i6z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



must of necessity be high. Hence, wages under such circumstances 

 (as exist in Mexico and elsewhere) will be very low, and the conditions 

 of life very unsatisfactory and debasing. 



On the other hand, when machinery is intelligently applied for 

 the conversion or elaboration of comparatively cheap crude materials 

 coal, ores, metals, fibers, wood, and the like a very little manual 

 labor goes a great way, and production (as in the United States) is 

 necessarily large. This being sold in the great commerce of the 

 world, gives large returns, and the wages represented in such produc- 

 tion will be high, because the cost of the product measured in terms 

 of labor is low, and the employer is thereby enabled to pay liberally ; 

 and in fact is obliged to do so, in order to obtain under the new 

 order of things what is really the cheapest (in the sense of the most 

 efficient) labor. Or, to state this proposition more briefly, the inva- 

 riable concomitant of high wages and the skillful use of machinery 

 is a low cost of production and a large consumption. 



The following circumstance curiously illustrates the prevailing low 

 money rate of wages in Mexico, and the obstacle which such cheap 

 labor interposes to the attainment of large production : At one point 

 on the Mexican Central Railroad, while journeying south, a machine, 

 the motive-power of which was steam, for pumping water into tanks 

 for the supply of the locomotives, was noticed, and commented upon 

 for its compactness and effectiveness. On the return journey, this 

 machinery was no longer in use ; but a man, working an ordinary 

 pump, had been substituted. The explanation given was, that with 

 hand-labor costing but little more than the (Colorado) coal consumed, 

 the continued employment of an engine and an American engineer 

 was not economical. 



But at no point within the observation of the writer, either on the 

 Continent of North America or in Europe, do wages, or rather remu- 

 neration for regular labor, reach so low a figure as at Santa Fe, within 

 the Territories of the United States. At this place, one of the notable 

 industrial occupations is the transport and sale of wood for use as fuel. 

 The standard price for so much as can be properly loaded upon a don- 

 key (or burro) is fifty cents. The money price of the wood is high : 

 but, as it is brought from a distance of fifteen, twenty, thirty, or even 

 more miles, each load may be fairly considered as representing the 

 exclusive service of a donkey for two days going, returning, and 

 waiting for a purchaser and the services or labor of an able-bodied 

 man, as owner or attendant, apportioned to from three to five donkeys 

 for a corresponding length of time. The gross earnings of man and 

 donkey can not, therefore, well be in excess of twenty-five cents per 

 day ; from which, if anything is to be deducted for the original cost 

 of the wood, its collection and preparation, and for the subsistence of 

 the man and beast, the net profit will hardly be appreciable. Or, in 

 other words, able-bodied men, with animals, are willing to work, and 



