BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

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BAR1L\J(iUS MEXILU
get away. So we put our wages together and used our
last dollar to pay for tickets to Torreon, where we hope
to find work in the cotton fields. I hear we can get one
peso a day in busy times. Is it so? Or will it be the
same story over again there? Perhaps it will. But what
else can I do but try? Work! work! work! That's all
there is for us—and nothing in return for the work!
We do not drink; we are not lazy; every day we pray
to God. Yet debt is always following us, begging to
be taken in. Many times I have wanted to borrow just
a little from my boss, but my wife has always pleaded
with me. 'No,' she would say, 'better (lie than to owe, for
owing once means owing forever—and slavery.'
"But sometimes," continued the old man, 'I think it
might be better to owe, better to fall in debt, better to
give up our liberty than to go on like this to the end.
True, I am getting old and I would love to die free, but
it is hard—too hard!"
The three-quarters of a million of chattel slaves and
the five million peons do not monopolize the economic
misery of Mexico. It extends to every class of men that
toils. There are 150,000 mine and smelter workers who
receive less money for a week's labor than an American
miner of the same class gets for a day's wages. There
are 30,000 cotton mill operatives whose wages average
less than thirty cents a day in American money. There
are a quarter of a million domestic servants whose wages
range from one to five dollars a month. There are
40.000 impressed soldiers who get less than two dollars
a month above the scantiest rations. The common policemen
of Mexico City, 2,000 of them, are paid but fifty
cents a (lay in our money. Fifty cents a (lay is a high
average for street-car conductors in the metropolis, where
wages are higher than in any other section of the coun-