individual industry and enterprise, and retarded the growth of Spanish
population. [96] Le Gentil and Zúñiga give detailed descriptions of the
method of conducting this state enterprise [97] after the limits had
been raised to $500,000 and $1,000,000 respectively for the outgoing
and return voyage. The capacity of the vessel was measured taking as
a unit a bale about two and one-half feet long, sixteen inches broad
and two feet high. If then the vessel could carry four thousand of
these bales, each bale might be packed with goods up to a value of
one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The right to ship was known as a
_boleta_ or ticket. The distribution of these tickets was determined
at the town hall by a board made up of the governor, attorney-general,
the dean of the _audiencia_, one _alcalde_, one _regidor_ and eight
citizens. [98]

To facilitate the allotment and the sale of tickets they were divided
into sixths. Tickets were ordinarily worth in the later eighteenth
century in times of peace eighty dollars to one hundred dollars,
and in war time they rose to upwards of three hundred dollars. [99]
Le Gentil tells us that in 1766 they sold for two hundred dollars
and more, and that the galleon that year went loaded beyond the
limit. [100] Each official as the perquisite of his office had
tickets. The regidores and alcaldes had eight.

The small holders who did not care to take a venture in the voyage
disposed of their tickets to merchants or speculators, who borrowed
money, usually of the religious corporations, at twenty-five to thirty
per cent per annum to buy them up and who sometimes bought as many
as two or three hundred. [101] The command of the Acapulco galleon
was the fattest office within the gift of the Governor, who bestowed
it upon "whomsoever he desired to make happy for the commission,"