Barbarous Mexico 4

BARBAROUS MEXICO

JOHN KENNETH TURNER

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

CO-OPERATIVE

By CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE SLAVES OF YUCATAN 9

II. THE EXTERMINATION OF THE YAQUIS 37

III. OVER THE EXILE ROAD 49

IV THE CONTRACT SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL 67

V. IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH 82

VI. THE COUNTRY PEONS AND THE CITY POOR 100

VII. THE DIAZ SYSTEM 120

VIII REPRESSIVE ELEMENTS OF THE DIAZ MACHINE 138

IX. THE CRUSHING OF OPPOSITION PARTIES 160

X. THE EIGHTH UNANIMOUS ELECTION OF DIAZ 174

XI. FOUR MEXICAN STRIKES 197

XII. CRITICS AND CORROBORATION 220

XIII. THE DIAZ-AMERICAN PRESS CONSPIRACY 237

XIV. THE AMERICAN PARTNERS OF DIAZ 253

XV. AMERICAN PERSECUTION OF THE ENEMIES OF DIAZ 270

XVI. DIAZ HIMSELF 299

XVII. THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 324

CHAPTER XIV

THE AMERICAN PARTNERS OF DIAZ

The United States is a partner in the slavery of Mexico. After freeing his black slaves Uncle Sam, at the end of half a century, has become a slaver again. Uncle Sam has gone to slave-driving in a foreign country.

No, I shall not charge this to Uncle Sam, the genial, liberty-loving fellow citizen of our childhood. I would rather say that Uncle Sam is dead and that another is masquerading in his place—a counterfeit Uncle Sam who has so far deceived the people into believing that he is the real one. It is that person whom I charge with being a slaver.

This is a strong statement, but I believe that the facts justify it. The United States is responsible in part for the extension of the system of slavery in Mexico; second, it is responsible as the determining force in the continuation of that slavery; third, it is responsible knowingly for these things.

When I say the United States I do not mean a few minor and irresponsible American officials. Nor do I mean the American nation—which, in my humble judgment, is unjustly charged with the crimes of some persons over whom, under conditions as they exist, it has no control. I use the term in its most literal and exact sense. I mean the organized power which officially represents this country at home and abroad. I mean the Federal Government and the Interests that control the Federal Government.

Adherents of a certain political cult in this country are wont to declare that chattel slavery was abolished in

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the United States because it ceased to be profitable. Without commenting on the truth or fallacy of this assertion, I aver that there are plenty of Americans who are prepared to prove that slavery is profitable in Mexico. Because it is considered profitable, these Americans have, in various ways, had a hand in the extension of the institution. Desiring to perpetuate Mexican slavery and considering General Diaz a necessary factor in that perpetuation, they have given him their undivided support. By their control of the press they have glorified his name, when otherwise his name should be by right a stench in the nostrils of the world. But they have gone much farther than this. By their control of the political machinery of their government, the United States government, they have held him in his place when otherwise he would have fallen. Most effectively has the police power of this country been used to destroy a movement of Mexicans for the abolition of Mexican slavery and to keep the chief slave-driver of Barbarous Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, upon his throne.

Still another step can we go in these generalizations. By making itself an indispensable factor in his continuation in the governmental power, through its business partnership, its press conspiracy and its police and military alliance, the United States has virtually reduced Diaz to a political dependency, and by so doing has virtually transformed Mexico into a slave colony of the United States.

As I have already suggested, these are generalizations, but if I did not believe that the facts set forth in this and the succeeding chapter fully justified each and every one of them, I would not make them.

Pardon me for again referring to the remarkable defense of Mexican slavery and Mexican despotism which

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we find in the United States, inasmuch as it is itself a strong presumption of guilt partnership in that slavery , and despotism. What publication or individual in the United States, pray you, was ever known to defend the system of political oppression in Russia ? What publication or individual in the United States was ever known to excuse the slave atrocities of the Congo Free State ? How many Americans are in the habit of singing paeans of praise to Czar Nicholas or the late King Leopold ? Americans of whatever class not only do not dare to do these things, but they do not care to do them. But what a difference when it comes to Mexico! Here slavery is sacred. Here autocracy is deified.

It will not do to deny the honesty of the comparison between Mexico and Russia or the Congo. For every worshipper of Diaz knows that he is an autocrat and a slave-driver and enough of them admit it to leave no ground for doubt that they know it.

What, then, is the reason for this strange diversion of attitude ? Why do so many prostrate themselves before the Czar of Mexico and none prostrate themselves before the Czar of Russia ? Why is America flooded with books hailing the Mexican autocrat as the greatest man of the age while it is impossible to buy a single book, regularly published and circulated, that seriously criticizes him ?

The inference is inevitable that it is because Diaz is the Golden Calf in but another form, that Americans are profiting by Mexican slavery and are exerting themselves to maintain it.

But there are easily provable facts that carry us far beyond any mere inference, however logical it may be.

What is the most universal reply that has been made to my criticisms of Mexico and Mexico's ruler? That

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there are $900,000,000 of American capital invested in Mexico.

To the Powers that Be in the United States the nine hundred million dollars of American capital form a conclusive argument against any criticism of President Diaz. They are an overwhelming defense of Mexican slavery.

"Hush ! Hush !" the word goes about. "Why, we have nine hundred million dollars grinding out profits down there !" And the American publishers obediently hush.

In that $900,000,000 of American capital in Mexico is to be found the full explanation not only of the American defense of the Mexican government, but also of the political dependency of Diaz upon the Powers that Be in this country. Wherever capital flows capital controls the government. This doctrine is recognized everywhere and by all men who have as much as half an eye for the lessons that the world is writing. The last decade or two has proved it in every country where large aggregations of capital have gathered.

No wonder there is a growing anti-American sentiment in Mexico. The Mexican people are naturally patriotic. They have gone through tremendous trials to throw off the foreign yoke in past generations and they are unwilling to bend beneath the foreign yoke today. They want the opportunity of working out their own national destiny as a separate people. They look upon the United States as a great colossus which is about to seize them and bend them to its will.

And they are right. American capital in Mexico will not be denied. The partnership of Diaz and American capital has wrecked Mexico as a national entity. The United States government, as long as it represents American capital—and the most rampant hypocrite will hardly deny that it does today—will have a deciding voice in

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Mexican affairs. From the viewpoint of patriotic Mexicans the outlook is melancholy indeed.

Let us cast our eyes over Mexico and see what some of that $900,000,000 of American capital is doing there.

The Morgan-Guggenheim copper merger is in absolute control of the copper output of Mexico.

M. Guggenheim Sons own all the large smelters in Mexico, as well as vast mining properties. They occupy the same powerful position in the mining industry generally in Mexico as they occupy in the United States.

The Standard Oil company, under the name of the Waters-Pierce, with many subsidiary corporations, controls a vastly major portion of the crude oil flow of Mexico. It controls a still greater portion of the wholesale and retail trade in oil—ninety per cent of it, so its managers claim. At the present writing there is an oil war in Mexico caused by an attempt of the only other oil distributing concern in the country—controlled by the Pearsons—to force the Standard to buy it out at a favorable price. The situation predicts an early victory for the Standard, after which its monopoly will be complete.

Agents of the American Sugar Trust have just secured from the Federal and State governments concessions for the production of sugar beets and beet sugar so favorable as to insure it a complete monopoly of the Mexican sugar business within the next ten years.

The Inter-Continental Rubber company—in other words, The American Rubber Trust—is in possession of millions of acres of rubber lands, the best in Mexico.

The Wells-Fargo Express company, the property of the Southern Pacific Railroad, through its partnership with the government, holds an absolute monopoly of the express carrying business of Mexico.

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E. N. Brown, president of the National Railways of Mexico and a satellite of H. Clay Pierce and the late E. H. Harriman, is a member of the board of directors of the Banco Nacional, which is by far the largest financial institution in Mexico, a concern that has over fifty branches, in which all the chief members of the Diaz financial camarilla are interested and through which financial deals of the Mexican government are transacted.

Finally, the Southern Pacific Railroad and allied Harriman heirs, despite the much vaunted government railway merger, own outright or control by virtue of near-ownership, three-fourths of the main line railway mileage of Mexico, which enables it today to impose as absolute a monopoly in restraint of trade as exists in the case of any railway combination in the United States.

These are merely some of the largest aggregations of American capital in Mexico. For example, the Harriman heirs own two and one-half millions acres of oil land in the Tampico country, and a number of other Americans own properties running into the millions of acres. Americans are involved in the combinations which control the flour and meat trades of Mexico. The purely trade interests are themselves considerable. Eighty per cent of Mexican exports come to the United States and sixty-six per cent of Mexican imports are sent to her by us, the American trade with Mexico totaling some $75,000,000 a year.

So you see how it is in Mexico. The Americanization of Mexico of which Wall Street boasts, is being accomplished and accomplished with a vengeance.

It were hardly worth while to pause at this juncture and discuss the question why Mexicans did not get in on the ground floor and control these industries. It is not, as numerous writers would have us believe, be-

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cause Americans are the only intelligent people in the world and because God made Mexicans a stupid people and intended that they should be governed by their superiors. One very good reason why Diaz delivered his country into the hands of Americans was that Americans had more money to pay for special privileges. And Americans had more money because, while all Mexicans were becoming impoverished by the war for the overthrow of the foreigner, Maximilian, thousands of Americans were making fortunes by means of grafting army contracts involved in our Civil War.

Let me present an instance or two of the way in which Americans are contributing to the extension of slavery.

Take the Yaqui atrocities, for example. Vice-president Corral, who was then in control of the government of the state of Sonora, stirred up a Yaqui war because he saw an opportunity to get the Yaqui lands and sell them at a good price to American capitalists. The Yaqui country is rich in both mining and agricultural possibilities. American capitalists bought the lands while the Yaquis were still on them, then stimulated the war of extermination and finally instigated the scheme to deport them into slavery in Yucatan.

But American capital did not stop even there. It followed the Yaqui women and children away from their homes. It saw families dismembered, women forced into wifehood with Chinamen, men beaten to death. It saw these things, encouraged them and covered them up from the eyes of the world because of its interest in the price of sisal hemp, because it feared that with the passing of slave labor the price of sisal hemp would rise. The American Cordage Trust, a ramification of Standard Oil, absorbs over half the henequen export of Yu-

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catan. The Standard Oil press declares there is no slavery in Mexico. Governor Fred N. Warner, of Michigan, publicly denied my expose of slavery in Yucatan. Governor Warner is interested in contracts involving the purchase annually of half a million dollars worth of sisal hemp from the slave kings of Yucatan.

Also, Americans work the slaves—buy them, drive them, lock them up at night, beat them, kill them, exactly as do other employers of labor in Mexico. And they admit that they do these things. In my possession are scores of admissions by American planters that they employ labor which is essentially slave labor. All over the tropical section of Mexico, on the plantations of rubber, sugar-cane, tropical fruits—everywhere—you will find Americans buying, beating, imprisoning, killing slaves.

Let me quote you just one interview I had with a well known and popular American of Diaz's metropolis, a man who for five years ran a large plantation near Santa Lucrecia

"When we needed a lot of enganchados," he told me, "all we had to do was to wire to one of the numerous enganchadores in Mexico, saying: 'We want so many men and so many women on such and such a day.' Sometimes we'd call for three or four hundred, but the enganchadores would never fail to deliver the full number on the dot. We paid fifty pesos apiece for them, rejecting those that didn't look good to us, and that was all there was to it. We always kept them as long as they lasted.

"It's healthier down there than it is right here in the city of Mexico," he told me. "If you have the means to take care of yourself you can keep as well there as you can anywhere on earth."

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Less than five minutes after making this statement he told me:

"Yes, I remember a lot of three hundred enganchados we received one Spring. In less than three months we buried more than half of them."

The hand of the American slave-driver of Mexico has been known to reach out for its victims even as far as his own home—the United States. During my travels in Mexico, in order to become better acquainted with the common people, I spent most of my traveling days in second or third class cars. Riding in a third class car between Tierra Blanca and Veracruz one night, I spied an American negro sitting in a corner.

"I wonder if they ever caught him down here?" I said to myself. "I'll find out."

Tom West, a free-born Kentucky negro of twenty-five, hesitated to admit that he had ever been a slave. But he confessed gradually.

"Ah was workin' in a brick yahd in Kaintucky at two dollahs a day," was the way Tom put it, "when anothah cullahd man come along an' tole me he knowed where Ah cud get three seventy-five a day. Ah said 'Ah'm with ye.' So he hands me one o' them book prospectuses an' the next day he tuk me to the office o' the company an' they said the same thing—three seventy-five American money, or seven an' a half Mex! So Ah come with eighty othah cullahd folks by way o' Tampa, Florida, and Veracruz, down here to a coffee and rubbah plantation at La Junta, near Santa Lucrecia, Oaxaca.

"Seven and a half a day! Huh! Seven an' a half ! That's just what they paid me when they let me go aftah two yeahs! All run away twict, but they ketched me and brung me hack. Did they beat me? Naw, they beat lots o' othahs, but they nevah beat me. All yeh,

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they batted me a few times with a stick, but Ah wouldn't a let 'em beat me; no suh, not me!"

The plantation that caught Tom West, Kentuckian, was an American plantation. Some months after talking with Tom I happened to hold a conversation with a man who identified himself as Tom's master after I had told him Tom's story.

"Those niggers," this American told me, "were an experiment that didn't turn out very well. They must have been ours, for I don't know of anybody else down that way that had them at the time of which you speak. The seven and a half a day? Oh, the agents told 'em anything to get them. That was none of our business. We simply bought them and paid for them and then made them work out their purchase price before we gave them any money. Yes, we kept them under lock and key at night and had to guard them with guns in the daytime. When they tried to make a break we'd tie 'em up and give 'em a good dressing down with a club. The authorities? We chummed with the authorities. They were our friends."

The partnership of American capital with President Diaz not only puts at its disposal a system of slave labor, but also permits it to utilize the system of peonage and to beat the class of wage-laborers down to the lowest point of subsistence. Where slavery does not exist in Mexico you find peonage, a mild form of slavery, or you find cheap wage-labor. Diaz's rurales shot Colonel Greene's copper miners into submission and threats of imprisonment put an end to the great strike on an American-Mexican railroad. American capitalists boast of the fact that their Diaz "does not permit any foolishness on the part of these labor unions." In such facts as

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these are found the reason for their hysterical defense of him.

I shall briefly outline the railroad situation in Mexico, and tell the story of the railway merger.

Today the main lines of Mexican railroads aggregate 12,500 miles. Of this mileage the Southern Pacific company controls and will probably soon own 8,941 miles, or nearly three-fourths of the total. These lines consist of :

The Southern Pacific in Mexico, 950 miles ; the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient, 279 miles ; the Pan-American, 296 miles; the Mexican, 327 miles; the National Railways of Mexico, 7,039 miles.

Of these the Southern Pacific is the only one that is being operated openly as the property of the Harriman heirs. The Orient road is operated under the presidency of A. E. Stilwell, a Harriman ally, whose vice-president, George H. Ross, is a director of the Chicago & Alton road, a Harriman property with which the Orient road has traffic agreements. Construction is still going on on both of these roads and they arc drawing from the Diaz government about $20,000 of subsidy for every mile built, or nearly enough to build the road.

The Pan-American railroad was recently acquired by David H. Thompson, who is the nominal president. Thompson was the United States ambassador to Mexico, where he seems to have represented the Harriman interests first and the other American interests afterwards. After securing the road, he resigned the ambassadorship. It is a pretty generally accepted fact that Thompson was acting for Harriman in securing the road. Harriman men are associated with him as directors of the road. The especial purpose of Thompson's securing the road was to incorporate it as a part of Harriman's

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plan to make an all-rail route from the Arizona border to Central America.

The only control exercised by the Harriman interests over the "Mexican Railway," as far as the writer knows, is that involved in the pooling of interests, in both freight and passenger traffic, of the Mexican road and the National Railways of Mexico. It is the inside story of the Mexican merger—a story which I obtained from unimpeachable sources while working as a reporter of the Mexican Daily Herald in the Spring of 1909.

Briefly, the story is this: The consolidation under nominal government control of the two principal railroad systems in Mexico, the Mexican Central and the Mexican National, was brought about, not, as is officially given out, to provide against the absorption of the Mexican highways by foreign capitalists, but to provide for that very thing. It was a deal between E. H. Harriman, on the one hand, and the government financial camarilla, on the other, the victim in the case being Mexico. It was a sort of deferred sale of the Mexican railroads to Harriman, the members of the camarilla getting as their share of the loot millions and millions of dollars through the juggling of securities and stock in effecting the merger. On the whole, it constitutes perhaps the most colossal single piece of plundering carried out by the organized wreckers of the Mexican nation.

In this deal with Harriman, Limantour, Minister of Finance, was the chief manipulator, and Pablo Macedo, brother of Miguel Macedo, Sub-secretary of the Department of the Interior, was first lieutenant. As a reward for their part in the deal, Limatour and Macedo are said to have divided $9,000,000 gold profits between them, and Limantour was made president and Macedo vice-president of the board of directors of the merged roads,

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which positions they still hold. The other members of the board of directors of the merged roads arc Guillermo de Landa y Escandon, governor of the Federal District of Mexico, Samuel Morse Felton, former president of the Mexican Central, who was Harriman's special emissary in Mexico to work on Diaz to secure his consent to the deal, E. N. Brown, former vice-president and general manager of the Mexican National lines, and Gabriel Mancera. Each of these four men is said to have made a personal fortune for himself out of the transaction.

The National Railways of Mexico, as they are officially known, have, in addition to a general board of directors, a New York board of directors. Note the Harriman timber to be found among these names: William H. Nichols, Ernest Thallmann, James N. Wallace, James Speyer, Bradley W. Palmer, H. Clay Pierce, Clay Arthur Pierce, Henry S. Priest, Eban Richards and H. C. P. Channan.

Whether the Mexican railroad steal was conceived in the brain of Limantour or of Harriman is not known, but Limantour seems to have attempted to bring about the merger originally without the aid of Harriman. Some four years ago Limantour and Don Pablo Martinez del Rio, owner of the Mexican Herald and manager of the Banco Nacional, went into the market and bought heavily of Mexican Central and Mexican National stock, after which they broached the merger scheme to Diaz. Diaz turned the proposition down pointblank and Limantour and del Rio both lost heavily, del Rio's losses so bearing down upon him that he died soon afterwards.

It was at this point that Limantour is supposed to have turned to Harriman, who immediately fell in with

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the scheme and carried it to an exceedingly successful termination for himself.

Harriman owned some Mexican Central stock, but fifty-one per cent of this property was in the personal possession of H. Clay Pierce. When the first rumblings of the 1907 panic were heard Pierce was persuaded to hypothecate his entire holdings to Harriman.

After getting control of from eighty to eighty-five per cent of the Mexican Central property Harriman sent Samuel Morse Felton, one of the ablest railroad manipulators in the United States, to talk Diaz over to the merger scheme. Where Limantour had failed Felton succeeded and the world was informed that the Mexican government had accomplished a great financial feat by securing the ownership and control of its railroad lines.

It was announced that the government had actually secured fifty-one per cent of the stock of the company. Also the government was put in nominal control of the situation.

But—in the deal Harriman succeeded in placing such heavy obligations upon the new company that his heirs are almost sure to foreclose in the course of time.

The Mexican Central and Mexican National systems are both cheaply built roads ; their rolling stock is of very low grade. Their entire joint mileage at the time of the merger was 5,400 miles, and yet under the merger they were capitalized at $615,000,000 gold, or $112,000 per mile. Oceans of water there. The Mexican Central was 30 years old, yet had never paid a penny. The Mexican National was over 25 years old, yet it had paid less than two per cent. Yet in the over-capitalized merger we find that the company binds itself to pay four and one-half per cent on $225,000,000 worth of bonds

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and four per cent on $160,000,000 worth of bonds, or $16,525,000 interest a year, and pay it semi-annually!

Out of the merger deal Harriman is supposed to have received, in addition to merger stocks and bonds, a cash consideration and special secret concessions and subsidies for his west coast road. Harriman dictated the contract as to the payment of interest on those merger bonds and his successors will compel payment or foreclose. As long as Diaz remains in power; as long as the Mexican government is "good ;" that is, as long as it continues in partnership with American capital, the matter can be arranged—if in no other way, by paying the deficiency out of the Mexican treasury. But the moment there is trouble it is expected that the government will be unable to pay and the railroad will become American in name as well as in fact.

Trouble ! That word is an exceedingly significant one here. A Mexican revolution will probably mean trouble of this particular sort, for every revolution of the past in Mexico has seen the necessity of the government's repudiating all or a part of the national obligations for a time. Thus the final step in the complete Americanization of Mexico's railways will be one of the clubs held over the Mexican people to prevent them from overturning a government that is particularly favorable to American capital.

Trouble ! Trouble will come, too, when Mexico attempts to kick over the traces of undue American "influence." The United States will intervene with an army, if necessary, to maintain Diaz or a successor who would continue the special partnership with American capital. In case of a serious revolution the United States will intervene on the plea of protecting American

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capital. American intervention will destroy the last hope of Mexico for an independent national existence. Mexican patriots cannot forget this, for it is daily paraded before them by the Diaz press itself. Thus the threat of an American army in Mexico is another of the American influences which keep Mexico from revolution against the autocracy of Diaz.

American capital is not at present in favor of political annexation of Mexico. This is because the slavery by which it profits can be maintained with greater safety under the Mexican flag than under the American flag. As long as Mexico can be controlled—in other words, as long as she can be held as a slave colony—she will not be annexed, for once she is annexed the protest of the American people will become so great that the slavery must of necessity be abolished or veiled under less brutal and downright forms. The annexation of Mexico will come only when she cannot be controlled by other means. Nevertheless, the threat of annexation is today held as a club over the Mexican people to prevent them from forcibly removing Diaz.

Do I guess when I prophesy that the United States will intervene in case of a revolution against Diaz ? Hardly, for the United States has already intervened in that very cause. The United States has not waited for the revolution to assume a serious aspect, but has lent its powers most strenuously to stamping out its first evidences. President Taft and Attorney General Wickersham, at the behest of American capital, have already placed the United States government in the service of Diaz to aid in stamping out an incipient revolution with which, for justifiable grounds, our revolution of 1776 cannot for an instant be thought of in comparison. Attorney General Wickersham is credited

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with being a heavy stockholder in the National Railways of Mexico; Henry W. Taft, brother of the president, is general counsel for the same corporation. Thus it will be seen that these officials have a personal as well as a political interest in maintaining the system of Diaz.

Three times during the past two years the United States government has rushed an army to the Mexican border in order to crush a movement of Liberals which had risen against the autocrat of Mexico. Constantly during the past three years the American government, through its Secret Service, its Department of Justice; its Immigration officials, its border rangers, has maintained in the border states a reign of terror for Mexicans, in which it has lent itself unreservedly to the extermination of political refugees of Mexico who have sought safety from the long arm of Diaz upon the soil of the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

CHAPTER XV

AMERICAN PERSECUTION OF THE ENEMIES OF DIAZ

America, Cradle of Liberty, has joined hands with Porfirio Diaz, the most devastating despot that rules a nation, in stamping out that portion of the world movement for democracy which is today attempting to secure the common rights of human beings for the Mexican people. In previous chapters I have shown how the United States is a voluntary partner in the slavery and political oppression of Diaz-land. I have shown how, by its commercial alliance, its press conspiracy and its threat of intervention and annexation, it has supported the military dictatorship of Diaz. This chapter I shall devote to the story of how the United States has delivered its military and civil resources into the hands of the Tyrant and with that power has held him in his place when otherwise he would have fallen ; and thus has been the final determining force in the continuation of the system of slavery which I have described in the early chapters of this book.

When I say the United States here I mean the United States government chiefly, though state and local governments along our Mexican border are also involved. Numerous instances go to show that, in order to exterminate the enemies of Diaz who have come as political refugees to this country, public officials from the president down have set aside American principles cherished for generations, have criminally violated some laws and stretched and twisted others out of all semblance to their former selves, and have permitted, encouraged

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and protected law-breaking on the part of Mexican officials and their hirelings in this country.

For the past five years the law of our border states, as far as Mexican citizens are concerned, has been very much the law of Diaz. The border has been Mexicanized. In numerous instances our government has delegated its own special powers to agents of Mexico in the form of consuls, hired attorneys and private detectives. Mexican citizens have been denied the right of asylum and the ordinary protection of our laws. By the reign of terror thus established the United States has held in check a movement which otherwise would surely have developed sufficient strength to overthrow Diaz, abolish Mexican slavery and restore constitutional government in the country to the south of us.

Three times during the past two years, twice as Secretary of War and once as President, William Howard Taft has ordered troops to the Texas border to aid Diaz in wreaking vengeance upon his enemies. He also—at the same time as well as at other times—ordered posses of United States Marshals and squads of Secret Service operatives there for the same purpose.

The first time Taft ordered troops to the border was in June, 1908, the second time in September, 1908, the third time in July, 1909. The troops were commanded to drive back into the hands of pursuing Mexican soldiers or to capture and detain any fugitives who attempted to cross the Rio Grande and save their lives upon Texas soil.

That this action on the part of President Taft was an undue stretching of the laws it would appear from dispatches sent out from Washington, June 30, 1908. From one of these dispatches published throughout the country, July 1, 1908, I quote the following:

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"The employment of American troops for this purpose, by the way, is almost without precedent in recent years, and the law officers of the War Department, as well as the Attorney-General himself, have been obliged to give close study to the question of the extent to which they may exercise the power of preventing persons from entering the United States across the Mexican border.

"Under the law no passports are required except in the case of Chinese and Japanese, and about the only other reasonable ground for detention of fugitives seeking to cross the line would be some presumable violation of the immigration or health-inspection laws.

"So it will be a delicate task for the army officers, who are charged with the duty of policing this international boundary line, to avert clashes with the civil courts if they undertake to make promiscuous arrests of persons fleeing from Mexico into the United States."

The troops obeyed orders. Fleeing Liberals were turned back to be pierced by the bullets of Diaz's soldiers. Was our government justified in causing the death of those unfortunate men in such a manner ? If not, would it be improper to characterize the action as executive murder?

During the past five years hundreds of Mexican refugees have been imprisoned in the border states, and there have been numerous attempts to carry refugees across the line, in order that the Diaz government might deal with them after its own summary methods, and many of these attempts have been successful. Some of the schemes employed in this campaign of deportation are, first, to institute extradition proceedings under charges of "murder and robbery ;" second, to deport through the Immigration Department under charges of being "undesirable immigrants ;" third, to kidnap outright and feloniously carry across the line.

Some members of the Liberal Party whose extradition

[photo]

MEXICAN REVOLUTIONISTS

TOMAS SARABIA ANTONIO I. VILLARREAL

RICARDO FLORES MAGON

ENRIQUE FLORES MAGON LIBRADO RIVERA

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was sought on charges of "murder and robbery" during the space of a few months were Librado Rivera, Pedro Gonzales, Crescencio Villarreal, Trinidad Garcia, Demetrio Castro, Patricio Guerra, Antonio I. Villarreal, Lauro Aguirre, Ricardo Flores Magon and Manuel Sarabia. There were others, but I have not definite knowledge of their cases. Some of the prosecutions occurred at St. Louis, others at El Paso, Texas, others at Del Rio, Texas, and others at Los Angeles, Cal.

An uprising of a Liberal club at Jimenez, Coahuila, formed the basis of the charges in all but one or two of the cases. During this uprising somebody was killed and the government postoffice lost some money. Wherefore every Mexican who could be convicted of membership in the Liberal Party, although he might never have been in Coahuila nor have ever heard of the rebellion, stood in danger of extradition for "murder and robbery." The United States government spent a good many thousands of dollars in prosecuting these manifestly groundless charges, but it is to the credit of certain Federal Judges that the prosecutions were generally unsuccessful. Judge Gray of St. Louis and Judge Maxey of Texas both characterized the offenses as being of a political nature. The text of the former's decision in the Rivera case follows:

The United States vs. Librado Rivera.

City of St. Louis, ss., State of Missouri.

I hereby certify that upon a public hearing had before me at my office in said city on this 30th day of November, 1906, the defendant being present, it appearing from the proofs that the offense complained of was entirely of a political nature, the said defendant, Librado Rivera, was discharged.

Witness my hand and seal.

JAMES R. GRAY

U. S. Commissioner at St. Louis, Mo.

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The scheme to deport political refugees through the Immigration Department was more successful. The immigration laws provide that, if it be discovered that an immigrant is a criminal or anarchist, or if he has entered this country in an illegal manner, provided that such discovery is made within three years of his arrival here, the immigration officials may deport him. The question of the "undesirability" of the immigrant is not a subject for review by the courts, the immigrant may not appeal, and within two or three restrictions the immigration agent's word is law. It will be readily seen, therefore, that if the said official be not an honest man, if he be willing to accept a bribe or even yield to influence or blandishments, he may, with impunity, send many pure and upright men to an untimely death.

And exactly this thing has been done. Antonio I. Villarreal, secretary of the Liberal Party, was among those placed in danger of deportation "under the immigration laws." After various means had been used unsuccessfully to secure his extradition, he was turned over to the immigration officials at El Paso and was actually on his way to the line when he made a break for liberty and escaped.

Of a large number of Mexican Liberals arrested in Arizona in the fall of 1906, Lazaro Puente, Abraham Salcido, Gabriel Rubio, Bruno Trevino, Carlos Humbert, Leonardo Villarreal and several others were deported in one party by the immigration officials at Douglas. There is no legal excuse for deporting an immigrant because he is a political refugee. On the other hand, according to "American principles," so-called, he is entitled to especially solicitous care for this reason. And yet all of these men were deported because they were political refugees.

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All of them were peaceful, respectable persons. The law under no circumstances permits of deportation after the immigrant has been a resident of this country for more than three years. But several of this number had lived here for longer than that time and Puente, who was editing a paper in Douglas, claimed to have resided in the United States continuously for thirteen years.

Still another crime of officials may be cited in this particular case. When occasion arises for deportation the immigrant in ordinary cases is merely returned to the country whence he came. But in this case the group of Mexican Liberals was delivered over to the Mexican police in handcuffs, and the American handcuffs were not removed until the prisoners arrived at the penitentiary of Hermosillo, state of Sonora!

The Mexican government, by the way, found nothing against these men after it had got them except that they were members of the Liberal Party. Nevertheless, it sent each and every one of them to long terms in prison.

Many Americans will remember the case of L. Gutierrez De Lara, whom the Immigration Department seized for deportation in October, 1909, accusing him of being "an alien anarchist." De Lara had resided more than three years in this country, yet undoubtedly he would have been sent to his death had not the country sent up such a protest that the conspirators were frightened. It is supposed that De Lara's life was sought at this particular time because he accompanied me to Mexico and aided in securing material for my expose of Mexican conditions.

When Diaz fails to gain possession of his enemies in the United States by other means he does not hesitate to resort to kidnapping and when he resorts to kidnap-

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ping he finds no trouble in securing the criminal assistance of American officials.

The most notable case of refugee kidnapping on record is that of Manuel Sarabia. The case is notable not because it is the only one of its kind, but because it is the one which was most successfully exposed. Manuel Sarabia was second speaker of the Liberal junta. He was hounded about from place to place by Diaz detectives, finally bringing up in Douglas, Arizona, where he went to work quietly at his trade of printer.

On June 30, 1907, Antonio Maza, the Mexican consul at Douglas, saw Sarabia on the street and recognized him. That evening U. S. Ranger Sam Hayhurst held up Sarabia at the point of a pistol and, without a warrant, put him in the city jail. At eleven o'clock that night Sarabia's door swung open, he was led outside, forced into an automobile, carried across the international boundary line and there turned over to Colonel Kosterlitzsky, an officer of Mexican rurales. The rurales tied Sarabia on the back of a mule, and telling him that he was to be shot on the road, made a hurried trip with him through the mountains, finally bringing up, after five days, at the penitentiary at Hermosillo, Sonora.

What saved Sarabia? Just one thing. As he was forced into the automobile he cried out his name and shouted that he was being kidnapped. The ruffians guarding him choked him into silence and then gagged him, but some one had heard and the story spread.

Even then Consul Maza had the audacity to try to hush up the matter and carry his plot to a successful conclusion. By some means he succeeded in muzzling the string of Arizona newspapers run by George H. Kelly, as Kelly afterwards admitted in court. But in Douglas at that time there was a newspaper man whom

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Maza could not bribe. It was Franklin B. Dorr, who was running the Douglas Daily Examiner.

In his paper Dorr raised a protest that stirred the blood of the people of Douglas. Street meetings were held to further arouse the people. Mother Jones was there. A crowd looked for Maza with a rope. Telegraphic appeals were sent to the state and national governments. And finally—Sarabia was shamefacedly returned.

What would have happened to Sarabia if his voice had not been heard on that night in June, 1907? Exactly what has happened to others whose frightened voices have not been heard. He would have dropped out of sight and no one would ever have been able to say for certain where he had gone.

And what, pray, happened to the kidnappers ? Absolutely nothing. Consul Maza, Ranger Hayhurst, Lee Thompson, city jailer, Constable Shorpshire, Henry Elvey, the chauffeur, and some private detectives whose names were never given to the public seem plainly to have been guilty of the crime of kidnapping, which is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary. Those named were arrested and the first four were duly held to answer to the upper court sitting at Douglas. Elvey made a clean breast of the case and the evidence seemed conclusive. But as soon as the excitement had blown over every one of the cases was quietly dropped. It was not Sarabia's fault, for an effort was made to bribe Sarabia to leave town and Sarabia refused the bribe. Evidently the money which had bribed Hayhurst, Thompson and Shorpshire was not all the money that was used by Maza at that time.

Nearly every small town along the Mexican border

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harbors a personage who enjoys the title of Mexican consul. Consuls are found in villages hundreds of miles from the Mexican border. Consuls are supposed to be for the purpose of looking after the interests of trade between countries, but towns in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas which do not do a hundred dollars worth of trade a year with Mexico have consuls who are maintained by Diaz at the expense of tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Such consuls are not consuls at all. They are spies, persecutors, bribers. They are furnished with plenty of money and they spend it freely in hiring thugs and detectives and bribing American officeholders. By the power thus gained they have repeatedly suppressed newspapers and put their editors in jail, as well as broken up political clubs of Mexicans.

During the trial of Jose Maria Ramires and four other Liberals in El Paso in October, 1908, a city policeman naively swore that his chief had told him to obey the orders of the Mexican consul and the chief of police of Juarez, a Mexican town.

When, after threats by the Mexican consul of Tucson, Arizona, thugs destroyed the printing plant of Manuel Sarabia in that city in December, 1908, Sarabia was unable to persuade the City Marshal to make an investigation of the affair or to attempt to bring the perpetrators to account.

City detectives of Los Angeles, California, have repeatedly taken orders from the Mexican consul there and have unlawfully placed in his hands property of persons whom they have arrested.

Antonio Lozano, the Mexican consul at Los Angeles, at one time had two fake employment offices running at the same time for the single purpose of hiring mem-

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bers of the Liberal Party and luring them to points in Mexico where they could be captured by the Diaz police. This same consul, after De Lara and I started on our trip to Mexico, offered bribes to various friends of De Lara to tell them where he had gone.

Such minor details would fill many pages. John Murray was arrested by Secret Service Chief Wilkie. Murray's offense consisted of raising money for the legal defense of the refugees. Robert W. Dowe, the American customs collector at Eagle Pass, Texas, was compelled to resign under charges of acting as a secret agent for the Mexican government, and receiving money for such service. The evidence in the case was suppressed by our Treasury Department, which reinstated Dowe after some months had passed and public indignation over the affair at Eagle Pass had blown over. In the District Court of Los Angeles, Cal., a warrant for the arrest of De Lara, his wife, Mrs. Mamie Shea, an American, Mrs. Marie Talavera and about twenty others, has been on file for many months, ready for service at any time. Those named are charged with violating the neutrality laws in having circulated a manifesto printed by the Liberal Party. Threats that this warrant was to be served have been made to various of the parties, with the evident purpose of deterring them from aiding in any way the movement for the regeneration of Mexico.

Only a few months ago newspapers reported that Major Elihu Root of the U. S. Army had gone on a special mission to Mexico to confer with Diaz's War Department on the most practical means of entrapping the enemies of Diaz who are sojourning on our soil.

Only a short time ago the news was printed that Punto Rojo, an anti-Diaz labor paper of Texas, had been sup-

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pressed, that $10,000 reward had been offered for the capture of its editor, Praxedis Guerrero, that secret service men in pursuit of that reward had seized subscription books of the paper and from the books had secured names of men who would be at once proceeded against.

During the past three years persecution of this general character has directly caused the suspension of at least ten newspapers printed in Spanish along the border for Mexican readers.

To each of these persecutions and press suppressions there is an interesting story attached, but to attempt to detail all of them would require too great a proportion of this work. I shall detail but one case, that of Ricardo Flores Magon, president of the Liberal Party, and his immediate associates. This case, as well as being the most important of all, is typical. Its difference from the rest has been chiefly that Magon, having been able to gather about him greater resources, has been able to make a longer and more desperate fight for his life and liberty than others of his countrymen who have been singled out for persecution. For six and one-half years Magon has been in this country and during nearly the whole of that time he has been engaged in trying to escape being sent back to death beyond the Rio Grande. More than one-half of that time he has passed in American prisons, and for no other reason than that he is opposed to Diaz and his system of slavery and despotism.

The worst that can be said of Magon—as of any of his followers whom I know—is that he desires to bring about an armed rebellion against the established government of Mexico. In cases where reformers are given the opportunity of urging their reforms by democratic

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methods, armed rebellion in this day and age are indefensible. But when through the suppression of free speech, free press and such liberties, peaceable means of propaganda are impossible, then force is the only alternative. It was upon this principle that our revolutionary forefathers proceeded and upon which the Mexican Liberals are proceeding today.

Magon and his followers would never have come to this country to plot against Diaz had not their peaceable movement been broken up by gun and club methods and their lives seriously endangered at home. The propriety of citizens of despotic countries seeking refuge in another country, there to plan better things for their own, was for many decades recognized by the constituted powers of the United States, which protected political refugees.

A dozen years ago Palma established the Cuban revolutionary Junta in the city of New York, and instead of being arrested he was lionized. For more than a century political refugees from European countries, South America, and even China have found safety with us. Young Turks prepared for their revolution here. Irish societies raised money here for a movement to free Ireland. Jewish defense societies have been financed all over the country and none of the promoters have been turned over to the vengeance of the Czar. And these things have been done openly, not secretly. Today there are known to be Portuguese revolutionist headquarters in the United States. Porfirio Diaz himself—what historic irony !—when he turned revolutionist found safety on American soil and, though his cause was an extremely questionable one, no one arrested him. What is more, Diaz committed the identical crime which, through the legal machinery of the United States, he is now urging

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against many of the refugees, that of setting on foot a military expedition against a foreign power. On March 22, 1876, Diaz crossed the Rio Grande at Brownsville, Texas, with forty armed followers for the purpose of waging war upon President Lerdo de Tejada. He was driven back and, though all America knew of his exploit, no effort was made to imprison him.

But now the policy has been changed to accommodate President Diaz. Action has been taken against political refugees of just one other country, Russia, and it is safe to assume that those cases were undertaken merely that the authorities might defend themselves against the charge of using the machinery of government with partiality against Mexicans.

Magon and a small group of followers, including his brother Enrique and the Sarabias, crossed the Rio Grande in January, 1904, and soon afterwards established their paper "Regeneracion" in San Antonio. The paper had been going but a few weeks when a Mexican, a supposed hireling of the Mexican government, called at the office and tried to reach the Liberal leader with a dirk-knife. Enrique Magon grappled with the fellow, and in another moment four city detectives rushed in and placed Enrique under arrest. The next day he was fined $30 in the police court, while the supposed thug was not even arrested.

The exiles looked upon this incident as a part of a conspiracy to get them into trouble. They moved to St. Louis, where they re-established their paper. They had hardly got into their new quarters when they began to be annoyed by the Furlong Detective Agency. They claim that the Furlong Detective Agency put an "operative" into the office of "Regeneracion" in the role of an advertising solicitor, put "operatives" into the St. Louis

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postoffice to waylay the letters of the exiles, put "operatives" out to hunt somebody to bring libel proceedings against "Regeneracion," put "operatives" at work to harass the editors of the paper in every possible way.

Our Postoffice Department, called to aid in the suppression of "Regeneracion," revoked the second class privileges which had been properly secured at San Antonio. But this was insufficient, so two different parties were brought from Mexico to institute charges of criminal and civil libel against the editors. The editors were thrown in jail, the publication stopped. Furlong detectives stole letters and turned them over to the Mexican consul, and from these letters, the refugees claim, was gleaned a list of names which resulted in the arrest of some three hundred Liberals in Mexico.

The editors got out of jail on bail, whereupon new charges were prepared to get them back again. But, having important work to do, they chose to pay their bail and flee from these charges. Magon and Juan Sarabia went to Canada and it was here that they carried on their final correspondence preparatory to launching an armed rebellion against Diaz. The first gun was to be fired October 20, 1906, and on the night of October 19 the Liberal leaders gathered at El Paso preparatory to crossing the line the following morning.

As set forth in a previous chapter, this rebellion was betrayed and was more or less of a fizzle. Of the refugee leaders, Juan Sarabia was betrayed into the hands of Diaz and with scores of others was soon afterwards sent to the military prison of San Juan de Ulua. Villarreal, as previously stated, was among those arrested by the American police. For a long time he fought extradition on the "murder and robbery" charge and was finally turned over to the immigration authorities. Immigra-

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tion officers were in the act of leading him to the boundary line when he bolted and succeeded in escaping by running through the streets of El Paso. Librado Rivera, first speaker of the Liberal Junta, with Aaron Mansano, was kidnapped at St. Louis by city detectives, was hurried as far as Ironton, Missouri, but was there rescued and brought back through an expose which was made by one of the St. Louis papers.

As for Magon, for months he was hunted by detectives from city to city. He went to California, but was still kept dodging and once masqueraded as a woman in order to escape the Diaz hounds. Finally, he revived his paper in Los Angeles under the name of "Revolucion" and here he was joined by Villarreal and Rivera. The three worked quietly together, keeping always indoors in the daytime and going out for their airing only at night and in disguise.

Early in August, 1907, the hiding-place of the Liberal leaders in Los Angeles was located. The evidence seems to point to a plot to kidnap them much as Sarabia was kidnapped. First, the officers had plenty of time in which to procure a warrant, but they did not procure a warrant nor even attempt to do so. Second, they secreted an automobile in the vicinity and did not use it after the arrest. Third, when the three men, fearing a kidnapping plot, cried out at the top of their voices, the officers beat them with pistols most brutally, Magon being beaten until he lay bleeding and insensible on the ground. This circumstantial evidence of a kidnapping plot is borne out by the direct testimony of one of the hirelings of the Mexican consul at that time, who has since confessed that there was such a plot and that the Mexican consul was the man who hatched it.

Everything seems to have been arranged. The descent

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of the sleuths was made August 23, and Ambassador Creel came all the way from Washington to be on hand and see that things went off smoothly. On the night of August 22 Creel was given a banquet by Mexican concessionaires having headquarters in Los Angeles and the following day he sat in his hotel and waited for news that his thugs had gotten their victims as planned.

But the outcries of Magon and his friends collected a crowd and it became impossible to kidnap them. So unprepared were the officers for a mere arrest case that when they got their prisoners to jail they were at a loss to know what charge to place against them, so they put them down on the police books as "resisting an officer!"

Ambassador Creel then proceeded to hire some of the highest priced lawyers in Southern California to devise ways and means for getting the prisoners down into Mexico. These lawyers were ex-Governor Henry T. Gage, Gray, Barker and Bowen, partners of U. S. Senator Flint ; and Horace H. Appel. When the cases came into court their names were announced by the public prosecutor as special counsel and always during the hearings one or more of them was personally in attendance.

The "officers" who beat the refugees nearly to death and then charged them with resisting an officer—although they had not even procured a warrant—were Thomas H. Furlong, head of the Furlong Detective Agency of St. Louis, chief refugee-hunter for Diaz, an assistant Furlong detective, and two Los Angeles city detectives, the notorious Talamantes and Rico.

For months previous to the arrest of Magon and his associates a card offering $20,000 for their apprehension was circulated about the United States. That the city

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detectives received their share of this reward is evidenced by sworn testimony given in the Los Angeles courts by Federico Arizmendez, a Los Angeles printer. After the arrest of Magon the sleuths repaired to the office of Magon's newspaper, where they took into custody the nominal editor, Modesto Diaz. Here they met Arizmendez and the following conversation ensued:

Talamantes—You'd better congratulate me; I just made a thousand dollars.

Arizmendez—How's that?

Talamantes—I've just caught Villarreal.

At this writing Rico and Talamantes are still members of the Los Angeles police force!

The identity of the employer of Talamantes et al. was confirmed beyond question and the astounding usurpation by that employer of American governmental powers was revealed when upon being released the day following the conversation quoted above, Modesto Diaz was informed that he would have to wait a few days for the papers taken from him at the time of his arrest, as they had been placed in the hands of the Mexican Consul!

If there is any doubt as to who hired Furlong and his henchmen to hunt down Magon the doubt will be dispelled by the reading of an excerpt from Furlong's sworn testimony taken in the Los Angeles courts. Here it is:

CROSS EXAMINATION.

By Mr. Harriman:

Q.—What is your business?

A.—I am the president and manager of the Furlong Secret Service Company, St. Louis, Missouri.

Q.—You helped to arrest these men?

A.—I did.

Q.—What right did you have?

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Mr. Lawler—That is objected to as a conclusion of the witness.

Q.—By Mr. Harriman: Did you have a warrant?

A.—No, sir.

The Commissioner—The other question is withdrawn and now you ask him if he had a warrant?

Mr. Harriman—Yes, sir.

Q.—Arrested them without a warrant?

A.—Yes, sir.

Q.—You took this property away from them without a warrant?

A.—Yes, sir.

Q.—Went through the house and searched it without a warrant?

A.—How is that?

Q.—Went through the house and searched it without a warrant?

A.—Yes.

Q.—And took the papers from them?

A.—I didn't take any papers from them. I took them and locked them up and then went back and got the papers.

Q.—Took them from their house and kept them, did you?

A.—No, sir. I turned them over.

Q.—Well, you kept them, so far as they are concerned?

A.—Yes, sir.

Q.—Who paid you for doing this work?

A.—The Mexican government.

Nor was Furlong backward about confessing the purpose of the hunt. By a Los Angeles newspaper Furlong, in bragging about the arrest, was quoted as asserting that he had been "after" Magon and his friends for three years. During that period, he said, he had succeeded in "getting" 180 Mexican revolutionists and turning them over to the Diaz government, which "had made short work of them." According to an affidavit properly sworn to by W. F. Zwickey and on record in the Los Angeles courts, Furlong stated that he was "not so much interested in this case and the charges for which the defendants are being tried as in getting them

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over into Arizona ; that all we (meaning by 'we' himself and the Mexican authorities) want is to get the defendants down into Arizona, and then we will see that they get across the line."

Attorney General Bonaparte seems to have had the same purpose as Furlong and the Mexican authorities, even at a time when the case in hand did not involve extradition to Mexico or even to Arizona. During a hearing before Judge Ross in San Francisco Mr. Bonaparte had the temerity to wire his district attorney in that city : "Resist habeas corpus proceedings in case of Magon et al. on all grounds, as they are wanted in Mexico." This telegram was read in court. The incident was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that only a few days previously Bonaparte, in answer to a query from U. S. Senator Perkins, had replied by letter assuring the senator that the purpose of the prosecution of these men was not to send them back to Mexico.

Five separate and distinct charges were brought against Magon and his associates, one after another. First, it was "resisting an officer." Then it was the old charge of "murder and robbery." Later it was criminal libel. Still later it was murdering "John Doe" in Mexico. Finally it was conspiracy to violate the neutrality laws.

Undoubtedly the conspirators would have early succeeded in their purpose to railroad the men back to Mexico had not a number of Los Angeles organizations formed a defense committee, held mass meetings to arouse public sentiment, collected funds, and hired two able attorneys, Job Harriman and A. R. Holston. These lawyers after a long fight succeeded in driving the prosecution into a corner where they were compelled to pro-

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ceed only under action involving imprisonment in this country.

During the early stages of the legal fight the Diaz agents were suppressing the paper "Revolucion" in characteristic style. After the arrest of its three editors, the editorial emergency was met by L. Gutierrez De Lara, who had not previously been in any way identified with the Liberal Party. Two weeks later De Lara was keeping company with Magon, Villarreal and Rivera. His extradition was sought on the ground that he had committed robbery "on the blank day of the blank month of 1906 in the blank state of Mexico!"

Despite the passing of De Lara "Revolucion" continued to appear regularly. As soon as the agents of the prosecution could locate the new editor they promptly arrested him. He proved to be Manuel Sarabia and he was charged with the same offense as happened to stand against Magon, Villarreal and Rivera at the time.

Who was left to publish little "Revolucion?" There were the printers. They—Modesto Diaz, Federico Arizmendez and a boy named Ulibarri—rose to the occasion. But in less than a month they, too, were led to jail, all three of them charged with criminal libel. Thus the Mexican opposition newspaper passed into history. Incidentally, Modesto Diaz died as a result of the confinement following that arrest.

"Revolucion" was not an anarchist paper. It was not a socialist paper. It did not advocate the assassination of presidents or the abolition of government. It merely stood for the principles which Americans in general since the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States came into being have considered as necessary to the well-being of any nation. If an American newspaper of its ideals had been sup-

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pressed by one-tenth as brazen methods, a righteous protest would have echoed and re-echoed across the continent. But it was only a Mexican newspaper, an opponent of President Diaz, and—it was suppressed.

The story of Lazaro Gutierrez De Lara well exemplifies the system of robbing the enemies of Diaz of their personal liberty in the United States, as practiced by the Department of Justice working in conjunction with Mexican agents in various parts of the West during the past five years.

De Lara was taken to jail on September 27, 1907, on telegraphic instructions from Attorney General Bonaparte. As before stated, he was charged with larceny committed on the blank day of the blank month of 1906 in the blank state of the Republic of Mexico, and on this awful indictment his extradition to Mexico was sought.

The extradition treaty between the United States and Mexico provides that the country asking extradition must furnish evidence of guilt within forty days of the arrest of the accused. In De Lara's case this little technicality was waived, and at the end of forty days a new complaint was filed containing the illuminating information that the alleged crime had been committed in the state of Sonora. This was considered sufficient ground upon which to hold the prisoner another forty days.

Nothing happened at the end of the second forty days, and on December 22 Attorney Harriman applied for a writ of habeas corpus. The writ was denied and the prosecution was given more time in which to file a third complaint. De Lara was then accused of stealing uncut stove-wood in the state of Sonora, August 13, 1903!

Several peculiar facts developed at the hearing. One

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was that De Lara had been tried and acquitted of the identical offense in Mexico more than four years previously. Another was that while at the trial in Mexico the value of the wood was fixed by the prosecution at four dollars, at the Los Angeles hearing its value was placed at twenty-eight dollars. Because a thief cannot be extradited for stealing less than twenty-five dollars the wood market had taken a spectacular jump. But, by an oversight of the prosecution the market even then did not jump quite high enough, for by discovering that the price of silver was a little lower than usual that year, Attorney Harriman showed that the alleged value, fifty-six Mexican pesos, did not come to twenty-eight dollars in American money, but a little less than twenty-five dollars, and so on that technicality the life of De Lara was saved.

The facts of the case were that De Lara had never stolen any wood, but that, while acting as attorney for a widow whom a wealthy American mine owner was trying to euchre out of a piece of land, he had given the widow permission to cut some wood on the land for her own use. The audacity of the prosecutors in this case would be unbelievable were it not a matter of record. De Lara was released, but only after one hundred and four precious days of his life had been wasted in an American jail. He had been luckier than many of his compatriots, he had won his fight against extradition, but that three and one-half months were gone and could never be brought back. Moreover, "Revolution" had been suppressed and a Mexican gentleman had been taught that he who opposes the tyrant may be properly disciplined in the United States as well as in Mexico.

Magon, Villarreal and Rivera remained in prison continuously since August 23, 1907, for nearly three years. From early in July, 1908, to January, 1909, they were

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held incommunicado in the Los Angeles county jail, which means that no visitors, not even newspaper men, were permitted to see them. For a time not even Mrs. Rivera and her children were permitted to see the husband and father. Only their local attorney saw them. Two attorneys who were representing them in another state were excluded on the flimsy ground that they were not attorneys of record in California.

The only excuse Oscar Lawler, United States District Attorney, had to offer for this severe isolation when, in July, 1908, I called upon him at his office and protested was:

"We are doing this at the request of the Mexican government. They have accommodated us and it's no more than right that we accommodate them."

Requests were also made by the Mexican government that the men be not admitted to bail and the requests were obeyed. The privilege of liberty on bail pending trial is guaranteed by the law to all accused persons below the murderer in cold blood, and yet Judge Welborn, sitting both as district and circuit judge, denied the men this privilege. Bail had previously been fixed as $5,000, ten times the amount required in similar cases that had previously come up. In the latter part of July, 1908, this amount was raised and presented in the most gilt-edged form, but it was not accepted. Judge Welborn's excuse was that a rule of the Supreme Court says that during habeas corpus proceedings the custody of a prisoner shall not be changed. This rule he strangely interpreted to mean that these particular prisoners should not be admitted to bail.

During their six months of incommunicado, when the prisoners were unable to make any public statement, Lawler took advantage of their enforced silence

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publicly to declare them guilty not only of the offenses charged, but of others, among them a plot to assassinate President Diaz, when, as a matter of fact, Lawler had no evidence whatsoever of such a plot.

After nearly two years in county jails Magon, Villarreal and Rivera, were adjudged guilty of conspiring to violate the neutrality laws by conspiring to set on foot a military expedition against Mexico. They were sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment and were confined in the penitentiary at Florence, Arizona. Sarabia was not tried. Having waived extradition proceedings, he had been taken to Arizona ahead of the others. Here he was released on bail and soon afterwards was married to Miss Elizabeth D. Trowbridge, a Boston girl of old and wealthy family. His health broken by long confinement, believing that a trial would result in his imprisonment in spite of the lack of evidence against him, Sarabia was persuaded to pay his bail and with his wife flee to Europe. There he has since interested himself in writing for various English, French, Spanish and Belgian papers articles upon the democratic movements in Mexico.

The campaign to extradite the refugees on charges of "murder and robbery," generally failed. It succeeded insofar as it kept a good many Liberals in jail for many months, drained their resources, weakened their organization, and intimidated their friends, but it did not succeed in extraditing them. Most of the Liberals deported were deported by immigration officials or by kidnapping.

The "murder and robbery" campaign failed because it was so plainly in contradiction with American laws and American principles. The U. S. prosecutors must have known this from the start but, in order to accommodate Diaz, they went ahead with the prosecutions. That this

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campaign was not a mere blundering on the part of individual U. S. Attorneys, but that it was a policy of the highest officials of the government was shown, in 1908, when numerous published reports from various departments at Washington and from Oyster Bay expressed the desire of the administration to deport Mexican political refugees "as common criminals."

Failing in its efforts to deport Mexican refugees wholesale "as common criminals," our Department of Justice concentrated its energies to secure their imprisonment for violation of the neutrality laws or conspiracy to violate the neutrality laws. It is a high misdemeanor to set on foot a military expedition against a "friendly power," or to conspire to set on foot a military expedition against a "friendly power." In addition to Magon, Villarreal, Rivera and Sarabia, some of the Liberal refugees who have been prosecuted under this law are Tomas de Espinosa, Jose M. Rangel, Gasimiro H. Regalado, Lauro Aguirre, Raymundo Cano, Antonio Aruajo, Amado Hernandez, Tomas Morales, Encarnacion Diaz Guerra, Juan Castro, Priciliano Silva, Jose Maria Martinez, Benjamin Silva, Leocadio Trevino, Jose Ruiz, Benito Solis, Tomas Sarabia, Praxedis Guerrero, Sirvando T. Agis, John Murray, Calixto Guerra, Guillermo Adan, E. Davilla, Ramon Torres Delgrado, Amendo Morantes, Francisco Sainz, Marcelleno Marra and Inez Ruiz.

Most of the arrests occurred at San Antonio, Del Rio, El Paso, Douglass, or Los Angeles. This is by no means a complete list, but is a list of the most notable cases.

In nearly all of these cases the accused were kept in jail for month after month without an opportunity of proving their innocence. When the cases came to trial, they were usually acquitted. Convictions were secured

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the cases of Espinosa, Aruajo, Guerra, Priciliano Silva, Trevino, Rangel, and Magon, Villarreal and Rivera. Prison sentences ranging from one and one-half to two and one-half years were given the convicted ones and they were confined either at Leavenworth, Kansas, or Florence, Arizona.

Were these men guilty ? If not, how is it that they were convicted?

It is my opinion that not one was guilty within the proper interpretation of the statute, that the laws were stretched to convict them, that in some instances, at least, they were deliberately jobbed.

This is a bold statement, but I think the facts bear me out. That there exists on the part of our government a most incontinent desire to serve Diaz is shown by the circumstance that cases where the evidence of violation of the neutrality laws is ten times as clear—as American expeditions to aid revolutions in Central American or South American countries—have been and are habitually overlooked by our authorities. But this fact I do not need to urge in favor of the Mexican Liberals. The truth is that there has never been any adequate evidence to show a violation of the neutrality laws on their part.

Did they set on foot a military expedition against a friendly power? Did they plan to do so? No. What did they do? They came to this country and here planned to aid a revolutionary movement in Mexico. Here they fled to save their lives, here they staid, planning to return and take part in a rebellion upon Mexican soil; nothing more.

Did this constitute a violation of the neutrality laws ? Not in the opinion of U. S. Judge Maxey, of Texas, who reviewed some of the cases. January 7, 1908, the

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San Antonio Daily Light and Gazette, quotes Judge Maxey as follows:

"If Jose M. Rangel, the defendant, merely went across the river and joined in the fight, he had every right to do so, and I will so tell the jury in my charge. This indictment is not for fighting in a foreign country, but for beginning and setting on foot an expedition in Val Verde county."

The exact text of the law is as follows:

"Every person who, within the territory or jurisdiction of the United States, begins, or sets on foot, or provides or prepares the means for, any military expedition or enterprise, to be carried on from thence against the territory or dominions of any foreign prince or state, or of any colony, district or people, with whom the United States are at peace, shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and shall be fined not exceeding $3,000, and imprisoned not more than three years."

Magon, Villarreal and Rivera, the leaders, not only did not set on foot an expedition against Mexico, but they did not even cross the river and fight themselves. Their conviction was secured through the palpably perjured testimony of a Mexican detective named Vasquez, who presented the only direct evidence against them. Vasquez claimed to be a spy who had penetrated a meeting of a Liberal club. There, he declared, letters were read from Magon ordering the club to constitute itself as a military body and invade Mexico. At this meeting, said Vasquez, military appointments, forwarded by Magon, were made. The names, said he, were written by a member named Salcido. The paper was produced, but handwriting experts brought by the defense proved the document to be a forgery. Vasquez then changed his testimony and swore that he wrote the names himself. This was a vital point in the testimony and, had the public

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prosecutors been interested in upholding the law, rather than in persecuting the political enemies of Diaz, they would have discharged the defendants and prosecuted Vasquez for perjury.

The general persecution of Mexican political refugees continued unabated up to June, 1910, when the scandal became so great that the matter was presented to Congress, and the facts which I have set down here, but in more complete form, were testified to before the House Rules Committee. Resolutions providing for a general investigation of the persecutions are now pending in both houses.

Up to the initiation of congressional proceedings the government planned to continue the persecutions. Repeatedly it was announced that, when the terms of Magon, Villarreal and Rivera, at the Florence penitentiary, ended, they would be prosecuted on further charges. But on August 3 they were released and were not re-arrested. Since that date there have been no prosecutions, to my knowledge. It is to he hoped that the laws of this country, and the great American principle of protection for political refugees, will not again be abused, for I fear that the conspirators are only waiting for the public to forget their past crimes.

There may be further persecutions and there may not. Even if there are not, Justice will not be satisfied ; the friends of decency and of liberty cannot be content. For some of the victims are still enduring unjust punishment which it is in the power of the American people to end. There is Lazaro Puente, for example, the peaceful editor, thirteen years a resident of the United States, who was unjustly and unlawfully deported as an "undesirable immigrant" by our immigration officials. Lazaro Puente is

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a prisoner in San Juan de Ulua, the military fortress in Vera Cruz Harbor. He has been a prisoner there for more than four years. Unjustly he was yielded up to the Diaz police; in justice the American people should demand that he be returned free to this country.

CHAPTER XVI

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"But Diaz himself—isn't he a pretty good sort of fellow ?"

It is a question that almost invariably rises to the lips of the average American when he learns for the first time of the slavery, peonage and political oppression of Mexico. Though the question is only another evidence that the Diaz press agents have done their work well, yet it is one that may very well be examined separately.

The current American estimate of Porfirio Diaz, at least up to the past year or two, has indeed been that he is a very good fellow. Theodore Roosevelt, in writing to James Creelman after the publication in Pearson's Magazine of the latter's famous laudatory article, declared that among contemporary statesmen there was none greater than Porfirio Diaz. In the same year, during a trip to Mexico, William Jennings Bryan spoke in the most eulogistic terms of Diaz's "great work." David Starr Jordan of Stanford University, in recent speeches, has echoed Creelman's assertion that Diaz is the greatest man in the western hemisphere. And hundreds of our most distinguished citizens have expressed themselves in a similar vein. On the part of prominent Americans traveling in Mexico, it has become a custom, a sort of formality of the trip, to banquet at Chapultepec castle—the lesser lights at Chapultepec cafe—and to raise the after-dinner voice in most extravagant praise, loudly to

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attribute to Porfirio Diaz the virtues of a superman, even of a demi-god.

Were not the facts overwhelmingly to the contrary, did not the easily provable acts of Porfirio Diaz tell an entirely different story, I would not presume to question the estimates of such men, especially when those estimates agree and are accepted generally as correct. But when the facts speak for themselves, it matters not how obscure may be the individual who brings them to light. It matters not, even, how distinguished the men who disregard those facts, for facts are greater than men. Current Literature, in calling attention to the new conception of Porfirio Diaz that has of late been gaining ground in America, refers to Diaz as a man of mystery. "Is he a sublime statesman or is he a colossal criminal ?" it inquires. To which I would reply that we have our ideals of statesmanship and our concepts of criminality ; all we need upon which to base an estimate are the facts of the life of the man in question. Given the facts and the mystery dispels itself.

In judging the life of a man, especially of a man who has decided the fate of thousands, who has "saved a nation," or wrecked it, small virtues and small vices count for little; insignificant acts of good or ill are important only in the aggregate. A man may have committed grave crimes, yet if he has brought more joy to the world than sorrow, he should be judged kindly. On the other hand, he may be credited with laudable deeds, yet if he has locked the wheels of progress for a time to feed his own ambition, history will not acquit him of the crime. It is the balance that counts; it is the scales that decide. Will not Porfirio Diaz, when weighed in the balance of his good and evil deeds, be found wanting—terribly wanting? His friends may sing his praises,

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but when they, his best friends, begin to specify, to point out their reasons for selecting him for a high niche in the hall of good fame, is it not found that they themselves become, instead of his advocates, his prosecutors ? Out of even their mouths is he not convicted and by those our ideals of statesmanship and our concepts of criminality will we not judge him, not a statesman, but a criminal, and because there is no individual man in the world who wields so much power over so many human beings, will we not judge him the most colossal criminal of our time?

It is curious, this almost universal feeling—in this country—that Porfirio Diaz is a very good fellow. But it can be explained. For one thing, individuals who have not had the opportunity to judge a particular man or thing for themselves, though they be college presidents and congressmen, are apt to accept the word of others as to that man or thing. Porfirio Diaz, knowing this and valuing the good opinions of men who do not know, has spent millions for printer's ink in this country. For another thing, most men are susceptible to flattery and Diaz is a good flatterer. As prominent Catholics journeying to Rome seek an audience with the Pope, so Americans traveling to Mexico seek an audience with General Diaz; they usually get it and are flattered. Still again, to paraphrase an old proverb, men not only do not look a gift horse in the mouth, but they do not look the giver in the mouth. Despite the ancient warning, men do not usually beware of the Greeks when they bring gifts ; and Diaz is free with gifts to men whose good opinion is influential with others. Finally, there is nothing that succeeds like success, and Diaz has succeeded. Power dazzles the strong as well as the weak and Diaz's power has dazzled men and cowed them until

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they had not the courage to look steadily at the glare long enough to see the bones and carrion behind it. I do not for a minute imagine that any decent American approves of the acts of Porfirio Diaz. I merely guess that they—the decent ones—are ignorant of those deeds and are moved to strong praise by having accepted the word of others—and by the dazzle of success.

As for me, I do not come with a new ideal of statesmanship with which to change your opinions, but I come with facts. With those facts before you, if you hold Washington a great statesman, or Jefferson, or Lincoln, or any other enduring light of American political history, I am sure you cannot at the same time hold Porfirio Diaz a great statesman. What Porfirio Diaz has done, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, would have abhorred to do, and you yourself would abhor to do or see done, are you really an admirer of any or all of these men.

Porfirio Diaz is truly a striking figure. He must be a genius of a sort and there must actually be some traits of character about him to be admired. Let us examine some of his acts with a view to discovering whether or not he may justly be called the greatest living statesman or "the grandest man in the Americas."

First let us examine those broadly general allegations upon which is based his good fame abroad. Chief among these are three, that Diaz has "made modern Mexico," that he brought peace to Mexico and should therefore stand as a sort of prince of peace, and that he is a model of virtue in his private life.

Did Porfirio Diaz "make" modern Mexico? Is Mexico modern ? Hardly. Neither industrially nor in the matter of public education, nor in the form of government is Mexico modern. Industrially, it is at least a

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quarter of a century behind the times; in the matter of public education it is at least a half century behind the times; in its system of government it is worthy of the Egypt of three thousand years ago.

True, Mexico has seen some advancement in some lines—especially industrially—during the past thirty-four years. But that mere fact does not argue any propelling force on the part of Porfirio Diaz. In order to show that Diaz was the special propelling force will it not be necessary to show that Mexico has advanced in that period faster than other countries? And should it be shown that Mexico has advanced more slowly than almost any other large nation in the world in the past thirty-four years, would it not be logical to attribute to Diaz at least some of that retarding force?

Consider the United States thirty-four years ago and then today, and then consider Mexico. Consider that the world has been built over, industrially, in the past thirty-four years. To make the comparison perfectly unassailable, disregard the United States and European countries and compare the progress of Mexico with other Latin-American countries. Among persons who have traveled extensively in Argentine, Chili, Brazil and even Cuba, and Mexico, there is a pretty good agreement that Mexico is the most backward of the five—in the matter of government, in the matter of public education, even industrially. Who made Argentine? Who made Chili? Who made Brazil? Why don't we find a "maker" of these countries? The fact is that whatever modernization Mexico has had during the past thirty-four years must be attributed to evolution—that is, to the general progress of the world—instead of to Porfirio Diaz. In general, Porfirio Diaz has been a reactionary force. His claims for being progressive are all based

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upon one fact—upon his having "encouraged" foreign capital.

"Diaz, the peace-maker, the greatest peace-maker alive, greater than Roosevelt !" chanted an American politician in a banquet at the Mexican capital recently. And the chant was only an echo of louder voices. I remember seeing, not long ago, a news item stating that the American Peace Society had made Porfirio Diaz an honorary vice-president, in consideration of his having brought peace to Mexico. The theory seems to be that since the history of Mexico before Diaz was full of wars and violent changes in the government and the history of Mexico under Diaz has been without violent upheavals of far-reaching effect, Diaz must necessarily be a humane, Christ-like creature who shrinks at the mention of bloodshed and whose example of loving-kindness is so compelling that none of his subjects have the heart to do anything but emulate him.

In answer to which it will only be necessary to refer the reader to my account of how Diaz began his career as a statesmen by deliberately breaking the peace of Mexico himself, and how he has been breaking the peace ever since—by making bloody war upon the self-respecting, democratic elements among his people. He has kept the peace--if it can be called keeping the peace—by killing off his opponents as fast as their heads have appeared above the horizon. This sort of peace is what the Mexican writer De Zayas calls "mechanical peace." It has no virtue, because the fruits of legitimate peace fail to ripen under it. It neither brings happiness to the nation, nor prepares the nation for happiness. It prepares it only for violent revolution.

For more than twenty years before arriving at the supreme power in Mexico Diaz had been a professional

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soldier and almost continually in the field. The wars of those times were by no means unnecessary affairs. Mexico did not fight simply because it is the Mexican character to be looking always for trouble, for it isn't. Diaz fought in the Three Years War, in which the throttling grip of the Catholic church on the throat of the nation was broken and the nation secured a real republican constitution. Afterwards he fought in the War of Maximilian, which ended in the execution of the Austrian prince whom the armies of Napoleon Third had seated as emperor.

During these twenty odd years Diaz fought on the side of Mexico and patriotism. He probably fought no more wisely nor energetically than thousands of other Mexicans, but he had the good luck to have become acquainted in his youth with Benito Juarez, who, years later, as father of the constitution and constitutional president, guided the destinies of the country safely through many troublous years. Juarez remembered Diaz, watched his work and promoted him gradually from one rank to another until, at the downfall of Maximilian, Don Porfirio held a rank which in our country would carry the title of major-general. Note how Diaz repaid the favors of Juarez.

Following the overthrow of Maximilian, peace reigned in Mexico. Juarez was president. The constitution was put into operation. The people were sick unto death of war. There threatened neither foreign foe nor internal revolt. Yet the ambitious Diaz wantonly and without any plausible excuse stirred up rebellion after rebellion for the purpose of securing for himself the supreme power of the land.

There is evidence that Diaz began plotting to seize the presidency even before the fall of the empire. Dur-

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ing those last days when Maximilian was penned up in Queretaro friends of Diaz approached several military leaders and proposed that they form a military party to secure the presidency by force of arms, which prize would be raffled off among Generals Diaz, Corona and Escobedo. General Escobedo refused to enter into the conspiracy and the plan consequently fell through. Diaz, who was at that time besieging Mexico City, then effected a secret combination with the church to overthrow the Liberal government. According to one writer, he intentionally delayed taking the metropolis and asked General Escobedo for two of his strongest divisions, which he planned to turn against Juarez. But Juarez received word of the plot in time and instructed General Escobedo to send two of his strongest divisions under command of General Corona and General Regules, respectively, with orders to destroy the treachery of Diaz, should it arise. When the reinforcements arrived Diaz tried to get them entirely in his power by appointing new officers, but Corona and Regules stood firm, and Diaz, realizing that he had been anticipated, abandoned his plot.

Immediately after the coming of peace Juarez appointed Diaz commander of that part of the army stationed in Oaxaca and Diaz used the power thus secured to control the state elections and impose himself as governor. After his defeat for the presidency Diaz started a revolution, known as "La Ciudadela," The Citadel, but the uprising was crushed in one decisive meeting with the government troops. Six weeks later Diaz started a second revolution, calling his friends to arms under what is known as the "Plan de Noria," a platform, in reality, in which the leading demand was for

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an amendment to the constitution absolutely forbidding the re-election of either president or governors. This rebellion also met with ignominious defeat on the battlefield at the hands of the government forces, and when Juarez died in July, 1872, Diaz was a fugitive from justice, During one of these little rebellions of the present superman Juarez is said to have captured and brought Diaz before him and told him that he deserved to be shot like a rebel, but that the country would take into consideration his services rendered during the War of Intervention.

After the death of Juarez, Diaz prosecuted a successful revolution, but only after four years more of plotting and rebelling. The people of the country were overwhelmingly against him, but he found one very definite interest upon which to play. That, far from being a peaceful and legitimate interest, was a military interest, the interest of the chiefs of the army and of those who had made their living by killing and plundering. The government of Juarez and the government of Lerdo both carried out, after peace came, a sweeping anti-militarist policy. They announced their intention of reducing the army and proceeded to reduce the army. Thereupon the chiefs thereof, seeing their glory departing from them, became fertile ground for the seeds of rebellion which Diaz was strewing broadcast. Diaz gave these army chiefs to understand that under him they would not be shorn of their military splendor, but, on the other hand, that they would be raised to positions of higher power.

Lerdo issued an amnesty to all revolutionists and Diaz was safe from prosecution as a rebel. But instead of employing the freedom thus given to useful and honor-

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able pursuits, he used it to facilitate his plotting until, in January, 1876, he started his third revolution, issuing his "Plan de Tuxtepec," in which he again demanded a change prohibiting the re-election of the president.

For nearly a year Diaz prosecuted his third revolution, during that time issuing another manifesto, the "Plan de Palo Blanco," which gave his operations the aspect of still another and a fourth revolution. It was under this plan that the rebel leader finally gained a decisive victory over government troops and soon afterwards led his army into the capital and declared himself provisional president. A few days later he held a farcical election, in which he placed soldiers in possession of the polls and permitted neither rival candidates to appear nor opposition votes to be cast.

Thus in 1876, more than a generation ago, Porfirio Diaz came to the head of the Mexican state a rebel in arms. He broke the peace of Mexico to begin with, and he has continued to break the peace by periodical and wholesale butcheries of his people. General Porfirio Diaz, the "greatest living peace-maker," "prince of peace !" It is a sacrilege!

That the Mexican dictator has not fallen a victim to the physical debaucheries that sometimes over-tempt men suddenly risen to great power is undoubtedly true. But what of it ? Certainly no one will argue that, since a man keeps clean physically, he has a right to misgovern a country and assassinate a people. Personal cleanliness, physical temperance and marital virtue do not in he least determine the standing a man deserves as a statesman. Thus it will be seen that the allegations upon which the good fame of General Diaz is based have no foundation in fact. Moreover, none of his flatterers have so

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far discovered in him any claims for greatness any better substantiated than those mentioned.

Diaz has some personal abilities, such as a genius for organization, keen judgment of human nature, and industry, but these do not determine that his public acts shall be beneficent. Like the virtues the devout Methodist lady attributed to the Devil, industry and persistence, they merely render him more efficient in what he does. If he chooses to do good, they become virtues; if he chooses to do ill, they may very properly be incorporated with his vices.

The flatterers of Porfirio Diaz are wont to speak in generalities, for otherwise they would come to grief. On the other hand, a large book could be written recounting his evil deeds and contemptible traits. Ingratitude is one of the charges least worthy of mention that are made against him. Benito Juarez made the career of Porfirio Diaz. Every promotion which Diaz received was given him by the hands of Juarez. Nevertheless, Diaz turned against his country and his friend, started rebellion after rebellion and made the last days of the great patriot turbulent and unhappy.

Yet, to portray the other side, Diaz has shown gratitude to some of his friends, and in doing so he has at the same time exhibited his utter disregard for the public welfare. An Indian named Cahuantzi, illiterate but rich, was Diaz's friend when the latter was in rebellion against Juarez and Lerdo. Cahuantzi furnished the rebel with horses and money and when Diaz captured the supreme power he did not forget. He made Cahuantzi governor of Tlaxcala and sent him a teacher that he might learn to sign his name to documents of state. He retained Cahuantzi as governor of the state of Tlaxcala, giving him free rein to rob and plunder at

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will. He kept Cahuantzi there for thirty-four years, down to this day.

A similar case was that of Manuel Gonzalez, a compadre who aided the Diaz rebellions and whom Diaz substituted for himself in the presidential chair from 1880 to 1884. After Gonzalez had served his purpose in the federal government Don Porfirio presented him with the state government of Guanajuato, where he reigned until his death. Gonzalez was wont to boast that the government had killed all the bandits in Guanajuato but himself, that he was the only bandit tolerated in that state.

The flatterers of Diaz tell of his intellectual ability, but of his culture they dare say nothing. The question as to whether or not he is a cultivated man would seem important inasmuch as it would determine somewhat the distribution of culture among the people whom he controls so absolutely. Diaz is intelligent, but his intelligence may very well be denominated a criminal intelligence—such as is needed at the head of a great freebooter corporation or an organization such as Tammany Hall. In devising ways and means to strengthen his personal power Diaz's intelligence has risen even to genius, but of refinement and culture he possesses little or none. Despite the necessity of his meeting foreigners almost daily he has never learned English nor any other foreign language. He never reads anything but press clippings and books about himself and he never studies anything but the art of keeping himself in power. He is interested in neither music, art, literature nor the drama and the encouragement he gives to these things is negligible. Mexico's drama is imported from Spain, Italy and France. Her literature is imported from France and Spain. Her art and music are likewise im-

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ported. Within a century past art flourished in Mexico, but now her art is decadent—choked like her budding literature, by the thorns of political tyranny.

General education in Mexico is appallingly absent The flatterers of Diaz tell of the schools that he has established, but the investigator fails to find these schools. They are mostly on paper. There is practically no such thing as country schools in Mexico, while towns of many hundreds of inhabitants often have no school whatsoever. Nominally there are schools in such towns, but actually none because the governors of the various states prefer to keep the expense money for themselves. While traveling in the rural districts of the state of Mexico, for example, I learned that scores of schools in small towns had been closed for three years because the governor, General Fernando Gonzalez, had withheld the money, explaining to the local authorities that he needed it for other purposes. The fact that there is no adequate public school system in Mexico is attested by the most recent official census (1900), which goes to show that but 16 per cent of the population are able to read and write. Compare this with Japan, an over-populated country where the people are very poor and where the opportunities for education seemingly ought not to be so good. Ninety-eight per cent of Japanese men and 93 per cent of Japanese women are able to read and write. The sort of educational ideals held by President Diaz is shown in the schools that are running, where a most important item in the curriculum is military study and training!

Is Diaz humane? The question is almost superfluous, inasmuch as few of his admirers credit him with this trait. All admit that he has been severe and harsh, even brutal, in his treatment of his enemies, while some of

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them even relate deeds of the most bloodthirsty cruelty—relate them with gusto, condemning not at all, but treating the incidents as if they were merely some excusable eccentricities of genius ! The wholesale killings carried out by the orders of Diaz, the torture perpetrated in his prisons, the slavery of hundreds of thousands of his people, the heart-breaking poverty which he sees every time he leaves his palace, and which he could greatly ameliorate if he wished, are of themselves sufficient proof of his inhumanity.

Cruelty was undoubtedly a part of his inheritance, for his father, a horse-breaker by trade, was noted for it. Horses which did not yield readily Chepe Diaz, the father, killed, and others he chastised with a whip tipped with a steel star, which he landed on the belly, the most tender part of the poor brute. For this reason the people of Oaxaca, the birthplace of Diaz, patronized the father but little, and he was poor. That inherited trait showed itself in Porfirio at an extremely tender age, for while only a child Porfirio, becoming angry at his brother over a trivial matter, filled his brother's nostrils with gunpowder while he was asleep and touched a match to it. From that time Felix was known as "Chato" (Pug-nose) Diaz. "For Porfirio Diaz"—in the words of Gutierrez De Lara, "the people of Mexico have been the horse."

As a military commander Diaz was noted for his cruelty to his own soldiers and to any portion of the enemy that happened to fall into his hands. Several Mexican writers mention unwarranted acts of severity and executions of subordinates ordered in the heat of passion. Revenge is a twin brother of cruelty and Diaz was revengeful. Terrible was the revenge visited by the child upon his sleeping brother and terrible was the

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revenge visited upon the town where his brother many years later met a tragic death.

Accounts of the incident differ, but all authorities agree that the massacre at Juchitan, Oaxaca, was done in cold blood, indiscriminately and out of revenge. On becoming president, Diaz installed his brother "Chato" as governor of Oaxaca. "Chato" was a drunkard and a libertine and he was killed while over-riding the personal liberties of the people of the town of Juchitan. Many weeks later, long after the uprising of a day had passed, President Diaz sent troops to Juchitan who, according to one writer, suddenly appeared one evening in the public square where the people had gathered to listen to the music of a band, and poured volley after volley into the crowd, continuing to fire until all the people left in the square were dead or dying on the ground.

Such killings have been a recognized policy of the Diaz rule. The Rio Blanco massacre, the details of which were set forth in a previous chapter, took place after the town was entirely quiet. The executions in Cananea were carried out with little discrimination and after the alleged disturbance of the strikers was over. The summary executions at Velardena in the Spring of 1909 all took place after the so-called riot was over. And other instances could be given. It may be suggested that in some of these cases not Diaz, but an underling, was responsible. But it is well known that Diaz usually gave the orders for distributing indiscriminate death. That he approves of such a policy as a policy is shown by his remarkable toast to General Bernardo Reyes, after the Monterey massacre in 1903, when he said: "Señor General, that is the way to govern."

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The inhuman methods used by Diaz to exterminate the Yaqui Indians have been exploited in a previous chapter. One of his famous Yaqui orders which, however, I did not mention, not only exhibits his rude and uncultured ideas of justice, but it paints his cruelty as most diabolical. Several years ago, after various employers of labor of the state of Sonora had protested against the wholesale deportation of the Yaquis because they needed the Yaquis as farm and mine laborers, Diaz, in order to pacify the aforesaid employers, modified his deportation decree to read substantially as follows: "No more Yaquis are to be deported except in case of offenses being committed by Yaquis. For every offense hereafter committed by any Yaqui 500 Yaquis are to be rounded up and deported to Yucatan."

This decree is attested to by no less a personage than Francisco I. Madero, the distinguished citizen of the state of Coahuila, who dared oppose Diaz in the presidential campaign of 1910. The decree was carried out, or at least the stream of Yaqui exiles kept on. Cruel and revengeful is the Mexican president and bitterly has his nation suffered as a result of it.

Is Diaz a brave man? In some quarters it has been taken for granted that he is a man of courage, inasmuch as he made a success as a soldier. But there are many distinguished Mexicans who, having watched his career, assert that he is not only not brave, but that he is a shrinking, cringing coward. And they point to numerous accepted facts to support their assertion. When the news of the uprising at Las Vacas reached him in the last days of June, 1908, Diaz was suddenly taken sick and for five days he staid in his bed. In high government circles it was whispered about—and the fact is alleged to have come from one of his physicians

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—that he was suffering from a common malady which comes upon one overpowered by acute and panicky fear.

The fact that when Diaz seized the power he carefully excluded from any part in the government each and every one of the most popular and able Mexicans of the day is attributed to fear. The fact that he maintains a large army which he distributes in every quarter of the country, and a huge secret police system armed with extraordinary power to kill on suspicion, the terrible way in which he gets rid of his enemies, his bloody massacres themselves, even his muzzling of the press, are all attributed to arrant cowardice. In his book "Diaz, Czar of Mexico," Carlo de Fornaro voices this belief in the cowardice of Diaz and reasons quite effectively upon it. He says:

"Like all people quick to anger he (Diaz) is not really fearless, for as the jungle song says, 'Anger is the egg of fear.' Fearful and therefore ever vigilant, he was saved from destruction by this alertness, as the hare is preserved from capture by his long ears. He mistook cruelty for strength of character and consequently was ever ready to terrorize for fear of being thought weak. As a result of the outrageous nickel law and the payment of the famous English debt in the period of Gonzalez, there happened a mutiny. 'Knife them all,' suggested Porfirio Diaz to Gonzalez. But Gonzalez was not afraid.

"Last year, on the 16th of September, as the Mexican students desired to parade on the streets of the capital, they sent their representative, a Mr. Olea, to beg the President's permission. Porfirio Diaz answered: 'Yes, but beware, for the Mexicans have revolutionary tendencies lurking in their blood.' Think of three score of youngsters parading unarmed being a menace to the republic, with 5,000 soldiers, rurales and policemen in the capital!

"It is only by admitting this shameful well-hidden stigma on the apparently brave front of this man that we can logically explain such despicable and infamous acts as the massacres of Veracruz and Orizaba. He was then panic-stricken, like a

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wanderer, who shoots wildly at the fleeing phantoms of the night; he was so terrorized that the only means of relieving his blue funk was to terrorize in return."

Hand in hand with cruelty and cowardice often travels hypocrisy and of the three Diaz is not the least endowed with hypocrisy. Constantly is he foisting new shams and deceptions and farces upon the public. His election farces and his periodical pretense of wishing to retire from the presidency and the reluctantly yielding to a universal demand on the part of his people have already been referred to. Diaz's rule began in hypocrisy, for he went into office on a platform which he had no notion of carrying out. He pretended to consider the doctrine of non-re-election of president and governors of enough importance to warrant turning the nation over in a revolution, yet as soon as he had entrenched himself in power he proceeded to re-elect himself as well as his governors on to the end of time.

When Elihu Root went in to Mexico to see Diaz and to arrange some matters in regard to Magdalena Bay Diaz was desirous of showing Root that the Mexican people were not as poverty-stricken as they had been painted. He therefore, through his Department of the Interior, distributed the day before Root's arrival in the capital, 5,000 pairs of new pantaloons among that class of workmen who were habitually most prominently on the streets. In spite of orders that the pants were to be worn, the majority of them were promptly exchanged for food, and so Mr. Root was probably not very badly fooled. The incident merely goes to show to what extents the petty hypocrisy of the Mexican ruler sometimes goes.

Diaz is the head of the Masons in Mexico, yet he nominates every new bishop and archbishop the country

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gets. Church marriages are not recognized as legal, yet Diaz has favored the church so far as to refuse to enact a divorce law, so that today there is no such thing as divorce or re-marriage during the life of both parties in Mexico. Constantly is Diaz trying to fool the people as to his own motives. He brought about the merger under national control of the two leading railway systems of the country, ostensibly to put the railways where the government can use them best in time of war, but actually in order to give his friends an opportunity to make millions in the juggling of securities. Deceits of this class could be enumerated ad infinitum.

One of the most notable hypocritical antics of Diaz is his pretended concurrence in the overwhelmingly popular idolatry of the patriot Juarez. It will be remembered that when Juarez died Diaz was in revolution against him and that therefore if it is conceded that Juarez was a great statesman it must be admitted that Diaz was wrong in rebelling. Diaz undoubtedly recognized this fact and some ten years ago he is said to have aided secretly the publication and circulation of a book which attempted, by new and cleverly written interpretations of the acts of Juarez, to make out the father of the constitution a great blunderer instead of a great statesman. This failed to turn the tide against Juarez, however, and Diaz fell in with the tide until nowadays we see him every year, on the occasion of the birthday of Juarez, delivering a eulogistic speech over' the tomb of the man against whom he rebelled. More than this, during each speech Diaz sheds tears—rains tears—and is wont to refer to Juarez as "my great teacher!"

The ability to shed tears freely and on the slightest provocation has, indeed, been named by Diaz's enemies as his greatest asset as a statesman. When a distin-

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guished visitor praises Diaz or his work Diaz cries—and the visitor is touched and drawn toward him. When the "Circulo de Amigos de General Diaz" pays its formal call to tell its creator that the country once more demands his re-election he weeps—and the foreign press remarks upon how that man does love his country. Once a year, on his birthday, the president of Mexico goes down into the street and shakes hands with his people. The reception takes place in front of the national palace and all the while the tears are raining down his cheeks—and the soft-hearted people say to themselves: "Poor old man, he's had his troubles. Let him end his life in peace."

Diaz has always been able to cry. While striving against the Lerdist government in 1876, just before his day of success came, he was beaten in the battle of Icamole. He thought it meant an end of his hopes and he cried like a baby, while his subordinate officers looked on in shame. This gained him the nickname of "The weeper of Icamole," which still sticks to him among his enemies. In his memoirs Lerdo calls Diaz "The Man Who Weeps."

An oft-related incident which shows the shallowness of the feeling which accompanies the Diaz tears is told by Fornaro as follows:

"When Captain Clodomoro Cota was sentenced by the military tribunal to be shot, his father sought the President, and on his knees, weeping, begged him to pardon his son. Porfirio Diaz also was weeping, but, lifting the despairing man, uttered this ambiguous phrase: 'Have courage and faith in justice.' The father left, consoled, believing that his petition had been answered. But on the following morning his son was shot. The tears of Porfirio Diaz are crocodile tears."

It is said that Diaz does not dissipate. At least he drinks deep and drunkenly of the wine of adulation.

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Both vanity and lack of refinement and taste are shown by the very coarseness and ridiculousness of the praise for which he pays and in which he revels.

Diaz is not noted for avarice, which is not surprising, inasmuch as the power that he wields by reason of the army and the rest of his Machine is far greater than any power that money could buy in Mexico. To Porfirio Diaz money and other cashable goods are but a pawn in the game, and he uses them to buy the support of the greedy. Yet his enemies declare that he is the richest man in Mexico. He keeps his financial affairs so well hidden that few can guess how large a fortune he has. It is known that he has large holdings under aliases and in the names of dummies and that the various members of his family are all wealthy. But why should Porfirio Diaz care for mere money, when all Mexico is his—his with no strings upon it except the strings of foreign capital?

The picture sometimes drawn of the love match of Don Porfirio and Carmelita Romero Rubio de Diaz, while pretty, is not true; the truth is not at all flattering to the personal virtues of Diaz. The facts are that little Carmen was forced to marry Diaz for purposes of state. Her father, Romero Rubio, had held a high position in the Lerdist government and had a strong personal following; her god-father was Lerdo de Tejada himself, while little Carmen, together with the other feminine members of the family, was a devout Catholic. By marrying the girl Diaz hoped to kill three birds with one stone, to win the support of her father, to turn aside the enmity of the friends of Lerdo, and to assure to himself more actively than ever the support of the church. He knew that Carmen not only did not love him, but that she wanted to marry another man, and

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yet he was a party to her forced marriage. The marriage did give him the more active support of the church, it won Don Romero Rubio, but as for Lerdo, he was obdurate. In his memoirs Lerdo prints some letters from the unhappy Carmen, his god-child, to show how her youth and innocence were employed as merchandise in Diaz's mad barter for political security. One of these letters, which also gives an interesting side-light on the times, is as follows:

"Mexico City, Jan. 1, 1885.

"Sr. Lic. Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada.

"My Very Dear God-Father :—If you continue to be displeased with Papa, that is no reason why you should persist in being so with me; you know better than anyone that my marriage with General Diaz was the exclusive work of my parents, for whom, for the sake of pleasing them, I have sacrificed my heart, if it can be called a sacrifice to have given my hand to a man who adores me and to whom I respond only with filial affection. To unite myself with an enemy of yours has not been to curse you ; on the contrary, I have desired to be the dove that with the olive branch calms the political torments of my country. I do not fear that God will punish me for having taken this step, as the greatest punishment will be to have children by a man whom I do not love; nevertheless, I shall respect him and be faithful to him all my life. You have nothing, God-father, with which to reproach me. I have conducted myself with perfect correctness inside the social, moral and religious laws. Can you blame the Archduchess Marie of Austria for uniting herself with Napoleon? Since my marriage I am constantly surrounded by a crowd of flatterers so much the more contemptible since I do not encourage them. They do not fail in anything except in falling down on their knees and kissing my feet, as happened with the golden princesses of Perrault. From the deputation of beggars with whom I became acquainted yesterday to the minister who begged a peseta in order to dine, on the staircase ascending or descending, all mix together and trample each other under foot, entreating for a salute, a smile, a glance. The same who in a time not so very remote would have refused

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to give me their hand had they seen me fall on the sidewalk, today crawl like reptiles in my path, and would consider themselves happy if the wheels of my carriage should pass over their unclean bodies. The other night, while expectorating in the aisle of the theatre, a general who was at my side interposed his handkerchief, in order that the saliva, each precious pearl, should not fall on the tile floor. If we had been alone, surely the miserable creature would have converted his mouth into a cuspidor. This is not the exquisite flattery of educated folk; it is the brutal servility of the rabble in its animal and repulsive form, in that of a slave. The pets, the minor poets and the poetasters each martyr me after his own fashion; it is a waterspout of ink fit to blacken the ocean itself. This calamity irritates my nerves to such an extent that at times I have attacks of hysteria. Horrible, isn't it, dear God-father? And I say nothing to you of the paragraphs and articles published by the press that Papa has hired. Those who do not call me an angel say that I am a cherub ; others raise me to the standard of a goddess; others place me in the firmament as a star, and still others put me down in botany, classifying me among the lilies, the marguerites and the jasmin. At times I myself do not know whether I am an angel, a cherub, a goddess, a star, a lily, a marguerite, a jasmin, or a woman. Dios! Whom am I that I am deified and enveloped in this cloud of fetid incense? Ah, my God-father, I am very unfortunate, and I hope that you will not deny me your pardon and your advice.

"CARMEN."

Is Diaz patriotic? Has he the welfare of Mexico at heart? The flatterers of Diaz swear by his patriotism, but the facts demand a negative answer. Diaz helped depose the foreign prince, but immediately afterwards he plunged a peaceful country into war to feed his own ambition. Perhaps it will be said that Diaz imagined that he could order the destinies of Mexico more for the benefit of Mexico than could anyone else. Doubtless, but why has he not given his country progress? Is it possible that he believes that autocracy is better for a people than democracy? Is it possible that

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he considers illiteracy a condition of the greatest possible happiness for a people? Can he believe that a state of chronic starvation contributes to the welfare of a nation? He is an old man—eighty years old. Why does he not make some provision against political chaos after his death ? Is it possible that he believes it to be best for his people never to attempt to govern themselves, and for this reason is wrecking his nation so as to prepare it for easy possession by foreigners?

It is impossible to believe these things of Diaz. It is eminently more reasonable to judge that whatever desire for the welfare of his country he possesses is over-shadowed, wiped off the slate, by a personal ambition to maintain his rule for life.

This, in my judgment, is a key to the character and the public acts of Porfirio Diaz—to stay there—to stay there!

How will this move affect the security of my position? I believe this question has been the one test for the acts of Porfirio Diaz in all those thirty-four years. This question has always been before him. With it he has eaten, drank, slept. With it before him he was married. With it he built a machine, enriched his friends and disposed of his enemies, buying some and killing others; with it he has flattered and gifted the foreigner, favored the church, kept temperance in his body and learned a martial carriage; with it he set one friend against another, fostered prejudice between his people and other peoples, paid the printer, cried in the sight of the multitude when there was no sorrow in his soul and—wrecked his country!

Upon what thread hangs the good fame of Porfirio Diaz with Americans? Upon that one fact, that he has wrecked his country—and prepared it for easy posses-

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sion by foreigners. Porfirio Diaz is giving to Americans the lands of Mexico; the people he is permitting them to enslave ; therefore he is the greatest living statesman, hero of the Americans, the maker of Mexico! A wonderful man, that he is intelligent and far-seeing enough to appreciate the fact that, of all nations, the American is the only one with virtue and ability enough to lift Mexico out of its Slough of Despond! As for the Mexican, let him die. He is only fit to feed the grist mill of American capital, anyhow !

CHAPTER XVII

THE MEXICAN PEOPLE

Since, in the last analysis, all apologies for the Diaz system of economic slavery and political autocracy have their roots in assertions of ethnological inferiority on the part of the Mexican people, it would seem wise to end this book with an examination of the character of Mexicans and a discussion of the arguments upon which Americans are wont to defend a system in Mexico such as they would not for a moment excuse in any other country.

Every defense of Diaz is an attack upon the Mexican people. It must be so, since there is no other conceivable defense of despotism except that the people are so weak or so wicked that they cannot be trusted to take care of themselves.

The gist of the defense is that the Mexican must be ruled from above because he "is not fit for democracy," that he must be enslaved for the sake of "progress," since he would do nothing for himself or the world were he not compelled to do it through acute starvation, that he must be enslaved because he knows nothing better than slavery and that he is happy in slavery, anyhow. All of which, in the end, resolve themselves into the simple proposition that because he is down he ought to be kept down. Incurable laziness, childish superstition, wanton improvidence, constitutional stupidity, immovable conservatism, impenetrable ignorance, an uncontrollable propensity for theft, drunkenness and cowardice are some of the vices at-

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tributed to the Mexican people by those same persons who declare their ruler to be the wisest and most beatific on the face of the earth.

Laziness, in the estimation of the American friends of Diaz, is the cardinal vice of the Mexican. Laziness has always been a cardinal vice in the eyes of the grinders of the poor. American planters actually expect the Mexican to work himself to death for the love of it! Or is it for the love of his master that he expects him to work? Or for the dignity of labor ? But the Mexican does not appreciate such things. And, failing to receive anything more tangible for his work, he "soldiers" on the job. Wherefore he is not only lazy, but stupid! Wherefore, it is right and proper that he should be driven to the field with clubs, that he should be hunted down, forced into enganchado gangs, locked up at night, and starved.

It may be information to some persons to tell them that Mexicans have been known to work willingly and effectively when they saw anything to work for. Tens of thousands of Mexicans have displaced Americans and Japanese on the railroads and in the fields of the American Southwest. As high an authority as E. H. Harriman said, in an interview published in the Los Angeles Times in March, 1909: "We have had a good deal of experience with the Mexican, and we have found that after he is fed up and gets his strength he makes a very good worker."

Note that. "After he is fed up and gets his strength." Which is saying, in effect, that the employers of Mexican labor, many of whom are estimable Americans, friends of Diaz, starve them so chronically that they have not the actual strength to work effectively. Thus we live a second reason why Mexicans sometimes

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"soldier" on the job. Worthless, worthless Mexicans! Virtuous, virtuous Americans!

The American promoter feels a personal grievance at the religious bigotry of the poor Mexican. It is because of the church fiestas, which give the Mexican a few extra holidays a month, when he is free to take them. Profits are lost on those fiesta days; hence the anguish of the American promoter. Hence the welcome which the American gives to a system of labor such as we find in Valle Nacional, where the cane of bejuco wood is mightier than the priest, where there are neither feast days nor Sundays, nor any days when the club does not drive the slave to the back-breaking labor of the field.

"They told us labor was cheap down here," an American once said to me in a grieved tone. "Cheap ? Of course. Dirt cheap. But it has its drawbacks." He expected every "hand" to do as much work as an able-bodied American and to live on thin air besides!

Far be it from me to express approval of the influence of the Catholic church upon the Mexican. Yet it must be admitted that the church alleviates his misery somewhat by providing him with some extra holidays. And it feeds his hunger for sights of beauty and sounds of sweetness, which for the poor Mexican are usually impossible of attainment outside of a church. If the rulers of the land had been enlightened and had given the Mexican the barest glimpse of brightness outside of the church the sway of the priest might have been less pronounced than it is today.

Those fiestas which are such a thorn in the side of the American promoter are useful to him at least in that they furnish him with an excuse for paying the

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wage-worker so little that it is an extravagance, indeed, for the latter to take a day off. "They're so improvident that I have to keep them at the starvation point or they won't work at all." You'll hear Americans saying that almost any day in Mexico. In illustration of which numerous stories are virtuously recounted.

Improvident ! Yes, the starving Mexican is improvident. He spends his money to keep from starving! Yes, there are cases where he is paid such munificent wages that he is able to save a centavo now and then if he tries. And, trying, he finds that providence boots him nothing. He finds that the moment he gets a few dollars ahead he at once becomes a mark for every grafting petty official within whose ken he falls. If the masters of Mexico wished their slaves to be provident they should give them an opportunity to get something ahead and then guarantee not to steal it back again.

The poor Mexican is accused of being an inveterate thief. The way a Mexican laborer will accept money and then try to run away, instead of working for the rest of his life to pay off the debt, is, indeed, enough to bring tears to the eyes of the American grinder of enganchados. The American promoter steals the very life blood of the laborer and then expects the latter to be so steeped in virtue as to refrain from stealing any part of it back again. When a Mexican peon sees a trinket or a pretty thing that takes his fancy he is quite likely to steal it, for it is the only way he can get it. He risks jail for an article worth a few centavos. How often would he do it if the payment of those few centavos would not mean a hungry day for him? American planters steal laborers, carry them away by force to their plantations, steal their families away from them,

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lock them up at night, beat them, starve them while they work, neglect them when they are sick, pay them nothing, kill them at the last, and then raise their hands in righteous horror when a poor fellow steals an extra tortilla or an ear of corn!

In Mexico plowing is often done with a crooked stick or with the hoe. The backs of men take the place of freight wagons and express vehicles. In short, Mexico is woefully behind in the use of modern machinery. For which the Mexican is accused of being unprogressive.

But the common people do not choose how much machinery shall be used in the country. The master does that. American promoters in Mexico are little more progressive in the use of machinery than are Mexican promoters, and when they are they frequently lose money by it. Why? Because flesh and blood are cheaper in Mexico than machinery. A peon is cheaper to own than a horse. A peon is cheaper than a plow. A hundred women can be bought for the price of a grist mill. It is because the master has made it so. If by some means the price of flesh and blood were suddenly to be shoved up above that of dead steel, machinery would flow into Mexico as fast as it would flow into any new industrial field in the United States or any other country.

Do not think that the Mexican is too stupid to operate machinery when he is put to it. There are some lines in which machine labor is cheaper than hand labor and we have only to look to these lines to learn that the Mexican can handle machinery quite as easily as any other people. Native labor operates the great cotton mills of Mexico almost exclusively, for example. For that matter, mechanical cunning of a high order is shown

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PRIMITIVE PLOW. MEXICO IS BACKWARDS IN MODERN MACHINERY, NOT BECAUSE THE MEXICAN LABORER IS STUPID, BUT BECAUSE HE IS CHEAP

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in the many hand arts and crafts practiced by the natives, the blanket weaving, the pottery making, the making of laces, the manufacture of curios.

Ignorance is charged against the Mexican people as if it were a crime. On the other hand, we are told, in glowing terms of the public school system which Diaz has established. Charles F. Lummis in his book on Mexico remarks that it is doubtful if there is a single hamlet of one hundred Mexicans in all the country that has not its free public school. The truth is that the people are ignorant and that there are few schools. The sort of authority Mr. Lummis is may be gauged by the government statistics themselves, which, in the year Mr. Lummis issued his book, placed the number of Mexicans who could read and write at sixteen per cent of the population. In Mexico there are some public schools in the cities and almost none in the country districts. But even if they were there, can a hungry baby learn to read and write? What promise does study hold out for a youth born to shoulder a debt of his father and carry it on to the end of his days?

And they say the Mexican is happy! "As happy as a peon," has come to be a common expression. Can a starving man be happy? Is there any people on earth—any beast of the field, even—so peculiar of nature that it loves cold better than warmth, an empty stomach better than a full one? Where is the scientist that has discovered a people who would choose an ever narrowing horizon to an ever widening one? Depraved indeed are the Mexican people if they are happy. But I do not believe they are happy. Some who have said it lied knowingly. Others mistook the dull glaze of settled despair for the signature of contentment.

Most persistent of all derogations of Mexicans is the

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one that the Spanish-American character is somehow incapable of democracy and therefore needs the strong hand of a dictator. Since the Spanish-Americans of Mexico have never had a fair trial at democracy, and since those who are asserting that they are incapable of democracy are just the ones who are trying hardest to prevent them from having a trial at democracy, the suspicion naturally arises that those persons have an ulterior motive in spreading such an impression. That motive has been pretty well elucidated in previous chapters of this book, especially in the one on the American partners of Diaz.

The truth of the whole malignment of Mexicans as a people seems very plain. It is a defense against indefensible conditions whereby the defenders are profiting. It is an excuse—an excuse for hideous cruelty, a salve to the conscience, an apology to the world, a defense against the vengeance of eternity.

The truth is that the Mexican is a human being and that he is subject to the same evolutionary laws of growth as are potent in the development of any other people. The truth is that, if the Mexican does not fully measure up to the standard of the highest type of European, it is because of his history, a most influential part of which is the grinding exploitation to which he is subjected under the present regime in Mexico. Let us go back to the beginning and glance briefly at the Mexican as an ethnological being and compare his abilities and possibilities with that of the "free" American.

While nearly all persons of more than primary education nominally accept the theory of evolution as the correct interpretation of life upon this planet, not so many of us take advantage of its truths in estimating the people about us. We cling, instead, to the old error of ex-

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istence by special creation, which supports us when we wish to believe that some men are created of superior clay, that some are inherently better than others and always must be better, that some are designed and intended to occupy a station of special rank and privilege among their fellow men. Forgotten is the scientific truth that all men are shoots from the same stalk, that intrinsically one man is no better than another, that in the fulness of time the possibilities of one race or people are no greater than those of any other. Whatever differences there are between men and races of men are due, not to inherent differences, but to the action of outside influences, to soil and climate, to temperature and rainfall, and to what may be denominated the accidents of history following naturally, however, in the train of these influences. "A man's a man for a' that and a' that."

But there are differences. There are differences in general between Americans and Mexicans. Let us see if there are any differences which justify the condemnation of Mexicans to slavery and government by a despot.

What is a Mexican? Usually the term is applied to the members of a mixed race, part native and part Spanish, who predominate in the so-called sister republic. Pure natives who long ago left the aboriginal state are also often included in the category and they seem to have a right to the name. In the government census of 1900 the proportion of races is given as 43 per cent mixed, 38 pure native and 19 of European or distinct foreign extraction. The Mexican Year Book thinks that the proportion of mixed peoples has greatly increased in the past ten years until it is far more than half the total today. The Mexican of today, then, is

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either all Spanish, all native, or a mixture of the two, most often the last; so the peculiar character of Mexicans can be said to be made up of a combination of the two elements.

Take the Spanish element, first. What are the peculiar attributes of the Spanish nature? In Spain we find much art and literature, but on the other hand, much religious bigotry and little democracy. We find a versatile people, but a people with swift passions and fickle energies. In its accomplishments along modern lines Spain stands at the foot of the countries of western Europe.

But—why?

The answer is to the credit of Spain. Spain sacrificed herself to save Europe. Standing upon the southern frontier, she bore the brunt of the Moslem invasion. Retarding the barbarian hordes, she saved the budding civilization of Europe and its religion, Christianity. Long after the issue was settled as far as the other nations were concerned, Spain was still engaged in that fight. And in that death-struggle to preserve their existence, it was inevitable that the power of the State should become more centralized and despotic, that the Church should come into closer union with the State, that the Church should become more unscrupulous of the methods it employed to annex power to itself, more sordid of gain, more dogmatic in its teachings and more ruthless in the treatment of its enemies.

Thus is revealed the prime cause for Spain's position as a laggard in the path of democracy and religious enlightenment. For the rest, it may be said that, while the magnificent scenery of the country has helped to make the Spaniard superstitious, it has also helped to make him an artist ; that while the exuberance of the soil by

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enabling him to secure his living with comparatively little labor, has not forced him to habits of such regular industry as are found farther north, it has contributed to his cultivating the arts of music, painting and social intercourse; that the heat of the summer, by rendering hard labor at that season inadvisable, has also militated toward the same ends.

Of course I am not attempting to go into details on these matters. I am merely pointing out a few principles which underlie racial diversities. On the whole, a close examination of the Spanish people would show that there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that they are specially unfit or unworthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy.

As to the native element, which is more important, inasmuch as it undoubtedly predominates in the make-up of the average Mexican, especially the Mexican of the poorer class, an examination of its peculiar character will prove quite as favorable. Biologically, the aboriginal Mexican is not to be classed with any of the so-called lower races, such as the negro, the South Sea Islander, the pure Filipino, or the American Indian. The Aztec has been a long time out of the forest. His facial angle is as good as our own. In many ways he measures up to us. In some ways perhaps he even surpasses us, while the ways in which he falls below us can all be traced either to peculiar external influences, or the luck of history, or both.

It must be admitted that Mexico is not quite as well favored for the generation of physical and mental energy as is the great portion of the United States. The bulk of the population of Diaz-land lives upon a plateau ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 feet high. Here the air is thinner and for every foot-pound of energy ex-

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pended there is a greater tax upon the heart and the human machine generally. Americans who take up their residence on that plateau find that they must live a little more slowly than in this country, that it is better to take the mid-day siesta, like the Mexicans. If they persist in keeping up the old gait they find that they grow old very fast, that it does not pay. If, on the other hand, they choose to live in the tropical belt they find that here, too, because of the greater heat and moisture, it is not wise for them to work as fast as they were wont to do at home.

If the average Mexican has less working capacity than the average American it is largely for this reason, and for the other reason that the Mexican laborer is invariably half starved. When the American laborer meets the Mexican on the latter's own ground he is quite often outdone. Few Americans engage in physical labor either on the plateau or in the tropics. The laborer of no nation can outdo the Mexican in carrying heavy loads or in feats of endurance, while in the tropics the Mexican, if he is not starved, is supreme. The American negro, the Asiatic coolie, the athletic Yaqui from the north, have all been tried out against the native of the tropical states and all have been found wanting, while there is no question as to the inferiority of the working capacity of men of European descent under tropical conditions.

So much for the working capacity of Mexicans, which, in this extremely utilitarian age, is placed high among the virtues of a people. As to intelligence, in spite of the fact that it was always the policy of the Spanish conquerors to hold the native Aztecs in subordinate positions, enough of the latter have succeeded in forcing their way to the top to prove that they were quite as

[photo]

WOOD CARRIERS, CITY OF MEXICO. "A MEXICAN LABORER IS CHEAPER THAN A HORSE"

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capable in the higher functions of civilization as the Spaniards themselves. The most brilliant poets, artists, writers, musicians, men of science, military heroes and constructive statesmen in the history of Mexico were natives pure or natives but faintly crossed with the blood of Spain.

On the whole, the Mexicans seem to exhibit stronger artistic and literary tendencies than we and less inclination toward commerce and heavy mechanics. The mass of the people are illiterate, but that does not mean that they are stupid. There are undoubtedly several million Americans who are able to read but who don't read regularly, not even a newspaper, and they are no better informed, perhaps, and certainly no clearer thinkers, than the peons who pass the news of the day from mouth to mouth on their Sundays and their feast days. That these people are illiterate by choice, that they are poor because they want to be, that they prefer dirt to cleanliness, is absurd.

"They choose that sort of life, so why should we bother ourselves about their troubles?" "They could improve their condition if they cared to make an effort." "They are perfectly happy, anyhow." Such expressions are sure to greet the traveler who remarks upon the misery of the common Mexican. The fact is, the ordinary Mexican chooses the life he lives about as nearly so as a horse chooses to be born a horse. As I suggested before, he cannot he happy, for no starving being can be happy. While as to improving his condition alone and unaided he has about as much chance of doing it as a horse has of inventing a flying machine.

Pick up a poor young Mexican in Mexico City, for example, where the opportunities are the best in the land. Take a typical Mexican laborer. He cannot read

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or write because he was probably born in a country district ten miles from the nearest school, or if he was born in the shadow of a public school he literally had to scratch the earth from the time he could crawl in order to get something to eat. He has no education and no special training of any kind because he has had no opportunity to secure either. Having had no special training all he is able to do is to carry heavy loads.

Probably at twenty-five he is a physical wreck from under-feeding, exposure and overwork. But suppose he is one of the few who has kept his strength. What can he do? Carry more heavy loads ; that is all. He can get perhaps fifty cents a day carrying heavy loads and all the effort of a Hercules cannot better the price, for all he has is brawn, and brawn is cheap as dirt in Mexico. I have seen men "making an effort." I have seen them work until I could see the glazing of their eyes, I have seen them put forth such efforts that their chests rose and fell with explosive gasps, I have seen them carry such heavy weights that they tottered and fell in the street, in which way they are crushed to death, sometimes, by the thing above them. They were putting forth their best efforts in the only thing they knew because they had never had an opportunity to learn anything else, and they were dying just as fast as those others who did as little as possible to live. The point is that they never enjoyed the opportunities at the start that we accept as a birthright. Imagine, if you can, the majority of our American schools being suddenly swept away, imagine a change from your condition of partial work partial leisure to one of all work and no leisure, imagine your earning power as insufficient to feed any mouth but your own, imagine each mouth in the family needing a separate pair of hands to feed it

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and each new mouth needing its own hands while they are yet the soft hands of a baby—imagine these things and you may faintly appreciate the difficulties which the common Mexican encounters in trying to improve his condition. For all practical purposes they are insurmountable.

And how about the capacity of Mexicans for democracy? The assertion that democracy is not compatible with "the Spanish-American character" seems to be based wholly upon the fact that a considerable percentage of the Spanish-American countries—though not all of them—are still ruled by dictators, and that changes in the government come only through revolutions by which one dictator is succeeded by another. This state of affairs was brought about by the peculiar history of these Countries rather than by "the Spanish-American character." Ruled as slave colonies by foreigners, these countries asserted enough valor and patriotism to overthrow the foreigner and expel him. Their struggle for freedom was long and bitter ; moreover, being small countries, their national existence was in danger for considerable periods after their independence. Therefore, of necessity the military calling became a dominant profession and militarism and dictatorships followed naturally. Today what Spanish-American countries as are still ruled by dictators are ruled by dictators largely because of the support accorded the latter by foreign governments, which oppose democratic movements sometimes even with arms. Diaz is not the only Spanish-American dictator who is supported by the United States at the behest of Wall street. During the past five years several of the most notorious of the Central American dictators have been held in their places only by a military demonstration on the part of this country.

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But is Mexico ready for democracy? Does she not need to be ruled by a despot for awhile longer, until such a time as she shall have developed capacity for democracy? I repeat this absurd question only because it is so common. The only reasonable reply is that of Macaulay, that capacity for democracy can only increase with experience with the problems of democracy. Mexico is as ready for democracy as a country can be which has no democracy whatsoever. There is no chance of Mexico having complete democracy at this time. These things come only gradually, and there is no danger whatsoever of her suddenly getting more democracy than is good for her. Who will say that Mexico should not at once have just a little democracy, enough, say, to deliver her people from the mire of slavery and peonage?

Assuredly Mexico is behind us in the march of progress, behind us in the conquests of democracy. But, in considering her, be just and consider what the luck of history gave us in comparison to what it gave the Mexican. We were lucky enough not to have the rule of Spain imposed upon us for 300 years. We were lucky enough to escape the clutch of the Catholic church at our throats in our infancy. Finally, we were lucky enough not to be caught in our weakness at the end of a foreign war, caught by one of our own generals, who, in the guise of president of our republic, quietly and cunningly, with the cunning of a genius and the remorselessness of an assassin, built up a repressive machine such as no modern nation has ever been called upon to break. We were lucky enough to escape the reign of Porfirio Diaz.

Thus, whichever way we turn, we come finally back to the fact that the immediate cause of all the ills, the shortcomings, the vices of Mexico is the system of Diaz,

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Mexico is a wonderful country. The capacity of its people is beyond question. Once its republican constitution is restored, it will be capable of solving all its problems. Perhaps it will be said that in opposing the system of Diaz I am opposing the interests of the United States. If the interests of Wall Street are the interests of the United States, then I plead guilty. And if it is to the interests of the United States that a nation should be crucified as Mexico is being crucified, then I am opposed to the interests of the United States.

But I do not believe that this is so. For the sake of the ultimate interests of this country, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the millions of Mexicans who are actually starving at this moment, I believe that the Diaz system should be abolished and abolished quickly.

Hundreds of letters have come to me from all over the world begging to know what can be done to put a stop to the slavery of Mexico. Armed intervention of foreign powers has been suggested again and again. This is unnecessary as well as impractical. But there is one thing that is practical and necessary, especially for Americans, and that is to insist that there shall be no foreign intervention for the purpose of maintaining the slavery.

In Mexico today exists a nation-wide movement to abolish the Diaz system of slavery and autocracy. This movement is quite capable of solving the problems of Mexico without foreign interference. So far it has not succeeded, partly because of the assistance our government has given in the persecution of some of its leaders, and partly because of Diaz's threat—constantly held before the Mexican people—of calling an American army to his aid in case of a serious revolution against him. Under the present barbarous government there is no hope for reform in Mexico except through armed revo-

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lution. Armed revolution on the part of the decent and most progressive element is strong probability of the early future. When the revolution starts American troops will be rushed to the border and made ready to cross in case Diaz is unable to cope with the revolt alone. If the American army crosses it will not be ostensibly to protect Diaz, but to protect American property and American lives. And to this end false reports of outrages upon Americans, or danger to American women and children, will be deliberately circulated in order to arouse the nation to justify the crime of invasion. That will be the time for decent Americans to make their voices heard. They will expose, in no uncertain terms, the conspiracy against democracy and demand that, for all time, our government cease putting the machinery of state at the disposal of the despot to help him crush the movement for the abolition of slavery in Mexico.

John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (1910)

Part 1 (Chapters 1-5); Part 2 (Chapters 6-10); Part 3 (Chapters 11-13); Part 4 (Chapters 14-17)

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