MEXICO AND MEXICANS 



481 



every place that they could fill, because it 

 would be good for the country, in the de- 

 velopment of a middle, thinking class, to 

 have the employees as well as the owner- 

 ship of the railroads nationalized. He 

 felt that to have Mexican conductors, 

 engineers, telegraphers, etc., would be to 

 assist in the establishment of a middle 

 class, which he recognized as Mexico's 

 crying need. 



The railway manager knew by experi- 

 ence that the Mexican does not make as 

 good a railroad man as the American, 

 but he was gradually carrying out this 

 policy at the time I was in Mexico, which 

 was just before the fall of Diaz. It was 

 Diaz's idea that the establishment of in- 

 dustries in Mexico and the employment 

 of Mexicans in responsible positions in 

 connection with them must eventuate in 

 a middle class worthy of the name. 



SOME: MEXICAN INDUSTRIES 



Mexico has many important industries, 

 and some of the plants are the largest 

 of their kind in the world ; for instance, 

 the Bueno Tono Cigarette Factory, of 

 Mexico City, has a daily output of 12 

 million cigarettes a day. It is the largest 

 factory of the kind in the world, and 

 earns a 12-per-cent dividend on an in- 

 vestment of $3,250,000. 



The Mexican Light & Power Company, 

 with a capitalization of $25,000,000, op- 

 erates the great hydro-electric plant at 

 Xecaxa, which is one of the largest on 

 the Western Hemisphere. 



A few years ago there were in Mexico 

 145 cotton mills, with 732,000 live spin- 

 dles, and employing 35,000 operators. 

 The owners of a single chain of mills 

 at Orizaba employed 5,000 people and 

 turned out products valued at many mil- 

 lions of dollars (see also page 476). 



One of the largest glycerine and soap 

 factories in the world, with a daily out- 

 put of 75,000 boxes of soap, was in op- 

 eration in the very country where the 

 Federals and the Constitutionalists have 

 been fighting during the past few months. 



All of these growing industries were 

 demanding something in the way of in- 

 telligence from their employees and were 

 making progress in the direction of es- 

 tablishing a middle class in Mexico. 



THE MINES OF MEXICO 



Humboldt once pronounced Mexico 

 "the treasure - house of the world." It 

 produces one-third of the world's silver, 

 a considerable percentage of its gold, one- 

 ninth of its lead, and one-twentieth of its 

 copper. The country's mineral produc- 

 tion, exclusive of iron, coal, and petro- 

 leum, amounted to $158,000,000 in 19 10. 

 With the exception of Campeche, Ta- 

 basco, and Yucatan, every State in the 

 Mexican republic possesses mines, of 

 which there are 21,000, covering 633,000 

 acres of mineral lands, and giving em- 

 ployment to half a million men. Yet 

 probably less than one-fourth of the min- 

 eral possibilities of the republic have been 

 exploited. Prior to the outbreak of the 

 Madero revolution, upward of 5,000 min- 

 ing claims were registered each year. 



The famous iron mountain at Durango 

 is estimated to contain 600 million tons of 

 iron ore, which is worth seven times the 

 value of all the gold and silver mined in 

 Mexico in two centuries. It is believed 

 that this deposit was formed by the same 

 process that made the Hudson River 

 palisades, near New York city. A big 

 opening was made in the earth's crust, 

 through which this enormous mass of 

 iron was thrust up, and piled high above 

 the surrounding territory. No one knows 

 how deep this iron mass penetrates. It 

 is nearly a mile long, more than a third 

 of a mile wide at the base, and some 700 

 feet high. An American smelter com- 

 pany has erected works to utilize this 

 iron. 



The Santa Maria graphite mines are 

 the largest and most important in the 

 Western World. There are seven beds 

 of graphite deposits, varying in thickness 

 from 9 to 10 feet. They were formed 

 from coal beds by the metamorphic ac- 

 tion of intrusive granite. The graphite 

 is transported to Saginaw, Mich., where 

 it is ground up and sold to the pencil and 

 lubricant factories of the world. 



The region around the Gulf of Mexico 

 is very rich in petroleum. Some years 

 ago an oil company was engaged in sink- 

 ing a well near Tampico. At a depth of 

 1,824 feet a gas explosion blew out the en- 

 tire installation of machinery, and the well 



