In the West and in Mexico the principal industry subsidiary to mining is smelting. Very few Mexicans are employed in the Colorado steel works; but in smelters they have been used at times in that State, and are largely employed nearer the frontier. In Mexico some of the largest plants in the world are run entirely by this labor, under American and European supervision. Those employed around the steel works and smelters in Colorado are chiefly engaged in chopping wood and in hauling fuel. One large smelter had, at the time it was visited, no Mexicans on its pay rolls, though some had been employed occasionally in the past. Most of the work is done by contract, at fixed rates per ton of ore, and neither Mexicans nor Japanese can compete with the physically stronger and more robust Italians and Austrians. Japanese tried unloading ore at this smelter, but they could earn only $1.25 a day, while Austrians working beside them at the same rate per ton were earning $1.75 and over daily. An employment agent in Denver said he had recently filled an order from the Union Pacific Railroad Company with 40 men from Mexico who were to be used at shoveling coal. That work is about the same as unloading ore, but it is probable that the Mexicans were contented with much lower earnings than would satisfy Japanese and Europeans. A smelter engineer in Arizona said that in that Territory Mexicans were employed mostly in small smelters, performing all the common labor for a wage averaging about $2 a day. The large custom smelters employ fewer Mexicans. An eight-hour day is worked, because, though the Mexicans can stand hot work, they can not work long hours in the very hot surroundings of a desert smelter. Another informant mentioned smelters where but three white men were employed—an engineer, an assayer, and a superintendent. At the El Paso smelter, where labor from Mexico is very largely used, men were receiving from $1.10 to $1.25 a day.

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In Mexico itself native smelter labor was said to be very satisfactory after it was trained. At Zacatecas laborers were paid 5 and 6" reales," amounting to 62 and 75 cents in local currency, or half that amount in American money. At a very large American smelter in Aguas Calientes men were being paid 62 cents (silver) a day, which was an increase of 25 per cent over the rate paid in the spring of 1907. Besides this, in order to encourage regular work, if a laborer lost but one workday in any month he was paid the extraordinary premium of 50 cents (silver) a day for that month. These laborers were observed lined up on pay day. Several received sums that would indicate that they had earned the premium. They were fairly sturdy and well fed, in marked contrast to the peons who came in to market from the neighboring "haciendas." Yet the smelter workers are themselves peasants and usually leave work in July to put in their crops. There is a constant labor shortage, though the manager said his best laborers did not emigrate.

LUMBERING AND WOODWORKING.

The lumber industry is not important in the section of the United States where Mexican labor is common. At Albuquerque, N. Mex., and at Flagstaff and a few other places in northern Arizona, there are sawmills of some size, supplied with timber from mountain camps at a considerable distance. The American Lumber Company, in Albuquerque, has about 1,000 employees, of whom something over one-half are Spanish-speaking, though mostly American born. A few of the latter are employed in the camps, but most of them are laborers and lumber pilers at the mills, where they earn from $1.25 to $2 a day. Immigrant Mexicans were to be distinguished from natives, according to the superintendent, only by being slightly slower and duller. They were not considered ideal laborers, but improved and were willing to learn. Young New Mexicans were employed as bench workers and in operating machines in the box factory, where they earned up to $2.75 a day. They were reported to work regularly and to give satisfaction.

At Flagstaff, where some 500 men are employed in mill and camp, a large majority of the laborers are New Mexicans, and give satisfaction. About 20 immigrant Mexicans were employed as tie cutters, earning $2 a day. They are also satisfactory. Mexicans were employed as section men on the logging road.

MISCELLANEOUS OCCUPATIONS.

Some Mexican laborers are located in city colonies, having drifted away from the railroads to engage in various occupations requiring little skill. During the clearing-up operations at San Francisco they worked by the side of Italians and Japanese, sometimes in groups, often scattered among workmen of other nationalities, earning the regulation $2 a day. Contractors in that city spoke of them as less efficient than Italians, but seemed to place them vaguely in the same class. As the demand for unskilled labor lessens they will probably be replaced entirely by Europeans.

In Los Angeles and vicinity Mexicans of California descent and immigrants are employed as builders' helpers and in minor occupations connected with construction. Parties of these laborers were unpacking and passing tile in a large steel office building. Employers say these workers are mainly from Mexico. They carry hods. and drive dirt carts. Through the southern counties of Arizona, in the Gadsden Purchase, there has always been a larger Mexican population than in any other parts of the Territory, and here-in such towns as Phoenix and Tucson-the less skilled building trades are largely controlled by workers of this nationality. As at Laredo and at other Mexican-American frontier towns, the better class of these

workers enter trade unions, or form unions separate from their English-speaking colleagues. In these occupations men earn from $1.50 to $2 a day. At Monterey, Mexico, similar laborers, employed on a large ice plant, were paid but 75 cents (silver) a day. An American manager in Monterey said Mexicans worked fairly well under foremen of their own nationality, but that as soon as they had finished what they were told to do they folded their arms and stood still until they received further instructions.

In southern California and in Texas Mexicans do most of the excavating and road building, and are otherwise employed on public works. In the former State a contractor said Mexicans could drive a two-mule scraper, but that he would not trust them with a four-mule scraper. They were paid $2.25 a day. White laborers were preferred, because they received the same wages, except that the four-mule scraper drivers were paid $2.50 a day. Asphalt and cement workers, except skilled hands, are paid $1.25 a day in Los Angeles. Mexicans accept lower wages in the city, because they can be with their families. The pay rolls of one contracting firm, engaged largely in street grading and in other public works, showed that Mexican laborers were paid from 221 to 30 cents an hour in the vicinity of the city. In San Antonio, Tex., street laborers are paid $1.25 and $1.50 a day. They are mostly Mexican immigrants or of Mexican descent. A number of Mexicans are employed by the Government upon its irrigation projects in the southwest. They were said to be receiving the same pay as other laborers—that is, from $2 to $2.50 for an eight-hour day-but it was evident from talk with the foremen that where uniform wages are paid, as in this instance, other laborers are much preferred.

In the city colonies of Mexican immigrants, especially in families where children have attended public school, evidences begin to appear of a differentiation of employments, and a rise of the more intelligent to a better class of positions. In Los Angeles immigrant Mexicans are working in slaughterhouses and in meat shops. One boy is foreman of a bed spring factory, receiving $18 a week. A number of girls work in canneries and at packing crackers. One girl is clerk in a 10-cent store that caters to, Mexican trade. A few women are said to be employed in clothing factories, though none were actually found in this occupation. At Austin, Tex., a number of Mexican girls work in a candy factory, where they are said to be more regular and to have better morals than white help.

But Mexican women and children do not usually work in factories in the United States. This is partly because husbands and fathers oppose it, having a peasant prejudice to their women leaving home, and it is partly because these women lack the foundations of industrial training. For the same reason Mexicans do not become domestic

servants. Women of the better laboring class will not leave home, and the immigrant women have so little conception of domestic arrangements in the United States that the task of training them would be too heavy for American housewives. The fairly well-trained servants of Mexico do not emigrate. Even in that country the Chinese are often the only competent and trustworthy servants obtainable by American residents.

CHARACTER, AND COMPARISON WITH OTHER NATIONALITIES.

The Mexican laborer is unambitious, listless, physically weak, irregular, and indolent. On the other hand, he is docile, patient, usually orderly in camp, fairly intelligent under competent supervision, obedient, and cheap. If he were active and ambitious, he would be less tractable and would cost more. His strongest point is his willingness to work for a low wage.

Though Mexicans lack ambition, they are alert in certain ways. In the Colorado beet country they are said to be the first to reach a section where higher wages are paid. "Quick to catch on," was the expression used in characterizing them. A California contractor, who had very broad experience with laborers of this nationality, said: "They have more intelligence than you think at first. They learn quickly, so that they can do anything in asphalt work." Other employers, both in Mexico and in the United States, noted similar qualities in their laborers; the usual opinion, however, is that they are dull.

Though careless in some ways about money, the Mexicans are very tenacious of their rights. Many disputes arise between them and the farmers employing them on contract in the beet fields. Their suspicions of the fairness of their employer seem easily aroused, and they will quit a job at once if they think they are being cheated. One employer said the Mexicans were always trying "to do" their boss, but this opinion of them is not common. Many of them drink to excess, and lose time after a spree; but they never attack a man placed over them, and they settle their rows among themselves.

Ordinarily their credit is poor, and commissary managers complain of losing much money through Mexican patrons. One storekeeper, in a Colorado mining camp, tried the experiment of extending to some of the old settled and more reliable Mexicans credit to the amount of $25 on thirty days' time; but the men slowly fell behind in their accounts and would not pay up, and the experiment was abandoned after six months. This manager said he would trust ten Italians rather than one Mexican. On the other hand, when the payment of a debt depends upon a sentimental obligation,

or something more than everyday commercial honor, it is generally paid. The assistant general manager of one of the Texas railroads said that he had often loaned a dollar or two to Mexican workmen, who chanced to be stranded in the city, and who had at one time been employed by the road, and that they had never, in a single instance, failed to repay him. In one case a sick man, with a family, on his way back to Mexico borrowed $2, which was given as an act of charity without expectation of its being returned. But a few weeks or months later, when the man was well again and had returned to work, he stepped into an office of the same railroad several hundred miles off, and handed the money to the agent to be forwarded to the lender. Money lenders in Mexico seem to loan money without much security to intending emigrants-though the actual conditions under which these loans are made could not be discovered. But probably in such cases there is some means of exacting payment in case the emigrant ever returns to his home and family.

Mexicans who have families are said generally to be faithful to their marriage relations. Yet this common testimony of employers and foremen and those dealing most with these laborers was directly contradicted by other men in a position to be equally well informed. The devotion of the Mexican laborer to his family while it is with him, and his desire to return to it in Mexico, are everywhere recognized by Americans. The bishop of an American Catholic diocese, himself a Spaniard, said that as a rule the immigrants sent money to their families left in Mexico and ultimately either returned to them or brought them to the United States; but that cases occurred where a man deserted his family in Mexico and took up with some woman of his class in the United States.

Wherever immigrant Mexican laborers are employed in any numbers in the Southwest postmasters reported that they sent money back to Mexico. Usually the postal orders were for small sums, but often they made a respectable total in the aggregate. From Rocky Ford, Colo., some $300 a month is thus sent. By reason of the fact that the laborers there work but for a season, most of them doubtless hoard their earnings (such as they do not spend currently) and carry them back with them on their return. Near Gallup, N. Mex., mine and railroad laborers send money home through the post-office, and from northern Arizona, as an educated Mexican who acted as correspondent for illiterate laborers expressed it, very much of what they don't spend" is thus sent home. The postmistress at Flagstaff, Ariz., said that making out postal orders for Mexicans formed a considerable part of the work of the office. Some officials, though remarking that the total sum was small, noted it as a new item or a growing item in their post-office transactions. The postoffice seems to be used by Mexicans for money transfers the more

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