1914

Style for women: long dresses.
To show an ankle, even, was considered unladylike.

*

W.E. Carson, writing in Mexico: The Wonderland of the South, spills out the unthinking kind of racism that used to get into textbooks. Of the “Indians” of that nation, he has this to say:

 

…Notwithstanding his dirt, his tattered clothes, his battered sombrero and his filthy blanket, the Mexican Indian is one of nature’s gentlemen, if he is only treated properly.

 

But he has his faults, and they are faults which have seriously checked progress in Mexico. He is essential to agriculture, yet his tropical surroundings and his mental characteristics unfit him for energetic work or for the adoption of modern improvements. As a farmer the Indian is a rank failure. He brings no intelligence to his work. His ancestors hundreds of years ago scratched the soil with a wooden hoe, and he is content enough to go on with the same implement. If a society were formed for presenting every Indian peon with a modern plough, it would do no good; he wouldn’t care to use it, and he wouldn’t use it. His ideal of life is to be idle; he does not want to struggle; he does not want to fight; he only desires his little mud brick hut, his piece of ground, his pig, his tortillas and his frijoles. Furniture he does not need, as his household goods are generally limited to a tin can for boiling water or cooking, a couple of stones for making tortillas, a few picturesque jars made by the native potters and a few old sacks to sleep on. His wants being easily supplied, there is really no incentive for him to be progressive. He cannot read or write, is unable to think, and his mode of life is primeval in its simplicity.

 

The Indian in the tropical region of Mexico is especially slothful. All he needs is enough to eat, a thatched hut and a little cotton cloth. The hut he can make himself; there are fish in the river and game in the forest. There is plenty of unoccupied land upon which he can raise a little maize for food or to trade for such simple luxuries as coffee, sugar and tobacco. There is no winter to provide against, and though rainy days often come, they only mean more rest. Consequently, the tropical Indian is seldom a hireling.

 

Mentally and physically lethargic, the peon of central Mexico has been for years little more than a slave, in spite of his very slender wants. The system which is called peonage is very subtle and it is very simple. The peon receives so scant a wage that he has nothing left after his humble wants have been satisfied. He usually earns from fifteen to fifty cents a day, and being very improvident is always without money. On all the haciendas or large estates he is compelled to deal at the hacienda store, being encouraged to be extravagant in his orders. …

 

Being utterly without ambition, the Indians have no desire to improve their condition or educate their families. None of them can be trusted with money; in a few hours most of them will drink and gamble away the earnings of months. The great aim of the average peon is to earn a little money, sufficient to supply him with tortillas and frijoles and the opportunity to see an occasional bull-fight or enjoy a little gambling. As long as he has a penny in his pocket he will not work, and even when his money is gone, the word “mañana” (meaning to-morrow, but in fact some more convenient time) springs instinctively to his lips. Untruthfulness is universal among Indians of the lower orders, and in the capital most of them are petty thieves. Very few of them have the slightest conception of morality from the Anglo-Saxon point of view. …

 

The Indian man has a fitting mate in the Indian woman, who is not a wholesome-looking person. Nearly all the women are small, plump and slatternly, with tousled hair, their dresses torn and dirty, their general appearance being reminiscent of gypsies. Some of the girls are handsome enough; but the hardness and monotony of their lives make them old women before their time, and an Indian maiden of thirty is often simply a bent and wrinkled hag. Early marriages are the rule, girls of fourteen in some cases being married to boys of sixteen, after which they become mere household drudges. In many places the immorality which exists is appalling, polygamy being quite general, marriage is seldom taking place and kinship being disregarded. The Mexican government, with the aid of the church, is endeavoring to put an end to these deplorable conditions.

 

Large families are the rule among the Indian population, a childless woman being very rare; but most of the children, through neglect, die in infancy. Like their husbands, the women are invariably dull-witted and unprogressive. Even in those parts where flour is available, they will continue every morning to pound their corn on the metate and bake the tortillas, for they would scorn the American idea of having one big bake and getting it over. They have few virtues save their devotion to their husbands and children; but many of them are not unskillful in the fancy work, being able to follow the most elaborate designs, doing also really delicate and pretty work on handkerchiefs and linens. (pp. 187-193)

*

June 16: The U.S. and Columbia come to an agreement – Columbia shall have free use of the Panama Canal, and a $25 million indemnity. 

Teddy Roosevelt refers to this as “belated blackmail.” As Walworth explains, Roosevelt grumbled that “the Wilson administration had forfeited all right to the respect of the people of the United States.” (10/387) 

Certainly, the 28^th President of the United States was a man of strong morals:

 

At table, once, Wilson’s daughters told him of a state governor who pardoned a son. They asked him, in jest, whether he could pardon them if they were convicted of a crime, and he grew very serious and replied, solemnly: “God help me, I don’t believe I could.”  (10/416)

 

Wilson’s entire philosophy was based on religion, as he once explained. 

“My life would not be worth living if it were not for the driving power of religion, for faith, pure and simple. I have seen all my life the arguments against it without ever having been moved by them…never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they understand – that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe – I’m sorry for such people.” (10/417)

*

July 27: With war brewing in Europe, enthusiasm grows amid predictions that the fighting will be over in only three months.

 

Leaders in just about every nation predict victory.

Source: America by Hendrik Van Loon, 1927.

*

The Rauch and Lang Electric Car has a top speed of 19, glass vases for flowers and costs $4,300.