The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-11-13

ment. etc. will be purchased by Bolivia In the United States.
 The Bolivian government has brought its national system of railroads to within 100 miles of the Argentine boundary There remains this short link to be com pleted, and then there will be uninter- .upted railway travel from Lima. Peru, through La Pax, the capital of Bolivia, to Buenos Ayres on the Atlantic side of the South American continent or Valparaiso 1n the Pacific side. When this link IS built Peru will probably have completed a short section now under construction stretching from Lima to the railroad which runs southerly through Bolivia to Argentina.
 In the last months Of the service of
 Horace G. Knowles as American minis ter to Bolivia, in the administration or President Taft, there came to his knowl- edge proposition which the BonVlan government wes considering. That was the asking of bids for the constructing of this link necessary for the completion # the great north and south railway line
 n South America. The Bolivian govern ment had secured the loan in Paris of S5,o0o,000, and this sum was to be appro- prlated, or so much of it as was neces- sary, to pay the successful bidder. MT. Knowles learned that a group of English capitalists were preparing to bid, and .n the hope that this work might be com mitted by an American, he suggested to Christopher Dillon that he put in bid Mir. Dillons already high reputation as an engineer had been increased by reason of his construction of the very difficult railway roadbed and plant stretching from Guyaquil, Equadors 8 harbor upon the Pa cifc ocean, to Quito. the capital of Eou- ador Nowhere in the construction work
 xx-hi iaf, lad ln ta
 surmount the Rocky mountains were there more difficult problems of an en- gineering character to master than were those which Mir. Dillon mastered when he built the railroad from Guyaquil to Quito
 Seeking American Capital
 Mir. Knowles was persuaded that if an
 American contractor whose reputation was as great as Mir. Diilon's should secure
 the contract fo rthe construction of the
 last link in the great longitudinal rail-
 road ill South America then American
 capital could be relied upon to aid in
 financing the proposition.
 Within a comparatively short time be- fore the beginning of war in Europe the
 Bolivar government received a number of bids. The one involving the largest amount was made by the group of Eng fish capitalists. The bid offered by Mr. Dillon was not only the smallest but 1t was about $2,000,000 less than the bid which the British capitalists put in. For certain technical reasons. all of the bids were rejected, but the Bolivian board of public works spoke in words of com
 mendation of the Dillon bid, both as a whole and also with respect to the de- tails and specifications.
 Bolivia was getting ready to ask for
 new bids when of sudden the European war ended for the time being all con structive public work which the Bolivian l government contemplated.
 The Pan-American Railroad ! Were the late Hinton Rowan Helper now living, he would exult in the reason able prospect that in the course of a | few years the Pan-American railroad which he spent the last years of his life l in advocating would be constructed. MT. Helper was widely known to the earlier generation by the publication of a little | book written by him four years before
 our own civil war began. It was called ''rhe Impending Crisis" It was almost as widely read as was Mrs. Stowe $ l Uncle Toms Cabin.' This was due in 1 part to the fact that MT. Helper was a
 man of the south. and yet ventured to predict that civil war was near at hand and that by reason of the recourses oi the north, the issue would ultimately De determined in its favor.
 | After the war was ended. MT. Helper began the study of transportation que5- | tons both in North and South America and at last began the agitation of the 1 construction of a railroad whose north. ern terminal was to be on the Alaskan | seacoast and with southern terminals al Buenos .Ayres and Valparaiso. For many