Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/20

18 as Mexico. Central America is a marshy country, but in Mexico you come to the highlands and the plateaus; and that country, situated as it is, a narrow land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California and the Pacific gets the benefit of the atmospheric precipitation, the benefit of the waters from both sides, so that they have plenty of rain, and can raise crops of everything—from rubber, cocoa, cotton, the tropical fruits, to the very hardest of wheat. The primeval forests in Mexico are second to nothing except the jungles of Africa. There they have great forests of mahogany, of dragonsblood wood, ironwood, copal, juniper and cedar that have never been touched. Just at this stage the reading of Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" would be very interesting, also Humboldt's and Buckle's. The latter book I found to be perhaps not as exhaustive as Prescott's, but splendidly written. Those I read while I was on my vacation, when I didn't have anything else to do but read. (Laughter.)

The capitalists, who are responsible for all wars are responsible for the present trouble in Mexico. (Applause.)