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22 as possessed arms for their own defense. No guns are allowed on any of these oil properties nor are they desired. Their possession would be a menace, because they would be desired and fought for by the politically contending forces and the roving bands that at times overrun Mexico from north to south and east to west.

When a generation ago the Boston people ploughed the railroad line from Atchison to Santa Fe and across the great American desert into California, they had great hopes of traffic from the Mexican Central line they built from El Paso to connect with the City of Mexico, a thousand miles distant. They believed it would be a great feeder to the Atchison.

In this they were disappointed, but they still had the courage to build a branch to Tampico, hoping therefrom to make a new port for the development of the interior of Mexico. They had no thought of oil and no other thought than the wealth of the great high plateau in the center of Mexico.

For years the Atchison folders printed the Mexican lines almost as their own. To-day on the Atchison folders connections north even into