eat away the wooden cross-pieces on the iron towers with disheartening
rapidity. The company is philanthropically inclined toward its
employees. Even the peons are given two weeks' vacation on full pay,
during which many rent a patch of land on the mountainside to plant with
corn. A savings bank system is maintained, strict sanitation is insisted
upon in the houses furnished by the company, and the methods of the
haciendas of the region, of paying the peon the lowest possible wages
for his labor and produce and selling to him at the highest possible
prices at the estate store, thereby keeping him in constant debt and a
species of slavery, are avoided. The result is a permanent force of
high Mexican grade. All attempts of the company to introduce schools,
however, even on its own property, have been frustrated by the powerful
churchmen. A bright young native in the plant was an expert at figures,
which he had been surreptitiously taught by his "gringo" superior, but
he could not sign his name.



CHAPTER V

ON THE TRAIL IN MICHOACAN

My compatriot strongly opposed my plan of walking to Uruapan--at least
without an armed guard! The mountains were full of bandits, the Tarascan
Indians, living much as they did at the time of the Conquest, did not
even speak Spanish, they were unfriendly to whites, and above all
dangerously superstitious on the subject of photography. There are
persons who would consider it perilous to walk the length of Broadway,
and lose sight even of the added attraction of that reputed drawback.