surface culture but has missed the lesson that civilization means work and responsibility for those who do not labor with their hands as well as for those who do. He has developed new wants but they have not sunk deeply enough into his nature to make him, in fact as well as in appearance, a person of Western European civilization.
Along the railroads and at the seaports, wherever the currents of commerce have penetrated, demands for the simpler and cheaper manufactured articles have developed, and if education and economic changes, which would open greater possibilities of economic independence, were to reach the people, they would doubtless progress faster toward a European standard of wants.[1] Until those elements that a modern state considers it essential to furnish its citizens are introduced in Mexico, it will be too soon to judge what the capabilities of the local population are and the degree to which they will be able to keep their country their own—both in an economic and a political sense.
- ↑ A good description of the position of the Indian in Mexican life is found in Luis Pombo, op. cit., p. 7 et seq.
