“Besides, Mexico is not the States.  As you say, it is Latin in its civilization, not Saxon.  It does not want our sort of culture.  And some of our missionaries, both of the church and of industry, have thought that the Mexican ought to be ‘Americanized.’  That’s a fatal mistake in any mission field outside the States.  All in all, you can see that it isn’t entirely inevitable that the Mexican should understand our motives, or appreciate them when he does understand.  But that’s all the more reason for bearing down hard on every form of genuine missionary work.  It’s the only thing that we Americans can do in Mexico with any hope of avoiding suspicion or of our presence being acceptable to the Mexicans in the long run.  We’ve got to fight the backfire of our American commercialism, and the prejudice which is as real on the Texas side of the river as it is on the other; for if the Mexican thinks in terms of ‘gringo,’ the American of the Southwest is just as likely to think in terms of ‘greaser.’”

When J.W. and Mr. Tanner parted for the night it was with the mutual promise that they would have another talk some time the next day, but the promise could not be kept.  The retired business man heard from some of his business in the early morning, and had just time to say a hurried farewell.  As he put it, “I thought I had retired, but unless I get back to look after this particular affair I may have to get into the harness again, and that is not a cheerful prospect at my age.  So I go to business to avert the danger of going back to business.”

A little later the two hardware salesmen were in El Paso again, after a couple of side trips.  J.W. took advantage of a long train wait to hunt up the city library.  He wanted to know whether Mr. Tanner was right in saying that the Latin-American question was much the same everywhere.

He wrote a letter to Mr. Drury that night, having thus far used picture postcards until he was ashamed.  In the letter he took occasion to mention his talk with the “missionary father-in-law,” and his own bit of reading up on the subject.

Said he:  “I guess that man Tanner was right.  He did not speak much of the difference between the people of one country and those of another, which rather surprised me.  He said nothing of the two great classes, the rulers with much European blood, and the peons, largely or altogether Indian.  There must be all sorts of Latin Americans, rich and poor, mixed blood of many strains, Castilian and Aztec and Inca, and whatever other people were here when Columbus set the fashion for American voyages.  But this is where this ‘missionary father-in-law’ hit the heart of the trouble:  Latin America has all sorts and conditions of men, but everywhere it has the same church.  And it is a church that can’t ever make good any more.  It might, at the beginning, but it can’t now.  It has a reputation as fixed as Julius Caesar’s.  I’m hardly ready to set up as an expert observer, being only a cub salesman on his first trip, but, Mr. Drury, I believe I can see already that the only chance for these people to get religion and everything else which religion ought to produce, is for us to send it to them.  Maybe that would stir up the church down here, and help to give it another chance at the people’s confidence, though I’m not sure.”