a standing after the war. It would be poor business for either Germany or Mexico to lay the gage of battle on the Rio Grande, for thereby the business aims of both would be defeated.
Germany looks ahead and wants business after the war. Mexico needs financial assistance and will need business development for many years to come. OUR GOVERNMENT'S WOBBLES
The United States has had no steady business or political policy toward Mexico. It has been "Go in!" "Come out!" "Go back!" "Stay out!" The Washington declaration has been, "Down with the tariff and into the export field," and when hands have been uplifted from Mexico, our nearest and most needy field for export, Mr. Bryan has responded, "Why don't you stay at home?"
I heard it declared in Mexico, "Every Wilson policy toward Mexico has been wrong. Never has the right thing been done at the right time; but in extenuation of Mr. Wilson it must be admitted that nobody can now say what would have been the correct policy toward Mexico."
The strong policy was when Evarts wrote to our Minister Foster in Mexico in August, 1878: —
This practical order from the United States enabled Diaz to keep the peace in Mexico for thirty years. He was able to tell his generals, "You will maintain order and protect life and property or somebody else will."
THE WILSON REVERSE
Then both Taft and Wilson, by words and acts, reversed the Evarts policy. "As long as I am President, nobody shall interfere with them," said Wilson at Indianapolis.
The national government in Mexico became powerless. Wilson's words were posted over Mexico. It was "open season" for all who could get the guns.
Mr. Wilson announced that it would take more than four hundred thousand men from outside to restore order.
I have reason to believe that the military report to Mr. Wilson was, "Four hundred thousand men cannot do it if directed from Washington. But forty thousand men would be too many if directed by the army officers alone."
Having blundered in and out of Mexico, it is now clearly the duty of the United States to reflect upon the situation and determine upon what basis it can extend a cooperative and effective helping hand to that unhappy country. If we do not do it, somebody else will.
There is no possible reading of the Monroe Doctrine that forbids Germany or England making the business development of Mexico or rendering financial assistance to the Mexican government and people. But when Mexico has to turn from her natural guardian and protector to European powers, the United States will be deservedly "counted out," both north and south of the Panama Canal.
MAN WITH THE HOE
No country in the world needs closer relations with the oil development of Mexico than the United States. The future demands not only redemption of the Mexican man of the soil, but the redemption of the American farmer as well.
Agriculture is basal in the world's progress. All industries, in both peace and war, rest upon it. But "the man with the hoe" still indicts Christian civilization.
He has no eight-hour day; he competes with women and children who put no price on their labor; his surplus products are dumped, almost as refuse, his milk to the milk contractor, his potatoes to the starch factory. He has no storage for apples when, in an abundant season, they are not worth the price of the barrel. Heaven's sun itself appears to compete with him. He has never been taught that there is only one wealth for the farmer, and that is large storage backed by broad acres, quickly cultivated by machinery. His great machine, the horse, for spring and fall ploughing, "eats his head off" in an idle winter.
THE REDEMPTION OF AGRICULTURE
His redemption cannot come through the parcel post or oil-smoothed roads for city motors, or by state and national agricultural bureaus.
The redemption of "the man with the hoe" will come through the gasolene motor that will plough spring and fall, cultivate all summer, chop wood in the winter, and not "eat its head off."
The ambition of Henry Ford is a gasolene tractor within reach of the farmer. Success here would mean more for the world than all gasolene motor development to date.
It would solve the labor problem on the farm; enable the individual farmer to hold broad acres, by quick cultivation and crops quickly stored. The result from such prosperity for the farmer would be great stores of food, steadying prices for the world.
The farm power, the food power, the sea power, the world power, cry out for gasolene and fuel oil. The Pennsylvania and Indiana oil fields are failing. California is exhausting pocket after pocket. The great oil area of the world to-day stretches from Kansas to Tehuantepec. The lightest oil is at both these extreme points. The appearance is that the great central reservoirs are in the Mexican field.
Their conservation is a world-wide necessity. Their protection is the duty of all nations.
NO OIL SANDS IN MEXICO
two to three thousand feet deep. The porosity of oil sand is fourteen per cent, and those wells do not average two hundred barrels a day.
Yet there are no oil sands in Mexico. About two thousand feet below the level of the sea the oil drills strike the bed of ancient oceans and from coral reefs with sixty per cent of porosity spurt the greatest oil wells in the world. No pipe line yet constructed has been able to receive the full measure of one of these gushers.
South of Cerro Azul is the great Potrero oil well of the Mexican Eagle or English company. It gives the entire forty thousand barrels per day that this company can export on present shipping facilities, but this is not half its capacity. Lord Cowdray is giving his whole time to his country at the head of the British aviation department, so essential on land and sea in winning the war, and his pipe lines and refineries work automatically on this coast. When the war is over this field may compete for his great organization and engineering talent.
THE DOS BOCAS CATASTROPHE
Above to the north, near the terminus of the Mexican Petroleum Company's railroad at San Geronimo, on the borders of the Tamiahua Lagoon, still rises a cloud of steam from the ruins of the famous oil well Dos Bocas.
Here, in 1909, came in unexpectedly the world's greatest gusher. Through an eight-inch pipe line shot a column into the air fifteen hundred feet high by actual theodolite measurement; then the earth heaved and belched three hundred million barrels of liquid per day. How much of it was oil nobody could say. The torrential flood reached the boiler fires and soon in place of that eight-inch pipe was a heaving, seething mass, one hundred acres in extent. Soldiers as well as civilians fought the flow and flames to restrict the area of damage, but for many nights Dos Bocas lit up sea and shore for one hundred and fifty miles around.
THE HUMAN CATASTROPHE
Was this an advanced flash picture of the Mexico to follow? At Dos Bocas they worked even to save the fish of the river and the lagoon; but Mexico, abandoned by its friends and with notice to everybody else to keep out, was to become a politically heaving mass, with Mexicans, Americans, and Chinese massacred in the Mexican war flames.
China got promises. Americans, Germans, and English filed claims and the strongest nations of the world filed theirs at Washington; but where will the millions of the good people of Mexico who want work, wages, and human progress lodge their claims or cries?
I shall never forget the sincere, earnest emphasis of Edward L. Doheny, controlling owner in the Mexican Petroleum Company, as on March 16, 1917, he declared, on his yacht Casiana heading into the "northers" on the Gulf of Mexico: "I would sink all my interest on this coast ten thousand feet deep in the sea to give the good people of Mexico right, justice, and freedom in a modern system of civilization."