WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 229

“OHEAP’ LABOR A MISNOMER

It is charged that the Mexican is a cheap laborer and, entering a community,
reduces the scale of wages paid in that community by virtue of his presence
there. None of the evidence submitted verifies this, and in fact all the statistical
data submitted show beyond question that there is no truth in the statement.
The official figures of the United States Department of Agriculture on wages paid
show that wages for the Southwest are higher than for the rest of the country, and
that wages in California, where the Mexican is employed in large numbers
agriculturally, are higher than those paid in any other State of the Union for
agricultural labor, and that the spread is so great as to prove once and for all that
Mexican labor is not cheap labor. We feel that the continual attempts on the
part of some people to denominate Mexican labor as cheap labor are deliberate
and most unfortunate.
It seems to me doubly essential now that we should face all the facts rather
than a selected portion. If they are not all available, certainly at least an
honest attempt should be made to make them so. With all the facts before us,
the agricultural people in the Southwest are willing to face the situation fairly
and squarely and accept the course which they indicate, regardless of whether it
may be immediately to their interests or not.

STARTLING WORLD FACTS ON LABOR INCOME

Farm relief has been one of the most talked of subjects agriculturally throughout
 the Nation for a number of years. A number of gentlemen urging the application
 of a quota, particularly gentlemen from the South, have cited the labor situation
 in the Southern States as a valid objection to both the Mexican and the
itinerant laborer generally. Recently the MacMillian Co. has published a
book by Lewis F. wy entitled “America Challenged,” in which some very pertinent
 and unescapable facts are brought out. Among other things he points out
that the average agricultural worker in the Southern States, wherein the great
Cotton Belt lies, doing the work of one man, and one man only; i. e., the worker
who has nothing to sell but his labor, receives for his labor only about 25 cents a
day. Further extensive studies of these “one man’ farms, or “one man and a
mule’ farms, show this conclusively to be the case. May I quote from what
Mr. Carr has to say on this subject?
“Now, incredible as this low wage may seem, it appears, on second thought, a
natural thing. For the agriculture in that section, like 90 per cent of our agriculture,
 was producing a crop, in this case, cotton, that sold on the world market
at the world price. And the labor producing that crop was inefficient in the
particular sense that one man did only one man's work. Therefore, the only
wage that such work could pay was the wage that the world paid for such labor.
“And when we look at the world, we find that crops that are sold on the world
market at a world price and that are produced by labor that does only one man’s
work a day will pay that labor about 20 to 25 cents a day. Twenty to twenty-five
cents a day is about what the inefficient East Indian makes in his cotton field.
Is there any reason why the inefficient laborer in America should make more?
Twenty to twenty-five cents a day is about what the Egyptian cotton-field laborer
makes, what the Chinese coolie makes, what the African laborer makes, and the
Mexican peon, the European peasant, and the laborer in the East Indian rubber
plantations. Twenty to twenty-five cents a day appears to be about what the
world pays for common, ordinary labor, in which one man does the work of only
one man. And 20 to 25 cents a day, we now find by #ctual survey in the field,
is what our American laborers actually do make in producing world-market crops
by labor that does only one man’s work a day.
“But if you were to charge American agriculture with the basic world wage of
25 cents a day, paying the man who does the work of one man, 25 cents, and the
man who is geared up so that he can do the work of two men, 50 cents, and the
man who does the work of 4, $1, and so on, the profit-and-loss sheet of American
agriculture would probably just about balance or show a profit. .
“And here in these figures and considerations, we suddenly realize is actually
the farm problem.”

FALLACY OF THE ONE-MAN FARM

If Mr. Carr's conclusions are correct, and in the long run what a man can earn
on a commodity that enters into the world markets can only be what other producers
 on the same basis earn from the same crop, then we must face some hard