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Show PANAMA CANAL COMPETITOR. On the first of January the Tchuan-tepec Tchuan-tepec Railroad, which crosses Mexico between Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf coast and Salina Cruz on the Pacific, was opened to through traffic. "The great work has been conducted quietly," quiet-ly," says one paper, and the statement state-ment is likely to pass unchallenged. From the New York Journal of Commerce Com-merce we learn that construction was begun on this line twenty-live years ago, but that it came to a standstill because of complications between an American contractor and the Mexican government, the franchise being forfeited for-feited in 1882. A few years ago an English company revived the undertaking. under-taking. The new road is a single-track single-track line, 189 miles in length, with an elevation of 800 feet where it crosses the Sierra Madre ridge. At the terminals, we read, arc the latest contrivances for transferring cargoes from ship to train and vice versa. It was reconstrue'ed and brought to completion at a cost of more than $25,000,000. Says the Journal of Commerce: Com-merce: "It is calculated that the tonnage carried over the Tehuantcpcc route . will be 600,000 tons the first year and will increase progressively. To an extent it will compete with the trans-1 trans-1 continental railroads of the United ' States and act as a regulator upon their rates. The control of the Mexican Mexi-can government, which has a fifty-year fifty-year contract with the English company, com-pany, upon the expiration of which the state will have possession of the railway, can be counted upon to prevent pre-vent any combination to restrain this competition. There is every reason to believe that this line will become an important factor in commerce between be-tween the Atlantic and Pacific until the Panama Canal is open. Then we shall see what happens. May the consummation con-summation not be too long delayed." From the Louisville Courier-Journal we learn further: "The eastern terminus is but about 850 miles from New Orleans or less than half the distance to Colon, the eastern terminus of the Panama route; while its Pacific terminal is correspondingly nearer San Francisco Francis-co and other American Pacific ports. New Orleans and St. Louis have direct di-rect railroad connection with Coatzacoalcos, Coatza-coalcos, the eastern terminal, and a large mineral and agricultural portion of Mexico will find outlet for its pro-1 pro-1 ducts in the same direction." The St. Louis Globe-Democrat thinks that even the Panama Canal, when completed, will find this Mexican Mexi-can road " a rival of some consequence." |
