32 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 



look over the agent's house, touching everything, talking little, 

 exclaiming much. They dip their wet fingers in the sugar bowl and 

 taste, turn salt out upon their hands, hold colored solutions from 

 the medicine chest up to the light, and pull out and push in the 

 corks of the bottles. At the end of a month or two the house is 

 done. Then they gather their women and babies together and say : 



' ' Now we go, ' ' without asking if the work corresponds with the 

 cost of the articles they had bought. Their judgment is good how- 

 ever. Their work is almost always more valuable than the arti- 

 cles. Then they shake hands all around. 



"We will come again," they say, and in a moment have disap- 

 peared in the jungle that overhangs the trail. 



With such labor the Compania Gromera de Mainique can do 

 something, but it is not much. The regular seasonal tasks of road- 

 building and rubber-picking must be done by imported labor. This 

 is secured chiefly at Abancay, where live groups of plateau In- 

 dians that have become accustomed to the warm climate of the 

 Abancay basin. They are employed for eight or ten months at an 

 average rate of fifty cents gold per day, and receive in addition 

 only the simplest articles of food. 



At the end of the season the gang leaders are paid a gratifica- 

 tion, or bonus, the size of which depends upon the amount of rub- 

 ber collected, and this in turn depends upon the size of the gang 

 and the degree of willingness to work. In the books of the com- 

 pany I saw a record of gratificaciones running as high as $600 

 in gold for a season's work. 



Some of the laborers become sick and are cared for by the 

 agent until they recover or can be sent back to their homes. Most 

 of them have fever before they return. 



The rubber costs the company two soles ($1.00) produced at 

 Yavero. The two weeks' transportation to Cuzco costs three and 

 a half soles ($1.75) per twenty-five pounds. The exported rubber, 

 known to the trade as Mollendo rubber, in contrast to the finer 

 "Para" rubber from the lower Amazon, is shipped to Hamburg. 

 The cost for transportation from port to port is $24.00 per Eng- 

 lish ton (1,016 kilos). There is a Peruvian tax of 8 per cent of 



