The Mexican National was a relatively poorly built narrow-gauge line.
Trade and Commerce of Paso del Norte, Reports from the Consuls of the United States, vol. 39 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1889), 50th Cong., 2d sess., H. Misc. Doc. 141, 754.
Report of the U.S. Congress Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, 49th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1886), 10.
Poor, Manual, 1892, xxii.
The transcontinental traffic was the most expensive to secure and the least remunerative of all traffic for the Union Pacific.
Adams to Callaway, Aug. 31, 1885, UP, PO, OC, vol. 32, ser. 2, r. 25.
Adams to Gould, May 10, 1885, UP, PO, OC, vol. 28, ser. 2, r. 24.
Adams to Callaway, Oct. 8, 10, 1885, PO, OC, vol. 32, ser. 2, r. 28.
Testimony of Artemas Holmes, PRC, 1:132 ff, gives an account of Villard as receiver.
Also Villard, Memoirs, 2:273, 283.
Klein, Jay Gould, 244-45.
The Oregon Short Line stocks and bonds were offered to stockholders of the Union Pacific; the Union Pacific guaranteed interest on the bonds through a stock guarantee. The road was built on the assumption that the Northern Pacific would not be completed.
Adams to Callaway, Dec. 18, 1884, UP, PO, OC, vol. 24, ser. 2, r. 21.
Testimony of Charles Francis Adams, PRC, 1:90-95.