tracts or not. They all said they had been refused permission to leave the house unless they paid back the money which they were told they owed.'
good work of the police
"From the time that the first notice of the infraction of the labor law was received by the police officials at the fifth comisaria until the prosecution of Hernandez was put under way their activity has demonstrated beyond any question how far the government authorities are from connivance in labor abuses with which this country has been charged.
"The Mexican law provides punishment by five years imprisonment for offenses of this character against minors, and expressly forbids the signing of contracts by persons under legal age binding themselves to work. As there is no legal detention without process of law, the prospects for a severe punishment of the man Hernandez, if the assertions of the lad are found correct, seems certain, as he is likely to be made an example of for the benefit of other labor contractors disposed to be careless of their methods."I doubt if I could do better than to end this chapter with quotations from official reports of the United States government itself. Cold-bloodedly as were the succeeding paragraphs written, the statements that they contain are yet exceedingly corroborative. They are from Bulletin No. 38 of the United States Department of Labor, published in January, 1902. I should like to quote more extensively, but I take only a few paragraphs from pages 42, 43 and 44.
"In a great many (Mexican) states where tropical products are raised the native residents are employed under a contract which is compulsory on their part, owing to their being in debt to the planter. ***
"The system of enforced labor is carried out to its logical sequence in the sisal-grass plantations of Yucatan. There, on each large plantation, is to be found a body of peons, called criados or sirvientes (servants), who, with their families, live on the plantations, and in many cases have been born there.