452 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



can Congress recently decreed instant execution, without any formal 

 trial, to any one caught in the act of wrecking or robbing a train. 

 That any improved methods of intercommunication between different 

 people or countries common roads, vessels, railroads, or vehicles, or 

 the like increase the production and exchange of commodities, is ac- 

 cepted as an economic axiom. But there could be no more striking 

 and practical illustration of this law, than a little recent experience on 

 the line of the Mexican National Railroad. The corn-crop, which is 

 the main reliance of the people living along the present southern ex- 

 tension of this road for food, had for several years prior to 1885 failed 

 by reason of drought ; and, under ordinary circumstances, great suf- 

 fering through starvation would inevitably have ensued. The na- 

 tives, however, soon learned that with the railroad had come a ready 

 market, at from two and a half to three cents per pound, for the fiber 

 known as " ixtle " ; the product of a species cf agave, which grows in 

 great abundance in the mountainous regions of their section of coun- 

 try, and which has recently come into extensive use in Europe and the 

 United States for the manufacture of brushes, ladies' corsets, mats, 

 cordage, etc. And so well have they improved their knowledge and 

 opportunities, that the quantity of ixtle transported by the Mexican 

 National Railroad has risen from 224,788 pounds in 1882 to 700,341 

 in 1883; to 3,498,407 in 1884; and 3,531,195 in the first seven months 

 of 1885 ; while with the money proceeds, the producers have been able 

 to buy more corn from Texas than they would have obtained had 

 their crops been successful, and have had, in addition, and probably 

 for the first time in their lives, some surplus cash to expend for other 

 purposes. "What sort of things these poor Mexican people would buy 

 if they could, was indicated to the writer by seeing in the hut of a 

 laborer, on the line of the Mexican Central Railroad a place destitute of 

 almost every comfort, or article of furniture or convenience a bright, 

 new, small kerosene-lamp, than which nothing that fell under his obser- 

 vation in Mexico, was more remarkable and interesting. Remarkable 

 and interesting, because neither this man nor his father, possibly since 

 the world to them began, had ever before known anything better than 

 a blazing brand as a method for illumination at night ; and had never 

 had either the knowledge, the desire, or the means of obtaining any- 

 thing superior. But at last, through contact with and employment on 

 the American railroad, the desire, the opportunity, the means to pur- 

 chase, and the knowledge of the simple mechanism of the lamp, had 

 come to this humble, isolated Mexican peasant ; and, out of the germ 

 of progress thus spontaneously, as it were, developed by the wayside, 

 may come influences more potent for civilization and the elevation of 

 humanity in Mexico, than all that church and state have been able to 

 effect within the last three centuries. 



The projection and extension of the American system of railroads 

 into Mexico commanded the almost universal approval of the people 



