BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

THE MEXICAN PEOPLE
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tribute4 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 cnganchado 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
Southwe st. 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 lie 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 tlzcnz so chronically that the'
have not the actual strength to work cffcctivclit. Thus
we have a second reason why Mexicans sometimes