-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~snider/railroads.htm Discussion: Did railroads hold the key to Latin American progress? In the mid- to late nineteenth century, Latin American leaders saw the geographic isolation of their countries as a major obstacle to trade and modernization. Many came to regard the building of railroads as the key to national progress, but they also recognized that financing and construction, as well as relations with labor and consumers, were among the concerns that had to be addressed. It was especially clear that Latin American railroads could not be built without importing foreign technology and capital. Henry Meiggs (1821-1877) Therefore, the region’s leaders often courted American and European industrialists, like Henry Meiggs and his nephew, Minor Cooper Keith, to develop their nations’ railroad systems. Although these foreign men often succeeded in their endeavors, this success came at a price for Latin America. Below are excepts from the writings of two historians who have examined the topic of Latin American development. The first reading focuses on the building activity of Henry Meiggs. Written by J. Fred Rippy, this excepts takes a fairly tolerant and sympathetic view of Meiggs activity. The second reading is by John Dos Passos. Passos takes a more critical view of foreign commercial involvement in Latin America. J. Fred Rippy, Henry Meiggs, Yankee Railroad Builder. (1944) Henry Meiggs was perhaps the most remarkable railroad builder who ever appeared on the Latin-American scene. Landing in Chile early in 1855, a stranger and "like a thief in the night," he obtained his first railway contract three years later, and by the end of 1867 had managed the construction of nearly 200 miles, a good part of it across the Chilean coastal range. In 1868 he went to Peru, where the railway era was at its dawn, with less than 60 miles in operation. At his death in Lima on September 30, 1877, Peru had approximately 1,200 miles of track, more than 700 miles of which had been built under Meiggs’s direction. . . . Meiggs knew how to win Latin-American sympathies. He was a great dramatist and a great orator. His banquets, celebrations, and charities were long remembered both in Chile and Peru. A Chilean declared that he was a true philanthropist. He distributed thousands of pesos and soles among the poor and the victims of earthquakes. He spent tens of thousands on ceremonies and entertainments, chiefly in connection with his railways. Work was begun on the Valparaiso-Santiago Railway with a gorgeous fiesta; interrupted to dedicate a monument created by Meiggs himself to the memory of a Chilean Revolutionary hero; concluded with magnificent ceremonies that extended from one end of the line to the other. Trains received the blessings of the higher clergy; Chileans drank toasts to Don Enrique Meiggs the Great Builder; Meiggs compared the Chilean officials of the day with the intrepid founders of the nation, paid glowing tribute to his railway experts, and praised the Chilean roto to the skies. For five years thereafter he was a social lion in Chile. . . . Meiggs’s spectacular career is not free from the stain of dishonesty and corruption. Having over-speculated in California real estate, he sold forged warrants and issued unauthorized stock in an effort to save himself and his friends. When his crime was about to be discovered he fled to Chile to avoid prosecution — perhaps even execution — by irate citizens determined to take "justice" into their hands. Although his record in Chile is untainted and it is said that he later made amends for his financial sins in California, he has been accused of resorting to large-scale bribery in Peru. He is also charged with major responsibility for bankrupting the nation. The millions spent on his railways and others of the period did bring Peru at least to the very brink of bankruptcy; and the unsuccessful war with Chile that followed in 1879—1883 sent the country over the precipice. In 1890 the Peruvian Corporation, an English enterprise organized to bail out European bondholders and salvage the wreck of Peruvian finances, took over most of the railways of the nation. And the Peruvian railways are still dominated by this English corporation. In the midst of their calamities it was natural for the Peruvians to search for a scapegoat, and some of them found one in Henry Meiggs. Meiggs probably bribed several politicians. Bribery seems to have been the custom in those days, not only in Peru but in a number of other countries. It is likely that Meiggs had to buy some of the Peruvians in order to obtain permission to build the railways. And the drive for bribes, along with the Meiggs pageantry, no doubt contributed to the railway boom. But other factors were involved. The earning capacity of railroads and their power to stimulate economic development were vastly overestimated — perhaps honestly so by many — and enthusiasm for the new means of transportation was already tremendous among the members of the ruling class before Meiggs reached Lima. . . . The conclusion seems clear. Peruvian leaders must share much of the blame for the nation’s calamities. At times Henry Meiggs was a scoundrel; but he had his good traits and he built some remarkable railways. Few have ever accused him of shoddy workmanship or the use of any but the best of materials. His iron roads may not last as long as the Inca palaces; but they are sure to endure for many years. John Dos Passos, Emperor of the Caribbean. (1930) When Minor C Keith died all the newspapers carried his picture, a bright-eyed man with a hawknose and a respectable bay window, and an uneasy look under the eyes. Minor C. Keith was a rich man’s son, born in a family that liked the smell of money, they could smell money half way round the globe in that family. His Uncle was Henry Meiggs, the Don Enrique of the West Coast. His father had a big lumber business and handled real-estate in Brooklyn; young Keith was a chip off the old block. (Back in 49 Don Enrique had been drawn to San Francisco by the gold rush. He didn’t go prospecting in the hills, he didn’t die of thirst sifting alkalidust in Death Valley. He sold outfits to the other guys. He stayed in San Francisco and played politics and high finance until he got in too deep and had to get aboard ship in a hurry. The vessel took him to Chile. He could smell money in Chile. He was the capilista yanqui. He’d build the railroad from Santiago to Valparaiso. There were guano deposits on the Chincha Islands. Meiggs could smell money in guano. He dug himself a fortune out of guano, became a power on the West Coast, juggled figures, railroads, armies, the politics of the local caciques and politicos; they were all chips in a huge poker game. Behind a big hand he heaped up the dollars. He financed the unbelievable Andean railroads.) When Tomas Guardia got to be dictator of Costa Rica he wrote to Don Enrique to build him a railroad; Meiggs was busy in the Andes, a $75,000 dollar contract was hardly worth his while, so he sent for his nephew Minor Keith. They didn’t let grass grow under their feet in that family: at sixteen Minor Keith had been on his own, selling collars and ties in a clothing store. After that he was a lumber surveyor and ran a lumber business. When his father bought Padre Island off Corpus Christi Texas he sent Minor down to make money out of it. Minor Keith started raising cattle on Padre Island and seining for fish, but cattle and fish didn’t turn over money fast enough so he bought hogs and chopped up the steers and boiled the meat and fed it to the hogs and chopped up the fish and fed it to the hogs, but hogs didn’t turn over money fast enough, so he was glad to be off to Limon. Limon was one of the worst pestholes on the Caribbean, even the Indians died there of malaria, yellow jack, dysentery. Keith went back up to New Orleans on the steamer John G. Meiggs to hire workers to build the railroad. He offered a dollar a day and grub and hired seven hundred men. Some of them had been down before in the filibustering days of William Walker. Of that bunch about twenty-five came out alive. The rest left their whisky scalded carcasses to rot in the swamps. On another load he shipped down fifteen hundred; they all died to prove that only Jamaica Negroes could live in Limon. Minor Keith didn’t die. In 1882 there were twenty miles of railroad built and Keith was a million dollars in the hole; the railroad had nothing to haul. Keith made them plant bananas so that the railroad might have something to haul, to market the bananas he had to go into the shipping business; this was the beginning of the Caribbean fruit trade. All the while the workers died of whiskey, malaria, yellow jack, dysentery. Minor Keith’s three brothers died. Minor Keith didn’t die. He built railroads, opened retail stores up and down the coast in Bluefields, Belize, Limon, bought and sold rubber, vanilla, tortoiseshell, sarsaparilla, anything he could buy cheap he bought, anything he could sell dear he sold. In 1898 in cooperation with the Boston Fruit Company he formed the United Fruit Company that has since become one of the most powerful industrial units in the world. In 1912 he incorporated the International Railroads of Central America; all of it built out of bananas; in Europe and the United States people had started to eat bananas, so they cut down the jungles through Central America to plant bananas, and built railroads to haul the bananas, and every year more steamboats of the Great White Fleet steamed north loaded with bananas, and that is the history of the American empire in the Caribbean, and the Panama canal and the future Nicaragua canal and the marines and the battleships and the bayonets. Why that uneasy look under the eyes, in the picture of Minor C. Keith the pioneer of the fruit trade, the railroad builder, in all the pictures the newspapers carried of him when he died? <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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