Wages, on the average, in Mexico, are from one half to two thirds less than what are paid in similar occupations in the United States; and yet in comparison with the United States the price of almost all products of industry in Mexico is high. Thus, in the city of Mexico, where wages rule higher than in almost any part of the republic, the average daily wages in some of the principal occupations during the year 1885 were as follow: Laborers, porters, etc., forty to fifty cents; masons, seventy-five cents to one dollar; assistants, thirty-seven and a half to fifty cents; teamsters, fifty cents; blacksmiths, one dollar and fifty cents; printers, one dollar; saddle and harness makers, sixty-two cents; tailors, seventy-five cents; painters, eighty-seven and a half cents; weavers in the cotton-mills at Tepic and Santiago, four dollars per week of seventy-two hours; spinners, three dollars ditto. In the cotton-mills in the vicinity of the city of Mexico a much higher average is reported. The operatives in the woolen manufactories of Mexico are in receipt of higher average wages than those in almost any other domestic industry; and Mexican woolen fabrics are comparatively cheap and of good style and quality. Underground miners, at the great mines of Zacatecas and Guanajuato, receive an average of nine dollars per week of sixty hours; underground laborers, three dollars ditto; agricultural laborers in the district of San Blas average nineteen cents per day, with an allowance of sixteen pounds of corn per week. On a hacienda near Regla, in Central Mexico, comprising an area some eighteen miles in length by twelve in its greatest breadth and including an artificial lake two miles in its principal dimensions, the wages paid in 1883 were six cents a day for boys and thirty-seven cents for the best class of adults. In other districts the wages of agriculturists are reported as from eight to ten dollars per month, with rations.
The following are the retail prices of some of the principal articles of domestic consumption in Mexico: Fresh beef, twelve to eighteen cents per pound; lard, twenty to twenty-five cents; coffee, twenty-five cents; sugar, unrefined, twelve to twenty cents; table-salt, six cents; potatoes (city of Mexico), twenty-five cents per dozen; flour, ten to twelve cents per pound; corn-meal, not usually in the market, unless imported; candles, thirty to fifty cents; unbleached cottons, ten to fifteen cents per yard; calicoes, fifteen to twenty cents per yard. Utensils of tin and copper are fifty per cent dearer than in the United States; while the retail prices of most articles of foreign hardware (and none other are used) are double, treble, and even four times as much as in the localities whence they are imported. "Between the extremes, a modest and economical lady's wardrobe will cost, at the city of Mexico, about fifty per cent more than the same style in the United States. This, however, is modified by the climate, which requires no change of fashions to suit the seasons, as the same outfit is equally appropriate for every month in the year."—(Strother.)
