Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/11

 

submerged eighty per cent, of the Mexican people—the peons—who, for four hundred years, have been the victims of an industrial slavery almost without parallel in history, and to those who have been their greatest friends and benefactors in that dark period, the heroic American pioneers who, at the risk, and oft-times at the cost, of their lives, have invaded the mountains, deserts, and jungles of Mexico to discover and develop the hitherto unknown natural resources of that country for the benefit of its workers and of civilized mankind.