The population now numbers over 50,000, of which 15 or 20 per cent are Mexicans.
Just across the Rio Grande River is the Mexican city, Ciudad Juarez. I spent nearly a day in this quaint looking city. In the center of the town is a large park. Seated on one of the beautiful rustic benches, placed close together along the shaded avenues of the park, you are quite free from the hot, scorching sun beating down overhead. Just above your head a large frame work, extending over the entire park, has been constructed, and upon it a thick growth of vines and beautiful flowers are entwined in endless profusion.
Wherever I spent a small American coin, I was sure to receive nearly a handful of Mexican coins in change.
A toll bridge spans the river and connects the two cities.
An American collects the toll on the El Paso side and a Mexican on the Juarez side. It cost me two cents to cross each way.
While in El Paso I heard a great deal of talk about the high wages paid laborers in Bisbee, Ariz., and as it was only a few miles out of my way going to Tucson, I decided to stop over there a few days.
I shoveled coal on an El Paso and Southwestern freight train from El Paso to Douglas, a distance of 200 miles.
Douglas, Ariz., is a small place of about two thousand population, and is twenty-seven miles from Bisbee.
When we reached Douglas the engineer and the fireman invited me to take dinner with them.
The engineer offered to get me a place in the large railroad shops located there as apprentice boy at $2.50 per day, but I told him I would go on to Bisbee and try that town for a job first.