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None disputes that while aiding Calles to suppress the abortive revolution of 1929,* Cárdenas, having received 100,000 pesos from the Ministry of War for his first month's expenses, returned 93,000 pesos at the end of the month with the notation, "seven thousand were sufficient"—an unprecedented act of Mexican self-control.
As Governor of the State of Michoacan, General Cárdenas slashed his own salary in half, trimmed bureaucratic expenses to the bone, squandered money on schools and peasant welfare and made life intolerable for priests. "I was a laborer and I am still a laborer," the new President is fond of saying. "At the age of 11 the death of my father left me the head of a family of nine. Yes, I know what it is to work." In 1930 forehanded Boss Calles started General Cárdenas through the mill that grinds out Mexican Presidents. He became successively President (chairman) of the National Revolutionary Party, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary for War, after which he retired for six months to meet the Mexican Constitution's requirement that one must have been out of office to become a candidate for President. Last July the Party—which can no more lose an election than the German Nazis, the Italian Fascists or the Russian Communists—made General Cárdenas the people's choice by a majority of 60 to 1 over his nearest opponent. Cut & dried, the election was of no significance, but the National Revolutionary Party Convention which nominated Cárdenas had taken an epochal step. It adopted as the Party platform, under Boss Calles' direction, the Six-Year Plan. To this Candidate Cárdenas added one plank of his own. A moderate drinker, he announced: "If elected President of the Republic I shall decree Prohibition!"
Six-Year Plan, In Mexico the rumor is more than a whisper that radical, priest-baiting Boss Calles is "really Fascist." For that matter Benito Mussolini is really radical. Each in his own way, Il Duce and El Jefe ("The Boss") are providing slow-tempo revolutions as alternatives to Bolshevism. Red-hot Mexican radicals grumble against General Calles because his farm has not been chopped up and given to the peons. Under Callismo or the Rule of Calles, the 12,000,000 peasants of Mexico have been split into 9,000,000 who still toil as peons for the great landowners and 3,000,000 who have now received land from the Government.†