occupations, though a few are employed as coachmen. In Mexico it has sometimes been necessary to place Chinese laborers together in a mine entirely separate from the Mexicans.

The attitude of Americans of Mexican descent toward immigrants from Mexico seems to be friendly, except where there is direct competition between the two. In Colorado the former regard the latter as interlopers, though they are not actively hostile to them. New Mexicans complain that the immigrants can work cheaper, because they have no families with them. The New Mexican is different from the Old Mexican, in that he sometimes objects to working with Negroes. Another evidence of nascent social consciousness is that he considers himself very much above the immigrant, and does not want to be confounded with him in public opinion. This sentiment is observed in parts of New Mexico where labor is so scarce that there is no opposition by the natives to immigration from Mexico on economic grounds. In Texas, where there are labor organizations among resident Mexicans, the latter oppose an inflow of immigrants likely to lower wages; and in some cases they have lodged complaints of alleged violations of the contract labor law.

SOME EFFECTS IN MEXICO.

Incidentally the effects upon Old Mexico of Mexican emigration to the United States have been referred to in treating of the influence of emigration upon the laborer. But there remain to be pointed out some of the economic and social effects felt by that country as a whole. Labor is scarce in Mexico; that is, not adequate to the demand of the country's expanding industries. In spite of the cry for more labor in the United States in the summer of 1907, Mexican immigrants were being shipped back to the State of Sonora from El Paso at a wage equal to that they would be paid on American railways near the frontier. The Mexican newspapers are filled with discussions of the labor shortage, and contain many dispatches telling of crops unharvested or railways and public works delayed because of the impossibility of securing workers. These reports are from all parts of the country. The authorities in some of the central States at times suspend entirely the right to hire laborers within their boundaries for work in other States. This was done in Querétaro in July, 1907, and in October of the same year a similar provision was revoked in Zacatecas.

Therefore the emigration to the United States, though it withdraws from the labor market but a small fraction of the total supply, may have a decided influence upon wages. Not only does it make the existing shortage more acute, but the influence of returning emigrants is to educate local labor to higher wage demands. An official of a large employing corporation in Mexico, himself an American, said: "The

effect of emigration will finally be to make our wages as high as those in the north. To retain labor so far as we can in the southern portion of the Republic we and other employers of labor have had to advance wages considerably."

This rise in wages exceeds in ratio, to the rate previously paid, the rise of wages in the United States. The increase is not to be attributed solely to emigration. It is perhaps as largely due to mining development, to railway building, and to other local demands for workers. But the movement of labor northward is more dramatic and obvious than its silent absorption by domestic industries, and is therefore given relatively more importance in common opinion.

Within a few years railways have raised the rate of pay for unskilled labor from 50 cents to 62 cents (Mexican) in the vicinities of the City of Mexico, Guadalajara, and Aguas Calientes. These are the cheap labor districts of the Republic. A railroad contractor, who was employing several thousand men on construction work on the west coast, said that he was paying common labor as high as $1.25 (Mexican) a day, where he had been paying 50 cents (Mexican) five years ago. This contractor has imported Asiatics, but prefers Mexicans when they can be obtained.

Wages are much lower away from the railways, and even upon railways not affording direct connection with the north. While skilled miners earn $1.50 (Mexican) a day, according to their employers, around Zacetecas, they are paid but 75 cents (Mexican) a day 60 miles distant in the interior. As recently as 1906, upon the east coast north of Tampico, in country not yet connected with Monterey and Laredo, laborers employed in railway construction were paid but 40 and 50 cents (20 and 25 cents United States currency) a day. This was about the plantation rate. Immigrants at El Paso often reported that their wages on the hacienda where they had been employed were "dos reales" (equivalent to 12 cents in American money) a day, and this sum was often received in supplies. Five years ago farm laborers in the vicinity of Monterey, within a few hours' ride from the Texas border, were paid a conventional rate of 40 cents (silver) a day. In 1907, even as far south as Aguas Calientes, at least one large estate owner was reported to be paying 60 cents (silver) a day for farm hands. This wage was probably exceptional, since it was paid by an unusually progressive proprietor, who had grappled with the problem of labor scarcity in an intelligent way and was experimenting with steam plows and other modern agricultural implements. As a rule farm wages rise more slowly than those of unskilled labor in other industries, and this rule applies with the more force in Mexico on account of peonage and the patriarchal organization of agriculture. In fact, the "hacendados " are reported to make little effort to keep their labor in face of higher wages elsewhere,

except by preventing open recruiting in their vicinity. Wages are so much a matter of custom in Mexico that to change them is like amending the constitution in another country. So cases are cited where large landowners, formerly rated very wealthy and accustomed to a liberal scale of living, are on the verge of bankruptcy because the labor has drifted away, rendering their estates unproductive. Entire villages have migrated to other parts of Mexico, where employment has been found in the mines or on the railways, or have gone to the United States. This conventional wage rate is uneconomic and unjust to the more industrious workers. An American agricultural expert, who was employed to manage a large "hacienda " in Mexico. during the introduction of citrus fruits as a main crop, said that when he first went on the place every workman was credited with 40 cents (20 cents United States currency) a day, without regard for his efficiency and industry. Some men were good workers, others simply loafed and talked, but each received the same pay at the end of the month. When the new manager began to discriminate in wages and discharge the loafers, it was at first considered a cruel and unjust innovation, but ultimately the men who really cared to work saw the advantage of the new system, and much more plished by a few well-paid laborers than had formerly been accomplished by many half-paid "peones.

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Ultimately, perhaps, labor scarcity will force most large proprietors to adopt the same system. Many intelligent Mexicans consider that before this happens the large estates will be broken up and the peon become a true peasant proprietor. This is regarded by many liberal-minded people as a most desirable outcome of present conditions, and there are some who welcome the emigration to the United States for this reason.

The rise of wages and lack of labor in Mexico are being met by other measures in which the United States is not unconcerned. Large employers, especially mining companies and railways-but also planters, more particularly in the tropical portions of the Republic are importing many thousand Chinese and Japanese. There is no effective political opposition to this immigration, and very little criticism of the policy of importing alien labor of another race upon civic or upon social grounds. If the Indian has any sentiment with regard to the question it is unexpressed. Wages are traditionally low in Mexico, and in the face of a large immigration they would probably resume their former level, thus checking the inflow of foreign labor. Other things being equal, native labor is preferred to Asiatic. At the rubber growers' convention in Mexico, in October, 1907, the discussion brought out clearly that Mexican labor was better than Japanese in this industry. After several years' experience, native mining labor is given the preference to imported. A large railway contractor expressed the same preference after

equally extensive experience. All this means, in a word, that Mexican labor is cheaper than Asiatic when it can be obtained. Meantime, if the economic status of the native laborer improves, there will probably come an increase in his intelligence and in his political force, and with it, awakened opposition and power to resist the influx of Orientals.

No very definite effects of their experience in the United States, upon the social ideals of the laborers returning to Mexico, is as yet reported. There are some labor organizations in the latter country, but mostly among a class of workers that does not emigrate. The Government supervises the relations of employers and employees somewhat strictly. During the cotton operatives' strike in 1906, and the more recent mining labor difficulties at Cananea, near the American frontier in northern Sonora, the authorities intervened so sternly as to repress disorder and force the men back to work at the old terms. This intervention was partly to prevent an opportunity for disaffected political elements to take advantage of the crisis. But when there was talk of a strike on one of the large railway systems, the authorities, after an investigation, decided that some of the demands of the employees were just and directed that they be granted. The essence of these later difficulties has been the demand of Mexicans that they be paid the same wage as Americans for the same work; and the Government supports this contention when convinced that Mexican labor does render the same service; but as decidedly rejects it when equal efficiency is not shown. The Mexican laborer who emigrates to the United States usually comes from the agricultural classes, ignorant of the labor movement, and his work in this country does not bring him in contact with trade unionism except at the mines, where he finds it either arrayed against him or apathetic to his interests. In any case, no effort has been made by American unionists to organize the Mexicans, or to dispose them favorably toward labor organizations. An exception to this attitude is found when American-born Mexicans are numerous in any trade. At Tuscon, Ariz., the builders' helpers, mostly or entirely Spanish speaking, have a union, and at Laredo, Tex., there is a labor paper published in Spanish, and an active branch of the American Federation of Labor largely composed of Mexican or MexicanAmerican members. During the coal strike in Colorado in 1903-4, when Mexicans were employed as strike breakers, they would join the union when urged, and remained faithful to the labor cause so long as they were paid strike benefits. A small income without work seems much better to these people than a large income with work. Yet nearly all the Mexicans engaged in this disturbance, either as union men or as strike breakers, were American born.

If labor organization in Mexico is influenced by returning emigrants to the United States it seems likely that the emigrants will have

received their new ideas indirectly through these Spanish-speaking unions of workers on the American side of the border rather than directly from the organizers and leaders of the labor movement in Mexico.

Among the Latin-American people more than among Americans labor agitation is apt to end in political agitation and, as already suggested, the Government of Mexico, with this fear in view, keeps a close watch over the incipient enterprises of labor reformers. Conditions are not favorable in Mexico to a socialist propaganda. Mexican labor has not yet evolved to that peculiar kind of class consciousness that makes the mind receptive to socialist theories. The masses are ready, perhaps, to adopt any programme handed out to them by a vigorous and ready spoken leader; but they would adopt it on authority, not as a personal conviction, and desert it with perfect unconcern as soon as the leader had fallen.

Therefore, because their contact with American workers is purely one of locality, not of intellectual sympathy, and because they are as yet a people with but rudimentary social experience, the emigrants from Mexico do not carry home with them a burden of new thoughts and ideals likely to revolutionize the intellectual condition of native workers.

In time, of course, if this current of labor continues to flow to and fro between Mexico and the United States social ideas gathered from industrial surroundings in the latter country will begin to permeate the thought of the working classes south of the border. But this process promises at present to be so slow as to be negligible in a study of existing conditions or of those of the immediate future.

In other respects the laborer returns not uninfluenced by his sojourn in another land. His knowledge of ideal things may remain the same, but his knowledge of concrete things has expanded. He has become accustomed to better—at least different-clothing, more varied food, a generally wider material horizon. His consumption has grown. And by his newly acquired wants and his example he is increasing the consuming impulse of the whole Mexican laboring class. It is somewhat to the advantage of Americans that the things he has learned to want are mostly the product of our own country and that the increment to the market is in the demand for American goods. Mexico, too, is benefited by this increased consumption, for it is paid for by additional labor, which develops the country. There is at least a shadow of ground for the contention of some optimistic residents of Mexico that the labor supply of the country is not really lessened by emigration to the United States, because the new needs of the returning laborers make all laborers work the harder. Even if this compensating outcome is not so immediate as these people hold it will probably come ultimately in the greater aggregate laboring power of the nation.