WESTERN HEMISPHELRLD IMMIGRATION

it is not a question of wages, since the Mexicans get the same wages as the Americans;
 that the competition of Mexicans is negligible and has in no wise injured
the American standard of living or caused unemployment, etc., without limit or
qualification. Now their theories and claims may help in explaining the facts,
but the facts do not seem to be such as to substantiate their theories.
Even the biggest-paid distributor of pernicious propaganda will hardly dare say
that there is a shortage of idle Mexicans in the Southwestern States. It is a
common trick of such persons to state that after making a house-to-house canvas
seeking laborers they have been unable to find over a dozen or so in a city of a
hundred thousand or more of people. Now, the truth of the matter seems to be
that there always will be a shortage of efficient Mexican as well as American and
all other kinds of laborers who will knowingly submit to the requirements and
exploitations of avaricious labor employers, who seem to be seeking an abundant
supply of unskilled labor with American industry and efficiency and Mexican
submission to starvation wages. Only new immigrants raw from the Mexican
interior will submit for awhile to the galley-slave conditions which exist in their
own country where they are treated as human beasts of burden. It is in the
hope of getting more of these temporary workers—docile peons— that employers
of such are clamoring for the continuation of an open border. For a new arrival’s
working rarely outlasts his first year here. Then he is tossed into the discard.
He is unwilling to work and more must be brought over to take his place. The
idle are to be seen on every hand—a burden on charity, law enforcement, education,
 real-estate values, American business, and prosperity. Each year an enormous
 percentage of the crop of immigrants of the preceding year is a white elephant
 on our hands not only for this but for all future years. Indeed, there may
be a shortage of unskilled labor willing to work under existing conditions and at
present wages, but there is no shortage of idle Mexicans in any State, section, or
community of the Southwest. As previously stated, reliable data indicates that
there are fully two and one-half millions Mexicans in this country. Los Angeles
alone should be able to supply the unskilled labor needs of the entire Southwest
from its Mexican population. An almost inexhaustible supply of such labor
exists in the cities of the Southwest. Why are these Mexicans domiciled in the
United States unwilling to meet the need for common labor in the Southwest?
Unless the interpretation stated above is true, why is it necessary to turn to
Mexico for a new supply every year? For the facts indicate beyond doubt that
the vast majority of Mexicans who enter this country do not return to Mexico,
but rather congregate in the cities of the Southwest. In this way alone can we
account for the swelling hordes of Mexicans that are overrunning our cities and
who have no intention of either returning to Mexico or of working in the future,
Dr. Paul 8. Taylor cites the following conversation between Mexicans which
Nustrates the problem:
“These Americans don’t care for us except to have us do their work for them.
When we get old and unable to work, we'll go back to Mexico, where our own people
 will care for us.” **No; why go back to be a burden on your native country?
Stay here and make the Americans who have used your labor take care of you.”
The fact is, however, that those who have used the labor of these Mexicans
do not contribute to the public funds which are necessary to take care of the ones
who have learned that it does not pay to work in order to be exploited, when it is
50 much easier to exist in the American cities with a minimum amount of labor.
The burden of proof is clearly upon those (who claim that a shortage of common
labor exists) to explain why the tens of thousands of Mexicans in the cities of the
Southwest are not available to meet their needs many times over. Granting for
the sake of argument that a labor shortage actually exists, why is it necessary to
turn to Mexico annually when a more than abundant supply of Mexican labor is
in our very midst?
From this it is evident that one thing the propagandists say seems to be borne
out by the facts: Under existing conditions they seem to be unable to get unskilled
white labor to work in the cotton and beet fields, in truck gardening and fruit
oicking, in the mines and on the railroads as section hands. The Mexican has
virtually supplanted the American and driven him out. A white man will not
work alongside a docile peon either at equal wages or for any price. This is not
to say that the American is unwilling to do unskilled or manual work or that
“dirty” work is repulsive to him. The facts are to the contrary. Rather he is
anable to compete with the Mexican and would lose caste immediately were he to
accept a job that would necessitate his working alongside of and in competition
with the Mexican. Thus the Mexicanization of business throughout the Southwest
 has developed unchecked until it has reached the stage where drastic and