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CHAPTER VII.

 Manufacturing in Mexico — Restricted use of labor-saving machinery — Scarcity of fuel and water — Extent of Mexican handicrafts — Number of factories using power — Manufacture of pottery and leather — Restriction of employments for women — The pauper-labor argument as applied to Mexico — Rates of wages — Fallacy of abstract statements in respect to wages — Scarcity of labor in Mexico — Retail prices of commodities — The point of lowest wages in the United States — Analysis of a leading Mexican cotton-factory — Free trade and protection not matters of general interest in Mexico — Characteristics of the Mexican tariff system — Mines and mining — The United States, not Mexico, the great silver-producing country — Popular ideas about old Spanish mines without foundation.

Manufactures. — Apart from handicrafts there is very little of manufacturing, in the sense of using labor-saving machinery, in Mexico; and, in a country so destitute of water and fuel, it is difficult to see how there ever can be. In very many cases where the employment of machinery is indispensable, mule or donkey power seems to be the only resource; as is the case in the majority of the mines and silver-reducing works of the country — not a pound of ore, for example, being crushed through the agency of any other power,