Desirable and even necessary as that material progress was, it produced only a one-sided prosperity.

Diaz was singularly deaf to the just complaints of the people of the laboring classes, who, as manufacturing and other industrial enterprises developed, were resolved to better their conditions.

In the country at large the discontent was still stronger.

Throughout many of the rural districts general advancement had been retarded because of the holding of huge areas of fertile land by a comparatively few rich families, who did little to improve it and were content with small returns from the labor of throngs of unskilled native cultivators.

Wretchedly paid and housed, and toiling long hours, the workers lived like the serfs of medieval days or as their own ancestors did in colonial times.