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18 The manufacturers of this city, who own factories in the valley within sight of it, in sending out money to pay the weekly wages of their operatives, always accompany it with an armed guard; and it has repeatedly occurred, during the past twelve months (1878), that the street railway-cars from this city to the suburban villages have been seized by bands of robbers and the money of the manufacturers stolen. Every mining company which sends its metal to this city to be coined or shipped abroad always accompanies it by a strong guard of picked men; and the planters and others who send money or valuables out of the city do likewise. The principal highways over which the diligence lines pass are constantly patroled by the armed rural guard or the Federal troops; and yet highway robbery is so common that it is rarely even noticed in the newspapers. One of the commercial indications of the insecurity of communication between this capital and the other cities of the republic is found in the rate of interior exchange," which at that time, according to the minister, varied from ten per cent in the case of Chihuahua, distant a thousand miles, to two and two and a half per cent for places like Toluca, not farther removed than sixty miles.