Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1919-1980, 1922-03-18


more kindly or courteous people.
With the exception, perhaps, Of
the Yaqui territory, one is safer
ON the west coast in person and in
property than he is in Salem. The
trouble with the YaQui Indians
was caused by thieving contrac-
tors who robbed them mercilessly
when they worked on railroad
construction.
The average man when told of
the richness and climate of the
west coast Immediately inquiries,
why, then is it unsettled? The
answer is simple. The Mexican
laborer lives in a palm thatched
hut, the dirt floor of which is
the common rendezvous of the
family, its dogs and hogs and such
visiting dogs and hogs as may
want to be neighborly. For him
religion may have helped his un-
discovered soul and government
may have held him in bounds
while he was being robbed, but
neither has contributed to his
material welfare or intellectual
development. A kindly, patient,
u n d loped possibility, his
knowledge of usury, monopoly and
other kindred attributes of our
highly developed religious civili-
zation is confined to the exactions
under which he suffers. Who shall
say that in the long race of life,
his uncorrupted mind may not de-
yelop a truly Christian civiliza-
ton?
The Mexican plants most of his
corn and beans with a pointed
stick in unplowed ground and
once only with a machett cuts
down the weeds. If he plows at
all, it is with burro attached to
an unsharpened Sinch plow with
which he turns about foot in
with about 3 inches deep.
The other type is the owner OF
the hacienda and ranch. He has
from several thousand to many
thousand acres Of untitled lane
upon which he runs long horns
In that country they have nc
steers, only COWS and bulls, vel
beef is a third higher there thar
it is here and in the last siz
months they have imported from
like corn averages about two crops
worth Of livestock.
Neither of these classes know
anything about business. They
develop nothing, produce practi-
cally nothing except babies, which
like cane averages about two crops
a year. Truly, a country to de.
light Teddy!
Land sells for from 80 cents to
$45 an acre for highly irrigated
and productive land close to trans
portatlon. 1t is a wonderful
country for men who don't wear
silk stocking and women who can
live without paint and lip sticks
To those whose greatest joy in
life is to get their names in the
society columns of your paper,
would say, don't go to Mexico. In
the first place, neither Mexico mol
any other country has any use fol-
you and in the second place 1t Is
no country for sissy.
But to manly men and womanly
wives with at least $4,000 to use
the west coast ur Mexico offers
rare opportunities.
Apparently, the government is
stable and its tax levy is small,
from two to five cents an acre.
Within 80 kilometers of the coast
and so kilometers of the border
an American cannot own land, as
an American. He can, however,
form a Mexican company and by
keeping the stock always control
| tne land. One need not worry over
this. So far as confiscation of
property is concerned, in the
mutation of time this may occur
i can't know-but if the Mexi-
can government gets the Ameri-
cans there before the taxeaters
gets us here, they will have to
step lively.
The economic pressure here, the
exactions of the usurer and the
monopolist of the thousands of un-
necessary commercial n-produc-
ers, represented by a multiplicity
Of trades people, are driving the
people to the choice of immigrat-
ing or revolution. Being peace
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