David Ames Wells

“ But what has the Church, in whose hands for so many years was exclusively vested the matter of education, and which lacked nothing in the way of power and opportunity, to say to the appalling depths of ignorance in which she has left the Mexican people; an ignorance not confined to an almost entire lack of acquaintance with the simplest elements of scholastic learning—reading, writing, and the rules of common arithmetic—but even with the commonest tools and mechanical appliances of production and civilization? ”

“ The fruits of the soil and the results of individual labor have been repeating themselves for hundreds of years. Men have died, but others do the same thing from generation to generation. Here as impressively as anywhere in Mexico appears the tireless and mechanical iteration that marks the Indian as an unprogressive human animal, and shows him to be in lower life the same child of nature as the uneducated negro of the Southern States of the United States ”

“ The owners of these large Mexican estates, who are generally men of wealth and education, rarely live upon them, but make their homes in the city of Mexico or in; Europe, and intrust the management, of their property to a superintendent, who, like the owner, considers himself a gentleman, and whose chief business is to keep the peons in debt, or, what is substantially the same thing, in slavery. Whatever work is done is performed by the peons—in whose veins Indian blood predominates—in their own way and in their own time. ”

“ Not one American business man in five hundred will succeed in Mexico, for the sole reason that he attempts to force his own ways and methods upon a people whose habits and ways are the antipodes of his own. ”

“ The mass of all those engaged in the prosecution of agriculture and the performance of other manual labor are also divided into classes, as separate and distinct from each other as it is possible to imagine a people to be who occupy a common country and acknowledge the same government, and in this respect they greatly resemble the natives of British India.
It is difficult, in fact, to express in words, to those who have not had an opportunity of judging for themselves, the degraded condition of the mass of the laboring-classes of Mexico. ”

“ Doubtless there are many intelligent people in Mexico who recognize the gravity of the situation, and are most anxious that something should be done in the way of reform. But what can be done? If autocratic powers were to be given to a trained financier, thoroughly versed in all the principles of taxation and of economic sciences, and conversant with the results of actual experiences, the problem of making things speedily and radically better in this department of the Mexican state is so difficult that he might well shrink from grappling with it. ”

“ Every right, however, carries with it and involves a duty; and the assertion of the Monroe doctrine by the United States carries with it an obligation of duty in respect to Mexico. What is that duty? Manifestly the duty which the strong owes to the weak. Not an offensive protectorate or meddlesome interference, but a kindly feeling and policy; manifesting itself in acts that will tend to promote the prosperity of our neighbor, and bring her willingly in accord with our own interests and wishes. ”

“ Society is said to be bound by laws that always bring vengeance upon it for wrong-doing—"the vengeance of the gods, whose mills grind slow, but grind exceeding small." What penalty is to be exacted of the great North American Republic for its harsh treatment and spoliation of poor, down-trodden, ignorant, superstitious, debt-ridden Mexico, time alone can reveal. ”

“ Finally, what Mexico is to-day, socially and politically, is the natural and legitimate sequence, and exactly what might have been expected from the artificial conditions which for more than three centuries have been forced upon her; and history has never afforded such a striking, instructive, and pitiful illustration of the effect upon a country and a people, of long-continued absolutism and tyranny in respect to both government and religion. ”

“ We do not oppose material progress, but we rather desire that it should come by natural steps, in proportion as the peace and public guarantees re-establish confidence and encourage the development of the country's own resources. Without foreign capital and without foreign labor, nothing or very little shall we be able to do, but we ought to refrain from calling in our neighbors, whose tendencies toward absorption are well known, in order that they shall decorate luxuriously our house and then install themselves in it definitely, relegating to us the departments of servitude. ”

“ The publication of this history, so long and jealously withheld from the public, offers the unlooked-for chance of seeing the men of the Revolution through the eyes of a vigilant enemy, who knew them more or less exactly, not only as to their characters, but their private lives and family antecedents. It will cause more than one descendant of ancient and honorable families of New York to wince, and to wince all the more because they are in a poor plight to refute the statements of Judge Jones. ”

“ There can be no doubt, further, that there is a powerful party in Mexico—the old social leaders, and what considers itself the best society of the country—embracing the Church, the notables, and persons of wealth and ancient lineage allied with Spain—which is not at all in sympathy with the younger and progressive element of the nation, and sullenly opposes the introduction of railroads, and dislikes the United States. ”

“ Shoes in Mexico are a foreign innovation, and properly form no part of the national costume. The great majority of the people do not wear shoes at all, and probably never will; but in their place use sandals, composed of a sole of leather, raw-hide, or plaited fibers of the maguey-plant, fastened to the foot with strings of the same material, as the only protection for the foot needed in their warm, dry climate. And these sandals are so easily made and repaired that every Mexican peasant, no matter what may be his other occupation, is always his own shoemaker. ”

“ Another explanation is that our European competitors in foreign trade recognize at the outset, and at all times, that trade, especially when involving radical innovations on old-time precedents and usages, is not of spontaneous growth, but has got to be cultivated; that it is a system in which product is to be given for product, and service for service, and therefore, from its very nature, can not be a "one-sided business." ”

“ A miller, in Mexico, it is said, is obliged to pay thirty-two separate taxes on his wheat, before he can get it from the field and offer it, in the form of flour, on the market, for consumption. As a matter of necessity, furthermore, every center of population—small and big, city, town, or hamlet—swarms with petty officials, who are paid to see that not an item of agricultural produce, of manufactured goods, or an operation of trade or commerce or even a social event, like a fandango, a christening, a marriage, or a funeral, escapes the payment of tribute. ”

“ This fear serves no other purpose than to keep large capitals from our soil, which employed in Mexican enterprises would give an impulse and new life to agriculture, to mining, and to a multitude of industries which could be developed in our country, and, besides being irreconcilable to our national pride, also make us appear in the eyes of our next neighbors as a cowardly people which doubts its own vitality, the manliness of its sons, and which seeks safety in the recourse of all weaklings against danger, namely, in flight, instead of fighting danger bravely ”

“ But, at the same time, if there are any who expect that trade would immediately and largely increase between the two countries if all tariff restrictions were mutually abolished, they are certain to be disappointed. A large proportion of the people of Mexico—possibly nine tenths—will for the present buy nothing imported, whether there is a high tariff or no tariff—not because they do not want to, but because they are so poor that they can not buy under any circumstances; while the limited wealthy class will buy what they want of foreign products, irrespective of high duties. ”

“ If you pass one week in an hotel, and should write conformably to what various interests would have you, you are at once quoted as a 'most intelligent and experienced traveler.' A thorough investigation scrapes off all the varnish, and will often expose the motives of not a few people in Mexico, who would have American capital plant itself there under conditions which afford no protection by their Government or ours. ”

“ To answer this question intelligently, one needs but to get a position outside of ourselves—more especially anywhere among the other people and states of the American Continent, north or south of our boundaries—when a little inquiry will satisfy, that the United States is regarded very much in the light of a great, overgrown, immensely powerful "bully," from whom no favor and scant justice are to be expected under any circumstances ”

“ No one accurately knows the total population of Mexico, as no undeniably accurate census has ever been taken; and there is no immediate prospect that any will be: certainly not so long as a majority of the people have a fear of giving any information in respect to their number, as is represented, and a not inconsiderable part of the country, as has already been pointed out, has never yet been brought under the rule of civil authority. ”

“ And when he further reflects on the numbers of idle, shiftless, and certainly to some extent profligate people, who tenanted or were supported by these great properties, and who, producing nothing and consuming everything, virtually lived on the superstitions and fears of their countrymen—which they at the same time did their best to create and perpetuate—he no longer wonders that Mexico and her people are poor and degraded, but rather that they are not poorer and more degraded than they are. ”

“ But for the United States and Mexico to maintain their present tariff restrictions on the international trade of the two countries is to simply neutralize in a great degree the effect of the railways, and create conditions so antagonistic to the idea which a railway represents that the investment of a large amount of money in their construction by citizens of the United States, under existing circumstances, would seem almost akin to dementia. ”

“ But it is not unlikely that Mexico would have to go through one more revolution, and that the worst one she has yet experienced, before any such result could be accomplished. At present, furthermore, there is no evidence that the mass of the Mexican people, who would be most benefited by any wise scheme for the partition of the great estates and for tax reform, feel any interest whatever in the matter, or would vigorously support any leader of the upper class that might desire to take the initiative in promoting such changes. ”

“ Among the large mercantile houses in the interior of Mexico, as well as the importers, and the large sugar, grain, cotton, and cattle raisers, the moral sense in a square business dealing is as keen and as just and responsible as among the general run of customers in the United States. They are slow, but pay their bills, make few business compromises, and still fewer failures. From actual inspection of books of large houses in Mexico, exhibiting accounts of a series of years, I found that eighty-five to ninety per cent of long-credit sales were paid in full. ”

“ The laboring-classes in Mexico—the so-called "peons," who comprise the great bulk of the population—are chiefly Indians, or descendants from Indians, and are a different race from their employers. Originally conquered and enslaved by the Spaniards, and then emancipated by law, they are, as a matter of fact, through their peculiar attachment to the place of their nativity, and through certain conditions respecting the obligation of debts, almost as permanently attached to the soil of the great estates of the country as they were in the days of their former peonage, or slavery. ”

“ It is a well-established fact that neither the Mexican nor the European merchant has anything to fear from his American rival, and our own national experience proves conclusively that this fear of the Yankee is nothing but a bugbear, a groundless prejudice, which greatly injures the material development of this country. ”

“ But, be the explanation what it may, it is greatly to the credit of Mexico, and one of the brightest auguries for her future, that after years of war, and social and political revolutions, in which the adherents both of liberty and absolutism have seemed to vie with each other in outraging humanity, the idea of a constitutional government, based on the broadest republican principles, has lived, and, to as large an extent as has perhaps been possible under the circumstances, practically asserted itself in a national administrative system. ”

“ A population of ten million, poor almost beyond conception, have therefore to pay from two to three hundred per cent more for the staple material of their simple clothing than needs be, in order that some other ten or twelve thousand of their fellow-citizens—men and women—may have the privilege of working exhaustively from fourteen to fifteen hours a day in a factory, for the small pittance of from thirty-five to seventy cents, and defraying the cost of their own subsistence! ”

“ The bulk and weight of the silver currency constituted a most serious embarrassment to commerce and all money transactions. Thus, if one proposed to trade, even to a retail extent, or go on a journey, a bag of coin had to be carried. ”

“ The single fact, however, that the present Government and the most intelligent and influential people of Mexico have recognized the necessity of educating the masses of the people, and that probably the best that can be done under existing circumstances is being done, certainly constitutes the most hopeful and encouraging augury for the future of the republic. ”

“ Strother, [5] "none of the working-classes of Mexico have any idea of present economy, or of providing for the future. The lives of most of them seem to be occupied in obtaining food and amusement for the passing hour, without either hope or desire for a better future. As the strongest proof of this improvidence on the part of the city mechanic and laborer, is the constant demand for money in advance—from the mechanic, under the pretext of getting materials to enable him to fill some order, and from the laborer, to get something to eat before he begins work." ”

“ The subversion of the so-called Republic of Mexico, with its unstable government and frequent revolutions, and its replacement with an empire, backed by the then apparently invincible arms of France, and with one of the Catholic princes of Europe on the throne, were, therefore, most acceptable to the Mexican Church and its adherents; and in Maximilian of Austria they thought they had found a man after their own heart. ”