for from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent less, but the operatives were unable to buy their goods at these stores.
The operatives were not content. The might of the company towered like a mountain above them, and behind and above the company towered the government. "Behind the company stood Diaz himself, for Diaz was not only the government, he was also a heavy stockholder in the company. Yet the operatives prepared to fight. Secretly they organized a union, El Circulo de Obreros," which means "The Circle of Workers," holding their meetings not en masse, but in small groups in their homes, in order that the authorities might not learn of their purposes.
Immediately upon the company learning that the workers were discussing their troubles it took action against them. Through the police authorities it issued a general order forbidding any of the operatives from receiving any visitors whatsoever, even their own relatives being barred, the penalty for violation being the city jail. Persons who were suspected of having signed the roll of the union were put in prison at once, and a weekly newspaper which was known to be friendly to the workers was swooped down upon, suppressed and the printing plant confiscated.
At this juncture a strike was called in the cotton-mills in the city of Puebla, in an adjoining state. The mills of Puebla were owned by the same company as owned the Rio Blanco mills, and the operatives thereof were living under similar conditions to those at Rio Blanco. The Puebla workers went on strike and the company knowing that they had no resources behind them, decided, as one of its agents told me, "to let nature take
