BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

200 BARBAROUS MEXICO
for from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent less, but
the operatives were unable to buy their goods at these
stores.
The operatives were not content. The might of the
company towered like a mountain above them, and
behind and above the company towered the government.
Behind the company stood Diaz himself, for Diaz was
not only the government, he was also a heavy stockholder
in the company. Yet the operatives prepared to fight.
Secretly they organized a union, "El Circulo de
Obreros," which means "The Circle of Workers," holding
their meetings not en masse, but in small groups
in their homes, in order that the authorities might not
learn of their purposes.
Immediately upon the company learning that the workers
were discussing their troubles it took action against
them. Through the police authorities it issued a general
order forbidding any of the operatives from receiving
any visitors whatsoever, even their own relatives being
barred, the penalty for violation being the city jail. Per-
Sons who were suspected of having signed the roll of the
union were put in prison at once, and a weekly newspaper
which was known to be friendly to the workers
was swooped down upon, suppressed and the printing
plant confiscated.
At this juncture a strike was called in the cotton mills
in the city of Puebla, in an adjoining state. The mills
of Puebla were owned by the same company as owned
the Rio Blanco mills, and the operatives thereof were
living under similar conditions to those at Rio Blanco.
The Puebla workers went on strike and the company,
knowing that they had no resources behind them, decided,
as one of its agents told me, "to let nature take