The Mexican Problem (1917)/The Law Of Compensation
CHAPTER VII
THE LAW OF COMPENSATION
The problem of value with any investment is determined according to the aim of the management, otherwise the soul of the proprietor, owner, or manager.
An elephant and a jackass were born on the same day in the same stable, drank from the same spring of water, and ate from the same bale of hay. At the end of several years every physical fiber of each had come from the same water and the same hay, but the elephant was still more of an elephant and the jackass more of a jackass because one was born with the soul of an elephant and the other with the soul of a jackass.
One of my newspaper associates was recently en route from Winnipeg to meet me in Montreal.
"What did you learn?"
He replied: "I visited all the smoking-cars en route to mingle with the people. They were jovial and light-hearted in the third-class smoker, but in the first-class smoker sullen, morose, thoughtful. I believe that of all my friends in Winnipeg the war has slain four out of five.
"In the first-class smoking compartment a Canadian asked: 'What is the compensation to Canada for all her sacrifice?'
"And a British officer growled, 'There is in this world no compensation in sacrifice.":
"Did you refute him?"
"How could I, with eighty per cent of my friends in Winnipeg dead in the war and my own memories of a struggle when as a youth of ten to protect my school-books, snatched from my hand by a little negro girl, I rolled in blood and dirt, for she buried her teeth in my flesh to the cheek-bone, and I carry the scar to-day? What compensation to me or to Canada?"
I had to respond: "I have never forgotten the slow, solemn words of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the Old South Meeting-House at Boston, as he drawled forth: 'The Sandwich Islanders have a proverb that the strength of the slain enters into the arm of the conqueror.'
"Was your arm weakened or your fighting soul for right shrunken by your youthful combat? Did I not tell you two years ago that the war had rejuvenated France and raised in her a new soul? Is she not to-day the proud treasure of the world? There are many rich men in the United States who would like to swap their money and position with the men of England who have given up their fortunes in defense of their country but have found their souls.
"The sum of human happiness to-day is greater in the British empire united and at war for liberty and humanity than ever before; and it will increase with the sacrifice."
Then I went down into Mexico and studied an empire of natural wealth and resources, but a nation that has never yet found its soul, or a flag which represents service to humanity.
CARTRIDGES ARE CURRENCY
When the Mexican soldier finds Carranza money will not buy food, he or his woman takes the government cartridges and buys their provisions. Cartridges are currency in Mexico.
Zapata has maintained himself supreme in his state against six administrations in the City of Mexico and never imported arms or munitions. He holds a rich territory, the food of which can buy the arms and cartridges of his opponents.
Seventeen million people on the richest mineral territory of the world, that can grow anything in the world and produce food in abundance every month of the year, use their cartridges for currency; and their national soul can never be born under that miserable motto of self-interests, "Mexico for the Mexicans," which means Zapata for Zapata, Carranza for Carranza, Pelaez for Pelaez, Villa for Villa, until every part is for itself and nobody for the whole.
Returning north, I find Canada, seven million of people, on a soil that works only three or four months of the year, sacrificing state and national treasure to develop national transportation, and until this war dependent upon foreign credit, now summoning all her resources, not for Canada, which needs no defense, but for civilization and the empire of which she is a part; giving more than four hundred thousand of her best men to the battle line and over a billion of her treasure and earnings for the funds of war; and men, women, and children working every possible hour of the twenty-four.
Mexico is still seeking compensation for something she never knew she had until American enterprise developed it and with it lifted her labor toward modern civilization.
Canada, like France and Britain, has found her soul, not in the motto, "Canada for the Canadians," but in Canada for world defense. 
Canada is young but has the soul of an elephant.
Mexico will never be for the Mexicans or for humanity until American and European enterprise has had fair play in that country and been permitted to pay fair wages to her willing people who are longing for light, enlightenment, and education. Without education leading to usefulness there can be no patriotism.
OUR CRIME AGAINST MEXICO
Carranza is in a difficult situation. We of the United States have struck down all credit for Mexico.
Had we deliberately gone about a diabolical scheme to wreck a billion of foreign capital in Mexico, to give forty thousand foreigners over to plunder, and to decree misery, poverty, and sorrow for more than fifteen million Mexicans, we could have conceived of no more effective plan than that which we have executed toward her without ever planning anything against her.
Because the Guggenheim smelting interests could make some millions of dollars more a year with peace in Mexico, nobody must speak a word for peace in Mexico, for the Guggenheims represent capital and the securities of their companies are in Wall Street. Because the Standard Oil people with peace in Mexico might build pipe lines therein and buy Mexican oil and make money refining it, it is better to have anarchy in Mexico than that the Standard Oil Company should have any more capital, wealth, or earnings.
Therefore, Mexico must be cut asunder, Carranza must rule or tumble down in Mexico City; Villa may overrun Chihuahua and even raid into the United States; Pelaez may govern in the oil fields, Felix Diaz may operate from Vera Cruz, Zapata may rule to the south of Mexico City, and Cantu may run Lower California.
If we had meditated a diabolical plan to ruin Mexico, and all the friends of Mexico, how successful would have been the most wicked machination if it could have accomplished the present disunited and hopeless situation!
If Mexico had been permitted to be truly free by an assisting hand from the United States, what a power to-day would be her food and mineral resources in health and help for the whole world!
We have declared ourselves brother-keeper of Mexico and have imprisoned her; and as she tears herself within her own prison walls, we stuff cotton in our ears and give her over to the I.W.W and the crazy, illogical brains of such as Lincoln Steffens.
With many of the richer states in Mexico cut off from support to the central de facto government, where shall Carranza raise revenue to pay his soldiers and maintain law and order?
THE COMPENSATION OF LOOT
It is a mystery to everybody in and out of Mexico how Carranza can exist. I have very reliable reports from abroad that some German money has come into his hands. Only recently he took $38,000,000 Mexican silver from the banks in Mexico City, and it was figured that this would last him only so many weeks and that then Villa would again be raiding over the country. When Carranza has troops and money, Villa takes to the hills, but when the money is gone and his soldiers clamor for pay, Villa appears on the scene and promises the compensation of loot; and our Mr. Wilson says that these good patriots, both of whom have been his allies, must fight it out as did our forefathers.
I wonder if Mr. Wilson's forefathers would really have sat up on the top rail of a fence and cheered on the Indian tribes against the American pioneer bringing the white man's civilization into the jungle? Would they have called out, "Bully for you, old Puritan, over goes your meeting-house and some children in the flames! Buck up there, old Sioux, there are more scalps for you! more women to torture! more fields to burn! more plunder ahead! fight it out!" Now, individual reader, please don't blame MF. Wilson; he represents you, calloused and hard to the sufferings of your neighbor, rejoicing in the sacrifice of your fathers and the prosperity of your present position. You have not and you do not take any more interest in Mexico than you do in a famine in India. You think Mexico is a good joke on the Guggenheims, the Standard Oil Company, and Wall Street, but when a long war in Europe, where you are now to take the forefront of the battle, has softened your heart and the income taxes have come down to the smallest savings, you will be less of an Indian, less of a savage, less of a Mexican, yourself. You will be more thoughtful, more tender of heart, and a more worthy son of the men who first brought freedom and true democratic government into the American jungle.
The pity about it all is that Mexico was brought so near to modern civilization under Diaz; then an explosion and a political and social catastrophe, the like of which no man in or out of Mexico had ever dreamed! Yet I don't believe there were ever two hundred thousand men under arms in Mexico. As to any invasion by the Gringos, there were never fifty thousand Americans in the whole of Mexico, and to-day there are only about five thousand.
THE DIAZ RECORD
I first met Porfirio Diaz nearly forty years ago when he was inviting New England capital into the railroad development of Mexico. He ruled Mexico with an iron hand and invited the capital of the world into its development. His policy never varied. It was to promote in Mexico every enterprise that would give his people opportunity for work, wages, and education. I have talked with all interests that ever had to deal with him and I have never heard a charge that he had the taint of graft or personal ambition. Every business interest that ever appealed to him for support found him fair and forceful for the right.
I was pleased to learn on this trip to Mexico that when he died, an exile in France, he was not the absentee ruler with treasured or hidden millions at his command. He left seventy million dollars in the Mexican government treasury, but died a pauper, as befits an exiled patriot; and his funeral expenses were paid by sympathetic American friends who still hope that the native blood of Mexico will produce more of his kind.