May 1907.] 



311 



Miscellaneous. 



This emigration is not a recent thing, and, according to the statistics of our 

 country, it is measured by thousands. This is why places in the interior have been 

 decimated and haciendas completely abandoned, which were once sources of great 

 wealth, now they are idle because there are no laborers to work them. 



There exists on the borders of the republic an imaginary line marked by 

 imaginary terrestial parallels, or by the bed of a stream, dry the greater part of the 

 year, a line which is more easily noted on the map because it is drawn in colors, and 

 which enthograpbically separates two distinct peoples. But it is no great obstacle 

 for the man who can work and is a native of Mexico. 



To the south is a nation which requires work, which is seeking capital and 

 needs colonists ; a nation which is progressing vigourously, though not phenomenally, 

 as the yellow journal say, a people which is passing through an evolutionary stage in 

 its schools, its government and its industries, which will some day be a rich people, 

 but which is still poor ; a nation which does not inquire where its emigrants come 

 from, for it needs laborers, let the class be what it may. 



To the north is a wonderlul nation, rich, powerful, pletholic, with capital, 

 industry and energy, and which is not content to contain itself with its own frontiers, 

 a nation which has been receiving European immi ^ration for many years, and which 

 may now select her immigrants, covering a poll tax or prohibiting entrance in a 

 definitive manner. Notwithstanding these conditions, men are contiually crossing 

 this line, and are leaving the country which requires labourers and is bidding for 

 colonists, and they are going to the country which r revents their entry and collects 

 a tax on all those entering, instead of paying tor th->.n as the former has done. This 

 is done apparently, in opposition to all the la vs of physical science. And yet it has 

 its explanation, which is easily understood if we throw beyond us all prejudices. 



This current has continued to flow unnoticed by the people of the interior 

 until the depopulation has made itself felt through the alarmiug proportion it has 

 taken ; for the simple reason that they have not thought of the facts that there are 

 mines in Arizona and Colorado, ranches in California, and railroads in construction 

 throughout the states to the north which are being built exclusively by Mexican 

 laborers who have arrived recently. 



Therefore it is not a question of building up the city population at the 

 expense of the rural, as is the case in the United States and Europe. This is felt to 

 some extent in Mexico, where the manufactures of the city are built up at the 

 expense of the country, and the mines pay SSl'SO to the peons who gained 50 cents on 

 the ranch, though often, when the price of provisions taken into account at the 

 mines, he gains no more than he did at home. 



The pleasures and comforts of the city, too, attract the laborer from the 

 hacienda, and this added to the higher wages he receives in the cities, causes many 

 to flock there. But we are feeling only what other nations have felt before us and 

 are now feeling. 



In all parts of the country, as soon as a railway approaches, at once the 

 scarcity of laborers begins to be felt, on account of the call for them for construction 

 work, and as soon as the road is in running order the communication which it makes 

 with other parts of the country and with outside nations causes the laborers to leave 

 the fields. The discovery of mines also helps to take away the laborers from agri- 

 cultural occupations. 



These are some of the causes of rural depopulation. But there are still 

 others. There is the attraction of the United States. And if the first helps our 

 mining industry at the expense of the rural districts, the second brings with it an 

 evil which has no recompense and redounds only to the benefit of the foreign nation. • 



I have heard sensible persons say that the peon goes to tb.3 United States 



