2 o'clock in the morning until late at night. Their food is of the coarsest, and scanty enough at that. The men are frequently and cruelly beaten with water-soaked ropes, the women and girls subjected to every indignity that barbarism can devise. Once in the power of the slave-owners, there is practically no way of escape. Should a labourer succeed in breaking away, he dares not venture near town or village, for the authorities are vigilant and eager to take and restore him. Human aid denied, he can scarcely hope to win subsistence from the barren wilds through which he must journey ere he reach "civilization.” Is it any wonder, then, that the final release comes quickly to these poor people?—that few but the hardiest outlast six months of bondage? The millionaire slave-owner looks on complacently. There are more, and still more, to replace those who die—and such labour is cheap.
So alarmed did men of liberal outlook in the Republic become at the possibility of another extended term of office on the part of the Diaz group, that many political clubs were organised, among them the Central Democratic Club, the programme of which included extended municipal powers, better educational facilities, the freedom of the Press, stricter enforcement of the laws against monastic orders, an employers' liability act, new agrarian laws, and measures granting greater personal liberty and the abolition of contract slavery. Many of the propagandists were imprisoned or banished, and their newspapers suppressed.
Francis I. Madero, the politician whose public spirit so greatly advanced Mexican democratic ideals, was a type of statesman by no means foreign to Latin-American politics. Madero.But although an opportunist to the finger tips, it cannot be said of him that his actions were not prompted by necessity and patriotism. A man of wealth and ability, belonging to a great family in Coahuila, a lawyer by profession, he first attracted public attention in the early part of 1910 by a
