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276 too much in the communities of their birth came to add their bit to keep life on the border from becoming dull. If they were "wanted back home," they had a tendency to step across the border, whence they might make themselves even more a subject of anxiety for their home governments.

Such a community, as it grew, developed a rough and ready character not inconsistent with respect for its own, but having little conscience about the rights of those across the border. The records of the foreign relations of the United States and Mexico for the '70s, '80s and '90s of the past century are interesting, if not always pleasant reading. They are by no means records of a civilization of which either Mexicans or Americans can be uniformly proud. Raids, violations of sovereignty, contraband trade, corruption of officials, murders, miscarriage of justice, stimulation of national antipathy by newspapers, which baited each other across the border—the record is full of evidence that the friction in Mexican-American relations was so great that a bursting forth into flame was a possibility for years and doubtless would have occurred frequently but for the efforts of the governments to calm the local discontent.

In the period before the Diaz régime a stream of complaints of lawlessness went from the border to Washington and Mexico. While the revolution was in progress the partisans of Lerdo de Tejada operated along the border and were popular in certain districts of Texas. At times they allowed United States troops freedom to operate on both sides of the river to put