Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/190

172 of Mexico for 1916. The president reported no receipts from operation and a debit of 21,870,213.02 silver pesos for the year. The debit since the beginning of the revolution was almost 80,000,000 silver pesos. The nominal reported receipts were extraordinarily high in some periods but they did not appear to reach the treasury and, even if they had done so, their real value was but a fraction of their face, since they were in the Vera Cruz issue, which was worth 14 or 15 cents gold in January, 1915, but later fell rapidly to two cents and and then so low that it refused to circulate.

The rolling stock gradually disappeared from active use. The military chiefs confiscated it to military uses in transporting troops or as spoils of war, if it was captured while in possession of the enemy. The various so-called generals used the cars "as barracks and permanent dwellings for the soldiers and their families, and frequently for freight transportation within their jurisdiction for personal profit."

The railway employees, or at least those in authority over divisions that were still in operation, seized the opportunity to create a system of graft seldom, if ever, equaled. It is true they are hardly to be blamed, for they could not live on the salaries the government paid to them in its own depreciated currency. Government officials in the railway administration shared the illegitimate returns directly or indirectly. The few cars available were eagerly sought by those whom rashness or