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40
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

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.