Mexico’s economy in the early twentieth century was devastated by the Mexican Revolution and nearly four decades of the Porfiriato (1876–1911, when Mexico was ruled primarily by the dictatorial president Porfirio Díaz). As a result, the United States saw an increasing number of Mexican migrants coming to the states to look for work. Many of these workers were largely unskilled and undereducated, but some had schooling that exceeded that of their American-born counterparts and should have put them ahead of others in finding well-paying jobs. American nativist ideas, however, made much of this schooling irrelevant, or at least marginalized enough to yield only small increases in pay and slightly less arduous working conditions. Even those who were able to secure higher-paying jobs and save money to enter into sharecropping arrangements with American farmers often found themselves the target of schemes that would leave them without compensation for their crops or no recourse when the crops failed. Unlike many of their white counterparts in the United States who could turn to a bank for a loan to support them during a rough growing season, Mexican farmers were often forced to return to work doing jobs in the cities or working as low-level farmhands.