AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF MEXICO. 23 



fitted for the uses and progress of a commercial nation ; and which 

 will inevitably constitute a very serious obstacle in the way of indoctri- 

 nating the Mexican people with the ideas and methods of overcoming 

 obstacles and doing things which characterize their great Anglo-Saxon 

 neighbors. It should also be borne in mind that a language is one of 

 the most difficult things to supplant in the life of a nation through a 

 foreign influence. The Norman conquest of England, although it 

 modified the Saxon language, could not substitute French ; neither 

 could the Moors make Arabic the language of Spain, although they 

 held possession of a great part of the country for a period of more 

 than seven centuries. It seems certain, therefore, that Spanish will 

 continue to be the dominant language of Mexico until the present 

 population is outnumbered by the Americans a result which may 

 occur before a very long time in the northern States of Mexico, where 

 the population at present is very thin, but which is certainly a very 

 far-off contingency in the case of Central Mexico. 



Of the present population of Mexico, probably three quarters, and 

 possibly a larger proportion for in respect to this matter there is no 

 certain information can not read or write, possess little or no prop- 

 erty, and have no intelligent ideas about civil as contradistinguished 

 from military authority, of political liberty, or of constitutional gov- 

 ernment. 



It is difficult, in fact, to express in words, to those who have not 

 had an opportunity of judging for themselves, the degraded condition 

 of the mass of the laboring classes of Mexico. The veil of the pictur- 

 esque, which often suffices to soften the hard lines of human existence, 

 can not here hide the ugliness and even hideousness of the picture 

 which humanity exhibits in its material coarseness and intellectual or 

 spiritual poverty. The late consul-general Strother, who, as a citizen of 

 one of our former slaveholding States, is well qualified to judge, ex- 

 presses the opinion, in a late official report (1885), that the scale of liv- 

 ing of the laboring classes of Mexico " is decidedly inferior in comfort 

 and neatness to that of the negroes of the Southern (United) States 

 when in a state of slavery. Their dwellings in the cities are generally 

 wanting in all the requirements of health and comfort mostly rooms on 

 the ground-floor, without proper light or ventilation ; often with but a 

 single opening (that for entrance), dirt floors, and no drainage. In the 

 suburbs and in the country, the dwellings in the cold regions are adobe; 

 and in the temperate or warm regions mere huts of cane, or of stakes 

 wattled with twigs, and roofed with corn-stalks, plantain-leaves, or 

 brush." In such houses of the common people there is rarely anything 

 answering to the civilized idea of a bed, the occupants sleeping on a mat, 

 skin, or blanket on the dirt floor. There are no chairs, tables, fireplace, 

 or chimney ; few or no changes of raiment ; no washing apparatus or 

 soap, and in fact no furniture whatever, except a flat stone with a stone 

 roller to grind their corn, and a variety of earthen vessels to hold their 



