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THE DIAZ-AMERICAN PRESS CONSPIRACY

If there is any combination of Interests in the United States that exercises so powerful an influence over the press of this country as does President Diaz of Mexico I should like to know its name.

In a previous chapter I asserted that no publication in Mexico dares, no matter what the circumstances, to criticize President Diaz directly. While the same thing cannot, of course, be said of the United States, at least this can be said, that there exists a strange, even an uncanny, unwillingness on the part of powerful American publishers to print anything derogatory to the ruler of Mexico; that, also, there is manifested a remarkable willingness to print matter flattering to the Mexican dictator.

At this writing I do not know of a single book, regularly published and circulated in the United States, which seriously criticizes President Diaz, the man or his system; while I could name at least ten which flatter him most extravagantly. Indeed, I do not know of any book that has ever been circulated in the United States—that is, one put out by one of the regular publishing houses—which attempted an extended criticism of President Diaz.

And the situation with the magazines is exactly the same. While the number of articles containing praise of Diaz which have been published in magazines—not to mention newspapers—during the past several years have undoubtedly run into the hundreds, I do not know of one prominent magazine that has prosecuted a criticism of the Mexican dictator.

Is it not an astonishing situation? And what is the