The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-10-08

Each gives employment to about 4ou men. No one will traverse the great plant at Monterey and doubt that the Mexican workman in the industry ren- ders equal labor, man for man, with the American employed in the Omaha sme!t- CT. At Omaha there is little labor given at S1.50 q day. The wages in the various grades of the smelter range ns high as $3 q day It will not place the average too high to make it $2 per day. That IS American money-gold. Here the com mon labor unloads the cars and heaps the ore by the thousands of tons in thG yiarSss' This same labor loads the ore into the little iron tramcars and wheels it under the sheds. where the more skilled work. men do the mixing of the ores in great beds. This common labor shovels anu lifts and pushes as hard as the Sl;2o gold labor at Omaha and does it for G2ta cents a day Mexican silver. or 3lEs cents gold. This labor works ten hours day for that price. Then there is the twelve hours labor, so. divided to keep the shelter running night and day Here something besides muscle en- ters in. The iron barrows must be wheeled upon the scales. and one kind of ore follows another in. as beam after beam tips, until the barrow is full of just the right proportions of lead and iron and lime and various ores to take out all of the silver in the smelting, The MeNicans who do this are paid 70 cents day, worth 3Tla cents American money. Then come the feeders and the furnace men, who know just when to dump in the barrow loads at the top draw off the bullion. This is labor that receives $1 day in Mexican silver. or 5O cents day in gold. The slag pullers get 70 cents day in silver. The fore men of the yards. who moves about over | seelng and directing. are paid from S3 | to So n day. They are few in number. l still fewer are the furnace foremen of | that ripe experience which is responsible for the results. These get 5000 month, | the equivalent of $100 in gold.
 The pay at the Omaha smeltcr aver ages S2 day, or $500 for the 100 la b0rers, the equivalent of S1600 in Mexi- can money. The pay at the Monterey shelter averages $1 day in Mexican money, or $400 for the 400 employees.
 Here is difference of $1200 Mexican money or S60O gold in the daily pay rohs. The Mexican silver smelters are said to he making S10 in Mexican money where the American smclters are profit l ing S1 in American money. Whether free silver in the United States would raise the Mexican money to the Ameri- can money or lower the American to the Mexican it would require the American smeltcrs to pay only twice as much for labor where now they pay four times as much as the Mexican smclters do. The wages paid at the smelters here com- mand .he best of Mexican labor. The lowest rate, G2l@c, is nearly double that l paid for ordinary. common labor. It brings to the works brown men with muscles like steel. who trot along with 3CO pounds of ore in barrow. These McNicans shed all clothing but sandals, | strawhat and cotton drawers as they push and pull the ore down the incline of the long roasting ovens. They have only one bad habit. They will come tc work before breakfast. You can teach Mexican labor to smclt ores to perfection but you can not teach the Mexican wom an to get uD and preDarc breakfast, sim pie as 1t is, before the whistle blows fol the change of shifts from night to day | And so. an hour or two after the brown men have begun work. the little hrowr women come stringing in with the beans and the corn cakes and tine bit of meat.
 Laborcrs' Wages.
 At Cerralvo. in the state of Nnevs Leon, is located the Benavides smelters From this smeltcr there has beer shipped since the list of January, by O, carts, 1.SOUOOO pounds of bullion. Thi,
 
 ter 300 years ago. lt had n government mint, and turned out quantities of coil during two centuries under Spanish do minion. When the revolutionary pcriot set in mining ceased. Titles lapsetl With the establishment of stable gov crnmcnt and the coming of railroads mining in Mexico took on new activity The Ccrralvo district was one of the la & to feel the spirit of revival. The rail roads passed by and left this ancien town in the interior. Three years az, American enterprise found this lon. neglected district. A smclter was built The highly successful operation of thi plant for the past three years. ninet. miles from railroad. affords one of tn best possible illustrations of the cheapcn ing of silver production in Mexico. Tn manager of the smclter is Mir H. c. liar rison, who has had a good deal of ex pcrience in mining and smelling. H furnishes the actual cost of operation from his books and makes a comparisol with the cost of like smeltcr in tn States. These are his figures:
 Shelter operation In Mexico.