Other private issues

El Higo

Hacienda “El Higo”

El Higo in 1910

The Compañía Azucarera del Pánuco, S. A. was founded in 1898 by a group of Frenchmen, including Julio M. Limantour and Hugo Scherer, Jr.^{AHAGN, Notary 62 and 543, Agustín Pérez de Lara, 24 September 1906}. The company had a capital of $1,000,000. It planted 4,000 acres of sugar cane at its hacienda at El Higo, in the north of the state, under the management of Federico G. Proal, and the company’s engineer, Durand, went to New Orleans and France to buy machinery for their new mill^{El Imparcial, Tomo VI, Núm. 847, 12 January 1899}. The company exported all of its production.

Because of the shortage of coins in the area, including the major port of Tampico, the company already used metal tokens in its tienda and brought in 1c coins from Mexico City, and we have $5 vales dated 10 April and 5 May 1915.

M4012 $5 Compañía Azucarera del Pánuco

M4012 $5 Compañía Azucarera del Pánuco

The company also issued $1 and $2 notes printed by Bouligny & Schmidt. The $1, Series A, is known with datestamp 22 April 1916

M4014 $1 Compañía Azucarera del Pánuco

The signatories are:

Federico G. Proal was a French entrepreneur who was born in 1860. He became a founder/manager of the Compañía Azucarera del Pánuco and the settlement of El Higo. Federico Proal was elected a member of the board (consejero) of the Banco de Londres y México 14 April 1915 in substitution for José Spitalier, who was out of the countryThe Mexican Herald, 20 May 1915. He was an auditor (comisario) for the Papelera San Rafael from 1915 to 1917 and then a consejero from 1918 to 1924. He died in 1925.
A. Lanzier
E Jean-Vincent was the cashier (cajero)
Asencio Vidaurrázaga

Huayacocotla

Huayacocotla is a town in the Huasteca Baja region.

A series of cartones (1c, 25c, and 50c) for local use, with the name of Carlos Barranco, of "La Ciudad de Londres".

M3985 1c La Ciudad de Londres

M3986 25c La Ciudad de Londres

M3987 50c La Ciudad de Londres

Naolinco

Domínguez Hermanas

M4054 2c Domínguez Hermanas

A typewritten 2c note. The text ‘no circula’ shows that it was for internal use.

Mahuixtlán

Hacienda de Mahuixtlán

Mahuixtlán is 19 kilometres south of Xalapa.

The sugarcane mill at Mahuixtlán, 1910 (courtesy J. C. Reyes. 1991)

The politician and businessmen Eduardo Dondé owned this hacienda: in 1880 he installed a still to produce aguardiente de caña, and in 1907 and 1910 a waterwheel to drive it. So the Francisco Hernández who issued a note for 50c, dated 22 August 1914, might have been the leasee or overseer or run a local tienda.

M4022 50c Hacienda de Mahuixtlán

Tuzamapam

The Hacienda de Tuzamapam in 1926
(courtesy Archivo fotográfico Vicente Martínez Castro)

Tuzamapam is 14 kilometres east of Coatepec. The hacienda of Tuzamapam was founded in the eighteenth century under the name of San Juan Bautista, with the Gorozpe family as the first owners. Over time it became the largest ingenio in the region. During the nineteenth century most of the land was used for cattle breeding with sugar cane grown on 960 hectares of irrigated land, and some coffee plantations.

Around 1907, Luis Gorospe, son of the owner, began the installation of a mill, turning Tuzamapam into a sugar plantation. The construction lasted almost ten years and involved the construction of stone roads, railway tracks, bridges and irrigation canals, aqueducts, the construction of the main house and factory building and the transfer and installation of imported machinery. The area used for the cultivation of sugarcane increased, leading to an increase in the demand for labour.

Between 1900 and 1920, the hacienda had around 250 workers in the field. For its part, the installation, operation and maintenance of the factory involved the hiring of skilled artisans and workers, many of them brought from other states—mechanics, carpenters, electricians, among others—who had a higher status than farm workers ^{Patricia Ponce y Cristina Núñez Madrazo, Tuzamapan: el poder viene de las cañas, 1992, Xalapa, Editora del Gobierno del Estado}.

Working hours were organized according to the needs of the mill. The workers worked two shifts of six hours each and the field workers worked a twelve-hour day, the latter receiving lower wages: 50 to 75 cents per day for the labourers and 1.25 pesos for the workers^{Fábregas, 1990}. A part of the consumer goods was periodically received in kind – clothing, meat, corn. Within the area of the hacienda, a commercial activity was organized restricted to the existence of a single store, owned by the boss: the only difference with the typical tienda de raya is that workers were not allowed to go into debt.

We know of a series of notes (5c, 10c, 20c, 50c, $1 and $2), with the text reading “ Estos vales suplen al hacer la raya y serán cambiados por billetes de cinco pesos cuando se reunan vales por esa cantidad”.

M4095 5c Hacienda de Tuzamapam

M4096 10c Hacienda de Tuzamapam

M4097 20c Hacienda de Tuzamapam

M4098 50c Hacienda de Tuzamapam

M4099 $1 Hacienda de Tuzamapam

M4100 $2 Hacienda de Tuzamapam

Cosautlan

Cosautlán is a town in the central mountainous area of Veracruz, about 25 kilometres south of Xalapa.

Carlos Cortés y Hermano

M4010 50c Carlos Cortés y Hermano

A 50c note, dated 20 February 1915 and signed by Carlos Cortés and A. Cortés, presumably his brother. The datestamp. for 20 February 1915, reads 'ASCENCIO MER[            ] - TIENDA M[IXTA]', so these ran a store.

Carlos Cortés
A. Cortés

Botica de “San Rafael”

This chemist's, owned by José de J. Rincón, issued a 50c note, dated 1 March 1915. The legend reads 'Este Vale es provisional y sólo para facilitar las operaciones de la casa que los expide' so these were, expressly at least, only for use within the store and would have been a response to the lack of small change.

M4008 50c Botica de San Rafael

They are signed by José de J. Rincón.

José de J. Rincón was a magistrate in the Tribunal Superior de Justicia in Xalapa in 1899.

Veracruz

After the Americans withdrew their forces a new Junta de Administración Civil was established on 24 November 1914. At one of its first sessions, on 1 December, the Inspector de Policía, Teodoro Frezieres, reported that some casas comerciales had issued cardboard vales (cartones-moneda) without any legal authorisation. He was ordered to collect in the paper money and consign the offenders to the authorities. He was also told to use the press to inform the public that such issues were prohibited^{AHV, Actas del Cabildo (Junta de Administración Civil), libro 91, p14} so the next day he published a notice, warning stores that had made issues of moneda fiduciaria, in contravention of the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, that they would be referred to the authorities for punishment^{El Dictamen, Año XVI, Núm. 1350, 4 December 1914}.

Emilio Llaxa

Llaxa was one of the merchants who issued cartones, in his case for one and two centavos. On 23 December 1914 his lawyer, Manuel Lozada y Prado, asked the Junta de Administración Civil to return $48 that the police has confiscated. The Junta agreed to return the money, in Constitutionalist notes, and refer Llaxa to the Presidente of the Junta for judgement^{AHV, Actas del Cabildo (Junta de Administración Civil), libro 91, p50}.

Hoteles “Diligencias”

The Hotel Diligencias of Diáz, Menendez y Compañía faced the main square (and still does).

M4018 50c Hotel Diligencias

Salon "La Lonja"

M4019 50c La Lonja

This simple typewritten note for 50c used to be catalogued as from Mexico City but is in fact from Veracruz. Braulio Aparicio advertised his restauant in The Mexican Herald from May to September 1914.

Compañía Limitada de Luz Eléctrica, Fuerza y Tracción de Veracruz

looking north up avenida Independencia from calle Rayón, with the cathedral tower in the distance
(courtesy collection Allen Morrison)

The Compañía de Luz, Fuerza y Tracción de Veracruz was registered in London on 28 July 1906. This new English company purchased the existing Ferrocarril Urbano and ordered ten cross-bench open trams from J. G. Brill in Philadelphia on 16 September 1907. The company inaugurated three routes of a new electric tram system on 5 July 1908. All started from the new railroad station on calle Montesinos and ran down avenida Independencia toward the old station on calle Rayón.

The catalogues list a ticket from this tram company but, as elsewhere, with similar tickets from the Compañía Eléctrica de Luz, Fuerza y Tracción de Tampico, S. A. in Tampico or the Compañía Hidroeléctrica e Irrigadora del Chapala, S. A. in Guadalajara, we need further documentary evidence before we can agree that these were used as paper currency.

M4106 10c Compañía de Luz, Fuerza y Tracción de Veracruz

Rio Blanco

Compañía Industrial de Orizaba, S. A.

La Compañía Industrial de Orizaba S.A. was formed in 1889 with capital from Thomas Braniff, and the Barcelonnettes Ollivier y Cía (Ciudad de Londres), J. Tron y Cía (Palacio de Hierro), and Signoret, Honnorat y Cía (Puerto de Veracruz). In the next ten years it acquired and constructed four textile factories in the Orizaba valley: Cerritos, San Lorenzo, Río Blanco and Cocolapan (acquired in 1899). The Rio Blanco factory was built to supply the owners’ department stores in Mexico City and other major cities throughout the country. With more than 40,000 spindles and almost 2,600 workers, it was the largest textile mill in the country and was large even by international standards. Like most textile mills in Mexico, it was originally built on an unpopulated site that was eventually transformed into a company town.

One way in which the Compañía Industrial de Orizaba's partners earned income, from the foundation of their factories until 1912 were the tiendas de raya. These businesses served the entrepreneurs to recover part of the wages of the workers, by forcing them to buy in them the food, clothing and other goods they needed. The tiendas de raya received the vales issued by the textile companies as an advance of the salary at the request of the worker. Vouchers could be redeemed for goods or for money at 90% of their value. The following Saturday the amount advanced to the workers was deducted from their salaries to pay the debt.

Río Blanco’s company store was leased to Victor Garcín, a Barcelonnette who had been in the region for some decades. Eduardo Garcín, his brother, was the Compañía Industrial de Orizaba manager in 1903 and a member of the board in 1905 and 1906. However, Garcín’s store was not merely a company store. He seems to have run the largest store in the area, occupying a whole block, and sold not only directly to workers but also to several stores in the region. Besides Río Blanco’s company store Garcín owned two other stores: “El Centro Comercial” at Nogales,and “El Modelo” at Santa Rosa, and nine pulquerías which also held billiard tables.

After the conflicts of 1907, where the workers burned the tiendas of Victor Garcin, he decided to sell his property to Manuel Diez and left the area.

In 1914 the Compañía Industrial de Orizaba issued bonos de caja provisionales.

M4077 20c Compañía Industrial de Orizaba

M4078 50c Compañía Industrial de Orizaba

The conditions under which these notes operated were written on their reverse^{[text needed].}