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Show NICARAGUA'S GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP Politicians and Passes MaKe Failures of All the Public Pub-lic Utilities. RAILROAD IS JOKE . TO THE TRAVELER Telegraph " Service Cheap but Miserably Handled; Slow Steamships, Too. ET FREDERIC J. HASBUN. 1 'MV.V'Vi eiisaeagwa. iaar.u fur many tear lias had government ownership of mot of its public utili tics. Principal among these is the rail rmi'l system of the rountiv, which con Mwts'of one railroad having 161 mile of main line and twelve miles nf branch line. The rail ou the main division are of fortv pounds to the yard weight, - while on the other division they are thiitv pound to the yard. The insxi-mu insxi-mu in" grade on the road is twenty-eight . teet a mile. This line is built upon a bed of volcanic .ash. and globe trotters concede that it is the dustiest railroad in the world. The rolling stis k is American built. hikI reminds one of the pictures of railroad rail-road trains of seventy live years ago. There are about fifteen engines, nil of them .wood burners, ami none weighing m ire than twenlv tons. The smoke -larks ayiarciitly'are as large as the boilers. The engines are not designated b- numbers thev are in the t'nited Slates, but earn lias its own name. Sometimes tliev are christened with as much cereiniyiv as might be expected at t lie iBiim-siiig of a modern American drcrduanght. Charges Extra for Baggage. The road lias ten first class cars, eighteen second class, seventv-two box cars and forty flat cars. The coaches are not more than thirty feet long anil icein not to have, enjoyed a coat of pai.it since they were first put in coin, mission, some of them more than twen-tv twen-tv vears ago. Tho construction of the niiiruail was bcuun in H7K and that section from t orinto to the shores ot l ake MaTigoa was eo-nplefed in lMsl. and extended to Managua in HM, am! f.i lira .a.la in IsKH. The fares on this national railwav are said to be the cheapest in the world. Owing to the fluctuation in the cmrency rf the country the first class- passenger rate has dr.ippei nciow t ecu a mile. Tli distance from t orinto t" Managua is eighty eight miles. The fare is !t.9n, Nirarnguan money. At the prevailing rate of exchange this W less than "4 cents. American money. It Cf.stH much more to check one's h;ig gage than to btiv a ticket. There is no tree checking, and baggage is fcnt hist as Americans vnd ex'rc.-i matter. The distance between t'orinto hud Leon is less than forty miles, and vet an ordinary ordi-nary traveler's baggage for this distance dis-tance will cost him about $IH in Nica raguan money. His passajjo does not roet so much by half. Politicians Soda Free. Kor years the national railways ot Nicaragua were oierated directly hi the government. Niraraguan ofticials ere a.) liberal, howes-rr. with free trannportation for passengers, baggage snd freight that each year showed a large deficit and the abuse grew as the vears went liv. Finally a Herman named Wiest, who had rchidcd for some years in the I n.ite.1 .states, and who had enjoyed some practical railroad experience, entered en-tered into an agreement with the Niraraguan Nira-raguan government to rent the railroad from the government at a fixed annual rental. Bv abolishing the free transportation trans-portation ahuts- to a large extent he was able to put the road upon a paying basis and to pay the rental called for in the agreement. Later President Zebtva ennnurcd at tlrf organization of a company which took over the Jesse from Wiest. the president beomrkg a large shareholder In this companv. Stories differ as to how this happened and what brought it nlioiit.. Wicst ileclares that in rehabilitating rehabili-tating the road he became financially embarrassed and went to Zelaya for one fhonev to carrv on the work. He sv that Zelava agreed to put up half of the amount required, provided he could rrtise the other half somewhere else. This Wiest waa able to do. and in order to secure Zelaya and the bankers bank-ers to furnish the money, he organised the operating companv and gave them each a certain share in the stock. Began Losing Again. Others declare that when Zelaya saw that Wiest was making a profit out of the railroad the latter was informed that Zelava was entitled to share in these profits and must lie taken care of in some .wir. However this may.be. evervfiodv concerned agreed that dnr ing the operation of the road by Wiest it waa a profitable iavestment to the government, aetr.ething that it never Itcfore e-d never has Ifen inee When the Estrada government came into power it immediately took the road out of the hands of the operating com panv and began to dperate it directly. . Hinre then the old ahnse of free trans ptirtatioa has crept in and the road is going in debt every day it operates. Nicaragua levies heavy burdens upoa , imports, and those encountered -at the customs house are not the greatest, for fhe railroad aasista materially in levying tribute against import. All freight msde op of imparted goods is( ehsrged for st a flicker rate taan do-' mestte products. Where the freight charges on a eoasignmeat of domestic products would amottat to $4.50, on imported im-ported articles it would amount to $6. People Travel Mack. y- t'onsidering the poverli strtckes condition of the people of Nicaragua they are a much traveled eople. Ihir-1 - ing the last year for which data is available the rim. I carried 825.IKXI nas senders, snd 62.U0O tons of esrgo. The receipts from passenger traffic were . Continued on page 4. NICARAGUA'S GOVERN. MENT OWNERSHIP (Continued from page 1.) 1704 000, Nicaraguan, and from freight traffic f31,294.0i0. When the railroad rates under which this traffic was handled han-dled were made, s dollar gold would huv six dollara Nicaraguan. Today it will buy twelve, so that ia Nicaragua there ia a system of rate reduction which no court ean enjoin. In addition to the railroad, a steamship steam-ship aervico is maintained on Lakes Managua and Nicsragua and the Han Juan river. The latter river extends frnm Lake Nicaragua tn the Atlantic ocean at Han Juan del Norte, known in canal days aa (irevtown. Although the trip from Granada to Grevtown is only about l?n miles, one ran travel from New York to Liverpool in almost as short a time and with much leas discomfort dis-comfort than between these two points. On the two lakes and the Han Juan river about half a dozen little steamers ply, the heaviest of them of less than .100 tons burden and the average probably prob-ably not over s hundred tons. Transcontinental Line. During the Zelava regime It was planned to extend the railroad from San Miguelitn, on Laka Nicaragua, tn Monkey Point, a distance of lis miles, and it ia said that if the revolution had not broken up his plana, the road would now b under construction. It would afford another transcontinental railroad across the American continent. It ia thte line, or one paralleling it, that the Nicaraguana expect to build it the American senate ratines their treaty and the loan is successfully negotiated. As matters now stand, comparatively little of Nicaraguan territory has been developed, and it is believed in Itieara-. gua that trade with the United 8tatee probably wnuld be quintupled, if better means of communication were provided. At present the ordinary means of leaving leav-ing for the United States is by an unsatisfactory un-satisfactory steamer that sails every ten day a. It takea four days to go to Panama, where a layover1 of from one tn three days may 'be necessary, and then six or seven" da rs to New York. Travelers may yarv this route by crossing cross-ing Coeta Rica or Guatemala or rail and sailing from Port Limoa for New Orleans and New York. Telegraph Berries Awful. The telegraph service of Nicaragua is also operated, by tha government. The cost of sending telegTama ia so little that nearly all business correspondence ia conducted by telegraph. The government gov-ernment maintains a system of censorship censor-ship over telegrams and it la hard to fet s code message through the system, able mesages sent by private code are more often undeliverd than otherwise. When one wishes to tend a telegram he does not call a messenger as in the United States, but must go to the telegraph tele-graph of flee in person. An Americas who is accustomed to drafting s message mes-sage on one blank and then rewriting it on another is destined to be rudely shocked when he goes to s Nicaraguan telegraph office. The operators sre required re-quired to keep s careful account of the blanks iasuedt and none is allowed to be destroyed. An American visitor recently re-cently tore np a blank and asked for another. He was informed that he would have to return tha torn one be fore another eould bo given him. He gathered the piecee off the floor and handed them into the window. The operator patched them together on another an-other piece of paper with as mnch ear as though it had been s hundred dollar bill to be aent into the treasury department de-partment for redemption. Government ownership as spplied to publie utilities in Nicsragua has been fironounred a failure by foreigners snd rading natives alike. It ia agreed that the liberality of tbs Niearaguaa politicians poli-ticians in the issuance of transportation and their carelessness with the funds make it certain that it always will he impossible for the government profitably profit-ably to operate tha publie utilities. |