Page:The Mexican Problem (1917).djvu/75

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FAITHFUL MEXICANS
33

blanket for a sail is picturesque, but not industrially expansive. The fishing is good, and existence calls for but little energy. On the other side of the river are well-dressed Mexican families with comfortable homes, pure water, electric lights, moving pictures, wages, and opportunity for more. There are great possibilities of savings in these wages and of personal development therefrom; but throughout all Mexico there is not yet a savings bank.

The Mexicans are good workers when tools and instruction come to their hand. So far as operated, the railroad lines of the country and the railroad repair shops are manned entirely by Mexicans. There are several independent Tampico shipbuilding and repair yards all owned and operated by Mexican graduates from the repair plants of the Mexican Petroleum Company on the other side of the river.

FAITHFUL MEXICANS

When in 1913 all the Americans were called out of Mexico, the native employees of the Mexican Petroleum Company, who had been assisting in the pumping stations and in the shops, saw to it that never a stroke was missed, nor was there a barrel less oil produced, nor any