in years of drought, it was insufficient for the needs of the masses whose chief articles of food are corn and beans, and importation was necessary. In the year 1907–08 the importation of cereals was valued at less than one million dollars, as compared with an average of two million for each of the two preceding years, while in the following year it dropped to only one-tenth of a million.[1] In October, 1909, removal of the tariff on importation of grains was decreed and Diaz was authorized by the legislature to spend a million pesos for corn and beans to relieve the masses. In the year 1909–10, the value of imported cereals was five million dollars.
In 1906, several thousand miners at the great American-owned copper works in the state of Sonora, struck for $2.50 per day and an 8-hour shift. Troops were sent in and hundreds of miners killed, causing excitement on both sides of the border. In 1907, a large number of employees of the French-owned Orizaba cotton mills in the state of Vera Cruz, went on strike for a wage of 75 cents per day for day men, 40 cents for women and 30 cents for children, with a reduction of working hours from 16 to 14 per day. To break this strike, the workers were forbidden to use company wells, their only source of water. When this had stirred up some little violence, troops were brought in and many workers slaughtered. Several freight cars of bodies were rushed to Vera Cruz to be thrown into the ocean.[2] In his opening message to Congress, 1907, Diaz deplored property losses due to this disorder and promised to increase armed forces to preserve law and order.[3]
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