As if testing Uslar-Pietri' s thesis, in December 1936, the oil workers at the Maracaibo fields went on strike for better daily wages, better housing, and salary parity between Venezuelans and foreigners; the regime joined with the oil companies to refuse the demands, sent in the police, and decreed a mediocre rise in the daily wage as a sop. The oil industry created an industrial proletariat, but their numbers remained low in this capital-intensive industry. When the oil workers made de­mands on their flushed proprietors, they earned no redress. The foreign (mainly U.S.) management recycled prejudices that did not answer the aspirations of the workers. The vice president of Venezuelan Gulf, W. T. Wallace, felt that there was no need to take care of these workers because "the native mind" cannot "conform to the accepted method of living, "and if the workers do try to make their surroundings inhabitable, this comes "not on a real desire to conform to American practices, but from a desire to try to get something for nothing."