Identifier: barbarousmexico00turn (find matches)
Title: Barbarous Mexico
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Turner, John Kenneth
Subjects: Mexico -- Politics and government 1867-1910 Mexico -- Economic conditions
Publisher: Chicago : C. H. Kerr & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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y than are Mex-ican promoters, and when they are they frequently losemoney by it. Why? Because flesh and blood arecheaper 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 sud-I denly to be shoved up above that of dead steel, machin-i I ery would flow into Mexico as fast as it would flow\ into any new industrial field in the United States or anyother country. Do not think that the Mexican is too stupid to oper-ate machinery when he is put to it. There are somelines in which machine labor is cheaper than hand laborand we have only to look to these line§ to learn that theMexican can handle machinery quite as easily as anyother people. • Native labor operates the great cottonmills of Mexico almost exclusively, for example. Forthat matter, mechanical cunning of a high order is shown
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THE MEXICAN PEOPLE in the many hand arts and crafts practiced hy the na- jtives, the blanket weaving, the pottery making, the mak-, ^^ing of laces, the manufacture of curios, l^v-C*^ Ignorance is charged against the Mexican people asif it were a crime. On the other hand, we are told, inglowing terms of the public school system which Diazhas established. Charles F. Lummis in his book on Mex-ico remarks that it is doubtful if there is a single hamletof one hundred Mexicans in all the country that has notits free public school. The truth is that the peopleare ignorant and that there are few schools. The sortof authority Mr. Lummis is_may be gauged_by the gov-ernment statistics themselves, which, in the year iJvTr.Lummis issue3~His book, placed the number of Mexi-cans who could read and write at sixteen per cent of thepopulation. In Mexico there are some public schoolsin the cities and almost none in the country districts.But even if they were there, can a hungry baby learnto read and wri

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