such wide success as they achieved among a working population truly awake to its own interests and dealing with responsible government anxious to advance the interests of the people it served.
Nevertheless, here as in the protest of the agricultural population, although the dissatisfaction with old conditions resulted in a following of irresponsible and ill-advised leadership and the adoption of indefensible methods to try to secure laudable ends, the fact that the dissatisfaction with the old system did result in protest is encouraging. A laboring population that meekly accepts every rule made by the employer is servile. The first requisite for a fair adjustment between employers and employed is the recognition by both that each has rights and responsibilities.
Before the Mexican laborer can enjoy the solid benefits that should come to him from the break-up of the old régime and enter a working world in which he will enjoy greater independence and greater rights than he has had heretofore, he must unlearn much of what his teachers have taught him. He must first of all learn that greater independence means greater responsibility and that privileges are paid for by sacrifice. The old system had much that was indefensible about it, the ideals toward which his self-appointed leaders turned his ambition were often impractical. Those who are intelligently to lead the Mexican laboring classes to refuse to allow the return of the old abuses and to avoid new ones have a delicate task before them. It is one that is the more difficult because of the present limitations of those whom they attempt to serve.
