try except close to the American border. And this proportion is constant throughout the industries. An offer of fifty cents a day without found, would, without the slightest doubt, bring in Mexico City an army of 50,000 able-bodied laborers inside of twenty-four hours.
From such miserable wages it must not be guessed that the cost of the necessities of life are less than they are here, as in the case of other low wage countries, such as India and China. On the contrary, the cost of corn and beans, upon which the mass of the Mexican people eke out their existence, is actually higher, as a rule, than it is in the United States. At this writing it costs nearly twice as much money to buy a hundred pounds of corn in Mexico City as it does in Chicago, and that in the same money, American gold or Mexican-silver, take it as you like it. And this is the cheapest staple that the poverty-stricken Mexican is able to lay his hands upon.
As to clothing and shelter, the common Mexican has about as little of either as can be imagined. The tenements of New York City are palatial homes compared to the tenements of Mexico City. A quarter of a mile in almost any direction off Diaz's grand Paseo de la Reforma, the magnificent driveway over which tourists are always taken and by which they usually judge Mexico, will carry the investigator into conditions that are not seen in any city worthy the name of civilized. If in all Mexico there exists a city with a really modern sewer system I am ignorant of its name.
Travelers who have stopped at the best hotels of the metropolis may raise their eyebrows at this last statement, but a little investigation will show that not more than one-fifth of the houses within the limits of that metropolis are regularly supplied with water with which to flush the sewers, while there are many densely popu-
