poverty without misery. These people are happy and contented. They have never seen any other living. They have no schools. There are no churches. Civilisation to them is a railroad train. Business is a railroad train. Life is but the hours between trains.
As I stood on the siding at Querétaro one day gazing at this awful aspect of life, a young Mexican, who had been educated in the United States, remarked to me:
"You know, if these people could go to the states for a few years they would come back different people. They don't know any better. They have had no opportunity."
While the engine was taking water at Querétaro and I sauntered about the train I met an old American railroader who had been working on Mexican railways twenty years. Four thousand dollars, his life savings, which he had invested in a hotel in a town near there, disappeared one night in a fire when the bandits came to burn and plunder.
"These bandits," said he, "will never stop until there is food enough for all the people. There would be no bandits if there was work for the men and food for their families. You know what the Mexicans say around here. Oh, I know them and they don't know I'm an American or my life would not be worth that"—and he snapped his fingers. "But I make good money and I travel up and down these lines. You know these people say
