BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

PUBLISHERS' NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION
Since John Kenneth Turner wrote "Barbarous
Mexico" Diaz has fallen, Madero has fallen, and as
we go to press with this edition Of the book, the
-Constitutionalists" under Carranza and Villa in
northern Mexico are fighting with considerable success
against Huerta, who still holds Mexico City.
Until this month President Wilson has resisted the
demand of American capitalists that the United
States intervene, but the latest dispatches indicate that
United States soldiers will soon invade Mexico.
The possibility of war with Mexico on behalf of
American capitalists makes it more important than
ever that American wage-workers understand the
facts which Turner has presented in "Barbarous
Iexico."
The trouble in Mexico is not mainly due to the
acts of Huerta or any other individual. It is due to
the fact that the working people of Mexico are held
in virtual slavery by the land system against which
they are rebelling. In Mexico there is little machinery
as yet, and land ownership is the chief means
of exploitation. So the slogan of the Mexican rebels
is "Land and Liberty."
From the confused bits of information which trickle
through the battle lines, it seems that here and there,
in the territory occupied by the rebel armies, the
peons are beginning to work for themselves without
paying tribute to landlords. Will American workers
allow the American army to be used to force these
rebels back into slavery?
April, 1914.