line prosperity and wealth, and on this side destitution and poverty. . . ."[1]
With the cooling off of at least officially expressed anti-foreign feeling and the establishment of order the foreigners who were interested in railway development gradually weakened in their feeling that the right of appeal to the home government must be recognized before they could undertake projects in Mexico. At the same time the Mexican Congress came to realize that the advantage of rail connections with the United States overbalanced the attendant dangers.
When Diaz assumed control of the government in 1876 there were 666 kilometers of railroad in the country—the line from Mexico to Vera Cruz—and proposed American connections, as is indicated above, were unpopular. This prejudice was largely removed in the first term of the dictator and in September, 1880, the Mexican Central Railroad and the Mexican National Railroad received permission to build from Mexico City lines to the Rio Grande border. Thereafter the building of Mexican railroads was carried on practically without interruption to the end of the Diaz régime. At its close in 1910 the 666 kilometers of railway running at its beginning had increased to 24,559 kilometers. There were then two lines instead of one connecting the capital with Vera Cruz. There were two transcontinental lines and two connecting the capital with the American border.
It is hard to overestimate the benefits conferred on Mexico by the broader policy of railway development
- ↑ Antonio Morano, Senator from Sonora in ibid., p. 831.
