Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/156

138 the average for the whole industry being not less than $1.00.

The payrolls of one of the largest American construction companies operating in Mexico show that the prevailing wages of their peon laborers in 1909 and 1910 was $1.25. In 1911, the average was almost $1.50. In 1912-13, the average fell gradually, reaching $1.25 in the latter year. These figures are in Mexican currency, equal to about half the same amounts in United States gold.

The tendency of wages, both the nominal money payments and the actual return, during the Diaz régime, so far as indicated by the information available, seems to have been steadily upward. As a rule, the rates of payment were lower in the more thickly settled uplands. The highest average payments, these individual cases, like the general survey previously cited, seem to show, were found in the unhealthy lowlands and in the northern states where proximity to the United States and the prevalence of undertakings by foreign capital appear to have had a favorable effect. As a rule, the wages of laborers working for foreign corporations in the northern states were higher than those paid elsewhere. The mining and oil companies showed the highest average. The textile mills paid less but still at a rate appreciably above that for agricultural labor.

The wage conditions created by the revolution were so abnormal that a study of them does not allow any