WHAT'S THE MATTER
WITH MEXICO?
BY
CASPAR WHITNEY
M
AUTHOR OF "THE FLOWING ROAD,"
"HAWAIIAN AMERICA," ETC.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
All rights reserved
WJ
COPYRIGHT, 1916.
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1916.
that abused group of
Countrymen, driven from
their homes and denied the pro-
tection of their Government
which protection, if afforded,
would long ago, without war, have
brought peace to desolated
Mexico this little book is dedi-
cated with genuine sympathy.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE QUESTION ......... 1
WHO ARE THE MEXICANS? 2
MAKING A MISFIT CONSTITUTION .... 7
THE REVOLUTIONARY HABIT 18
THE SUBMERGED 80 PER CENT 43
THE MAN AND THE JOB DIAZ MADERO 76
WHEN THE AMERICANS WENT TO MEXICO . 90
WHAT Is A CONCESSION? 118
WHEN CARRANZA CAME TO TOWN . . . 127
UNDER PRE-CONSTITUTIONAL CONDITIONS . 141
THE MEDITATIONS OF A THEORIST . . . 161
,DUM-DUMS IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY . 179
'WHAT MEXICO NEEDS 184
THE COST OF A DUTY-LAST POLICY . . . 200
THE ANSWER 211
WHAT'S THE MATTER
WITH MEXICO?
THE QUESTION
IN Mexico both native and foreigner
are in distress ; in America perplex-
ity rules as to cause, and confused dis-
cussion as to the action we should take
for the safety of our citizens and the
help of the Mexicans.
What is this trouble? Why are our\
troops along the border, and in Mexico,
without the consent and against the
protest of the revolutionist First Chief
whom the Government of the United
States recognised ? Why are the Amer-
ican people called on to share if not to
solve the problem of its sadly deranged
neighbour ?
The Mexicans have a Constitution as
lofty in sentiment and as comprehen-
sive in scope as our own ; and have had
since 1857. Why does not this Con-
stitution guide them to the political
peace it provides? ^
WHO ARE THE MEXICANS?
rilO understand the present state of
JL Mexico you must understand
Mexican conditions ; and to understand
Mexican conditions you must under-
stand Mexican character. To under-
stand Mexican character you must
know the blood mixture which flows in
his veins ; and, if you would escape false
and misleading notions, you must com-
prehend, deeply, for things in Mexico
are not often what they seem to be to
the onlooker.
The aborigines were not chiefly
" Indians," as we are wont casually to
call them, but Aztecs, Toltecs, Zapo-
tecs that numerous, sturdy race
which there and in Peru left architec-
tural and engineering monuments re-
vealing art, inventive genius, and me-
chanical skill to prove them a people
apart from, and above in culture, the
roving Redmen of the North. But
there were Indians also in this earliest
period, Yaquis and Apaches in the
2
Who Are the Mexicans? 8
Northwest, and many small tribes of
many tongues along the west coast and
in the South, the descendants of whom,
the ethnologists say, are to-day repre-
sented by the something like one hun-
dred and twenty-five tribes, speaking
fifty different dialects, that are dis-
tributed in limited numbers throughout
the country but more especially along
and just behind the western littoral.
Commonly and comprehensively we
refer to all these aboriginal races, and
to their pure descendants, as Indians ;
and if the reference is loose, yet it has
the value of distinguishing between the
peoples that were originally on the soil
and those which have come through
cross breeding.
These scattered tribes differed little
if any from those of North America in
character or habit ; but the Aztecs and
allied peoples are set down by the his-
torians of that period as being highly
religious and notably cruel. Human
sacrifice was a common practice of their
priests, and flaying a prisoner one of
the tortures visited upon a captured
enemy.
It is recounted by the Abbe Claviger
in his " History of Mexico " (published
4 What's the Matter with Mexico?
1806), that instead of killing they cut
off the ears of their opponents in one
battle and preserved them in baskets to
show their allies as evidence of their
prowess.
During the time I was in the State of
Tamaulipas, 1914-15, Constitutionalist
troopers caught a " bandit " who had
given them a hard chase, and to make
sure he would not again escape, as once
before he had, they sliced off the soles
of his feet !
When the Spaniards came to Mexico
with their arts and their agricultural
skill, their industrial training, their
church and their avarice, they found in
this hardy people, who had so valor-
ously defended their capital city until
betrayed and overwhelmed, a means
ready at hand to till the soil, and to
search the mountains for that golden
storehouse of which they had heard and
dreamed.
The settled lands the Spaniards dis-
tributed among the Indians (I shall
hereafter use this term when referring
to the aborigine or his unmixed de-
scendant) under a form of share-work-
ing with an over-chief; the unsettled
land and the mines they took for them-
Who Are the Mexicans? 5
selves. Thus the vanquished Indian be-
came the man-of -all-work in his own
country for the victorious, domineer-
ing Spaniard; the miner, the farm-
hand, the unskilled labourer, or the
peon, as we hear him most often called
- a master and, what was practically,
a serf class.
The new Spanish colony thrived ; the
haciendas flourished on the plains, the
hills yielded bountifully of a wondrous
treasure, and Spaniards that came orig-
inally to adventure remained to build
their homes. Gradually through the
intermarriage of these Europeans and
the natives there grew up another and
a third class, between the peon workers
on the one hand and the alien masters
on the other; a class combining the
pride, the tyranny, the moroseness, the
fighting spirit of Spain, with the vision,
the improvidence, the cruelty, the care-
free hopefulness of the aborigine.
The arrogance of Castile with the
fanaticism of Anahuac. It was a mix-
ture which did not suggest co-opera-
tive, peaceful, constructive partner-
ship.
From this source came the human
division we see to-day in Mexico. (1)
6 What's the Matter with Mexico?
An inert, illiterate, tractable mass a
political nonentity; (2) a partially ed-
ucated, mixed, or middle-class active,
but ambitious beyond its efficiency and
excessively vain; (3) a comparatively
small upper or capital or educated
class, having but slight regard for the
proletariat, little patriotism, and less
civic courage also active, and
shrewd, but in the making of their own
fortunes rather than in the general de-
velopment and advancement of their
people.
Of such components unprepared
by education or training, unfitted by
habit or temperament, distrustful and
discordant has the occasional pa-
triot in Mexico sought to build a Re-
public.
MAKING A MISFIT CONSTITUTION
DISCONTENT was sure to come
out of this mixture of dissimilar
bloods and unfair adjustment of rela-
tions; and a glance at the revolutions
which followed fast will help immeas-
urably to a comprehension of the situa-
tion to-day.
Of the names that stand out in mem-
ory and in Mexican history Father
Miguel Hidalgo, 1810; Jose Morelos,
1813 ; Augustin Iturbide, 1821 ; Vicente
Guerrero, 1827; Juan Alvarez, 1854;
Bentio Juarez, 1857; Porfirio Diaz,
1876; Francisco Madero, 1911
every one came to power as the leader
of a revolt against an existing govern-
ment. Hidalgo, Morelos, Guerrero,
Alvarez, Juarez, were men of high char-
acter and moved undoubtedly by senti-
ments of genuine patriotism nor is
there any doubt of Madero's honest
ideals and sincere purpose and of
these Morelos, Guerrero, Juarez a
pure Zapotec and Diaz a Mixtec
7
8 What's the Matter with Mexico?
half caste had foresight and mental
endowment.
Hidalgo, a Spanish priest of Dolores
in the mining State of Guanajuato, is
popularly accredited with making the
first stroke for freedom, but two years
before had been an earlier attempt
which failed through the treachery of
one of the conspirators.
Hidalgo made some progress, gath-
ering adherents by aid of government
treasure which he had " promptly
seized " at the outset, and fighting gal-
lantly against heavy odds and deter-
mined opposition. His supporters
proved recreant to their pledges, how-
ever, in an important locality and at a
critical moment, and finally the Father
was betrayed by one of his own officers,
captured, and executed.
Morelos, who picked up the mantle
of Hidalgo, maintained the struggle
long enough to proclaim (in 1813) the
Constitution of Apatzingam declaring
for rights of citizenship, elections, free
ballot, and liberty of press. But de-
fections from his followers, lack of
funds, and especially the first, weakened
his force and he, too, was captured and
shot.
Making a Misfit Constitution 9
Iturbide, sometimes called the " lib-
erator of Mexico " because of his Plan
de Iguala declaring for independence,
who raised himself to power by a cuar-
telazo through the help of Santa Ana
was ejected a year later by the same
Santa Ana who faced always which-
ever way best suited his own advance-
ment and ordered executed by the
very congress he had previously while
in power ordered dissolved. Up to this
period the church had exercised a de-
ciding and widely recognised influence
in the affairs of state, but with the war
of independence the army became the
supreme force of the nation. And now
was established the cuartrfazo, or mili-
tary uprising, expressive of individual
ambition and the disaffected elements
which have supplied Mexico with revo-
lutionists since 1821.
Guerrero, second president of the
Republic, called " the Great Commoner
of Mexico," whom Iturbide had scan-
dalously used as an unwitting dupe dur-
ing his administration, was overthrown
by a cuartelazo, abandoned by the en-
tire army which had but just acclaimed
him, and deserted even by his personal
following. He sought the peons of the
10 What's the Matter mtli Mexico?
soil whom he had always befriended and
for whom he had achieved freedom from
the advance wage debt system, but they,
too, turned from him and joined the
rebellion. Though literally a man of
the people, and a leader who had served
their interests ceaselessly, they forsook
him in the hour of his need for another
with alluring promise. Guerrero's end
is characteristic and familiar; he was
betrayed by a trusted friend, and shot
October, 1831.
In the work of a native historian we
read " it was charged against the ad-
ministration of Guerrero that he en-
deavoured to rule in a democratic spirit
a people ignorant and inexperienced
and devoid of democratic training and
traditions." And again of the period
following, that " the generals and high
officers of the army (during the presi-
dency of Bustamante) " under cover of
the fueros, supplemented their hand-
some salaries by operating counterfeit
mints, gambling hells, and gaudy
brothels ; while the lesser officers con-
tented themselves with mere blackmail-
ing and open highway robbery and . . .
" occasionally the army went into busi-
ness for itself on a large scale and in-
Making a Mis-fit Constitution 11
stituted farcical revolts and uprisings
for purposes of loot and rape," until
finally Bustamante, who had come into
office through the cuartelazo by which
he deposed Guerrero, was himself over-
thrown by a cuartelazo in 1841.
And now for several years with the
country in anarchy and its resources
depleted, cuartelazo followed cuartelazo
until Herrera, who was raised to the
presidency in 1845 as a relief from the
mercenary Santa Ana, was himself put
out of office within the year by cuarte-
lazo. But the year following a cuarte-
lazo put the treacherous Santa Ana
back in power again and called upon
congress to frame a monarchical consti-
tution.
The ever lurking cuartelazo having
ousted the then president Arista
the first official act of his successor,
Juan Cevallos, was to abolish the con-
gress 1
Perhaps another quotation from the
native history of this period showing a
deliberate plot to embroil Texas, will
be informing to those that are ever so
insistent in their criticism of the United
States Government for the Mexican
War of 1847. The quotation serves
1 What's the Matter with Mexico?
also as a parallel to recent and famil-
iar happenings during 1916.
" The necessity of keeping the atten-
tion of the people from domestic af-
fairs compelled the clerical party once
more to resuscitate the idea of a war
with the United States for the recovery
of Texas, and catholic press and cheap
politicians vied with each other in their
efforts to inflame public sentiment in
favour of the plan. The ruse suc-
ceeded immediately in so far as it gave
the government sufficient strength to
suppress the revolutionary movement
for federalism in Tampico and Puebla."
There is an impressively familiar
note in this for those who recall the
political weavings and manifestos of
Huerta and Carranza.
That stalwart figure, Alvarez, headed
a successful revolution in 1854 with his
Plan de Ayutla " discharging " the
Santa Ana pest, whom he also defeated,
and in the year following representa-
tives to congress were instructed to as-
semble for the purpose of framing an-
other new constitution. The call re-
sulted in the historic meeting of which
Juarez and Alvarez were the command-
ing figures, and in the drafting and fi->
Making a Misfit Constitution 13
nally in the promulgation (1857) of
Mexico's present constitution. Alvarez
became the natural choice for president
during this formative period, but estab-
lished the altogether quite unusual
precedent of resigning office shortly
after without request or pressure and
was succeeded by Ignacio Comonfort.
Within fifteen days after the adop-
tion of the new constitution, Comon-
fort was defeated and driven into exile
by a cuartelazo headed by Felix Zu-
loaga, who was forthwith made provi-
sional president. His first act as presi-
dent was to abolish this new constitu-
tion which expressed " the aspirations
of the Mexican people " and had been
forty-seven years in making.
The native historian in commenting
on this phase of his country's revolu-
tionary agony tells us that Comonfort,
who on taking the presidential office,
had shown a more lenient attitude
towards his erstwhile opponents as
for example imprisoning instead of
shooting, as had been the custom, po-
litical offenders, deserting soldiers, and
the like was inspired by the hope
" that a policy of liberality and mercy
would appeal to the better nature of his
14< What's the Matter with Mexico?
opponents and bring to weary, blood-
stained Mexico a period of peace and
good will." 'Twas a hope not real-
ised.
After three bloody years of fighting,
Juarez entered Mexico City and opened
congress with a spirited and patriotic
speech in which he declared " the fed-
eration is now compact and united by
constitutional ties, and ready to sus-
tain our national institution and to en-
force and obey the laws enacted by this
sovereign assembly." And on his re-
election after the French intervention
period, Porfirio Diaz issued his Plan
de la Noria and set out to depose him
with a revolution, which, however, be-
cause' Juarez was both ready and
strong, failed almost at its inception.
Juarez died in 1872, leaving one of
the greatest names in Mexico's history
and his country in comparative peace
on the threshold of awakening to indus-
trial development.
Lerdo de Tejada, who succeeded him,
followed in his wise footsteps of keeping
the military out of civil administration
to a very large extent, yet an element
of disquiet soon again raised its dis-
torted head, and in 1876 Porfirio Diaz
Making a Misfit Constitution 15
issued his Tuxtepec plan which " dis-
charged " Tejada and all opposing gov-
ernors, declared against re-election of
either president or governors, and ap-
pointed himself " interim president
pending a presidential election."
Tejada lacked the iron hand and will
of his great predecessor Juarez'; his
ways had been more the ways of peace,
so that he was unequal to resisting this
new revolutionist, who, marching into
Mexico City, was accepted at once as
president.
Juarez was the best of Mexico's rulers
to that time, and Tejada an excellent
one; their regimes, 1867-75, called the
" Restoration Period," brought the
first peace the country had experienced
and gave the people enjoyment of the
full democracy granted under the con-
stitution of 1857 for which they had as-
pired and fought. The country was
just beginning to settle to habits of
peace and the beginning of prosperity.
Yet in the face of this, when General
Hernandez in Oaxaca launched his
cuartelazo for Diaz, it was at once fol-
lowed by cuartelazos with the same ob-
ject all over the country even from
Lower California to Vera Cruz !
16 What's the Matter with Mexico?
The impulse of revolutionists previ-
ous to Alvarez had been, according to
native history, " to overthrow the power
that denied them high official position,"
but Francisco Madero, in his 1910 Plan
of San Luis Potosi calling for free
ballot and non-re-election, introduced
" free land " and made it the slogan of
his revolt against Diaz.
When in October, 1911, Madero was
elected president he, like Guerrero and
Comonfort before him, sought to admin-
ister his office in a democratic spirit,
instituting a " generous and merciful
attitude " towards his erstwhile politi-
cal opponents and again like Guer-
rero and Comonfort, he, too, found a
people " ignorant " and " devoid of
democratic training."
From 1810 when Father Hidalgo
made the first bid for independence, to
1913 when Madero was murdered, the
duration in office of Mexico's many rul-
ers had averaged, apart from the
Juarez and Diaz regimes, scarcely one
year each. Contention for leadership
has kept the country in desperate and
well-nigh unending strife, until 1857, to
secure a constitution, and since then,
ostensibly, to put that constitution
Making a Misfit Constitution 17
into operation. In one hundred and
six years there have been forty-one
years of peace (of comparative peace
many of them) seven under Juarez-
Tejada, and thirty-four under Diaz-
Gonzales.
Bearing upon our study of condi-
tions in present day Mexico, the im-
partial history of this period reveals
three prominent facts, viz:
(1) That the revolts have sprung
from individual and not from popular
impulse ;
() That the people were irresolute
in principle ;
(3) That the people were fickle in
conduct.
THE REVOLUTIONARY HABIT
SO we come to the question of why
these revolutions continue now
that Mexico has a liberal and free spir-
ited constitution, how they start, how
maintained, their effect upon the peoT
pie, and why results appear never to be
conclusive.
We must keep in mind that original
blood mixture, the three hundred years
of Spanish greed and domination before
freedom came, and the division of the
population as it stands to-day. In
round numbers there are, or rather
were in 1910, about fifteen millions of
all classes. Of these it is estimated that
sixty per cent., or about nine millions,
are pure, direct descendants of their
aboriginal forebears; thirty per cent.
or about four and a half million repre-
sent the mixed class of Indian and
Spanish the Mexican so-called ; and
ten per cent, or approximately one
million and a half answer for the Span-
18
The Revolutionary Habit 19
iards of the pure blood and the foreign-
ers, of whom Americans comprised the
largest number, reckoned to be at that
time fully fifty thousand or more.
In every revolution, as in this one
also, there were men inspired by sin-
cere and patriotic motives, but as a rule
their origin has been in motives less
honourable.
Most revolutions start by spme dis-
affected local leader with political am-
bitions and a grievance, gathering his
friends and employes under a plan
promising solution of all national ills,
and the unhampered pursuit of happi-
ness for his supporters. Following the
tradition established by Hidalgo he
opens the jail and then sallies forth,
confiscating whatever he is strong
enough to take and destroying what-
ever property of the " enemy " he can-
not use. If there is public treasure, he
takes it, and if there are foreign com-
panies in the neighbourhood, they as
well as the merchants and the bankers
yield a " loan " for as much as happens
to be in sight. From the church money
is extorted by imprisonment, or tor-
ture, or threat of death. Such are the
sources of support of all revolutionists
20 What's the Matter with Mexico?
before they get hold of the Govern-
ment.
The free and not too dangerous or
onerous life of the army, the lax disci-
pline, the license to appropriate what-
ever property may be found along the
march, the freedom from confining
steady labour, constitute a strong ap-
peal to the Indian half of that mixed
blood, and make of recruiting the sim-
ple proposition of some ready money
and a plenty of promise. So every
man with nothing to lose but his life,
turns revolutionist. It becomes the
best business in sight for the peon,
sometimes the only business. He has
no clear knowledge of the quarrel be-
yond what his immediate jefe (chief)
tells him, not even for what or for
whom he fights. He has done what his
jefe has told him to do time out of
mind, and he fights because the jefe
tells him to fight and promises him a
share of the booty. It is the personal-
ism of politics in Mexico. Thus the
peons form the rank and file of the
army, while from the ranchero, the ha-
ccndado, the gang boss of the city, the
bandit of the country, come the offi-
cers. The political* lawyers, the dis-
The Revolutionary Habit
appointed office seekers, the dream-
ers, and the fanatics furnish the agi-
tators, the orators, the press
a^nts.
rThe very easiest thing to start in
Mexico is a revolution ; first, because
their constitution does not agree with
the nature and the character of the peo-
ple ; second, because it is personalism
in Mexican politics and not the law or
even thought of country that rules and
influences action; and third, because
the bullet and not the vote is the rec-
ognised medium f or jsettling differences
in political opinion.! It is the code of
the country that a man who fails at the
polls must fight; otherwise he is po-
litically dead. That is why foreigners
living in Mexico dread an election
even of the " arranged " variety which
has obtained quite as much as a
revolution, for the first has been the
usual forerunner of the second,
dero was put in office
em oticmaT wave towards an
able idea'
the
GOTH
Made
22 What's the Matter with Mexico?
governors was followed by as many se-
rious State revolts.
In Guanajuato, the governor, Vil-
lasenor, congratulated his successful
opponent and forthwith killed him-
self politically for his very unusual and
un-Mexican act. The people looked
upon him as a poor thing lacking spirit
and not entitled to further support.
Before the interview Porfirio Diaz
gave James Creelman in 1908, there
had been during the Dictator's reign,
no other party. It was all Diaz. A
man was a Porfirista or he kept his
opinions to himself. But in this pub-
lished interview which Diaz did not
deny, the General said he was going to
make the next election 1910 a
real election ; that he was determined
to retire ; that he hoped for an election
which would express the choice of the
Mexican people, and desired parties
to form and offer candidates. This
statement caused Mexico to gasp in un-
disguised surprise, but as there came
no word to the contrary from the Cas-
tle, a movement started to organise for
and discuss possible candidates. The
Partido Democratico, a party having
for its slogan "no personalities; prin-
The Revolutionary Habit 23
ciples only," was formed. It was a
strange happening and aroused much
interest throughout the country. At
the first meeting, the attempt to elect
a chairman developed such commotion
through the heated advocacy of rival
candidates that the meeting finally
broke up in disorder. And that was
the end of the Partido Democratico.
It never revived.
When Eulalio Gutierrez was elected
" Convention " President at Aguas
Calientes October, 1914, after Villa
had come down from the north and
Carranza had refused to come up from
the south, General Antonio Villareal,
who had brazenly courted the honour,
disputed the Chairman, split the party
and left town in a fury. Later when
Gutierrez fled before Villa from Mex-
ico City to set himself up as president
independent of this Convention or of
Villa or Carranza, taking Lucio Blanco
and other disaffected members of the
party with him, he carried off ten mil-
lion pesos of the national treasury.
And all factions represented at the
Aguas Calientes Convention, which sub-
sequently waged war on one another
Obrcgon, Villareal, Gonzales, Agui-
24 What" s the Matter with Mexico?
lar, Gutierrez, Villa, and Zapata
present or represented, wrote their
names in token of their complete ac-
cord upon the flag of Mexico amid
cheers and tears and a vast oratorical
outpouring to attest their patriotism
and their loyalty to the Convention.
One of the generals to put his name
on the silk flag at Aguas as a repre-
sentative of Venustiano Carranza was
Alfonso Santibanez. He had been a
local jefe on Tehuantepec under Ma-
dcro and when the latter in the course
of his appointments sent a successor,
Santibanez killed him and took to the
hills where as an active bandit he ac-
quired further importance and quite a
following. When General Jesus Car-
ranza was sent to the Isthmus by his
brother the First Chief, to secure its
fealty, he sought out and " recog-
nised " and attached to his army this
Santibanez.
A month or so later Santibanez
changed his faith, captured General
Jesus Carranza, and killed him.
Thus the officers' viewpoint; the sol-
diers can hardly be expected to have
one more elevated.
While in Monterrey a friend told me
The Revolutionary Habit 25
the story of his house servant who had
joined the Constitutionalist army.
The muchacho one day announced his
intention of going to the front; the
master said he was sorry to lose a good
servant but pleased to see support for
the constitutionalist cause coining vol-
untarily from men of his class who
should naturally be the ones most bene-
fited by its success, and therefore
among the first to enlist. "But," re-
plied the servant, " I am not sure I shall
join the constitutionalists." " Not the
constitutionalists," exclaimed my friend
in astonishment, " what army is there
then that you would join?" "Well,"
answered the patriot, " the constitu-
tionalists here are offering one peso
fifty, but I hear that Huerta is offering
one seventy-five to recruits, and before
I join I am going to learn who pays the
most." And neither this man nor any
of many similar cases encountered in
my travels among the Villistas, the Car-
ranzistas, or other istas, saw anything
in such an attitude not entirely becom-
ing a loyal member in good standing of
a " delicate, sensitive race."
At a mine near San Luis I met a
man who had deserted from General
26 What's the Matter with Mexico?
Angeles because the officers had " de-
ceived " him. When he was lured from
a good place with one of the American
mining companies, and recruited, he had
been promised a chance at looting in
the captured towns; but no towns had
been captured so he had run away.
At Jalapa I talked with another who
had deserted the Blanco brigade be-
cause, as he said, the officers took all
the best horses and loot for themselves ;
he was planning at that time to join
the Jesus Carranza command where he
heard the men were given a " fairer "
share.
During the uncertain time at Tam-
pico between the going of the Federals
and the coming of the Pablo Gonzales
troops, there was a lot of free-for-all
looting, or, shall I say, the taking of
anything which for the moment ap-
peared unemployed; in a word, any-
thing not nailed down. So the horse
belonging to a foreign resident disap-
peared. One day after the Constitu-
tionalists had settled into undisputed
possession of the town, tfte owner of the
lost animal discovered it hitched as one
of a public coach pair. He claimed
and finally, after much difficulty and
The Revolutionary Habit 27
with the good offices ' of his Consul,
came again into possession of it. But
the hackman could not at all under-
stand why he should be deprived of a
horse he had " found " in the fields
while he was serving his jefe, and swore
vengeance on those who were instru-
mental in taking from him property he
had acquired, legitimately, so far as he
could see. The man was entirely sin-
cere.
In Mexico City I was presented to a
colonel of the Carranza army, who
three years before had been a motor-
man on the city trolley line. At the
time I talked with him, at the house of
a native with whom I was studying
Spanish, he had amassed a house in the
city, two pianos of which he spoke
with especial pride good clothes, and
an automobile. He had been a pelado ;
now he was a senor with a capital S.
One ranch peon who joined the army
and was in the fighting and looting at
Durango, shortly thereafter bought a
ranch in his own State, Chihuahua, for
twenty thousand pesos. Is it to won-
der that the army is popular with cer-
tain types of Mexicans? The wonder
is whether these men are going to re-
28 What's the Matter with Mexico?
turn to the trolley, and the ranch, and
the mine when present opportunity
ends.
When Obregon and Blanco made
their get-away from Mexico City in
November, 1914, leaving the city as
they thought to the expected looting of
Zapata, the troop trains stood amidst
literal lanes of household goods taken
by the departing patriots from the con-
fiscated houses of their fellow country-
men ; and all the Mexicans' luxuries
from typewriters to phonographs and
pianos and sewing machines could be
picked up at bargains when it became
known that there were not enough cars
to carry away all the loot which had
been taken in the name of " uplift."
Two days after Blanco had skulked out
of the city, I counted sixteen automo-
biles destroyed or mutilated beyond re-
pair in a field seven miles from town
where they had been abandoned by him
and Obregon.
These soldiers of the army are not
concerned with the principles of de-
mocracy; they have neither interest in
nor knowledge of the problems of a re-
public ; it matters not who happens to
be first chief; their interest is in having
The Revolutionary Habit 29
a chance at getting something for noth-
ing. It is not that they are so vicious
as that they are so ignorant, and the
blood they have inherited makes for
lustful adventuring. They are having
such a fling at " liberty " as they have
never known in their impoverished and
more or less oppressed lives.
The Huerta soldiers that defended
Chihuahua under General Mercado
against Villa's assaults, joined Villa in
considerable numbers when he came into
the city triumphant. The men on the
border constantly shifted from Car-
ranza to Villa or back again according
to varying fortunes and local condi-
tions. The men of Gonzales deserted
him by the score when he was driven
out, and entered the Villa ranks. Villa
lost officers and men right along at such
points as he was compelled to evacuate,
and after his heavy defeat, in a trap
by Obregon at Celaya owing to his im-
petuous and overconfident advance, the
desertions from his ranks were large
enough to weaken him seriously. Both>
Blanco and Obregon lost heavily in de-
sertions to General Angeles when they
retreated before his advance. Miners
throughout Chihuahua who were thrown
30 What's the Matter with Mexico?
out of work by the shutting down of
the foreign properties, joined the
forces of Madcro, then those of Or-
ozco when he fought Madero, then
Huerta, who fought both Madero and
Orozco, and finally were to be found
under the banners of Villa and Car-
ranza.
Then there is the well established
story of Veracruz, where the Federal
gunboat officer who switched fealty
from Madero to Felix Diaz and back
again to Madero, explained his most
recent' change to some very good Amer-
ican friends at a dinner on the ground
of being a patriot in doubt as to which
side was going to win and, said he,
" how can one be a patriot if he is on
the losing side? "
Of all the Government military offi-
cers at the National Palace on that
morning of February 8, 1913, which
ushered in the fateful conspiracy
against Madero, only General Lauro
Villar and his valiant little group re-
mained actively loyal. They managed
to hold the Palace but the troops which
had promised to keep faith, went over
to Mondragon after being harangued
by his officer, Colonel Aguillon.
The Revolutionary Habit 31
Although Madero's Plan particu-
larly urged that soldiers must not
" sack any town or kill defenceless pris-
oners," the dreadful slaughter of three
hundred Chinamen at Torreon, 1911,
by the troops under his brother Emilio,
and the looting and barbarous conduct
at Durango, Zacatecas, and elsewhere,
showed the little influence of his appeal
either while he lived or with the gen-
erals who espoused his cause after he
had been murdered. When carrying
out his idea of democracy Madero dis-
banded twenty thousand of his army
after taking the presidential chair,
most of whom had fought for the
opportunity to loot, they at once
flocked to the standards of his oppo-
nents.
When Felix Diaz was captured by
General Valdez on his stupid and un-
successful attempt at Vera Cruz to
start a cuartelazo against Madero, his
soldiers promptly shouted for his cap-
tor and returned allegiance to the Gov-
ernment which a few moments before
they had been ready to fight.
General Reyes, who had been a sup-
porter of General Porfirio Diaz with
sword in hand ready to quell Madero,
32 What's the Matter mill Mexico?
became subsequently a follower of Ma-
dero and then headed a revolt to un-
seat him.
Francisco Vasquez Gomez was Ma-
dero's chief of the Washington junta
his board bill paid by the Madero
family; and after Madero was elected
lie joined a revolt against him.
Orozco, the red handed, who had
fought for Madero, started a revolu-
tion in favour of himself after Made-
ro's election, because Madero, after
giving him one hundred thousand re-
fused to give him another one hundred
and fifty thousand pesos he demanded
as his share for patriotically helping to
" free " Mexico.
Huerta, when found to be short over
one million pesos of the money Madero
had sent him for his campaign against
Orozco, was raised to a major general-
ship.
Such are the workings of the Mex-
ican mind and habit ; such the rule of
revolution as we have more often seen
it. Constitutional government as the
excuse for leaders to exercise the pro-
fession of politics politics, the open
sesame to the grab bag. Apart from
the few high minded, loyal Mexicans,
The Revolutionary Habit 33
for whom jail has been the usual re-
ward of constancy, patriotism has
served as a mere phrase and a cloak to
hide the opportunist.
The Juarez breed of patriot has just
about run out. Not a single Mexican
civilian among all he had befriended
went to the support of Porfirio Diaz
after his thirty-six years of reign ; not
that they were righteous, but they were
Mexicans. When Madero in the bit-
terness of his awakening to the changed
sentiment around him, called upon the
law and abiding citizens for help, only
one man responded an American of
Irish extraction, Braniff by name. And
when Carranza came to Mexico City in
August, 1914, Carranza, the " aveng-
er "of Madero, he turned the American
mother of Braniff out of her house and
handed it over to his General Obregon
for headquarters.
The jefe of one little town during
the Madero-Orozco revolution, raided
another small town Aldaman
driving off the defenders and then ap-
propriating everything that could be
carried away from the shops and the
houses of the people whose misfortune
it was that two rival bands had hap-
34 What's the Matter with Mexico?
pened to use their little settlement for
a battleground.
An Englishman who had a ranch
nearby and chanced to be in the town,
asked the looting jefe what it was all
about, why he fought and robbed these
people who had taken no part in the
battle or the controversy and done him
no harm. "A just cause," replied the
jefe. " Yes, I know," persisted the
Englishman, "but what is it about?
!You destroy and carry off the crops
of your fellow countrj r men, you loot
their stores, you misuse their wives and
daughters, what's the reason, why do
you do this?" " A just cause, and
that's all I'll say, a just cause," replied
the jefe; and that was all the English-
man could get out of him. And it is
about all I was ever able to get out of
any Mexican high or low who indorsed
the riot of anarchy.
A riot of anarchy, a riot unre-
strained and atrocious in deed fit-
tingly describes the activities of the
revolutionists of this last " passion for
peace " explosion, whether under Ma-
dero, Huerta, Villa, or Carranza.
Zapata, despite his reputation out-
side of Mexico to the contrary, has
The Revolutionary Habit 35
the cleanest record. Mexico City had
been awaiting his heralded approach in
the autumn of 1914 with fear and
trembling; the bars for the shop doors
and windows had been reinforced in the
hope of at least delaying the antici-
pated looting of these " wild bandits."
And when Zapata and his simple, bare-
footed Indians finally did come to the
City, they gave the residents the first
unmolested period it had enjoyed up to
that time, and the only fair treatment
since Madero was killed. The Zapatis-
tas confiscated no property, and pro-
ceeded to restore to its owners as far
as they were able, that which had been
stolen by the Carranzistas. The City
breathed at will and relaxed in smiles.
Those who had successfully concealed
their automobiles from Obregon and
Blanco, rode through the streets
bravely and happily. But the act of
the Zapatistas which literally took
breath away was their return of a fifty
thousand peso loan which they had
made on arrival and pending the levy-
ing of one extra month's tax to meet
the feeding of the soldiers. It was
something unheard of in the history of
revolution past or present.
56 What'* the Matter with Mexico?
The usual procedure of a revolution-
ist party upon successfully carrying a
town, is to first search out the women;
second, to loot ; third, to destroy. Such
is the fight for " constitutional " gov-
ernment ! Destruction and brutality
visited upon their own harmless people ;
and some of their exploits have been
fiendish even in this day when " flaming
fire " and gas and burning tar are the
usual weapons of attack.
Of the atrocities committed in North-
western Mexico alone, I have eleven
sheets of legal cap fully covered with
brief statements the longest being
five lines of murders, kidnapping,
seizure of property, robbery, and ruth-
less destruction of livestock !
When^ retreating from San Luis Po-
tosi the Huerta federals shot from the
car windows at whatever and whom-
ever they saw, though luckily their
marksmanship was poor. All along the
line cattle were killed in this manner.
On one occasion a vaquero made an in-
viting target and the train was actually
stopped while a number of the soldiers
tried to hit him before he rode out of
range.
It was the constitutional victors over
The Revolutionary Habit 37
this lot of Federals who on passing an
oil pumping station impressed two of
the workmen into guiding a group of
soldiers to a certain point of their road.
When they had reached their destina-
tion they hung the two guides, whose
graves I passed on my way through
this section.
One of the earliest successes of the
Constitutionalists was at Durango un-
der the leadership of a brute called Ur-
bina, where the soldiers were given
twenty-four hours' license to do as they
pleased ! The story of the looting and
the raping of that poor town will al-
ways remain a disgrace to the consti-
.tutionalist general staff and soldiery.
They pillaged the bank, they robbed
the stores, they chased every comely
face that dared venture onto the
streets, and they stabled their horses
in the parlours of the private houses.
After passing through miles and
miles of torn-up roadbed and twisted
rails, demolished stations, and burned
freight cars, I entered Zacatecas over
the sunken road where Villa had
trapped the retreating Federals and
made the greatest killing of the war
with his machine guns placed on the op-
38 What's the Matter with Mexico?
posite and commanding hillside. The
town cowered. The priests had been
stripped of whatever was to be found
in their churches, and imprisoned;
some of the shops had been looted ; the
officers were taking toll of such women
as could not escape; and the Supreme
Court was being used as a stable for
the horses of the officers. Zacatecas
has good reason to remember its occu-
pation by General Natera of the Army
of the North. Money was raised by
the imprisoned priests and some of
them released with the advice to get
out of the country others are yet to
be heard from. But the girls had no
respite ; many of them were caught and
violated; none of them above the peon
women who kept their little street
stands of fruits and beans and corn,
dared show her face at a window or
venture out. The shops were closed
and barred ; the people were existing on
tunas prickly pear of the cactus
the town appeared as if in the grip of
a pestilence which had laid low half the
population and hushed the remainder.
In the ancient little town of Guada-
lupe lived a charitable old priest who
at the time of the fighting that swirled
The Revolutionary Habit 39
around that section of the State con-
verted the low, single story parish
school building into a hospital. Here
he had cared for such wounded as he
could hear of or as dragged themselves
to the doors of the settlement. One
day a considerable party of passing
Constitutionalists discovered the priest
at his merciful task. Opening wide the
door of the improvised hospital, as
many as could do so rode into the house
and over the wounded lying on the floor.
Those who escaped trampling were in
part taken out and shot.
Early in the campaign against
Huerta a favourite plan of destruction
with the constitutionalists took the
form of djHnamiting and it was through
his diabolical success in this killing
business that Gutierrez came first prom-
inently before the revolutionary world.
Previously he had been a roustabout
at an American mining plant, but now
he became a Carranza general, and later
he was elected president by the Conven-
tion at Agua Calientes. One of the
most fruitful of these dynamite at-
tacks was upon an ordinary Saltillo-
San Luis Potosi passenger train in
which, besides some Huerta soldiers,
40 What's the Matter with Mexico?
many second class passengers were
killed and all the living first class
robbed by Carranza soldiers lying in
waiting. But an equally choice exhi-
bition of revolutionist wreckage and
fiendish spirit was that at Cumbre
where an officer named Castillo wrecked
the regular passenger train in the tun-
nel and then fired it, among the passen-
gers killed being fifteen Americans.
Some .time later this same Castillo was
arrested on American soil by the bor-
der authorities, and under instructions
from Washington sent " for safety " to
Cuba. Not long after he returned to
Mexico and joined the constitutional-
ists!
From Chihuahua south all the way
through the country east and west
down to the Tehuantepec country, the
story was the same or similar ; some-
times worse, sometimes not so bad, but
always the tale of forced loans, of
looted property, of outraged women.
The atrocities committed upon the
priests and the nuns would make a vol-
ume of themselves. Everywhere out-
rages had been committed against
Americans but in no one town so varied
or so many as at Durango.
The Revolutionary Habit 41
With a friend, an American who
knows Mexico and the Mexican and is
their very good and comprehending
amigo I had gone over beyond Atzca-
potzalco one early morning of Novem-
ber, 1914, to visit Villa, who had ar-
rived the night before from the North.
On the road we met a Mexican mer-
chant who was on intimate terms with
my companion, and we journeyed on
together. Both my friend and I who
had watched the " dreaded " Zapatis-
tas come into Mexico City, and had cir-
culated much among them, were unani-
mous in our praise of their conduct.
My friend grew eloquent in Spanish ex-
tolling the Zapatista soldiers for ask-
ing bread, instead of confiscating it, as
the recently departed Carranzista sol-
diers had done. We thought it an en-
couraging sign of their honesty and
their sincerity of purpose. But the
merchant said contemptously " poor
fools, they know no better."
He correctly expressed the Mexican
spirit. He could not commend, he
could not, indeed, understand the hesi-
tation to take when opportunity of-
fered. The German idea of might is
right appeals to this kind of Mexican;
4g What's the Matter mih Mexico?
he understands that. He simply can-
not understand respect for the rights
and the property of another when a
man has the might and is above the law,
as are the battling factions in Mexico.
THE, SUBMERGED 80 PER CENT.
HAVING had a view of the mixed
native and the Indian under the
license of revolution and the undisci-
pline of the " army," let us see him
in the rough or normal, always remem-
bering the class divisions the In-
dians, the mixed peon class, the mixed
half-educated class (from whom and
the educated politician-lawyer-doctor
class, come the trouble makers) the
merchant, and the capitalistic class.
It must be confessed that the half
breed either in or out of the army
either of the lower or the middle mixed
class is the more complex and the least
amenable, but, except on occasions, not
the despicable man tourists so often
paint him. He is merely Mexican, and
that means he is a contradiction of vir-
tues and faults, a victim of fanaticism
and illusion, easy to manage and to get
on with if you allow for his foibles and
vanities. He is courteous, suspicious,
hospitable, not courageous as we under-
43
44< What's the Matter with Mexico?
stand courage, yet holds his life
cheaply. He does not comprehend and
has no respect for easy tolerance in his
employer. Madero, according to Mex-
ican ideas, erred in not condemning to
death General Reyes and Felix Diaz
when he had them in his power after
their attempted insurrection. Because
he did not shoot them, the people called
him weak.
Although his money comes to him
slowly and through patient toil, he
values it but slightly and will make
little effort to add to it or keep it.
Perhaps a personal experience will
illustrate their happy-go-lucky atti-
tude.
I had finished my inspection of Zaca-
tecas and was planning to break
through the Villa and Carranza lines
which faced each other near Agua Cali-
entes, and so make my way on south.
Transportation was at a premium with
the railroad held by the military and
all the horses confiscated. High and
low I hunted for something on four
legs, without success. Finally I found
an old fellow at Guadalupe, seven miles
south, who had a kind of stage and
some mules which the Villistas had not
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 45
thought worth taking. He agreed to
help me for forty pesos, which was
about twice the ordinary tariff, and I
accepted. At six o'clock the next
morning he was at my door in Zaca-
tecas, and in a few moments we were
on our way. When we reached his
house at Guadalupe he changed mules,
and having taken his seat again, turned
and asked me to pay him. I of course
declined to pay in advance ; said I was
willing to prove my good faith by pay-
ing him half now and the remainder
when I reached my destination ; that my
luggage was worth at least the with-
held balance should I be shot on the
road or fail to fulfil my obligation.
We argued the point in strict accord
with the Mexican custom, i.e. back
and forth and in and out and then all
over again, while the mules stood doz-
ing in the sun and their owner alter-
nately rolled cigarettes and told his
collected family and the gathered at-
tentive community, the dreadful thing
I was trying to do to him. Finally,
after two hours by the watch, I took
the stand that he could either accept
twenty pesos now and drive on to
Aguas where I should pay him twenty
46 What's tlie Matter with Mexico?
pesos more, or he could take me back to
Zacatecas. " Bueno," said he, and
back we started over the seven dusty
rock strewn miles. By the time we re-
entered the town at noon, my sense of
humour, as I recalled the scene at
Guadalupe and all the ridiculous arti-
fices he had employed to bring me to
his terms, had got the better of my
anger and disappointment at not get-
ting on my way, and so I asked him as
we stopped at the hotel, how much I
owed him for the scenic drive to Guad-
alupe and back, not to mention the rare
opportunity he had afforded me of be-
coming acquainted with him and his
numerous and good looking family.
He beamed, and then " Nada senbr,
nada," said he with such unaffected
suavity that forthwith I bought out a
little street dulce vendor and told him
to take it all home to his family with
my appreciative compliments for a very
pleasant and instructive morning.
And that was no lie. Twenty-one
miles of driving, the use of four mules,
of an entire morning, and " Por
nada, senor ; adios ! "
At Del Rio was a station restaurant
which gave the best food along the rail-
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 47
road. Once after paying for my meal
I had bought cigarettes and matches
amounting to twenty centavos. I had
only a peso and the proprietor had no
change. " Take them along," said he,
" and pay me another day when you
are passing ! "
In a restaurant at Jimenez my
breakfast amounted to fifty centavos.
I gave the waiter a peso and he re-
turned me two twenty-five centavo
pieces. Wishing to give him a tip of
fifteen centavos I asked him to make
the change, and as he could not get it
in the house, suggested his going next
door. But he shrugged his shoulders
as he said, " Gracious, senor, otra vez "
r another time. . **-
They are full of emotion, but lack
the first principles of consideration.
Scarcely a household that does not have
its pets, yet the men ride and treat
their horses cruelly. They are full of
polite phrases, prolific with presents,
yet lack comprehension of loyalty,
gratitude, team work. They cultivate
flowers and they have good music;
everywhere is the evidence of both.
Even along the railroad in the freight-
car homes of the peons you will see
48 What's the Matter with Mexico?
hardly a one which does not have its
tomato or kerosene cans of potted
plants ; and every small town has its
own most excellent band. People so
kindly to their children children so
happy with so little and so fond of
flowers and music have qualities which
promise much with development.
Until they have had the benefit of
training under the foreigner their sense
of responsibility appears to be as vague
-/is that of a child.
'Once I travelled on a train of freight
cars carrying a company of soldiers
to Irapuato. The track had been but
recently and roughly laid and fre-
quently we came to sudden and unex-
pected dips into and out of shallow
little gullies where the destroyed bridge
had not been replaced. We kept,
nevertheless, at a breakneck speed; the
box car rocking so violently it seemed
as if every minute must be our last on
the rails as we swayed from side to side
and lurched into and were jerked out
again of the " shoo-fly's " as such
improvised crossings are, I believe,
called in railroad parlance.
An anxious trainman in our car, who
probably had seen better railroad days,
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 49
put on the emergency brake ; and when
the train came to a stop and the cause
was discovered, that conservative train-
man was arrested by the indignant mili-
tary officer in charge and held under
guard in the corner of the car until we
reached the end of our exciting, not to
say perilous journey.
On another occasion on another
troop train we were coming down a stiff
and winding grade from Cardenas,
having to stop every now and again to
clear the track of obstructing rocks
and dirt that had either slid down from
the mountain side or been blasted there
by some of the neighbouring " other
constitutionalists." Between these halts
the train pitched forward at so lively
a pace that I found a seat in the open
doorway of the box car preferable to
being tossed around inside of it from
floor to ceiling.
On one of our sprints towards what
appeared like a jumping off place, the
engineer at his post and the conductor
at my side entered upon a hilarious
duel of badinage, the engineer leaning
from his cab window, munching a ba-
nana which he brandished at us, shout-
ing and laughing with apparently no
50 What's the Matter with Mexico?
thought of what we might encounter as
_we_sped on around the sharp curve.
Their attitude towards what we call
honesty, is a curious one and to us
quite incomprehensible without a com-
plete knowledge of their character and
a sympathetic study of the environ-
ment under which it has been developed.
In the matter of private engagements,
as servant, foreman, or boss, on the
ranch, in the mine, on the oil field, in
the factory, in the machine shop, they
have shown both honesty and loyalty,
where trusted ; but you must show that
you do trust them or they are sure to
prove doubt well founded. They have
been found over and again in these
troublous times entirely dependable by
many Americans who have been com-
pelled to leave their property in their
sole charge. My feeling is always that
if you give a square deal to the average
decent Mexican of this class he will not
fail you in a position of trust; such at
least has been the experience of many
foreigners in Mexico.
But they do not trust each other.
Among themselves there is little if any
reliability, because they lack the faith
in one another that they have in the
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 51
American, who they know by experience
keeps his word and pays his bills.
That is the crux of the matter; you
must keep faith with them especially
with the Indians. Many are the in-
stances where the servants and the em-
ployes of the master or the company, I
have saved property from the looting
soldiers.
An ex-Boer who had served his cause
with valour and distinction, told me at
his hacienda that his major-domo, in
whom he placed the utmost trust, was
yet not on an equal footing of trust
with his own family consisting of wife
and daughter, also employed in the
house. Each of the three had a key to
the family strong box, but none was
ever permitted to go to it without the
other two being present.
A boy of fourteen employed on an
American property near Victoria was
taken off with an automobile confis-
cated by Carranzistas. The roads
were heavy and the car stalled, where-
upon the soldiers, having neither me-
chanical knowledge nor patience,
abandoned it and continued their
journey, taking the youngster with
them. Next day, however, the lad
52 What's the Matter with Mexico?
escaped, hid in the bush, made his way
back to the stranded car when the
coast was clear, finally extricated it,
and returned to his company four days
later.
In Oaxaca an English mine super-
intendent pointed out an Indian he had
been sending alone every month for
several years with two thousand dollars
on a four day journey to the mines;
and, he added, that although the man
might, as others did, take a few cen-
tavos from a fellow worker, yet he had
always fulfilled the trust the company
reposed in him to the very last centavo.
A merchant in Mexico City, a
Frenchman with a large native trade,
told me that in eighteen years of busi-
ness he had not lost $,000. Mexicans
take a long time to pay, he said, but do
pay their bills.
If you stop to buy at one of the
many little street stands or of the
pedlar along the road, he, or more
likely she, appears to take an actual
interest in your getting your money's
worth, picking out the biggest, or the
best conditioned, or the most highly
decorated of her stock.
Public office or position in a semi-
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 53
public capacity, on the other hand, ap-
pears to be regarded not so much as
a trust as an opportunity.
I recall a meeting with the well-
educated and intelligent son of a dis-
tinguished Mexican who had given his
country long and valued service, being
responsible, among other similar tasks
under the Diaz administration, for the
erection of a very large and complete
group of public-service buildings.
Commenting on these, I referred espe-
cially to the superiority of their ap-
pointments and the thoroughness of
their equipment. " Ah," said the son,
" there was a chance ! Had I been
older at the time those buildings were
given my father to supervise, I would
have feathered the family nest, as my
father failed to do; but I was too
young and my father was too honest."
The train carrying refugees out of
Jalisco State to Manzanillo, stopped
just outside of Guadalajara, where it
was boarded by the Chief of Police of
that city, who in full uniform went
through the train making a thorough
collection of all the moneys the pas-
sengers had. Even Madero with his
education and his higher ideals could
54 What's the Matter with Mexico?
not restrain the hereditary instinct of
the man in power to milk the public
cow. At Saltillo in the State of Coa-
huila, where Carranza was governor
before he became revolutionist, I found
two inspectors on the trolley line, in
addition to the conductor for every
car; three men on the ticket job.
When I visited Zapata, his chief of
staff exhibited some recently coined
money, saying, with a considerable show
of pride, that we " at great sacrifice
have made silver pesos for our peo-
ple." The money in question had been
made out of the bullion Zapata had con-
fiscated from the Ortiz mine !
A German had a ranch in the San
Luis country and decided to put in
modern machinery in order to utilise
the first grade of his workmen, while
he kept also the old plant going for the
second grade men. He picked out the
best of his peons, all of whom were
being paid one peso a day ; these he
broke in on the new machinery and
gradually increased their wages until
finally they were getting two pesos and
a half. The strange new plant, the
learning, etc., kept the men interested,
and diligent, but with the novelty gone
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 55
and more than double the money com-
ing in than they had been used to re-
ceiving, they began to lay off for a few
days at a time. Places of amusement
were provided in an effort to hold them ;
a shop with articles at merely the cost
and freight price was opened that they
might spend their money where they
would not be robbed, and everything
done to keep them happy ; for they were
desirable workmen, and the employer
was a widely known friend of the Mex-
ican, whom he understood and encour-
aged to better things. Finally, how-
ever, these men began to strike; then
came trouble, another strike, and at
last they quit. After loafing around
until their money was exhausted, they
went to work on an adjoining hacienda
for seventy-five centavos a day!
They are quick to take offence, to
fly into ungovernable passion, and to
violent action. Yet generally they are
to be handled if you go at it the right
way, despite the untoward experience
of the San Luis haciendado. You
must see their point of view, generally
very difficult to find, be patient, gentle,
but firm when there is need. You
must never bluff, or permit yourself
56 What's the Matter with Mexico?
to be bluffed; above all you must never
employ empty threats, otherwise both
their respect and your control are
gone. In a word you must consider
their mental calibre and their under
development. They are prone to riot,
but such breaks can usually be checked
if you are on the ground at the very
start and to know the Christian
names of some of them is most helpful
on such an occasion.
A mine manager in the Santa Eulalia
district had an experience very much
in point. The mine was shut down for
the greater part but the company kept
open all the time one or another of its
extensions, using alternately different
gangs that all in camp might get a
little work. It was money out of
pocket for the company of course, but
it was giving their men enough to keep
body and soul together while their com-
patriots went on wrecking the country.
For several days the men had been
gathering in loud talking little groups
during noon hour and generally show-
ing the sullen symptoms which presage
a demonstration. Some of the consti-
tutionalist recruiting agents had also
recently visited the section with their
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 57
highly coloured stories of the " extra 5>
(loot) to be made in army service, and
the poison apparently had begun to
work.
At this inauspicious moment it hap-
pened that the local jefe embargoed the
ore tramway connecting with the rail-
road, for one of the thousand and one
untenable excuses local jefes are ever
in these days creating as an effective
first aid to the extraction of the for-
eigner peso. As this cut off means of
delivery to the mill the manager shut
down the gang on the shaft hoist.
This was the opportunity of the mal-
contents and the announcement was a
signal for general disturbance on the
property. Demands were made not
only that the hoist be started but every
extension opened, and all the men be
set to work. It looked like a riot, but
the manager had lived twenty years in
Mexico and knew his people. He
called a meeting and after a short gen-
eral talk on the situation finished by
saying : " This trouble is yours as
well as ours ; you and I are in the same
boat. We want to help each other to
live and we can't because your jefe
won't let us. Now I want you to help
58 What's the Matter with Mexico?
me, so that I can help you. I want
you Juan, and you Miguel, and you
Jose to come with me as representing
these miners here, to the jefe and ask
him to give us all a chance to do what
we want to do."
That was the end of the riot ; the sop
to their vanity in the selection of sev-
eral of their own number - so favour-
ably regarded as to be called by their
Christian names was the counter
irritant to the Villa recruiting agent.
The jefe was visited, made the cus-
tomary impassioned speech to the men
of his devotion to their interests and to
the revolutionary cause, received one
hundred pesos from the manager " on
the quiet," and the camp settled again
to its revolutionary times jog, to wait
for the opening of the main line and a
chance to do something towards paying
expenses.
Normally the Indian, as distin-
guished from the peiado of the mixed
blood, is an even dispositipned,
credulous, hospitable, philosopher, ab-
solutely without self-consciousness. A
soldier carrying his baby on his back
and his rifle on his arm, his woman fol-
lowing, was no uncommon sight in
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 59
Mexico when Zapata had control of
the City; and time after time have I
had one of these approach with hat off
and ask for a few centavos for food
this Indian with his rifle in hand and
his body hung about with belts of
cartridges, who had the power to walk
into any shop and help himself as the
constitutionalist soldiers of the mixed
blood had done before him.
In any city in Mexico you may see
the Indian in rags and holes moving
among the best dressed without slight-
est thought of any difference between
their clothes and his ; he goes every-
where unembarrassed. He accepts
death, the loss of money, the smallpox,
as a visitation for occult reasons to
him unfathomable.
As illustrating how cheaply he holds
life, Alfred B. Mason, one time rail-
road engineer engaged in the Tehuan-
tepee country, tells a story out of his
own experience. Mr. Mason was sit-
ting in his car at the end of the track
when he saw three rurales come riding
out of the jungle, each leading a bound
peon at the end of a rope, with a
sobbing woman following on behind.
Asking the trouble the explanation was
60 What's the Matter with Mexico?
made to him that, " one peon " whom
we will call A " had quarrelled with
B about the woman. So A hired C to
kill B, paying him his price, a whole
peso, fifty cents in our money (at that
time) in advance. C did not know B
by sight. So C hired D for a quarter
of the peso to point out B. This done
C knifed B. The rurales had gathered
in A, C, and D, and the woman in the
case."
As he is reckless of his own life so
he is wanton in the destruction of other
life when a latent cupidity is developed
or his hatred engendered. He is more
unmoral than immoral, more uncivilised
than either. He is ready to serve, or
to build or to destroy, according to the
temper of those that lead him.
The excuses made by the constitu-
tionalist leaders for the promiscuous
killing of noncombatants, and the
fiendish atrocities visited upon the cap-
tured towns, that their soldiers " got
out of hand," are discredited by the
character of the Mexican, who is in
truth the most easily influenced and
easiest guided man in all the Americas.
It's the leaders, from the top down
through all the long list of looting and
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 61
butchering generals, that are respon-
sible for Mexico's outrages and must be
held so before the world. These are the
generals that declaim so earnestly about
the " foul foreign hand " that has
" robbed our poor people," and who
are stealing from them with both hands
at this very hour of my writing. From
the mixed class come these officers
not the self-respecting well established
middle class that class which fur-
nishes also the most offensive, most
deceitful, and untrustworthy creature
on earth. These are the trouble
makers; the men who hunt in packs
like coyotes ; the revolver carrying
braggarts of the towns, who bully the
" submerged " of their countrymen for
whose " uplift " they are reported to
be so concerned.
In a Chihuahua restaurant I sat on
a stool at the counter next to an officer
who pulled his gun on the waiter be-
cause the latter was slow bringing the
coffee. At Puebla before a saloon full
I saw an officer force at gun point the
bartender to deliver him champagne
without pay. On a train I saw an un-
armed servitor shot by his officer-
master for not getting some bottles of
62 What's the Matte i mill Mexico?
beer at a station where we had stopped.
The revolution has raised to unac-
customed importance and authority all
kinds of low born, ignorant men who
naturally do not know how to use their
new power and make it the medium of
domineering over their men and of vain-
glorious display in their little world.
At Rodriguez I came into personal
contact with one such officer who was
entraining his men for Monterrey.
The summer before he had driven the
threshing machine on a large ranch
some fifty miles to the north. Now as
I beheld him he was a full fledged colonel
with about two hundred and fifty men
ununiformed and variously armed.
But the colonel was uniformed for the
entire outfit. He wore the usual
steeple crown hat heavily laden with
silver trimming around band and brim ;
silver braiding full two inches wide ran
the length of his trouser seams and
around the collar and cuffs of his
flannel shirt. His saddle and bridle
were without ornament he probably
hadn't yet caught any one owning
better and he was mounted on a
scrawny little horse which he continu-
ously prodded with enormous spurs to
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 63
make it simulate the spirit the poor
beast obviously lacked; he carried a
rifle, a pearl-handled revolver, and a
dagger.
For no visible purpose except to ex-
hibit himself, he kept riding up and
down and around and over and through
his men and everything and evervbodv
that happened to be within or near the
only approach to the train which he
had exempted for a show ring. He ap-
peared to find greatest joy in swinging
his horse into a group of onlookers and
scattering them in consternation.
I had put down my blanket and
saddle bags somewhat apart from the
field of his cavorting, at the end of the
troopers. I had shown no interest in
his performance and perhaps that
piqued the colonel, for on a sudden he
came rushing and buck- jumping his
much overworked nag across my blan-
ket where, a few moments before, I had
been half reclining and smoking. He
seemed much pleased with the exploit,
as did all the native spectators, so I
returned to my blanket to dispute an-
other sally, which however he did not
make although he circled around me a
number of times.
64 What's the Matter with Mexico?
The incident is so typical of the
simple, vain nature of this new crop of
generals and others in authority under
the new order of things, that I have
been tempted to recite the otherwise
foolish little story.
The Mexican dearly loves a " demon-
stration " ; it matters not if he has
personal ground or impulse, or even if
'cause be entirely wanting; he simply
wants to do something to parade, to
caper, to yell.
During a patriotic demonstration in
Guadalajara a newsboy ran alongside
the automobile of an English friend of
mine, crying, " Mueran los gringos "
(Kill the gringos). " Why do you say
that? " called the Englishman, who was
a patron of the young man and knew
him well. " Oh, just for the yelling,"
shouted back the lad as he went on up
the street indulging in the popular and
national pastime. In this engaging
game of " showing off " the automobile
is a wonderful new instrument ; it has
speed and noise, and the half breed
adores both. Particularly he enjoys
the horn and presses the button on
smallest excuse that the lowly pedes-
trian may gaze enviously upon him as
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 65
he speeds furiously past, mufflers wide
open just like a certain " new " type
in our own country. But of all demon-
strations, the Mexican is at his best
on horseback. He loves to make his
mount prance and rear for the admira-
tion of beholders, or, racing wildly
through a crowded street, to pull up ;
short before the shrinking, terror-
stricken women at the crossing. ^ ?
As a whole he is not a disturber of j
the peace, and the tranquillity of
Mexico City during the interval be- .
tween the going of the Carranzistas and
the coming of the Zapatistas in No-
vember, 1914, is an eloquent tribute to
their generally peaceful disposition.
Obregon and Blanco had been detailed
to hold the city while the Carranzistas
were rejoining their First Chief who
had led the advance in the retreat be-
fore Villa. Both Obregon and Blanco
had warned the city of the ravages sure
to be committed upon the success of
Zapata in the sporadic fighting which
^as at that time within hearing. And,
having issued fervid manifestos of devo-
tion to their protection and loyalty to
the cause of the people, those valiant
generals, Obregon first, Blanco follow-
66 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ing, deserted the city, leaving it, as
they had said and no. doubt believed,
to the looting of the Zapatistas.
During this interval while the city
was without even its police, who had
been taken away by the considerate
Obregon and Blanco, another American
and I wandered all over that quarter
where the very poor and the pelados
and the turbulent element lives, without
having the smallest personal annoyance
and without seeing any indication of
disturbance. There was literally noth-
ing to prevent riot or looting, the City
was at the mercy of its worst element,
as Obregon and Blanco intended it
should be for they both returned
hatred for the City which held them in
contempt yet there was at no time
sign of disquiet. To my mind that
constitutes a highly credible record for I
a city of five hundred thousand, and
sufficiently answers the excuse of the
Constitutionalist generals that they
" could not control " their men. I re-
peat what I have already said: the
Mexican people are the easiest led and
the easiest controlled of any people on
this continent.
And there is no more fitting place
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 67
than here to say, that in all my wan-
derings over the face of the earth I
have j^et to find a land where a smile
and a courteous word gets you so far
as it does in Mexico ; among el pueblo,
the great undeveloped mass of Mexico's
fifteen millions, mind you, not among
the politicians who fatten upon their
ready credulity, or among the orators
and " patriots " that hypnotise official
Washington, or among the underbred
and lawless leaders of the revolution.
During seven months' knocking about
the country in revolution, in all my de-
liberate seeking out of the low and
crowded sections of the cities, I was not
once jostled ; I never had any one bump
into me even on Avenida de San Fran-
cisco with its slowly moving crowd of
idlers; I never had any one tread on
my feet in the unbelievably crammed
and unsteadily running railway cars;
among the pelados I always found po-
liteness it may not have been as deep
as the heart but was at least agreeable
and suggestive. Of course I am re-
ferring to where and when revolutionist
bands or the bandits were not operat-
ing. The fortunes of war bring chance
of a hold-up if you are riding across
68 What's the Matter with Mexico?
country on a good horse any old nag
is a good horse these days or of
robbery if you leave yourself open to
it in town or out. But at any rate, a
smile and " con su permiso " (with your
permission) got me past all ordinary
obstacles ; even through three sets of
sentries that guarded the house and its
passageways where Villa and Zapata
had their first eventful meeting at
Xochimilco.
The drudging, trustworthy cargador
all but staggering under his load; the
labourer crossing the walk with un-
wieldy plank atop his head; the criada
sweeping down the steps ; the conductor
of the trolley ; the public cochero
all, every last one of them, prefaces his
approach with " con su permiso."
The elevator boy in the office building
comes back to the fourtK floor which
you have passed unheeding, and, when
you thank him, immediately responds
with " por nada, seilor " (for nothing,
sir) ; the boatman soliciting your pat-
ronage which you withhold, says,
" gracias " and " adios," the salute
friendly.
An old man, unkempt, dirty, and in
rags, sat in a doorway trying to roll
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 69
a cigarette of a bit of newspaper. I
stooped and handed him the remainder
of a package from my pocket; and his
acknowledgment was courtly, no less.
Nowhere does the soft, kind, compre-
hending word turn wrath as it does in
Mexico among these docile, polite, and
very readily swayed grown-up children
for that's what they are. You must
know them through long association, if
you would manage them, you must be
sympathetic, you must like them as
you will grow to do ; you must under-
stand their natures and their point of
view; consider their irresponsibility,
their untrained condition, and know
their strange inconsistency.
For these people who are so kind to
their children, so courteous to friend
and stranger, who love flowers and
music, are of the same class that stood
around the burning bodies of the inno-
cent victims of the Decena Tragica in
February, 1913, laughing uproariously
at the contortions of arms and legs as
they twitched under the stimulation of
the flames ; they are of the class from
whom came the soldiers that looted the
churches at Monterrey, wearing in
their sombreros the picture of the
70 What's the Matter with Mexico?
sacred Guadalupe shrine while they
burned the altars and its effigies ; of
the same soldiers that under Emilio
Madero at Torreon tied to horses and
tore asunder literally limb by limb the
wretched Chinamen who dared to resist
the looting of their houses. These are
the same that go into raptures over pet
dogs and let others feed them.
Yet these, the Indians, the illiterate
mixed class, particularly the Indians,
are the most dependable people in
Mexico. From these come the loyal
servants, the trustworthy foremen, the
sincere friends; from these have come
the strongest men Mexico has produced
Alvarez, Juarez, Diaz ; and of this
great trio, Juarez was a full and Diaz
a half blood Indian.
I must sound my praise too of the
women of these people patient, en-
during, devoted ; they nurse Mexico,
they till Mexico, they feed Mexico, and
God only knows the depths of the
agony they are suffering for Mexico
because of the fiendish lawlessness of
their half savage men whom their own
country cannot and their big northern
brother will not restrain. They are
the commissariat of the army, following
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 71
the soldiers with fortitude and doing
their arduous duties efficiently, untir-
ingly ; the food scouts, cooks, and wash-
erwomen ; the first and the last on the
camping job; and on the road the least
comfortably provided for, either pur-
suing their vocations on top the box
car, or resting on platforms fastened
to the iron truss rods under the car.
It was the criadas house maids
that braved the street fusillade to bring
food to the home during those tragic
ten days while Huerta and Felix Diaz
shot up the City of Mexico ; and of the
several thousand innocent citizens
killed through their perfidious compact,
women furnished the greater pro-
portion.
And she gets small acknowledgment
from her men. I recall an incident
somewhat illustrative of masculine
Mexican attitude generally. At Tlaca-
lula on the way to Mitla I watched a
middle aged man help his companion,
a tottering white haired old woman, off
the train. From her hands and arms
he took her many bundles as she es-
sayed the steps a "moral" (grass
woven bag) filled to the very top, a
pottery jug, a roll of cloth, a paper
72 What's the Matter with Mexico?
wrapped parcel. When she was firmly
on the ground, he handed them all back
I to her; and then they two, she thus
heavily laden, he with only his cane,
walked down the platform and disap-
peared around the corner into a
waiting coach, I hope.
From Tecalco to Mexico City, one
hundred miles or more, two sisters
journeyed with a baby and a burro
which they rode turn and turn about,
to carry a much needed document to
their feeble old father who earlier, while
the train yet ran, had gone to the City
hoping to free himself from some con-
fiscatory measure of the Carranzistas.
The paper delivered, one sister, the
younger, and the burro remained with
the father; the other with her baby
walked back to keep her mother com-
pany in the disrupted home.
I take my hat off to these women of
" Mexico; they will be the salvation of
that distracted land; meanwhile, like
their English, French, and Belgian sis-
ters in anguish, they are the spirit be-
hind the best in their men.
Between el pueblo, and the small well
born and educated classes, there are
the orators, the politicians, the social-
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 73
ists, and the soldiers of fortune, a class
of parvenus risen by chance and not by
merit, " ignorant and full of preten-
sions," as Mme. de la Barca, who knew
them so well, says in her very interest-
ing memoirs. It is futile to argue with
a Mexican of this class, vain, boast-
ful, obstinate and incompetent; he has
all the advantage of you at the very
start, for he does not restrict himself to
facts. How he proceeds in national
matters has been thoroughly shown by
the patriots now occupying our atten-
tion in Mexico, but perhaps an example
of how Huerta sought to work up pub-
lic opinion against America offers a
good and typical illustration of the
methods commonly employed as quite
ethical.
This unscrupulous traitor whose
short reign was one of graft and terror,
and whom the American Administra-
tion wisely did not recognise, sent tele-
grams throughout Mexico, after the
landing at Veracruz, saying that
the Naval School Cadets had sunk the
United States battleship Louisiana f
that the federal troops had captured
El Paso, Brownsville, and San Antonio ;
that the American soldiers at Vera-
74? What's the Matter with Mexico?
cruz were outraging and slaughtering
Mexican women and carrying babies
around town on the points of their
bayonets. This was all published
widely in the Mexican newspapers, and
the people believed it; just as they be-
lieved that the United States troops
left Veracruz in November, 1914, be-
cause they had been ordered out by
Carranza, whose manifesto, reeking
with hot " patriotism " and high flown
sentiment, " demanding the with-
drawal " of the American soldiers, had
been filling the native newspapers and
the agitators' mouths throughout the
country. And the same experience
with the same result was repeated in
1916 when the troops were withdrawn
in Chihuahua State.
And thus is " public opinion " fash-
ioned in Mexico.
On the night of the day President
Wilson withdrew the American troops
from Veracruz and thereby delivered
Mexico and her tortured people over
to anarchy, I stood with a crowd of
natives listening to Obregon inveighing
against the Americans and extolling the
Carranzista officers who had done
little else since they had come to Mex-
The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 75
ico City but to prey upon its inhabi-
tants. I did not hear him utter a
single appreciative word of what
America had done for the constitution-
alists ; I never heard while I was in
Mexico, one officer, except Villa,
acknowledge that the United States had
helped them to get rid of Huerta or
helped them at all, or express any
thankfulness for any of the very ma-
terial aid the Administration has given
them first and last. During all the
time the Carranzista brand of consti-
tutionalists was in Mexico Gity during
1914 it was permissible to raise the
American flag only over the Brazilian
Embassy where United States official
business was cared for.
THE MAN AND THE JOB
DIAZ MADERO
THIS was the country steeped in
anarchy and this the people
prone to revolt over whom Diaz became
president in IS^Qj, a people that had
been fighting among themselves for
leadership, with but a few years' respite
under Juarez another strong man
for fifty years. Both people and
country were exhausted; the nation
was bankrupt, industry slept, the mail
travelled by coach, and the land
swarmed with bandits.
Diaz sought to build, to bring peace
and the plenty which he thought Mex-
ico capable of producing.
With the history of his country writ
deep in his heart and an understanding
of his people consistent and profound,
he knew that if Mexico was to be de-
veloped, the skill, the energy, the money
for the unfolding of her natural re-
sources and the founding and the shap-
76
The Man and the Job 77
ing of her industrial potentialities must
come from outside ; and his thought
turned naturally to a close commercial
and financial relationship with his en-
terprising and powerful rich neighbour
to the north. But before he could
hope to enlist foreign genius and at-
tract foreign capital he realised that
he must establish order in his disorderly
country and respect for property
rights among his lawless people.
And well Diaz knew the full measure
of the tremendous undertaking which
confronted him. Born 1830 under the
treachery which ruined the patriotic
efforts of Guerrero and brought death
to that " Great Commoner of Mexico,"
his youth passed amidst the vivid scenes
of that distracting period when until
the coming of Alvarez, cuartelazo fol-
lowed fast upon cuartelazo, he came to
his task imbued with the spirit to make
his country live, and aware of the in-
stability of his people and their unpre-
paredness for self-government.
To fit them to their constitution, to
lift them to a comprehension of demo-
cratic principles, Diaz believed could be
accomplished only through a breath-
ing spell during which they might be
78 What's tlie Matter with Mexico?
educated and till their land; by the
subordination of the local political
leaders to the national government ; and
by the suppression of robbery and mur-
der. " Peace was necessary, even an
enforced peace, that the nation might
have the time to think and work."
And it was the work of a giant ; a giant
of resolute purpose and a firm hand.
He realised that if he was to make
a nation of his people Mexico must
learn to work and to pay her debts.
So he began by penalising robbery with
death, he kept his telegraph lines open
by executing every foreman who failed
to apprehend those that cut the lines
in his district, and he suppressed insur-
rection swiftly and mercilessly. " The
blood that was shed was bad blood ; the
blood saved was good blood," as he
once expressed it in a frank review of
the early days of his rule. Under this
Draconian code, applied promptly and
widely, grew order where had been
chaos, peace where had been unceasing
strife, safety where insecurity had
reigned ; and Mexico entered upon her
first era of real tranquillity. He
cleared the border of its bandits, and
kept it cleared, for his experience with
The Man and the Job 79
his neighbour had taught him the
United States Administration of that
day wquld not stand idly recording the
outrage of its citizens, and the desire
for its help and the respect for its just
might which had urged him to put his
country in order impelled him to keep
it so.
And then the Americans came; to
develop Mexico's resources, to give the
natives new lessons in wage scale,
strange experiences in the human rela-
tions of co-workers, and Mexico her
first taste of prosperity.
With Diaz began serious economic
development ; the regulation of the
taxes, the placing of the Government
on a gold basis, the establishment of a
banking system separating the banks
of issue from the banks of loan and
promotion and an interest rate of
six instead of twelve per cent. To his
own and to the foreigners that came in
response to his invitation to build, to
invest and to work, he showed a liberal
spirit, but in general to no greater ex-
tent than has been the custom in every
new country seeking aid in its upbuild-
ing, and not nearly so much as we have
seen over our own country in railroad,
80 What's the Matter with Mexico?
irrigation, and manufacturing projects
of state and private enterprise.
Everywhere public improvement went
forward; streets were paved, hospitals
and roads were built, schools estab-
lished, parks laid out. And hand in
hand with this splurge of contract let-
ting and new building, went the favour-
itism, the graft which we see every day
in our own cities. It was not in the
work done by foreigners for the na-
tional Government where money was
wasted through corruption, but in the
deals between the Cientifico group and
the States.
It has been said truly that of the
millions of pesos which went into archi-
tectural monument, into sanitation,
into general municipal embellishment,
some might profitably have been di-
rected towards fitting his people more
rapidly for democratic government.
Also it is fair to record that these pesos
were not squeezed from the pockets of
the people ; they were the first fruits of
the industrial boom Diaz had started,
and the improvements were essential to
his plan of placing Mexico among the
enlightened.
As there had always been so during
The Man and the Job 81
the rule of Diaz there was a prepon-
derance of the well-to-do in the Gov-
ernment, because the wealthy class
contained the great majority of the
educated and because the first consti-
tution of Mexico proclaimed by More-
los in 1813, abolished personal taxa-
tion and placed the burden of govern-
ment support on this class alone.
Under this provision or tradition
grew up the Cientificos, a group at first
entirely advantageous to the develop-
ment of Mexico but which became
finally settled in special privilege and
for the last six or more years of the
Diaz regime, dominated official circles
and distributed government patronage
almost at will. At the last it became
more powerful than Diaz himself, this
political ring, no better and no worse
than the rings we know in Philadelphia
and New York, which in his declining
years enmeshed this shell of the giant
and, to the casual on-looker, clouded
the great work he had given his
country.
Whether through mis judgment or
for lack of vision, Diaz in our eyes,
perhaps after all less discerning in the
matter than his, failed in two vital re-
82 What's the Matter with Mexico?
spects ; first, in not putting his people
on the land in small holdings ; and sec-
ond, in not encouraging to wider ad- |
vance in democratic and political train-
ing his growing middle class that
class upon which rests the bulwark of
every republic. That he did not ex-
tend suffrage throughout the land was
because he believed the people en masse
were not qualified for the vote; that
the elections were in most instances pre-
arranged was part and parcel of mis-
take number two. Yet he told James
Creelman in 1908, and I believe truly,
that he had " waited patiently for the
day when the people of Mexico were
prepared to choose and change their
government at every election without
danger of armed revolution and with-
out injury to the national credit or in-
terference with national progress."
Two years later his people had returned
to their abandoned habits of looting
and killing!
Yet whatever mistakes Diaz may
have made, what he accomplished was so
big under odds so heavy as to out-
weigh the errors and render them neg-
ligible in the world's record of achieve-
ment. He put Mexico on the civilised
The Man and the Job 83
map, covered her land with telegraph
wires and rails, placed robbery almost
among the lost native arts, made travel
both comfortable and safe, built up
Mexico's foreign trade from thirty mil-
lion of pesos to over five hundred mil-
lion, and local industry from hand
looms to mills and foundries and fac-
tories. He found three thousand
schools in the whole land, he built ten
thousand others; he succeeded to an
empty treasury, he left one containing
sixty-three million pesos, when he re-
signed and quitted the country on May
25, 1911.
Criticism to the contrary notwith-
standing, Porfirio Diaz was a patriotic
and a gallant figure in Mexican history.
He sought to make a nation of his
unstable, untrained people, and dis-
rupted land. Despite the handicap of
the Cientificos and of his own indiffer-
ence to the bad land laws, he carried
Mexico to where it was just about to
take its place among the advanced and
enlightened nations of the world as he
was ambitious for it to be. And then
Madero came ; a symbol swept along on
an emotional wave loosed by his " free
land" slogan and the maddening sight
84 What's the Matter with Mexico? I
of the opulent, obscuring politicians
ringed around the President, too en-
grossed to descry the pit they were
digging for themselves, too selfish for
thought of the harm they did their
chief or the injury they gave their fel-
low citizens.
. It wasn't his strength that won Ma-
mero the revolution ; it was that the
(government disclosed its weakness.
When in an eleventh hour awakening
Diaz, manipulated by Limantour, and
beginning his eighth term of office, de-
clared in answer to the free land de-
mand of the Madero revolt, for no
re-election, " effective suffrage," and
the opening of public land for small
buyers, the people beheld a government
that had ruled with arbitrary sway now
suddenly resorting to conciliatory com-
promise; and they were swift to with-
draw both their fear and their respect.
By its failure to pull down the rag-tag
and bob-tail following of Madero, the
erstwhile " iron hand " revealed its im-
potence, and the Dictator before whom
all had bowed but a few days before,
now heard the howl in the streets
for his resignation by the emboldened
people. The fight had gone out of the
The Man and the Job 85
Diaz government; the army proved
straw, the cabinet inept, and the ring,
conscious of its guilt and that its day
of reckoning had come, confused and
hysterical.
Th people, faithful sons of atavism,
were playing true to form as in all their
previous history they had played when
the wholesome fear of might was re-
moved ; and with fear removed and long
curbed ambitions released, hell broke
loose.
By certain sympathisers of the fallen
government Madero was said to have
won because of the moral support of
the American Government and the
money aid of large American interests
" big Business." This was repeated
over and again to stir Mexicans to anti-
American feeling, and was accepted by
them as it was also by the great ma-
jority of newspapers and magazines
and others who based their superficial
knowledge on port rumours and cafe
gossip.
The revolt with which Madero's:
name is associated really was begun in
Chihuahua by Orozco as a protest
against a local jefe, and when Madero
returned from Texas where he had fled
86 What's the Matter with Mexico?
on his release from jail, the two joined
in the common cause of revolt against
Diaz. The money for their support
came neither from an oil company nor
any other foreign interest. It was a
short campaign and an inexpensive one,
and what Madero raised on his prop-
erty, Orozco secured through forced
loans, and the 700,000 pesos appropri-
ated by Gustavo Madero from the
funds of a railroad organised in Mex-
xico and financed in Paris, comprised
practically the entire amount. Were
the claim of such foreign help a fact,
the failure of the Madero government
to protect these interests would show
strange ingratitude. In truth one of
the early things he did after inaugura-
tion was to create an export tax on oil.
Madero had an idea, the idea shared
by every reputable citizen, that the
lowly of his people ought to have
greater opportunity, and that a coun-
try with eighty per cent, of its popula-
tion uneducated was out of harmony
with twentieth century civilisation. It
was a good if not a novel idea, but-
needed experience, knowledge, force, to
produce practical results.
He had the ideal, had honesty, had
The Man and the Job 87
the wish, but he entered upon his most
difficult office utterly unfitted by train-
ing or temperament, and surrounded
himself with advisers who were little
abler than he to meet the big questions
confronting him, and not always co-
operative. Unwise in his appoint-
ments, unversed in the political vagaries
of his confreres, harassed by criticism
and intrigue, he was a fated and a
despairing figure. He was unable to
exact compliance from his official fam-
ily with the benevolent plan he had is-
sued from San Luis Potosi; he failed
to cure the ills he had railed against ;
the elections in the States remained
about as usual, and " free land " de- \
veloped little further than to remain^
the party banner. Failure was fore-
ordained; the job was too big for him.
Diaz and Madero had one experience
in common the experience which Hi-
dalgo and Morelos and Guerrero and
Gomez Farias and Comonfort and Te-
jada, and other less conspicuous figures
in Mexican history also shared before
them viz. their followers in the dayl
of prosperity abandoned them in the*
hour of adversity.
When the Madero " idea " flamed
88 What's the Matter with Mexico?
into a conflagration which threatened
the Diaz regime, the men whom it had
brought to power, who had advantaged
themselves richly when the palsied
" iron hand " had lost its weight and
grip, the men who owed their very po-
litical existence to the Dictator scut-
tled like rats to escape, without a
thought of their president or their
country. When overwhelmed by State
problems beyond his ken, surrounded
by detractors, facing conspirators,
Madero turned for counsel and support
to the men with whom he had fought,
to the friends that had applauded and
caj oled him they turned theii backs.
The man who in 1910 had been hailed
as the " redeemer " of his people, who
had been elected in 1911 under the con-
stitution of the country by the " largest
(19,500) popular vote ever cast for a
president in the history of Mexico,' r
could not in February, 1913, muster
sufficient support from among all these
to hold the leadership of his army
/against so contemptible a coxcomb as
|Felix Diaz, or save the State or his life
-vfrom so ill-equipped and vicious a com-
pany as the senors Huerta-Mondragon-
Hodolfo Reyes, in those foul and tragic
The Man and the Job 89
days of betrayal, and citizen butchery
in February, 1913. The people that
had wildly acclaimed Madero on his en-
! nance into Mexico City, had hailed him
s " the people's friend," as the deliv-
rer from the " iron hand," and de-
glared him to have " freed all Mexico
from espionage and placed the Mexi-
cans on their honour," marched cheer-
ing through the streets of the same city
when the announcement came that Ma-
dero had been arrested by Huerta !
The press which Madero had freed,
criticised and caricatured him with
neither fairness nor judgment. His-
tory had repeated itself.
WHEN THE AMERICANS WENT TO
MEXICO
THE suppression of lawlessness in
Mexico was the signal for a for-
eign industrial invasion. Every now
and again a story of its mines and
ranches and farms had floated out be-
tween revolutions to friends at home
from some American who had ventured
into the country after our Civil War,
but continuous internal strife kept it an
unknown land to capital and labour.
First among those to respond to the
Diaz call, in 1879, for help to build up
his country, were the railroad men.
England had been the pioneer with the
'Veracruz-Mexico City line, begun in
1854, but not been opened until twenty
years later owing to continual disturb-
ance, and in 1878 this and another
short line to Queretaro, represented all
there were of railroads in Mexico's
eight hundred thousand square miles.
Quickly followed the miners, the
ranchers, the planters, and last, the ex-
90
When Americans Went to Mexico 91
plorers for oil, and along with these
went the traders and the bankers and
a host of managers, foremen, and clerks.
It is also true that here, as is the case
in the opening of every new field, espe-
cially railroad and mining field, there
followed in the wake of legitimate busi-
ness enterprise and venture, a class of
promoters, of commercial renegades,
hailing chiefly from America, that were
no credit to either their country or the
business world and who engaged in
many varieties of questionable under-
takings and were responsible for some
rather shady stories which came out of
the new country. It was a small class,
but an annoying and a discreditable
one, and almost the last of them were
cleaned out by consular action under
President Roosevelt.
I In every industry these railroaders
and miners and others of the same fine
pioneer type that had developed their
own great West, found crude methods
of work ; and everywhere the native la-
bourer living wretchedly, illy paid and
roughly, often brutally treated.
They replaced the human ore bucket
with modern American machinery, the
forked stick with the iron ploughshare
92 What's the Matter with Mexico?
and undertook the industrial education
of that vast peon class for whose ad-
vancement or material care no native
employer appeared to have given
thought.
Before the foreigners came these
workers received from the equivalent of
twenty-five cents down to a mere allow-
ance of corn for a day's work, whether
in the mines or in the field, and had no
fixed hours of labour ; they were being
paid before this present revolution,
from at least four to eight, and more
times that much. Now, in 1916, on the
railroads taken over by the Carranza
government, labourers have been put
back to where they were thirty years
(ago and are receiving four cents (gold)
for their day's work.
The men employed by the light and
power companies who now get one peso,
or rather got it in 1912, in the old days
received eighteen centavos ; the house
servants that worked for from two to
eight pesos a month now receive from
twenty-five to forty-five from the for-
eigner.
Everywhere the foreigner has raised
the wages and regulated the working
hours. And the Spanish and Mexican
When Americans Went to Mexico 93
ranch and farm and mine owners have
been compelled also to raise wages
to some extent, and do not like the
change.
A Mexican ranchero was paying his
men fifty centavos a day when an oil
company next door, so to say, opened
for business and paid its men one peso
fifty. The ranchero, Lopez by name,
endeavoured to get the men back, not
by raising their pay but by telling them
they were foreigners' slaves, that the
foreigners were going to take their
country away from them, and more of
the inflammatory talk common to this
type of half breed. Soon, after this
Lopez joined the constitutionalist
cause to " uplift the eighty per cent."
But his conduct towards his men on
that ranch showed his real concern for
their well being.
Another equally characteristic but
more pleasing instance is that of the
manager of a Monterrey brewery who,
just at starting, had a strike among
his men for thirty instead of the twen-
ty-five cents a day they had been given
by the former owner. In peace time
these men receive $1.50 and have since
the American took hold. And that is
94 What's the Matter with Mexico?
the story throughout Mexico where the
foreigner has gone into business.
I recall two ladies met in the Gov-
ernor's anteroom in Morelia who com-
plained that " the English ladies whose
husbands had come to make the sewers,
had paid servants so much that she
must now pay as much as twenty-
four reales ($.40) a month for a
cook."
The foreigner, having increased the
worker's wage so that better living be-
came a possibility, went on to teach
him how, and surrounded his attempts
with kindly thought and guidance.
There is not another field of labour in
the world where the lowly have had the
considerate and intelligent treatment as
is given in Mexico to this great help-
less labouring class by the English and
Americans. Schools for their children,
hospitals for their sick, baths, recrea-
tion centres for their entertainment,
sanitary homes for their families ;
water and gardens furnished, their
wages safeguarded against unscrupu-
lous agents, and the destroying pulque
habit combated. Such a paternalism is
scarcely to be believed unless witnessed
on the ground. Particularly the em-
When Americans Went to Mexico 95
ployers tried to get the men to save
their money, to make use of higher
wages in better living, better food, shel-
ter, and clothing for the family. The
effort has never been easy and not al-
ways successful, for the average Mex-
ican of this, class is prone to spend the
increase of money in extended idleness
rather than to better his living condi-
tions, and a process of education long
and arduous has been a necessary pre-
lude.
At the Santa Rosa mine near Sal-
tillo the company built small houses for
their men with a tillable quarter acre
patch of land around each for which
they pay the nominal sum of one peso
a month.
At Ebano, at a cost of $10,000, the
Huasteca Company erected a large and
handsome recreation building contain-
ing a hall with stage and piano where
entertainment is regularly provided, a
well filled and chosen library for the
more advanced, indoor games of many
kinds and teachers for those that wish
to improve themselves.
The Real del Monte Company, in or-
der to save its men from the avaricious
local store-keepers who were making the
96 What 9 s tlie Matter with Mexico?
most of the recent food shortage,
bought corn by the carload and sold it
to the workmen at cost.
At Tampico the Mexican Petroleum
Company during the famine period of
last winter, brought in beans by the
carload at a considerable expense and
distributed them among its people.
Pachuca is in the pulque district and
the miners are more or less accustomed
to get drunk every Saturday night and
spend all their money, except a small
portion given the wife for the week's
marketing on Sunday morning. This
amount which the wife providentially
exacts with much difficulty, is seldom if
ever enough, so that when the supplies
are exhausted it is the habit of the men
to borrow against their Saturday pay
check from the store and cantinas at a
ten per cent, interest fee for the ad-
vance.
In an effort to save him this need to
borrow and the consequent interest
charge as well as to help his family to
better, easier living, the Santa Ger-
trudis Company inaugurated a daily
pay day at considerably increased
bookkeeping, so that every one who de-
sired might get one peso of his wage
When Americans Went to Mexico 97
every day, the balance being held to the
usual week end pay day.
The manager of the El Oro Company
found that the " collectors " the sort
of head men that bring in applicants for
work were knocking down about one-
third on each man they furnished, it
being the long established custom to pay
over to the collector the wages of the
men he brought in. This the company
stopped by paying direct to the work-
men, who strangely enough for such
the contrary working of the Mexican
mind rebelled at first, but soon came
to see its purpose and value when they
got the entire amount of their wage.
Any innovation with the Mexican is apt
to draw his disapproval; and if the
leaders are loud enough in their objec-
tions even a riot may occur over the in-
auguration of something as much for
their own benefit as in this case.
I know another company in the Du-
rango district which, although shut
down and losing money every day,
keeps a physician on their property to
watch over the health of the families
of their former workmen who were
forced to join the army by pressure of
the local jefe and hunger, fighting be-
98 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ing the only job left in most of Mexico.
These are but incidents taken here
and there of the help given their work-
men by the " foul foreign hand." All
Mexico furnishes similar ones.
Formerly under Spanish and Mex-
ican employers the workmen were
obliged to patronise the company ti-
enda de raya or store, where the sup-
plies were doled to them at exorbitant
prices as part payment, and frequently
no cash was given at all or seldom.
Now the company store has been abol-
ished on all English and American
properties, or if, in remote sections it
exists as a convenience to the men, it has
no connection with the paymaster de-
partment and the men buy or not as
they please the same as at any other
shop except that here they get more
for their money.
Particular attention has always been
given also by the foreigners to the con-
duct of their foremen towards the Mex-
icans and Indians, especially the illit-
erate ones to see that they are not
roughly handled and no advantage
taken of their ignorance. They are
naturally suspicious and their treat-
ment by their own people was, and still
When Americans Went to Mexico 99
is, generally very severe. Pains are al-
ways taken in arranging their wages
and their contract work to see that the
men are satisfied and are given a good
return for their labour. If there are
any complaints they are patiently and
willingly listened to and their accounts
carefully gone over and explained.
When the American first went to
Mexico shoes were unknown among any
but the better classes. To-day in
backward towns, like Leon for exam-
ple, you hardly will find shoe shops,
Americans not having operated in or
around Leon and the wages being still
low and the standard of living very
much as it always has been. But
where the Americans and English are
engaged in development work you see
shoes, felt hats, overalls, and especially
children's clothing on sale in the native
stores. You never see children in what
could be called clothes in sections where
the foreigners have not been. You
never saw children in clothes at all any-
where before the foreigners came. You
do see them clothed now for the for-
eigner has paid the peon enough to feed
his family and dress them; and given
him the desire to do so. Before the
100 What's the Matter with Mexico?
} .. *"
foreigners came even tlje men hardly
were clothed for their pay* woulfl not
permit of it. I recall an oil painting
hanging in a club of Mexico City that
represents a scene in the Zocolo (plaza)
of the city of about 1830, in which
squatting peons and the aguadores arje~
shown with only a breech-clout.
When the Americans went to Mexico
there were practically but two classes
of people, the ruling class and the work-
ing or peon class. The peon was the
all-round labourer. In the saddle and
on the cattle ranch he was excellent, but
beyond this his knowledge extended
only to a crude kind of mining and
farming. When the mines and the
railroads and the other industries of
the foreigners began operation there
was, therefore, no local supply of help-
ers apart from this ordinary worker;
there was no skilled labour. Now there
are not half as many Americans em-
ployed in foreign enterprises as even
so recently as ten years ago. As fore-
men, shift bosses, underground or on
the surfaces, as carpenters, mechanics,
engineers afloat or ashore, clerks, they
are filling the posts and filling them well.
The master mechanics of many mines
When Americans IVerii TO Kesnto 101
are Mexicans,, and all the companies on
the rivers prefer the native crews, from
engineer to oiler, for their launches.
The Mexican makes a most efficient
mechanic and carpenter, and is espe-
cially clever at cabinet work. Thej r
are indeed naturally dexterous and
competent at anything with their hands,
as witnessed by their carving. The
shoe factories in Mexico now rely en-
tirely on native men and women.
The manager of a popular and cheap
watch company told me that when they
first started a branch factory in Mex-
ico they found to their astonishment
that' the initial timing of watches on
the assembling of its parts was nearly
fifty per cent, better by both men and
women than had been their experience
in either the United States or England,
indicating the greater care of the Mex-
ican and especially the delicacy of the
work he is capable of with his hands.
To build, to educate this class of na-
tive helpers required patient and expen-
sive training, for considering its aver-
age of return, Mexican labour is not
cheap ; operations can be carried on
more cheaply in America. But to de-
velop helpers out of the natives of the
th$ MqtUr with Mexico?
country as well as to develop its re-
sources was the plan of the American
pioneer. Not that his impulse was
charitable, but because the American
believes in a square deal and his busi-
ness habit and methods make for ef-
ficiency.
There is no doubt of the uplift given
to the inert labouring class by Amer-
ican and other foreigners always ex-
cepting the Spaniards, whom, in fact,
I never refer to as " foreigners."
From an illiterate, abject race of near-
slaves, American enterprise and fair
treatment have made them a people
with a considerable number that can op-
erate machinery, self-respecting, effi-
cient ; and until revolution and the
I. W. W. fell upon them happy.
The record of the American in Mex-
ico is one for his country to be proud
of. He has given the peon a chance ;
he has helped to build a middle class.
Above all he has created him indus-
trially; for apart from increasing the
wages of the lowest grade workman, he
has produced higher grades of work,
which before his coming were unknown
in Mexico, and fitted the native to it.
This is what Bryan calls " exploit-
Wlien Americans Went to Mexico 103
ing " the native. But the native knows
better. And the proof that he knows
the American in Mexico better than
Brj^an or official Washington, is, that
you never find him working for his own
people if he can get work from the
American.
Popular thought in America, based
on the fanciful sketches of Mexico
which have ruled in magazine and press,
pictures an El Dorado with Americans
roosting on the border like vultures
ready to swoop upon every industrial
tidbit uncovered. But Mexico was no
virgin El Dorado ; and Americans paid
full market value for what they got.
Take mines for instance. The pop-
ular conception is a treasury which the
Americans and English had but to en-
ter and pick up gold. The fact does
bear out the fiction. Mexico is not
the fabulous repository it is commonly
thought to be except in the matter of
quantity. For three hundred years
the Spaniards and the Mexicans took
the cream, which was very rich, and
they were glad, not to say relieved, to
sell to the Americans whom they urged
to come in and work. Americans
brought financial and scientific assist-
104< What's the Matter with Mexico?
ance to help operations which were
nearing a termination because the na-
tive holders had reached the limit of
their knowledge; and their advent was
a life saver to camps that had long lain
idle because the owners could not carry
them farther by their primitive meth-
ods on the low-grade ores remaining.
In a word, the Spaniards and Mexicans
had worked out the mines they sought
to dispose of.
The money and experience and
knowledge and better ore treatment the
Americans brought caused a revival of
operations, and a new lease of mining
life in Mexico. Large capital and
great skill were necessary in such ven-
tures because the property could riot
possibly be operated profitably on a
small scale, and the, resources finally de-
veloped by such means would have been
untouched if left in Mexican hands.
Investments in Mexican mines have
not been so remunerative on the whole
as investments in mines in the United
States for the reason that mines in
Mexico, nine times out of ten, are old
mines, whereas in the United States
they are new. New discoveries or new
districts in Mexico are rare. In
When Americans Went to Mexico 105
twenty years I know of only a few.
There are the old mines in Sinaloa
from which, in times past, the Mexi-
can owners have taken a large amount
of money, and which they now seek to
sell at very high prices. To work
these mines would require a very great
capital for the purpose of sinking new
shafts, providing better haulage and
ventilation in order to go deeper and
so make them pay through the quantity
of ore removed. Guanajuato is an ex-
ample of old mines practically dead
which were bought by Americans and
have been worked almost continuously
for ten years and have paid little profit.
The coal mines in Coahuila, a really
important and necessary industry for
Mexico, have been in operation for the
last fifteen years on an inferior coal
which had to compete with a much bet-
ter grade from the United States ; a
very large amount of money has been
spent in bettering their washing plants
and really very little profit on their out-
lay of capital has been made.
In a good many cases the old mines
purchased have done well, mainly be-
cause foreigners have brought better
methods of operation and capital to
106 What's the Matter with Mexico?
equip for deep work and for the treat-
ment of the difficult ore which the Span-
iards and the Mexicans could not
handle. In as many cases or more, in-
vestments in Mexico have not been good
and have been attended with a great
deal of delay before anything like profit-
able work resulted. If Americans had
not gone into Mexico, that country
would now be in much the same condi-
tion as Guatemala and all the Central
American republics.
Mexico needs to foster its mining in-
dustry very carefully. The business
has reached its zenith and unless new
discoveries are made and opened up,
Mexico's glory as a great mining land
will wane. And new discoveries are
not too likely ; the Spaniards were good
prospectors and explored the country
from end to end for mineral.
Some say the foreigners have " ex-
ploited " Mexico. Well, the mineral,
the guayule, the oil, were always there
and had the foreigners not come,
would have continued untouched for
probably another four hundred years.
It would seem as if " developed "
would be a more appropriate word to
employ.
When Americans Went to Mexico 107
The oil, for example, had always ex-
isted; for ages it had been known; the
Aztecs employed it for the floors of
their temples, but the Spaniard found
no use for it. And undeveloped that
marvellous reservoir of petroleum re-
mained while Mexico was buying pe-
troleum outside of its border until
the genius of Charles A. Canfield and
Edward L. Doheny unlocked it to the
world in the year 1900. But it took
courage and experience and more than
three million of dollars before success
came to reward the judgment and per-
severance of these pioneers.
So the building and the prosperity of
Mexico went on. The help which Diaz
had asked for had been given freely, and
in 1910 the foreign trade of Mexico in
consequence was over five hundred mil-
lion pesos starting from less than
one-tenth of that figure twenty
thousand miles of railroads had taken
the place of the two short lines ; one
billion of American and another half
billion of English money had been in-
vested in the country; and the foreign-
ers that had helped in the building
were, for the greater number, still in
residence the happy and prospering em-
108 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ployers of over two million improved
and contented natives.
Most of the manufacturing industry,
much of the planting, all of the electric
power and lighting and street paving,
all of the railroads, and all of modern
mining were developed by foreigners
and financed for the most part by for-
eigners. All the notable buildings in
the country not left by the Spaniards,
were designed and built by foreigners ;
and foreigners pay eighty per cent ..of
the internal taxes of Mexico.
/ In a word, Mexico's natural but dor-
mant resources have been quickened
into life and dollars by foreign enter-
prise and capital which have brought
great riches to the country and great
betterment to its people. In this in-
dustrial and human development the
American has taken a leading and an
honourable part. Let us glance at
some of the types of him that thus
" served humanity " practically and
their own country as advance trade
agents in Mexico.
Allen was a chemist in New York,
where returning soldiers from the Mex-
ican War had told him of the archaic
drug shops in Mexico City, and thus
When Americans Went to Mexico 109
opened his eyes to a new and likely busi-
ness field. He made the journey by
sailing boat and stage, and opened the
first adequate drug compounding house
in Mexico City before our Civil War.
His children were born in Mexico and
all he held dear were there. His busi-
ness success brought orders to Amer-
ican wholesalers who passed the pro-
ceeds on to the American producers of
drugs and appliances and medicines.
He extended American trade. His
work was and is of benefit to Mex-
ico.
Bates was a wet plate photographer.
His war time wagon took him to Mex-
ico long before the railways. Pho-
tography was for the rich at that time ;
he made it a possibility for the poor.
His simple portraits perpetuate the
memory of thousands of heads of Mex-
ican families. He prospered and
showed the way to better materials and
paraphernalia from the United
States. He extended our trade in
Latin America, and the supply house
he established still takes American
goods in great quantities to our Latin-
American friends. He and his kind by
their presence and industry turn orders
110 What's the Matter with Mexico?
away from Germany to the United
States.
Childs came with the railroad. He
was chainman in a gang of the first sur-
veyors. He learned to know and to
like the peon, as no Mexican can like
his inferior. He rose to high grade on
the railways. He and hundreds of his
kind kept the Mexican railways Amer-
icanised, and also Americanised the
English built roads. Every year they
turned millions of dollars of orders into
American shops and foundries and
rolling mills, which passed the millions
on to carpenters, upholsterers, lumber
jacks, mechanics, puddlers, and miners
all American. He and his kind serve
their country and extend their trade.
They have got " better acquainted," as
President Wilson has advised. They
have educated the Mexican along the
railway lines to do the work of Ameri-
cans. When they first came, in the
1880's, contractors were forced to
bring with them timekeepers and all
clerks needed, for there were no read-
ing or writing Mexicans for the work
at that time. When these American
railroad builders came the last time
they found all their required clerical
When Americans Went to Mexico 111
force on the ground, native. They
have served to educate, more, they have
trained the Mexican and so helped him
as well as the trade of their own coun-
try.
Dean was a Colorado prospector.
There are thousands of Deans. He
heard in the late '80's that Mexican
mining laws had at last been revised to
protect owners against confiscation
through chaotic and capricious taxa-
tion. He went mine hunting and found
that only the bonanzas were being
worked by the native owners. He took
a low grade Spanish rabbit-holed hill-
side and brought American machinery
down the railroad, over the trails, and,
by block and tackle, up and over the
hills and through the canyons. And
he made the abandoned mine pay.
Other Deans came, bringing Amer-
ican machinery and cables and tools.
All mines in the country saw the ad-
vantage of their appliances, and to-day
no other brand is being used over all
of Mexico. Dean and his kind did it.
Most of them lost their money, but the
trade they built up has enriched the
American producer, and his workers,
down to the man who mined the iron
112 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ore. And they paid the Mexican miner
four times more than his former Mex-
ican employer paid him, and treated
him a hundred fold better. Now-a-
days the Mexican miner will work only
for an American or English employer
if there is one in his district.
Eads was a lawyer. On a suit for a
client who sold office supplies, he went
to Mexico City. His suit dragged piti-
fully and he loafed around the Mexican
branch of his client. He became at-
tracted to the trade and dropped into
a chair permanently. He has sold fur-
niture, all American now, for twenty
years. His American made goods
have, by his presence and his personal-
ity, been so strongly pushed, that his
orders to American factories have ex-
ceeded ten million dollars. The fac-
tory has paid this out to its workers
for assembling and making ; and to lum-
bermen for the wood, who have passed
it on to their axmen and teamsters ; to
cloth mills, who have passed it on to
their spinners; and, through wholesal-
ers, ginmen, and planters, to the Amer-
icans who picked the cotton and sheared
the sheep.
Eads has paid the price of success as
When Americans Went to Mexico 113'
a salesman ; he has been accused of hav-
ing a " stand-in " ; but it is as certain
as the rain in August (Mexico) that
if he had not been on the ground to pick
up those ten millions of dollars orders,
the orders would have gone to German
or French or English factories, and
enriched European instead of American
workmen.
Fenn was a mechanic. The railways
brought him down. He set up a shop
for working iron and equipped it with
American machines. No other iron
working machinery is now used in Mex-
ico ; the American salesmen on the
ground see to that. Take them, and
Fenn, and his kind away and the ma-
chinery will come from elsewhere, and
this contribution to American export
and American workmen, and, through
the company, the shop, and the mine,
will go across the water. And Fenn
took the raw Indian, who has a strange
machine sense, and made him an iron-
master. As a result the Indian is fond
of Fenn and is educating his children
on the wages the Fenns pay him.
Green was a stockman in Texas. He
knew that in the livestock country of
Mexico milch cows are scarce, and
What's the Matter with Mexico?
brought a carload to Queretero where
he started a dairy. Cows are not bred
in Mexico, and he began the business,
since then extended, of the importation
of cows. He and other Americans have
furnished milk to the people free from
water, and clean. Their imports of
milch cows has sent hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars to farmers and ranch-
ers in the West and Middlewest.
Howe was a farmer. He took up a
small ranch near the Gulf Coast. His
Mexican neighbours hired their help;
he did his own work with American ma-
chinery. His neighbours saw the advan-
tage of the deep plough over the fork
of a tree, and began to buy American
agricultural machinery. The example
was given by Howe ; the American man-
ufacturer and workman profit. And
the Mexican farmer has the American
machinery habit, which he will hold as
long as the example lasts.
Ives drifted to Mexico as a plumber.
He is now known as the best in the busi-
ness. He boosts American plumbing
supplies against the English, French,
and German, and ^keeps them from a
clear field and the money spent for these
necessary house furnishings by having
When Americans Went to Mexico 115
live salesmen and enthusiastic boosters
on the ground.
Jones was a contractor who would
try anything in the construction line.
He could underbid his Mexican, Span-
ish, and English rivals because the peon
labourers followed him ; and the labour-
ers followed him because he treated
them right and worked them laughing.
He bought American shovels and picks
and showed his rivals the way to tool
economy. But for him they would
have continued to buy their tools in
England. He knew something better
than the two-wheel whole body dump
cart ; he brought down American four-
wheel under-dump wagons, and his com-
petitors had to do the same, and the re-
sult was increased trade for the Amer-
ican manufacturers, better treatment
for Mexican drivers and labourers gen-
erally not to speak of increased
work for American factories and wheel-
wrights.
Keep, knowing that the growing
American colony would buy American
groceries, began competition with the
Spanish tienda men on their own
ground. His groceries were all Amer-
ican. They were laid before Mexicans
116 What's the Matter with Mexico?
at American houses. And the American
canner has had an income from Mexico
to pass on to the tinsmith, the fruit
grower, the farmer, and the fisherman
of the United States. When Keep and
his many American grocer associates
leave Mexico, the Mexican trade will
go again to Spain and France.
Leach was a California oil man who
heard of asphalt exudes in Mexico. He
had men, and he had money. He
bought and leased his land, and then
began the most heartbreaking business
of them all, fighting jungle, mud, dis-
tance, and time. He risked every dol-
lar he had in the world, but he pro-
duced the first oil in Mexico and gave
the world a cheaper fuel and Mexico a
new source of wealth. He multiplied
the Mexican workers' wages by four,
and gave them schools and hospitals
and homes and comforts. His tools,
machinery, wagons, mules, traction-en-
gines, pumps, pipe, rails, locomotives,
and everything necessary in a business
that makes necessary the building of
whole towns and communities at the
company's expense, came from his own
country.
He and other oil men that followed
When Americans Went to Mexico 117
him have brought into Mexico thou-
sands of miles of American pipe, and
hundreds of acres of tank plates. Had
they not ventured from home and
risked their money, this enormous busi-
ness would have gone to the hard com-
peting German or the well-established
and confident Englishman.
The balance of the alphabet could be
filled out with others of that company
of advance agents who, invited by Diaz,
encouraged by the treaty which assures
them and their property full guarantees
of protection, went to Mexico until
their number swelled to probably fifty
thousand in 1910. There they risked
life, money; created industry, raised
their homes, reared their children, and
built up America's trade with Mexico
until her share was sixty per cent, of
the whole; which means that American
exports to Mexico were more than to
either China or the Philippines.
These are the men who have been
doing practical " uplift " work in Mex-
ico, and these the Americans, their
women, and their children whom the
Administration abandoned to a furious
half-civilised people in a tempest of an-
archy !
WHAT Is A CONCESSION?
AS " free land " is the loudly pro-
claimed panacea of the Mexican
orator-revolutionist for all the ills of
Mexico, so " big business " as the root
of all evil in Mexico is the apparition of
President Wilson, and of all the scrib-
bling theorists and professional paci-
fists that have cast a casual eye upon
that unhappy and but little understood
country.
Because Lord Cowdry had been un-
usually favoured in the way of an oil
exploring license by the Diaz Govern-
ment with a view to bring English com-
petitors into the oil field, and the Wa-
ters Pierce Company and Cowdry later
engaged in a price cutting war, it must
necessarily follow, according to Admin-
istration logic, that one or the other or
both of them were fomenting revolution
in their commercial rivalry, and hence
all other rival investors in Mexico must
be engaged in undermining the Govern-
ment in a general struggle for illegal
advantage.
118
What Is a Concession? 119
Woodrow Wilson affects to believe
and seeks to make the people of the
United States believe through his un-
just, polished phrases, that the business
ventures of Americans in Mexico are
predatory and baneful ; that they are
based on " concessions " scenting to
high heaven with fraudulent special
privilege wrung from the Mexican Gov-
ernment through corruption at the ex-
pense of the Mexican people.
Neither the President nor the editors
who take their cue from his slanderous
fluency appear to know what a conces-
sion is.
The word " concession " has been
used as a bait for speculators, and in
newspaper " write ups," by the smooth
promoters, of whom Mexico has had
more than its share, to imply especial,
personal, and exclusive favour. It is
not all or any one of these things in
the sense inferred. It is instead merely
a national license to do business with-
out the handicap of local extortion.
Any and every government contract
is a concession. A contract to lay ;
sewers, to lay a pipe line, to sell mules,
to build a factory or a hospital or a
school, to buy timber tracts on the pub-
120 What's the Matter with Mexico?
lie domain, to explore a given section
for mineral or water, to supply beef
or coal or oil to any public institution,
is called a concession in Mexico. In
a word, wherever you wish to be free
from petty graft, you seek a conces-
sion. There once was a form of sur-
veying concession where a block of land
was given in return for the surveying
and plotting of certain great stretches,
of unmapped and literally untravelled
government land, but that man paid
dearly for his land. George Washing-
ion acquired much land in Virginia by
:i similar form of concession.
There are no concessions in Mexico
granted to Americans that can compare
in generosity or objectionable features
with the franchises and grants our own
country gave the railways from the
Mississippi to the Pacific. In the sense
of monopolistic privilege or govern-
ment subsidy, concessions do not exist
in Mexico for Americans or American
companies.
The most usual form of Federal
" concession " is the contract for the
Establishment of New Industries. On
showing that you are opening a new
industry you can make a contract with
What Is a Concession?
the national Government, in which un-
der bond you bind yourself to the fol-
lowing, among many burdensome obli-
gations.
1. To develop your project.
2. To invest in its development an
agreed upon minimum of money.
3. To render annual reports cover-
ing the innermost history of the busi-
ness.
4. To allow any teacher to bring his
pupils to such schools as you establish
on your property for your own em-
ployes at your own expense.
5. Not to transfer the concession
without the consent of the Government.
In return the Government binds it-
self:
1. To allow you to enter upon the
development of your project.
2. To allow you free importation of
the machinery and supplies not pro-
duced in Mexico, for the establishment
of the business but not for replace-
ments, over a period of ten years.
3. Not to levy any special taxes on
your enterprise for a ten year period.
Anybody may compete with you.
There is not the slightest vestige of ft
monopoly. The concession only guar-4
What's the Matter with Mexico?
antees against robbery by taxation.
It " guarantees," but it does not in-
variably protect. I know of several le-
gitimate foreign enterprises holding
concessions that were taxed out of bus-
iness by the connivance of state and
local officials ; and the list is long of
those not holding concessions that have
been obliged to close their doors be-
cause of the constant plucking to which
they were submitted.
Then there is also the local conces-
sion. For example, the American
Smelting and Refining Company wants
to put up a smelting plant at either
San Luis Potosi or Aguas Calientes.
In its desire to get the business and the
increase of population, and the free
school and hospital that it knows the
Americans always build and in which
particular this company is notably gen-
erous, Aguas offers an exemption from
local taxes for, say, twenty years. And
the contract is made and the concession
granted.
Similar contracts all over America
are offered constantly by hustling
towns seeking to attract industries,
without those receiving the exemption
What Is a Concession? 123
agreements being called " sinister in-
terests."
However it is entirely true that all
of the large plantations, ranches, mines,
oil companies, every foreign developing
company, have given money at differ-
ent times during the last five years to
the assorted brands of " patriots " that
come seeking a " loan " ; given often
and to all factions just as little as they
could get off with. And they are still
giving it, in this present day of con-
stitutional government, to the various
representatives of the Carranza co-
horts who seek them out and demand it.
This is self protection, not foment-
ing revolution. There is no choice;
they must give in order to continue
business and retain their property.
And even giving has not always saved
them; the loss by the foreigners from
wanton destruction and robbery after
such " protection " reaches Jmhdreds of
thousands of dollars.
It is also true that despite these con-
tracts, these concessions, all foreign in-
terests have been compelled to pay offi-
cial tribute to whatever group held the
balance of national power in their
\
What's the Matter with Mexico?
immediate neighbourhood ; to each when
there was disputed authority or a shift-
ing command, or, as at present, to such
Carranza local jefe as may be on the
job. Tribute and graft. Americans
" exploiting Mexicans " !
There is no " big business " in Mex-
ico as big business is understood and
exists in America, in the sense of allied
or monopolistic combinations of like in-
terests. The biggest smelting interest
comes nearest to that classification, but
it has vigorous and unoppressed rivals.
There are no American owned indus-
trial monopolies in Mexico. The
Standard Oil Co., to whose fearsome
activities we see such frequent refer-
ence by these writing casuists, is really
a very small influence in the Mexican
oil producing world. There are indeed
few monopolies as such of any owner-
ship in Mexico, a dynamite factory,
a brewery in Sonora, some pearl fish-
eries on the California Gulf Coast, two
cigarette manufactures, one or two
others, the list is shorter than can be
found in a like area elsewhere and
not one of them is held by an Ameri-
can.
While the ownership and manage-
What Is a Concession? 125
ment of the mines and power and light
and oil enterprises are held to the ma-
jor extent by Americans and English,
Mexicans are on the directorate of
many of these and separately own com-
panies that are strong and progressive.
For example, Mexican control and own-
ership is represented by somewhat less
than one-third of the ninety operating
oil companies ; by eighteen out of forty-
eight listed industrial companies ; by
four out of sixteen electric light and
power companies, while they share the
management with the French and Eng-
lish of the eight chartered banks of
Mexico City.
There has of course been struggle
for monopoly in Mexico just as there
is and always has been in the United
States, and along the same lines ; but in
no instance has the rivalry resulted
harmfully to the labouring class, or
taken anything from the Mexicans that
belonged to them. On the contrary,
there is no company in Mexico which
has made more intelligent effort and
done more extensive or practical work
for the betterment of the peon, than the
American S. & R. Co. which in an effort
to control the smelting business has
126 What's the Matter with Mexico?
tried for long to buy out its competi-
tors.
Not only is the theory of the " in-
terests " in Mexico being fostered and
safeguarded by special and monopolis-
tic privilege, at fault, but the oft re-
peated statement that the business ven-
tures of foreigners are founded on con-
cessions is also untrue. Literally the
reverse is the fact. The overwhelming
number of foreign interests in Mexico
is represented by small independent en-
terprises merchants, miners, engi-
neers, planters, contractors, manufac-
turers who have no concession and
no connection with trusts or combines.
There are " crooks " and there is dis-
honest business in Mexico, of course, as
in every other spot on the globe,
Mexico is not Utopia, but these are
the exceptions. As a whole a cleaner,
more creditable body of men never rep-
resented business America anywhere.
No slander more venomous or injustice
more wanton could be uttered than the
statement that these men, who are in
fact the best friends in Mexico of the
" submerged 80 per cent.," have " ex-
ploited " the native.
WHEN CARRANZA CAME TO TOWN
WHEN Carranza entered Mexico
City in August, 1914, after de-
clining to receive the provisional pres-
ident's (Carbajal) emissary. General
Lauro Villar, (one of Madero's few of-
ficers to remain loyal), the Constitu-
tionalists had won their fight. The
purpose for which they had gone to
war defeat of Huerta, rescue of the
constitution had been attained.
Huerta's elimination had been effected
through the landing of United States
troops at Veracruz, "his officers had
laid down their arms, none opposed the
restoration of the constitution ; and the
people, worn and impoverished with
revolutionary ravages, were eager to
acknowledge and support this man who
proclaimed himself the champion of the
lowly, and an upholder of constitu-
tional government.
In the name of that constitution and
of legality and for the " uplift of the
submerged 80 per cent." he assumed
127
128 What's the Matter with Mexico?
control as First Chief of the Constitu-
tionalists ; following which he promptly
decreed a " pre-constitutional " period.
It became a government by manifesto.
A decree of the First Chief in charge of
the Executive Power had all the effect
of law. There was no other law.
Having set aside that historic and
dearly prized document for which so
much blood had been spilled, he allowed
his officers to take what they pleased.
And the officers did. No property was
safe. The street tramways English
owned and managed, were confiscated
and run by the First Chief and his
officers. The railroads, the express
companies, were seized and operated
for war revenue. Houses, automobiles,
horses, pianos, furniture, ornaments,
clothing, were taken over, used, sold, or
destroyed as suited the fancy of the
moment and the individual. The sub-
merged 80 per cent., as represented by
the Carranzista soldiery, slept on the
concrete floors of the patios of the lux-
urious houses occupied by their self-de-
nying officers, and waited on them; the
others of the submerged 80 per cent,
recognised in this, their advertised
" deliverance," only a new name for a
When Carranza Came to Town 129
game with which they had long been
familiar.
It was a shock to the credulous; it
led to the disagreements which finally
resulted in the unnecessary break with
Villa, who had won the strategic bat-
tles of the campaign, was valuable, and
could have been handled ; and it plunged
the land into an orgy of robbing, kill-
ing, and raping, such as it had never
been subjected to.
And to this miserable period el pu-
eblo, the lowly for whose " freedom and
happiness " it was inaugurated, contin-
ued as usual the prey of official thiev-
ery and the victims of soldier lust who
made no distinction so far as could be
seen between the " enemy " and these
people of the land, their own people,
innocent of political animus or active
hostile act.
As I rode from Tehuacan to Espe-
ranza to get around a cut in the rail-
road line made by a band of ex-federals
that had gone on the warpath again,
as the only resort left after their over-
tures for peace had been rejected, I
stopped to feed and rest my horse at
Tlacotepec. It was a little Indian vil-
lage which lay on the road of both the
130 What's the Matter with Mexico?
federals and the Carranza troops, and
had paid heavy toll within three days.
The federals had done little damage,
but the constitutionalists broke open
houses, helped themselves to whatever
caught their eye, and, disregarding the
earnest request of the villagers that
they be permitted to cut and bring feed
for the soldiers' horses, turned the ani-
mals into the corn fields and of course
caused irremediable damage. One man
told me he had hid his daughter all day
in a corn stack to keep her out of sight
of the soldiers who raped the women
wherever they could lay hands on them.
Another night and at another time in
riding across the San Luis Potosi line
into Coahuila I passed a small Mexican '
ranch where all the little belongings of
the owner's family had been burned and
the daughter carried off.
General Pablo Gonzales, who headed
Carranza's southward move before the
advance of Villa, stopped a time at
Pachuca and while he issued manifestos
breathing patriotism and love for his
people, his soldiers looted the native
shops and his officers preyed upon the
women.
A mother and her two daughters
When Carranza Came to Town 131
walking on the streets were accosted
by an officer and a demand made for
the elder daughter. The daughter ob-
jecting, the officer seized her arm and
when she and her mother set up an
alarm soldiers were called and all three
of the women taken into the quartel or
barracks, where they were held until
the next day.
In the same town under the same
Carranza general a native walking with
his wife was shot down in cold blood
by an officer who had tried to take his
wife from him and been resisted.
When Obregon entered Guadalajara
he harangued the people on the peace
and justice of the constitutionalist
caur.e, hanging over the school doors
that motto of Benito Juarez " re-
spect for the rights of others is peace."
With this sentiment securely nailed up
and a discourse on the devotion of his
generals to the interests of the people,
delivered, said generals proceeded to
give a practical exhibition of that re-
gard. They lodged the troops and the
horses in the public institutions, soiling
and damaging them; confiscated auto-
mobiles and horses, broke into houses,
taking and distributing the furniture
132 What's the Matter with Mexico?
and clothing among their followers,
j looted the shops ; and finally opened a
store for the sale of the booty thus
gathered.
At Texcoco a constitutionalist Colo-
nel seeing one day a girl on the street
that pleased his eye, sent his orderly
after and fetched her; for no father
can stand in the way of the officers'
lust without paying for it with his life,
and everywhere the poor people know
it. This girl was used by the officer
for a few days, and then turned over
to his orderly. In the same town an-
other officer saw a girl on a balcony
as he passed, but this girl had also seen
the officer and when his orderly came
later there had been an exodus from
town of the remaining women and girls
to the City of Mexico.
The Mexican part owner of a mining
property on the edge of Hidalgo had
his fifteen year old daughter taken off
and violated by the Constitutionalists,
after which he was charged with being
a Zapatista and thrown into jail!
These are but typical cases of what
happened wherever the " patriots "
roamed.
The beans and corn and cattle of
When Carranza Came to Town 133
the natives were as little exempt as their
women. One of the choice perquisites
which these patriotic generals gathered
at the expense of the people for whose'
" betterment we fight " was through
control of the sale of all cattle. Those
owning cattle were commanded under
penalty of confiscation to bring them to
the general in their section. The gen-
eral set his own price, less than could
be got in the open market, for hide and
meat, and sold to the army or elsewhere
at a handsome profit for himself.
There was no escape from this market
and no redress. No one else than he
was permitted to either buy or sell; if
any attempted it their stock was con-
fiscated and very likely they lost
other property also, for in these days
when the army is the law of the land,
to disobey an unjust or whimsical or-
der is to become a man marked, and fi-
nally to lose everything at the hands of
these brave sons of their country for
daring to oppose the will of the gen-
eral. Such a one was welcomed in ev-
ery section because he " legalised " dep-
redations.
General Gonzales, of Pachuca ill
fame and who later was made Com-
134 What's the Matter with Mexico?
mander of the Federal District, came
to be almost a cattle king. While he
was in the Tampico district he and his
staff confiscated stole cattle to
the amount of full $30,000 gold, from
the foreign companies in the neighbour-
hood. Theirs was often too a whole-
sale hide industry. At such times they
shot the cattle in the fields, stripped off
the hides and left the carcass on the
ground to rot. Meanwhile the poor of
Tampico went without meat !
In town the Governors also had a
look in on the looting. One of the most
active in this game was Coss of Puebla,
sometime mule driver in Coahuila, who
found no commercial till too humble to
rifle, and brooked no interference with-
out showing his displeasure. There
was, for example, a pawnbroker from
whom Coss -had taken jewelry, dia-
monds, to the amount of 100,000 pesos,
but who, through some influence or
other, got an order from the military
commander directing Coss to return
the loot. Most of it was given back,
but the Governor kept on that pawn-
broker's track until he at last ruined
him.
On a night while I was in Puebla the
When Carranza Came to Town 135
local University officers, and all the
students in the building at the time, had
been arrested because some of the Gov-
ernor's loot scouts in searching the
vaults of the cathedral for treasure,
had found bones no doubt the bones
of some faithful padre long since passed
to his rest and thus honoured by being
buried on the scene of his life's work.
Robbing the church " for the peo-
ple," by the way, is and has always been
the cry of the revolutionists, but no
profit of it has ever reached the peo-
ple, whose share on the contrary has
been loss of the hospitals and other
charitable institutions up-kept by the
church.
It was not necessary to have taken
part in any of the demonstrations of
any of the many factions, to come un-
der the displeasure of a constitutional
general. Reputable Mexican citizens
like Yanez, Irigoyen, and Alcala of Chi-
huahua were killed by Villa and the
Carranza generals, merely for belong-
ing to the educated class. Men who
had never taken any share in the poli-
tics of their country were hunted down,
robbed, and murdered. It was so ev-
erywhere.
136 What's the Matter mill Mexico?
The foreigners also paid their price
to the constitutionalists.
When Pablo Gonzales of the Carran-
zista forces left Mexico City at the
first coming of the Zapatistas, he re-
treated to Pachuca, where he settled
down to enjoy himself in that rich min-
ing town, having incidentally an-
nounced himself as the one real presi-
dent of the several then in the running.
First, there was of course need of
horses, so his soldiers confiscated all
they could find belonging to local Mex-
ican mining companies and then set out
to gather in some fine mules and other
stock belonging to an American out-
fit. This company however had several
native guards on duty who warned the
Gonzales thieves to keep away ; and in
the fight that ensued one of the looters
was killed as he rode off on a mule.
And the result? The guard just es-
caped being shot for defending his mas-
ter's property and the American com-
pany was fined or rather forced to
pay as tribute to Gonzales twenty-five
thousand pesos !
At another one of the three largest
mining towns in the country, the
English company had shut down its
When Carranza Came to Town 137
mill because it could not do business,
and had but. recently recovered some
fifty or more bars of bullion to which
Carranza had taken a fancy and relin-
quished with reluctance only under
pressure. The v company could get no
dependable guarantee that its future
product would not be again stolen,
could get no cars for shipping, so it
closed its plant. Nevertheless it con-
tinued to employ a considerable number
of men on half time just pottering
around on various odd jobs, solely for
the purpose of helping the men. The
jefe de armas, of whom every district
has one, and who is the local boss and
district military chief, and, together
with pulque, the greatest curse of the
country, began stirring up trouble ; he
threatened the superintendent, made
demands on the company, and finally
incited the men to strike.
Of course the men were prime for a
strike, being on half time and en-
tirely unappreciative of the company's
generous spirit in giving them work at
all when it was out of pocket so
they sent a committee to the Carranza
Governor, who came to camp and com-
manded the superintendent to put the
138 What's the Matter with Mexico?
men on full time and start the mill.
But the jefe was not satisfied; he con-
tinued to make himself extremely of-
fensive, running in and out of the mill
and going so far as to tell the superin-
tendent that if he discharged any man
he " would put him back at work and
make it d disagreeable for you."
In Oaxaca Carranza ordered an
American owned brewery which had
closed because it could not meet its ex-
penses on the depreciated money, to
open and to keep prices as formerly
notwithstanding to do so spelled ruin
for the owner.
At Puebla Governor Coss was issuing
decrees daily. Merchants were ordered
to sell their merchandise at the same
price as that asked in 1912 regardless
of the intervening losses, and the drop
in value of the peso. Merchants were
shipping through five different customs
houses while the duties levied on the
same class of exports varied from
three-quarters to ten centavos a kilo,
according to the grafting habit of the
Coss under chief running it.
In the City of Mexico the street rail-
way company fell a victim to an in-
spired strike. In the municipal office
When Carranza Came to Town 139
the company's .lawyer told the Gov-
ernor he had five hundred old employees
that wished to return to work and asked
police protection. " And I have one
thousand soldiers to prevent them re-
turning," was the Governor's pre-con-
stitutional reply.
I sat one night in the little Zaca-
tecas plaza at the side of the curiously
and ornately decorated old church, lis-
tening to the sorrowful tale of an
American miner who had been cleaned
out so completely he was actually living
with one of his peons, eating his corn
and beans until the railroad opened
and he could go north. He was fifty
years of age, had lived in Mexico
twenty years, knew the language, the
country, the people, and liked them all.
His small savings had been put into a
mining claim he had found and filed on.
That was his " stake," to be realised on
with the further opening of the coun-
try. Then came the revolution.
Now there was no work to be had
and the enormous increase in mine
taxes meant that he must forfeit his
property; he could not even reach,
much less work his mine. And so with
his stake lost he was eating the corn
140 What's the Matter with Mexico?
of his peon, looking for a chance to
beat his way to the border and what
do then, a man of fifty with the last half
of his life spent in the country from
which he was a fugitive!
An Englishman .who had his every
dollar in a mine and had been doing
very well on his shipments to the
smelter, told me he was, as I knew to
be true, selling cigarettes around the
town in order to get enough money to
pay for his meals. And meantime he
had over twenty thousand dollars'
worth of ore which had been made ready
and could not be shipped.
The big power plant at Necaxa which
had given employment at a good wage
to thousands of Mexicans, had enabled
mines and industries in and around
the city to operate much more cheaply,
was closed down by the revolution after
an enormous expenditure.
And so the story ran over all stricken
Mexico.
UNDER PRE-CONSTITUTIONAL
CONDITIONS
THE result of this patriotic move-
ment carried over two years is (I
am writing this paragraph September
7, 1916) devastation of country, near
cessation of business enterprise, par-
tial famine, distress and disquiet among
the " submerged 80 per cent " ; and
graft, riches, despotism in the official
class that set out to ease the lowly
among their compatriots.
Here is the recent comment of an
intelligent Mexican on present condi-
tions in his country:
" Indians and peons, the middle and the upper
classes as well, are starving, while the 4 pa-
triots ' oh, those noble patriots who want
nothing but the democratic welfare and happi-
ness of the people are enriching themselves
rapidly; exchanging the loot for gold which
they export and deposit in American banks to
insure the future."
This is a trifle overdrawn, for the
Mexican can never paint a picture with-
out more or less colour, but none the
141
2 What's the Matter with Mexico?
less it is a fact that the members of the
Carranza official family, including the
army officers, are the only comfortable
folk in Mexico ; and it is also a fact
that constitutional government seems
farther off than it did a little over
two years ago when Carranza first came
into Mexico City.
Whatever there is of tangible prog-
ress is towards oligarchy rather than
towards democracy. Carranza has
made himself and his group the law of
the land; he dictates prices, taxes,
wages, with grave assurance and nar-
row view; his monetary decrees read
like the emanations of a mad house.
The repudiation by his Government of
its own money for the payment of pub-
lic dues, the nullification of existing
notes of large value never in all his-
tory has there been anything to equal
it in lunacy and knavery. And his
decree threatening practical seizure or
foreclosure for those merchants who,
to escape ruin through this financial
legerdemain, proposed to close their
doors, shows no comprehension of the
national problem and no thought, at
least no sane thought, to help his
people.
Pre-Constitutional Conditions 143
Let us review Carranza's dizzy rec-
ord in making and unmaking the poso.
In September, 1913, he published a de-
cree authorising himself to issue an " in-
terior loan " to cover the expenses of
the revolution in the form of fiat money.
The amount announced was 4,000,000
pesos, nominal, and was considerably
over issued. It was also easily coun-
terfeited. The decree made it a crime
of any Mexican or resident foreigner
to discount or refuse to take it. There-
fore it was forced on the public for
valuable provender, most of it at fifty
cents United States gold per peso, as
exchange had not begun to fall when it
was first issued.
In December, 1914, without notice
Carranza declared this issue all void.
It is true that on September 17, 1915,
a notice did appear that Monclova bills
presented at the light house in Vera-
cruz, whence the prudent " liberator "
had retired, would be exchanged for the
new issues if offered before the end of
the month, but the time was so short
and communication so difficult, that
practically none was able to take ad-
vantage of this brief respite. So the
issue became a total loss to the public,
What's the Matter with Mexico?
and a total free gain to the Carranza
Government.
About May, 1914, another issue,
" ejfcrcito " money, was brought out.
This was uncertain in total issue.
Side by side with it circulated the
lithographed " Gobierno Provisional "
money, as well as paper produced in
abundance on a cheap press in Calle
Cinco de Mayo, Veracruz. Carran-
za's decree limited this paper issue to
250,000,000 pesos face value ; lately he
has admitted there was an over issue
and that 750,000,000 of such " money ' ?
was put forth, but there is little doubt
that the sum actually floated on the
public was three times that figure.
This paper issue was turned over
with prodigality to the generals and
special agents of Carranza, who used it
for payment of troops, and purchase
of supplies. But a great use of it was
to " buy " local foodstuffs beans,
garbanza, etc., that could be sold in
Cuba, Spain, and the United States for
the real money which they had to pay
in advance for ammunition.
Parenthetically I will say here, it is
well established that a considerable
source of income to Carranza officials
Pre-Constitutional Conditions 145
has come from the fodstuffs which
have been taken, not bought, from the
people and shipped out. While the
American Red Cross was taking in
food to the half starved people of the
northeastern states, this game was in
process. Red Cross ships discharging
for the people, and Carranzista ships
loading to take away and sell what came
from the people, were common at a
single wharf ! And it is still going on
and will go on as long as the beans hold
out, and the United States permits its
ammunition to go into a prostrate
country where the little the people have
is liable to be taken from them. The
Red Cross may be forced out of busi-
ness, but the " double cross " is always
working in Mexico.
Returning to Carranza's monetary
system : a new " uncounterfeitable "
issue began to arrive in December, 1915.
There had been much question as to how
it was to be put in circulation, the
problem being to make about 2,500,000
pesos fit into 500,000,000 new issue.
Carranza and Cabrera, his Secretary of
Finance, both declared the existing is-
sue to be a " sacred debt of the revolu-
tion," and that the new issue would be
146 What's the Matter with Mexico?
exchanged peso for peso for the old
one.
When the time came, in the course
of a series of rapidly appearing and
contradictory decrees, it was finally de-
cided not to exchange the old money
the " sacred debt " but to get the new
issue in circulation through the pay-
ment of officials, etc., making it obliga-
tory on business men to mark all prices
and pay all labourers on a gold basis,
and to make payments at five of the
new issue for one Mexican gold ; or ten
to one American money.
Then the old issue, the aforesaid
" sacred debt," was absolutely voided
with the exception that persons were
allowed to deposit their old bills with
the Treasury for a mere receipt with-
out engagement for reimbursement at
any fixed time.
To get a good understanding of what
this means in Mexico, let us suppose
that the United States should suddenly
declare all silver certificates void. Then
all bank bills. Then all Federal re-
serve notes. Then that it should issue
a new currency guaranteed against
counterfeiting, reading only " United
States of America (so many) Dollars "
P re-Constitutional Conditions 147
without reference to law or promise to
make good. Suppose that everybody
in the United States was morally sure
that as soon as this remarkable new
issue was out it would be declared void.
What chance to do business would any
of us have? That is what Carranza's
monetary decrees and the " bilimbique "
money have done for Mexican business,
bilimbique being the name given to
the Constitutionalist peso printed on
paper, to distinguish it from real
money.
Indeed the acts of the Carranzistas
suggest a group of unlearned, inexperi-
enced irreligious anarchists, come to
new power. Nearly every ruling re-
veals crass economic ignorance and ig-
nores the democratic principle by which
they claim to be actuated.
On June 11, 1916, a decree was is-
sued by Carranza as " First Chief of
the Constitutionalist Army and in
Charge of the Executive Power of the
United States," nullifying all acts ex-
ecuted by private parties in which
" functionaries " (including notaries
and brokers) of the " Huertista and
the Convencionista " (this was the
Aguas Calientes convention govern-
148 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ment) "usurping administrations and
of the alleged governments of Oaxaca
and Yucatan, may have intervened or
participated."
This decree covers practically every-
thing that affects the personal status
of citizens and foreigners, excepting
only the births and deaths and those
marriages where children have been
born or where one of the parties has
died. It also covers judicial procedure
in civil matters, including estates, and
in some penal cases, revalidation of
which may be had at the discretion of
the Government if asked for on or be-
fore December 30, 1916, and provided
the stamp tax is paid over again!
On the same date, another decree was
issued by the same " First Chief," re-
establishing in part the Circuit and Dis-
trict Federal Courts provided for by
the law of December 16, 1908, and its
amendments (prior to February %%,
1913), but "with the various modifica-
tions originating out of the present
circumstances existing in the coun-
try"!
Of the courts to be re-established the
decree specifically excludes the Supreme
Court ; " this is exacted," the decree
Pre-Constitutional Conditions 149
says, " by the pre-constitutionality of
the Government " ! but the decree gives
certain powers of the Supreme Court to
the " First Chieftainship." The great
writ of " Amparo " is not re-established
because " the constitutional order (or
procedure) is in suspense," and " in-
dividual guarantees are in suspense," as
the decree says.
With 90 per cent, of the mines idle
and thousands upon thousands of Mexi-
cans out of work on that account, Car-
ranza recently decreed a new mining
tax which increases the rate on the
property thirty-seven times over what
it had been, and adds the new feature
of a 5 per cent, tax on the mines' out-
put ! Taxes of mines in Mexico were
already greater than anywhere else in
the world; raising them still higher is
quite likely to suspend operations in
districts like Guanajuato, Zacatecas,
and others which have been able only
just to keep moving. It is another in-
stance of Carranza's obstinate disre-
gard of consequences to his own coun-
try. Yet another instance of the des-
perate effort making to get income, is
the last June decree taxing banks of
the first class from one to five thou-
150 What's the Matter with Mexico?
sand pesos a month, payable in national
gold or silver.
Never before has revolution in Mex-
ico brought such widespread suffering
and hopelessness, because of loot and
destruction long sustained. Life is in-
secure, property unprotected, there is
no free press, no constitution, no con-
structive effort bringing practical or
helpful results, and the country is bank-
rupt.
Because the Americans have been
forced out to so great an extent by
their Government's abandonment of
them, there is little work and wages are
low ; and graft is the chief reason of
the low wage.
Take the Carranza run railways for
instance. The merchant who wants to
ship a carload must first pay the su-
perintendent of the road up to six thou-
sand bilimbiques before he will be able
to get a car. Then the yard master
must be tipped about two hundred bil-
imbiques to move the car. Then the
agent of the- merchant must follow up
the road trains run only in daylight
these days and watch for the car on
sidings. If it has been cut out, he must
pay another two hundred to the local
P re-Constitutional Conditions 151
patriot to get the car attached to an-
other train. And so he follows it on
to its destination. Thus the merchant
through tips and graft pays the rail-
road more than ever before. He must
add the " extras " to his prices, but the
railroad takes in only the regular old
rate fixed in Mexican silver but paid in
depreciated bilimbiques. Therefore lit-
tle remains with which to pay the train-
men.
The only district where work con-
ditions approached normal last May
was at Tampico, where the lowest paid
labourer in the oil fields received one
dollar United States, or forty-two pesos
bilimbiques. The railway locomotive
engineers were being paid eighteen pesos
bilimbiques ; and decided to strike.
The leaders were arrested and taken to
Monterrey, and it was announced they
would be shot. But Carranza cannot
afford to shoot an engineer ; they are
scarce. However, the strike was put
down by intimidation and to-day the
government engineer receives less than
half what American companies in the
oil district pay their lowest peons.
The chance to do business or earn
wages has gone, except in the oil pro-
152 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ducing regions which continue at work
because near the coast, and depending
on private pipelines and steamers for
transport, cannot be killed as all other
industry has, through the government
" ownership " of railways, and conse-
quent grabbing of all the profits.
Meanwhile the Casa del Obrero Mun-
dial, which is the I. W. W. of Mexico,
sends forth its wage raising mandates
to the merchants, which has no other
result than to lay off more and more
men, as business is cut lower and lower.
It would be interesting to trace the
number and length of bank accounts
held in the American border towns by
the patriots across the line.
Having in mind the battle cry of the
Constitutionalists, " free land " and
" death to all big business," the study
of a circular sent out from Mexico City
January 24, 1916, is most interesting.
This circular, elaborately done, sets
forth, that " taking into account the
great development all the sources of
wealth of the country will experience,
as a consequence of the era of peace
that has solidly begun "(!) "we have
formed a company named: Company
for the Encouragement of National
Pre-Constitutlonal Conditions 153
Riches, Ltd., which we have the honour
to communicate to you, asking you to
take note of the signatures at the bot-
tom."
Now the " signatures at the bottom "
include that of Niceforo Zambrano, who
is Treasurer General of the Carranza
Government, and Pablo Gonzales, who
was Military Commander of the Fed-
eral District at the time of the incor-
poration of this company, and with
whose cattle and other patriotic activi-
ties at Tampico and Pachuca we are
already familiar.
The interesting feature of this docu-
ment is the parallel it offers between
these patriots and the ones they suc-
ceeded; this is precisely the same old
cientifico game of business-with-public
office that the present brand of patriots
came in to extirpate.
Battle cries of " revolutions " are
springes to catch woodcock. Porfirio
Diaz came in on " no re-election," and
succeeded himself for twenty-six years.
Madero cried " effective suffrage and
no re-election " and his own brother
was preparing an amendment to the con-
stitution whereby Francisco could suc-
ceed himself for a full term " as he is
154 What's the Matter with Mexico?
only finishing out the unfinished term
of Diaz." Felix Diaz shot Mexico City
to pieces with the army he stole from
Madero under the cry of " Peace and
Justice." Carranza wiggled his way
in through the help of our President se-
cured by crying " constitution," and
promptly on his arrival in Mexico City
declared the Constitution' inoperative,
and a " Pre-constitutional period,"
which is the present status.
President Wilson, who objected to
Huerta because his government was
"not constitutional" (see speech to
Congress August 27, 1913), recognised
the frankly non-constitutional govern-
ment of Carranza.
The revolutionary battle cry should
really be, " Quitate tu para que me
ponga yo " You get out so I can get
in.
Scanning the record then of this pre-
constitutional governing group as it
stands to-day, we find that:
It has not restored the constitution.
It has not restored the courts.
It has not given freedom to the press.
It is not protecting its own people
or the foreigners from robbery by its
own servants.
Pre-Constitutional Conditions 155
It has used famine as a lever to fill
its army.
It has made business impossible by
issuing bad money for good value, de-
claring it void, and then repeating the
process.
As for the land division, the " free
land " slogan of Madero, no government
policy appears to have been decided
upon, and it is true that the time is
not propitious for giving men land
which has nothing on it and when they
have no work with which to earn some-
thing to put anything on it.
Twenty thousand acres is more than
the total that have been divided and
distributed, but the people are obliged
to leave the land to get something to
eat. To give the soldier land at the
present time means that he will sell to
the first officer who comes along with
his pocket full of bilimbiques.
The pre-constitutionalists are wont
to liken themselves to the French Revo-
lutionists. Except in the Mexican ap-
proach to the record of bestiality set
in 1792, the comparison is not well ven-
tured.
The French Revolution saved as well
as spilled the very best of its blood, and
156 What's the Matter with Mexico?
developed a group of leaders of notable
mentality and extraordinary construc-
tive sense. The group of leaders in
Mexico have conducted themselves like
ignorant anarchists on an I. W. W.
debauch. They have wrecked their
Government and built none in its stead ;
they have torn an economic fabric to
shreds and show neither woof nor web
of another.
The French have great power of cor-
porate organisation ; the Mexicans have
none.
The French have cohesion ; the Mexi-
cans do not know the word's mean-
ing.
Patriotism in the French is a living
white fire ; in the Mexicans it is red hot
air.
The plan of the French Revolution
was definite, and its work constructive;
in Mexico we see neither practical defi-
nition nor construction.
Those that indorse the statements
from Mexico on their face value can
occupy themselves profitably seeking
names in Mexico to place alongside of
Mirabeau, Lafayette, Danton, Robes-
pierre, St. Just, Carnot, Roland
Pre-Comtitutional Conditions 157
which I choose at random from that
gruesome yet wonderful period of
French history.
In Mexico, of those that appear to
have the fortune of their country in
the hollow of their hands, we see most
frequently the name of Luis Cabrera.
The First Chief's right hand man is so-
cialistic, involved, and impractical ; but
he has an alert, clever mind and as
lobbyist has few equals in or out of
Mexico. He and Carranza are respon-
sible for the nightmare of bilimbiques,
which perhaps may be charged more to
ignorance than to dishonesty. The one
man Carranza had of financial training,
Felicitas Villareal, he put in jail for
being unwilling to sponsor this frenzied
finance policy. Cabrera is a lawyer by
profession and an intriguer by nature.
He is the one man of record, however,
to have sought to remedy the land laws
under Madero.
Venustiano Carranza, like his best
man, is also impractical, and he is, I be-
lieve, personally honest ; but he is bump-
tious, vain, obstinate, of small ability,
and with no control over his men. The
best thing to his credit is shutting the
158 What's the Matter with Mexico?
saloons on Sundays and holidays. He
was a ranchero in Coahuila before be-
ing " elected " local judge. He never
studied in a law school. Later, for
many years he was a Senator in the
Senate of Porfirio Diaz, and was prom-
ised the governorship of Coahuila.
Diaz did not keep his word, and named
a de la Pena, which affronted Carranza,
and he joined the Madero revolution
when it broke out. It is a mistake to
say he was always the foe of the Cien-
tificos ; he tried in fact to get into the
inner circle.
Both Carranza and Cabrera have
kept their word when force of circum-
stance and the generals of their army
permitted.
Alvaro Obregon, Minister of War,
was a small planter in Sonora and is
probably the most stable and least im-
pressionable man in the group, being
at the same time one of but mediocre
calibre. He is by far the best general
in the Carranza army, and with Villa
and Angeles one of the only three to
reveal any ability in the field. He has
shown himself narrow and brutal in
dealing with his poor countrymen
his course in Mexico City being dis-
Pre-Constitutional Conditions 159
tinctly reprehensible. He is no ad-
mirer of Americans.
Candido Aguilar, the Minister of
Foreign Relations, is a man who saw his
opportunity and " done it." Apart
from the ability he has shown at gather-
ing pesos in the last couple of years he
has none. He is ignorant but served
Carranza faithfully and was rewarded
by the governorship of the rich State
of Veracruz, where he evidently made
the most of the occasion, for he is now
reported to be rich.
Generals Luis Gutierrez and Fran-
cisco Coss are about of the same type
as Aguilar and equally alive to oppor-
tunity. Coss we have already learned
of as Governor of Puebla, where he
made enough money to embark in the
sisal business on a large scale at Sal-
tillo with his friend Luis, who is a
brother of Eulalio, of whom we have
also heard at Aguas and Mexico City.
Before he became a patriot he was a
labourer in the maguey fields; now he
has enough money to have put, it is
said, one million pesos into business.
Of General Pablo Gonzales we have
also already heard much, and enough
for our purpose.
160 What's the Matter with Mexico?
Palavicini, " Minister of Education
and Fine Arts," is a disciple of " Dr."
Atl.
"Dr." Atl, whom David Starr Jor-
dan sponsored for Americans, is an en-
thusiastic anarchist and the editor of a
vicious anti-everything paper called the
Accion Mundial. His first service to
the " cause " was as confidential ad-
viser to Zapata, to whom he gave his
socialistic strain ; then he deserted to
Carranza when Zapata's race appeared
to him about run. Obregon used him
as an instrument in his " castigation "
of Mexico City in February, 1915, and
for the organisation of the Casa del
Obrero, the I. W. W. helpmate of the
faithful.
THE MEDITATIONS OF A THEORIST
IN March, 1913, the way was clear
for a settlement of our troubles in
Mexico. Retiring Secretary of State
Knox had informed Huerta, just as
Secretary Evarts had told Diaz thirty-
seven years earlier, that recognition by
the United States Government depended
upon his putting his country in order ;
the adjustment of pending claims, in-
demnities for the murder and destruc-
tion of American life and property,
and guarantees against repetition.
And now a man had been elected
President on a platform which not only
indorsed the traditional American pol-
icy of Jefferson, Adams, Monroe and
of every national party since 1860
but emphasised it by the following
plank :
"The constitutional rights of American citi-
zens should protect them on our borders and go
with them throughout the world, and every
American citizen residing or having property
in any foreign country is entitled to and must
161
-
What's the Mattefmth Mexico?
4L
be given the full protection bf the United
States Government, both for himself and for his
property."
The peace of Mexico, the safety of
Americans in Mexico were in the hands
of the new Democratic President, Wood-
row Wilson.
Facing this great responsibility, with
the murder and the destruction un-
checked, he announced a policy of pa-
tience and hope.
On August 4th, however, the Presi-
dent forsook " watchful waiting " for
active interference by a demand on Hu-
erta for his retirement, made through
John Lind, whom he sent as his per-
sonal agent on this delicate mission to
Mexico, knowing neither the people
nor their language. And while Lind
was on the road with his unusual pro-
posal and after Huerta had been five
months President of Mexico President
Wilson sent the following message to
Congress :
" I deem it my duty to exercise the authority
conferred upon me by the law of March 14,
1912, to see to it that neither side to the struggle
now going on in Mexico receive any assistance
from this side the border ... by forbidding
the exportation of arms or munitions of war
of any kind from the United States to any part
The Meditations of a Theorist 163
of the Republic of Mexico. We cannot in the
circumstances be the partisans of either party
to the contest that now distracts Mexico or con-
stitute ourselves the virtual umpire between
them."
That was sound American doctrine
and had been expressed by Presidents
Monroe and Cleveland, by Jefferson,
Webster, Hay, Root, and the Hague
Conference of 1907.
The entire text of the arbitrary de-
mand which Lind conveyed, having been
given to the press in Washington dur-
ing its consideration by Huerta, the lat-
ter became obdurate in the face of co-
ercion thus made public. Whereupon
Lind made the extraordinary offer to
Gamboa, Huerta's Foreign Secretary,
to procure money for the pressing
needs of the Mexican Government, if
he and his Cabinet associates would ac-
cede to Huerta's elimination 1
Gamboa's official reply to this bribe
was : " No loan from American bank-
ers could be large enough to induce the
Mexican Government to renounce the
sovereign rights of the nation and to
permit its dignity to be lessened."
Upon which the press of all Mexico
howled with derisive glee at the purity
of the American Government and the
164 What's the Matter with Mexico?
statesmanship of its representatives.
And a humorous weekly was started
in Mexico City, called Mister Lind;
" Mister " being the Mexican form of
address when they wish to show con-
tempt for one of their own people.
Nothing having resulted, Lind went
home after waiting anxiously and cour-
ageously out of arms' reach at Vera-
cruz, for the word which never came.
But Americans in Mexico experienced
results from the Lind mission. Menace
to their lives and depredations upon
their property increased alarmingly ; to
such an extent that Secretary Bryan
instructed the Consul General in Mex-
ico to notify all officials, military or
civil, exercising authority, that they
would " be held strictly accountable for
any harm done to Americans, or for
injury to their property."
Despite this warning, however, out-
rages continued, and the United States
taking no step to follow up its recent
" warning " or to enforce compliance
with the notice its President had served
upon Mexico, they increased. Instead
of calling upon Huerta to safeguard
Americans, as the treaty between the
two countries required him to do, Presi-
The Meditations of a Theorist 165
dent Wilson called upon his citizens to
leave the country. Thus making it
clear to the Mexican mind that insist-
ence on the protection of its nation-
als, on which all treaties are based, had
been discarded by the American Gov-
ernment for " diplomatic welfare
work."
On October 27, 1913, in his Mobile
speech, President Wilson supplemented
his request to Congress for a " free
hand in Mexico " by declaring " human
rights, national integrity and oppor-
tunity as against material interests is
the issue which we now have to face."
And on the next day, Mr. Bryan paused
long enough on his lecture tour to an-
nounce through the press that " Eng-
land, France and Germany had agreed
to take no action (as to Mexico) until
the United States had announced its
policy."
Thus America became Mexico's spon- /
sor before the world.
Two months later, through his mes-
sage to Congress, came announcement
of another change in the President's
policy since his last official communica-
tion to Congress about three months
before. Then he had said we must not
166 What's the Matter with Mexico?
interfere, now he declared Huerta must
go-
On February 3, 1914, he added deed
to word by raising the embargo on
arms and ammunition which Taft had
wisely placed in March, 1912, as the
most effective deterrent to extended
revolution and slaughter, and which
Wilson on August 27, 1913, had said,
" I deem it my duty " to continue and
enforce. And in April, 1914, the Presi-
dent pursued his policy of interference
to the limit of an armed attack and a
landing upon Veracruz.
To exact from Huerta a delayed sa-
lute of the American flag and to pre-
vent the landing of a shipload of arms
for him, was the public avowal of the
President at the time. The cargo of
arms was landed and reached Huerta,
the flag was not saluted, and on July
16, 1916, Franklin K. Lane, the Presi-
dent's intimate and Secretary of the
Interior, openly confessed in the New
York World that the Administration
had abandoned the long established
American principle of non-interference,
declaring " we didn't go to Veracruz
to force Huerta to salute the flag. We
did go there to show Mexico that we
The Meditations of a Theorist 167
were in earnest in our demand that Hu-
erta must go."
With our troops at Veracruz for
this purpose, and rival political fac-
tions fighting all over Mexico, the Presi-
dent said through S. G. Blythe in the
Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1914,
" all the unrest in that country . . .
was a fight for the land just that
and nothing more."
Now followed the A. B. C. confer-
ence with its to be expected disregard
by Carranza and its thorough discred-
itable contravention of promise by
Bryan.
Bryan had promised the mediators
and the Huerta delegates, that during
the Conference he would absolutely em-
bargo all shipments of arms to the
Constitutionalists. Five days later the
Ant ilia sailed direct from New York
to Tampico with 3,000,000 rounds of
cartridges. Six other shipments fol-
lowed in three different boats. These
boats however were, on the advice of
John Lind (as shown by carbon copies
of letters found in the office of Shirby
Hopkins, a Carranza lawyer, at Wash-
ington, and not denied by Lind) de-
spatched to Havana, putting in to
168 What's tlie Matter with Mexico?
Tampico from " stress of weather,"
and were reported to the State Depart-
ment by its Consul!
As a result of the landing at Vera-
cruz and the failure of the A. B. C.
Conference to reach any tangible con-
clusion, Huerta finally did " go " ; and
the contending parties which had been
three increased to half a dozen.
Meanwhile, Americans in Mexico
viewed the unsupported demands, the
empty threats, the landing at Vera-
cruz, with dismay. They had not
wished intervention, except in so far
as it appeared to be the only way out
of the mess ; they had wanted only pro-
tection and Mexico made to realise that
she must respect her treaty obligations.
Their lives had been endangered by their
Government's unwarranted interference
with Mexico's internal affairs, and such
protection as they had received at the
time of the unheralded Veracruz landing
was given by English and German naval
officers, when with Tampico full of refu-
gees Secretary of Navy Daniels with
characteristic efficiency had ordered the
United States cruisers to sea seven
miles from the harbour, where they had
been lying for months against just such
The Meditations of a Theorist 169
an emergency. A town full of Ameri-
cans in danger, and their gunboats
sent out of reach to sea !
With this culminating evidence of the
Government's lack of regard for its cit-
izens, it became an open season in Mex-
ico on Americans and their property.
They were arrested on trivial charges,
forced to give money; murdered; their
property everywhere at the mercy of
the looting soldiery, which knew by this
time it had no need to fear government
displeasure, either its own or that across
the border.
There was no safety for Americans
in Mexico and no justice for them at
Washington. The only men that could
reach the President's ear or that of
his yodelling Secretary, were the revolu-
tionary agents. Clean handed Ameri-
cans of long established business integ-
rity and unquestioned patriotism were
neither heard nor even received with
courtesy. The President had " service
for humanity " but none for Americans ;
in his burning desire to effect a " spir-
itual union " with the Mexicans he had
abandoned twenty thousand of his own
people and departed from the long
maintained American principle against
170 What's the Matter with Mexico?
meddling with the domestic affairs of a
neighbour.
The Monroe Doctrine does not pre-
scribe the right to dictate the form of
government in Latin America, only that
it shall be free of Old World domina-
tion. But even earlier the principle of
non-interference was the ruling one.
Secretary of State Jefferson in 1793
wrote : " We surely - cannot deny to
any nation that right whereon our own
Government is founded that every
one may govern itself according to
whatever form it pleases, and change
these forms at its own will and that it
may transact its business with foreign
nations through whatever organ it
thinks proper, whether king, conven-
tion, assembly, committee, president or
anything else it may choose."
Mr. Webster in 1852 repeated the
same fundamental principle : " From
President Washington's time down to
the present day it has been a principle
always acknowledged by the United
States, that every nation possesses a
right to govern itself according to its
own will, to change institutions at dis-
cretion and to transact its business
The Meditations of a Theorist 171
through whatever agents it may think
proper to employ."
Secretary of State Hay in 1899 in-
structed our Venezuelan Minister to
recognise Castro " if the provisional
government is effectively administering
government of nation and in a position
to fulfil international obligations.'-'
The United States Senate in 1907 in
ratifying the arbitration convention of
the Hague Conference resolved that:
" Nothing contained in this convention
shall be so construed as to require the
United States of America to depart
from its traditional policy of not in-
truding upon, interfering with or en-
tangling itself in the political questions
of policy or internal administration of
any foreign state."
Therefore when President Wilson set
out upon his campaign to drive Huerta
out of Mexico he was going against
both American principle and prece-
dence ; he was an offender against the
law America has contributed to the in-
ternational code. And in the abandon-
ment of his nationals in a country in
anarchy he made a departure which was
so novel and so discreditable to a great
172 What's the Matter with Mexico?
nation that it will live long as a black
page in the history of the American
people.
William M. Evarts, our one time
great Secretary of State, said : " The
first duty of a government is to protect
life and property. This is a para-
mount obligation. For this govern-
ments are instituted and governments
neglecting or failing to perform it be-
come worse than useless."
And John Fiske, the distinguished
political economist, says : " A govern-
ment touches the lowest point of ig-
nominy when it confesses its inability to
protect the lives and property of its
citizens."
But Woodrow Wilson said in his
Shadow Lawn speech accepting renom-
ination by the Democratic party early
in September : " Many serious wrongs
against the property, many irreparable
wrongs against the persons of Ameri-
cans have been committed within the
territory of Mexico herself. . . . We
could not act directly in that matter
ourselves."
So the 1912 plank in the Democratic
platform, and the " strictly account-
able " telegram of 1913, and the June,
The Meditations of a Theorist 173
1916, " America first " talk, were all
" scraps of paper." Protecting its own
citizens has been the first care of all
nations. We, on the other hand, have
introduced the new policy of abandon-
ing our own citizens in a publicly pro-
claimed attempt to serve aliens in their
own country.
In 1915, with the country in a riot
of anarchy, the President, who had
been favouring Villa in his opposition
to Carranza, changed again, and tak-
ing chances on the Carr^inza side, fi-
nally in October, 1915, recognised
him, while investigation was pend-
ing of an atrocious murder commit-
ted ten days before of an American
by a Constitutionalist soldier who had
cut off and displayed his head on a
pole for public gaze !
Recognised by this great Govern-
ment without his giving guarantee for
the protection of American life or prop-
erty in Mexico !
Then in 1916 came the border
troubles, the raids quickly following
the President's stubborn disregard of
previous recorded experience and the
advice of men who knew the border
and Mexicans and adjured him not to
174 What's the Matter with Mexico?
permit Obrcgon's troops to pass
through American territory in pursuit
of Villa. Santa Isabel, Columbia,
Glenn Springs, Parral, Carrizal one
after the other, from January to June,
bringing loss of life and further hu-
miliation and insolent notes and un-
friendly acts from Carranza.
Here again the President was not
without established precedent to guide
him. In 1876, when Diaz came into
power, Mexico was in a turbulent state
and the border alive with bandits. The
Mexican had the same temper and habit
then as now, there was the same brand
of patriots, the same subterfuges ; but
the Administration of 1876 saw its duty
more clearly than that of 1913.
President Hayes declined to recog-
nise Diaz until he had put his country
in order, and Secretary Evarts made
Diaz understand that no injury to
American life or property would be tol-
erated. When injury came, as at first
it did, reparation was demanded and
exacted. Diaz realised he had to put
his country in order to secure recogni-
tion and keep it in order to escape the
just might of the United States. And
the border troubles ceased.
The Meditations of a Theorist 175
In 1914 President Wilson declared
we had gone into Mexico to " serve
humanity," but on January 8, 1915, in
his speech at Indianapolis he had " an-
other emotion of sympathy " which
bade him say that he was " for the 80
per cent." and that they had the " right
to spill as much blood as they pleased."
We have already seen what that poor
80 per cent, is getting.
After using the army and navy of
the United States in April, 1914, to
make Mexico understand that " Huerta
must go," President Wilson at the Press
Club dinner last June, 1916, asked, " do
you think that it is our duty to carry
self-defence to the point of dictation
in the affairs of another people? "
And with the long record of looted
and murdered Americans in Mexico un-
avenged, the repeated and humiliating
disregard of his demands, ultimatums
and messages, the President before a
gathering of advertising men in the
same month (June, 1916) delivered
himself of this fine and stirring senti-
ment:
" I believe America, the country which we put
first in our thoughts, should be ready in every
point of policy and of action to vindicate at
176 What's the Matter with Mexico?
whatever cost the principles of liberty, of jus-
tice, and of humanity to which we have been
devoted from the first."
With the principles of liberty, jus-
tice, and humanity being outraged by
torpedos on the high seas, by bullets
in Mexico, by assault upon our very
territory, the President told the world
we are " too proud to fight."
At Detroit on July 10, 1916, after
Santa Isabel, Columbus, Glenn Springs,
Parral, Carrizal, the President said, " I
refuse to butt in on Mexican affairs."
On June 20, 1916, Secretary of State
Lansing addressed a note to Carranza
opening with the following shameless
recital :
"... the lives of Americans and other aliens
have been sacrificed; vast properties developed
by American enterprise and capital have been
destroyed or rendered nonproductive; bandits
have been permitted to roam at will through the
territory contiguous to the United States and
to seize without punishment or without effective
attempt at punishment, the property of Ameri-
cans, while the lives of citizens of the United
States who ventured to remain in Mexican ter-
ritory or to return there to protect their in-
terests have been taken and in some cases
barbarously taken, and the murderers have
neither been apprehended nor brought to jus-
tice. ... It would be tedious to recount in-
stance after instance, outrage after outrage,
atrocity after atrocity, to illustrate the true
The Meditations of a Theorist 111
nature and extent of the widespread conditions
of lawlessness and violence which have pre-
vailed. . . . the lower Rio Grande has been
thrown into a state of constant apprehension
and turmoil because of frequent and sudden
incursions into American territory, and depre-
dations and murders on American soil by
Mexican bandits who have taken the lives and
destroyed the property of American citizens,
sometimes carrying American citizens across the
international boundary with the booty seized.
American garrisons have been attacked at
night, American soldiers killed and their equip-
ment and horses stolen; American ranches have
been raided, property stolen and destroyed, and
American trains wrecked and plundered."
And no reparation exacted. Was
there ever published a more humiliating
confession of impotency or indifference
for its name and its citizens by a great
nation !
Mr. Lansing quotes the words of Sec-
retary Evarts of " protection " for its
citizens and their property being " a
paramount duty of government," and
recording the failure of the Mexican
Government to check the outrages re-
cited, says : " It only makes stronger
the duty of the United States to pre-
vent them, for if the Government of
Mexico cannot protect the lives and
property of Americans, exposed to at-
tack from Mexicans, the Government
178 What's the Matter with Mexico?
of the United States is in duty bound
so far as it can, to do so."
Had the concluding paragraph of
this note been written three years be-
fore, and enforced once, Americans
would not have been murdered, nor the
" submerged 80 per cent." ravaged to
destitution. Carranza has never re-
plied to this note; he evaded its ar-
raignment by proposing the commission
idea. He has never cleared himself of
responsibility for Carrizal.
Yet in the face of this experience,
with millions of American dollars lost
and American citizens denied the pro-
tection of their Government, President
Wilson suggests a loan for the bank-
rupt Carranza Government! And
Carranza, not to be outdone by his
" great and good " friend in working
that easy thing, the listless American
public, wants two hundred million dol-
lars as an emollient for his lacerated
feelings and the severe loss his Govern-
ment has sustained through our " inva-
sion " of his territory, and the aid of
our late lamented ex-Secretary of State
and President Wilson gave Villa.
DUM-DUMS IN THE NAME O? HUMANITY
PERHAPS, however, our course in
the arms traffic in Mexico is the
most baffling and not the least discred-
itable page in the story of this " policy
of peace " and " service to humanity "
which, under its President's guidance,
the United States entered upon in Feb-
ruary, 1914. Space is wanting here to
recount its numerous and varied mani-
festations, but, briefly, it is a matter
of Congressional Record that the
United States has sent upwards of ten
million of dollars' worth of munitions
to Mexico since the President made an
operation base of our frontier against
the constituted Government of Mexico.
That means millions upon millions of
cartridges mostly of the soft nosed
or dum-dum type outlawed by civilised
peoples thousands of rifles, thou-
sands upon thousands of pounds of
dynamite. Millions of death dealing
implements sent in the name of human-
Z79
180 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ity to a country seething in anarchy
and reeking in blood. It is a noble
record !
It is also on file in the Senate that
after the raids upon Santa Isabel,
January 12, 1916, Columbus, March 9,
1916, and Glenn Springs, May 6, 1916,
and after the Government had complete
knowledge of Carranza's unfriendliness,
as explicitly set forth in Secretary
Lansing's note of June 20, 1916
after these massacres and while United
States troops under General Pershing
were making their way into Mexico in
pursuit of Villa three large ship-
ments of munitions, sailing from New
York, discharged their cargoes for
Carranza at Veracruz, March 18th,
April 1st, and May 23rd!
The ambush of General Pershing's
detachment and obvious treachery of
Carranza's troops at Parral occurred
April 13th. On April 18th Secretary
Lansing, according to unrefuted record
in the House of Representatives, issued
an order permitting Carranza to import
one million rounds of small arms am-
munition into Mexico!
And after further treachery and the
killing of United States soldiers at Car-
Dum-Dums 181
rizal on June 21, 1916, an intellectual
anarchist from Mexico, an intellectual
pacifist from California, and others
more intelligent, if less sincere, urged
upon the Administration the raising of
the embargo just replaced, and were
actually granted an audience !
Lincoln Steffens, the American in-
terpreter of Carranza's ambitions,
wrote in the May, 1916, issue of
Eevrybody's Magazine: " Huerta . . .
thought the Mexican people would kill,
rape and rob every American in Mexico
. . . and that's what Villa thought . . .
that's what the men and the interests
back of Villa thought when they planned
that raid into New Mexico " !
The Department of Justice, by di-
rection of President Wilson, made an
investigation immediately after the
New Mexico raid which proved conclu-
sively that " Villa had no support from
Americans except that which he ob-
tained by theft." And this investiga-
tion was made at a time when the Ad-
ministration was under fire and eager
to charge, if it could be substanti-
ated, that the pernicious activity of
Americans was the cause of much of
the border trouble. Steffens' implica-
182 What's the Matter with Mexico?
tion is not only outrageous, but is based
on false premises.
Senator Bacon, then Chairman of
Foreign Relations Committee, said
" When Americans cross that river
(Rio Grande) the United States has no
further interest in them."
Dr. David Starr Jordan says, " The
Americans who went to Mexico did so
at their own risk."
Senator Stone, Democratic Chair-
man of Foreign Relations Committee,
told those who exclaimed at the loss of
Americans on the Lusitana, " Well, it
was their own fault ; why did they go
on the boat? They had been warned."
When the raping of nuns by Car-
ranza soldiers was reported to Bryan,
then Secretary of State, he replied to
Fathers Kelly and Tiernan, "That's
nothing. Two American women were
raped by Huerta's soldiers near Tam-
pico in 1913."
There appears to have grown up
among us some strange and unlovely
brands of Americanism.
At a time when they could not get
them elsewhere we furnished arms to a
people in anarchy, thus helping to make
a shambles of their country ; and we
Dum-Dums 183
have put into the hands of a treacher-
ous soldiery the bullets with which they
have killed our own people.
And this is " service to humanity " !
WHAT MEXICO NEEDS
WE have several wrong theories
about Mexico. We hear so
much that is based on theory, on preju-
dice; so much that is inspired by pre-
conceived notions of Mexican charac-
ter and Mexican ambitions ; such a call-
ing of names, such an array of cocksure
panaceas for Mexico's ailments, such a
parading of ignorance it is small
wonder bewilderment rules among us.
Some call the bloody carnival which
has held the country in its horrid grip,
a " popular uprising for land " ; others
say it is a " revolt against oppressive
conditions." Neither is the essential
motive viz. the revolutionary habit
of the politically ambitious and socially
radical. The present period has been
called " abnormal " ; it is not. The
history of Mexico is filled with such.
Nor is it " civil war." Throughout
Mexican history, less than one per cent,
of the population has ever engaged in
one of these revolutionary epidemics.
184
What Mexico Needs 185
The great mass of Mexico is strug- !
gling to secure neither land nor po-
litical rights ; it is not struggling at
all. It is not bloodthirsty and fond
of fighting, as is ignorantly maintained
in the United States. Peace, at almost
any price, is what this simple minded,
easily misled multitude is praying for;
they have never as a people had sym-
pathy with the revolutionists, with any
set of them, despite the pathetic stories
of their struggle for " life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness," relayed to
Washington by native revolutionary \
agents. The common people, el pueblo,
have no interest in any political up-
heaval ; they know that whether the lo-
cal jefe owes his appointment to Diaz,
Madero, Huerta, or Carranza, they
will get about the same deal, which is
not, and never has been, a square one.
Because a few gifted junta propa-
gandists discourse earnestly and elo-
quently on " constitution," " patriot-
ism," " free elections," we are led into
believing that the Mexicans think as we
think on human equity, understand as
we understand democratic principles,
and co-operate as we co-operate for
democratic government. Because of
186 What's the Matter with Mexico?
the tremendous industrial advance of
the country through foreign brain and
foreign capital, we are prone to regard
Mexico as approaching our general
standards of business and economic and
political sense; whereas, in reality a
very small class has a veneer of culture
and political method and economical
sanity, while basically the nation is
without public opinion or political
habit or democratic thought.
Mexico is filled to overflowing with
conscienceless agitators who call them-
selves patriots, but their impassioned
speech means nothing, literally noth-
ing. They are not sincere, they are
not loyal, they are not brave ; no more
than the 'average Mexican do they know
even the meaning of patriotism.
It is the tragedy of Mexico that a
small group of agitators, or " intellec-
tuals " as you please, should have the
imagination, but neither the capacity
nor the equipment to carry through,
nor the judgment to wait on education.
So every once in a while, one or an-
other group of such visionaries, heed-
less of the unpreparedness of their fel-
lows, over-estimating their own qualifi-
cations, set out to run the Government ;
What Mexico Needs 187
and at once clash with another group
seeking the same thing indulgence of
political ambition without thought of
the " submerged 80 per cent."
First and last, these groups have had
a long trial at running Mexico, under
the constitution which " expresses the
aspirations of the Mexican people," and
with control of courts and legislation.
They have raised and cast down die- "
tators, but not yet have they succeeded
in working together steadily for mu-
tual welfare and their own advance-
ment. A stable state and law arid
justice is not to be built on spoliation,
which seems to have been the medium
of reform upon which they have chiefly
relied.
That is why a strong central gov-
ernment is needed, that peace may be as-
/s\ired long enough to give the people
time for the education and training
they must have to fit themselves for
democratic government. And until
\ Mexico has such central government
^forceful enough to command respect of
life and property throughout the land,
) Mexico cannot progress economically,
' politically, or socially for the pres-
ent is a social, even more than a po-
188 What's the Matter with Mexico?
litical upheaval, and unfortunately for
Mexico the agitators of its budding-
" middle class " are making the worst
instead of the best use of their small
learning and big opportunity by up-
setting the poise of their countrymen
with inflammatory speech and impossi-
ble promise.
So the first need of Mexico after
stable government, is honesty within,
including particularly the honest treat-
ment of its lowly class. (1) Honest
courts, which she has never had; (2)
Revision of the land laws so that taxes
are fairly levied, that the holdings of
great bodies be made costly, and small
holdings made easier by governmental
irrigation projects; (3) Control and
heavy reduction of the pulque traffic ;
(4) Extension and improvement of the
educational system, including the wide
introduction of vocational training
schools for practical training rather
than their present " culture " idea of
education is what the bulk of the peo-
ple should have. For. the rest, given
honesty, Mexico will grow; her poten-
tialities are great.
Honesty, justice, these are the
things that she must have; these are
What Mexico Needs 189
the things which her leaders seem un-
able to give her until they themselves
undergo a further development of char-
acter a development which shall
bring them cohesion, stability as well
as honesty. This can come only by
education, either from within or with-
out ; but in either case it will be a slow,
a very slow process.
Let the American never think he can
change the temperament of the Mexi*
can; he will be able to establish justice
and maintain it if he keeps his eye
open but for the rest he must accept
what he finds as the character funda-
mental, and build upon it and in har-
mony with it, as the American business
men have done. Mexico is not Iowa ;
nor are the tastes and the habits of
the Mexicans those of -New England.
It wouldn't be Mexico if they were ; and
above all it will be well to keep Mexico,
Mexico.
The land question is a most im-
portant one in the regeneration of Mex-
ico, but it would be just as impossible
to carry out in Mexico the full dream
of the free land idealists as to put into
practical effect any other socialist
brain storm in New York. Further-
190 What's the Matter with Mexico?
more, there is not the general "land
hunger " which tourist authors of col-
ourful pen delight to portray for con-
sumption in the United States of
America.
This isn't to say that there have not
been plenty of instances in Mexico
where the Indians and the Mexicans
were outrageously defrauded through
their ignorance, unjust land laws, and
exploiting land companies of both na-
tive and foreign personnel. Of such
injustice the Indians have been the most
frequent victims, particularly the Ya-
quis in Sonora, to whom my sympathy
always flies when I hear they have
" broken out again," to avenge the
wrongs done them by the Mexicans who
stole their lands and then sold them to
foreigners.
Always land has been sold in large
blocks in Mexico with little thought of
the small holder. Yet when the land
question is offered, as President Wil-
son has advanced it, as the cause of
revolution, it is well to consider facts.
Diaz in his very last message to Con-
gress suspended the legal proving up
act of 1884 the non-compliance with
which, through ignorance, had led to
What Mexico Needs 191
the loss of their property by the In-
dians and appointed a commission to
make a thorough study of the subject.
And second, Madero, whose presiden-
tial campaign was made on the free land
slogan, made but one attempt at land
division after he had been elected, al-
though his family was and is among the
largest holders in Mexico. This at-
tempt was the purchase, from a rela-
tive of the family, of a large piece in
Tamaulipas State at so high a figure
that the people could not afford to buy
it when parcelled for their purchase.
A little knowledge of Mexico is also
helpful when discussing its problems.
Many people think of Mexico as a land
of milk and honey, as everywhere a
fertile garden ; which is quite the wrong
picture. Only the pieces on the coasts
and alongside water are naturally of
the garden variety ; for the greater part
the plains are stretches upon great
stretches where cultivation is impossible
except by irrigation. Irrigation proj-]
ects are among the urgent of Mexico's ^
needs.
The " 80 per cent." Mexican does
not want, cannot use, much land. All
over Mexico, wherever you find him,
192 What's the Matter with Mexico?
and you find him everywhere water
flows, he cultivates just so much as is
necessary to supply his wants and to
leave something over for sale. There
are few watered sections where this
small holder is not found, and almost
invariably, the land in excess of what
he puts in use, lies fallow.
Guasave, a hamlet of about five hun-
dred in Sinaloa State, has a native com-
munity land holding which is more or
less typical of the average Mexican's at-
titude towards quantities of land larger
than he has immediate use for. This
holding amounts to about thirty thou-
sand acres, and scarcely seven hundred
are under cultivation !
Community lands were originally es-
tablished for protection against the
bandits that roamed the country at
will before the coming of Porfirio Diaz,
for the assurance of water and the bet-
ter working of the soil. In most of the
reclamation projects undertaken by
foreigners on government and unsur-
veyed and unoccupied land, the Gov-
ernment exacted that a proportion of
the land be sold back to the natives at
a given fair price after the water had
been put on it; and that half of
What Mexico Needs 193
the previously unsurveyed government
land, which the projectors had sur-
veyed as part of their contract, be re-
turned free of expense to the Govern-
ment. The idea under these require-
ments being to get government land
surveyed at no cost to the Mexican
Government, and to bring water onto
the land, which otherwise would never
have been watered and therefore of no
use to the natives, at a very small cost
to the native purchaser, and no cost to
the Government beyond certain grants
from the enormous quanities of idle
land.
Some of these Community lands have
passed into foreign hands quite legiti-
mately, because of this disposition of
the native to work only what he uses
a community being of the nature of
a stock company in so far as each
member may dispose of his pro rata
but the majority have been undis-
turbed.
In the States of Jalisco, Morelos,
Aguas Calientes and Chihuahua, land is
held in large quantities by a few owners
and the agrarian question is justly
pressing; yet the situation is not as
black as painted, for even in Chihuahua
W hat's the Matter with Mexico?
something like fifty thousand natives,
it is said, are tilling community land.
In Oaxaca where three quarters of the
about one million population is Indian,
community land, held in large areas be-
yond the cultivated acres, has changed
ownership hardly at all.
An experiment was made a couple of
years ago in land division by the Ha-
cienda San Sebastian near Torreon
among the men that had been working
on the place for wages, which throws a
significant light on the natives' feeling
on the " land question." When the
plan of division was announced the men
celebrated their good fortune by sere-
nading the owner, their former em-
ployer, and appeared overjoyed with
the scheme which not only gave them
land but their share of the live stock
on the ranch as well. They worked
with a will and kept it up to the end
of the first week, when, as they had
been accustomed to do, they went to the
manager of the hacienda asking for
their week's wages. " Wages," ex-
claimed the manager, "you're no
longer working for me; you're working
for yourselves and must get your money
What Mexico Needs 195
out of your crop." And the men quit
right there ashing for a restoration of
the old order of things that gave them
regular wages every week's end.
Such represents with fair correct-
ness the average peon's attitude on the
land question. They have not the
means to cultivate the land as a rule,
and they are not inclined to do so when
they have, for the fact is, the Mexican
is not a success at farming or business ;
he does not want to work beyond what
he must to live; and he won't work
while he has money in his pocket. At
one time the land in Morelos was dis-
tributed in great quantities among the
people but it finally got back again to
a few owners, almost into original
hands.
" Free land " has been the catchword
both in and out of Mexico to incite
domestic turbulence and to arouse for-
eign sympathy. It gave Madero the
border sympathy of the United States
which impelled the resignation of Diaz
who remembered his lesson of 1876-9
and believed the United States would
be as exacting now as then. It re-
vealed President Wilson as a very cas-
196 What's the Matter with Mexico?
ual reader of Mexican history, and will
be the doom of any man or party that
raises it for a shibboleth.
The peon's lot is by no means the
unhappy one it is supposed to be by
those who depend for their information
on the sensational and deluding stories,
like " Barbarous Mexico " for example,
which so often find favour with pro-
vincial editors. From our viewpoint it
is never ideal, and there are many in-
stances and some directions, notori-
ously Yucatan, where he was little bet-
ter off than a serf. But speaking gen-
erally he is well treated, wears about the
same clothes, eats about the same food,
lives in the same kind of house, as his
fellow countrymen, who, independently
till their own ground. To the man
from the North, the Mexican of the
tierra, whether working his own ground
or that of his employer, appears to live
a wretched, poverty stricken existence.
But if you live among them you will
find the most contented, free from care
people you have ever known.
The continued influence of the for-
eigner and gradual education will
slowly arouse this native to improve his
general living conditions and to not
What Mexico Needs 197
spend every peso y/hich finds its way
into his hand. Meanwhile the peaceful
state of his mind (blotting out the last
five years) may well be envied by his
compassionate neighbours to the north.
And what he needs is not the vote,
which would only strengthen the grip
on him of the politician to thus deepen
his degradation but a square deal,
and practical industrial education,
training, under patient, comprehending
teachers.
So also these peons need a religion.
" No state can have unity unless it pos-
sess a religion " was what Rousseau
wrote in that remarkable revolutionary
tract, " Contrat Social ; " and none
suits these people as the Catholic with
its vestments and aesthetic ritual. Take
the church out of politics and keep it
out, but Mexico needs at this stage of
its civilisation the acolyte and the con
fessional.
Such a class, the overwhelming ma-
jority, can make no intelligent use of
self-government; can not defend itself
against its own until education has fit-
ted them at least in a measure. As
sometime Professor Woodrow Wil-
son once wrote, " Self-government is
198 What's tlie Matter with Mexico?
not a thing that can be given to any
people, because it is a form of charac-
ter and not a form of constitution."
How can we look for constitutional
election in Mexico when they have
neither constitutional method, habit, or
protection? The Mexican middle class
thinks and talks much about rights and
privileges, but has as yet small idea of
duties and responsibilities ; and slight
capacity for the self-control which is
essential to democratic government.
It is Mexico's job to develop her mid-
dle class, which must grow slowly and
without which there is no true democ-
racy, for through it will come the polit-
ical intelligence of which Mexico at the
moment has almost none. It is en-
tirely natural that these people, un-
trained and with but a handful of edu-
cated among them, should accept their
present freedom from restraint and
President Wilson's Indianapolis senti-
ment, as license to kill and loot and rape
such being the only way they know
how to celebrate their new born free-
dom !
For her political rehabilitation Mex-
ico needs forceful men of unselfish pur-
pose and constructive ability; for the
What Mexico Needs 199
" submerged 80 per cent.," work first,
and then education and always fair
play. The Carranza group thus far
has evolved no leader of such character
and ability ; but such a one must arise
or Mexico be compelled to accept the
strong helping hand of another nation
if she is to regain her foothold among
civilised peoples. And she must be
made to regain it, if not for her own
sake, then for our " peace and prosper-
ity."
THE COST OF A DUTY-LAST POLICY
THERE is only one issue in Mexico
for America ; there has been but
one since Woodrow Wilson took oath
to uphold the Constitution of the
United States and to defend the rights
of its citizens: viz., the protection of
American life and property.
By instance, principle, and law the
President's duty lay clear, imperative,
and defined when he accepted the great
trust of the people March 4, 1913.
Except in post-prandial speech how-
ever, he has given no evidence of ac-
quaintance with that duty. He has
proclaimed but never enjoined the
rights of Americans in Mexico. He
not only refused to protect these citi-
zens but used the influence of his great
office to lead a campaign of slander
against them which made their position
in Mexico one of grievous humiliation
and increased danger.
It was a craven, unrighteous, un-
heard of policy to fling to the world's
200
Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 201
view; it was the very worst and least
defensible one that could be employed
in Mexico. It destroyed literally the
respect in which Americans and the
United States had been held; it em-
boldened the lawless to kill our citizens ;
it led to the raids into our border
states. It was the hat-in-hand policy
which every one of smallest knowledge
of those peoples knows, is of all others
the very one unsuited to Latin America.
If the motives for such policy were
" good " as has been said, then they
sprung from ignorance of a country,
its condition, and people's character,
which must be declared unpardonable in
an executive with one hundred million
citizens in his care and a clean-cut prin-
ciple as exemplar.
The President had abundant oppor-
tunity to extend his knowledge of Mex-
ico, but closed his ear as well as his
official door to all who could give him
real light. He had a preconceived
idea, and he was determined to let it
guide him. And it has. After three
years of this treatment, Mexico is deso-
late and the " submerged 80 per
cent.," for whose fancied relief the
President neglected his own, are pros-
202 What's the Matter with Mexico?
trate; Americans have been robbed,
ruined, murdered, and our army patrols
the border while the bands play the
democratic lullaby, " He kept us out of
war."
It was not our business whether Mex-
ico had a Huerta or a Carranza; it
was our business and our sole and par-
ticular business to insist on the pro-
tection of our citizens. Neither Car-
ranza, who has shown his unfriendli-
ness repeatedly, nor any other aspirant
thrown up by the revolutionary shuffle,
should have been recognised until a
pledge for the protection of foreign life
and property had been required.
The history of our relations with
Mexico shows that peace and safety
have always reigned when compliance
with treaty obligations were exacted.
Barring twenty-six of the years under
Diaz and two periods of foreign inva-
sion, Mexico was from 1810 to 1910 in
the same state approximately as to-day,
minus the voided paper money, the high
powered rifle, the railways, and the elec-
trical communications.
Those twenty-six years of peace co-
incided with the years when the United
States took the attitude that our only
Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 203
interest in Mexico was compliance with
treaty and international obligations
towards American citizens, and, as a
corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, to-
wards all foreign nationals resident in
Mexico. This was not mere coinci-
dence. It was cause and effect. Diaz
was no more amenable or responsive
when first he arrived at the Presidency,
than the others. He was to Juarez
what Madero was to him ; a revolution-
ist raised to president. But our line
of soldier presidents stuck to the Ev-
arts warning that " protection of
its citizens was a paramount duty of
government " and made Diaz under-
stand that if he failed to comply with
his obligations, the United States would
not hesitate to intervene. And Diaz
kept his obligations. That unflinch-
ing, patriotic policy did not lead to war
any more than a similar discharge of
his duty by President Wilson would
have done. It led in 1879 to peace and
prosperity for both countries. It was
a genuine " service to humanity."
And now we have a Commission in
our midst, a political move on both
sides of the line, to discuss the rights
long ago established by this Govern-
204 What 9 s the Matter with Mexico?
ment to protect its border against in-
vasion, and its citizens in a foreign
country from pillage and murder.
It will at least afford amusement at
this juncture to review the previous
experiences of the Administration at ne-
gotiating with Carranza.
The Niagara Falls mediation. Car-
ranza refused to recognise it so that
the few agreements made as to the in-
ternal affairs of Mexico were abso-
lutely nullified by Carranza's coming
into power subsequently without- being
bound by the Conference. The one
agreement which subsists is ours, pro-
viding that the United States shall
never make claim against Mexico for
the expense of the Veracruz occupation,
which, as Secretary Lane has said, we
entered upon so Mexico might under-
stand that " Huerta must go " that
Carranza might come in.
When we retired from Veracruz,
and turned Mexico over to anarchy,
President Wilson tried to get promises
of good behaviour out of Carranza.
He gave nothing. He did agree with
the State Department not to charge
merchants second duties on the goods
in the Veracruz Customs House. He
Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 205
complied with this; but his officials
sold all the goods at public auction and
kept the money for the " cause " ! Un-
cle Sam again held the bag.
The ABCBUG conference to settle
the Mexican question August-Octo-
ber, 1915, Villa, Zapata, and the State
of Oaxaca came in.- Carranza was
given ten days to come in, prolonged
the time by dilatory tactics. The Con-
ference asked each of his generals sep-
arately to come in. This prolonged it
still more. Finally when all his gen-
erals had refused, Carranza refused;
and then we recognised Carranza!
If however this Commission is a se-
rious attempt to do something definite
in the way of remedying the present
intolerable situation, it will help if the
American members keep in mind : That
from 1878 to 1910 we limited ourselves
to seeing that Mexico treated our cit-
izens and their interests justly accord-
ing to treaty stipulations.
That from 1878 to 1910 Mexico was
in a condition of constantly increasing
peace.
That from 1910 we have ceased to
exact respect of these treaty obliga-
tions.
206 What's the Matter with Mexico?
That from 1910 Mexico has been in
a condition of increasing disturbance.
That this is not coincidence but cause
and effect.
If the Commission wastes time inves-
tigating the stories which have been
brought from the border by " Dr."
Atl, Dr. Jordan, and Professor Stef-
fens, their mediations will be as fruit-
less and their conclusions as trifling
as the jeremiads of the two well mean-
ing but misled Americans.
The Commission might " serve hu-
manity " perhaps by finding and classi-
fying the Jordan " vulture " the
talkative pacifist having himself failed
to locate the sinister bird, after giving
tongue of his find too quickly. One
result is assured those American
Commissioners are going to know a
whole lot more about Mexico's " deli-
cate, sensitive race," before they have
finished their seance.
If this Commission has any raison
d'etre, it is, first to ascertain if Car-
ranza is willing and able to establish
peace and safety in Mexico and to pun-
ish those of his soldiers and officers
that have crossed the border and killed
Americans ; and second, to inform Mex-
Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 207
ico that America's friendship from this
time depends on the following three
things :
1. Effective control by Mexico of her
border bandits.
2. Protection of American lives and
properties and of their legal rights in
Mexico.
3. Settlement of foreign and Ameri-
can claims.
The first two at once and the third
as soon as may be.
Henceforth we must consider our
duty to ourselves. Deeply as we may
be moved by the burdens and the strug-
gles of the Mexicans, our obligations in
the first instance are not so much in
solving their problems as in safeguard-
ing our own people. We have given
ample evidence of our patience, of our
good intent to Mexico to the entire
world. Neither " service to human-
ity " nor " watchful waiting " has
proved curative. We can wait no
longer. Europe from whom we asked a
free hand, can wait no longer. The
foreigners whose legitimate enterprise
and capital developed Mexico can not,
will not abandon their rightful hold-
ings. It would ruin them; it would
208 What's the Matter with Mexico?
wreck Mexico. We must quit taking
sides in these revolutions with first one
and then another of the outcropping
leaders and return to our traditional
policy of non-interference. Mexico
must respect her treaty obligations if
not by her own will then by the will
of the United States ; not through a
" war of conquest " but by an expedi-
tion, that would not necessarily mean
war, to establish justice in accord with
the law of civilised nations.
And whether the American members
of the Commission say this or not to
their Mexican confreres, the failure of
Mexico to comply with these require-
ments must lead to intervention dip-
lomatic welfare work, and arms traffick-
ers to the contrary notwithstanding,
if not by the United States, then, when
the Great War is won, by England and
France who will not submit to indignity
and injustice to their subjects.
As an aid to peace and the comfort
of Mexico's " 80 per cent.," it will be
helpful if Congress makes the embargo
on arms permanent until actual order
and safety to foreigners has existed for
one year.
However disinclined the Administra-
Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 209
tion may be to face it, our responsi-
bility for present conditions is heavy.
Because we shirked our duty Mexico's
problem has become our problem too.
These four years have been years of
destruction, murder, humiliation. The
life loss has been for the Mexicans
probably two hundred thousand, for us
nearly four hundred. The property
loss is no less than three hundred mil-
lions. The loss in education by the
young cannot be estimated. The loss
of the habit of peace is beyond com-
putation. Because President Wilson
twice notified the world of our sponsor-
ship for Mexico, the United States is
confronted with the probability of be-
ing held pecuniarily responsible for the
losses suffered by foreigners.
Had the United States remained on
the straight and historic line of limit-
ing her relations with Mexico to an in-
sistence that treaty provisions and the
law of nations be lived up to, the dev-
astation and the embarrassment could
have been averted. President Wilson
took the side track of solicitude for the
welfare of aliens in an alien land in-
stead and we are off the main track
of international procedure and headed
210 What's the Matter with Mexico?
for the very calamity he sought to es-
cape.
Such is the penalty for putting duty
last.
THE ANSWER
WHEN American citizens working
in Mexico under treaty rights
needed and asked the protection of their
Government, they were made the tar-
get of official slander and told to get
out. In response to the killing of
Americans and the destruction of their
property, the President wrote notes,
as recounted by Secretary of State
Lansing under date June 20, 1916. No
American can travel Mexico to-day and
see with his own eyes the plight of the
lowly, and hear with his own ears de-
scription of what his fellow country-
men and women have endured, and not
hang his head in very shame for, his
puissant, supine Government.
There are men who call this " peace
with honour."
We have both duties and rights in
Mexico ; we neglected the one and failed
to exact the other. We trespassed
upon the rights of the Mexicans and we
did not assert the rights of our own
211
What's the Matter with Mexico?
citizens. We departed from precedent
long established by disregarding the
principles and the spirit of our Ameri-
can doctrine, and allowed Mexico to ig-
nore the plain and long respected letter
of her own treaties with us.
That's what's the matter with Mex-
ico.
We have been just neither to our own
citizens nor helpful to the Mexicans
whose " uplift " we set out to accom-
plish. Our citizens are ruined and the
" submerged 80 per cent." are passing
through the darkest chapter in their
history. We interfered with their do-
mestic affairs when we should not have
done so ; and we have not interfered
in the interest of our own people when
we should have done so. We have
preached peace; and handed the Mex-
icans rifles. We have chanted " serv-
ice to humanity " and abandoned our
own people. We have made of Mexico
an experimental station for sociologi-
cal theories, and now we must pay the
rent.
Two things we have failed to do, and
so failing have got ourselves into the
The Answer
A,
worst muddle in our history: (1) We
have failed to mind our own business ;
and (2) we have failed to mind our own
business.
And that is why America is in arms
and Congress is voting a bond issue of
one hundred and thirty millions of dol-
lars to pay for the war which Presi-
dent Wilson kept us out of !
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