3 1822024674673 
 
 THE RAILWAY 
 REVOLUTION IN 
 MEXICO 
 
 f California 
 
 Regional 
 p acility
 
 Of 
 
 N DIEGO
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 31822024674673 r 
 
 E^Bms 
 
 THE 
 
 RAILWAY REVOLUTION 
 
 IN 
 
 MEXICO 
 
 BY 
 
 BERNARD MOSES, PH. D. 
 
 Professor in the University of California 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 THE BERKELEY PRESS 
 
 1895
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, 
 BY BERNARD MOSES.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE first charter for a railway in Mexico was granted 
 in 1837. It covered the distance between the City of 
 Mexico and Vera Cruz, with a branch to Puebla. But 
 the project involved in this concession was not carried 
 out. Several years later, however, under a new charter, 
 a railway connecting these cities was built, and for many- 
 years, while it controlled the traffic between the capital 
 and the principal port of the Gulf coast, it possessed eco- 
 nomic advantages which no other Mexican railway has 
 had. The early movement was not prophetic of an early 
 development; the greater part of the existing railways of 
 Mexico have been built in the last two decades. At 
 present they constitute a well-planned, well-equipped, 
 and efficiently manned system of rapid transportation, 
 which embraces 6,687 miles of track, operates 632 loco- 
 motives, 1,032 passenger cars, 11,331 freight cars, and 
 reaches all of the important centers of population. 
 
 The notes embraced in the following pages were made, 
 with the exception of a few paragraphs, during a vaca- 
 tion journey extending over nearly all the railway lines 
 of Mexico, and they are here printed with no essential 
 modification of the form in which they were originally 
 set down.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Order 7 
 
 II. Population 21 
 
 III. Agriculture 38 
 
 IV. The Cities 73 
 
 (v)
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORDER. 
 
 AN adequate explanation of the fact that 
 Mexico's latest period of prosperity falls in the 
 years of the commercial depression of certain 
 other nations, involves the consideration of a 
 number of contributing forces; but it is pos- 
 sible to describe one or two of these without 
 thereby intimating that the others do not 
 exist This is what is done when some of 
 the more general results of the introduction 
 of railways are pointed out. 
 
 One of the most striking things in the 
 economic history of Mexico is the complete- 
 ness and persistence of her isolation. By 
 destroying this isolation, she has suddenly 
 been brought under the influences that make 
 for social changes, and we discover here an 
 excellent example of the transition from a 
 stagnant to a progressive society. In order to 
 determine to what extent the building of rail- 
 ways has been influential in effecting these 
 changes, we have to take account of the fact 
 
 (7)
 
 8 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 that the Spaniards acquired from the Moors, 
 during their long association with them in the 
 Peninsula, an indifference to roads suited to 
 vehicles with wheels, and that the colonists 
 who went out from Spain in the sixteenth 
 century carried this indifference to the New 
 World. Settlements were made and cities grew 
 to importance, with no other means of com- 
 municating with the world at large than that 
 offered by the Indian trail or the mule path. 
 
 This was not a matter of great moment so 
 long as Spain's colonial restrictions on trade 
 were maintained. A few Indians or a few 
 donkeys would carry at a single trip all that 
 any town received from Spain in the course 
 of a year; and the colonists were thus thrown 
 back upon their immediate efforts for the 
 satisfaction of their wants; and the king, 
 by prohibiting trade between the colonies, 
 emphasized their isolation, and indicated the 
 uselessness of means of communication. This 
 restrictive policy of Spain with regard to her 
 colonies tended to place the European settlers 
 on the economic basis of the Indians. A 
 short period of the kind of life to which they 
 were reduced made them forget most of the 
 wants that had belonged to their previous 
 station, and made it comparatively easy to 
 provide what seemed to be an adequate 
 satisfaction of those remaining.
 
 Order. 9 
 
 But by the imperfection of the means of 
 production, and of internal transportation, a 
 vast amount of force was consumed without 
 great results. It is not enough to say of this 
 case that labor was cheap, and to find in this 
 a justification of its unprofitable use. Labor 
 was cheap because, through the force of 
 custom and the restrictions of the law, it 
 continued to be used in such ways that its 
 product could afford no larger compensation. 
 
 By referring to Spain's restrictions on trade 
 with and in America, the accomplishment of 
 ends with rude means, and the employment of 
 human and animal power directly with little 
 use of mechanical appliances, we indicate the 
 early character of Mexico's economic system, 
 a system which became so thoroughly rooted 
 in custom that its main characteristics were 
 preserved well into this century; and some of 
 its features are conspicuous in the Mexican 
 life of the present. Fruit is still carried into 
 the City of Mexico on the backs of men, 
 over distances requiring journeys of several 
 days; and when you buy it there in the 
 market, you think it still cheap, from which 
 may be inferred how little must be the daily 
 compensation of these men, and, in relation to 
 the result, how great the expenditure of force. 
 
 The revival in Mexico is a result of the at-
 
 io Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 tempt now making to set aside an antiquated 
 economic system and introduce that which the 
 most progressive nations have adopted. Prob- 
 ably the most conspicuous force thus far ob- 
 servable as helping to effect this change, has 
 come through the introduction of railways. 
 
 When the railway was introduced into Eng- 
 land and France, it came as a rival to all sorts 
 of wheeled vehicles drawn by pro'perly fed and 
 trained animals over roads that were excel- 
 lent specimens of well-executed public works. 
 When the railway was introduced into Mexico, 
 it came as a rival of the half-starved donkey 
 and the not overfed Indian. The transition 
 from the freight wagons and passenger coaches 
 on the great roads of France was less striking 
 than the transition from the beasts of burden 
 on the rough trails of Mexico. The time of 
 the revolution in the two cases was also im- 
 portant. In the one case it happened before 
 the habit of much travel and the practice of 
 extensive shipments had become fully devel- 
 oped; in the other case it came when the lead- 
 ing nations had become filled with the turmoil 
 of travel and the transportation of goods, when 
 these, in fact, had become the characteristic 
 features of modern civilized life. 
 
 A conspicuous means by which the intro- 
 duction of railways has contributed to the
 
 Order. 1 1 
 
 economic revival in question is the influence 
 which they have exerted on political affairs. 
 As long as the history of politics in Mexico 
 was the history of successive revolutions, one 
 party after another laying lawless hands on 
 private property, economic improvement was 
 impossible; for security, the essential condition 
 of such improvement was wanting. Manufac- 
 tures would not flourish when the factories 
 might be plundered without redress. Goods 
 would not be transported when they might be 
 seized by one party or the other, under the 
 pretext of military necessity. 
 
 And the means for escaping from this state 
 of things were not at hand. Over the terri- 
 tory of the republic, extending from northwest 
 to southeast a distance of 1,900 miles, and 
 covering an area of 768,500 square miles, it 
 was impossible to move soldiers and the muni- 
 tions of war with sufficient rapidity to prevent 
 uprisings, at points remote from the capital, 
 from gaining numbers and prestige. Before 
 the Federal forces could intervene, a local gov- 
 ernment might be overthrown, and the ex- 
 cluded authorities themselves be placed in the 
 attitude of revolutionists. Rapid transporta- 
 tion, therefore, became necessary for the pres- 
 ervation of peace and the maintenance of 
 legitimate authority; and this has been fur- 
 nished by the railways.
 
 1 2 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 The revolutionist has now not adequate 
 time to gather and effectively organize his 
 forces before he is overwhelmed by a superior 
 force acting under orders from the capital. 
 Thus the first important service which the rail- 
 ways have rendered to Mexico is to make 
 possible the maintenance of civil order and the 
 security of property by this means furnishing 
 a direct incentive to industry and commerce. 
 
 And the demand for peace and security is 
 bred by peace itself, and grows stronger and 
 becomes more universal the larger becomes 
 the number of persons who have accumula- 
 tions at stake. Already the desire for peace 
 constitutes a phase of a new national senti- 
 ment. In the words of one of the most 
 thoughtful writers on economic affairs in Mex- 
 ico, "the Mexican people do not want to 
 return to the habits of revolutionary days. 
 They are becoming accumulators of wealth, 
 and a new generation has grown up, composed 
 of young lawyers, planters, and men of affairs, 
 who lead laborious lives and are well fitted to 
 guide the destinies of the republic in the early 
 years of the coming century." 
 
 Revolutions have not only ceased to be de- 
 sired, but they have also ceased to be feared. 
 Those who know how firm is the hand at the 
 helm, and how complete is the information
 
 Order. 1 3 
 
 possessed at the capital concerning the condi- 
 tion of affairs in the remotest parts of the 
 country, are confident that no revolution could 
 possibly attain threatening proportions. They 
 are conscious, however, that for this state of 
 things the nation is very largely indebted to 
 the sagacity and firmness of one man, which 
 qualities, together with his marvelous com- 
 mand of the details of administration, have 
 made him master of the situation, and the ef- 
 fective ruler of the nation under his authority. 
 Knowing these things, and, consequently, how 
 much depends upon a single life, it is only 
 natural that many persons should manifest 
 anxiety with reference to the succession to the 
 throne. 
 
 The building of railways not only made pos- 
 sible the establishment of peace and security, 
 but it also made imperative the demand for 
 them. Having granted certain privileges which 
 caused large amounts of capital to come into 
 the country, the government was virtually 
 pledged to maintain such conditions as would 
 not be an active cause of the loss of value on 
 the part of that capital; and everyone informed 
 of the recent political history must confess 
 that the government has very generally lived 
 up to its implied pledge. 
 
 This was not easy, for, to quote from an
 
 14 Railway Revolution in Mexico, 
 
 official publication, " Lack of order, immoral- 
 ity, in fact, crime was in Mexico almost the rule 
 of the day, and this not alone on the high- 
 ways, but even in some of the largest cities." 
 To those whose gains from highway robbery 
 had not been very great, the railway trains, 
 with their freight and baggage and the ready 
 money of the passengers, offered a more favor- 
 able field for spoils than had previously ex- 
 isted. The Secretary of the Interior appreci- 
 ated this fact, for on one occasion he said 
 "that in the beginning, immediately after the 
 establishment of our great railroads, attacks 
 were made under a new form, more cruel and 
 atrocious than ever. The robbers used every 
 means to throw the train off the line, in order 
 that when this was once done, they might pos- 
 sess themselves of the baggage, merchandise, 
 etc." 
 
 The knowledge of the general designs of the 
 robbers, and a specific instance of train wreck- 
 ing and robbery on the Mexican Central, 
 roused the indignation of the better elements 
 in the nation, and moved the government to 
 take decisive action, which placed those who 
 violated the security of railway property in an 
 extraordinary position. This position was es- 
 sentially that of outlaws. 
 
 This fact becomes clearly evident by a brief
 
 Order. \ 5 
 
 reference to the laws which have been recently 
 passed concerning this matter. The first 
 twenty-nine articles of the Federal Constitu- 
 tion of Mexico constitute an elaborate bill of 
 rights. The first part of Article 13 provides 
 that "in the Mexican republic no one may be 
 judged by private laws, nor by special tribu- 
 nals." Article 20 affirms that "in every crim- 
 inal trial the accused shall have the following 
 guarantees: 
 
 "i. He shall be informed of the basis of the 
 proceeding and of the name of the accuser, if 
 there be one. 
 
 "2. His preparatory declaration shall be 
 taken within forty-eight hours, counted from 
 the time of his arrest. 
 
 "3. He shall be brought face to face with 
 the witnesses against him. 
 
 "4. He shall have access to the information 
 necessary to enable him to prepare his defense. 
 
 "5. He shall be heard in his defense either 
 in person or by an attorney, or both, as he 
 may wish. In case of his having no one to 
 defend him, he may choose from a list of per- 
 sons appointed to this office." 
 
 Article 21 declares that the application of 
 penalties shall be made exclusively by judicial 
 authority. 
 
 These elementary rights or guarantees con-
 
 1 6 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 firmed by the Federal Constitution were sus- 
 pended with reference to all road robbers by 
 the decree of May 17, 1886. This was done 
 under the provisions of the last article of the 
 constitutional bill of rights, which declared that 
 in cases of invasion, serious disturbance of the 
 public peace, and other cases in which society 
 might be placed in great danger, the proper 
 authorities might suspend these guarantees 
 granted by the Constitution. 
 % The first article of the decree referred to 
 simply enacted the suspension. The second 
 article defined road robbers, thus specifying 
 those regarding whom these guarantees were 
 suspended. They were those intending to 
 stop trains on a public road, with the purpose 
 of robbing the passengers or stealing the 
 goods carried, and to this end in any way 
 destroy or carry off any part of the property 
 belonging to the railway, in a word, those who 
 lay hand on railway property when not em- 
 powered to do so, with the purpose of injury. 
 These persons, elaborately described in the 
 decree, are by this decree practically placed 
 without the law. "If caught in the act, they 
 shall suffer the punishment of death, without 
 further trial or proceeding than the mere 
 drawing up of a record by the chief of the ap- 
 prehending force, in which record shall be set
 
 Order. 1 7 
 
 forth the fact that they were taken in the act, 
 and the identification of their persons." 
 
 This medicine was supposed to be strong 
 enough to effect a cure in the few years it was 
 decreed to be applied. The time the law was to 
 continue in force having elapsed some time 
 since, it has been deemed advisable this year 
 to suspend again the constitutional guarantees, 
 and to enact a similar law, which has been 
 stated, in substance, as follows: "Whenever 
 any individual stops, derails, or interferes with 
 a train, removes fastenings from the track, puts 
 obstacles on track, or destroys any locomo- 
 tive, cuts telegraph wire, or destroys or re- 
 moves any of the apparatus, thus cutting off 
 communication, should any such action result 
 in the death of one or more passengers, rob- 
 bery, or any other damage, and the criminals 
 are caught in the act, they shall be shot with- 
 out trial, but the commander of the force ap- 
 prehending the criminal shall report the fact 
 to the proper authorities. When the criminals 
 are not caught in the act, but afterwards, they 
 shall be tried by the nearest authority within 
 fifteen days, and, if guilty, shall be condemned 
 to death. If the party guilty is only an acces- 
 sory to the crime, his sentence shall be from 
 five to twelve years' imprisonment." This law 
 has already been promulgated, and will con- 
 tinue in force for one year. 
 2
 
 1 8 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 The railways, by their presence, have brought 
 to a crisis the question of security on the lines 
 of public transportation. But for them and 
 their influence on the authorities, robbers might 
 have carried on their petty depredations on 
 stages and mule trains, without arousing the 
 government to determined and effective action. 
 The development of the railways has given to 
 the question of security an entirely new aspect. 
 The magnitude of the interests involved have 
 made the demand for security imperative. 
 
 Here was a case where the government had 
 clearly before it a condition and not a theory; 
 and the condition had to be changed. Later 
 it might be possible to speculate and quibble 
 about individual rights. Here the supreme 
 right of society at large presented itself and 
 demanded recognition; and it is refreshing to 
 find a government rising to the importance of 
 the problem before it. It did not entangle 
 itself in an intricate web of speculation as to 
 individual rights, but recognized the fact that 
 great social interests were endangered, and that 
 there was a serious social disease which needed 
 a remedy. It recognized, moreover, the sol- 
 emn truth that it is better for society that a 
 person who attempts to wreck a train, whether 
 successful or not, should be dead rather than 
 alive. He is an enemy of mankind and an
 
 Order. \ 9 
 
 outlaw, and should be treated accordingly, and 
 under the existing law he is so treated. 
 
 The result is, railway traffic goes on undis- 
 turbed. With no newspapers to publish their 
 illustrated biographies, liable to be shot with 
 impunity by anyone discovering them at their 
 work, and with many of the brotherhood bur- 
 ied where they fell, robbers of trains in Mex- 
 ico have very little prestige at present. Thus 
 not only railway transportation has become 
 safe, but other lines of transportation have par- 
 ticipated in the good result 
 
 If the railways, by the presence of their large 
 amounts of capital, have brought on the crisis, 
 and thus forced a remedy for a long-standing 
 evil, the government itself is in a very large 
 degree directly benefited by the result. About 
 the time of the opening of the Mexican Central 
 Railway the Federal government had not suf- 
 ficient funds at hand to meet its current ex- 
 penses, and the outlook for foreign creditors 
 was not hopeful. The budget for 1895-1896 
 shows a surplus, and the state of Mexico's 
 credit abroad has undergone a very flattering 
 change. It would, of course, be unjust, in esti- 
 mating the causes of this happy revolution, to 
 leave out of account the remarkable ability of 
 Mr. Limantour, the present Secretary of the 
 Treasury, who, though still a comparatively
 
 2O Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 young man, has won a distinguished place 
 among the leaders of the present administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Yet the achievements he has made have been 
 rendered possible by the security which has 
 come to the affairs of the country through 
 forces entirely independent of his action. For- 
 eign creditors accept the railways, with the 
 multitude of other interests which they have 
 called into existence, as a sufficient guarantee 
 that their investments will be honestly recoLj 
 nized.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 POPULATION. 
 
 THE introduction of railways has not only 
 affected the action and standing of the govern- 
 ment, but has also set in motion certain influ- 
 ences which tend to modify the character of 
 the population. At present the nation is a 
 heterogeneous body, in which the contrasts of 
 social conditions are as marked as were those 
 of mediaeval Europe. Many of those of the 
 lower ranks are practically serfs. The impor- 
 tance of the strong class distinctions and the 
 wide differences in material conditions become 
 clear when we remember that the character of 
 a nation's government and laws depends upon 
 the character of the people, and the relation of 
 the different elements to the whole. The legal 
 or the political development of a nation is not 
 represented by the laws on the statute books, 
 but by the laws actually carried out in the 
 government of the people. In order, therefore, 
 that there may be healthy legal and constitu- 
 tional growth towards enlarged liberty, it is 
 
 (21)
 
 22 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 necessary that the various elements of the 
 nation be welded into one homogeneous mass, 
 to all parts of which the written laws may 
 be made to apply without condition or res- 
 ervation. The conviction must become a pub- 
 lic opinion that when a law is made it is 
 made for everybody, and only when this is 
 the fact is the nation in a condition of liberal 
 development. In the United States we may 
 easily pretend to have reached this condition, 
 since the Indians are reckoned as no part of 
 the nation. But in Mexico the Indians and 
 others of nearly the same social standing make 
 up the bulk of the population. The polit- 
 ical bearing of this fact is readily compre- 
 hended when we consider that a form of 
 society, which is persistent, will determine the 
 form of the actual government without special 
 regard to the form that may happen to be 
 prescribed by the written law. The small 
 minority of the wealthy and cultivated in 
 Mexico stand as completely apart from the 
 great body of the common people as the 
 nobility in any European nation ; in fact, the 
 form of Mexican society is not greatly unlike 
 that which has always been found in connec- 
 tion with the monarchical form of government. 
 While, therefore, Mexico has elaborately 
 planned to be a republic, the unconscious force
 
 Population* 23 
 
 of her social forms has driven her, in spite of 
 plans, under a government which, in all the 
 essentials of its spirit and practice, is a mon- 
 archy. And the evidence is not strong that 
 the government is likely soon to throw off 
 this character ; for the Indians and others of the 
 lower stratum of the population are appar- 
 ently destined to retain yet many generations 
 their relative position in the nation. Until the 
 class of property owners more or less cultivated 
 is much larger than at present, we may not 
 reasonably expect great progress towards a 
 real republic, and this increase in the imme- 
 diate future is more likely to be made by 
 immigration than by the rise of the members 
 of the lower ranks. In fact, the lower stratum 
 of the population may not be expected to rise 
 with sufficient rapidity to be able to control 
 and direct the new forces, which are becoming 
 manifest in the country through the present 
 industrial revival. Wherefore the demand which 
 the railway age in Mexico is making for per- 
 sons familiar with the affairs of modern indus- 
 trial society will be met by a more or less 
 extensive immigration. There are also other 
 forces which appear to make such an immigra- 
 tion inevitable. One of these becomes evident 
 in considering the different rates of increase of 
 population in Mexico and the United States.
 
 24 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 On account of the imperfection of the sta- 
 tistics it is impossible to determine accurately 
 the rate of growth of Mexico's population in 
 the last ninety years. But to affirm that it has 
 increased from 5,000,000 to 11,000,000 is not 
 to go very wide of the truth. With reference 
 to the United States, it may be safely said 
 that the population has increased in the same 
 period from about 5,000,000 to about 70,000,000. 
 And during this remarkable growth the larger 
 nation has been as well fed and clothed as the 
 smaller, which has grown more slowly ; and 
 there is no more need of taking account of a 
 checking pressure of population against sub- 
 sistence in the larger than in the smaller nation. 
 There is, moreover, no more reason to antic- 
 ipate a very great modification of the rate of 
 increase in the one case than in the other, 
 except as one overflows into the other. But a 
 continuation of the hitherto existing rate of 
 increase in the two nations will give Mexico a 
 population of about 30,000,000 and the United 
 States about 600,000,000, at the end of the 
 next ninety years. 
 
 The two nations might come to stand in 
 this relation to one another as to numbers, if 
 there were no means of intercourse between 
 them. But, for good or for evil, the barrier 
 between them has been thrown down, and can
 
 Population. 2 5 
 
 never be set up again ; and the rates of growth 
 indicated will be more or less modified by 
 migration from the nothern to the southern 
 country. 
 
 This may not diminish materially the indi- 
 cated result as it regards the United States, 
 but the practical, result as to Mexico will 
 probably be a population much larger than 
 that suggested. There are many reasons for 
 affirming that the coming decades will witness 
 such a migration. One of the most important 
 is drawn from the character and social history 
 of the people of the United States, large num- 
 bers of whom have been for generations a 
 frontier people, and as such have always been 
 ready to move forward whenever the pressure 
 of population has become inconvenient. In 
 fact, the most prominent characteristics of the 
 people of the United States are those engen- 
 dered by the frontier. Our national virtues are 
 the virtues of frontiersmen, and our national 
 vices are the vices of frontiersmen recently 
 come to town. Our acceptance of political 
 equality, and, in some measure, of social equal- 
 ity, has come chiefly from the equality of con- 
 ditions in which we have found ourselves, 
 whether on the frontier of New England or 
 Indiana or Nebraska. And a large part of our 
 country has as completely the characteristics
 
 26 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 of the frontier to-day as at any other period. 
 
 As a people of the frontier, we are moved 
 by a strong desire for change of place. The 
 passage of years, bringing more convenient 
 means for transportation, appears to have 
 strengthened rather than to have weakened 
 this desire. Running rapidly across the conti- 
 nent, as we have done, has not satisfied, but 
 only stimulated our desire to move on to some 
 other place, where, we are sure, life will be 
 easier, and the good things of the world more 
 abundant, and it is not to be supposed that, 
 having reached the Pacific, the force which has 
 carried on this great westward movement is 
 suddenly to cease to be. 
 
 With the continuance of the disposition to 
 migrate, the return towards the east will be 
 unimportant, and the stream that might flow 
 toward the north will be checked by the streams 
 of western migration on either side of our 
 northern border. There will remain, however } 
 an outlet toward the south; and the opportu- 
 nity here offered will be embraced, partly be- 
 cause of the attractiveness of the climate of 
 the Mexican table-land, where the extremes of 
 temperature which mark the seasons in the 
 United States may be avoided, and where one 
 may have ready at hand the products of all the 
 zones. But a more powerful reason for this
 
 Population. 2 7 
 
 southward movement may be found in the fact 
 that the commercial sagacity and daring of the 
 northern people may find here a comparatively 
 easy victory. This is more important than any 
 consideration of climate, or accessibility to the 
 luxuries of living, for the dominant motive by 
 which the great masses in a migration are 
 moved is the desire for easier gain. 
 
 Already the belief is widely entertained that 
 in the industrial and commercial contest the 
 Mexican is destined to go down before his 
 northern competitor, and this confidence spurs 
 the American citizen to enterprises here which 
 would not be undertaken in a land inhabited 
 by Englishmen or Germans. If this assumed 
 commercial and industrial superiority exists, it 
 does not necessarily imply that the Mexican 
 stands on a lower stage of civilization than the 
 American ; it indicates only that his cultivation 
 is of another sort We do not accord to the 
 Chinaman a superior place in the grades of 
 human society because, if left unhampered, he 
 might win in an industrial competition with 
 the white man in most departments of work. 
 And yet we are in danger of concluding that 
 because the Mexican would go to the wall in 
 an industrial and commercial contest with 
 Americans, he, therefore, represents a lower 
 degree of civilization. The qualities of a sue-
 
 28 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 cessful salesman, or of a daring organizer of 
 business enterprises, are not the highest human 
 qualities of which we have knowledge, although 
 they do much to advance the material interests 
 of society, and, by that, indirectly to promote 
 its spiritual interests. 
 
 The Spanish people had once an opportunity 
 to acquire those qualities which win in the 
 commercial contest. For a thousand years 
 they had lived in closer intimacy with the Jews 
 than had any other nation. The two peoples 
 had begun to intermarry with one another, and 
 there seemed to be nothing in the way of a 
 complete amalgamation, when the Jews were 
 overwhelmed by the edict of exile, and by this 
 their hopes were blasted. And by this also 
 the Spanish threw away their opportunity of 
 becoming able to engage with success in the 
 industrial and commercial competition of the 
 world. By incorporating the Jew and making 
 him a part of the nation, they might have 
 become endowed with his marvelous ability. 
 By sending him into exile they rejected their 
 only opportunity of becoming able to take 
 conspicuous rank as an industrial and commer- 
 cial people. With more extensive resources 
 than any other nation, with the better part of 
 a continent of untold wealth in their power, 
 they have constantly played a losing game, and
 
 Population. 29 
 
 the heritage of their peculiar incompetency has 
 descended upon their children and their chil- 
 dren's children, even to the present generation. 
 The history of the Spanish people, both in 
 Spain and in America, is the history of eco- 
 nomic incompetency. The great enterprises 
 of Spain are to-day in the hands of foreigners. 
 It is foreign capital and foreign force and 
 sagacity that are rousing Mexico from her 
 slumber of centuries. 
 
 Given this superior efficiency of the foreigner 
 in matters of business, there is only wanting 
 the opportunity afforded by adequate means of 
 communication to insure his peaceful invasion. 
 And these means have been abundantly pro- 
 vided. Four distinct gateways to Central 
 Mexico have been opened within a compara- 
 tively few years. Vera Cruz, of course, has 
 been open for centuries. It was used as a port 
 for Mexico when there was only one other port 
 of the Spanish possessions in America open to 
 the trade of Europe, which meant the trade of 
 Spain. The other port was Porto Bello, on the 
 Isthmus. For generations the only trade that 
 existed between Spain and its American colonies 
 passed between Seville, in Spain, and Porto 
 Bello and Vera Cruz, in America. Once a 
 year the tub-like ships of the Spanish, popu- 
 larly known as the stately galleons, anchored
 
 30 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 off Vera Cruz, discharged their cargoes of Eu- 
 ropean wares, and took on board the products 
 of Mexico. Then they sailed away, and the 
 port slept for another year, till the return of the 
 fleet. 
 
 In contrast with this isolation of the colonial 
 days, mark the present relation of Mexico to 
 the rest of the world. The port of Vera Cruz 
 is open to the vessels of all nations, and two 
 railways connect it with the capital and the 
 other interior towns. By a system of jetties, 
 constructed by the Mexican Central Railway, 
 the bar that closed the harbor of Tampico has 
 been scoured away, and ocean vessels now 
 ascend the river Panuco seven miles, to the an- 
 cient town of Tampico. Here they may anchor 
 in perfect safety and discharge their cargoes 
 and passengers without lighterage or transfer. 
 Thus there has been opened to Mexican ship- 
 ping an inland harbor on the eastern coast, 
 free from the storms which make the roadstead 
 of Vera Cruz sometimes inconvenient and dan- 
 gerous. And the new port of Tampico has 
 already regular lines of steamers connecting it 
 with New York, Mobile, Havana, and European 
 ports. While this is the first inland port that 
 has been opened on the eastern coast of Mexico 
 the western shore has, it is true, good harbors; 
 but they are of comparatively little advantage,
 
 Population. 3 1 
 
 for two reasons : they are not readily accessible 
 to the markets of Europe and the eastern part 
 of the United States; and they have as yet no 
 means of communication with the important 
 cities of Central Mexico, except the pack mule 
 and the burden-bearing Indian. But by the 
 Mexican Gulf Railway, running northwestward 
 to Monterey, and by the branch of the Mexican 
 Central, which runs through San Luis Potosi, 
 the port of Tampico is brought into immediate 
 communication with the great internal system 
 of Mexican railways. 
 
 Tampico is clearly destined to be the strong 
 rival of Vera Cruz, which has long had a 
 practical monopoly of Mexico's external trade 
 toward the east The New York and Cuba 
 Mail Steamship Company's line of steamers 
 make direct weekly sailings between New York 
 and Tampico. Conspicuous among the other 
 lines rendering regular service to and from this 
 port are the Hamburg-American Packet Com- 
 pany, the Harrison Steamship Company, the 
 West India arid Pacific Steamship Company, 
 and the New York, Mobile, and Mexican 
 Steamship Company. The growth of the im- 
 port and export business of the port may be 
 seen in the following statement:
 
 32 Raihvay Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 Tonnage of Tonnage of 
 
 Year. Imports. Exports. 
 
 1885 9,672 7,603 
 
 1886 10,824 10,696 
 
 1887 9,731 11,878 
 
 1888 13,817 7,893 
 
 1889 H,67I 7,462 
 
 1890 21,188 8,074 
 
 1891 22,582 8,853 
 
 1892 80,670 28,702 
 
 1893 115,813 54.717 
 
 1894 M3,3o6 48,780 
 
 The value of the exports, stated in Mexican 
 dollars, during the same period, is as follows: 
 
 1885 | 733.591 29 
 
 1886 916,407 09 
 
 1887 760,769 76 
 
 1888 635,460 80 
 
 1889 684,653 27 
 
 1890 910,738 54 
 
 1891 1,100,966 92 
 
 1892 5>9io>390 63 
 
 1893 10,015,145 35 
 
 1894 13,465)830 oo 
 
 The rapid and constant increase of exports 
 and imports by way of Tampico since 1888 
 may be compared with exports and imports by 
 way of Juarez, the northern terminus of the 
 Mexican Central Railway. The imports to 
 Mexico and the exports from that country at 
 this point, were as follows :
 
 Population. 33 
 
 Year. Imports pounds. Exports pounds. 
 
 1889 33)472,55 128,375,414 
 
 1890 52,468,776 140,058,456 
 
 1891 77,454,031 207,670,788 
 
 1892 136,973,330 241,891,731 
 
 1893 46,665,395 100,014,387 
 
 1894 27,576,736 28,015,122 
 
 The Tampico figures show a strong increase, 
 while the Juarez account shows an increase 
 followed by a sharp decrease. The decrease is 
 very largely due to the falling off in shipments 
 of ore from Mexico to the United States, and 
 this falling off is in turn due to the development 
 of smelting works in Mexico at which the ore 
 mined in Mexico is smelted. 
 
 Furthermore, travelers who wish to reach 
 Mexico by sea from New York or New Orleans 
 are likely to find Tampico an agreeable port of 
 entry, and those who enter the republic by 
 this route have a certain advantage over those 
 who enter through Laredo, Eagle Pass, or El 
 Paso, for in ascending to the table-land by the 
 Tampico branch of the Mexican Central Rail- 
 way, they are carried through some of the 
 finest mountain scenery of Mexico. Those who 
 enter by any one of the other three gates are 
 obliged to pass over many miles of arid country 
 before the natural beauties of Mexico rise above 
 their horizon. Those from the western and 
 middle portions of the United States will enter 
 
 3
 
 34 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 by the northern gate, Paso del Norte, which 
 has recently been named the City of Juarez, in 
 honor of the champion of republican independ- 
 ence, who here held together his followers while 
 Maximilian was playing emperor in the City of 
 Mexico. They will approach this entrance to 
 Mexico by either the Southern Pacific or the 
 Santa Fe Railway, and by this route they will 
 have the advantage of entering Mexico at a 
 considerable elevation above the sea, as usually 
 stated, 3,717 feet, sufficient to make fairly sure 
 an agreeable summer and fall climate. Travel- 
 ers from the southern States, who wish to visit 
 Mexico without crossing the Gulf, will enter 
 the country either at Eagle Pass, by the Mexi- 
 can International Railway, or at Laredo, over 
 the Mexican National, and these are the four 
 gates that have recently been opened into East- 
 ern and Northern Mexico: Tampico on the 
 Gulf, and Laredo, Eagle Pass, and El Paso on 
 the Rio Grande. These means of communica- 
 tion between Mexico and other nations, particu- 
 larly between Mexico and the United States, 
 are of the nature of a number of agencies whose 
 efforts are directed to keeping active the migra- 
 tion of persons and the transportation of 
 goods. 
 
 The railways have not only opened ways into 
 the country, but are in themselves the moving
 
 Population. 35 
 
 forces of an industrial revolution. For it is a 
 mistake to suppose that the only function of a 
 railway corporation, having once set its road in 
 operation, is the somewhat passive one of receiv- 
 ing the business brought to it without its initia- 
 tive. Capital in large masses must itself, 
 through its agents, make the conditions of its 
 own existence. It goes with its products to 
 places where they have not been previously 
 desired, and creates a demand for them. When 
 a large amount of capital has been gathered 
 and organized for doing a specific work, the 
 principle of the life of that capital is having that 
 work to do. Suppose that in the time of active 
 railway construction in a given country a large 
 plant for making rails has come into existence. 
 When the roads which it was built to supply 
 are completed, the original occupation of this 
 capital appears to be gone. It must now be 
 transformed at a loss, or lie idle at a loss, or 
 those who act for it must become instrumental 
 in creating a demand for its products elsewhere. 
 Thus the existence of such plants in England, 
 called into being by a strong domestic demand 
 for rails, becomes a force in extending the rail- 
 way systems of other countries. The managers 
 may, rather than allow the capital to lie idle or 
 be transformed, agree to terms which make the 
 building of railways profitable in Russia or the
 
 36 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 Argentine Republic. Thus the capital organ- 
 ized for the construction of rails and the equip- 
 ment of railways becomes a permanent mission- 
 ary of railway civilization. The same thing is 
 true of the enormous amounts of capital organ- 
 ized for the construction of sewing machines. 
 If certain nations are supplied so that there 
 might be naturally a falling off in the demand, 
 this must not be; otherwise the value of the 
 plant is diminished; hence other people must 
 be made to demand sewing machines. Thus 
 the missionary force of the capital involved in 
 the making of the machines has carried them 
 to the four quarters of the earth. They may 
 be found in huts in Mexico, where the dwelling 
 itself and all else that it contains is not of half 
 the value of the machine. These are only 
 instances of the aggressive force of large masses 
 of organized capital, prompted by the instinct 
 of self-preservation in the organization. 
 
 The capital that has gone into Mexican rail- 
 ways is subject to the same law. It cannot be 
 passive; it must be a reforming agency. The 
 people among whom the roads have been con- 
 structed, whether they have hitherto felt the 
 need of them or not, must feel the need of 
 them. It is not a question of greater or less 
 happiness the railway has come and com- 
 manded other forms of life, and millions of
 
 Population. 37 
 
 capital depend on this command being obeyed, 
 and it will be obeyed. Men may not, hitherto, 
 have wished to go to Mexico; they will be 
 made to wish this thing especially. The ordi- 
 nary man or the poor peon who has never left 
 his native valley, will be indifferent at first. His 
 mind is not easily inflamed. There will gradu- 
 ally be awakened in him a desire to see the 
 great city, and the great city will inspire in 
 him the wish for things he has never possessed. 
 His wants will be increased; he will feel the 
 necessity of work; continuous work will make 
 him a man ; and the railway will bring to him 
 for his earnings things of which he never 
 dreamed. What nobody wanted at first will at 
 last be demanded by everybody; and organized 
 capital in the form of railways will have suc- 
 ceeded in creating demands for its services by 
 the compensation for which it may be main- 
 tained and increased How far this revolution 
 has been actually effected here remains to be 
 seen.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AGRICULTURE. 
 
 AMONG the more general economic effects 
 of the building of railways in Mexico may be 
 observed an increasing disposition to establish 
 and conduct productive enterprises with cor- 
 porate capital. A conspicuous weakness of the 
 Spaniards in Spain, and of their descendants 
 in Spanish America, has been their inability 
 to form and conduct successfully industrial 
 and commercial corporations. 
 
 The extreme individualist who thinks a dis- 
 astrous step was taken when the law established 
 the conditions, and permitted the existence of 
 business corporations, will naturally find a na- 
 tional virtue in the disinclination to organize, 
 or to carry on business by such corporations. 
 As the question of the good or evil of com- 
 mercial corporations is not under consideration, 
 it is not necessary to controvert this opinion, 
 but simply to call attention to the fact that one 
 may have many virtues and still lack practical 
 efficiency. If we may form a judgment from 
 (38)
 
 Agriculture. 39 
 
 the actual economic facts of our society, the 
 business corporation is the most feasible and 
 most effective means yet extensively practiced 
 for conducting great industrial enterprises; and 
 the nation that is not in a position to make 
 use of this means, by reason of its virtues or 
 its vices, is not in a position to compete suc- 
 cessfully with its neighbors who are not thus 
 hampered. 
 
 In both Spain and Mexico, therefore, the 
 large undertakings, which require more capital 
 than one man is likely to be willing to invest 
 in a single venture, have fallen into the hands 
 of foreigners who have not been opposed to 
 the corporate form of business management. 
 In Spain French corporations own and manage 
 most of the railways, while English corporations 
 work mines and control other important inter- 
 ests; and in Mexico these two lines of business 
 have already absorbed large sums of English 
 and American capital under corporate organiza- 
 tion. The reluctance of the Mexicans to take 
 advantage of this form of organization has made 
 the way here comparatively easy for foreign 
 corporations. 
 
 The reason of this reluctance is not found in 
 lack of knowledge, but in the lack of confi- 
 dence on the part of Mexicans in one another. 
 They do not believe, apparently, that their fellow-
 
 40 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 citizens are as honest in business affairs as the 
 members of other nations. As an evidence of 
 this may be noticed their comparative willing- 
 ness to enter into commercial corporations in 
 case a foreigner is to be at the head of it. In 
 this matter they appear to have more confidence 
 in a foreigner, whom they do not know, than in 
 one of their own nation, whom they do know 
 But this must be regarded as a transitory state 
 of things. The railway corporations are mak- 
 ing the people of Mexico familiar with this form 
 of investment, and since their advent there 
 have not been wanting those who were willing 
 to aid in organizing corporations for other 
 purposes. 
 
 The missionary of the modern industrial 
 system is in the field ; and through his per- 
 sonal solicitations, and through the force of the 
 example of corporations already organized, 
 Mexico is destined to be carried more and more 
 completely into line with those nations that 
 have at present largely supplanted individual 
 industry by corporate industry. By the inti- 
 mate connection which has been established 
 between this and the most advanced nations, 
 the forces that have operated to produce in 
 them an industrial revolution are working now 
 with comparative freedom, and are bringing 
 about a similar revolution in Mexico.
 
 Agriculture. 4 1 
 
 There appears to be no doubt that the prop- 
 erty of the Mexican nation as a whole has 
 already been greatly increased in value by the 
 building of the railways. Rafael Herrera, an 
 apparently conservative statistician, in setting 
 forth the items which make up the nation's 
 property, amounting to $2,200,000,000, enters 
 the railways at $200,000,000. In the same 
 account he shows that the private property in 
 the States already traversed by railways has 
 been increased $125,000,000. But a greater 
 indirect result may be reasonably expected in 
 the increase which will come as a consequence 
 of the improvement and extension of cultivation 
 that the better means of communication will 
 induce. The improvement of cultivation is 
 brought about by facility in obtaining better 
 agricultural implements, which are already 
 being largely imported, those that reach the 
 southern part of the country coming chiefly 
 from England by way of Vera Cruz. 
 
 It is noticeable that thus far the improved 
 implements introduced, particularly along the 
 line of the Mexican Southern Railway, between 
 Puebla and Oaxaca, are principally for harvest- 
 ing, while in preparing the soil and planting 
 there is still a vigorous adherence to old meth- 
 ods. The plow of the old style, with the pres- 
 tige of several thousand years of use, holds its
 
 42 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 place against all intruders with remarkable 
 resistance. The claim that it is better suited to 
 the conditions of the Mexican soil and climate 
 than any other is supported only by a tradi- 
 tional prejudice, and others of superior fitness 
 will ultimately be introduced, but they would 
 come the sooner if the makers of them would 
 consider carefully the conditions under which 
 they must be used and adapt them as far as 
 possible to these conditions. 
 
 The people of the United States are so abso- 
 lutely sure that their ways are the only proper 
 ways that they have not made the advances in 
 Spanish American trade they might have made 
 if they had been more disposed to adapt them- 
 selves and their work to the conditions and 
 practices of other nations. It may be true that 
 the customs of a nation, although supported by 
 the traditions of many generations, are not the 
 best conceivable. Still it may not be advisable, 
 if we wish to trade with that nation, to make 
 it especially conspicuous in the beginning that 
 we know they are wrong and we are right, and 
 that they must change and accept our practices 
 immediately. 
 
 If the Mexicans wisji a plow with only one 
 handle, it is not worth while to stand on their 
 accepting a plow with two handles as if it were 
 a high moral question. Moses gave his fol-
 
 Agricidture. 43 
 
 lowers not the best laws he could invent, but 
 the best they were prepared to receive; so 
 ordinary business sense should have suggested 
 to Americans to give the Mexicans not the 
 best agricultural implements that could be in- 
 vented, but the best tne Mexicans were pre- 
 pared to receive. In the course of their attempts 
 to trade with Spanish America, the merchants 
 and manufacturers of the United States have 
 not always lived up to this principle. Year 
 after year they have continued to pack goods 
 for Bogota, or Quito, or a town in Mexico not 
 reached by rail, as they would pack them to be 
 sent from New York to Albany, or from Chi- 
 cago to San Francisco, paying no attention to 
 the fact that all goods sent to Spanish America, 
 even where there are railways, may be required 
 to be carried a longer or shorter distance on 
 the backs of men or mules, and that where 
 there are no railways this is the almost uni- 
 versal method of transportation. 
 
 In loading and unloading cars the ordinary 
 truck is seldom used; the goods are taken up 
 bodily and carried from the station to the car, 
 or from the car to the station, and if they are 
 to be taken to points remote from the station, 
 they are usually taken on mules. The necessi- 
 ties of the case demand, therefore, that the 
 package should never exceed 150 pounds in
 
 44 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 weight, except where the nature of the wares 
 shipped renders the reduction of the package 
 to this size impossible. If, instead of this 
 arrangement, a package of 400 or 500 pounds 
 reaches a point from which it must be carried 
 by men or animals, it will have to be broken 
 into several bundles before it can be trans- 
 ported to its destination; and it requires only 
 a little observation to be able to appreciate 
 what is likely to happen to packages of goods 
 broken in transit in any Spanish American 
 country. 
 
 One result we may count on with much 
 certainty: the next time the consignee wishes 
 goods he will send his orders to another house, 
 and probably to another country. In the mat- 
 ter of adapting themselves to the peculiar con- 
 ditions of Mexico and of Spanish America in 
 general, the traders of the United States appear 
 to have shown less quickness and sagacity than 
 the members of certain other nations ; but, hav- 
 ing found out that there is something to be 
 learned, they are now learning it rapidly. 
 
 On the extension of cultivation the direct 
 influence of the railways is clearly discernible- 
 Persons who had lived in that connection with 
 the rest of the world which proximity to the 
 railways gave them, were naturally reluctant to 
 involve themselves in agricultural enterprises
 
 Agriculture. 45 
 
 far away from the means of rapid transporta- 
 tion. But it is by such persons that the recent 
 extraordinary demand for agricultural lands 
 has been made; and this demand has been 
 largely induced by the construction of railways 
 that in the last few years have brought large 
 tracts of productive land into easy communica- 
 tion with the rest of the world. 
 
 Conspicuous among the railways that have 
 of late opened new fields for agricultural enter- 
 prise are the Mexican Southern, the Inter- 
 oceanic and the Guadalajara branch of the 
 Mexican Central. The Mexican Southern is one 
 of the latest ventures in railway building in 
 Mexico. Maintaining a general direction toward 
 the southeast, it runs through a rich agricul- 
 tural region between Puebla and Tehuacan, then 
 descends into an interior valley, which is only 
 about 1,500 feet above the sea. Here the 
 cocoanut flourishes, and the mango and the 
 banana thrive with apparently little aid from 
 cultivation. As we are here under about the 
 seventeenth degree of latitude, it is somewhat 
 warm, as might be expected, but it is not 
 oppressive. Even in midsummer it is not dis- 
 agreeable. With the surrounding mountains, 
 which are completely clothed with foliage, send- 
 ing down abundant streams of water, there are 
 on all sides the suggestions of a tropical par-
 
 46 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 adise. From this region the road leads up 
 through a deep and crooked canyon to the 
 summit of a ridge 7,000 feet high, which 
 is here the watershed between the Gulf and 
 the Pacific. At this point of advantage a 
 magnificent view toward the south is spread 
 out before us, over hills that are green with 
 the freshness of spring, over valleys of waving 
 corn, and on toward the ocean. By the build- 
 ing of this railway the rich valley of Oaxaca 
 is brought within an easy day's journey of 
 Puebla, whereas formerly it was reached only 
 after a week's journey over a hard road. 
 
 The Guadalajara branch of the Mexican 
 Central has not only brought railway com- 
 munication to the third city of the republic, 
 but has also made readily accessible an exten- 
 sive and productive agricultural region. It is 
 in this part of the country that the oranges 
 are produced which have lately begun to be 
 shipped to the United States. The time of ship- 
 ment is, however, such that should the amount 
 greatly increase it would not be likely to inter- 
 fere with the market of the California crop. 
 But at present it is not the cultivation of the 
 orange but of coffee that is attracting special 
 attention. The possibilities of the western slope 
 with reference to this product are but imper- 
 fectly determined, while on the eastern slope
 
 Agriculture. 47 
 
 much progress has already been made. The 
 completion of the Interoceanic Railway to Vera 
 Cruz, through Jalapa, has made more acces- 
 sible rich coffee lands that are already culti- 
 vated and others that will hereafter be brought 
 under cultivation. 
 
 Among the reasons for supposing that lands 
 not at present cultivated will be found suitable 
 for raising coffee and brought under cultivation 
 is the extraordinary profit which the production 
 of coffee offers. The cost of its production in 
 Mexico in general is between eight and ten 
 cents a pound in Mexican money, and it sells 
 at from twenty-five to thirty-two cents. An- 
 other consideration pointing to the same result 
 is the probable diminution of the production 
 in Brazil. 
 
 Hitherto Brazil has produced about one-half 
 of the coffee that has been consumed in the 
 world. It is clear, therefore, that any serious 
 interference with the conditions of production 
 in that country would open extraordinary op- 
 portunities for other countries. Probably the 
 most violent shock which the economic inter- 
 ests of Brazil have suffered in this century has 
 been caused by the emancipation of the slaves, 
 of whom about 284,000 were engaged in the 
 cultivation of coffee, working from twelve to 
 fourteen hours a day. As long as those con-
 
 48 Railway Revolution in Mexico, 
 
 ditions of labor continued which existed prior 
 to the emancipation of the slaves, Brazil was 
 naturally not regarded by the laborers of other 
 countries as a favorable place to which to 
 emigrate. 
 
 Thus, without European colonists seeking 
 independent farms, the ownership of land drifted 
 more and more toward large possessions. 
 When the slaves were emancipated, their first 
 disposition was to avoid work and to fall into 
 indolence and general worthlessness, and the 
 large estates consequently found themselves 
 with a diminished force of laborers. The gov- 
 ernment undertook to remedy the evil by intro- 
 ducing Chinese. One of the Ministers, in 1879, 
 advocating this measure, said that "the govern- 
 ment, having little hope of saving the cultiva- 
 tion of coffee by means of European colonists, 
 directed its view toward China, with the design 
 of introducing from that source agricultural 
 laborers who might replace the slaves." He 
 did not regard the introduction of the Chinese 
 as a part of a process of colonization, but only 
 as furnishing an addition to the labor force; and 
 the government, as he confessed, turned its 
 attention to this source "because it was con- 
 vinced that there was no other available." 
 
 The plan was carried out against great opposi- 
 tion, but the Chinese introduced remained only
 
 Agriculture. 49 
 
 a short time on the coffee plantations; they 
 then fled to the cities, where they became 
 laundrymen and were engaged as domestic 
 servants. 
 
 One phase of this embarrassing state of things 
 was an enormous increase of mortgages on 
 the coffee plantations. By 1883 the 1,039 
 plantations in the region about Rio and Santos 
 had become burdened with claims amounting to 
 $24,707,015. This creation of large permanent 
 obligations, for the payment of which the estates 
 were pledged, stands in strong contrast with 
 the earlier practice, under which comparatively 
 small sums were borrowed for short periods on 
 simple promises to pay, and were promptly paid 
 with a part of the proceeds of the first succeed- 
 ing crop. The new condition of things indicates 
 such a decline in production that the borrowers 
 have found themselves unable to liquidate their 
 obligations, and are forced to carry them as 
 permanent burdens. And in later years the 
 affairs of the planters of Brazil have shown no 
 especially marked improvement. At present 
 twenty per cent, of the plantations are practi- 
 cally free from debt, thirty per cent, in case 
 of liquidation, would scarcely be able to meet 
 their obligations, and fifty per cent, are in a 
 hopeless condition. 
 
 The recent rise in the price of coffee is partly 
 4
 
 50 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 due to the desperate situation of the Brazilian 
 planters, and partly to the very marked in- 
 crease of consumption in the United States and 
 the European nations. The increase in annual 
 consumption in these nations from 1873 to 
 1882 was 257,347,273 pounds, which is to say 
 that Italy, France, Russia, Norway, Sweden, 
 Switzerland, Austro-Hungary, Germany, Portu- 
 gal, Belgium, England, Holland, Denmark, and 
 the United States consumed in 1882 upwards 
 of 250,000,000 pounds of coffee more than 
 in 1873. The next decade witnessed an even 
 greater increase in consumption. The con- 
 sumption of 1892 exceeded that of 1883 by 
 400,000,000 pounds; and there is reason to ex- 
 pect, with the prospect of Russia and Spain 
 becoming coffee-drinking nations, that the in- 
 crease in consumption in the future will be 
 even greater than in the past. 
 
 These facts indicate that the present extraor- 
 dinary demands for coffee lands in Mexico 
 have a certain reasonable foundation. Even 
 should Brazil escape from her difficulties with 
 respect to labor, the greatly increased con- 
 sumption of coffee is likely to keep its price 
 near its present figure for at least a number of 
 years. As the ills of Brazil are not merely 
 economic but also political, the hopes of a 
 speedy recovery are not strong. In the con-
 
 Agriculture. 5 1 
 
 test for some share of the gains of the existing 
 market, Mexico has important advantages. She 
 has an extensive territory adapted in soil and 
 climate to this form of cultivation, and, in the 
 Indians, an excellent body of laborers, perhaps 
 better fitted for this kind of work than the or- 
 dinary laborers of any other country. 
 
 A reference to the statistics of the exporta- 
 tion of coffee from Mexico shows that what- 
 ever may have been the price the amount 
 exported has continued to increase. From an 
 examination of the details of these statistics 
 we get the following general results, showing 
 the number of pounds of coffee exported from 
 Mexico in each of the years 1873, 1883, 1889, 
 and 1890: 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 In 1873 1432,100 
 
 In 1883 18,598,419 
 
 In 1889 21,755,956 
 
 In 1890 27,797,056 
 
 From this statement we see that the annual 
 exportation of 1873 was 1,432,100 pounds. In 
 the course of ten years the amount of the an- 
 nual exportation had increased to such an extent 
 that in 1883 it was 17,166,319 pounds more 
 than in 1873. In 1889 the exportations were 
 3,157,537 pounds more than six years earlier, 
 in 1883; and in 1890 they were 6,041,100 
 pounds more than during the previous year.
 
 52 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 If, in want of the exact figures of the most re- 
 cent years, we assume that the annual increase 
 of exportations since 1890 has been what it 
 was during the year 1889-1890, we shall reach 
 the provisional statement that the exportations 
 for the year ending in 1895 will amount to 
 58,012,556 pounds. 
 
 The cultivation of coffee and other export- 
 able products is favored at this time, in order 
 that they may be sent abroad to liquidate for- 
 eign obligations, and thus prevent the exporta- 
 tion of silver at its present low price. This 
 appears to be a kind of generally accepted pol- 
 icy. If this design of exporting agricultural 
 products and manufactured commodities to pay 
 for imports and meet the interest on foreign 
 loans is carried out, the result will necessarily 
 be a state of things apparently not foreseen 
 here, at least not brought forward in the op- 
 timistic views set forth. Hitherto silver has 
 been exported because it has been the cheap- 
 est thing Mexico could produce which was 
 largely demanded by foreigners; and thus, in 
 spite oi the enormous production, it has not 
 accumulated in the country to such an extent 
 as to affect the currency seriously by causing 
 an undue inflation. Hence, considering only 
 the immediate past and only one phase of the 
 economic forces in operation at present, there
 
 Agriculture. 53 
 
 has come into existence in Mexico a feeling of 
 remarkable hopefulness with respect to the fu- 
 ture, which does not appear to be entirely 
 justified. For, in financial affairs, the immedi- 
 ate effects of a policy are not adequate grounds 
 of judgments respecting the merits of that 
 policy. 
 
 The immediate effect of any form of inflated 
 currency is to stimulate economic activity. 
 Whether the sudden overabundance of money 
 is caused, as in Germany after the war with 
 France, by the importation of a large amount of 
 gold, or by importing or mining and coining a 
 large amount of silver, or by issuing an inor- 
 dinate amount of paper money, the immediate 
 economic effects are essentially the same, a 
 feverish activity, in which enterprises of vari- 
 ous kinds are set on foot, through which it is 
 hoped to get some part of the gains that ap- 
 pear unusually large and easily earned. This 
 movement goes naturally to the point where 
 the extraordinary amounts of capital invested 
 fail to bring the expected returns; and there 
 follow losses from disappointing ventures, con- 
 sequent failures to meet obligations, an inev- 
 itable subsequent shrinkage, and the other 
 characteristic and familiar features of a com- 
 mercial crisis. 
 
 Any artificial stimulus of production, if car-
 
 54 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 ried far enough and rapidly enough, whether 
 caused by an increase in the amount of the 
 currency, or by stopping the preexisting cur- 
 rents of imports, will lead to the same result. 
 The decline in the price of silver has operated 
 in both of these ways in Mexico. The infla- 
 tion, however, has not been very great. It has 
 come only in proportion to the unusual amount 
 of silver that has been retained in the country 
 by reason of the substitution, in the list of ex- ' 
 ports, of other commodities for a certain part 
 of the silver usually exported. In the other 
 way the fall of silver has been much more in- 
 fluential. By making it impossible to get from 
 foreign countries more than about one-half as 
 much for a dollar as formerly, it has practically 
 doubled the protective force of the legal cus- 
 toms duties. 
 
 By this means it is expected that the im- 
 ports will be greatly lessened; and by the stim- 
 ulated production of coffee and other commod- 
 ities it is hoped that the foreign obligations 
 thus lessened will be met. This avowed de- 
 sign leaves the silver in the country. If, 
 then, the mines continue to be worked, and the 
 mints continue to coin the silver, the inevitable 
 result will be a rapid increase in the amount 
 of money in the country. And there is every 
 reason to suppose that both of these things
 
 Agrieultu re. 5 5 
 
 will continue to happen. A rapid rise of prices 
 will, therefore, surely follow, unless the in- 
 creased business, by its demands for a more 
 abundant circulating medium, will absorb the 
 great stream of coin flowing from the mints. 
 And this is not to be anticipated, for several 
 reasons. In the first place, because of the enor- 
 mous amount of silver produced and passed 
 from the mines through the mints. This 
 amount for the sixty-seven years from 1822 to 
 1889 was $3,371,647,269, exceeding the total 
 present value of all the property of Mexico, 
 public and private, set down at $2,200,000,000, 
 by more than one-half of this sum, making an 
 average yearly coinage of over fifty millions 
 of dollars. 
 
 If, in spite of revolutions and general inse- 
 curity of property, there have been coined over 
 fifty millions a year for the last sixty-seven 
 years, we have reason to expect a larger rather 
 than a smaller sum in the coming years. In 
 the second place, it is not to be expected that 
 the increasing business will absorb the annual 
 product of the mints, because with the placing 
 of the business of Mexico on the basis of mod- 
 ern commercial nations, credit will be much 
 more extensively used than formerly, and this 
 condition of things is already beginning to be 
 manifest. In the third place, it will not hap-
 
 56 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 pen, because of the decline in the amounts 
 hoarded on account of greater public security 
 and the introduction of new methods of busi- 
 ness. 
 
 It thus appears that the substitution of cof- 
 fee or other products for silver in the foreign 
 exchanges will leave the silver in the country, 
 and inevitably bring about a local depreciation 
 of it. This will result in a general increase of 
 prices, diminishing somewhat, particularly as it 
 affects wages, the extraordinary advantages 
 which those who produce in Mexico for a for- 
 eign market now have. The advantages will, 
 however, disappear slowly, for labor follows the 
 upward movement in the prices of other 
 things. Here the wages of ordinary labor are 
 especially slow in rising, owing in part to the 
 fact that the Indians who perform this work 
 are to such an extent a class apart that they 
 form almost a separate nation, with respect 
 to the rest of the nation practically a non- 
 competing half. Consequently the producers 
 who employ this labor, as do the coffee plant- 
 ers almost entirely, will retain the existing ad- 
 vantages by so much the longer. 
 
 The part of Mexico reached by the western 
 branch of the Mexican Central Railway, which 
 at present ends at Guadalajara, is one of the 
 most fruitful provinces of the country. In a
 
 Agriculture. 57 
 
 book called a "Geographical Description of the 
 Indies," which was written more than three 
 hundred years ago, and which has lain in man- 
 uscript until it was printed last year, the au- 
 thor makes the following reference to this 
 region : "The temperature of this province," 
 so runs the description, "is rather cold than 
 hot, and is thus a healthful region. It rains 
 and thunders much in the months of June and 
 July, and there are severe earthquakes. The 
 soil of the province is sandy, and thus it is 
 never muddy. There are many springs and 
 rivers, and the land is rather uneven than 
 level; and there are also great mountains of a 
 porous rock, not suitable for the purposes of 
 building; there is much limestone but no gyp- 
 sum. There are in the province, as in other 
 parts of the kingdom, mines of silver, although 
 all poor; there is much pasture and meadow 
 land, some of which is irrigated, and there is 
 a disposition to extend this; and thus it is very 
 fertile and productive of corn and wheat and 
 all the grains and vegetables of Spain." Since 
 this brief description was written, three hun- 
 dred and twenty years ago, there has been 
 time to write a better one, but it has not yet 
 appeared. 
 
 In the beginning the growth of Guadalajara, 
 as it was the center of an agricultural region,
 
 58 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 was necessarily slow. But Zacatecas, founded 
 later in a rich mining district, grew much more 
 rapidly. In the course of time, however, Gua- 
 dalajara became a political capital. It was 
 the seat of the judicial and administrative body 
 known as the Audiencia, and thus the center 
 of the ancient kingdom of New Galicia. This 
 advantage it has retained; since the establish- 
 ment of the republic of Mexico it has been 
 the capital of the State of Jalisco. But some- 
 thing more than politics has been necessary to 
 make it the rich and prosperous city of to-day. 
 The source of this wealth is the fertile land of 
 the adjacent region, which will produce in 
 abundance almost everything that has ever 
 been cultivated. Hitherto the amount of the 
 production of this region has been limited 
 especially by two things: By the difficulties of 
 reaching a market, and by the possession of 
 land in very large tracts free from taxation. 
 
 Before the railway penetrated this part of 
 Mexico, certain things which might be produced 
 here in practically unlimited quantities were 
 cultivated only to a very limited extent The 
 orange is perhaps a good illustration of this. 
 The considerable and increasing shipments that 
 have already been made in the last few years 
 furnish no indication of the capacity of the 
 province in this respect; they are scarcely more
 
 Agriculture. 59 
 
 than the surplus which was wasted under pre- 
 vious conditions. As long as it was very dif- 
 ficult or impossible to ship the portion of any 
 product that was not demanded for local con- 
 sumption, there was certainly no inducement 
 to increase the amount of the production. The 
 railway has relieved this condition of things to 
 a certain extent; but there are still needed in 
 this part of the country branches of the exist- 
 ing railway from twenty-five to a hundred 
 miles in length to bring better means of trans- 
 portation to rich and extensive lands which at 
 present are only imperfectly cultivated. 
 
 The other hindrance to the agricultural devel- 
 opment of this most favored region is the ex- 
 istence of very large estates, the land of which 
 is free from taxation, only the products bearing 
 a tax. This hindrance exists not merely in the 
 neighborhood of Guadalajara, but throughout 
 the territory of the republic. Although there 
 may be large estates in all parts of the coun- 
 try, yet the magnitude of the evil in different 
 places varies with the different kinds of culti- 
 vation. The highlands between Puebla and 
 the City of Mexico, which appear to be espe- 
 cially useful, and perhaps only useful, for the 
 production of pulque, may be most advanta- 
 geously managed in large tracts. In the profits 
 of the business there is a sufficient incentive to
 
 60 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 keep the territory fully planted. But this is 
 not true in some other kinds of production, 
 where the expenses are nearer the gross re- 
 turns, particularly where the land is owned not 
 for the sake of the maximum revenue, but as 
 a family endowment that may be held from 
 generation to generation as a means of assur- 
 ing to the family its present economic and 
 social standing. 
 
 One observing these vast estates, which em- 
 brace from twenty-five to five hundred square 
 miles, large parts of which may be neither 
 increasing in value nor bringing an annual re- 
 turn from cultivation, naturally thinks of the 
 advisability of selling them or parts of them, 
 and so investing the money that it may bring 
 an income. He may, perhaps, expect to see 
 this result speedily brought about; for he sees 
 in this course abundant gains for the owner 
 instead of the comparatively meager gains of 
 the present, and he relies upon what he calls 
 the economic forces to effect this change. If 
 he has faithfully accepted the one-sided politi- 
 cal economy sometimes taught, he will con- 
 clude this must be, since there is a great pecun- 
 iary advantage in this line of action. But it 
 is the rare man who moves in the line traced 
 by the earlier economists, and it is particularly 
 not the mediaeval man who survives in the 
 person of the great landholder of Mexico.
 
 Agriculture. 6 1 
 
 A student of the conditions of rural Europe 
 in the Middle Ages would find great enlight- 
 enment in a few weeks on one of these great 
 estates. In the residence of the proprietor he 
 would find himself walled about in a manner 
 to suggest the stronghold of the mediaeval 
 baron. The extent of the estate he would find 
 not less than that of the barony, and the au- 
 thority of the later lord equal to that of the 
 earlier. He would find the peons, who live on 
 the estate, as dependent as were the serfs, and 
 their methods of working quite as crude. Con- 
 temporary illustrations show the mediaeval serf 
 working with a rude hoe, but the Mexican serf 
 in completing the work of cultivating the corn 
 after the plow, often uses only his hands. The 
 desire of the modern feudal lord, moreover, to 
 preserve his estate entire for his descendants, 
 regardless of economic considerations, appears 
 to be as strong as it was in his European 
 predecessor; and it is this which stands as the 
 chief hindrance to a speedy revolutionizing of 
 rural life and cultivation in the especially fertile 
 parts of the country, such as the region about 
 Guadalajara, or on the eastern slope between 
 Tampico and San Luis Potosi. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that, while the building 
 of the railway sets aside one of the hindrances 
 to more extensive cultivation, the other re-
 
 62 Railway Revohition in Mexico. 
 
 mains. The owners of the large estates are 
 several degrees removed from the "economic 
 man" of the economists. They do not proceed 
 in the line of the greatest pecuniary gains. 
 
 The satisfaction of mere possession, and of 
 the thought that the later generations of their 
 families are assured independence, counterbal- 
 ances all other considerations. If they produce 
 enough for their own wants and the mainte- 
 nance of their numerous servants and other 
 dependents, they find no inconvenience in the 
 fact that a large part of their lands are not 
 under cultivation, and produce little or nothing. 
 If they produce nothing, they are not taxed. 
 Taxes come only with production. The ob- 
 stacles to more extensive and complete culti- 
 vation involved in this system may not be 
 removed by showing that superior economic 
 gains would be had in case of their removal, 
 for, as suggested, the proprietors are not 
 amenable to the consideration of maximum 
 gains. 
 
 If Mexico's rich lands are to be fully util- 
 ized and abundance to reign, her mediaeval 
 system of landholding and agriculture must be 
 modernized; the great estates must be divided, 
 and the prize of independence held out to the 
 agricultural laborers. This is not a statement 
 based on mere speculation; it is emphasized
 
 Agriculture. 63 
 
 and confirmed by the affairs of every nation 
 that has achieved for the bulk of its citizens 
 a noteworthy degree of prosperity. And the 
 means are not in the hands of private persons 
 or railway corporations, but in the hands of 
 the government, and should be applied in the 
 form of a general tax on land, sufficiently 
 heavy to make it extremely inconvenient for 
 one to hold thousands of acres of fertile land 
 without cultivating it or putting it to some 
 productive use. But here is the rub; the gov- 
 ernment is an oligarchy, topped by a despot, 
 and the members of the oligarchy, or the class 
 to which they belong, are the great landholders, 
 and naturally have no desire to impose a bur- 
 den on land which would make the holding of 
 their estates in their present form practically 
 impossible. Yet this measure properly carried 
 out would enable the government to relin- 
 quish some of its petty imposts on manufac- 
 turing and trading, which at present discourage 
 business without bringing to the state large 
 returns. It would, moreover, tend to throw 
 certain lands into the market in those parts of 
 Mexico which are most desirable as places of 
 residence. 
 
 But there are certain forces at work, which, 
 even without a tax, will tend to bring Mexican 
 lands into the market and cause them to be
 
 64 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 divided. One of these is the railway compa- 
 nies, who are directly interested in having this 
 end reached. They are interested in it be- 
 cause it will increase their local traffic in both 
 freight and passengers; and most of these com- 
 panies have had already sufficient experience in 
 their business to be able to see clearly that they 
 must rely for the support of their undertakings 
 on the local instead of the "through" traffic. 
 The railway company in Mexico, that bases its 
 expectation of a degree of success superior to 
 that of the other companies, on the fact of hav- 
 ing the shortest line between New York or 
 Chicago and the City of Mexico, is bound to 
 be fooled, unless it has equal or greater ad- 
 vantages than the other companies in local 
 business. 
 
 These facts clearly seen are leading some of 
 the companies to put forth extraordinary ef- 
 forts to secure such control of lands adjacent 
 to railways that they may sell them in tracts 
 of the sizes desired by immigrants. The rail- 
 way companies or other combinations of cap- 
 italists in which the railway companies are in- 
 terested, are the only persons who are in a 
 position to make the original purchase; for in 
 some places, if the sale is made at all, the 
 whole of an estate of say two hundred and 
 fifty thousand acres must be sold. The rail-
 
 Agriculture. 65 
 
 way company or a syndicate must be the mid- 
 dleman, and it may be expected to make a profit 
 on the portions sold. This will be necessary 
 to cover the loss of holding comparatively 
 worthless tracts that remain unsold, or if sold 
 bring not more than the original purchase 
 price. If a railway company thus becomes a 
 trader in real estate, it will expect a permanent 
 source of gain in an increase of its regular bus- 
 iness. 
 
 A syndicate has nearly completed its negotia- 
 tions for the purchase of a large estate on the 
 line of the Tampico branch of the Mexican 
 Central Railway, which embraces a magnificent 
 valley at the bottom of the first great descent 
 from the table-land. It ought to be attractive 
 to settlers, if soil and climate and scenery can 
 make any place attractive; and if things culti- 
 vated will grow as things uncultivated now 
 grow, it ought to be easy there to gather the 
 means of a comfortable existence. The region 
 farther down towards the Gulf, through which 
 one passes on the journey from San Luis Potosi 
 to Tampico, comes nearer to one's ideal 01 
 tropical scenery than that presented almost 
 anywhere else in Mexico the forests apparently 
 impassable for their abundance of tangled vines, 
 the brilliant flowers scattered here and there in 
 the dark green foliage, and the wide stretches 
 5
 
 66 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 of country in which the tall and dignified palms 
 are the conspicuous objects. 
 
 The part of Mexico tributary to Guadalajara 
 has not only almost unlimited agricultural re- 
 sources, but also excellent opportunities for 
 manufacturing. A few miles from the city 
 there is a fall in the largest river of the country, 
 which some persons, by a powerful effort of 
 the imagination, like to call the Niagara of 
 Mexico. It has been utilized to a certain ex- 
 tent, but only a very small fraction of its power 
 developed. It runs certain mills in the neigh- 
 borhood; it furnishes the electric light of Gua- 
 dalajara; and there appears to be no reason why 
 the whole system of street cars might not be 
 driven by power from the same source, and 
 still leave enough for many years of industrial 
 growth. 
 
 The recent progress in manufacturing cotton 
 goods in Mexico has raised inquiries concerning 
 the raw material and the resources of the coun- 
 try respecting this form of agricultural produce, 
 and a reasonable conclusion is that the records 
 give us no information of a period when cotton 
 was not cultivated here. The Spaniards found 
 it under cultivation on their arrival, and among 
 the presents which Cortes received shortly after 
 he had destroyed the city of Cholula were 1 ,500 
 suits of cotton clothing. They found it not
 
 Agriculture. 67 
 
 merely in a few places, but throughout almost 
 all the territory which at present belongs to 
 the republic, and it was even in use by the 
 Indians of California. Articles of cotton figure 
 in nearly all the presents received by Cortes 
 from the natives, and they were found among 
 the first presents sent by him to the king of 
 Spain. So numerous are the evidences of the 
 use of cotton by the Indians that it has been 
 affirmed that it was more extensively cultivated 
 before the conquest than during the period of 
 Spanish domination. In the latter period the 
 Indians, who had previously worked independ- 
 ently, were reduced to slavery in the service 
 of the invaders, and called away from their 
 customary occupations and compelled to follow 
 the directions of their masters, under whom 
 agricultural interests were neglected and the 
 cultivation of cotton declined. The last cen- 
 tury of Spanish rule witnessed, however, an 
 improvement in agriculture and in the condi- 
 tion of the Indians, not so much on account 
 of improvement in the laws as on account of 
 the fact that these laws were not enforced with 
 rigor. 
 
 The repressive system had proved itself an 
 economic blunder, and with the return of the 
 inhabitants to a larger degree of freedom there 
 was an increase in nearly all kinds of produc-
 
 68 Railway Revolution in Mexico, 
 
 tion, and in the production of cotton with the 
 rest To such an extent was the production 
 of cotton carried on in the last years of the 
 old regime that it entered as an important item 
 into the trade with Spain, but on account of 
 the great cost of transportation by land, only 
 planters near Vera Cruz were able to obtain 
 any considerable advantage from this trade. 
 The amount sent to Spain in 1761 was only 
 3,350 pounds, while in 1810, about fifty years 
 later, it amounted to 505,200 pounds. These 
 figures are not necessarily in the ratio of the 
 amounts produced, for in the intervening period 
 the new commercial code between Spain and 
 her colonies had established almost complete 
 freedom of trade, and by this had greatly in- 
 creased the shipments of wares both ways. 
 In the seven years from 1802 to 1808 inclusive, 
 Mexico imported cotton goods to the value of 
 $13,152,416. The freedom of trade which the 
 colonies enjoyed in the last years of Spanish 
 rule not only increased the importations but 
 also the amount of domestic production. 
 
 In the early part of this century cotton was 
 produced in nearly every State of Mexico, but 
 only a limited area in some of the States was 
 suited to its cultivation. The regions especially 
 adapted to it are three, the lower portion of 
 the slope toward the Pacific, the gulf coast, and
 
 Agriculture. 69 
 
 an interior district lying between Saltillo and 
 Chihuahua. The different parts of these several 
 regions are not of uniform importance. In the 
 gulf district the best lands are found in the 
 State of Vera Cruz. Yet, during the war be- 
 tween the Northern and Southern States of the 
 Union, the State of Temaulipais produced large 
 quantities of cotton, through which the pro- 
 ducers made large gains. But the return of 
 peace and the revival of the South deprived 
 this region of its importance in the production 
 of cotton. The amount raised declined from 
 year to year, and fell, in the course of time, to 
 almost zero. With the view of bringing about 
 a revival, the government, in 1882, instituted 
 inquiries and experiments to determine the best 
 means of restoring the early prosperity, but 
 without noteworthy success. In the State of 
 Vera Cruz, however, the cultivation is still con- 
 tinued, the annual production amounting ap- 
 proximately to 25,000,000 pounds, and with 
 prospects of extension. 
 
 On the side of the Pacific the territory 
 adapted to the cultivation of cotton is much 
 more extensive, but less fully developed. It 
 embraces a strip of territory 100 miles wide, 
 more or less, reaching from Hermosillo to the 
 border of Guatemala. 
 
 The progress of cotton planting in this west-
 
 7O Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 ern region, as well as the progress of civilization 
 generally, has been greatly impeded by the lack 
 of means of communication. Of the large 
 number of companies that have received con- 
 cessions from the government to construct rail- 
 ways to the Pacific, no one has as yet fulfilled 
 the conditions. The only means of transporta- 
 tion between the cities of Central Mexico and 
 the region along the Pacific is still the mule 
 train, and as a consequence there are few signs 
 of progress here that have not been observed 
 during the last 300 years. Under such condi- 
 tions corn and fruit are almost the only things 
 cultivated, and these because they are the prin- 
 cipal items of food, and, for a large part of the 
 population, the only food. For these products 
 there is a local demand, each community con- 
 suming the whole or a large part of its product. 
 Cotton, on the other hand, under the new con- 
 ditions of manufacturing, has need of transpor- 
 tation, sometimes over long distances, and this, 
 in view of the existing want of facilities, is an 
 effective discouragement of its production. 
 
 The existing system of cotton manufactures 
 in Mexico had its origin in the decade following 
 the achievement of political independence. Lu- 
 cas Alaman, the historian, then minister, was 
 influential in bringing it into existence. The 
 first mill for spinning and weaving was built in
 
 Agriculture. 7 1 
 
 Puebla, and was called "La Constancia." Some- 
 what later, in 1835, another mill was established 
 in the same city, and called "El Patriotismo," 
 and at the same period the mill called "La 
 Magdalena" was built in the little town of 
 Tlalpam, in the valley of Mexico. In the be- 
 ginning the development was slow, but in the 
 last few years the number of mills has increased 
 rapidly, and at present there are in the country 
 ninety-eight establishments of sufficient impor- 
 tance to be properly termed cotton mills. As 
 early as 1842 an experiment in making prints 
 was undertaken in Puebla. Other attempts 
 were made in 1860, but they led to no perma- 
 nently valuable results; in fact, little of impor- 
 tance in this line was done till 1870, and it was 
 eight years before there began to be observed 
 a diminution in the importation of European 
 prints. At first the mills were established only 
 in the capital and neighboring towns, for the 
 spirit of enterprise was found concentrated here; 
 but in the course of time this spirit has extended 
 itself to the outlying parts of the republic, and 
 at present there is no part of the country that 
 has not its cotton mills of greater or less im- 
 portance. 
 
 An apparently sober-minded Mexican con- 
 cludes a discussion on this subject by saying 
 that "we have immense territories suited to the
 
 72 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 production of cotton, which are still unculti- 
 vated, so that it is possible to raise the produc- 
 tion of cotton to a very respectable figure. 
 Continual political dissensions, the want of 
 means of communication, and, above all, the 
 practice which is followed in the cultivation of 
 cotton, are the things which have contributed 
 especially to the low state in which the cotton 
 industry has been found. We have, however, 
 to-day, fortunately entered upon a new era of 
 beneficent peace; the ways of communication 
 are becoming easier, circumstances which tend 
 to the advancement of the industry in question. 
 But there is still something wanting; the culti- 
 vators must abandon their methods, and under- 
 take their agricultural work in the light of the 
 most advanced knowledge; they must learn 
 new methods, and inform themselves how to 
 overcome the difficulties of this form of cultiva- 
 tion. When this happens, there will unquestion- 
 ably come an increase in the production of 
 lands already cultivated, and the area of culti- 
 vation will be extended. Then Mexico will 
 occupy a very high place, if not the first place, 
 among the cotton-growing countries." This 
 last expression may, perhaps, involve a slight 
 exaggeration, and more or less ignorance of the 
 resources of eastern Texas, but it indicates the 
 strong conviction of one who has wandered 
 over a large portion of his country for the pur- 
 pose of investigating its resources in this regard.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CITIES. 
 
 MUCH light may be thrown on the character 
 of the economic revolution now in progress in 
 Mexico by observing also what Mexican cities 
 were before railways reached them, and what 
 they are now becoming under new influences. 
 Their conditions were unlike the conditions of 
 either those cities of the United States that 
 have recently grown into importance, depend- 
 ing in the beginning on older centers of popula- 
 tion, or those that existed in the eastern part 
 of the country before railways were built. The 
 difference between them and the more recently 
 developed American cities is the difference 
 between an independent growth and growth 
 fostered from some external source. The points 
 in which they differed from the American cities 
 of the period before the railway are mainly 
 two: They were more completely isolated 
 and compelled to be self-dependent, and their 
 inhabitants comprised two classes distinctly 
 separated by different race characteristics, the 
 
 (73)
 
 74 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 very large majority of whom were Indians. 
 It is not to be supposed that in Mexico the 
 new order of things introduced by the means 
 of rapid transportation is to be equally advan- 
 tageous to all places. Towns that have already 
 been developed in Mexico have grown in obedi- 
 ence to forces that will not necessarily remain 
 the dominant forces. The currents of trade 
 and the centers of distribution are not neces- 
 sarily the same before and after the introduc- 
 tion of railways. A town, by reason of its 
 position and the energy of a few of its inhabit- 
 ants, may become an important distributing 
 center; its merchants may hold large quantities 
 of goods in stock, and may supply the dealers 
 in the towns of the adjacent region. The 
 building of a railway to that town, and through 
 the region which has become tributary to it, 
 may destroy its trade and its relative impor- 
 tance at a single blow. The dealers in other 
 towns, who have been its customers, are en- 
 abled to go directly to its source of supply. 
 In this process of developing a few large centers 
 of trade, some of the hitherto existing smaller 
 ones are either left stationary or caused to 
 decline. 
 
 Probably the present condition of no Mexican 
 city illustrates the early condition of all of them 
 better than that of Oaxaca. It has been easily
 
 The Cities. 75 
 
 accessible for so short a period that its circum- 
 stances are essentially what they were before 
 the railway was built. Through three cen- 
 turies of its history it has grown as an interior 
 town, in the fullest sense of that term. It lies 
 in one of the most beautiful and fertile valleys 
 of Mexico, or rather at the meeting point of 
 three valleys. It is shut off from the ocean 
 on the south by a solid range of mountains; it 
 is separated from the cities of Central Mexico 
 on the north by a mass of rough and broken 
 country. The region of which it is the center 
 is a part of the world by itself, and the com- 
 munity which occupies it is practically a self- 
 sufficing body of people. The population has 
 grown so slowly through its long existence 
 that it has learned to satisfy its wants, as they 
 have appeared, by its own products. The 
 hand looms which have been used for genera- 
 tions are still used. The pottery which the 
 inhabitants of this region must have learned 
 to make centuries ago, is still made and turned 
 to all conceivable uses, from cooking stoves to 
 children's toys. Articles made from the potter's 
 clay serve most of the purposes of our articles 
 of iron or tin or wood or brass. If you wish 
 a bell, you will buy it of the potter. If you 
 wish a whistle, you will buy it of the potter. If 
 you wish tiles to cover the dome of the cathe-
 
 76 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 dral, you will buy them of the potter. In fact, 
 from the great variety of uses to which the 
 potter's clay is put, we readily see that life 
 before the iron age was not necessarily mean. 
 Other apparently simple materials are also made 
 to serve a large number of ends. The maguey 
 plant is a familiar instance of a single kind of 
 material put to a multitude of uses. So skill- 
 fully, under the pressure of necessity, have 
 the resources of this region been utilized, that 
 if a wall of absolute exclusion were built along 
 the ridge of the encircling mountains, the life 
 of the community would go on without note- 
 worthy inconvenience to the bulk of the in- 
 habitants. The well-cultivated cornfields would 
 produce, as they do now, an abundant supply 
 of the staple food. The flocks and the herds 
 would multiply, as they do now, and their skins 
 would be turned into sandals, shoes, and other 
 articles of clothing. On the physical side there 
 would be few wants unsatisfied. As now, few 
 would be rich, and each would have something. 
 This condition of Oaxaca is typical of the 
 condition of all Mexican towns that have 
 grown up where they are by reason of their 
 rich agricultural neighborhood. When the rail- 
 way first reaches them, they have no use for 
 it. Their produce and manufactured articles 
 have their long-established currents of move-
 
 The Cities. 77 
 
 ment, and the inhabitants themselves have no 
 desire to make long journeys. This condition 
 of things is the basis of the remark by an 
 engineer who has had great experience in locat- 
 ing railways in Mexico, that it is never worth 
 the while to go out of the way to reach a 
 Mexican town, but quite worth a special effort 
 to reach the great plantations. This would be 
 permanently true if the towns were to remain 
 as the railways find them. But they do not so 
 remain. The coming of the railway means for 
 the town a transformation of its life. We may 
 examine the case, and, perhaps, reach the con- 
 clusion that the transformation is not desirable ; 
 that it means loss of original character and con- 
 sequent deterioration. Nevertheless, the change 
 will come. The railway remains and creates a 
 demand for its services; it carries wares from 
 without into the town, which from being at 
 first luxuries become necessities. Some domes- 
 tic manufactures decline, other lines of produc- 
 tion are stimulated; and the buying and selling 
 of goods become more conspicuous features of 
 the town's life. With a more extensive use of 
 things from without there arises the desire to 
 see some part of the country beyond the im- 
 mediate horizon. Thus the town grows away 
 from its original character, and becomes merged 
 in the larger life of the country or the world.
 
 78 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 But this transformation does not come sud- 
 denly with the appearance of the railway. 
 Long after the new means of transportation 
 have been established, we find some part of the 
 trade of a region running in its old channels. 
 The Indian and his donkey are the persistent 
 rivals of the railways; and the Indians without 
 donkeys are carriers with whom it is hard to 
 compete. Even such cheap and heavy goods as 
 coarse terra-cotta jars are still carried by men 
 from the valley of Toluca to the City of Mexico, 
 along the highway which, for some part of the 
 distance, runs parallel with the Mexican Na- 
 tional Railway. 
 
 The case of Oaxaca is still not quite typical ; 
 its extreme isolation and the productiveness of 
 the surrounding country have made its con- 
 dition different, on the one hand, from that of 
 towns like Jalapa and Orizaba, on the great 
 ancient highways, and, on the other hand, from 
 towns like Zacatecas and Guanajuato, which 
 are great mining camps of long standing, and 
 have come into existence without reference to 
 the agricultural qualities of the adjacent ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 In the ancient days there were two roads 
 leading from the port of Vera Cruz to the City 
 of Mexico, and the principal towns through 
 which these passed, Jalapa, Orizaba, and Puebla,
 
 The Cities. 79 
 
 were naturally more or less in touch with one 
 another and with various points of the world 
 beyond. The traffic which passed over these 
 roads and through these towns made them less 
 isolated than Oaxaca, and suggested that by 
 producing for others than their own inhabit- 
 ants they might have some part in the advan- 
 tages of this traffic. Thus, when they were 
 reached by railways, they had made some prog- 
 ress in trade beyond their borders. 
 
 Jalapa became the seat of a fair in the eight- 
 eenth century, which was intended to hold 
 the same relation to the trade between Spain 
 and Mexico that the great fair at Porto Bello, 
 on the isthmus, held to the trade between 
 Spain and South America. In order to avoid 
 the effects of the unwholesome climate of the 
 coast, goods arriving at Vera Cruz were trans- 
 ported to Jalapa, to be there exchanged for 
 Mexican products destined to be exported to 
 Spain. Jalapa was chosen for this purpose, 
 although an inland town, because of its agree- 
 ableness and healthfulness as a place of resi- 
 dence. It lies among the hills about half way 
 up the eastern slope. It is sufficiently warm 
 to permit many tropical plants to thrive, and, 
 as it is favored with rain at all seasons, the 
 neighboring valleys and hillsides are perpetually 
 fresh and green. From the plaza, where one
 
 8o Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 has the higher part of the town above him, 
 and overlooks the lower part and the broken 
 country in the distance, the world appears 
 a very beautiful place. Persons arriving from 
 Spain were accustomed to come immediately 
 to this place to rest after the long voyage be- 
 fore completing the journey to Mexico; and 
 here those intending to depart for Spain waited 
 till the vessels were ready to sail, as the old 
 geographer, Velasco, puts it, "in order not to 
 be in Vera Cruz, on account of the danger of 
 becoming ill." And the town has kept this 
 character. Although great wealth is produced 
 on the coffee plantations not far away, still 
 Jalapa does not figure as a center of commerce 
 or manufactures, but as a resort for pleasure, 
 or a place of waiting till the ships go out. 
 And in this character it is becoming more con- 
 spicuous since the completion of the Inter- 
 oceanic Railway from Mexico to Vera Cruz, 
 which, in descending from the table-land to the 
 coast, passes through Jalapa. As a sign of 
 this change, one of the old hotels has taken a 
 new name, and has become the Grand Hotel, 
 with all the solemn pretensions, the mingled 
 subserviency and impudence, and the multi- 
 tudinous extras which that title attached to a 
 hotel for tourists often implies. 
 
 The old roads from the coast to the capital
 
 The Cities. 81 
 
 have been supplanted by the railways, the 
 northern, that passing through Jalapa, by the 
 Interoceanic; the southern, that passing through 
 Orizaba, by the Mexican Railway. Orizaba, 
 like Jalapa, lies about midway between the two 
 extremes of the coast and the plateau, but in 
 most other respects the two towns stand in 
 sharp contrast with one another. At Jalapa the 
 view ranges over a wide extent of hills and 
 valleys; at Orizaba it is limited by the closely 
 surrounding mountains. Jalapa has apparently 
 few and unimportant industries, while Orizaba 
 is one of the busiest manufacturing towns 
 of Mexico. Its cotton and jute mills employ 
 a large number of laborers. Lying on the line 
 of the oldest railway in the country, not far 
 from Vera Cruz, and with easy access to the 
 interior cities, it has unusual facilities for ob- 
 taining imported raw material and for reaching 
 markets for its finished products. The rapid 
 stream which passes through the valley fur- 
 nishes adequate water power, and in this lies 
 one of its special advantages as a manufactur- 
 ing town; for one of the serious problems of 
 manufacturing in Mexico is the problem of fuel. 
 Whoever will solve this problem will not only 
 have an easy opportunity to acquire a fortune, 
 but will also give the industrial development 
 of the country a powerful stimulus. Certain 
 6
 
 82 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 patents have already been issued for making a 
 composite fuel, with peat as a basis, and one 
 of the attempts under these patents is in an 
 advanced stage of experiment. The peat is to 
 be obtained from the marshes near the lakes 
 in the valley of Mexico. At present the per- 
 sons having this enterprise in hand fix no price 
 for their product, but offer to those using fuel 
 for mechanical purposes to do the work at ten 
 per cent below the present cost. If successful, 
 this undertaking will be of importance even to 
 some places where water is ordinarily used as 
 a motive power; for in places like Orizaba there 
 are sometimes periods of drought when it is 
 necessary to resort to steam, and also periods 
 of too great abundance, when the stones and 
 debris of various kinds brought down render 
 the use of the water at least inconvenient. 
 
 In addition to her cotton and jute mills, Ori- 
 zaba is also taking a hand in one of the newer 
 industries of Mexico, that of brewing beer. 
 This enterprise is conducted by Germans, and 
 they claim for it a special advantage in the 
 excellence of the water obtained. The demand 
 keeps pace with the production, which is good 
 for the business, but bad for the beer. But 
 the beer of Toluca appears to have the widest 
 market. It is found wherever the means of 
 transportation have made it feasible to carry it
 
 The Cities. 83 
 
 Men, women, and children run about with it 
 at the railway stations, offering it for sale, and 
 even the pulque venders are not more ener- 
 getic in their attempts to secure a market. It 
 seems to be the growing fashion to drink the 
 beer of the country, and the fashion is un- 
 doubtedly encouraged by the fact that it sells 
 for half the price of imported beer. 
 
 The success of this undertaking is in part 
 due to the fact that at present the Mexicans 
 are looking for a drink. The use of pulque is 
 almost limited to the comparatively small part 
 of the country where it is produced, on ac- 
 count of the impossibility of keeping it, except 
 for a very short time, after it is ready for use. 
 The railways have extended somewhat the ter- 
 ritory of its consumption. It may now be car- 
 ried from the plantations near Puebla to Oax- 
 aca, which, before the building of the Mexican 
 Southern Railway, was without the limits of 
 the pulque region. But, after all, it is the drink 
 of the Indians, and this means much in Mex- 
 ico; it means that the classes socially above the 
 Indians must have something else Hitherto 
 some form of brandy, or a miserable concoction 
 called French wine, has been extensively used, 
 and if the brewing of beer will furnish a partial 
 substitute for one or both of these, the effort 
 will be in the line of reform.
 
 84 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 But the cities of Central Mexico which ap- 
 pear to have felt especially the force of the 
 new stimulus are Puebla and the City of Mex- 
 ico. Both are points from which a number of 
 railways radiate. From Puebla the Mexican 
 Southern reaches Oaxaca, and, in general, South- 
 ern Mexico; the Interoceanic runs out in three 
 directions, to Matamoras and beyond on the 
 way to Acapulco, to the City of Mexico, and 
 to Vera Cruz; and the Mexican Railway gives 
 Puebla another line of communication with the 
 City of Mexico and with the coast. These 
 make Puebla, as a railway center, second only 
 to the capital. At present both its population 
 and its industries are increasing, and the vari- 
 ety and distribution of the industries help to 
 give the city an air of general prosperity. Its 
 textile industries are the most conspicuous; in 
 fact, in all parts of Mexico at present this 
 branch of manufacturing is under the powerful 
 stimulus of a high import duty, which is prac- 
 tically doubled in consequence of the fall in 
 the value of silver. In addition to these ad- 
 vantages for the manufacturer, some of the 
 States have granted special privileges to the pro- 
 ducers of textile fabrics, such as freedom from 
 taxation, the government granting the privi- 
 lege, expecting, at least in some cases, that the 
 manufacturer will produce a certain amount,
 
 The Cities. 85 
 
 or supply the local market. The strong de- 
 mand in the country is for the cheaper articles, 
 such as prints and plain unbleached cotton, 
 the latter constituting the principal part of the 
 clothing of the people. In the cities, however, 
 there is an increasing number of persons who 
 are adopting the European style of dress for 
 men, and this makes an increasing demand for 
 woolen goods suitable for this purpose; and the 
 attempt to supply this demand with domestic 
 products is one of the noticeable recent devel- 
 opments in the textile industries. That profit 
 is coming to Puebla from her participation in 
 enterprises along these lines is clearly evident. 
 If we may judge from their wares, the man- 
 ufacturers of Puebla have a liking for strong 
 colors. This is manifest in their brilliant scra- 
 pes, particularly those made of cotton and in- 
 tended for the smaller interior towns. Some- 
 times these colors are combined with great 
 artistic effect. This is especially true in the 
 decoration of some of the products of the pot- 
 teries. It would be difficult to find in crockery 
 decoration finer combinations of colors than 
 may be seen in the exterior painting on certain 
 bowls made in Puebla. The material is coarse, 
 and the glazing is often imperfect, but those 
 who apply the colors have certainly the sense 
 of color in rare development.
 
 86 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 As long as communication was difficult, each 
 district produced the earthenware used by the 
 common people of the district. This local de- 
 velopment led to great individuality of design in 
 form and ornamentation, and in some places one 
 can observe the very beginnings of the artistic 
 sense making itself manifest in the products of 
 industry. In some cases the development of 
 this sense has been arrested very early, and 
 what was the beginning of artistic activity has 
 become simply conventional work, in performing 
 which the workers have apparently no thought 
 of further progress. In other cases several 
 steps have been taken. In the little village of 
 San Antonio, near Cuernavaca, the only con- 
 ception of ornamenting which has arisen in 
 the primitive minds of the potters, is that of 
 pressing into the sides of the jar or dish of 
 whatever sort, before it is baked, small fragments 
 of china or glass, and with these making lines 
 or figures. Sometimes, in the most sublime 
 flights of their artistic imaginations, they ar- 
 range these fragments in such form that they 
 present the outlines of a bird or some four- 
 footed beast not distinctly specified. In watch- 
 ing the old women press these small pieces of 
 china into the clay of the unbaked vessel, one 
 observes that there is apparently not the slight- 
 est mental effort to depart from the rigid con-
 
 The Cities. 87 
 
 ventional form. The modern artists of Rome 
 or Paris differ from these artists of the mud 
 hovels of San Antonio in that, while they rec- 
 ognize and are more or less dominated by con- 
 ventional forms, they strive to depart from them 
 to such an extent, at least, as to make their 
 works a variation on the conventional theme. 
 When this striving ceases, art falls to the posi- 
 tion of pottery decorating in San Antonio. In 
 Puebla the painting is of a much higher order, 
 although on plates and cups and bowls painted 
 by hand, which sell for two or three cents 
 apiece, it is not to be expected that the painter 
 will lavish a large amount of artistic invention. 
 Yet it is evident from the production of new 
 forms and the variety of decorations that the 
 force of originality is not extinct 
 
 With the development of facilities for trans- 
 portation there is a tendency to demand certain 
 preferred kinds of wares, although they may 
 not be produced in the district. This leads to 
 the concentration of productive forces at points 
 where the wares demanded are made. The 
 railway, therefore, as it affects these things, 
 brings a stimulus to the production of the pre- 
 ferred articles, and applies a suppressing force 
 to the production of the others, in this way 
 causing in the realm of inanimate things the 
 survival of the fittest.
 
 88 Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 As might well be expected, the signs of 
 change are more manifest in the City of Mexico 
 than in any other town. As the capital of the 
 kingdom, as the point at which more railways 
 converge than at any other place, and as the 
 principal residence of the wealthy, there are 
 naturally more forces which make for progress 
 operating here than elsewhere in Mexico. It is 
 found, therefore, that in the last ten years impor- 
 tant additions have been made to the buildings 
 on the side towards Chapultepec, and the style 
 of them indicates that foreigners have directed 
 their construction. In the central part of the 
 city the transformation is evident in better 
 pavements, better lighting, and finer shops. 
 The prominence given to the industry of making 
 and trimming ladies' hats, where not long since 
 the mantilla and the roboso held the field, is a 
 clear indication that a new age has dawned. In 
 considering the activity that goes on at certain 
 points, one might easily imagine himself in a 
 European capital. 
 
 But here where I write, on the shore of Lake 
 Patzcuaro, it would be easy to forget that prog- 
 ress has been made in Mexico or anywhere else. 
 The scene and circumstances are those of prim- 
 itive society. At different points on the oppo- 
 site side of the lake, and on the steep slope of 
 the principal island, are Indian villages, where
 
 The Cities. 89 
 
 the life that is lived to-day is essentially the 
 same as that of five hundred years ago; and the 
 features of the scene at this moment are surely 
 of the ancient world From all points of the 
 lake more than a hundred canoes, or "dugouts," 
 are moving in converging lines to a point on 
 this shore. The modern art of making boats 
 has clearly not influenced the builders of these 
 primitive vessels, which are in the shape of a 
 Chinaman's shoe, except that the width is very 
 much less in proportion to the length. The 
 bottom is flat and the widest part of the craft, 
 the sides sloping inward towards the top. They 
 are propelled not by oars, but by paddles, which 
 consist of a straight stick with a circular disk, 
 of about ten inches in diameter, at the end. 
 They are manned by men and women, or by 
 men or women, as it may happen. Three times 
 a week they make this trip across the lake, 
 bringing their wares to a common market-place, 
 and return late in the afternoon with the prod- 
 uce of their exchanges. The wares which 
 they offer are such as their ancestors might have 
 brought to market centuries before the conquest. 
 In fact, this part of Mexico remains yet to be 
 conquered, if by that term is meant subjected 
 to the forces and laws of progressive civilization. 
 Yet in strange contrast with the products of
 
 go Railway Revolution in Mexico. 
 
 this semi-barbarous society, the miserable little 
 village of Tzintzuntzan, on the shore of the 
 lake, possesses the finest picture in Mexico, 
 an excellent example of the work of no less a 
 master than the great Titian. *
 
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