lines now in progress will reduce its income so that it will do no more than hold its own. By that time, however, it will have made up for all its losses in past years, and will manage, with its subsidy, to keep its rolling stock in order, its road in repair, and its stockholders in easy circumstances.
The railway backbone of Mexico, traversing the dorsal ridge of the plateau from the city of Mexico to the Rio Grande, is the Central, running northwardly from the capital, with branches right and left, to the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, and with feeders out to all important points.
The longest of any Mexican line,—direct, 1,215 miles,—it has also the largest subsidy, $9,500 per kilometre, amounting to about $32,000,000. It runs through a country rich in mineral and agricultural resources, and connects the largest centres of population in the south, although it crosses certain areas of sterile plains in the north.
The company was incorporated in 1880, under the General Railroad Laws of Massachusetts. "The capital stock is fixed