The Nome daily nugget., 1911-04-19
By John Kenneth Turner. CContinued from Yesterday)

In Mexico there are at least five or six millions of peons-one third of the population. These peons are only slightly removed from chattel slavery They are bound to their employers by debt and under such terms that there is no hope of their ever paying their debt Hundreds of thousands of them never owned a piece of money in their lives. Where wages are paid. they range from nine to twenty-five cents a day in our money. without board, cloth ing or provisions The peons live and die in rags and seldom taste any food except corn and beans the prices of which are usually higher than the same articles cost in the United States The peons have absolutely no opportunities to learn to read or to advance in any way If they run away from their em- ployers they are hunted down and brought back by the duly appointed constabulary of the state. The system of peonagc has expanded during the regime of Diaz and the conditions of the peons have become very much worse. Can a nation which supports a system t personal service for debt be called modern? Can ruler who has never attempted to abolish or mitigate such a system properly be called a statesman?
 I do not believe that there is couu- try in the world where the general poverty is more acute than it is in Mexico. I have never visited China or India, but if the masses are any worse off in those countries they are starving to death by the millions The soil of Mexico. acre for acre, k as rich as that of the United States. The popu- lation per square mile is about the same. Is it not a little peculiar that the masses are starving?
 On the other hand. there are rich men in Mexico. The extremes of wealth are far greater than they are in the United States. In this country the farmer is of the middle class. Tn Mex leo the typical farm is the million acre farm. the farmer--the man who owns the slaves and the peons-the king of money kings. The Mexican haciendado often spends as much for d suit of clothes as he pays to peon for a life time of toil. The sort of farms and farmers one runs across in Mexico may be guessed from a press dispatch. printed in the American newspapers during the month of December. which stated that a certain haciendado of Oaxaca had offered the services of fifty armed, to Diaz to aid in crushing the revolution. This Sixteenth century feudalism tlansplanted in the twen- tieth century. The hacieudado can send his peons to war without asking their consent. If he wish, he may have the right of the first night" He can starve his peons. kill them; the govern ment does not protect them k il not pretty generally conceded that the first duty of statesman is to protect the weak against the aggressions of the strong?
 Certainly the care of the public health and the education of the masses are two issues which. if the govern ment fail. it cannot be called mod ern government and the man who Is the government cannot be termed a great statesman
 If in all Mexico there exists a city with really modern sewer system l am ignorant of its name. In Mexico City the metropolis of the country. not more than one-ffth of the houses within the city limits are regularly supplied with water with which to flush the sewers while there are many densely- -populat- cd blocks which have no public water whatsoever either for sewer flushing or for drinking. As a result epidemics of typhoid sweep away thousands every year and the death-rate ranges always between five and six per cent-doublt that of well-regulated cities of Soutt America and nearly three times that of the most unhealthy city of the Uni ted States. Which means that from one-haIf to two-thirds the people whS die in Diaz's metropolis die of causes which modern cities have abolished.
 Mexican schools are mostly on paper There is practically no such thing a' country schools. while towns of many hundreds of inhabitants often have n, public schools whatsoever. According t' the Mexican census of 1900 but six
 teen per cent Of the population wer' able to read and write. Compare thii
 with Japan an over-populated country
 where the people are very poor anC