Excerpt from The Railroads of Mexico Mexico's centennial year, 1910, marked the end of normal conditions throughout the country. Porfirio Diaz, who had brought order out of chaos, was an old man. The voices of discontent were no longer quiet, and the world was asking with renewed interest the question, "After Diaz, what?" Hardly had the great anniversary celebration been concluded when insurrection broke out in the north, and a reign of disorder set in which has continued with varying degrees of violence until the present. When the power that maintains public order breaks down, property interests suffer; and railroads are peculiarly liable to loss and destruction. The regularly constituted government avails itself of its right to take over the lines for military use; equipment is seized for the transportation of troops, munitions, and supplies; and the service essential to the maintenance of commerce and industry is disorganized if not brought to a complete standstill. Revenues fall off, outlays for construction and maintenance are curtailed, and the return to investors is suspended. More serious still is the effect of the activities of the forces of rebellion and disorder. Bridges are destroyed and tracks are torn up to prevent the movement of trains; equipment is seized and buildings arc burned. All varieties of railroad property arc destroyed, sometimes purely for the sake of destruction. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.