kidnapping of women and of men. Hundreds of half drunken men are picked up about the pulque shops of Mexico City every season, put under lock and key, and later hurried off to Valle Nacional. Children, also, are regularly kidnapped for the Valle Nacional trade. The official records of Mexico City say that during the year ending September 1, 1908, 360 little boys between the ages of six and twelve disappeared on the streets. Some of these have later been located in Valle Nacional.
During my first Mexican trip El Imparcial, a leading daily newspaper of Mexico, printed a story of a boy of seven who had disappeared while his mother was looking into the windows of a pawn shop. A frantic search failed to locate him; he was an only child, and as a result of sorrow the father drank himself to death in a few days' time, while the mother went insane and also died. Three months later, the boy, ragged and footsore, struggled up the steps and knocked at the door that had been his parents'. He had been kidnapped and sold to a tobacco planter. But he had attained the well-nigh impossible. With a boy of nine, he had eluded the plantation guards, and, by reason of their small size, the two had escaped observation, and, by stealing a canoe, had reached EI Hule. By slow stages, begging their food on the way, the baby tramps had reached home.
The typical life story of a labor agent I heard in Cordoba on my way to the valley. It was told me first by a negro contractor from New Orleans, who had been in the country for about fifteen years. It was told me again by the landlord of my hotel. Later, it was confirmed by several tobacco planters in the valley. The story is this:
Four years ago Daniel T———, an unsuccessful Spanish adventurer, arrived, penniless, in Cordoba. In a few
