SEl'TEMiitP 1. 1914. 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



(41 



Some Neglected Nearby Markets — III. 



GUATEMALA. 



PERSONS living in tlie states of the upper Mississippi Valley 

 and those living within a hundred miles or so of New 

 York may sec at any time from May to late September 

 a tiny bird about live inches long from the point of its slender 

 beak to the tip of its tail. It is of a golden yellow for the 

 most part, but its wings are of a grayish blue, which gives it 

 its common or garden name of blue-winged warbler. Its blue 

 wings are undeniable, but its warble is about like that of a 

 house cricket convalescing from a month's illness. Its com- 

 parative rarity, its beauty and its great usefulness as an insect 

 destroyer make it a deserved favorite with the nature lover as 

 well as the economist. 



During the summer he flits about our gardens and orchards, 

 singing the liest that he can — even if not very well— and brings 



HUENA VIST.^ St.vtion, Gu.\tem.\l.\ Ce.\tr.\i. R.\ilro.\d. 



up his family; l)eing occasionally married to his cousin, the blue, 

 golden-winged warbler. When the lirst frosts come he starts 

 southward and goes on until, in October, he has reached the 

 Gulf of Mexico. Here he rests a few days and takes a few 

 good square meals. Then he spreads his blue little wings, 

 launches out over the vast waters of the gulf and is soon out of 

 sight of land with the illimitable sky above, the far horizon 

 on every side and the storm-tossed billows beneath. The sun 

 goes down at the western water's edge and the stars keep watch 

 on the brave little traveler, flying dauntlessly lietween sea and 

 sky. The sun rises and shows him a palm-lined southern shore, 

 where he may rest and feed and sing the best he knows how. 



Is it the voice of cold commercialism we hear, asking what 

 all this has to do with the rubber business? It is; and such 

 questions are not new. But w'e insist that a lesson may be 

 learned from our little blue-winged warbler. Wherever he spends 

 his summers, in Iowa, Ohio or New York, he is sure to go to 

 Guatemala for the winter. And why? Because there is some- 

 thing there that he wants; so he is going after it, even if he 

 has to fly across the Gulf of Mexico. And the point of the 

 whole matter is that if he can cross the Gulf of Mexico, with 

 only his blue little wings for support and only a few bugs and 

 worms for his reward, why cannot an American cross in a 

 comfortable steamship, to get the dollars that are there waiting 

 for him to come and take them? 



Guatemala is the largest of the Central American states and 

 adjoins our afflicted neighbor, Jilexico. It was, indeed, politically, 

 a part of that country for a time, but a very short time. In 

 1822 Iturbide. who called himself Emperor of Mexico, annexed 

 Guatemala, but the annexation lasted only as long as the empire, 



and wlien, a year after the event just described, the self-made 

 emperor was chased across the Atlantic, Guatemala was again 

 independent. He came back — not in the sense expressed by mod- 

 ern slang — the next year, but the climate of our hemisphere has 

 never been healthy for emperors and Iturbide died suddenly — in 

 front of a firing squad. Since then, in spite of political dis- 

 orders and the handicaps produced by three centuries of foreign 

 bondage, Guatemala has advanced in wealth, population and 

 civilization. It has a population of about two million, living on 

 an area slightly greater than that of Louisiana. And it is so 

 near to that state that our little warbler can fly across the inter- 

 vening waters without stopping for rest or food. 



The soil of Guatemala is considered by many as the most 

 fertile of any country on earth. It is basically of volcanic ash 

 and with this is mingled the humus produced by the decay, 

 through countless centuries, of an inexpressibly luxuriant trop- 

 ical vegetation. With such a soil, with drought and winter un- 

 known, Guatemala possesses almost boundless possibilities of 

 wealth. As the republic lies tiftcen degrees north of the equator 

 the sun at midwinter occupies the same place above the Guate- 

 malan horizon that it does in New^ York about the middle of 

 September. .And twice each year, in May and in July, the great 



Temple of Mi.nerv.\, Scene o> Sciiul.\»tic Fe?iiv.\l^, 

 Gu.^TEM.^LA City. 



daystar passes directly overhead, shining down chimneys and 

 to the bottoms of wells. But there is no excessive heat, for 

 Guatemala, with nearly all the country at an elevation of four 

 to ten thousand feet and lying between two oceans, enjoys a 

 salubrity of climate approached by few other countries. 



Of the people, more than half are pure Indian and only a few 

 thousand are pure white, the remainder being of mixed blood. 

 But this need not worry us. Many of the ablest men in the 

 republics south of us have been wholly or in part of Indian 

 extraction and in the only state of our own country where In- 

 dians are numerous — Oklahoma — they furnish a citizenry of 

 which we have no reason to be ashamed. In Guatemala, as else- 

 where, the so-called lower classes arc coming into their own. 

 That the native stock is not lacking in capacity is proved by the 

 astonishing ruins which arc found not only throughout Guat- 

 emala but in the neighboring parts of Mexico — ruins of great 

 buildings erected by the ancestors of the meek, brown natives 

 of the present day. These structures, which rivaled those of 

 ancient Egj^pt and Assyria in massiveness and picturesque detail, 

 were not the work of a people of low capacity. They had a 

 civilization which in time would undoubtedly have worked out 



