Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/298

264 plan to make an all-rail route from the Arizona border to Central America.

The only control exercised by the Harriman interests over the "Mexican Railway," as far as the writer knows, is that involved in the pooling of interests, in both freight and passenger traffic, of the Mexican road and the National Railways of Mexico. It is the inside story of the Mexican merger—a story which I obtained from unimpeachable sources while working as a reporter of the Mexican Daily Herald in the Spring of 1909.

Briefly, the story is this: The consolidation under nominal government control of the two principal railroad systems in Mexico, the Mexican Central and the Mexican National, was brought about, not, as is officially given out, to provide against the absorption of the Mexican highways by foreign capitalists, but to provide for that very thing. It was a deal between E. H. Harriman, on the one hand, and the government financial camarilla, on the other, the victim in the case being Mexico. It was a sort of deferred sale of the Mexican railroads to Harriman, the members of the camarilla getting as their share of the loot millions and millions of dollars through the juggling of securities and stock in effecting the merger. On the whole, it constitutes perhaps the most colossal single piece of plundering carried out by the organized wreckers of the Mexican nation.

In this deal with Harriman, Limantour, Minister of Finance, was the chief manipulator, and Pablo Macedo, brother of Miguel Macedo, Sub-secretary of the Department of the Interior, was first lieutenant. As a reward for their part in the deal. Limatour and Macedo are said to have divided $9,000,000 gold profits between them, and Limantour was made president and Macedo vicepresident of the board of directors of the merged roads,