A GREAT MAN AND HIS WORK

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 11

A GREAT MAN AND HIS WORK

PORFIRIO DIAZ.

(By R. EC. RUSSULE, in the “Metropolitan. Magazine.”)

Among the rulers of the world to-day, there is no'more sturdy, interesting or, . picturesque figure than Porfirio Diaz, President of .the. Mexican Republic--Hero of ■ more than- fifty, battles, fought at the head of his inen, leader of desperate-charges and defender of forlorn hopes,. six times heid. prisoner, and , each time escaping by the narrowest of hazard,, oyer fifty .years in the service of his country, his career reads like a •''tale of an ancient crusader. He. was born in the city of Oaxaca in • the , south of Mexico on September 15th, 1830, and inherited from his mother a strain, of aboriginal blood, her grand-, mother having been a Mixteca Indian. His parents; wished to educate him for the church. After finishing with a. primary schpol at seven, he served as errand, boy in a store until he was. eight years old, and from that time until he was fourteen he studied in the seminary. Prom fourteen to seventeen,, he was obliged to support himself by tutoring, and at. that age he volunteered for the war with thj United States, but was not sent to the front. The young churchman then decided to be a lawyer,' and after a four years’ course -he entered the law office of Juarez. Soosn after he served in the Revolution against Santa Anna, at the close of 'which he became Mayor of Ixtlan, a,nd established a military force there, with , which he overthrew Garcia who had issued a prondunciamento in Oaxaca. - Eater he became Captain of the National Guard, and crushed the rebellion of Jamiltepeo. In the war of reform, Juarez gave • the young officer control of the district of Tehuantepec, where he not only held his own in the field', but commenced .to put in practice his ideas of public education and good government. -Then followed a number of campaigns preceding the invasion of Mexico by France, England, and Spain in 1862, ■ when Juarez sent him to the front to hold back the invaders while he should gather his forces in the -interior,' and on May 5, 1862, he won the splendid battle of the Cinco do Mayo against the trained European soldiers of Lorenoez. After an heroic defence of Puebla, he was obliged to capitulate to the superior forces of the French, but iiefused to take parole with the other* officers, and soon escaped from prison. \t. this juncture President Juarez offered to make him Secretary of War; Diaz declined the honour on the ground that -he -was- too young • a man for promotion, but later he was forced to . yield to Juarez’s solicitations, and be- / came Commander-in-Chief of the army and General of Division—a post second only to that of President of the Republic.

-Again the, combined foroes of England, France, and Spain were concentrated upon Mm and Bazaine took the field against him in person. Once more Diaz was obliged to surrender to greatly superior force. Again he escaped his gaolers by scaling the prison wall, arid got away, with a reward of ten thousand dollars on his head . . r For two years more, he carried on a guerilla warfare with the invaders in the northern part of Mexioo, during which he had many hair-breadth escapes. Then -he appeared in the 'south again arid recaptured his native city of Oaxaca.' Gathering foroes as best he could he advanced on Puebla, and on April 2, 1867, made a desperate assault against the city, and scored his greatest battle in capturing it. On June 19, 1867, Maximilian was executed after his defeat by Escobedo, and on the following day Mexico surrendered to Diaz. His task accomplished and the exiled President, Juarez, reinstated in power, Diaz resigned and retired quietly to private life. After Juaiez’s death in 1872, Lerdo de Tejada was elected President. In two years he had so mismanaged . the country that revolutions broke out all over the republio, and Diaz, proscribed by Lerdo, who oorsidered him his most dangerous rival, was obliged to sell his property and take refuge in the United States. In 1876 he crossed the Rio Grande with forty men and after a series of adventures and reprisals he gathered together a small force with which he finally defeated Lerdo’s army captured his artillery and baggage, and marched on the City of Mexico, from which Lerdo had fled to the United States. Diaz then assumed the provisional Presidency of the Republio, and in 1877, he was elected constitutional From that time until the present day, with the space of four years?' interregnum from 1880 to 1884, in which Gonzales rilled, Diaz has guided and directed the affairs of the Republio that he has done so much to establish. To those who look deeper beneath the surface the Mexico of to-day reveals an advance nothing short of marvellous and possibilities, that are almost startling. That under the wise rule and just administration of one man _ a country should have made such rapid strides in higher civilisation in so short a time

is. almost beyond belief. When life was unsafe in Mexico ten years ago, it is . to-day safer than in. the City of New York, and an admirable system of city and rural police ’ has been established throughout the land that might well be the envy of any country on earth. Where disease lurked and epidemics were prevalent, the most modern sanitary systems have been established and the peril eradicated; A nation bred in ignorance is being enlightened by compulsory education, the government'" having assumed control of all the schools in order to insure homogeneity in the methods of education,' while' normal schools have been established in every State for the education and instruction of teachers. . -Railroads are being extended and facilities for .transportation are being improved. The . port of Vera Gruz has, at- a cost of some fifteen million . dollars, been made into one of the finest harbours in ’the world, and its miles of magnificent stone quays shame the fliins-y water fronts of New York. ; The greatest drainage canal in the world, over- thirty miles long, constructed at a cost of about, twenty million dollars, is a mammontfi monument to 'the perpetual health of the capital city. New industries, are springing up throughout the land.' Blast furnaces, rolling mills and vast smelting establishments are working night ancF'day, converting the ores that are. pouring out of rich mines. Magnificent cotton mills and great woollen mills are turning out vast quantities of prints and millions of . zarapds, or Mexican blankets. Sugar mills equipped with the most improved machinery are grinding thousands of tons of cane; New locomotives are coming down from the States to run over the rapidly increasing mileage of the various railroads, £346,500 .worth . of engines, being ordered last year alone from the United States. Soldiers are being trained in well-equipped barracks. Cadets are being educated in the. military school at Ohapultepec. Desert land is being reclaimed by irrigation, and who can tell the vast possibilities these hundreds of thousands of arid Mexican acres will afford when Mr Burbank’s thornless cactus shall be introduced there?.. This one-fume deadly plant has been so bred qnd perfected by this modern miracle worker that it is now a producer of delightful and nutritious food for man and beast, and when in the coming years these vast plains shall be covered with these huge plants, each affording hundreds .of pounds of food so that countless millions of cattle could thrive here, then shall the prophecy of Isaiah be fulfilled. indeed, and “the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

A new railroad which crosses the isthmus of Tehuantepec from Coatzacoalcos to; Salina Cruz, connecting the Gulf of Campeche with the Gulf of Tehuantepec, is to have new lines of steamers on the one side to North and South American ports, Honolulu, and Japan, j|nd on the other to New Orleans and European ports. Thia road is about 190 miles long, and although it parallels the Panama Canal it will have the advantage of being in running order with its connecting steamship lines within a year, while the best that can be expected of the Panama Canal is that it should be finished in twelve years from now. The rapid growth of the production, industries and commerce of Mexico in recent years and the prospect for continuation of that growth are suggested by the fact that in the short period of twenty years its revenue has increased from i. 0,000,000 dollars to 30,0(X),000 dollars, its imports from 20,000,000 dollars to '75,000,000 dollars, and its exports from 7,000,000 dollars to 43,000,000 dollars, exclusive of 40,500,000 dollars of gold and silver. The investment of American capital in Mexico was estimated by United States Con-sul-General Barlow in 1902 at 500,000,000 dollars, nearly all invested within the last twenty-five years, and about one-half of it within the last five yearn. Since then the investment has doubtless increased materially. As to the principal articles making up the grand total of 45,(XX),000 dollars worth of exports from the United States to Mexico, it may be stated that manufactures of iron and steel held the highest rank; coal, second in rank; cotton and manufactures of cotton, third; while lumber, carriages and cars, manufactures of leather, manufactures of wood, chemicals, .drugs, and .dyes, gunpowder and mineral oil, are also important items in the table of exports to Mexico, and in practically every case show a gratifying growth.

An incentive to a further increase in trade between the United States and Mexico is the fact that- on May Ist of the present year Mexico was put on a gold basis. The mints have been dosed to the free coinage of silver since April 16th. The theoretical unit of the Mexican currency is now defined to he the peso of 50 cents gold. An important feature of the decree is a provision for a reserve exchange fund which at first will consist of 10,000,000 dollars or 15,000,000 dollars, and may be increased.

In Mexico City a new hospital has just been completed which has no rival in the world to-day. It is built on the French detached plan, and consists of thirty-five buildings, each 60ft apart, built on the most modern and approved sanitary lines, with a magnificent operating theatre, and a complete system of isolated wards for all infectious diseases. 411 this is to show in briefest outline

a few of the things that are working for the material good of a nation where even the penitentiaries are training schools for the turning out of better citizens, as President Diaz is a paternal rulers, and believes that the majority- of criminal first offenses in his. land are the results of ignorance rather than of vicious tendencies; therefore, those of the inmates who are first offenders are treated no more severely than if ■ they were wayward children. They are all taught to read and write and are made to learn useful trades, Such as shoemaking, blacksmithing, weaving, etc., and are shown the value of cleanliness and discipline, while for their entertainment military bands play twice a week within the green courtyards of their prison. Naturally a'-graduate of such an admirable institution is a better man and a more useful cit’zen than the ignorant lazy, unwashed, peon he was before his incarceration. Who can doubt that a nation so advanced in many ol its institutions can fail to start; e us with its inevitable progress in the next generation ? . The City of Mexico is a city of romance. You may regard it as. ancient Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital and scene of Prescott’s great and imaginative tale; you may study it as the last seat of empire on the American continent, or you may, marvel at it in its new awakening under its. present President. In all its phases it commands your wonder. The same great cypress trees under which Cortez an j Montezuma walked are growing to-day in tbepark pf Chapultepec. The Aztecs’ greatest idol, Hu'.tzilopochtli,. the stone God of W r ar whose insatiable appetite yearly, exacted thousands of human sacrifices reposes quietly in.the museum, and before.him is the great sacrificial stone on.. which thousands of his victims were bound while their breasts were tom open and their smoking hearts were, thrown into the golden salver which stood’ before the hideous stone face of the war lord. Where the cathedral now. stands was the teocalli 6* the Aztec priests. A little way out of the city stands “The Tree of the Dismal Night” or “Noche Triste” where Cortez paused to weep when driven from the city by the overwhelming revolt of. the Indians. Here 'to-day stands Maximilian’s house, closed, silent and unoccupied since his tragic end. Here is the magnificent palace of the Emperor Iturbide converted into a hotel. Here is an old Franciscan convent garden turned into the courtyard of. the Hotel del Jardin, and here through many carved stone doorways can be caught sunny, glimpses of flowered courtyards remin'seent of Italy and Spain. And her© also are newer monuments of a greater Mexico to come. Great hospitals, new public buildings, schools and colleges, institutions for physical betterment and intellectual enlightenment, all planned for the good of his country by a soldier who is also a statesman; by a warrior who seeks for his people the great rewards of peace. Here are modern shops, crowding shoulder to shoulder with old Spanish monasteries. Here on the streets are the patient little pack mules that for centuries bore the vast burden of all the merchandise, that came up from the coast over the steep mountain trails to the capital—now jostled and pushed aside to clear the W£iy for the electric tram cars Here are'peons in their native costumes touching elbows with grand dames in gowns from France. Here are contrasts everywhere, the old and the new, the ancient order and the modem spirit of progress. It is the spirit o. c education which is uplifting Mexico. -This is the greatest battle that President Diaz has ever fought. Seasoned warrior as he is, bearing his many honourable scans, with the wisdom of his mature years he has enrolled himself under the broad banner of universal education, and is. driving ignorance from his land with a strong hand. He has bound his many States together by a network of railroads and telegraph wires. In the last ten years he has more than trebled the national revenues; he has restored the national credit, and ha® placed his country upon a gold basis. By his patienoe, his energy, his forethought, and his knowledge of men he has created a great; nation out of*chaos: but greater than all his achievements, because it makes for the permanency of them all, is the establishment throughout the length and breadth of his land of the public school. Under the system of compulsory education, peonage is doomed; with the spread of education new and hitherto unknown ambitions are springing up in the breasts of th© people, and the child of the peon can now look forward to more than a life of ill-paid toil and drudgery in the field. I can think of nothing more typical of the awakening of the Mexican nation than the picture of the grave faced little scholar of Cholula studying his solitary lesson on the top of the ancient pyramid which for untold centuries had been the very centre and stronghold of ignorance superstition, and where, before the conquest, his ancestors prostrated themselves at the feet of their hideous stone gods and courted their favour by 'The offering of thousands of human sacrifices.