February 10th
This morning we went over the magnificent Buen Tono cigarette-factories. Pugibet, who sold cigarettes in the street forty years ago, is the founder and millionaire owner. The factory is a model in all ways, and a testimony to his brains, energy, and initiative. He showed us over the vast place himself. In one of the rooms he had refrained from installing machinery, as it meant taking work from hundreds of women.
Oh, the deftness and skill of those beautiful Indian hands! Their motions were so quick that one hardly saw anything but the finished article. He loaded us with cigarettes and many souvenirs, and we drove home after a visit to the big church he had built near by. On arriving home, I found the words, “Papa,” “Mama,” “Elim,” and “Kuss,” written in white chalk, in high letters, on the entrance-door. I hated to have them removed.
N. has protested to the Foreign Office regarding the scurrilous language the Imparcial has used about the President, the Imparcial being a government organ. “Wicked Puritan with sorry horse teeth,” “Exotic and nauseous Carranzista pedagogue,” are samples of its style.