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Perfectly delighted was Professor Moley with the quaint personification of gold employed by Boss Calles in explaining Mexico's "entire freedom from the gold standard." Said the general grimly: "We marched gold out, stood it up against the wall and executed it!" The silver peso, declares Professor Moley, "is practically pegged to the American dollar. Mexico is prepared to follow the dollar, wherever it goes."
Plan Results. Delayed at the start, like Russia's Five-Year Plan, Mexico's Six was launched by President Rodriguez, but queries to Mexican officials on results thus far brought the reply last week: "It will really get under way only under President Cárdenas."
As published, the Plan promises 1,000 new schoolhouses to be completed this year. Just before leaving office, President Rodriguez announced that they had been built. Also promised by Dec. 31, are: 1) the loaning to peasants of 20,000,000 pesos, of which 6,500,000 had been loaned to 1,200 peasant organizations at 8% by last week; 2) the spending of 15% of the Federal Government's budgetary outgo for education and 3.4% for public health; 3) reform of the Labor Code to insert social insurance in addition to the minimum wage recently decreed throughout Mexico of 1¼ pesos (42¢) per day. Of this sum the National Revolutionary Party is proud, considering that peons by the million have long grubbed for less. To enforce even a 42¢ minimum will be for President Cárdenas a hero's task.
Intensely practical in the most important respect, Mexico's Six-Year Plan includes this pledge: "Place at the Army's disposal such training, such preparation, such necessary armaments for it to warrant, in case of necessity, those exalted concepts and that profound faith which our country has vested in our armed institution."
As the warrior President of a nation of warriors General Cárdenas has named the son born to him last May after the last Aztec warrior Emperor of Mexico, famed Cuauhtemoc.
*Even deepest Southerners are Yankees to Mexicans who take little interest in the niceties of the U. S. Civil War.
*Not to be confused with the so-called National Revolution which is now no revolution at all but the Government of Mexico.
† According to Professor Maurice Halperin of the University of Oklahoma who testily adds: "The new landed peasant is better off than the peon in only one respect: he can starve without working, but the peon has to work while he starves." In expropriating land from private estates the Government hands the irate landlord bonds proportionate to the taxes he actually paid. Since most landlords connived with the tax-gatherers and paid less than they should, they are now neatly hoist by their own tax-dodging.
* The education clause is the Plan's red rag to the pious, for it provides, "The primary school, in addition to excluding religious instructions, will provide truthful answers—scientific and rational—to every question not clear in the minds of students."