Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-02

| It costs about as much to construct them,
| notwithstanding the cheap labor, as it does
In America have talked with great
many men engaged in the railroad business
and they tell me that the Mexican will not
do one-fourth the eraount the American
workman does, and only the muscle work is
done by the Mexicans. Indians who work
on the road get from so to 20 cents day,
and this is more than the average wages
paid them elsewhere. The railroads have,
in fact, increased the prices of labor along
the Lines of the railroads, but they do not
work mnch better for an increase of salary.
One contractor who offered double wages
for extra work tells me they did very well
for the first two weeks, and then they laid
off until they ate up their surplus.
AMERICANS RUN THE TRAINS.
There are some Mexican brakemen en-
ploye6 on the railroads, but, as a rule, the
men who are engaged in running the Mexi-
can trains are Americans, with few En-
gIishmen on the old line from Vera Cruz to
Mexico. The wages of Americans on the
Mexican roads are fairly good. Passenger
conductors on the Mexican Central get S165
a moth, and think they get vacation of
a month every. Engineers are paid by the
kilometer, or the distance travelled, and
they make from 5000 to $3.50 a month. On
the Inter-Oceapic narrow gauge, engineers
get salaries of $3.50 month, and salaries Of
passenger conductors are 500, and those Of
engineers $500 on the Vera Cruz road.
Among the Americans engaged on the rail-
ways did not find one who was dissatis-
fed. They ali appeared to like the climate,
the people and their work, and not a few Of
them had married Mexican girls, or better,
had brought American wives to Mexico.
The biggest railway system in Mexico Is
that of the Mexican Central 1t is owned
principally by Boston capitalists, and it
runs from El Paso
ALONG THE BACKBONE OF MEXICO
for 1, 295 miles to Mexico City. It has two
branches, one of which reaches out to Tam
pico on the Gulf, and the other of which
will extend to the Pacific 1t is q broad
gauge, il is well ballasted, and it has Amer
lean cars and through carriages from New
York and Chicago to the City of Mexico. 1t
is connected with the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railway, and it is one of the great
trunk lines of the world. 1t taps popula-
ton OF about 1000, coo people, and there are
20 cities along its route, the inhabitants of
which would aggregate 100000.
Cutting across the great desert of Chi
huahua, ii strikes into the garden of Mexico
at Aguas Calientes, and from there on the
ride for hundreds of miles to Mexico is
through perpetual green. Some of the
grades of the route are very steep, but it
has not the picturesqueness of the Vera
Cruz line, which Is one of the most pictur-
esque railways of the world This Vera
Cruz line has some grades so steep that a
sort Of Siamese-twin engine has been con-
structed to mount them, and this engine has
two heads and two boilers in the center
with two sets Of driving machinery to make
it 60. With it the train climbs $500 feet
upward in u miles, and over 4, 900 feet in 25
miles, and you go from the tropics to the
temperate zone in the ascent.
SCENERY THE BEST KNOWN.
The branches of the Mexican Central
promise to be very profitable. The scenery
of the new Tampico branch surpasses In
wildness and picturesqueness that of the
Denver and Rio Grande, and it is said there
is no road on the American continent that
will compare with it. 1t will be the same
with the road running from Irapuato to the
Pacific, some of the gorges Of which are
said to be 5000 feet deep, and the walls of
these gorgcs are perpendicular. A short
strip Of the Tampioo road cost SO, ,0O0. 600
for construction, and the Pacific branch
promises to be equally expensive.
So far Mexico has been greatly retarded |