Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/185

Rh $100,000,000 of value, given employment to thousands of people, produced a great taxable asset to the country, and yielded immense annual production of foodstuffs and cotton worth millions of dollars, should be wrecked and ruined. All this they are willing to sacrifice in order to secure a few dollars of present loot. It is nothing that the great financial institutions of the country, which furnished the capital that is the life blood of business, should be wrecked and ruined provided they can secure some present money which almost all goes to the army for the purpose of maintaining the heads of that organization in a life of vicious indulgence in the capital city.

It is this spirit now controlling the government which has destroyed the industry of Mexico and deprived hundreds of thousands of its people of the chance to make a living; has caused thousands of them to starve to death; has reduced the compensation of its labourers and school teachers until their incomes will barely sustain life, or has deprived them of employment altogether and has made the country the social and economic wreck that it stands to-day.

No account of the treatment of foreigners by the Carrancistas would be complete without a reference to the number of American citizens who have lost their lives at the hands of the revolutionists.