Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/372

334 there is a greater tax upon the heart and the human machine generally. Americans who take up their residence on that plateau find that they must live a little more slowly than in this country, that it is better to take the mid-day siesta, like the Mexicans. If they persist in keeping up the old gait they find that they grow old very fast, that it does not pay. If, on the other hand, they choose to live in the tropical belt they find that here, too, because of the greater heat and moisture, it is not wise for them to work as fast as they were wont to do at home.

If the average Mexican has less working capacity than the average American it is largely for this reason, and for the other reason that the Mexican laborer is invariably half starved. When the American laborer meets the Mexican on the latter's own ground he is quite often outdone. Few Americans engage in physical labor either on the plateau or in the tropics. The laborer of no nation can outdo the Mexican in carrying heavy loads or in feats of endurance, while in the tropics the Mexican, if he is not starved, is supreme. The American negro, the Asiatic coolie, the athletic Yaqui from the north, have all been tried out against the native of the tropical states and all have been found wanting, while there is no question as to the inferiority of the working capacity of men of European descent under tropical conditions.

So much for the working capacity of Mexicans, which, in this extremely utilitarian age, is placed high among the virtues of a people. As to intelligence, in spite of the fact that it was always the policy of the Spanish conquerers to hold the native Aztecs in subordinate positions, enough of the latter have succeeded in forcing their way to the top to prove that they were quite as