Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1894 — GOOD FROM EVIL. [ARTICLE]

GOOD FROM EVIL.

“Is it right to do evil that good may come?” is a question that has agitated many a debating society and shaken many a rural community from center to circumference. A satisfactory solution of this vexed moral problem has never been attained. The Mexican government does not appear to be troubled with with any scruples on the matter, however, and has answered in the affirmative, by granting great “concessions” for bull fighting and dovoting the proceeds to the completion of the drainage system for the City of Mexico • "frhlcSi*Wa^’bbgun three hundred yeatS’ilgo'; With the aid of the revenug-;dgrived-JronDbull ; fighting c! frill now be able to devote .$120,,000 ; , mdrith th this and it, is esti'mtfted r 't ( h'it i 'dn '^i^iteen 1 months” the'great' the' escape ! 6f thfeimprisbnedfioodsbf the valley, ifrhich fog centuries: lhls> been a-icbnl-staut menace to- the city, ; will have been completed. Estimates place the cost of this work in the past at many millions of dollars,’ and more

than 200,000 human? lives have been lost in its prosecution. The City of ' Mexico was originally.built upon an island in an inland,lake, which occupied the center of a . mountain basin, or wley about sixty miles in diameter, and was approached by" dikes, r of which was ten miles in length. r The .remain,?,of this. dike,,still .exjst./ There being no outlet through the wall surrounding this valley the city has at many different periods suffered from most disastrous floods. In the last great inundation the waters stoed at the level of the second Story of the houses for several years. Gradually, by evaporation, filling and ineffective drainage the great lake has been reduced, the waters subsiding into several smaller lakes, but the water level remained dangerously near the level of the streets.— The canal and tunneh iu>w nearing completion have a total length of forty miles, and as an engineering -work they rank among the greatest achievements of modern times.