hardware," he said, "that boy can
sell it, and I don't care where you put him. He can sell to people who
can't speak English, and I believe he could sell to deaf mutes or the
blind. He knows the line, and they know he knows it. Why, this very
first trip he's sold more goods on his own say-so than on the house
brand. Said he knew what the stuff would do, and people took that who
usually want to know about the guarantee." All of which Peter McDougall
filed where he would not forget it.

But to go back to the trip itself. Along the railway in Kansas J.W.
began to see box-cars without trucks, roughly fitted up for dwellings.
Dark-skinned men and women and children were in occupation, and all the
household functions and processes were going on, though somewhat
primitively.

"Mexicans," said Finch, as J.W. pointed out the cars. "Section hands;
when I first began to make this territory you never saw them except
right down on the border, but they have moved a long way east and north.
I saw lots of them in the yards at Kansas City last time I was there."

J.W. watched the box-car life with a good deal of curiosity. Here and
there were poor little attempts at color and adornment; flowers in
window boxes and bits of lace at the windows. Delafield had plenty of
foreigners, but these were foreigners of another sort. They seemed to be
entirely at home.

"I suppose," he said to Finch, "these Mexicans have come to the States
to get away from the robbery and ruin that Mexico has had instead of
government these last ten years and more."

"Yes," Finch answered, "thousands of 'em. But not all. Some of these
Mexicans are older Americans than we are. We took 'em over when we got
Texas and New Mexico and California from Old Mexico. They were here
then, speaking the Spanish their ancestors had learned three hundred
years ago and more. But they're all the same Mexicans, no matter on
which side of the Rio Grande they were born. Of course those born on
this side have had some advantages that the peons never knew."

"But do you mean," J.W. wanted to know, "that they are not really
American citizens?"

Fred Finch said no, he didn't mean exactly that. Certainly, those born
on this side were American citizens in the eyes of the law, and those
who came across the Rio Grande could get naturalized. But that made
little real difference. A Mexican was a Mexican, and you had to deal
with him as one.

J.W. was not quite satisfied with that explan