"The Mexican towns we had visited, were in no manner of life different upon this frontier from those of central Mexico The impression had been of a fixed stagnancy amounting to a slow national decay; the cause, a religious enslavement of the mind, preventing educa-tion, communication, and growth, giving rise to bigotry, hypocrisy, political and social tyranny, bad faith, priestly spoliation, and, worst of all, utter degradation of labor."