Strange Bedfellows

Three weeks ago many a U. S. businessman and soldier of fortune donned boots and sombrero, took his place on the Mexican border, looked over the Rio Grande into a new land of free enterprise. To such as he, Manuel Avila Camacho looked like a relief from the New Deal. If the New Deal had stifled such men's pioneer spirit, a Mexican President might well bring it back. Scarcely had the inaugural words "private initiative" died on his lips when Avila Camacho went down under a deluge of U. S. pioneers. No frontiersman himself, Mexico's new President was bewildered but happy--he liked them.

By last week 20 of the pioneers had formed a syndicate, prepared to stake out their claims in Mexico City. Their proposal: if Avila Camacho would undo some liberal reforms of his great & good friend ex-President Cardenas, they would give chicle-growing Mexico $100,000,000 to chew on. "Steps necessary to the economic rehabilitation of Mexico" included 1) lifting immigration bars to bring in skilled labor, 2) revision of expropriation laws to guarantee foreign investments, 3) reorganization of the nationalized railroads, 4) mechanization of farms, 5) a network of five U. S. highways converging on Mexico City (to be built largely with U. S. defense funds). With the $100,000,000 (more than last year's Mexican budget) the syndicate made specific proposals to develop almost every phase of Mexican life: industry, agriculture, railroads, mining, natural gas, hydraulic power, tourist business, amusements, canning, fishing, manufacture of paper matches. In return for this Good Neighborliness, they would not go begging. Taxes in Mexico are generally lower than in the U. S., return on investment generally higher.

Members:

>Stately, handsome John A. Hastings, promotive vanguard of the great bonanza. A onetime New York State Senator (at 22, the youngest in the Legislature's history), an oldtime crony of James J. Walker, unsuccessful candidate (although Father Coughlin backed him) for U. S. Representative in 1936, Hastings reportedly sought concessions for West Coast fishing, railroads, a trans-Isthmus pipeline. Mexican politicos thought him a U. S. Senator.

>Industrial Consultant George Harrison Houston, onetime president of Wright Aeronautical Corp. and Baldwin Locomotive Works, longtime crusader against the New Deal. The syndicate relied heavily on a three-year study of Mexican potentialities which his firm recently completed.

>Dapper, slick Lawrence Wood ("Chip") Robert Jr., former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, cordially disliked by the New Deal. When Chip's prosperous Atlanta contracting firm, Robert & Co., grabbed off one juicy segment after another of the defense pie, enemies effected his ousting from the secretaryship of the National Democratic Party.

>Suave, powerful Emilio Fortes Gil, Provisional President of Mexico after the assassination of Obregon. As No. 1 brawn-truster to Avila Camacho, Gil probably knows as much about Mexican politics as any other living man, will thus be indispensable to the syndicate.

Sir Harry Oakes, Maine-born, Bowdoin-bred mining tycoon (Canadian gold) now living in Nassau, where income taxes are 5%. Unlike his colleagues, most of whom are longer on bullishness than on bullion, Sir Harry is so fabulously wealthy that he might well finance the bulk of the bonanza.

>George Creel, California publicist and organizer of public opinion for the Wilson Administration during World War I.

>Others: Frank R. Fageol, president of Twin Coach Co., Crooner Morton Downey, Nassau Real Estate Man Harold Christie, Manhattan Architect John Sloan, Treasurer of the Banco Fiduciario de Mexico John R. O'Connor, Engineer Gustavo L. Trevino of Mexico City, President William O'Neil of General Tire & Rubber Co.

Of the mass of opportunists in Mexico City, these strange bedfellows probably knew best what they wanted and how to get it. Pooled, their special talents covered almost every angle of the syndicate's plan: finance, publicity, industrial planning, politics, engineering.

Question last week was whether they would be able to use them. The most important ingredient of all--a benevolent nod from Washington--was nowhere to be seen. If the New Deal has no use for Chip Robert, Avila Camacho has a lot of use for the friendship of the New Deal. It is a good customer for his useless silver. It may, if his negotiations are successful, even become a good customer for Mexico's expropriated oil. In such delicate times, Avila Camacho, for all his hospitality to pioneering principles, would not want to incur Washington's displeasure by letting his country be exploited too fast.

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