TELEGRAMS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 65, 18 March 1910, Page 3

TELEGRAMS.

TRADE POSSIBILITIES. MEXICO WANTS COAL AND COKE. [ST TttTCBAPH— SPECIAL TO TH* K>Sl.] AUCKLAND, This Day. "There is the open hand for big trade •t present waitimj to be- shaken across the Pacific, that has for New Zealand almost unbounded possibilities in; at ieast one direction." The words were spoKen to ;k Star reporter by Mr. David B. Russell, a prospeious ranchero in Mexico, who is visiting Auckland, his native place, after an absence of 27 years. '"In Mexico we have pretty well everything in the world that a ii*tion could desire, with the exception of *uel coal and smelting coke," said Mr. Russell, "but in these necessary accessories of manufacture and transit we are sadly hindered, and it was uith the remembrance of New Zealand's almost inexhaustible measures of the commodity that I returned to Auckland as an envoy, you might say, from the coal and co"ke starving people of wealthy Mexico! We have just opened a line of railroad f rom Guadalagaro, the Chicago of Mexico, to the port of Mangamillo, about 270 miles distant on the Pacific Coast, which connects all the railroad system of Mexico with a port on which the Mexican Government has already spent over 10,000,000 dollars, and intends to spend as much more, and the Japanese being a smart race have | started a line of steamers touching at j Mangamillo, Honolulu, Japan and China. About six hours from Mangamillo, right on the railway line, there is a hmge iron property, having on it every kind of machinery for milling iron, from i-in. to 6in. round or square, and this plant is at present practically shut down owing to the inability to obtain coke. There is a .huge field for New Zealand enterprise in this direction by making a coal and coke deposit at Mangamiilo. The railroad there is the tail end of the national lines of Mexico, and the whole system could be supplied with coal as well as Harriman's system — a tremendous line from Guaymas, Mayatlan and Tepee, to Guadalajara, and then to Mexico City, connecting with the pan-American line. Both of these- systems would have to use the coal and coke if it were sent, for there is none in the country except what is obtained from an insignificant mine in the north-west, and not only do we require coal for the railways and coke for foundries, but the smelters of Mexico generally require enormous supplies of coke, which at present has to be obtained from the United States at immense expense. There would be, moreover, unlimited possibilities opened up in the way of trade between that country and New Zealand," said Mr. Russell, who expressed his confidence that in a very short while the ueturn ships would ■be iaden with back cargo.