But these same laborers, even saving all possible margin of wages, could not have lived in anything like comfort on sixty-five cents per day. Most of them never see a newspaper, and could scarcely read, and not at all understand it if they did see it. There is not an item of news, a trace of historical knowledge or perspective, a gleam of scientific understanding, a moving picture show, or a lecture on any subject, or a musical program, nor any one of the thousand things that add interest and widen the horizon of life--none of these things ever enter the remotest areas of his consciousness. He lives in the flat, narrow confines of a life so small, so cramped, so possessed by superstition and terror and ill will that he is not many removes from the cattle with which he works. When this man would celebrate his saint's day he gets drunk, organizes a bull fight, and gives vent to every low impulse of his nature. Is it any wonder? The only tingle of interest that touches his soul comes from adventures in the realm of unfaithfulness and drunkenness. How many of the rest of us would do any better if born and bred in the mire of his social inheritance? There is such a thing as moral hookworm. Saint Paul called it by another term, but its symptoms are unchanged. The unshod soul, shuffling through the mire of degradation, acquires from the lower stratum of his environment the infection of a spiritual destitution that lowers moral vitality to the minimum. How comes this benumbed conscience and depraved practice! What is the matter that the average of legitimacy for all Central America is thirty per cent of the total population, while the seventy per cent are born of unmarried parents? It is not for lack of churches. Every town has its church, and the church is invariably the best building in the town. It stands on the plaza, commanding, central, and usually more or less beautiful. One can scarcely get out of sight of a church tower in any thickly settled, level country. And the churches are large enough to contain almost the whole population of the town, at least by taking them in several installments at mass hours. [Illustration: CHURCH BELLS OF ARRAIJAN, CAST 1722] It is not for want of priests. There are priests in every town, and most of them carry out pretty faithfully the routine of ecclesiastical observances that make up the day's program. Black gowns, tonsured heads, and beads and rosaries are seen everywhere, and the padre is usually the most influential man in the town. It is not for want of religion. Every house of any pretensions has its holy pictures, often its crucifix, and usually its rosary. Women in numbers attend mass and go to confession. It is not for want of opportunity on the part of priests or church. It is not because of "church competition." Here we have a unity complete and final.