Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1898-02-14
MEXICO PROSPERITY
What It Means How It Exists
Who Is Benefited The Poor
People and Laboring Men
Poorer Than Ever.
Graphic Description By a Man Who Knows,
From the Washington Post.

Il will not deny that there is a kind
of prosperity in evidence in the Republic
of Mexico" said Mr.. John A. McShane,
of Omaha, at the Arlington. Mr.. Nc
Shane is at the head of a large mining
concern that has been engaged in silver
production in the Mexican state OF Chi
huahua for the past ten years.
SIT is of this sort: The government
is largely back of it, and to the paternal
fostering of the Diaz administration it
is mainly due. The government subsi-
dies breweries, railroads, industrial
plants, and aids in every way to build
up the material resources of the u
try. Money is used with a liberal hand,
and as a consequence there is much &C.
tivity and great apparent prosperity.
The fact that Mexico is on a silver
basis does not figure; it can't help being
on that kind of a basis, but l should be
sorry to see the United States resort to
any such policy.
"Ten years of experience in that
country has forever set me against the
adoption of a monetary system which is
not only in disrepute among the leading
nations of the world, but which is
about to be discarded by countries like
Japan, Brazil, and some of the smaller
Spanish-American governments that
were formerly on a silver basis. The
masses in Mexico are in a worse condi-
ton than l trust will ever befall u
laboring population. This / can ex-
plain by referring to matters that have
come under my personal observation.
"When the Sherman purchasing act
was in force, some seven years ago, sill
yer was worth 81. ri, and a United States
dollar was worth in Mexico 100 cents in
Mexican money. The dollars of the
two countries were on a parity. At this
time we employed about 300 men in our
mines, their pay ranging from 81 to
$a.5 0 per day. 1t took approximately
$40, 900 a month to meet the payroll.
The money to cancel this expense was
shipped from Omaha, and it was ex-
changed for $4,000 of Mexican coin.
We operated general merchandise stores
along with our mining concern, and at
the time l speak OF, sold to our Mexican
employees bacon for 20 cents a pound.
"What are the conditions today? We
still hire 800 men and give them exactly
the same scale of wages that obtained
prior to the slump in silver caused by
the repeal of the purchasing clause of
the Sherman act. Our payroll still
aggregates $4,000 a month. TO meet
this we have shipped us q like sum of
United States money, and here is where
the point of difference comes in. In
stead of exchanging that amount at our
bank for it's nominal equivalent we get
for it not Sic, 1000, but $22, 900 of Mexican
money. We have here made a clear
gain of $4,000. Our employees still rem
der us 100 cents worth Of work, for
which they used to get 100 cents, and
do yet as far as the name goes, but in
reality they receive less than half of
Mexican coin in which they are paid
has shrunk to less than half of its former
value.
but there is more still. When the
Mexican miner goes to buy bacon he
finds that in rendering payment he AN
not buy it with deprecated money for 20
cents a pound; the price Is now As cents.
1t would still be so if he could tender VI
as good as that given him for his
labor at the time of the repeal of the
Sherman law. The $4,000 1 spoke of
simply comes out of the labor of the
country, and when the toiling class Of
any nation is forced to such a condition
it is stretching a point to call the people
prosperous. If the fair and right thing
were done by these Woodworking min
ers their wages would be doubled. The
man that now gets 81 a day is justly
entitled to 81, but labor will bring only
what price is fixed in the market, like any
commodity, and employers are not yet
far enough advanced in philanthropy to
voluntarily give more than the custom
airy rate.
$50 the talk about the prosperity of
Mexico in so far as it applies to the vast
body of its citizens--the common peo-
ple--is a myth. If there is prosperity
at all it is not due to the silver standard,
but in spite of it,"