Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/130

112 which is found elsewhere. The aboriginal races, which formed so important a factor in the early history of the United States, have disappeared as an important factor in the national life by a process of elimination, those of Mexico, which have been, until now, the foundation on which the state has been built, will disappear by intermarriage.

What effect this development will have upon Mexican economic and political life it is, of course, impossible to say. Whether through faulty education or other causes, the mixed bloods, up to the present, have not shown themselves an industrially able population. In politics they have been wonderfully facile and disappointingly unstable. Whatever the changes that the revolution brings in the labor conditions of Mexico may be—whether the Indian for the time being comes to play a more or a less important part in the national life and whether or not the mestizo rises to his opportunity—it is clear that Mexican labor problems will be in the future, as they have in the past, to a large extent, race problems. They must depend for the success of their solution upon the degree to which the Indian, and for the future the mestizo, population show themselves adaptable to the demands of industry.

It is not fair, however, to assume, as is often done, that given the chance to develop wants the Indian and mestizo populations have shown no tendency to do so. In fact, the Indian has been brought into contact with the habits of civilized life so casually, if at all, that his adaptive impulses, which appear naturally slow, have been but feebly aroused. The mestizo has taken on a