Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/19

Rh, have something to do with it, as also the local unions of the Industrial Workers of the World, there now being at this time three locals whose entire membership have gone across the line and joined the insurgents, and Berthold, one of the commandants, is an officer in the I. W. W. at Holtville, Cal. So that they have something to do with the insurrection. But the revolution in Mexico has been brought on by the capitalists, and it was no snap judgment on the part of Taft, the sending of the troops to the Mexican border. You recall two years ago Elihu Root went down to Mexico to visit Mr. Diaz, and following Root's visit, on the 16th of October a year ago, Mr. Taft went down and met with Diaz in Juarez and El Paso. Here is, to my mind, the nut of it, here is the milk in that cocoanut: the Japanese have been crowding into Mexico ever since the Japanese said they wouldn't come to the United States. They have been coming into Mexico in swarms, until now the administration looks on with a great deal of dread as to just what it means, if there is going to be a Japanese war, with the little brown fellows right down there in Mexico ready to come across the border.

Again, Mr. Taft would like to extend the territory of the United States by benevolent assimilation down to the Isthmus of Panama. He would like to take in all of Mexico and Central America. Why? Because the interests of this country—when I say "the interests" I mean the big ones, the Standard Oil and the Morgans, and even the fellows on the undercrust, like Bill Hearst—have got vast interests down in Mexico. Not that it cost them a great deal of money. Hearst has a million and a half acres down there that he estimates to be worth $12,000,000, and he paid perhaps half a million for it. But their interests are there. Mexico is a wonderful country. The remarkable thing is that the capitalists have let it go as long as they have. It is a wonder they hadn't jumped on Mexico as the dons of Spain did, because there is no country under the sun that is as rich