Letters, Feb. 26, 1934

(4 of 4)

Sirs: I return from a trip into the interior and stop for my copy of TIME expecting to catch up with the news. I find, for the second time in a year, that it is barred from newsstands in the city of Mexico and the Mexican republic. This is a great inconvenience to me. But I do not blame the Mexican Government. I blame you.

Your satiric handling of President Rodriguez' radio speech re: the newly-established minimum wage of 1½ pesos (42¢) per day for the Mexican working classes, in your issue of Jan. 22, is inexcusable. . . .

You may hear from tourists who stopped at one of the Americanized hotels in Mexico City and went right on buying their favorite home brands of tooth paste, radios, underwear, shoes and automobile gadgets, that a peso is just 280. But the Mexican worker doesn't live like a tourist and he wouldn't want to.

In Mexican products, which provide him with all he needs, a peso has the buying power of a pre-inflation dollar. Oranges cost three centavos (less than one penny). Avocado pears cost the same. The staples, black beans and pink rice, cost usually 20 centavos a kilo, which is more than two pounds. That's 2½¢ a pound. And if you've eaten black bean paste with chili sauce and Mexican pink rice, you know you don't have to feel sorry for anyone who makes it his daily fare.

The housing and clothing problem is simple here, and the Mexican has no fuel problem. He lives largely out of doors. In the country he raises what he needs, and he couldn't spend 1½ pesos a day on "honest pleasures" if he tried. In town, a bus will take him anywhere for 2¢, the best U. S, movies are shown a few weeks late for 8½¢, and a good pair of shoes can be purchased at the open market for two pesos. He prefers his own guitar to a caterwauling radio and he wouldn't want an automobile if you gave him one. A car in Mexico is a liability. If he is ill, his good wife who invariably knows a great deal about herbs can buy the required dose at the market for a third of a cent. This failing, he can attend a one-peso consultation held every afternoon for the poor by the very best surgeons in the capital. . . .

I cite these facts only to persuade you that the Mexican Government in establishing a peso wage is performing a greater good than you think. I was offered an hacienda in the State of Queretaro only last year, agricultural workers included, with the understanding I need pay the more skilled workers 60 centavos a day, the unskilled only 40. And I dare say even these would top some of the sweatshop paychecks in depression New York. MARION LAY Mexico City