Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-16

| tell me it is almost impossible to keep their
men without they are their debtors. They
never get anything ahead, and when they
want to get married they usually borrow
enough to pay the priests and the fees and
get the wedding outfit, and this makes
them debtors for years. Their employers
pay them SO much in food and wages each
day, reserving a small amount out of each
months wages to go toward the debt, and
as their wages range in different localities
from about IS to 80 cents day, it will be
seen that there is little hope for their sup
porting their families and paying their
debts.
In some parts of Mexico boys get cents
q day, and in others the average farm wages
is 10 cents per diem. On the Mexican
plateau the wages range from Is to % cents,
and along the lines of railroad where track
layers and construction companies have
paid more, they have become considerably
higher On the farms these Mexican In
dians work right along for these wages.
They lay off only for Sundays and feast
days, and they appear to be industrious,
quiet, subservient and good laborers.
CHOOSE THEIR OWN MASTERS.
Even if they are in debt they can change
their masters by saying that they wish to
leave and by getting a new master to as
case new contract is entered into and the
Indian stays with his new master till he
gets dissatisfied and gets another master to
pay his debts and to take him in. This
debt slavery exists in other branches of in
dustry as well as farming. Factories have
their poems and mines have their debt
slaves. The company store exists here as
it docs in the mining and manufacturing
regions of the United States and the poems
get deeper and deeper in debt as they live
on.
The Mexican, however spends but little
upon himself or his house. The houses of
the poor are huts or novels differing accord
ing to the locality. On the Mexican
plateau, where there is little wood, the In
dians live in low, square, one-story huts of
sun-dried brick, often Constructed without
windows. These novels are like great mud
boxes. They have fiat roofs, no ehimneys
or fire-places, and the door of each hut is of
roughly made boards and so low that the
men and women of the family have to stoop
in entering it. Most of these huts have but
one room. The family sleep on the floor on
mats and there are neither tables or chairs
The cooking is done over fire built out of
doors or IN corner of the hut and the
cooking utensils are of burnt clay and not
of iron or copper.
BUILD THEIR OWN HoVELs.
1t costs but few dollars to build such a
hoYel, and the average Indian can build his
own house. Near the towns these huts are
in collections Of adozen or so, making sub
urbs or villages of mud, and on the haci-
endas they are often inside the wall sur
rounding the adobe buildings where their
masters live, or they are built close to the
wall on the outside. Along the railroad
you often see them made of discarded rail-
road ties, the ties being set on end and form
ing the walls of the hut, while a,thatch of
cactus or other leaves makes the roof. If
you will remember the average length of
the railroad tie you will know the heighth
of the Mexican railroad hut.
In the rainy regions of Mexico, where the |
water comes down in showers every after |
noon for several months of the wear. the |
huts are built with ridge roofs, and in the |
valley of Mexico and amid the picturesque |
along the line of the Mexican |
National Railroad, you see roofs made of |