lock them up at night, beat them, starve them while they work, neglect them when they are sick, pay them nothing, kill them at the last, and then raise their hands in righteous horror when a poor fellow steals an extra tortilla or an ear of corn!
In Mexico plowing is often done with a crooked stick or with the hoe. The backs of men take the place of freight wagons and express vehicles. In short, Mexico is woefully behind in the use of modern machinery. For which the Mexican is accused of being unprogressive.
But the common people do not choose how much machinery shall be used in the country. The master does that. American promoters in Mexico are little more progressive in the use of machinery than are Mexican promoters, and when they are they frequently lose money by it. Why? Because flesh and blood are cheaper in Mexico than machinery. A peon is cheaper to own than a horse. A peon is cheaper than a plow. A hundred women can be bought for the price of a grist mill. It is because the master has made it so. If by some means the price of flesh and blood were suddenly to be shoved up above that of dead steel, machinery would flow into Mexico as fast as it would flow into any new industrial field in the United States or any other country.
Do not think that the Mexican is too stupid to operate machinery when he is put to it. There are some lines in which machine labor is cheaper than hand labor and we have only to look to these lines to learn that the Mexican can handle machinery quite as easily as any other people. Native labor operates the great cotton mills of Mexico almost exclusively, for example. For that matter, mechanical cunning of a high order is shown
