Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/173

Rh Imported articles of food are exceedingly high at retail at the city of Mexico. American hams, in canvas, forty to fifty cents per pound; American salmon, cans of one pound, one dollar; mackerel, eighteen to twenty-five cents each; codfish, twenty-five cents per pound; cheese, fifty to seventy-five cents. The industry of Mexican pottery, a handicraft exclusively, employs a great many laborers, but has no organization—every community, and almost every family, in the districts where the conditions for production are favorable, making its own wares, as iron, tin, and copper cooking utensils are almost unknown in the domestic life of the masses of the Mexican people. The Indian manufacturer packs his pottery into wicker crates, about two feet square and from five to six feet long, and starts to different portions of the country, on foot, with the crate. on his back. Consul Lambert, of San Blas, states that he has known one "to travel more than two hundred and fifty miles to find a market, and dispose of his articles at prices varying from one and a half to twelve, and, in the case of large pieces, as high as eighteen cents; receiving, in the aggregate, for the sale of his cargo, from twelve to fifteen dollars."

The manufacture of leather is also one of the great industries of Mexico; but, with the exception of the sewing-machine, which has been largely introduced in this and other occupations, the product is exclusively one of handicraft. In a country where everybody rides who can, the saddlery business is especially important; and by general acknowledgment there are no better saddles made anywhere in the world than in Mexico; and yet the United States has for many years exported from twenty to thirty thousand dollars' worth of saddles annually to Mexico. The explanation is, that the mechanical appliances used in the United. States for making the "trees," and for stamping, cutting, sewing, and ornamental stitching, enable the American manufacturers to pay an import duty of fifty-five per cent, and undersell the hand-product of the low price (but dear cost) Mexican artisan. Consul-General Sutton, of Matamoros, reports to the State Department, under date of July, 1885, that Mexican dealers send to the United States model saddle-trees and designs for trappings, and find it more profitable to have the major part of the work of saddle-making done there, than to do it all by the low-wage hand-labor of their own country.

In short, this condition of affairs in Mexico, in respect to wages and the cost of production, is in strict accord with what has been deduced within recent years from the experience of other countries; namely, that the only form of labor to which the term "pauper" has any significant or truthful application, is labor engaged in handicrafts as contradistinguished from machinery production; and that, where such handicraft or ignorant labor is employed in manufacturing, the final cost of its product, as represented by the amount of time required, or the number of persons called for in any given department,