might have been expected. Mining drew attention away from other developments, such as agriculture, but most of all the trade policy of the mother land kept the country in a backward condition. It shut out the foreigner who, by his example, might have stimulated the Indian to adopt a civilization in which industry played a greater part than in his own. It restricted the foreign trade that would have opened up the natural resources and that would have created greater necessity for labor and would have increased its reward. When the Spanish restrictions were removed, the influences that formerly hindered development largely vanished, but the country did not advance. Disorder, which discouraged capital investment and robbed the workman of the fruit of his labor, retarded progress. Not until after half a century of intermittent revolutions did Mexico right itself. Under the discipline of a strong government it gradually removed the more important survivals of the antiquated Spanish commercial policy, and the republic for the first time came into real contact with the current of world economic developments.
For these reasons the Mexican laborer—as a laborer—has only recently had a chance to prove his merits and even now his possibilities cannot be definitely stated.[1]
The estimates of the Mexican workman given by those who have employed him in large numbers vary as greatly as the Mexican himself varies. In some railroad construction work overseers who have had wide experience with all kinds of unskilled labor declare him to be the
- ↑ See Wallace Thompson, The People of Mexico, New York, 1921, pp. 315-348.
