Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/467

Rh have for the first time afforded the central Government for quick and ready communication between the remote portions of the republic, a stable government and a discontinuance of internal revolts and disturbances have for the first time become possible. Thus, to illustrate: Chihuahua, an important center of population, is distant a thousand miles or more from the city of Mexico; and between the two places, in addition, a somewhat formidable desert intervenes, of about a hundred miles in width, and over which the Mexican Central Railroad trains are obliged to carry a water-supply for their locomotives. Previous to 1883, if a revolution broke out in Chihuahua, the most ready method of communicating intelligence of the same to the central Government would have been to send a man on foot, probably an Indian runner. If the messenger averaged fifty miles a day, twenty days would have been consumed in reaching the city of Mexico, and from three to six weeks more at the very least, would have been required to dispatch a corps of trained soldiers from the capital, or some intermediate point, to the scene of the disturbance. But before this the revolutionists would have had all the opportunity for levying forced loans or direct plunder, or the gratification of private animosities, that their hearts could desire. And it is altogether probable that, in a majority of such cases, political grievances were merely alleged as a pretext for and a defense of plunder; and it is a wonder how, under such circumstances, there could be any desire for or expectation of accumulation through production, and that universal barbarism did not prevail. But now, under the railroad and its accompanying telegraph system, if anybody makes a pronunciamiento at Chihuahua, the Executive at the city of Mexico knows all the particulars immediately; within a few days a trained regiment or battalion is on the spot, and all concerned are so summarily treated, that it is safe to say that another similar lesson will not soon be required in that locality. The new railroad constructions were, therefore, absolutely essential to Mexico as a condition for a healthy national life, and the country could well afford to make great sacrifices to obtain and extend them, apart from any considerations affecting trade development.

But the American railroads in Mexico have, in addition, already done much to arouse the most stubbornly conservative people on the face of the globe from their lethargy, and in a manner that no other instrumentality probably could have effected. When the locomotive first appeared, it is said that the people of whole villages fled affrighted from their habitations, or organized processions with religious emblems and holy water, to exorcise and repel the monster. During the first year of the experience of the Mexican Central, armed guards also were considered an essential accompaniment of every train, as had been the case on the Vera Cruz Railroad since its opening in 1873. But all this is now a matter of the past; and so impressed is the Government with the importance of keeping its railroad system safe and intact, that the