panies entered the field of oil exploration under inducement contracts providing that no special or export taxes should be levied against their products. The Mining Law of 1887, never repealed, provides that petroleum shall not be specially taxed. This article of the constitution of 1917 puts an end to this protection, violating contracts. An excessive export tax on petroleum and gasoline, amounting to from 20 per cent to 50 per cent of the value of the oil at the wells, has been "decreed," and is in effect and payable in July, 1917.
If the principle is accepted, Mexico is in a position to embargo shipments of oil to the Allies by increase of the export tax. No friendship toward the Allied cause has been manifested by the de facto government of such nature as to lead one to suspect that Mexico will fail to so embargo exports.
Art. 123. By this article, 49 per cent of a body of strikers may legally destroy properties and lives. Only when 51 per cent are so engaged is the strike illegal enough to justify the intervention of the authorities. This seems childish; but this very "constitutional" precept was invoked by the Presidente Municipal and the Jefe de Armas of Tampico during the strike in the British and American oil termini in May, 1917, to justify their refusal to interfere with the "strikers" who were carrying torches around the storage tanks. Destruction was prevented only by the interven-
