Venezuela Too Busy For A Revolution.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 2, 1913:
The Country Is Booming and Castro Has No Followers, Returning Traveler Asserts.
GOMEZ REGIME IS POPULAR
Administration Which Will Succeed His In a Year Expected to Carry Out Reforms He Inaugurated.
    Lemuel C. Butler, President of the Caribbean Coal Company, of 71 Wall Street, who arrived yesterday on the Red "D" steamer Maracaibo from Venezuela, said that there was no foundation for the statements published in the New York newspapers that Castro was organizing a revolution to overthrow the Gomez Government.
    "Venezuela is developing an era of prosperity," said Mr. Butler, "and the people are all making money. They are too busy to waste time on a revolution which would disturb the present peace and prosperity of the land. Castro no longer figures in Venezuelan politics and in the time I was in Caracas I never heard his name mentioned. The revolutions of the South American republics are magnified in American newspapers. I witnessed three of the so-called revolutions in Venezuela sixteen and twenty years ago and they did not make as much trouble rolled into one as the strike in Lawrence, Mass., did.
    "Caracas is quiet and business is booming. The people have got a good government and are satisfied. I speak Spanish fluently and have many influential friends at the capital and I made it my business to visit the hotels, cafes and clubs before departing to see if there was any truth in the reports in the New York newspapers.
    "I did not hear any allusion to expected trouble in any way. The Gomez Government will be changed in another year, and I believe it will be succeeded by an administration that will carry out the plans for developing the commerce and prosperity of the country inaugurated by the present regime.
    Caracas is well paved and well lighted. The people are not savages, but are well educated. intelligent and industrious. There are 160 automobiles in use in the Capital and the roads are good for twenty miles outside the city. The old wagon road from Caracas to Laguayra is being macadamized for automobiles. While I was there the cruising steamers from New York were arriving two a weak and landing tourists to take the wonderful scenic ride by train from Laguayra to the Capital.
    "All Caracas needs now is a $300,000 hotel in the Plaza with rooms and baths to accommodate 300 to 400 persons. There may be a few swashbucklers hanging around the third-rate cafes at the ports who would like to start some trouble in order to get money without working for it, but they have no funds and no backing and no chance of starting even the smallest kind of a revolution, because the people of Venezuela have no sympathy with such a movement. Coffee is high, sugar is high and rum is high in Caracas to-day."