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Artificial sulphides, concentrates, matte, and ores:

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a.

5. REFINING OF GOLD AND SILVER

Gold in bars, at least 994 fine, for each kilogram or frac

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b. Gold and silver in bars, or mixtures of gold and silver in which the gold constitutes at least 10%, for each kilogram or fraction.....

C.

(Minimum charge $2.50)

$0.30

.$0.25

Bars containing no gold or in which the gold content
is less than 10%, for each kilogram or fraction. . . . ..$0.15

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The Mexican is generally considered an inferior workman. He is proverbially careless, lazy, and in most forms of work less efficient than the mine laborer across the border. His ingrained habits of theft, dissipation, and improvidence add to the employer's problems. Tools and supplies are continually stolen unless carefully watched; and where high grade ore exists, the employees must be thoroughly searched whenever they leave the mine. Because of the peon's disinclination to do a full week's work most companies find it necessary in order to operate continuously to have from twenty-five to fifty per cent more men available than are actually employed at any given time. It is also customary to pay a bonus for each full month's work.

Another drawback is the Mexican's lack of technical skill. Many companies, especially those near the border where a better class of labor exists than in the interior, have partially overcome this difficulty by giving a select number of their employees practical training in the companies' shops. In nearly all cases, however, even where this is done, the use of machinery must be left under the general oversight of a foreigner.

Both federal and state legislation has been passed in considerable volume, especially during the last decade, to protect the laborer against exploitation. Laws not only regulate hours and wages, but seek to provide for the safety and health of the employee. Companies are required to provide medical attendance. in case of accident, and in some states to pay an indemnity for permanent injury or death resulting from the management's carelessness or oversight. The welfare of the laborer does not depend entirely upon the efficacy of such laws, however, since most of the larger foreign companies voluntarily provide for their employees beyond the legal requirements. For example, the best hospitals in the republic today are those maintained by mining companies for their employees and their families. An excellent type of such institutions is the hospital supported by the Green Cananea Copper Company in Sonora. A number of years ago, several companies also sought to inaugurate systematic "Safety First" campaigns among their employees. The most effective efforts along this line were carried on by the Santa Gertrudis Company of Pachuca.

If the companies operating in Mexico are handicapped by the inefficiency of labor, they are somewhat compensated by the lower wage scale which predominates in that country. Wages are generally higher near the border, gradually diminishing as one approaches the interior. The contract system commonly prevails.

In 1920 the following was a fair schedule of the wages paid in Guanajuato on an eight-hour basis:

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In the metallurgical works at El Oro the schedule ranged. from seventy-five centavos to twelve dollars fifty cents (Mex.) a day, with an average wage of one dollar and seventy-six cents. The Santa Gertrudis Company of Pachuca paid from one dollar and eighty cents to five dollars (Mex.) with an average wage of two dollars and forty cents. The Green Cananea Copper Company, forty miles from the border, maintains a schedule based on Mexican currency that closely approximates the schedule in American currency prevailing in Arizona.

THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

I. HISTORICAL SUMMARY

Early History: Although the development of the petroleum industry in Mexico is of comparatively recent origin, the existence of oil springs and exudes in certain of the Gulf States has been known for centuries. Long before the coming of the Spaniards the Indians made primitive use of the asphalt which was to be found in numerous seepages back from the coast or along the beach where it had been washed up by the waves. The Spanish chroniclers of four hundred years ago also recorded the fact that a peculiar substance, which the Indians called chapapote, was bought and sold by the Aztecs in the great market of Mexico City. The commercial value of petroleum, however, was undreamed of by the world prior to the middle of the nineteenth century so that the potential wealth of the Mexican deposits. remained unnoticed until the first oil boom in Pennsylvania, and the fortunes which were made from it, led to a few spasmodic attempts to exploit the Gulf fields.

As early as 1865 a Mexican named Lopéz obtained a concession from the Department of Fomento to drill for oil in the San José de las Rusias field in Tamaulipas. Three years later an American named Hoyt, who was serving as United States Consul at Minatitlán, reported to the State Department that petroleum existed in almost unlimited quantities on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and frequently formed small lakes and springs on the surface. About the same time a company known as the Compañia Exploradora de Petroleo del Golfo Mexicano drilled a well one hundred and twenty-five feet deep from which it secured three or four barrels of oil a day. In 1870, a man named Autrey, or Ortray, reputed inventor of Angostura Bitters, came into possession of this property, set up a still at Papantla to which he carried oil by mule back, and refined about four thousand gallons of kerosene for which he found a ready sale in the local markets. In 1873, denouncements were made along the Tamesi river by certain Mexicans, and some ten years later a full report on the asphalt beds of Vera Cruz, Chiapas and Tabasco was sent to the State Department by the United States Consul-General at Mexico City.

Boston-Mexican Oil Company: The most pretentious efforts to develop oil during this early period, however, were made by a New England syndicate known as the Boston-Mexican Oil Company. In 1881 an American resident of Mexico, Capt. George Glidden, had denounced some two thousand acres of oil-bearing land in the Department of Tuxpam, Vera Cruz. Shortly afterwards, Glidden died in New Orleans and his widow sold his Mexican claims to the Boston-Mexican Company. The property

claimed by Glidden consisted of four haciendas, known respectively as Tampamachoco, Chapapote, the Gil, and Juan Felipe. Tampamachoco fronted on the western bank of the lake of the same name, four miles from the mouth of the Tuxpam river. Chapapote lay twenty-five miles upstream and about fifteen miles

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south of the Gil, through which ran the main highway (Camino Real de Juan Felipe) to the interior. Juan Felipe, some fortyfive miles northwest of Tuxpam, reached back to the highlands of the San Juan range and overlooked the plain below.

On each of these four properties, according to the prospectus of the company, there were numerous springs of petroleum which

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