So, despite all the sweeping promises of Carranza and his immediate successors, education and the progress of business, of trade and of development have gone into the discard. With the pressure of the needs of the revolutionary “generals” for greater and greater appropriations for their armies (and for the graft which ate up most of such appropriations), with the ever-widening circle of vampires who fattened on government patronage in every other conceivable way, the money available for education as well as for industrial advancement shrank steadily. Where under Diaz the total annual budget of the government was $50,000,000 a year, with a total appropriation for schools, federal and state, probably less than $4,000,000, Carranza had nearer $100,000,000 and spent less than $2,000,000 a year on education. For Carranza, when the demands of his “generals” for their “share” increased, shut off the federal support of the schools of the City of Mexico and its neighboring villages, and also the sums which in other days had gone to help the poorly provided state governments. He threw the school systems on the hands of absolutely bankrupt cities and towns, with the result that in the City of Mexico alone some 120 schools, half the former number, were closed, and 25,000 children, despite crowding into other buildings, were deprived of education. All this is history. And statistics do not show that there has been any recovery since that day. The Obregon government, on paper, re-established the federal department of education with a cabinet officer at its head, which was abolished by Carranza as an economy measure. There was some more of the endless Mexican discussion of systems of education, but so far as can be found, no increase in appropriations or in plans for better support of the public schools. All those wait, perhaps, as I have said, on the improvement of business conditions, as the final solution of the business problem waits, I believe, upon them. But they all wait on something else, which I have mentioned above, and that is the improved physical condition of the Mexican people. Comfort, food and health are as important to mental and moral development as the training of the mind by education. The misery of Mexico is so profound, her crashing inertia so deep-rooted and so self-perpetuating, that it sometimes seems that she can never be cured from within herself. Some outside force must break the circle and this I believe is the great opportunity of the American missions, working in conjunction with the great civilizing energies of American business.