BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

248 BARBAROUS MEXICO
the first extended criticism of Diaz and his system to
be put squarely before the American people. And the
reason for its being the first will be not because there
have not been facts that begged to be printed and writers
that desired to print those facts, but because of that
"skilfully applied influence upon journalism" which General
Diaz exerts in our land of free speech and free
press.
Again I come back to the question: What is the
source of that "influence upon journalism?" Why do
citizens of the United States, who profess a reverence
for the principles for which their forefathers of '76
fought, who claim to revere Abraham Lincoln most of all
for his Emancipation Proclamation, who shudder at the
labor-baiting of the Congo, at the horrors of Russia's
Siberia, at the political system of Czar Nicholas, apologize
for and defend a more cruel slavery, a worse political
oppression, a more complete and terrible despotism
—in Mexico?
To this question there is only one conceivable answer,
that for the sake of sordid profits principles of decency
and humanity, principles which are universally conceded
as being best for the progress of the world, have been
set aside.
By this I do not mean that all of the Americans who
have expressed admiration for General Diaz have been
directly bribed to do so by gifts of so many dollars and
so many cents. By no means. Some publishers and
some writers have undoubtedly been bought in this way.
But the vast majority of the active flatterers of Diaz
have been moved by nothing more than "business reasons,"
which, by some persons, will be considered as
little different from bribery. As to the great mass of the