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80 detailed reports." The result was Paddleford as General Superintendent, building railroads, pipes lines, and pumping stations.

Captain Green, the local superintendent at Tampico, is rightly titled. He was formerly with our army in the Philippines, where he mastered Spanish, and, therefore, in Mexico he can talk two languages at once—polite Spanish to the court and officials, and forceful English at the same time to the men under him. He is two hundred and fifty pounds of effective dynamite and a jaw that means fight if necessary.

The expanding part of the Mexican Petroleum Company's property at the present time is the topping plant at the Tampico terminal of the pipe line, said to be the largest topping plant in the world. Smith, at the head of it, was formerly with the Waters-Pierce refinery. He is several inches over six feet and the Mexicans under him look like children. Of the more than fifty thousand barrels produced daily half goes through the topping plant, which, without impairing the value of the oil fuel, takes a half-dollar's worth of gasolene—wholesale price of distillate at Tampico—right out of the crude oil barrel and at