tributed 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 enganchado 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 Southwest. 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 he 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 them so chronically that they have not the actual strength to work effectively. Thus we have a second reason why Mexicans sometimes
