EL PASO SEEKS LOST EMINENCE
Mexican Trade Vanishes With Wrecked Railways
Border Towns Seize Reins From Slipping Hands
Texas City Gathers Forces for Counter Attack
BY NORMAN WALKER
[EXCLUSIVE DISPATCH]
EL PASO (Tex.) June 7.— As the gateway to Mexico, El Paso is fighting with her back to the wall. Because of revolutionary and economic conditions, this, the largest port on the Mexican border, is seeing her valuable commerce with Mexico slipping away to Laredo, Nogales and Eagle Pass. Superior service through the port of Laredo has diverted much freight traffic to that city which rightfully belonged to El Paso.
Passenger traffic has also been diverted through Laredo because of the better Pullman equipment which is carried out of St. Louis direct to Mexico City via Laredo. Nogales, Ariz., on the west, is a growing, hustling, enterprising, Southwestern town which is going after its share of the West Coast business of Mexico and is getting it.
EL PASO NOT ASLEEP
El Paso business men are not asleep to this situation and El Paso will not surrender her supremacy as the principal Mexican border port without a struggle. The old El Paso spirit, which was allowed to starve for lack of nutrition, has been revived by the recent failure of the second largest bank and the run on another. Bankers who had been bitter enemies in business came to the rescue of these banks and the city and Southwest had as fine an example of civic co-operation as San Francisco showed after her fire.
Fifteen years ago, prior to the outbreak of the Mexican revolutions, El Paso was handling more freight traffic to Mexico than all of the other ports combined, exclusive of Vera Cruz. The joint railroad tracks and joint warehouse at the American end of the international bridge were congested with coal, machinery, foodstuffs and supplies going to all parts of the interior.
WAR WRECKS PLANS
When the revolution came in 1911, most of the fighting was in the north. The Mexican Central Railroad, running from the border to Western Chihuahua, with a projected port at Topolobampo on the Pacific, was so badly crippled by bridge burners and wreckers that it is now in the hands of a receiver and poor Dr. Francis Pearson's scheme of an industrial empire in Northwestern Mexico sank with him on the Lusitania.
El Paso learned a valuable lesson during the revolutionary period in Mexico. Up to that time the city depended largely upon Mexico for its trade. With the revolutions, this was cut off and El Paso wholesale houses went after business in Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas, even invading Los Angeles territory for trade. The El Paso valleys have been converted from a liability to an asset by introducing long staple cotton and 70,000 bales is expected to be grown in these valleys this year. El Paso has just begun to fight for her Mexican trade and is bringing up her industrial district and cotton-producing valleys as reserves.