Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/175

Rh work laboriously, at Santa Fé, in the United States, for simple subsistence; and a subsistence, furthermore, inferior in quality and quantity to the rations generally given to acknowledged paupers in most American poor-houses; and yet no high-priced laborer in the United States has any more fear of the industrial competition of the pauper laborers of Santa Fé than he has of the competition of the paupers who are the objects of charitable support in his own immediate locality.

The largest, best-conducted, and most profitable of the cotton-factories of Mexico, and the largest manufacturing establishment in the country, is the "Hercules" mill, located near Querétaro, 152 miles from the capital. Taking a tramway, with comfortable cars of New York (Stevenson's) construction, for a distance of about three miles from the plaza, the visitor, on approaching, finds an establishment, embracing several acres, entirely surrounded by a massive, high, and thick wall, with gateways well adapted for defense and exclusion. On entering, the objects which first arrest attention are an attractive little park, with semi-tropical trees and shrubs; handsome residences for the owner and his family, and a stone armory or guard-house—with men in semi-military costume lounging about—containing a complete military equipment for thirty-seven men, horse and foot—Winchester rifles and two small pieces of artillery. Without being too inquisitive, the visitors are given to understand that all this military preparation was formerly more necessary than at present; but that even now it was prudent for the officers or agents of the mill to have an armed escort in making collections, contingent upon the sale of its products, from the country dealers and shopkeepers. Back of the guard-house were the mill-buildings proper, warehouses, stables, boiler-house, etc., all well arranged, of good stone construction, scrupulously clean, and in apparently excellent order.

The machinery equipment was 21,000 spindles and 700 looms; its product being a coarse, unbleached cotton fabric, adapted for the staple clothing of the masses, and known as "manta." Both water-and steam-power were used. In the case of the former, a small stream, with a high fall, being utilized through an iron overshot-wheel, forty-six and a half feet in diameter—one of the largest ever constructed; for the latter a fine "Corliss" engine from Providence, Rhode Island. The spinning-frames and a part of the looms were from Paterson, New Jersey. The remainder of the looms, the steam-boilers, and the immense water-wheel, were of English workmanship. Wood, costing sixteen dollars per cord, was used for fuel; and the motive-power was in charge of a Yankee engineer, who had been induced to leave the Brooklyn (New York) water-works, by a salary about double what he had received there; but who declared that nothing would induce him to remain beyond the term (two years) of his contract, which had nearly expired. The motives prompting to this conclusion were suggested by observing, on visiting his quarters