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hitherto been left without schools. In four and a half years, beginning in 1923, more than three thousand new rival schools-country schools taught as a rule by one teacher-have been opened!

"I have just returned from a visit to thirty-seven of these schools in the Sierra region of the State of Puebla. What I saw is so typical of what is going on in those three thousand schools, and such an indication of the spirit of the times in ny country, that I cannot resist the temptation to say a word about it.

"These schools are scattered in one of he most mountainous regions of Mexico, ight hours by rail from Mexico City. They can only be reached on horseback, ind it takes at least two weeks to cover the territory over which they lie. The enthusiastic receptions which I received will be remembered as long as I live. I vas feasted and garlanded at every vilage. In thirteen days I was forced to jartake of fourteen turkey feasts. Aztec ndians, in a primitive state of civilizaon, live in these mountains. They now no Spanish, they are humble, quiet, and dignified, and have a deep levotion to their schools.

"The schoolhouse is always the best uilding in the village, second only to he over-towering church. The equipnent and general atmosphere are most nformal. There is almost always a ught session for adults. The schoolroom large and airy, the equipment simple. Outside is a playground. Two posts with askets speak of basketball. There is at ittle garden with flowers and a truck arden with individual plots for the chilİren. One acre of tillable land has some ind of commercial crop and is worked a co-operation by the children and their arents. In most places this serves as an xperimental plot. In the rear of the chool the pigeon-houses, chicken-runs, nd rabbit pens, as well as an apiary omplete the annexes. A hair-clipping achine is always part of the equipment nd is freely used by the teacher at ecess time. If children do not come to chool as clean as they should, either in heir bodies or in their clothes, the acher takes all the time necessary to ash them. Every year the children nd parents are vaccinated by the acher. The schools are co-educational. -hildren from seven to fourteen years of -ge attend by day, while the adults come t night.

"A number of activities and occupaons are always in progress in or about le school. Let me give you a repreentative list of articles made by the hildren: soap, candlesticks, blankets, mbroidery, lace-work, clothing, baskets, rushes, small furniture, toys, mats,

The Outlook for September 21, 1927

bread, candied fruit, and paintings. The
ingenuity and skill of the Indian children
seem to be unlimited. Their patience is
proverbial. The three R's are taught, of
course. There are singing, dancing, and
dramatizations. A Mexican flag and a
picture of the President are always seen
and tooth-brushes, one for each child,
are also in sight."

SIN

INCE the Indian, with the mestizo who shares his life, makes up the bulk of the population, every effort is being made to foster Indian culture and make it the real basis for a larger participation in national activities, without developing a "reservation system." Formerly, the educated classes were ashamed of anything that was Mexican and all education was carried along the line of foreign traditions. But now they are proud of everything that is national and indigenous.

The Federal Government is attempting integration by education to help the Indian to think and feel in Spanish, to bring him into that community of ideas and emotions which is Mexico, without sacrifice of his wonderful patience and quietness, his marvelous physical and mental endurance, and his artistic temperament.

When I asked Dr. John Dewey, educator and philosopher, about Dr. Saenz and his work, he replied immediately: "He is the chief factor in the reconstruction of Mexican education. There is in the new educational reforms of Mexico vitality, energy, sacrificial devotion, and the desire to put into operation what is best approved in contemporary theory, and, above all, the will to use whatever is at hand."

IN

N explaining the land reforms Dr. Saenz made it clear that the Constitution of 1917 did three things: (1) Nullified past illegal action on the part of the Government having to do with land, forests, and waters belonging to villages and communities and automatically restored title to such communal lands to the villages; (2) provided for the endowment of villages lacking ejidos with lands for the same; (3) provided the local machinery for putting the decree into effect, consisting of a National Agrarian Commission of nine members and a State commission of five members for each State.

"In 1910," continued Dr. Saenz, "after thirty years of Diaz, and when Mexico had reached a population of fifteen million, the total number of rural landholders was only 37,000, while something like 6,000 large haciendas were owned by a very limited number of indi

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viduals. The land is now being given back to the people either by restitution or by outright donation. Up to the end of 1926 more than 7,200,000 acres had been definitely distributed. Measures have been taken to prevent the peasant from selling his newly acquired holdings, and help must be given to enable him to work them. The law of 'Familiar Patrimony' provides that the property should always remain in the hands of the family, while a program of rural rehabilitation and a system of farmers' cooperative banks have greatly helped the peasants.

"The owners of the estates that have been returned to the people are, naturally, loud in their protests, and, if they happen to be foreigners, as many of them are, they appeal to their home Government, demanding action against the Mexican authorities. Since more than 1,400,000 acres of foreign-owned land have already been affected, it is easy to see why these foreigners are so loud in their protests against the agrarian policy of my Government. The difficulty is increased, of course, by the fact that lack of money in the national treasury has made it necessary for the Government to give bonds for the lands taken rather than cash payment.

"When we consider that a statistical distribution would give to each person in Mexico only two acres, and the fact that one man in the State of Chihuahua owned 15,000,000 acres, that another in Coahuila had 17,000,000, and that, in fact, the smallest hacienda in Mexico comprises 2,500 acres, and there are three hundred of them with more than 25,000 acres, these facts, I say, would explain and even justify any movement for the better distribution of property. It would explain any method of procedure, even outright confiscation, to serve the same purpose. Ten years ago people were saying about the labor organizations exactly what they are now saying about the agrarian organizations. We may regret the inconvenience and trouble, but there is no alternative. Four hundred years of waiting have made pariahs of us all. pariahs of us all. The people have waited too long."

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Salesmen of the King

By JAMES SCHERMERHORN

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EEST thou a man diligent in business?" You remember the rest of the Proverb-"He shall stand before kings."

The saying that was written came to pass when their sovereign majesties, George V and Mary, rode the length of the rebuilt and beautified Regent Street, the sightliest and most exclusive shopping artery of London.

Beginning where the street swings in graceful curve from Piccadilly and down its entire length, flags, flowers and festoons imparted to the marble fronts of uniform height a gala aspect as the royal car went by, preceded by outriders in scarlet coats.

Heralds ceased their trumpetings while the Mayor of Westminster delivered a few dedicatory words within hearing of the reigning house of the British Empire.

"Silversmiths to His Majesty," "Furriers by Appointment," and like legends, set off with kingly crests, were emblazoned over shop windows, themselves bowers of beauty.

Did the tens of thousands who took in the colors and the excitements of it all, take in all that was back of the presence of the king and queen as central figures of this merchandising pageant?

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A few weeks later at Olympia a vast exhibition, stressing art in advertising, commanded royal patronage. The Duke of York made the wonderful display of pictorial salesmanship the occasion of his first public appearance since his return from Australia.

"Advertising seems to have become a great power in the land," said His Royal Highness, surveying the attractive presentation of the Empire's products and the irresistible devices for disposing of them. "It is a new form of education or popular education highly organized."

Cabinet ministers, lords, and nobles were about him in that panorama of purveyance through printed appeal. For know ye that knighthood is in flour now, and soap, and publishing, and advertising! Voices raised at the Olympian ban

quets (sessions of the National Advertisers Association fringed the acres of art-in-selling portrayals) derived their inflection from offices, factories and counting-rooms, to a large extent.

Forty years ago those melodic mockers, Gilbert and Sullivan, satirized what has since come to pass with this ballad of the head of the admiralty:

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And I polished up the handle of the big front door;

And I polished up the handle so care-
fully

That now I am the ruler of the
Queen's navy."

THE significance of all of which is that

trade is now second to nothing in the new Brittannia. Trade has arrived, politically, socially. Being in trade, ignoble not so very long ago, means being "out in front" now.

Whatever brought it about-postbellum adversity, unemployment, empire unity-the ministry of merchandizing is established in the United Kingdom.

Barriers built in the long ago agains the earn-their-living element are burned away by a broader understanding of the indispensability of the producers.

There may be no royal road to suc cess, but there is one running on to rec ognition and title after the aspiring have achieved success.

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into merchant-guilds, artisans into craftguilds became general throughout Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Organization, the historian goes on to say, secured for the guilds recognition and favor from the crown and strength to overcome encroachments by lords and barons, and protection against imposition from greater folk or other guilds.

In due course the London guilds united into one for the purpose of carrying out more effectually their common aims, and at a later time the guilds of Berwick enacted "that where many bodies are found side by side in one place they may become one, and have one will, and in dealings with one another have a strong and hearty love."

The system known at a later time as frank pledge, or free engagement of neighbor for neighbor, was accepted after the Danish wars as the base of social order. Athelstan accepted frithguilds as a constituent element of borough life in the Dooms of London. A common fund was raised by contribuions among the members, which not only provided for the trade objects of the guild, but sufficed to found chantries and masses; and to set up painted windows in the church of their patron saint. Even at the present day, Greene wrote, he arms of the craft-guild may often be seen blazoned in cathedrals side by side with those of prelates and kings.

T

The Outlook for September 21, 1927

HOSE ancient worthies were the outriders of trade's triumphant advent n this year of our Lord in London. The ate Lord Leverhulme, manufacturer; ord Ashbridge and Sir Henry Thornon, transportation executives; Viscount Burnham, Lord Riddell, Lord Rothenere, Lord Beaverbrooke, newspaper ublishers; the late Lord Stevens, disiller; Sir Charles Higham, advertising xpert-all attest the co-equality of commercialists with the nobility and professional class.

There was a plug tobacco producer vho held that his business eminence enitled him to a coat of arms. A Latin cholar decorated his automobiles with uitable heraldry and inscribed undereath, "Quid Rides." But they couldn't jeep the irreverent rabble from shoutng as the tobacco lord passed, "Look-it -quid rides!"

Look at the endless procession of ondon busses, every one of them a raveling billboard. Not only quid, but igarette, cider, cocktail, catarrh cure ides! Trade not only has both sides of the London streets, but the middle of he streets besides. Kingship may surive merely as a symbol in the British

Underwood & Underwood

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The Prince of Wales opens the International Advertising Convention
Commonwealth, but it is outshone, out-
shouted wherever the be-lettered London
busses betake themselves. Trade is secure
in its new estate and also assertive.

Almighty answered, "Nay, Mulholland!
Be my minister on the cattle-ship!"

THE

HE same conclusion, so reflective of the passion for reconstruction in Europe, came out of the fourth bi-annual congress of the International Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm, in July last. Sweden's beautiful capital received the 1,000 delegates with nothing of the old contemptuousness for tradesmen, but as the full-credentialled ambassadors of business, world statesmen seeking restored confidence and prosperity.

The king, princes and princesses gave their presence to the business sessions and social functions of the congress, thus indicating that the divine rights of kings must take due account of the development of trade and industry.

In one of his "Songs of the Seven Seas," Kipling relates how Mulholland promised the Almighty he would become his minister if he would save the stormtossed cattle-ship. The craft rode safely into harbor and Mulholland prayed again and said: "You have spared our lives, O God! Now put upon me the robes of office and I will enter the pulpit and become your minister!" But the

The commercial and industrial crisis in the Old World is calling for an aristocracy of quality and competency to take hold without disadvantage as to rank, recognition, or prestige, and serve at the strategic points of economic recovery.

The nation's ministers in ships, shops, stores!

Trade has not only attained parity with the noble and the professional, but is on the way to still higher distinction. Commercialists may outstrip chancelleries in establishing the "covenanted friendship of the world."

A real league of nations looking to the outlawing of wholesale slaughter in the name of national integrity or patriotism, was the trade gathering at Stockholm, for both Germany and the United States were there in a "parliament of man, a federation of the world" to promote amity and mutuality.

Something better than an incomplete league of nations was at Ostend last June the international convention of that fine-visioned body of business clubs that carry the name of Rotary, and whose sixth objective is world concord. "Friendliness in international rela(Continued on page 93)

The Voice of the Immigrant

Foreign Newspapers Published in America as the Immigrants' Spokesmen

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On the theory that such questions are best answered by the immigrant himself, or by men in a position to speak for him, The Outlook has invited a number of foreign-language newspaper editors, representing twelve immigrant groups, to give their opinions.

No country in the world has a larger foreign-language press than we have here. Our fourteen million foreign-born are said to read some twenty-five thousand publications in their own tongues. Of these 165 are dailies, 870 weeklies, and the rest either monthlies, semimonthlies, or quarterlies. In Greater New York, with its immense polyglot populations, the foreign dailies boast as high a circulation as almost one million copies, with the Jews, Germans and Italians in the lead. The average foreign publication is the product of a few hands, often written and printed by the same man. It lives from day to day, or from week to week, and the slightest ill wind will cause it to subside. On the other hand, such publications as "Forward," "Corriere D'America," Progresso," the "Staats-Zeitung," the "Russky Golos," "Atlantis," "La Prensa," "Courrier Des Etats Unis" and others of their kind are firmly established, well organized, and ably written.

"Il

The influence of this press is not to be questioned. Its power for good or evil is unlimited. In form it follows the school of "personal journalism," preferring the standards of Europe to those of America. Not only are its editorials signed, but its news columns are so "doctored" as to be made to coincide with its editorial policies. The American newspaper, strictly impersonal, has a voice of its own-that is to say, it speaks as a newspaper, a journalistic entity, and its opinions are those of a group of editors hardly known to the public. Not so with the foreign-language publication, excepting, of course, the large daily. Its voice is that of its editor or editor-owner.

There is no more important figure in any immigrant "colony" than the editor of the immigrant newspaper. He is the alpha and the omega of every movement among his people, whatever be its na

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ture.

THE EDITORS.

Without his aid and that of his publication very little is possible. He speaks for his people, and, through him, his people speak to the world. He knows their wants and needs, their likes and dislikes, their prejudices and convictions. He is the comforter of the homesick "exile," the ruler of his mind and vote. In years gone by, when the immigrant press was but a shadow of its present self, the property of "bankers" and barbers, this editor was a poor scribbler of bad prose and worse poetry. To-day he is a professional journalist, the equal of his European colleagues. Many of Europe's best editors have found their way to this country since the war.

What, then, are the opinions of thes editors?

I might say that each editor has a opinion of his own, limited to his ow experiences and those of his group. Th points on which they all agree are fe compared to those on which they dis agree. We are dealing, of course, wit men of different mentality, different tem perament, and, naturally, different read tions. Let me illustrate. Geza D Berko, of the "Amerikai Magyar Nep szava," tells us that the Hungarian "sons of Louis Kossuth," are a liberty loving people and appreciate the freedor they enjoy here. Ivan Ovuntsoff, o the "Novoye Russkoye Slovo," on th other hand, complains that the Russian also a liberty-loving people, find le comfort here than "in Russia under th Czars." Thus one editor praises Ame ica for the very quality which, in th opinion of the other, she does not pos sess. Not only are the impressions an opinions of one group at variance wit those of another, which is natural, bu there is lack of harmony even amon spokesmen of the same group. Swedish editor, for instance, feels tha his people by immigrating are comper sated morally, spiritually, and fina cially. Another replies that they a compensated only in proportion to the ability to learn English, while a thi adds "they are hardly compensated Variety being the spice of life eve among immigrant editors, uniformity opinion is not to be had.

Now, in the mind of every immigra there are at least two Americas, one fancy and one of fact. When I speak the immigrant, I mean the bread-winn of our acquaintance, a peasant or worke without education, inexperienced of t world, credulous, and easily disillusione I am not concerned with the new arriv (the post-war immigrant), who is in mo cases a member of the middle class, n with the "Nordics" from English-spea ing countries. These have few illusio and less heartaches. The America of t immigrant's fancy is the Utopia of 1 dreams, a land of liberty unrestrain and fortunes easily acquired. America is a European creation, a lege that has found its way in the towns a hamlets of the Old World, personified Washington and Morgan, Lincoln a Rockefeller, in the peasant who retur

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The Outlook for September 21, 1927

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A few of the 1,200 foreign-language newspapers published in the United States

ome with money and experience, in the ast Side boy who rises to political fame nd industrial power. In thinking of the illions who sell all that they have, who bandon all that they hold dear, to venire life in a strange and unknown world,

is well to remember this Utopia. It elps explain our five decades of mass Immigration and the deserted villages of urope.

The America of fact is quite somehing else. It dawns upon the immigrant ith his landing at Ellis Island, chilling im to the marrow of his bones. It preints no streets paved with gold, no forunes easily acquired, no liberty unretrained. On the other hand, its offering hard, incessant labor and bitter strugle. In the words of M. S. Dunin, of he Polish "Ameryka Echo," this Amera is "variable, disappointing, not as deal as imagined." Its impression on he newly arrived is a discouraging one. It compels him to work long hours in teel mills," says Ivan F. Lupis, of the erb, Croat, Slovene, "Hravatski GlasErik," "live segregated in mining towns, ith no opportunities to learn English, to read, study, distinguish. It subjects him

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and 'promoter.' It offers no protection from the thousands of abuses practiced on the 'ignorant foreigner.'" "The wonderful impression," adds Colonel Andrew Cherna, of the Hungarian "Szabadsag," "turns to psychic disappointment at the end of a few years of work in our factories," where the immigrant learns "that he is not a white man as he used to be on the other side."

There is another America, of course, an America which is neither a Utopia nor a steel mill nor a factory. This is the real America, real to every man or woman who, without false illusions or unfair pretensions, embraces her spirit and enters into her life. To be sure, "she is imperfect, immature, ambitious, and without patience," but also fair and magnanimous, She is known to every immigrant who has come into contact with her and reaped of her fruits. "Nowhere on earth," says V. K. Rackakauskas, of the Lithuanian "Dirva," "is personal freedom, individual initiative, and business enterprise guarded with greater care." "She is the goal of the liberty loving," adds Oliver Linden, of the Swedish "Svenska Amerikanaren," "and a land of economic promise."

injustices and misunderstandings in ourt (with too long and heavy punish- The immigrant's aim is to attain to nents compared to natives), continual this America, but his journey is an arduheating by 'banker,' 'boss,' 'lawyer,' ous and difficult one. His first step is

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one of adjustment, of "settling down." Unable to speak English, a stranger in a

strange land, with no funds and often no friends, he seeks comfort and protection among his own. He settles in a foreign "colony"-a Little Italy, a Little Hungary, a Ghetto-and unless fortune favors him he remains in that "colony" to the end of his days.

"These 'colonies,"" the editor of the Italian "La Follia" explains, "are not mere accidents. They are the products of that 'will to live' which is common to all men. We might never have had such 'colonies,' or we might have greatly reduced their number, had the American people been more conscious of our difficulties and less prejudiced against us." It is in "colonies" such as these, with their foreign customs and standards, that the immigrant lives his spiritual life, out of contact with the life of the country about him. Thus when we ask if America fills the immigrant's spiritual needs, we are reminded that the immigrant's America is one of his own making. "Only a limited number of my people," says the editor of the "Hrvatski Glasnik," "find compensation in America. The mass has its own association, its own songs, music, and amusements, all related to the old country." The editor of the Slovak "Obrana" speaks in like terms. His countrymen have little contact with America. "They have lived their national life in this country since 1886." The Armenians, in the words of the "Gotchnag," do get some spiritual satisfactions, but only when they become adjusted to their new environments.

With the Poles it is a matter of "individual and not national adaptability," while in the case of the Bohemians spiritual and material progress go hand in hand. The least repaid seem to be the Russians, who "accept American culture in form but not in spirit." The only tone of optimism is furnished by the editors. of the "California Greek" and the "Amerikai Magyar Nepszava." Their people are well compensated, especially the Greeks, who, if we are to believe Mr. Tasos Mountanos, find greater spiritual satisfactions in this country than in their own, "where wars and the selfishness of European Powers" make life impossible.

The "will to live" is but one of many reasons contributing to the creation of foreign "colonies." There are others, among them inability to speak English. Colonel Cherna, voicing the opinion of many of his colleagues, maintains that the immigrant cannot be compensated, either spiritually or morally, while he is ignorant of the language of the country. Knowledge of English is the key to

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