away servant to return to the employ of his creditor on the ground that to abandon employment violated articles of the penal code and the law of servants.[1] If a trial resulted, the servant appealed to the Constitution for protection. Efforts were then regularly made to settle the case by compromise. Masters feared that if the Constitution was held to apply all servants might repudiate their debts. Servants were indisposed to run the chance of having the criminal sentence declared against them.
There were many variant contracts in the north as well as in the south. For example, in the district of Comonfort, municipality of Chamacuero in Coahuila, three sorts of share farmers were found. Renters might receive from the hacienda owner the use of the land, the seed, a yoke of oxen, and a load of grain to be paid back at harvest time. The renter paid one-fifth of the expenses in harvesting and received from the harvest one-fifth less than his half. By another plan the yield was shared equally, the owner furnishing the land, the seed, an ox, and half of all expenses including those of the harvest. If the laborer received land, seed, a yoke of oxen, one peso 50 centavos in cash, and a load of corn, these last not to be paid back, and did all the work, he received one-fourth of the crop.[2]
During the progress of the Diaz régime there were,
- ↑ Penal Code, Art. 407; Law of Servants, Article 10.
- ↑ The description of the labor contract in Coahuila is well detailed in Informes y documentos relativos a comercio interior y exterior, agricultura é industrias. Number 10, April, 1886, Mexico, p. 92 et seq. From this series the other illustrations given above are taken. A very excellent discussion of wage conditions in Mexico in 1891 is given in Matias Romero, op. cit., pp. 125-45.
