Visitor to Mexico

Onetime Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley has spent much of his life in the southwest with the Choctaw Indians. Mexico's President Lazaro Cardenas is part Indian. Therefore Lawyer Hurley, who works for Sinclair and other U. S. oil companies, would seem an excellent go-between in efforts to make Mexico pay up for the $175,000,000 in U. S. oil properties it expropriated last year.

But Pat Hurley is a Republican and Government support is the ace-in-the-hole that the oil companies need. So last month they looked around for someone with "White House connections," found him in onetime NRA Chairman Donald Richberg. Last week he was in Mexico City hard at work.

Since Lawyer Richberg stepped down from NRA in 1935, he has been little heard of. But he has been so well remembered by Transamerica Corp., Ford, American Rolling Mill, and other great corporations that he probably pockets a cool half million a year from his law business. The firm of Davies, Richberg, Beebe, Busick & Richardson is one of the busiest in the Capital and one of its principal assets is Partner Richberg's erstwhile intimacy with Franklin Roosevelt. Although he still sees the President frequently, Donald Richberg's advice no longer carries much weight, for the anti-NRA team of Cohen & Corcoran, high in White House favor, are decidedly anti-Richberg.

Just before he set out for Mexico last fortnight Lawyer Richberg ostentatiously called on Mr. Roosevelt. When he reached

Mexico City with a blare of publicity, President Cardenas was equally ostentatious by his absence -- he was off in the provinces making speeches praising the expropriation policy. For six days Envoy Richberg cooled his heels, diplomatically saying little and not denying reports that he would propose a compromise whereby the companies would operate the wells for the Mexican Government. Last week this bit of Mexican "manana policy" was suddenly ended by hard-bitten General Joaquin Amaro.

A full-blooded Tarascan Indian who once wore a red bead in his ear for good luck, General Amaro as War Minister for former President Plutarco Calles created Mexico's modern army. He has never cut much ice as a politician, but last week when he tossed his sombrero into Mexico's Presidential ring (to succeed Lazaro Cardenas next year) with a forthright denunciation of the present expropriation policy, he created a sensation.

Although Lazaro Cardenas justifies the expropriations on patriotic grounds, there is no question that they have almost brought Mexico to its knees economically. Oil exports have fallen 50%. Cost of living is sharply up. And Cardenas has promised that within ten years Mexico will compensate for all it has taken. General Amaro was the first Presidential candidate to broach this issue. "I deem it unpatriotic," he stormed, "to create obligations of an international character for the country in the knowledge that we have not the financial capacity to comply with them."

This brought Lazaro Cardenas hustling home, where he canceled appointments right & left to talk to Donald Richberg. Though the betting had been odds-on that the dickerings would remain stalemated, Mexico City was electrified two days later by an official announcement that a solution was expected within a week.

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