a£*a»~

up because of their economically and politically mischievous
influence, and the Jesuits were banished from the country.

And now the government took hold of the evil situation
in which thepeasants were involved. Eighty percent of the
Spanish people are peasants. And less than ten percent of
these peasants have been able to gain what we should re-
gard as a decent livelihood. Laborers on the ,large estates
received a pittance of sixty-fivedcents a day, which would
have about that much value in our money. Meat was almost
unknown in their diet, and rag covered their gaunt frames.
To remedy these evil conditions the government resolved to
break up the large estates and to redistribute the land; that
is, to enable the peasant workers on the large estates to
become the owners of the land they tilled, to enable the
peasants generally to purchase farms for themselves.

The Republic set out to educate the people. Education
was still almost entirely in the hands of priests and monks
and nuns, and forty-five percent of the people were still
illiterate. The Republican government laid down a program
which called for the building of ten thousand, six hundred
new schools during the following two years. Seven thousand
of these schools actually were built, in spite of the bitter
and vigorous opposition of the Church during the Repub-
lic’s first year. Progress was being made also in other
spheres.  

Then came the counter—revolution of 1933. The Con-
servatives, that is to say, the landowners, the industrialists,
the financiers, the militarists, and the militant Roman Cath-
olics——these who had ruled the country for centuries—join-
ed forces under the Conservative politician, Gil Robles, and
won the election of 1933.

Let me explain that the Conservatives won that election
because of what some would be inclined to regard as a
mistake that hadbeen made by the preceding Democratic
or Liberal government. That. earlier government had given
the vote tothe women of Spain, and millions of these Span-
ish women were still Roman Catholics and, through the
confessional, and otherwise, under the influence of the
priests, with the consequence that in the election of 1933
many of them took sides with the Conservative forces
united under Robles and elected aConservative regime.

The old story of brutality was now repeated. Some

9 twenty-five thousand Spanish Democrats were thrown into

prison. Many ofthem were flogged; others were brutally
13