Page:The Mexican Problem (1917).djvu/74

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32
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

future of Mexico is already on the map at Tampico because there is here exactly what European and American civilization are demanding for the world's progress, and whatever comes, whether the development is by Great Britain or Germany or by North or South America, the wealth that thence can give light and power to the world will never be surrendered back to the chemistry of Mother Earth.

The writer traveled thirty-five miles west into the oil fields and ninety miles south beside parallel pipe lines carrying oil, gas, and water; visited the terminals, machine shops, carpenter shops, tanks, reservoirs, and shipping wharves, and saw the Mexicans with work and wages never dreamed of half a generation ago.

THE CONTRAST

Boston people put the Mexican Central Railroad into Tampico more than thirty years ago, and between that railroad and the banks of the Panuco River are still the half-naked Mexican babies, the wan mothers, the listless boys and girls, without opportunity, and the fathers without ambition to keep in repair the roofs of their low huts.

A dug-out cedar log for a canoe with a red