The Mexican Problem. Clarence Walker Barron

      The Contrast

       Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      THE CONTRAST

       Table of Contents

      Appeals in behalf of Mexico have been before the people of the United States for more than one generation.

      Fifty years ago the appeals were from returned missionaries collecting money to help spread truth and light before our fellow man and brother over our southern border.

      Nearly forty years ago came the appeal for railroads. The good people of the North, and especially of New England, responded with millions and declared: "We think the investment will be profitable, but we take pleasure in the thought that the railroads will be the best missionaries. They will open opportunities for mutual and profitable development in trade, commerce, mining, and manufacturing. There is much that we can do for Mexico, and much that she can do for us."

      The nickels and dimes of my early savings that had not gone to the Mexican missionary in ​response to Bishop Butler's heart-moving appeals were now taken from the savings bank and subscribed for bonds of the Mexican Central and Sonora—Railways the one to open up the great tableland of Mexico from El Paso to Mexico City and the other to carry the Atchison development of the Southwest to the beautiful mountain-locked port of Guaymas on the Gulf of California. Here opened vistas for New England capital and California enterprise down the Pacific Coast and through the heart of Mexico.

      SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND MEXICO

      In conjunction with Thomas Nickerson, the great pioneer builder of the Atchison and the railroads of Mexico, I journeyed to California; and at San Diego listened to one of the best addresses I ever heard, and from a man who never made addresses. Thomas Nickerson told the Chamber of Commerce at San Diego that he was not in agreement with the Southern and Central Pacific people whom he had visited in San Francisco and who had declared that there was nothing in San Diego or Southern California except invalids, "one-lungers," and bees, and that the only prospective traffic from the harbor of San Diego was a few boxes of honey in the comb. ​Nickerson declared his faith and the faith of the people of New England in the development of Southern California and closed by saying that he was sure of one thing: that if the road did not pay, the people who had put in the money could afford to lose it.

      There was no such doubt regarding the railroads of Mexico. In Mexico were mines with long records of production, fertile soils, tropical fruits, millions of people. In Southern California there were no mines, few people, and only sunshine and honey bees as a basis for American enterprise.

      Although Thomas Nickerson was well along in years, we took to the saddle and rode up through Temecula Cañon and the Temescal Valley over the line of the proposed Southern California Railway and on to the irrigated gardens of Riverside, with not a house or habitation between that town and the seacoast, although sheep grazed peacefully in the broad valley of Temescal.

      A few days later I was in Sonora, journeying toward Guaymas. We made "Uncle Thomas," as we affectionately called him, a pallet of straw in the stable of the ranch of Jesus Maria, and then outside, before we said good-night to the stars and rolled up back to back in our blankets ​on buffalo robes, I interrogated the engineers, not only concerning mines and mining history, but as to how they knew the volume of water that might one day, in Southern California, seek to pass through that seventeen-mile narrow gorge known as the Temecula Canon. They explained in detail how they determined the watershed area in those hills and the probable rainfall and then built the bridges and tracks at elevations in the valley well above future waters.

      DISASTER AND RECOVERY

      Not long after our little party reached home the rainy season began in Southern California, and the beautiful valley where the sheep had been so peacefully grazing was a lake, several feet deep and twenty miles long; out of which roared through the Temecula Cañon a river, twenty and forty feet deep, vomiting forth ties, spikes, rails, and bridges, as man's poison to be cast forth upon the plains by the seacoast.

      The California Southern Railroad was gone, but the energy of the white men who built it remained. More rails were ordered, a new location, or pass, through the mountains found, and to-day the Southern California is the bright gem of the great Atchison system. ​In Sonora we shot blackbirds and jackrabbits, where grasses waved high as cornfields and the hills showed mineral values. The people at Hermosillo and Guaymas welcomed us as opening for them and their country the opportunities of a broader civilization. The rails were already laid for forty miles from Guaymas, which has a harbor more beautiful than California's Golden Gate.

      GREAT EXPECTATIONS

      A few days later we went out on the Mexican Central from El Paso to the end of the track, which was just then starting on its path toward the City of Mexico, to lift this great land of the Aztecs and its people into fellowship and commercial life with the "Big Brother" of the North. The future of Mexico seemed as clear as the sunshine, although Southern California seemed a doubtful proposition.

      Returning to Boston, I published as follows, February 15, 1882, thirty-five years ago:—

      No one realizes what government, or the absence of government,