BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

FOUR MEXICAN STRIKES 213
blood of our forefathers, but rather that we inhabit a land of
savage and brutal slave-drivers. Who can subsist on wages of
three and four pesos weekly and discounted from that fines,
house rent, and robbery in weights and measures? No, a
thousand times, no! Because of such circumstances we petition
our dear country for a fragment of land to cultivate, so that
we may not continue to enrich the foreigner, trader and
exploiter, who piles up gold at the cost of the devoted toil of
the poor and unfortunate worker!
We protest against this order of things and we will not work
until we are guaranteed that the fines will be abolished and
also the maintenance of dogs, for which we ought not to pay,
and that we shall be treated as workers and not as the unhappy
slaves of a foreigner.
We hope that our fellow workers will aid us in this fight.
Tizapan, March 7, 1909.
THE COMMITTEE-
The Tizapan strike was lost. When it was ready to
do so, the company reopened the mill without difficulty,
for, as corporation prospectuses of the country say,
there is labor aplenty in Mexico and it is very, very
cheap.
The Cananea strike, occurring as it did, very close
to the border line of the United States, is perhaps the one
Mexican strike of which Americans generally have heard.
Not having been a witness, nor even having ever been
upon the ground, I cannot speak with personal authority,
and yet I have talked with so many persons who were
in one way or another connected with the affair, several
of whom were in the very thick of the flying bullets,
that I cannot but 1)elicvC that I have a fairly clear idea
of what occurred.
Cananea is a copper cit y of Sonora, situated several
score of miles from the Arizona border. It was established
by W. C. Greene, who secured several million
acres along the border from the Mexican government