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230 times severe. When angry they heap abuse on the peons and even maltreat them physically. In some instances they have, in times not so distant, even taken the lives of native laborers who have incensed them, and have gone scot free."

August 27, 1909, in an article on "The Enganchado," the Herald said, in part:

"The enganchados are guarded most carefully, for there is the ever present danger of their running away on the slightest opportunity. Often the cabos are cruel in their treatment, a fact which is to be condemned. *** It is not in keeping here to mention the abuses which are alleged to have been practiced against the enganchados, the treatment of men so shamelessly that they die, the raping of the women, the deprivation of the laborers of any means of bathing, and the unsanitary condition of their houses, leading on to noxious diseases. *** No planter who knows the real history of the system, or the inside facts of the neighboring plantations, will deny for a moment the worst stories of the enganchado are true,

"Plantation men do not take the enganchado labor because they like it. Nor do they prefer it to any other, even the lowest. But there is a certain advantage in it, as one planter said to the writer, with a queer thrill in his voice: 'When you've got 'em they're yours, and have to do what you want them to do. If they don't, you can kill them.'"

Such corroboration from a subsidized supporter of the system itself would seem rather embarrassing to those individuals who were so zealous as publicly to announce that my portrayal of Mexican slavery was a fabrication. It will be seen that my exposures of Mexican slavery were not the first to be circulated in print; they were merely the first to be circulated widely, and they went into considerably more detail than anything that had gone before. The little item that I have just quoted admits practically all the worst features which I dealt with in my articles.