iousness had been awakened which was
intolerant of abuses and determined upon their removal at any cost; and
this public opinion and national consciousness were products of general
education, which had brought to the fore a number of intelligent men
eager to participate in public affairs and yet barred out because of
their unwillingness to support the existing regime.

Some one has remarked, and rightly, that Diaz in his zeal for the
material advancement of Mexico, mistook the tangible wealth of the
country for its welfare. Desirable and even necessary as that material
progress was, it produced only a one-sided prosperity. Diaz was
singularly deaf to the just complaints of the people of the laboring
classes, who, as manufacturing and other industrial enterprises
developed, were resolved to better their conditions. In the country at
large the discontent was still stronger. Throughout many of the rural
districts general advancement had been retarded because of the holding
of huge areas of fertile land by a comparatively few rich families, who
did little to improve it and were content with small returns from the
labor of throngs of unskilled native cultivators. Wretchedly paid and
housed, and toiling long hours, the workers lived like the serfs of
medieval days or as their own ancestors did in colonial times. Ignorant,
poverty-stricken, liable at any moment to be dispossessed of the tiny
patch of ground on which they raised a few hills of corn or beans, most
of them were naturally a simple, peaceful folk who, in spite of their
misfortunes, might have gone on indefinitely with their drudgery in
a hopeless apathetic fashion, unless their latent savage instincts
happened to be aroused by drink and the prospect of plunder. On the
other hand, the intelligent among them, knowing that in some of the
northern States of the republic wages were higher and treatment fairer,
felt a sense of wrong which, like that of the laboring class in the
towns, was all the more dangerous because it was not allowed to find
expression.

Diaz thought that what Mexico required above everything else was the
development of industrial efficiency and financial strength, assured
by a maintenance of absolute order. Though disposed to do justice in
individual cases, he would tolerate no class movements of any kind.
Labor unions, strikes, and other efforts at lightening the burden of the
workers he regarded as seditious and deserving of severe punishment. In