Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/35

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MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA
19

assistant to the director and the treasurer of the company, a company dedicated, as the confession in its circulars states, for the purpose of furnishing freight cars to those who need them.

"He also cited a deal for the sale of rails at 70 pesos per ton when they cannot at present be purchased at 140 pesos and said that payments were not received in money but in very bad and very costly ties.

"He also states that when metallic money began to circulate again, the great majority of railway employees were paid a determined amount in notes for a stated period; certain persons bought these notes at a discount of 25, 50, 60, and even 75 per cent, and when almost all of the notes had been cornered, the order was given to pay them, from which an enormous amount of money was made."

We thus see that General Nafaratte, one of the most prominent members of the Carranza administration, in a deal made for government property, secured a profit amounting to 4 pesos per ton on 20,000 tons of iron by merely permitting his name to be used, and that it was freely charged in the Mexican Congress that the poor employees of the national railways had been speculated upon to a shameful extent in the payment of their wages by the government.

It is commonly said in Mexico that the Villa and Zapata forces operating against Carranza secure their ammunition, and sometimes their