CONDITIONS IN MEXICO by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1901

CONDITIONS IN MEXICO.

By T.

JOHN S. CHEAVENS, Baptist missionary in Mexico, has the following to say in regard to industrial conditions there:—

“‘An invasion of ideas’ can not be resisted. The ‘industrial revolution’ is striking at the ancient order of things. The cities along the lines of railroad are progressive, the remote interior cities and villages conservative in the superlative degree. In Saltillo, for example, we have electric lights, street-cars, the city is now putting in a sewerage system, building a market-house, a corporation is building a hotel and bank building in the modern style, and a railroad is being built between this point and Torreon. This kind of work is going on all over Mexico. On the ranches twenty miles from here they use wooden plows, cut wheat with a sickle, tramp it out with horses, and bring it to town in a wooden-wheeled ox-cart. However, the American plow, self-binder, and steam-thresher are coming into use.

“The forces at work are many. Mexico is cosmopolitan in these centers of reform. I buy my daily paper from a Swiss news-dealer; my hardware, from a German; my watch was repaired by an Italian; my clothes are laundered by a Chinaman from Canton; our butter is made by a Texan; I have eaten ice-cream made by a Greek from Athens, the walls of the adobe house being adorned with photographs of ancient Greek statuary. I have bought gents’ furnishing from a Turk from Bethlehem of Judea. Nor is the native Mexican an idle spectator. The poor peon’s part is to dig a ditch at fifty cents a day, while the patrician, whose wisdom permits these changes, gets rich and sends his boys to New York, Paris, or London to be educated.”

Concerning the need of Christian schools in Mexico, Brother Cheavens says:—

“The government schools should not be depended on to train Christian workers. The workers so trained are not Christians. Some sad cases of good boys going into infidelity show us what to expect from government schools. I am speaking now of the more advanced students.”

While these industrial changes are going on, and such industrial activity is being manifested, the missionary work should be pushed in Mexico. It will be much easier now than later on to advance the kingdom of Christ in that field. T.