"If an enganchado rebels or is insolent or lazy, the lithe rod in the hands of the 'boss' of the gang winds around him, and he soon understands that he must fulfill his part of the contract. If he runs away, a reward of ten dollars is paid to whoever brings him back. His clothes are taken away from him, and he is clad in a gunny sack with holes cut for arms and legs."
Mr. Stevens' defense of this system, as published in the same number of the same magazine, is:
"Outside of the restrictions of dogmatic controversy there is only one phase that makes a wrong right, and that is necessity. A legal enforcement of a contract by using physical force over the person is in itself wrong. On the other hand, legislation now prohibiting contract labor would work a greater wrong, for it would destroy millions of investments, would retard a most beneficent and rapid development of the richest region on this continent, if not in the world, and would, by reflexes, work more harm to the very people it would intend to aid than an indefinite continuance of the present conditions."
This is exactly the logic the slave-driving cotton planters of our southern states used before the Civil War. It will hardly "go" with anyone who has not money invested in Mexican plantations which use enganchados.
I do not wish to tire the reader, but, aside from the fact that I have been most violently attacked, I have a reason for wishing to go a little deeper into this matter of critics and corroboration. Let us get right down into Mexico itself, down to the very newspapers that are paid a specified sum each week in exchange for manufacturing public opinion favorable to President Diaz and his system. In Mexico City there are two daily newspapers printed in English, the Herald and the Record. Both are prosperous and well edited, and both are open defenders of the Mexican government. The Herald, especially, repeatedly denounced my articles.
