Gram of Flesh

The four-year wrangle over Mexico's expropriation of U.S. oil properties was finally settled last week. The winner: Mexico, hands down.

Public Powerman Morris Llewellyn Cooke, the U.S. expert appointed to set a value on the exproperties, and Mexico's still more expert Manuel J. Zevada agreed that the entire U.S. stake in Mexican oil was worth $23,995,991 ($18,391,641 of it for Standard Oil of New Jersey).

For the cause of hemisphere' solidarity-- Mexico, more than any other Latin American country, has been fronting for the U.S--it was indeed fine to have what Franklin D. Roosevelt called "the so-called petroleum question" out of the way. The faintest suggestion that Uncle Shylock was more interested in his pound of flesh than in winning the war might destroy the whole Good Neighbor structure.

But to U.S. oilmen, with much greater stakes in other watchful foreign countries (particularly Venezuela), the settlement seemed like nothing so much as being sold down the river by their own Government. For, while $24,000,000 is almost three times as much as Expropriator Lazaro Cardenas liked to pretend their properties were worth, it is only about one-eighth of what the companies themselves think they were worth, and it apparently puts no value on subsoil rights -the oil reserves under the ground to which the oil companies had title. This is the very principle the companies have fought so hard to maintain abroad, since without it the initial expense of exploiting new oil properties is a gamble on the indulgence of foreign governments.

Bitterer still was another point in the agreement: the U.S. companies are still liable for "the private claims against [them] now pending before the Mexican courts." If the "private claims" include all the wage claims that were made just before expropriation, it could well mean that Standard, et al. owed Mexico money on balance.

Said one disgruntled oilman this week: "Lousy is the only word for it." But it was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and wartime is no time for big business to stand on peacetime principle.

Launching an anti-accident drive, the National Safety Council released some horrific statistics: industrial accidents last year were the "first cause of death" for all men of 22-38, cost enough man-days of labor (460,000,000) to build 66 battleships.

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