Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/412

398 is a surplus of labor in the market even at these rates. Then the laboring classes of Mexico live in a manner which no other population—the Chinese, perhaps, alone excepted—would willingly endure, and they can afford to work for a mere fraction of what would support a European or American laborer's family. For these and other reasons, I think that there is no immediate prospect of a large industrial immigration to Mexico from any part of the world.

But, on the other hand, does she need it? I do not think so. Mexico has to-day a population of eight million, five hundred thousand people—and that, too, after fifty years of wars and incessant revolutions, which have forced into the army the bulk of the able-bodied men of the nation, depopulated the rural districts, and reduced the great mass of the community to the most abject poverty. Its population equals that of the United States in proportion to its present area; and as fecundity is one of the most marked features of the native population, it must be evident that a few years of peace would very largely increase it. With peace will—or would—come railways and manufactories, and an influx of foreigners with more or less capital to invest in all kinds of enterprises, which would build up the country, and rapidly develop its almost illimitable resources. These foreigners would employ the native laborers, who are admitted by all to be patient, enduring, and anxious to work if paid and decently treated. As the condition of the laborers improved, and the agricultural population, now landless, began to become land-owners on a small scale, wages would rise, and foreign laborers would find it to their interest to come here and settle. Mexico has rich mines, wonderfully