In spite of the importance of this growth it must not be overlooked that the most significant, and for the republic the most important, developments in her export trade in the last generation have been in other hues. No nation whose prosperity depends on a few products is ever on a sound economic basis. Exhaustion of resources, bad growing seasons, and bad market conditions always have possibilities of national disaster for such a state. A nation is secure only when by the variety of its products it can escape the difficulties that may at any time attend the production of a few of them. Mexico at the beginning of the Diaz régime was in the condition first mentioned. At its end she had progressed far toward the second standard.
To be sure manufactures continue to have but a weak development but agricultural and forest products have become diversified in the last generation and the economic foundation upon which the Mexican national life rests has undoubtedly been broadened thereby. Moreover, the growth of the list of exports represents not only a stabilizing element in national commerce but a development toward a standard that favors a democratic government.
Though Mexico still has many cases that seem to indicate the contrary, agriculture is the small man's business. It is the occupation which, in the development of nations,
W. C. Teagle, President of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Rafael Alcerraca, chief of the Petroleum Department of the Mexican government, estimates 1920 production at 163,000,000 barrels. New York Times, June 18, 1921.
