Those who have worked with the Mexicans and those who have studied the situation say that the Mexican is here to stay. They point to Texas, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Denver, Topeka and many other places where Mexicans are known to have permanent residences and to have been in the country for several years.

Of 32,000 who entered in six months of 1928, 20,000 were men, more than half of whom were married. Over 6,000 were children under 16 years of age. Dr. Emory Bogardus of the University of Southern California says that while practically none of the Mexicans come expecting to stay, yet in a large group studied in Southern California, many of them were found to own their own homes. The number of Mexican children regularly enrolled in the schools, in many of the cities of the Southwest, points to their permanency of residence and to their increasing number. For instance, in El Paso Texas, the school population is 70 per cent Mexican. In July, 1928, there were 465 American born and 1047 Mexicans.

2

Mexican labor is becoming an increasingly basic factor in certain lines of industry. Most of the Mexicans who come to the United States work at unskilled labor. They are much in demand for the reason expressed by many employers, that they are, not radical, easily controlled by those in authority, and willing to take orders. In the North, East, South, and West, the Mexican is being used. Lumbering, agriculture, mining, grazing, railroad construction, all demand his labor. They furnish the great supply of transient labor for the perishable crops of the Southwest. Much of their work is seasonal and they drift from one occupation to another, from state to state, and between seasons are often idle and unemployed.

It is reported that in the Imperial Valley in California, each year Mexican labor picks 25 tons of raisins, 25 tons of walnuts, 5 million boxed of lemons, and 25 million boxes of oranges. In three counties of Colorado, 18,000 cared for 110,000 acres of beets, more than two thirds of its entire beet acreage.

3

They travel with the crops and the jobs. Whole families of them may be seen loaded in old half broken-down Fords, going from the oranges to the cantaloupes, then to the grape picking, and then to the walnuts. From the beet field they go to to whatever work is offered them.

In the Southwest, they are the principal highway builders and almost exclusivelu, the railroad section hands. They pick much of the cotton in Texas and Arizona; they tend vineyards, citrus orchards, walnut groves and melon fields in California; they care for the sugar beets in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and California; they are in the copper mines of Arizona and New Mexico.

Women, too, are numbered among the workers. Though women have not migrated as much as the men, they are being used throughout the Southwest, in industry. Their entrance into industry has been gradual, but they are there in considerable number. In the agricultural districts they are engaged in many tasks, weeding, chopping, and hoeing beets, picking and packing fruits.

4

Mexican labor is found in the construction and maintenance-of-way gangs, as soon as the weather opens up in the spring and as late as it will permit in the fall. The vice-president of one western railroad states that his road has steady employment for about 1,036 Mexicans, and during the summer when construction work is in progress, an employment of as many as 1,478. The engineer of maintenance -of-way of another railroad, states, that his road employs approximately 9,000 Mexicans. Only 4 per cent of these, he states, are employed in other than maintenance-of-way forces. Practically all of the western railroads employ Mexican labor.

One road reports normally 1,800, the number increasing to about 2,900 during the peak season in track work, and to some extent they are employed in the store departments. Another reports employment of as many as 2,600 in 1926, mostly used as track men all over the system. According to an official of another railroad, his railway employs 500 to 1,000 Mexicans in track work in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. Many of the great industrial centers claim their quota of Mexican workers.

5

They are to be found in the steel mills of Gary, the slaughter and meat packing houses of Chicago, Kansas City and Omaha, the mines of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, and railroad construction work and maintenance-of-way. In Chicago, the 1925 Report of the Department of Public Welfare, lists 1,042 in the steel mills, 606 in the Coundries, and a considerable but uncomputed number in the railroads and packing houses.

In one large cotton mill in a southwestern city, the entire force of 400, is made up of Mexican women and girls. Many of the girls appear under the age limit set by the Child Labor laws. Mexican women are also found in the garment factories making overalls and jumpers. Being good needle workers, they are used also on finer work, such as infant's and women's wear.

The practice of contracting for family labor is not uncommon expecially in the cotton, fruit and beet fields, where whole families are hired to care for a certain acreage. In the early morning at the market places in some of the cities of the Southwest, where labor agents hold forth, whole truckloads 6of workingmen and their families, are seen being taken to the fields, where jobs have been secured for them.

Family labor brings its quota of child labor. Child labor is used to a great extent in the beet fields. In a personal visit to the beet fields, many children were found to work "from sunrise to sunset." A 1926 study in Colorado, made by the National Child Labor Committee, listed 650 children doing some kind of farm labor, 292 of these assisted those growing beets. The children work long hours in the sun doing the topping and weeding. Especially in the beet industry of Colorado, it is claimed that the labor of children is needed. Except among a few, local sentiment seems to be with the industry and a general opinion prevails that the work of the children in the beet fields " doesn't hurt them."

The Knights of Columbus Mexican Welfare Committee of Colorado, holds a contrary view. It insists that " the welfare of the child should be superior to the needs of industry," and that if Child Labor laws are enforced, the industry will 7quickly find out how to adapt itself to the new condition, and be the better for it."

Wages

The wages of the Mexican workers are very low. Priests and Bishops speak often of the poverty. The Committee on Mexican Immigration, for the Federation of Labor, in one state declares, the Mexicans in the agricultural district in the Southwest, are working for as low as $1.50 a day. It was stated by an official of the Chamber of Commerce, that they receive as much as the American worker, especially in the Imperial Valley. There is discrimination in the wages paid to Mexican and American labor. In certain railraod maintenance-of-way gangs Mexican labor receives twenty-eight to thirty-two cents an hour while at the same work American labor receives forty-two cents.