BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

THE MEXICAN PEOPLE 329
in the many hand arts and crafts practiced by the natives,
the blanket weaving, the pottery making, the making
of laces, the manufacture of curios.
Ignorance is charged against the Mexican people as
if it were a crime. On the other hand, we are told, in
glowing terms of the public school system which Diaz
has established. Charles F. Lummis in his book on Mexico
remarks that it is doubtful if there is a single hamlet
of one hundred Mexicans in all the country that has not
its free public school. The truth is that the people
are ignorant and that there are few schools. The sort
of authority Mr. Lummis is may be gauged by the government
statistics themselves, which, in the year Mr.
Lummis issued his book, placed the number of Mexicans
who could read and write at sixteen per cent of the
population. In Mexico there are some public schools
in the cities and almost none in the country districts.
But even if they were there, can a hungry baby learn
to read and write? What promise does study hold out
for a youth born to shoulder a debt of his father and
carry it on to the end of his days?
And they say the Mexican is happy! "As happy as
a peon," has come to be a common expression. Can a
starving man be happy? Is there any people on earth—
any beast of the field, even—so peculiar of nature that
it loves cold better than warmth, an empty stomach better
than a full one? Where is the scientist that has discovered
a people who would choose an ever narrowing
horizon to an ever widening one? Depraved indeed are
the Mexican people if they are happy. But I do not belive
they are happy. Some who have said it lied knowingly.
Others mistook the dull glaze of settled despair
for the signature of contentment.
Most persistent of all derogations of Mexicans is the