"soldier" on the job. Worthless, worthless Mexicans! Virtuous, virtuous Americans!
The American promoter feels a personal grievance at the religious bigotry of the poor Mexican. It is because of the church fiestas, which give the Mexican a few extra holidays a month, when he is free to take them. Profits are lost on those fiesta days; hence the anguish of the American promoter. Hence the welcome which the American gives to a system of labor such as we find in Valle Nacional, where the cane of bejuco wood is mightier than the priest, where there are neither feast days nor Sundays, nor any days when the club does not drive the slave to the back-breaking labor of the field.
"They told us labor was cheap down here," an American once said to me in a grieved tone. "Cheap? Of course. Dirt cheap. But it has its drawbacks." He expected every "hand" to do as much work as an able bodied American and to live on thin air besides!
Far be it from me to express approval of the influence of the Catholic church upon the Mexican. Yet it must be admitted that the church alleviates his misery somewhat by providing him with some extra holidays. And it feeds his hunger for sights of beauty and sounds of sweetness, which for the poor Mexican are usually impossible of attainment outside of a church. If the rulers of the land had been enlightened and had given the Mexican the barest glimpse of brightness outside of the church the sway of the priest might have been less pronounced than it is today.
Those fiestas which are such a thorn in the side of the American promoter are useful to him at least in that they furnish him with an excuse for paying the
