19, under the caption, "Socialist
Government of Yucatan Grapples With the Binder Trust," we read:

"We get vastly less news nowadays from our next-door neighbor,
Mexico, than from Europe and Asia, therefore a 'Call' reporter,
meeting a Comrade who has recently returned from the tropic
peninsula, fell upon him and demanded news of the Socialist, labor
and co-operative movements there.

"'We are facing a very much tangled-up situation down there,'
answered the man from Yucatan. He is W. Elkin Birch, a well-known
American Socialist and business man, who has lived in Mexico
several years. He came up to 'the States' on a business trip, and
is returning to Yucatan, where he is prominent in the Socialist and
co-operative movements.

"'The forces of capitalism in Mexico are so strong, and the
commercial system is so vicious,' he began, 'that I am not very
optimistic about the future of Socialism in Yucatan.'

"'But we thought that Alvarado had established almost a paradise
down there,' cried the reporter. 'A year ago we learned that you
had elected a complete Socialist administration in Yucatan; then, a
few months since, we heard that it had not put any part of the
Socialist program into effect. We wondered what was the reason, but
hardly any news comes through now.'

"'Alvarado did work a wonderful transformation, and much of the
good he did remains. It is true, we have an administration of
Socialists, but we find that that is a very different thing from a
Socialist administration. Yucatan is still in the grip of the
commercial interests, and the game is blocked at every move. As
fast as the radicals devise some means of stopping the robbery of
the people by special privilege, the privileged interests find a
way of circumventing the radicals by apparently yielding, but
really maintaining their domination.

"'Alvarado took over the Reguladora, through which the henequem,
Yucatan's principal product, is sold for export; he took over the
railroads, and the line of steamships running to the States....

"'The government still controls the Reguladora, but, as I said, it
is in a deadlock with the powers who control its market. We still
have government-owned railroads in Yucatan, but government
ownership merely takes the public utility out of the hand