Bisbee daily review., 1907-09-01
MEXICAN REPUBL LlC NEVER BETTER FOR DEVELOPMENT
 THAN AT PRESENT TIME

gtdAo 1SO AOA PCfhePo " AcAAN mile of street, there would be no echo of the carpenters hammer; today nearly every block is a din of hammer ing: old buildings are being renovat- ed; adobe and stone and mortar are undergoing transformation. Tn other cities there is the same phenomenon. In Guadalajara a thousand substan- tial buildings are going up and labor
 is at a premium The new factories in Monterey require modern dwellings for the operatives. Saltillo is laying out suburban sections and has under
 construction a smelter, rubber fac
 tory, a theatre, a big store and four
 flour mills. In San Luis Potosi the demand for houses exceeds the rapid ity of their building There are old ones in plenty, but American residents want the new kind. with electric
 lights and running water. and tho
 Mexicans are beginning to want then too. Now, when the sluggist land
 lords of Latin America are pried loose
 by a boom, then you may know that
 the germ of enterprise has actually
 gotten into the blood It alters noth-
 ing that the germ comes from the
 outside, but it is eulogy for the states
 G.aaship that removed the quarantine against progress along the Rio Grande.
 But after all, activity in real es- tate Is only a reference backward to its cause and to this more profound fact that 1t suggests-the depth and extent of the general prosperity. One of the factors for instance, is the com pleuon of the railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the tre- mendous harbor works at either end. For Mexico and it's future. 1t is one of the superb strokes of history mak- ing. Even so long ago as the time of Phillip I, the Spaniards planned to
 dig a canal through the 190 miles of the Tehuantepec neck, and they did make a first survey. Later after our war with Mexico, we sought conces- sions for the same thing and 1t was not until 1880 that the Tehuantepec canal project was abandoned for the railroad scheme. At last the Mexi- can government took hold. and in partnership with a British engineer ing firm pushed the railroad through.
 After seven years work in tropical 1ungles, this bridge of the worlds commerce" as Humboldt called it, was formally opened last January by presidential decree. General Diaz pressed button aud an electric crane lifted fifteen bags of Hawaiian sugar from the hold of a steamship. A train was loaded, which he sealed, and a few days later he broke the seal on another continent. A cargo had say 125O miles, or five days, by going this way instead of by Panama Even had the Panama canal been ready for nav igation, Tehuantepec would still have been a shorter route. by four days. Former Chief Engineer Wallace, re- centlE urged on a senate committee the need of better facilities and lower rates on the Panama railroad. Even if we must operate the road at a loss we should do so, he is quoted as say ing, because if once traffic is diverted to Tehuantepec we may lost five or ten million dollars a year on our canal during the years required to draw the traffic back again. But this must be certain. The freight in sight for the first year of the Tehuantepec road is already half a million tons, or to quote the constructing engineer. prob ably 8 per cent more than the Pan ana railway ever carried in a year" He announces that he has contracts t5 t5 t55s7l5saliP a q75s7 t7sE af a T7lss;s0FI tons Q year Gf sugar alone. One cGn, Dany in particular, the American-Ha- waiian, which owns steamers aggre- gating 100000 tons, has abandoned the Cape Horn route to associate itself with the Tehuantepec project. Dur ing the first month the road handled 1 900 tons a day.
 The third feat of histoTy-making all so concerns transportation. Mexico is now a controlling partner in it's t-ro big trunk lines. It faced that menace to ourselves. a pernicious merger; and it simply bought shares in one road and then in the othter, and did its own merging It effected 1t through a new corporation with a capital stock of S225,00O 900, financed largely by American bankers, who look for a speedy and vastly increased develop ment of the properties The hope is because over 1000 miles of railroad (out of a total of II 900 miles in the country) there will now prevail economy Of operation and of competition. Depots. sidings all are piled high with freight. The passenger business has nearly doubled in the past year. Extensive enlargements of facilities and big orders for equipment are now the rule.
 As for new railroad construction, | that Is going on throughout the repub- :, lie on almost the same gigantic scale as with us. Until now the rugged of the continent has kept the rich coast country of the Pacisc's virgin wilderness. Even a wagon may not find it's way over the impossible Sierra Madre, and yet both of the Central and Southern Pacific are now In the lists against crusty old geog- raphy. The Central IS on the last link already that between Guadala,- jara and the terminal port. Manzanil- | To. There has never been construc- ! ton more difficult in Mexico, yet it l has never been better. The grade will in no place exceed 2 per cent, and | for the one link alone. not forty miles ! long, the cost is S5,000, ,000 This is apart from the harbor works at Man zanilio, where s3.500. .0ee has been spent on the breakwater alone. Two years more should see trains moving and opening territory that promises .o be one of the most productive re- gions In all Mexico. The oppoTtuni- lies are possibly greater than the road has ever had. Cotton. sugar, rice.co- soanuts, cacao, chiH. indigo. tobacco, hard woods, cattle and hogs. all await