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Rh grant the request of R. P. Davis and F. Villademoros, signers of a petition to him to allow the laborers to be shipped out. With their wives, children, and all their worldly possessions they form a motley camp near the station.

"In their petition, Davis and Villademoros claim that the railroad company is suffering large losses by the detention of the laborers and that many of the latter fear if they sign contracts they will be shipped to sugar and coffee plantations and held until the expiration of the specified terms. 

Governor Landa refused the request on the ground that the law requires such a formality to protect the laborers, while the reason for waiving it did not appear logical."

The Mexican Herald furnishes more corroboration than the Mexican Record. Commenting editorially upon the announcements of "Barbarous Mexico," it said, August 27, 1909:

"In this journal during recent years, and in many Mexican papers as well, the abuses of the peonage system, and the ill treatment of los enganchados or contract laborers in some regions, have been most frankly dealt with. The enlightened Governor of Chiapas has denounced the evils of peonage in his state and has received the thanks of the patriotic press of the country. That there are dark spots in agricultural labor conditions, no fair-minded person of wide information seeks to deny."

About the same time Paul Hudson, general manager of the paper, was quoted in a New York interview as saying that my exposures "do not admit of categorical denial." And in the Mexican Herald of May 9, 1910, J. Torrey Conner, writing in praise of General Diaz, says: "Slavery, doubtless, is known to exist in Mexico—that is generally understood." In February, 1909, in an editorial item upon the political situation in the state of Morelos, the Mexican Herald went so far as to admit the killing of debt laborers by their masters. To quote it exactly:

"It is undeniable that their (the planters') management is at