198 



FUNCTIONS OF WEALTH 



sary to hire a man, while one of the women can 

 work elsewhere occasionally; and it may be 

 recorded that doubtless a personal factor is 

 important, for the woman who works is the 

 widowed stepmother of the head of the house, and 

 the family for which she works is that of her 

 married daughter. 



One may conclude, in answers to the questions 

 put, that 



(1) A family controlling at least $200 worth of 

 land, normally distributed among cornfield, truck, 

 and coffee, does not hire out its labor, and pre- 

 sumably does not need to. Two hundred dollars 

 is the value of the land owned that divides 33 and 

 34 on the wealth scale, so it is seen that the only 

 exception al)out which I know is that of No. 25 in 

 table 79. That exception is not serious. A fam- 

 ily controlling between $00 and $200 worth of land 

 apparently hires (and needs to hu'e) out its labor 

 only in unusual circumstances. ($60 is the 

 amount of land dividing 90 and 91 on the scale.) 

 Families owning less than $60 worth of land nor- 

 mally cannot live off of it and need some other 

 source of income. 



(2) A family controlling at least $335 worth of 

 land hires (and presumably needs to hire) agricul- 

 tural labor, assuming again that its crop distri- 

 bution is normal. Three hundred and thirty-five 

 dollars is the value of land owned that separates 

 12 from 13 in the wealth scale. Only one highly 

 doubtful exception appears in my data. A family' 

 controlling between $170 and $335 worth of land 

 ($170 being the amount of land separating 40 and 

 41 on the scale) almost as frequently as not hire 

 hands and presuniablj^ (depending on circum- 

 stances) often finds this necessary. Families owti- 

 ing less than $170 worth of land usually do not 

 find it necessary to hire hands, if indeed they can 

 afford to. 



It is because the factors involved in the hiring 

 of labor for work in the cornfields are somewhat 

 distinct that I have not included it in the above 

 analysis. In 1936 there were 40 families growing 

 at least 0.89 acre of milpa (5 cuenlas). Of these, 

 I have specific information that seven hired help 

 especially for the milpa, but others of course used 

 their regular labor supply in the milpa as well as 

 in the coffee groves and truck gardens. The seven 

 families stood in places 84, 78, 67, 35, 32, 7, and 1 

 on the wealth (land-controlled) scale. For other 

 years I also have notes showing that families 



standing 95 and 44 hired labor in the milpa. On 

 the other hand, I have specific information that 

 members of 13 Indian families hired out to other 

 Indians for milpa work. These stood 124, 121, 

 120, 114, 105, 97, 78, 77, 66, 58, 43, 38, and 36 on 

 the wealth scale. The only coincidence in the two 

 lists is No. 78, representing a family which hired 

 labor for its milpa and in turn worked on the 

 milpas of others. (This is not a case of work- 

 exchange; the families do not work for each other.) 

 The two lists also show that the very rich do not 

 work in the milpas of others and that the very 

 poor — in land ownership, of course — do not hire 

 labor on their small or nonexistent milpas. 



It is the general custom to plant, cultivate, and 

 harvest a cornfield in as short a period of time as 

 possible; and this of course explains why even a 

 person with a small amount of corn tends to hire 

 helpers. An informant m 1941 gave me a short 

 list of persons who hire labor for the corn harvest 

 and who give some sort of harvest festival. This 

 shows that a family that in 1936 had 0.89 acre of 

 corn hired 3 men; another with 0.98, also 3; one 

 with 1.28, also 3; 1 with 1.95, 5; 1 with 2.95, 10; 

 1 with 4.63, 15; and 1 with 6.54, 8. The informa- 

 tion is probably not accurate, but it gives some 

 idea of the relations between the size of the corn- 

 field and the number of laborers hired. One 

 reason why the last-mentioned family hired 

 (according to this information) relatively few men 

 might be that his cornfield is in two lots and the 

 work on each done at a different time. Two 

 certainly reliable cases show clearly that labor is 

 hired even on limited quantities of land. One is 

 of the family of a widow, her grown son, and 

 adolescent daughter (in 1940) which stood 95 on 

 the wealth (land-controlled) scale. In 1940 it 

 held on pawn 0.71 acre of cornfield in Santa 

 Catarina; at the harvest three laborers were hired 

 for cash: a cousin (of a family standing 43d) and 

 two Catarinecos. The mother and daughter also 

 helped, and the har^'est was effected in one day. 

 The otlier case (also 1940) is a family 78th on the 

 scale consisting of a couple, a late-teen-aged 

 daughter, and two yoimg children. They had 

 1.42 acres of corn, and after half had been har- 

 vested the man went to hire "one or two" mozos 

 to help him finish; the wife and daughter also 

 helped. The men of both of these cases frequently 

 are employed by others — Ladiuos and Indians — 

 as agricultural laborers; had they not been aiLxious 



