to the necessity of educating the Indian in industrial pursuits. A few realized this necessity a generation ago. In 1892 one of the far-seeing declared: "The duty of the government is to civilize these co-citizens of ours . . . to place them in contact with the rest of the country and with the civilized world. . . . When the Indians, up to the present time disinherited, are subject to the advantages and comforts of civilization, there will have been accomplished, so to speak, the transporting to our country of millions of colonists."[1] But this task the men of the old régime overlooked, as a rule, or, if they appreciated it, neglected. It was the greatest failure of the brilliant exploit which Diaz and his lieutenants accomplished. They brought an economic transformation to Mexico but they left its social structure very much as they found it.
This is the most important task of the government that will rise out of the Mexican revolution—to drive the Indian from his self-contented, unprogressive state of few desires and waken him to new economic, political, and social opportunities and responsibilities. If Mexico is to be for the Mexicans in any real way, some means of bringing this change must be found. If it is not found and the Indian proves unable to respond to the new conditions now rapidly rising around him, he will become the hewer of wood and drawer of water for the white man who comes to develop the natural resources of his country, or he will be crowded gradually into the less desirable regions of his native land where his ex-
- ↑ Memoria de hacienda y crédito público de 1 de Julio de 1891 a 30 de Junio de 1892, Mexico, 1892.
