[Inclosure.—Translation.]
[From the Daily Federalista, Mexico, March 24,
1876.]
THE CRISIS IN SILVER.
Something more terrible than the revolution should occupy the attention
of Mexicans at present. The enormous fall which the price of silver has
had lately in European markets, is a lively topic which is given to all
Mexican capitalists, to commerce in general, and, it may even be said,
to all the nation. The vital strength of the country finds itself
seriously embarrassed; all know that the mines are what sustain in
Mexico the commercial movement with foreign ports, inasmuch as the
agricultural
[Page 395]
and industrial
exportations are insufficient to bring to our markets the necessary
goods. Therefore, it is easy now to foresee the time when the greater
part of the mines may have to suspend all work because of their not
producing sufficient to pay for operating them, except in exceptional
bonanzas.
On the introduction of the American trade-dollar, which competes with our
eagles, the monetary contracts made in Europe have co-operated with the
discovery of prodigiously rich mines in the American Far West to the
depreciation of silver. As the first result of this crisis, the Mexican
dollar loses its value, bullion is depreciated, exchange on Europe tends
to a formidable advance, transactions become difficult, the price of
gold rises rapidly, exportations diminish, importations cost more, many
houses will close, and foreign goods will become unusually scarce.
If Mexico wishes to resist this prospect of ruin which threatens her, it
is necessary that national industries profit without delay by this state
of things, and that the interested parties introduce in these
industries, at any cost and without delay, the perfections which may
give to their products the qualities which they lack; that agriculture
be stimulated; that Congress endeavor to secure the immigration so many
times promised and frustrated or opposed; that invested capital search
among mining-works for objects less subject than silver to those
depreciations which are perhaps determinate, such as gold, platinum,
quicksilver, iron, lead, copper, and coal.
But what a sad future awaits us! When a sudden catastrophe threatens to
dry the principal fountain of our public riches, certain party men, who
constitute themselves of their own accord political regenerators, put
the country into a disastrous conflagration, add the evils of
fratricidal war to those which rapidly come upon us on account of our
disunion, and, without caring for other than ephemeral and personal
questions, shed human blood in torrents, and drain the forces which are
so much needed in order to counteract the enormous pressure of the
financial crisis.
For us, the future of Mexico cannot be more gloomy; if civil contests,
eternal obstacles to progress and prosperity, do not soon have an end,
it will be impossible to attend in time to curing the evils which
threaten us; none of the remedies to which it is yet feasible to resort
can be employed, and to our present misery and poverty new causes of
political and social degeneration will be added. Mexico, now almost in
the last place of civilized nations, being inferior to all those of
Europe and to a large part of those of America, (as the United States,
Brazil, Chili, the Argentine Republic, Peru, and Uruguay,) to the
English colonies and other regions of Asia, Oceanica, and Africa, will
tend more and more toward barbarism, and if she already has so little
imporance in the assembly of nations, she will cease completely to have
any.
And we have deserved it; it has been our lot to possess the most rich and
fertile soil of the earth, and we are unworthy of that privilege. Let us
continue as at present, and the day will come in which we will have to
cede our rights to the country to men more skillful, worthy, and
cultivated. Sad truth, but the truth.
For God’s sake, let us avert these dangers.
