Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/738

 714 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

development of gambling in the United States during the last few years, until today the vice has as notable a hold on us as on the Mexi- cans, shows that some other cause must be assigned than the simple climatic conditions which he discusses a cause more general and less simply physical.

In his discussion of "The Territory" Guerrero shows clearly that Spain's mode of administration, perpetuated by Mexico, was directly influenced by the topographic structure of the country. He brings out well why Mexico was unable to exert the coercion necessary to hold Texas in the union of Mexican states. It is curious that Mexico has not yet learned the lesson which he here teaches, and that she today, blind to her past history, encourages with government aid lines of railroad which are of no direct advantage to her, and the whole strategic value of which is in favor of the United States. It would be wise policy to tie Sonora and Sinaloa, always points of danger, to the national capital, rather than to connect them by their only highways to another governmental center.

Most interesting, and most sad, are Guerrero's descriptions of the classes that make up Mexican society. These are marvelously true and could be written only by a Mexican, though there are few Mexicans who could or would write them. Their nature is shown by the follow- ing lines, a part of his description of the lowest class:

A, (a). Unfortunate men and women who have no normal or certain means of subsistence ; they live in the streets and sleep in public sleeping- places, crouched in the portales, in the shelters of doorways, amid the rubbish of buildings in construction, in some meson if they can pay for the space three or four centavos a night, or stowed away in the house of some compadre or friend. They are beggars, gutter snipes, paper-sellers, grease-buyers, rag- pickers, scrub-women, etc. With difficulty they earned twenty or thirty centavos daily ; now they may receive more, but the general rise in prices leaves them in the same condition of misery. They are covered with rags, they scratch themselves constantly, in their tangled hair they carry the dust and mud of every quarter of the city. They never bathe themselves save when the rain drenches them, and their bare feet are cracked and calloused, and assume the color of the ground. In general, they do not attain to an old age, but to a precocious decrepitude, worn out by syphilis, misery, and drink.

The men and women of this class have completely lost modesty ; their language is that of the drinking-house ; they live in sexual promiscuity, get drunk daily, frequent the lowest pulquerias of the meanest quarters ; they quarrel and are the chief causes of disorders ; they form the ancient class of Mexican Uperos ; from their bosom the ranks of petty thieves and pickpockets are recruited, and they are the industrious plotters of important crimes. They