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 believe 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
