BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

334 BARBAROUS MEXICO
pended there is a greater tax upon the heart and the
human machine generally. Americans who take up their
residence on that plateau find that they must live a little
more slowly than in this country, that it is better
to take the mid-day sicsta, like the Mexicans. If they
persist in keeping up the old gait they find that they
grow old very fast, that it does not pay. If, on the
other hand, they choose to live in the tropical belt they
find that here, too, because of the greater heat and
moisture, it is not wise for them to work as fast as
they were wont to do at home.
If the average Mexican has less working capacity
than the average American it is largely for this reason,
and for the other reason that the Mexican laborer is
invariably half starved. When the American laborer
meets the Mexican on the latter's own ground he is quite
often outdone. Few Americans engage in physical labor
either on the plateau or in the tropics. The laborer
of no nation can outdo the Mexican in carrying heavy
loads or in feats of endurance, while in the tropics the
Mexican, if he is not starved, is supreme. The American
negro, the Asiatic coolie, the athletic Yaqui from the
north, have all been tried out against the native of the
tropical states and all have been found wanting, while
there is no question as to the inferiority of the working
capacity of men of European descent under tropical
conditions.
So much for the working capacity of Mexicans, which,
in this extremely utilitarian age, is placed high among
the virtues of a people. As to intelligence, in spite of
the fact that it was always the policy of the Spanish
conquerers to hold the native Aztecs in subordinate positions,
enough of the latter have succeeded in forcing
their way to the top to prove that they were quite as