BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

FOUR MEXICAN STRIKES
199
Orizaba, the latter being the chief town in that political
district, we heard echoes of the strike, although its bloody
story had been written nearly two years before our visit.
In Mexico there are no labor laws in operation to
protect the workers—no provision for factory inspection,
no practical statutes against infant labor, no processes
through which workmen may recover damages for injuries
sustained or death met in the mine or at the
machine. Wage-workers literally have no rights that the
employers are bound to respect. Policy onl y determines
the degree of exploitation, and in Mexico that policy is
such as might prevail in the driving of horses in a locality
where horses are dirt cheap, where profits from
their use are high, and where there exists no Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Over against this absence of protection on the part
of the governmental powers stands oppression on the
part of the governmental powers, for the machinery of
the Diaz state is wholly at the command of the employer
to whip the worker into accepting his terms.
The six thousand laborers in the Rio Blanco mill were
not content with thirteen hours daily in the company of
that roaring machinery and in that choking atmosphere,
especially since it brought to them only from twenty-five
to thirty-seven and one-half cents. Nor were they content
with paying out of such a sum the one American
dollar a week that the company charged for the rental
of the two-room, dirt-floor hovels which they called
their homes. Least of all were they content with the
coin in which they were paid. This consisted of credit
checks upon the company store, which finished the exploitation—took
back for the company the final centavo
that the company had paid out in wages. A few miles
away, at Orizaba, the same goods could be purchased