of them men, the door is locked on them and they are left to the mercy of the men.
Often honest, hard-working Mexicans are taken into Valle Nacional with their wives and children. If the wife is attractive in appearance she goes to the planter or to one or more of the bosses. The children see their mother being taken away and they know what is to become of her. The husband knows it, but if he makes objection he is answered with a club. Time and time again I have been told that this was so, by masters, by slaves, by officials. And the women who are thrust into the sardine box must take care of themselves.
One-fifth of the slaves of Valle Nacional are women; one-third are boys under fifteen. The boys work in the fields with the men. They cost less, they last well, and at some parts of the work, such as planting the tobacco, they are more active and hence more useful. Boys as young as six sometimes are seen in the field planting tobacco. Women are worked in the field, too, especially during the harvest time, but their chief work is as household drudges. They serve the master and the mistress, if there is a mistress, and they grind the corn and cook the food of the male slaves. In every slave house I visited I found from three to a dozen women grinding corn. It is all done by hand with two pieces of stone called a metate. The flat stone is placed on the floor, the woman kneels beside it, bends almost double and works the stone roller up and down. The movement is something like that of a woman washing clothes, but it is much harder. I asked the presidente of Valle Nacional why the planters did not purchase cheap mills for grinding the corn, or why they did not combine and buy a mill among them, instead of breaking
