Show Breakfast Comes First MANY PEOPLE have argued argue and with considerable con- con l iii justice that the cause of war of revolution of progress and of all the great changes and nd developments in human history f r is s fundamentally economic It is they say the pressure of economic poverty and scarcity the desire for material improvement that is the mainspring of human action Recently Salt Lake City heard a message along that line which is of great significance to America Miss Graciela Mandujano of s Santiago Chile declared here that the abject t poverty of the lower classes in South America who have for so many years year lived under a form of democratic government makes it difficult to sell them on the idea that democracy democracy democracy racy is necessarily better than any other form of government that government that is totalitarianism Said Miss Mandujano 1 It is useless to try to convince them of the good points of a democracy democracy democracy racy until you raise their economic standard You cannot educate a child until- until hes he's had his breakfast Theres There's a lot of sound s sense nse in that ment Few of us in the United States have any conception of the great poverty existing in our neighbor nations of tIe the Americas AmerIca Lets Let's examine some statistics to back up Miss Mandujano's argument In the United States per capita national Income is about In Mexico its it's estimated at 37 In Brazil which has half the populatIon population population tion of all South America it is 29 C Chiles Chile's iles ile's average annual income per capita is 77 Cubas Cuba's 88 Richest nations of Latin America are Uruguay with and Argentina with Its It's easy to see from these figures that the average Latin American can hardly feel that ne lie has gained much economically from racy If 11 a little man with a moustache came alon along with promises no matter how empty I and arid after alter all few of the poorer classes down there have had enough education to discover how empty the promises are they might easily fall for them We know from our own exp experience in this country that people in poor circumstances all too easily swallow the glowing glowing glowing glow glow- ing promises of If some tongued smooth dema dema- gogue It would seem seemIe we Ie have not just a job of selling democracy as a political philosophy in Latin America but a job also of selling it as asan asan asan an economic system system and and it may well be true as Miss Mandujano says that before w we start tart educating them in the fine points of dein demo demo- 1 freedom and justice and human rights wed we'd better see that they've had their break- break fast |