Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/167

 gusto. The railways diminish the chance of trouble by for the first time furnishing ample employment to the idle, who formerly occupied themselves in plunder and ready to follow the banners of insurgent chiefs. They will be a potent military engine in enabling the government to mass its forces at points of danger. The fear, too, may be present of interference by foreign governments, should the enterprises of their citizens be threatened with serious damage by new upheavals.

Still, there are great administrative abuses. The civil service is notoriously corrupt. Opportunities for galling oppression are open to the governments, both federal and state, and, most ominous of trouble, redress by the ballot is not possible. The anomaly is presented of a republic in which there is no census nor registration of voters, no scrutiny of the ballot-box except by the party in power. There is hardly a ray of interest in the political machine by the people themselves. The number of votes cast at elections is pitifully small, as we have seen. It is not considered worth while to vote. The lower classes read no informing journals, have no public speakers. No organized opposition exists. Such opposition as there is is purely personal. All contests for office are personal, and not a matter of principles. The Government—that of the centre influencing the states, and these in turn the communities—sustains and counts in what candidates it pleases. There are no data for objection, since nobody can point to the real number of voters in a given place, nor their names.

When this is understood it seems to account for almost all that has happened. There is absolutely no remedy for oppressive domination but in rebellion. With the best of dispositions, the most entire patience, what has happened in the past may happen again.