Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/177

Rh comparatively few cotton and paper mills, and one or two (calico) print-works—accordingly enjoy a degree of protection that nearly or quite amounts to prohibition of all competitive legitimate imports; though it may be doubted whether the fiscal officers who advised or determined such rates had any knowledge or care for any economic theory, but they may have been, and probably were, influenced in their conclusions by the representations of interested parties. But, be this as it may, the practical working of such a tariff, in such a poor, undeveloped country as Mexico, is well illustrated by a recurrence to Don Rubio and his cotton-mill. The average fabric produced at this establishment is protected by a duty on similar imports of nine cents per square metre, or about eight cents per square yard, and sells for about fifteen cents per vara, or thirty-three inches. Domestic industry is thereby promoted, and the family of Don Rubio amass great wealth.

But let us look at the other side of this picture. The number of operatives who obtain opportunities for employment by reason of the existence of cotton manufacturing in Mexico is probably not more than six or eight thousand, certainly not in excess of ten thousand. The population of Mexico, to whom cotton-cloth is the chief and essential material for clothing, may be estimated at ten million. Free from all tariff restrictions, the factories of Fall River, in Massachusetts, could sell in Mexico at a profit a cotton fabric as good as, or better than, that produced and sold by the factory at Querétaro, for five cents a yard, or even less. A population of ten million, poor almost beyond conception, have therefore to pay from two to three hundred per cent more for the staple material of their simple clothing than needs be, in order that some other eight or ten thousand of their fellow-citizens—men and women—may have the privilege of exhaustively working from fourteen to fifteen hours a day in a factory, for the small pittance of from thirty-five to seventy cents, and defraying the cost of their own subsistence. Nor is this all. Under such excessive duties as now prevail, few or no cheap coarse cotton fabrics are legitimately imported into Mexico, and the Government fails to get the revenue it so much needs. The business of smuggling is, however, greatly encouraged, and all along the northern frontiers of Mexico has become so well organized and so profitable as to successfully defy the efforts of the Government to prevent it. On the shelves of the stores of all the Mexican towns and cities, within two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles from the northern frontier, American cotton fabrics predominate. Five hundred miles farther "southing," however, seems to constitute an insuperable obstacle to the smuggler, and similar goods of English and French manufacture almost entirely replace at such points the American products. The present loss to the Mexican Government from smuggling along its northern frontier has been recently estimated by the "Mexican Financier" at not less than $1,500,000