The eight-hour day provided in the constitution, the welfare projects such as the stern proviso that nursing mothers shall have two half-hour periods per day in which to care for their children, the constitutional support of the right to strike even in public utilities, and the virtual provision against the employment of strikebreakers, or the closing of a shop in a lock-out, are typical of the privileges for labor--they cover everything which the most radical would make the laws of every land. In Mexico, and under the peculiar conditions of Mexican psychology and inter-class relationships, they become little more than tools of the demagogues. The rulers do as they choose in any case, as when, not long ago, a railway strike was successful to the last detail of the demands made in the name of “the social revolution” and two months later a similar strike for similar ends was opposed by the general use of strikebreakers. The labor courts, theoretically a great advance, are used almost without exception as a palladium of radical propaganda--and as a toll-gate on the road of privilege. Such are the reforms of the new era. They provide six or eight hour days, for men who cannot read and whose children are not taught to read or to think. They provide minimum wages, to be determined by factory committees, with the most ignorant workmen in the world on a par with employers and industrial engineers. They provide against discharge for any cause except proven drunkenness, in a land where, to say the least, drunkenness is relative. Their own people have begun, a little, to wonder at the wisdom of these sweeping changes, and one, Ing. Carlos Arroyo, not long ago wrote in the official but very radical “Bulletin of Industry, Commerce and Labor” that there were four main difficulties which would have to be corrected before factory efficiency could be arranged in Mexico on a coöperative basis: first, scientific method would have to replace the empirical system now in use; second, there would have to be special training for apprentices; third, there would have to be study of employees to have them properly placed; fourth, the responsibility for the tasks assigned would have to be “equally” divided (not given entirely to the workers) between the management and the workers, “because the former continues to be charged with the responsibility for the competence of the latter.” And as to that competence, this same bulletin regularly publishes the records of accidents. There one will find that in 1918, for instance, there were, in 278 industrial establishments having 292,364 employees, 6,424 accidents, in which 184 were killed, and 42 maimed and 6,198 wounded. And, most illuminating of all, 5,165 of the accidents were admittedly due to the “carelessness of workmen,” only 195 were the fault of the management and 1,064 were due to unavoidable causes.