418 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

that there are sufficient idle men in the Southwest to do all the work needed to
keep up the production to a maximum. No one can gainsay the fact that Mexican
labor is grossly inefficient, and this inefficiency is not altogether due to the Mexican,
 either. It is due in great part to the method of handling it. The old
methods of the days of slavery and the contract-labor methods have long since
been abandoned by employers who demand efficiency. When the employer of
the Southwest is shut off from his apparently inexhaustible supply of peon labor
from Mexico he will realize what employers have learned in other sections of
the country and will encourage efficiency. They have learned that cheap labor
is not synonymous with efficient labor.
If the agriculturist of the Southwest could keep his Mexican peons from migrating
 into the interior of the country and from competition with the American-born
laboring man in many of the fields of labor, he would have a better claim on the
sympathies of the American public. Great numbers of Mexicans come in annually.
 Many are expected to return, but once in the United States it is easier to
travel the highways of our country than to return to Mexico, and the publie
eharitv of our large cities is more plentiful than that offered anywhere in Mexico.

PERSONAL SURVEY

Not long since I made a survey of the situation all along the southern and southwestern
 border from New Orleans to San Francisco. I made this survey in my
own way and at my own expense. Iam thoroughly convinced that there are enough
Mexicans lolling idly in the warm sun of the cities of the Southwest to do all the
labor required in that whole section by working one-half time, while they work
only about one-third of the time now. There are thousands traveling the roads
as itinerant vagrants who will never become an asset to the man power of our
gountry. Why keep out the bright young immigrants from the countries of
Europe and permit these unassimilable vagrants to come into the country?
In making this survey I had occasion to visit the Mexican sections of many of
the large cities of the Southwest. Whether cheap labor causes poor home conditions
 or whether poor home conditions is the cause from which cheap labor comes
may be a question, but there is no gainsaying the fact both cheap labor and poor
home conditions are destructive of the progress of our country regardless of which
is cause and which is effect.
I found that in each of these cities where the percentage of Mexicans in the
total population is high, the per capita purchasing power is corresponding low.
The Mexican family was usually very large and the living conditions poor. The
Mexican has none of the pioneer spirit that characterized other nationalities that
have contributed so mightily toward the growth of the Nation. The last of
many revolutions was in progress during the time of my visit. I saw one Federal
army and two rebel armies. These armies were nothing more than motley mobs.
Each army was followed by a mob of women and children supposed to be the
wives and children of the soldiers. They expected to be maintained from the
plunder collected by the army to which they were attached. At what was
heralded as one of the decisive battles of the war fought at Juarez, Mexico,
opposite El Paso, at which the only casualties were a few horses, the Federal
army fed into El Paso and sought the protection of the United States. I saw
this army camped at Fort Bliss and fed by the United States troops stationed
there. The women and children outnumbered the soldiers many times. The
news of the good rations provided by our soldiers spread down into Mexico and a
eonstant stream of women and children were coming in claiming to be connected
with the army through relationship with some soldiers.. The Army officer in
eharge of Fort Bliss was forced to refuse further additions to his mob, and the
immigration authorities turned back hundreds seeking admission. The condition
in the rebel army was much worse than that of the Federal army for they had
no source from which they could receive rations and they subsisted upon what
they could procure from plunder and forage. These poor ignorant soldiers in
both armies knew not what they were fighting for. Misguided by unscrupulous
leaders they blindly subjected themselves to danger for the benefit of some
bandit who’ sought to rob some other bandit of his power and property. In
no country in the world can a bandit be transformed into a general so quickly as
in Mexico. Such a transformation is freauently accomplished in a few hours.