won't give it a concession the company starts out to find one who
will. It hunts up a rival politician or a general of the army who
wants to be president, and all of them do, and makes a deal with him.
It promises him if he'll start a revolution it will back him with the
money and the guns. Of course, the understanding is that if the leader
of the fake revolution gets in he'll give his New York backers
whatever they're after. Sometimes they want a concession for a
railroad, and sometimes it's a nitrate bed or a rubber forest, but you
can take my word for it that there's very few revolutions down here
that haven't got a money-making scheme at the bottom of them.

"Now this present revolution was started by the Isthmian Steamship
Line, of which Joe Fiske is president. It runs its steamers from New
Orleans to the Isthmus of Panama. In its original charter this
republic gave it the monopoly of the fruit-carrying trade from all
Hondurian ports. In return for this the company agreed to pay the
government $10,000 a year and ten per cent, on its annual receipts, if
the receipts ever exceeded a certain amount. Well, curiously enough,
although the line has been able to build seven new steamers, its
receipts have never exceeded that fixed amount. And if you know these
people the reason for that is very simple. The company has always
given each succeeding president a lump sum for himself, on the
condition that he won't ask any impertinent questions about the
company's earnings. Its people tell him that it is running at a loss,
and he always takes their word for it. But Garcia, when he came in,
either was too honest, or they didn't pay him enough to keep quiet. I
don't know which it was, but, anyway, he sent an agent to New Orleans
to examine the company's books. The agent discovered the earnings have
been so enormous that by rights the Isthmian Line owed the government
of Honduras $500,000. This was a great chance for Garcia, and he told