Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/160

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150
A STUDY OF MEXICO.

service of a donkey for two days—going, returning, and waiting for a purchaser—and the services or labor of an able-bodied man, as owner or attendant, apportioned to from three to five donkeys for a corresponding length of time. The gross earnings of man and donkey can not, therefore, well be in excess of twenty-five cents per day; from which, if anything is to be deducted for the original cost of the wood, its collection and preparation, and for the subsistence of the man and beast, the net profit will hardly be appreciable. Or, in other words, able-bodied men, with animals, are willing to work, and work laboriously, at Santa Fé, in the United States, for simple subsistence; and a subsistence, furthermore, inferior in quality and quantity to the rations generally given to acknowledged paupers in most American poor-houses; and yet no high-priced laborer in the United States has any more fear of the industrial competition of the pauper laborers of Santa Fé than he has of the competition of the paupers who are the objects of charitable support in his own immediate locality.

One of the largest, best-conducted, and (by repute) most profitable of the cotton-factories of Mexico, and one of the largest manufacturing establishments in the country, is the "Hercules" mill, located near Querétaro, 152 miles from the capital.