Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/176

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160
MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA

prepared by U. S. Senator Fall of New Mexico for the use of our Secretary of State, enumerates 284 men, 301 women, and 1,266 children, 1,100 of whom had been born in Mexico. All the persons on this list not born in Mexico had lived there from ten to twenty-eight years.

A typical example of what these colonists were subjected to is shown by the following statement of one of them:

"There must have been 125 houses destroyed at Colonia Diaz, which I believe suffered more than the others. We had just three hours to get out, leaving all the accumulations of years of hard work. Oh, it was hard! I don't want to think of it. We left June 2, 1913, as the bandits destroyed my two story granary and threshing machine. I laid out that place twenty-eight years ago and, so to speak, grew up with it, so you can imagine how I feel in the matter. Several times the Mexicans thrashed through the colony, playing havoc with it each time until now it is in absolute ruin. Beautiful homes all destroyed, farm equipment burned. Everything those wretches could lay their hands on they burned or wrecked. I had 300 head of Polled Angus cattle; I saved only 29 head. Of 80 horses we had on the ranch, only 8 escaped the hands of the bandits. In that section, there were ten stallions worth $50,000. We did manage to save 3 or 4 from the bandits. I had 6,000 bushels of wheat on my ranch a year ago. It went quickly when the revolutionists showed up. In the colony