developed industries in Europe and the United States. Prices were also extortionate. Ice cream sold at the equivalent of 45 cents United States currency a plate, chewing gum at five cents a stick, pears at 40 cents apiece, and small tin cans of fruit at $1.50 apiece. Yet, for the time being, the most feverish prosperity was evident everywhere. The Chinese laundrymen used automobiles to deliver their customers' shirts, mestiza market women drove up and down the fashionable promenades of Mérida, the state capital, in coaches, and the local hotels charged prices far above those of similar character in New York or Paris. For the former peon, however, though the prices of what he consumed had also risen, the revolution, because of his increased wages, was at least a temporary advantage.
The old régime once upset is never reestablished but it seems clear that coming back to work in time of peace, in many parts of Mexico, will necessitate painful sacrifice on the part of the laborer of many of the exceptional conditions he enjoyed during the upheaval of the revolution. It is equally clear, however, that the low wage level of pre-revolutionary days has gone forever.
The labor union movement in Mexico was only beginning in the years before the revolution. The government was indifferent to the rights of labor and discouraged rather than favored the efforts of the workmen to improve their conditions. The first important development occurred among railway laborers, whose union dates from 1904. There developed also, in connection with the nationalization of the railroads, a movement for the nationalization of the railway service. A
