Villa then turned toward Torreon. The "soldaderas" of Alvirez's force had escaped when the fight at Aviles began and reached Torreon, quickly spreading the news. The Federal officer in command attempted to round them up, but to no avail, and Torreon's weak garrison became panic stricken, put up a feeble resistance, and evacuated the town. Villa occupied it on the night of October 1st. He sent his mounted troops against the Federal columns from Saltillo and Zacatecas, tearing up the railroad around them, until they both retreated. He maintained splendid order in Torreon; sent a detachment of one officer and twenty-five men to the American consul to protect American interests, and stationed patrols throughout the city with orders to shoot all looters. At first, a few stores containing provisions and clothing were looted, and some Spaniards who were supposed to be aiding the Federals were killed, but the pillaging soon stopped. Villa's occupation of Torreon thus contrasted strikingly with Urbina's occupation of Durango.
The capture of Torreon made precarious the military position of the Federals in Chihuahua, as Torreon was their principal supply point. When Villa's advance reached Santa Rosalía, the Federals evacuated their fortified position at that place and concentrated all available troops at Chihuahua City. They expected that a decided attempt would be made by Villa to take it. The Federals did succeed in repelling small attacks against Chihuahua on November 6th-9th and, to strengthen their garrison, they reduced the troops in Juarez until only 400 remained. Villa, while keeping up the investment of Chihuahua City, prepared a force for a dash on Juarez, and on the night of November 14th-15th the Federal garrison at that place was completely surprised and the city was captured.
These are the main events (to December 1st) that marked this chapter in the inevitable struggle between the new Mexico and the old, before the United States by interfering actively in the tumult changed the entire character of the war. The Carranza practise of killing the wounded shows that even the North has much to learn in civilized methods of warfare. On the other hand, the self-restraint exercised, in many cases, against looting captured towns, indicates that progress has been made. This account also indicates that the new Mexico, in aims as well as in material things, is getting the upper hand.
THE NEW DEMOCRACY
THE FORCES OF CHANGE DOMINATE AMERICA A.D. 1913
WOODROW WILSON
On March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as President of the United States, and thus became the central figure of a new and tremendously important movement. He was, it is true, elected as the candidate of what is known as the Democratic party, which has existed since the days of Thomas Jefferson. But the ideas advanced by President Wilson as being democratic were so different from the original theories and policies of Jefferson that President Wilson himself felt called on to formulate his principles in a now celebrated work entitled "The New Freedom." From the opening pages of this, as originally published in The World's Work, we here, by permission of both the President and the magazine, give his own statement of the ideas of the new era.
The voting body of Americans who stand behind President Wilson are obviously of the type now generally called progressive. In the convention which nominated him, the conservative element of the old Democracy struggled long and bitterly against the naming of any "progressive" candidate. In the Republican party, the strife between conservatism and progress was so bitter as to produce a complete split; and the progressives nominated a candidate of their own, preferring, if they could not control the government themselves, to hand it over to the progressive element among the Democrats. The former political parties in the United States seem to have been so completely disrupted by recent events that even though they continue to hold some power under the old names, they now stand for wholly different things. The two parties which in the triangular presidential contest polled the largest numbers of votes were both "progressive."
So it seems settled that we are to "progress." But whither—and into what? Is there any clear purpose before our new leaders, and how does it differ from mankind's former purposes? That is what President Wilson tries to tell us.
There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago.
We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and, with our economic society, the organization of our life. The old political formulae do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they belonged to a past age which men have almost forgotten. Things which used to be put into the party platforms of ten years ago would sound antiquated if put into a platform now. We are facing the necessity of fitting a new social organization, as we did once fit the old organization, to the happiness and prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we are conscious that the new order of society has not been made to fit and provide the convenience or prosperity of the average man. The life of the nation has grown infinitely varied. It does not center now upon questions of governmental structure or of the distribution of governmental powers. It centers upon questions of the very structure and operation of society itself, of which government is only the instrument. Our development has run so fast and so far along the line sketched in the earlier days of constitutional definition, has so crossed and interlaced those lines, has piled upon them such novel structures of trust and combination, has elaborated within them a life so manifold, so full of forces which transcend the boundaries of the country itself and fill the eyes of the world, that a new nation seems to have been created which the old formulae do not fit or afford a vital interpretation of.
We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. We have come upon an age when we do not do business in the way in which we used to do business—when we do not carry on any of the operations of manufacture, sale, transportation, or communication as men used to carry them on. There is a sense in which in our day the individual has been submerged. In most parts of our country men work for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but as employees—in a higher or lower grade—of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.
You know what happens when you are the servant of a corporation. You have in no instance access to the men who are really determining the policy of the corporation. If the corporation is doing the things that it ought not to do, you really have no voice in the matter and must obey the orders, and you have, with deep mortification, to cooperate in the doing of things which you know are against the public interest. Your individuality is swallowed up in the individuality and purpose of a great organization.
It is true that, while most men are thus submerged in the corporation, a few, a very few, are exalted to power which as individuals they could never have wielded. Through the great organizations of which they are the heads, a few are enabled to play a part unprecedented by anything in history in the control of the business operations of the country and in the determination of the happiness of great numbers of people.