Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1902 — WHERE CHEAPNESS PREVAILS [ARTICLE]

WHERE CHEAPNESS PREVAILS

Cheap Labor and Cheap Money Go Hand in Hand in Mexico. A recent visitor to Indianapolis was C. C. Hiatt, of Detroit, a mining engineer who came here to confer with local men who have large interests in Mexico. The Indianapolis Sentinel quotes Mr. Hyatt as saying:— j “One thing that makes Mexico an advantageous place for the investment of capital is that all work can be done so cheaply. For example, in mining, persons can be hired for 80 or 90 cents a day in Mexican money, which means about 35 or 40 cents in gold. In the camps of Colorado wages for the same work range from $4 a day upward. In all other industries the same difference prevails. The tobacco trust illustrated the opportunity for making money. On a capitalization of $1,700,000 the trust last year transacted business to the amount of $8,400,000 and paid a dividend on its stock of 59 per cent. The greatest price it received for cigarettes, which is its big product, was 5 cents for 18 hand-made cigarettes. In its factories 228 machines with a capacity of 120,000 cigarettes an hour each were kept in constant operation. The cigarettes come out of the machines faster than they can be counted, so perfect is the machinery.” 1 All this is Interesting for several reasons; first, because of the fact that cheap money and cheap labor are intimately associated in Mexico. Again, testimony is borne to the fact that without the parentage of our protective tariff, there are trusts in Mexico more grasping than our own, one in particular which, if tobacco products were put on a tariff for revenue basis, could readily destroy an industroy which is local to every Indiana community.