comprising an area some eighteen miles in length by twelve in its greatest breadth, and including an artificial lake two miles in its principal dimensions, the wages paid in 1883 were six cents a day for boys and thirty-seven cents for the best class of adults.
All statements of this nature have, however, but little of significance unless account at the same time is taken of the value or purchasing power of the wages received, the needs of the wage recipient, and the character and value of the work which the wages purchase; and when these matters are given due consideration it will be undoubtedly found that wages in Mexico, as everywhere else, sustain a pretty constant ratio to the value of the services rendered, the inefficient and primitive methods used, and the necessities of the laborers; and that if they seem to a citizen of the United States to be extraordinarily low, it should be remembered that the Mexican peasant, living in a mild and in part tropical climate, has not the stimulus of prospective want which exists elsewhere to incite to industrial effort, and is not required to labor to meet expenditures for fuel, clothing, food, and habitation, which in temperate and colder countries are essential for comfort and even for existence;[1] or, in other words, his indus-
- ↑ "Great stress is laid upon the capacity for cheap living of the Chinese coolie or Indian ryot. I believe that the Yucatecan labrador
