seek to break down barriers which to-day, may be needful. The jíbaro is respectful and obedient, fearful of the law and never defiant of his superiors; he is generous to a fault, sharing with any wayfarer his last plantain; he is devoted to his family and to his friends. Had he been ill treated by the educated and controlling class in the island he would be sullen and savage, but this has not been the case. If it is true that the jíbaro is in many ways differentiated from the upper classes, it is equally true that there is no masonry so strong as that existing among the jíbaros of Porto Rico. Bound to each other by the most intricate ties of relationship and by a still more potent one, the eternal bond conferred by the title compadre or godfather, they share their troubles and shield each other as though they belonged to one great family. It is really wonderful to see how quickly and with what complete self-abnegation an orphaned child or widowed mother is gathered into some poor neighbor's hut and there cared for. For these very same reasons search for a miscreant in the mountains is a formidable undertaking. On inquiry no one knows him, never saw him, never even heard of him, and the closest scrutiny of their faces will not detect the faintest trace of interest or even of intelligence.

"Care must be taken in deducing facts from questioning a group of jíbaros even in the most unimportant matters. They are tremendously suspicious and generally let someone among them who is leido (one who has established a local reputation for worldly wisdom) speak for them. One can be pretty sure that the rest will say 'amen' to all of his remarks. It is said that this deep suspicion of a strange investigator proceeds from the methods employed by the Spanish guardia civil or rural guard, to run down those suspected of unfaithfulness to the administration, petty infringement of the law, etc.

"The jíbaro is equally superstitious and very quickly impressed by a supernatural explanation of any phenomena he cannot understand. The more outlandish the explanation of a disease the better he likes it, and for this reason the curandero or local charlatan is so popular and powerful in the mountains. We very much fear that our abrupt tumbling in the dust of an ancient explanation of his for anemia, our assertion that it was due to 'worms' and our administration of 'strong medicine' which practically put him hors de combat for the day, accounts for part of our early success. In spite of this lack of knowledge of the world above him he has one quality which is his ever ready defense, his astuteness. There is one phrase much used in describing the jíbaro's acuteness of observation. Referring to a trade it is said: 'Para un jíbaro, otro, y para los dos, el demonio,' which means, 'To get the best of a jíbaro, employ another, and to catch both, Satan himself must take charge of them.'

"This astuteness, despite all of the great obstacles in the path of our work among them, was what chiefly led to success in bringing these people under treatment. They soon saw that we got results, and with a fact capable of sensational proof in our hands, the jíbaro accepted us and we joined the 'order' to which we have made reference. From that time he has been our friend, and better friends no man ever had, for his entire support is given us; he preaches our 'new medicine' and wherever we have expounded these things to him by word of mouth and by virtue of proof he takes pride in explaining, better than any representative of the upper classes, how the disease is acquired and how it may be prevented.

"The prime fact, however, is that he has, until recently, been much neglected, neglected by those who are not of his class, neglected by the authorities. There are municipalities whose town forms but a tenth of the population of the outlying country, whose taxes are collected to support it, yet which seem to forget the submerged mass in the mountains. This being so for the towns which are surrounded by these people, how attenuated the interest becomes in the capital and larger cities of the island, and how extremely diluted that of the continental American who neither knows his needs nor even what jíbaro means.

"Education will transform this jíbaro into something much better or much worse, for he will not remain content as he is when he can read, write, and see the world with his own eyes. In this education the respect he bears his more fortunate compatriots, the power for good they have over him, and the confidence he reposes in them must be preserved. The labor he must perform to enrich the island must be dignified by his employer and by himself, or else the hills will be deserted and the jíbaro will become a vicious hanger-on of towns. Better homes, better means of communication with towns, now becoming an accomplished fact, better food, education, in which remarkable progress is being made at this day, better habits of life, especially in the modern prevention of disease, must form a part of any plan adopted to improve his condition. The planter who to-day sees the laborer must see in him the man whose bodily, mental, and moral development will make the plantation a success. The planter is the man of all men in Porto Rico who must begin to help the jíbaro upward in order to emerge from his own present industrial depression. This lack of mental contact, of a common ground of interest between the jíbaro and the better class of Porto Ricans drives the former to charlatans for his medical advice, to the wild fruits and vegetables of the interior for his food, and to weird creeds for his religious comfort.

"His dependency causes him to look for protection, for direction and for ideas from the planter, from the municipality, and from the Insular Government. He considers himself a ward of his employer and of those placed in authority over him. He does not care to accept any responsibility for the simple reason that he has always been made to feel that he is not a responsible person. Therefore, how can we blame him when we find him without shoes, knowing that by wearing them he will protect himself against a dangerous infirmity; without bacon and corn, without household furniture, with but one room for his entire family.

"It is a specious excuse, nothing more nor less, which avers that the jíbaro is born the way he is and cannot be changed at this late day, that we must await a new generation, etc. On that principle we could expect very little from the antituberculosis crusades in New York. The truth is that to change the jíbaro, we must convince him that he will be bettered by the change, and he is sharp enough to change then, but the gist of all is that these changes must be begun by the men to whom the jíbaro has always looked for light, and this means good hard work and much perseverance, tact, and genuine personal interest. From our acquaintance with the men to whom this burden will fall we should say that they are not only sufficiently good business men to realize the benefit they would get out of a healthy laboring class, but that the innate patriotism of the Porto Rican agriculturist and the deeper underlying sympathy for his jíbaro will some day bring about reforms that they alone can make possible.

"Agricultural laborers, in spite of the small wages they receive, are nearly if not quite as expensive as those in the United States, for with 50 per cent less of efficiency from disease and wasteful methods of work, the difference in wage is of small advantage. Weyl states:

'The small equity which the planter holds in the estate which he cultivates does