Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/171

Rh ; and, in a country so destitute of water and fuel, it is difficult to see how there ever can be. In almost all cases where the employment of machinery is indispensable, mule or donkey power seems to be the only resource; as is the case in the majority of the mines and silver-reducing works of the country—not a pound of ore, for example, being crushed through the agency of any other power, in connection with the famous mines of Guanajuato. Many years ago an English company bought the famous Real del Monte mine, near Pachuca, which is reported to have yielded in a single year, with rude labor, $4,500,000. It was assumed that two things only were requisite to insure even greater returns; namely, the pumping out of the water which had accumulated in the abandoned shafts, and the introduction of improved machinery for working at lower levels. Large steam-engines and other machinery were accordingly imported from England, and dragged up by mule-power from Vera Cruz, at immense cost and labor. But the new scheme proved utterly unprofitable, and after some years' trial was abandoned. The expensive machinery was sold for about its value as old iron; the mines reverted to a Mexican company; the old methods were again substantially introduced, and then the property once more began to pay.

Deposits of coal of good quality are from time to time reported as existing, and readily accessible. But the fact that the Mexican Central Railroad supplies itself from the coal-fields of Colorado, nearly fifteen hundred miles from the city of Mexico, and that the Vera Cruz Railroad imports its coal from England, is in itself sufficient evidence that no coal from any Mexican mine has yet been made practically available for industrial purposes. In Central Mexico, wood commands at the present time from twelve to sixteen dollars per cord, and coal from fifteen to twenty-one dollars per ton.

According to the best information available, the number of factories of all kinds using power, in the republic, is about a hundred, representing a valuation of some $10,000,000, and employing about 13,000 hands. Their range of manufacturing is exceedingly limited, and comprises little besides the coarser cottons and woolens, the coarser varieties of paper, a few (cloth) printing and dye works, milling (flour), and the manufacture of unrefined sugar. The textile factories (cotton and wool) are said to contain 250,000 spindles and 9,500 looms.

No country affords such striking illustrations as Mexico of the fallacy and absurdity of the so-called "pauper-labor" argument for "protection"; or of the theory, which has proved so popular and effective in the United States, for justifying the enactment of high tariffs, that the rate of wages paid for labor is the factor that is mainly determinative of the cost of the resulting product; and that, therefore, for a country of average high wages, the defense of a protective tariff against a country of average low wages, is absolutely necessary as a condition for the successful prosecution by the former of its industries.