and as a result he reduced the number of deaths from thirty a day to an average of three a day.
"In its campaign against the Mayas," the former Sanitary Chief told me, "the government built a railroad sixty metres long. This railroad is known among the soldiers as 'The Alley of Death,' for it is said that every tie cost five lives in the building. When this road was built many prisoners were taken from the military prison of San Juan de Ulua to do the work. To encourage them to toil all were promised that their sentences would be cut in half, but after a few weeks in the hands of Bravo the majority begged—but in vain—to be returned to Ulua, which is the most dreaded of all houses of incarceration in Mexico. These unfortunate prisoners were starved and when they staggered from weakness they were beaten, some being beaten to death. Some of them committed suicide at the first opportunity, as did many of the soldiers—fifty of them, while I was there."
Fancy a soldier committing suicide! Fancy the cruel conditions that would lead fifty soldiers among 2,000 to commit suicide in the space of three years!
As to the graft features of the army drafting system, as I have suggested, the jefe politico selects the names in his own way in the privacy of his own office and no one may question his methods. Wherefore he waxes rich. Since—allowing for a high death rate—some 10,000 men are drafted every year, it will be seen that the graft possibilities of the system are enormous. The horror of the army is used by the jefe to squeeze money out of wage-workers and small property-holders. Unless the victim is drafted for political reasons, the system permits the drafted person to buy another to take his place—provided the drafting officer is willing. This option on the part of the jefe is used as a great money-
