This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
159
MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA
159

and unpatriotic greed which prefers a few dollars of loot in the present to a great national benefit in the future.

In all the stories that have been written of the robbery and oft-times murder by revolutionists during the last seven years, and especially by the revolutionists headed by Carranza, nothing is more pitiful than the destruction of a number of agricultural colonies established by Americans. These colonists represented foreign invasion of the most beneficent character. The members of these communities were industrious, frugal Americans whose efforts were devoted to making land, which before had been unproductive, yield the things most needed in their adopted country.

The first result of the success of these colonies consisted in increasing the national wealth to a large extent by producing property subject to taxation. They also gave employment to great numbers of the agricultural labouring class of Mexicans at wages higher than they had ever before known. In addition, they furnished examples to the Mexican people of improved methods of cultivation which should have made them of great economic value to the country.

There were a number of these American colonies, at Garcia, Pacheco, Juarez, Dublan, Diaz, and other places in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. An incomplete list of these colonists,