The Christian Social Manifesto

by Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J., Ph.D.

(The Christian Social Manifesto Table of Contents )

I THE SPIRIT OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE (RN, 1)

"It is not surprising," wrote Pope Leo XIII, at the beginning of his Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, on the Conditions of the Working Classes, in 1891, "that the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been predominant in the nations of the world, should have passed beyond politics and made its influence felt in the cognate field of practical economy" (RN, 1).

The battles of ancient history, countless and destructive though they were, never affected in any permanent way the status of the working classes. Whether fought on the newly risen Mediterranean plains of earliest Sumer and Akkad, where the first war chariots may have crashed together six millenniums ago; or in the fertile valley of the Nile, where, in ages after, mighty labor forces toiled and groaned beneath the burdens of the Pharaohs; or round the massive walls of Nineveh and Babylon, erected by the captives of a thousand wars of conquest and of plunder – these struggles never changed even by a finger's breadth the lot of the toiling masses.

Revolutions, no doubt, were a constantly recurring phenomenon, not seldom bringing with them in their course the rise and fall of mighty dynasties and the extinction of once glorious royalties. But "the spirit of revolutionary change," of which Pope Leo XIII writes, never extended to the economic sphere. Any permanent betterment of the laboring population was never brought about by such means, whether among the great world powers of the ancient East, or the later nations of classic Greece and Rome.

Changes in the fortunes of individuals were far from uncommon, it is true. By the turn of war the freeman of today might become the bondman of tomorrow. Kings themselves might be dragged from their chariots and bowed beneath the burdens laid on them by their conqueror. Entire cities were depopulated and their inhabitants sold into slavery, or employed on the public works, digging the endless networks of canals until they dropped exhausted in the watery trenches; or dragging over blazing causeways the gigantic stones which were to go into the temples, palaces, and fortresses of their new imperial masters. The only stimulus for all their labor was the rod.

But amid all these ceaseless and kaleidoscopic changes in political history, the social and economic institutions of the times underwent no substantial transformations in the pagan countries of the ancient world. As far as the great masses of the unfree working populations were concerned, political reversals meant merely a change of masters. All alike exploited them, each for his own advantage, without ruth and without mercy.

Sometimes, indeed, and that most rarely, a popular revolution might for the moment give the upper hand to the toiler and the bondman, but even then without affecting in the slightest manner the permanence of the existing economic institutions.

As far back as the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty the ancient wise man, Ipuwer, pictured in grim words a future period of social and political ruin, when the poor should become rich and the rich, poor, and when the foreign invader would overturn the entire established order. Among his writings can still be found a vivid description of the bloody paroxysm of a popular revolt, which may possibly contain authentic scenes from such an uprising during the earlier dynasties of Egypt.

"They hide by the roadside and kill the traveler. They take away his clothes. The gatekeepers say, 'Let us go and rob.' The poor have grown rich, and those that possessed riches have grown destitute. He whose cup is brimful now used to be glad of a crust. . . . He who possessed has now no shelter, no where to lay his head. The princes of the earth are starving, noble ladies go hungry and say: `Oh, if we had some food!' Their clothes are ragged. But the necks of the female slaves are encircled by gold and lapis lazuli, by silver and malachite, by cornelian stone and bronze. The king's shop was turned into a general possession."

But it was not by such orgies that the condition of the worker could be permanently improved. They left not even an impression on the social or economic institutions of their time. Even should the slave of today have become the master of tomorrow, he might only exercise his power the more tyrannically.

The Church and the Modern Revolutionary Spirit

The great transformation which really and steadily affected for the better the status of the working classes was that brought about as the result of true religion. This we notice in the days of the Old Testament, under the divinely given Mosaic legislation. This, again, we behold far more fully verified under the New Dispensation, which transformed the world to whatever extent it was willing to receive the Church's influence.

Yet that transformation was never revolutionary. It was a quiet, sure result of the silent power of the Church's doctrine, of the divine example of her Founder, and finally of her mighty means of supernatural grace, particularly the Eucharist, whose influence profoundly affected the first Christians even in an economic way.

Christ Himself never preached, as modern radicals have claimed, the destruction of existing systems. He gave instead the doctrine instructing us to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves. From that alone were bound to follow, in the course of time, all the wonderful changes which Christianity effected in the world – slowly, silently, but surely, wherever men gave heed to it.

In the days of Imperial Rome, the Church saved what could be saved of the old civilization. After the barbarian deluge had finally swept over Europe, she quietly built up anew, with ceaseless toil and sacrifice, that Christian civilization which attained its culmination in the days when gildhood was in flower; when the great cathedrals rose in Europe like hymns to God in carven stone; when poetry, art, and architecture reached their height in men like Dante, Raphael, and Michelangelo. It was that "fine rapture" which the world has never since been able again to recapture.

During the beginning of that period in particular, political as well as social and economic changes had been taking place, gradually and yet on a vast scale. But when now we come to the period referred to in the Encyclical, we find ourselves in an era of sudden ruptures and upheavals, which were to reach a climax with the stupendous Russian debacle and the tragic European collapse at the end of the great World War. With the consequences of these events we stilt have to reckon.

More than a full score of years before these things came to pass, before even the threatening storm clouds had as yet drawn together, Pope Leo XIII pointed out the connection between the revolutionary changes that then had occurred in the political world, and the social revolutions that would inevitably follow if due provision were not made without delay.

It is a trite saying that now the worker, once he found himself politically emancipated, realized that this was not sufficient. He desired economic emancipation as well. It was this movement which was going on in the days of Pope Leo XIII, and all credit is due to the great Pope of the Workingmen for having had the vision clearly to apprehend this fact and to foresee the events to which it might ultimately lead.

It was his sense of justice which at that early period made him defend all legitimate strivings of the working populations in whatever way they could be ethically and religiously justified. It was his profound consideration for the common good which equally made him desire to avert the catastrophe which he no less plainly saw would shake the world, unless something were done to relieve the misery that then was weighing down the masses.

The Breaking of the Storm

This was what the Pope meant when, in the very opening sentence of his Encyclical, without delaying for any labored introduction, he at once went to the very heart of his subject, solemnly warning the men of his time that the spirit of revolutionary change, long predominant in the nations of the world, had already passed beyond its mere political field and must now be reckoned with "in the cognate field of practical economy.:'

Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, apparently believed that he could set his heel upon German Socialism and with one violent effort stamp it out of existence. At the same time he set his heel with equal violence upon the Christian labor unions, which had been successfully established there by the valiant Catholic social leader, Bishop Emmanuel von Ketteler. But Bismarck had none of the economic insight of the great Pope of the Workingmen. The Pope well knew, as Bishop Ketteler had understood before him, that the just demands of the people, however wrongly expressed and mistakenly promoted by false leaders, could not be so defeated.

False leaders, indeed, abounded to deceive the masses, to rob them of their spiritual birthright and religious hopes, to hold out elusive promises and drive men into exasperation, hatred, and revolt. But for this very reason it was all the more important that the voice of truth and wisdom should be heard, directing rich and poor alike into the right path, and saving the world from the evils which threatened to envelop it in their dark shadows.

The foresight of the Pontiff in insisting upon the economic revolutions that would follow on the political upheavals of Europe was fully justified in the events of history. Bolshevist Russia is naturally the first example, and with it and under its instigation the sinister developments in the Far East. Germany, Austria, Italy, all passed through similar stages at the end of the great World War. Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Spain, and other countries were but further illustrations confirming the wisdom of that opening sentence of the Encyclical, sent out in 1891 to the nations as a warning of the impending developments whose end we cannot yet foresee.

"It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been predominant in the nations of the world, should have passed beyond politics and made its influence felt in the cognate field of practical economy."

These were but the immediate results which should in themselves have sufficed to bring home to the industrial world the seriousness of the Pope's message of warning to our times. But men are slow to heed, until calamity has overtaken them. Then it is too late!

There was a spirit of unrest, too, at the beginning of the great medieval gild movement. Men were claiming their full rights in the industrial world. But the new spirit of emancipation was wisely directed and prudently achieved its purpose. In the gild organizations, fostered by the Church, the liberation of the industrial worker was really achieved, and that with comparatively little violence. The high status thus acquired for industrial labor was legitimately maintained for centuries by the urban craftsmen. Justice, Christian charity, and public-spirited consideration for the common welfare were the characteristics of this period.

The decline set in considerably before the days of the separation of nations from the Church which still further, and in fact most seriously, aggravated the condition of the toiler, until the climax of his misery was reached in the Industrial Revolution. Out of this, owing to certain unfortunate conditions of the times, have ultimately arisen the revolutionary movements of our day.

II THE ELEMENTS OF CONFLICT (RN, 1)

"The elements of a conflict are unmistakable." That was the clear observation of facts as made by Pope Leo XIII, looking forth from his watchtower of the Vatican over the world of his day. With a keen eye he had discerned aright the signs of the times.

"Watchman, what of the night?" was the cry that had gone up to him from millions of souls out of the darkness of that economic confusion and distress. In solemn words he told them of the situation he so clearly understood and the means that must be employed to avert the dangers threatening mankind.

Briefly he traced the beginnings of the great social conflict which then was fast developing, and outlined the factors which had combined to imperil the world and divide it into two mighty camps, each steadily gathering strength for the fatal struggle. To restore peace and order, to establish them lastingly on the firm basis of justice and Christian charity, and to bring man back to his truest good, the love of his Creator, was the supreme purpose of his message. But it was necessary, first of all, to outline the existing situation and make plain the leading factors that entered into it.

"The elements of a conflict are unmistakable," he wrote. With profound historic knowledge and true economic wisdom, he then set forth the nature of these elements which threatened to convulse the world: "the growth of industry, and the surprising discoveries of science; the changed relations of masters and workmen; the enormous fortunes of individuals and the poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance and the closer mutual combination of the working population; and, finally, a general moral deterioration."

The present chapter is devoted to discussion of the two first elements as here enumerated by the Holy Father, while the remaining four are considered in the following chapter.

The Growth of Industry

Perhaps it may seem strange that "the growth of industry" should be mentioned among the elements of conflict, and that, too, in the very first place. Yet nothing could be more accurate. To understand the significance of this brief allusion we must have in mind the long and dismal period of exploitation connected with the initial growth of modern industry more than a century before the writing of the Encyclical.

We here touch on a historic fact grasped by the great Pontiff in all its inner meaning and pitiful consequences. He does not wish to impeach industry itself or strive in the least to hamper its proper development, but only to point out that the application of right moral principles must keep pace with its progress. This had in no wise been historically the case.

Modern capitalism came into being with the Industrial Revolution in the last third of the eighteenth century. The invention of steam power and its introduction into the textile industry in 1785 marked the beginning of the factory system. With this the ownership of the means of production definitely passed out of the hands of Labor into those of Capital. A new economic cycle had begun in human history.

But the Pope, in enumerating the elements of conflict which entered into the great class struggle, then drawing to its head, instanced in the first place "the growth of industry." This, in fact, preceded and made possible the factory system, together with all its subsequent developments.

The Industrial Revolution did not come overnight, as many are inclined to think. It was ushered in by precisely that development of industry which the Pope mentions, and which took place largely under the most deplorable and pitiful conditions of human exploitation. These circumstances above all others gave point to the words of the poet when he wrote of "man's inhumanity to man."

Two things were necessary before the factory system, and with it the Industrial Revolution and modern Capitalism, could begin. The first of these was ready money in immeasurably greater quantities than had ever been possessed by the industries of till Middle Ages. These had practically no need of what we may call money-capital. The second was a large, indigent city population, deprived of their means of livelihood upon the land, and merely waiting to be absorbed by the new industrial life growing up around them. This, too, was a phenomenon entirely foreign to the Middle Ages.

Money, the first condition for the new Industrialism, was partly secured, at this earliest period, by the military expeditions and colonizations in far-off countries. Loot in the form of gold, silver, and other precious materials was plentiful. But more profitable even than the plunder thus unconscionably secured in Africa, Asia, the East Indies, in Mexico, Peru, or elsewhere, were the inexhaustible resources of forced and slave labor to which the native populations were often subjected by their European conquerors. With these really began the new profit system.

A vast and lucrative slave trade added still further to both the horrors and the profits of this new "growth of industry." A description of the ghastly slave ships, with their prisoners crammed like cattle and their stench reaching for miles across the ocean, is sickening to death.

The profit motive, accepted as the supreme purpose of industry, had thus struck deep roots, regardless of the teachings of Christianity. So accepted, it stood in clear opposition to the principle of medieval economics, which always insisted upon the common good as paramount. This only correct ethical doctrine the Church never ceased to stress. But it was a period when, owing to the unfortunate divisions that had been brought into Christianity, her voice was not heeded by a great part of Europe, while the rest was often bewildered and beguiled by the glamour of the new possibilities for enrichment thus thrown open.

Indeed, it was with the plunder of the Church's own gilds, churches, and monasteries that this movement may justly be said to have taken its earliest beginning. The wealth of the institutions which formerly had been devoted to religion and the poor, now ultimately went, in the main, to swell the fortunes of individuals. A new class of predatory rich was created in many countries. Such are the simple historic facts.

But the profit motive. stimulated abroad with the new "growth of industry," through forced and slave labor, was soon enough also developed at home.

At that very time the severe laws of inclosure deprived countless small farmers of their holdings and drove them into the cities. Agricultural and industrial changes brought other vast numbers from the land into the town. In many instances, too, this was due merely to improved methods of farming and business administration, made possible by the new accumulations of wealth with which the small land owner or tenant could simply not compete.

Thus, by many various means, a city proletariat was created, ready to be swallowed up in the new Industrialism now in the process of formation. Money, too, was abundant in the hands of a few to carry on large industrial enterprises. Nothing more was needed, therefore, for the complete development of this new Capitalism in the last part of the eighteenth century.

The voice of the Church, which might still have directed the growing industries aright for the common good of all, continued to be not merely unheeded but unheard in the mad chase after wealth. Profit became supreme, and for the time was the modern Baal, slavishly worshiped in the place of God. No wonder, then, that this fast-spreading materialism should have seized also upon the unfortunate masses, not merely disinherited and oppressed, but in large part separated from the Church which might otherwise have been their one stay in this great calamity.

Such was that "growth of industry" which the Pope rightly names in the first place among the elements of conflict. It was further facilitated by the final breaking down, at the same period, of the international barriers, effectually throwing open the world markets to the new industries and thus helping to increase immeasurably the wealth and consequently the power of the new Capitalism.

The Discoveries of Science

We can now understand why it is in the second place only, after the "growth of industry," that Pope Leo XIII mentions "the surprising discoveries of science," as the next element of conflict.

The motive and stimulus for industrial invention which directly followed on a large scale, would have been entirely wanting before the rise of those conditions out of which the new Industrialism is held to have developed. Briefly stated they are: the accumulation of predatory wealth, the unhallowed profits from forced and slave labor, the helpless thronging of the landless and disinherited tillers of the soil into the fast-growing cities, and the consequent formation of that new proletariat which was prepared to crowd into the shops and factories, now rising in ever greater numbers. Here, then, was the stimulus for greater and ever greater discoveries in science and constantly new inventions of machinery, which mark the next stage in the development of these elements of conflict dividing rich and poor.

Needless to say, the Church is not opposed to the discoveries of science, but encourages them in every laudable way. Under her direction the application of these discoveries might have been made a bond of concord rather than of conflict. How this must have followed from her social principles I hope to make clear later. She desires nothing more than the true welfare and happiness of all classes, of employers and employed, and her wish is that the discoveries and inventions of science be turned to the benefit of all.

Instead of any such provision at the time here spoken of, the condition of the worker, refused his just rights of organization, became truly pitiful. New scientific developments merely added new strength to the moneyed classes, and under then existing conditions, accentuated the dependence of the worker. New inventions culminated in new unemployment, for the time at least, and so in further possibilities of dismissing the breadwinner of the family and substituting child and woman labor. Thus wages, too, could naturally be depressed still more, and the misery of the poor might only be increased.

Conscientious employers certainly existed then as now. But it was difficult, under such circumstances, for any Christian employer to act upon high ideals. He was face to face with the inexorable competition of such a system, imposed by men without any principles of religion or humanity in their industrial and commercial relations. For them the purely pagan law of supply and demand was the last word in industry. And this law was further applied under conditions artificially restricting the laborer and leaving him entirely at the mercy of those who alone controlled his means of livelihood.

With this explanation, made on purely historic grounds, it will be understood why the two first elements of conflict enumerated by the Sovereign Pontiff, as dividing class from class, were "the growth of industry, and the surprising discoveries of science." Naturally we would look upon both of these as almost unmitigated blessings. And in fact it was mainly the fault of the modern irreligion that they failed to be such in far larger measure for the human race.

III FACTORS THAT MAKE FOR WORLD REVOLUTION (RN,I; QA, 2)

The preceding chapter showed how the growth of industry and the discoveries of science were turned into elements of conflict amid the social and religious conditions existing at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Next in order, as the third significant factor contributing to the unsettled state of the existing social system and consequently as a source of class struggle and possible world revolution, Pope Leo emphasized "the changed relations of masters and workmen."

Changed Relations of Employers and Men

This naturally resulted from the constantly increasing dimensions of factory and mill, with their ever growing numbers of laborers, while beyond their gates were eager, hungry masses waiting for employment within.

Under the old domestic or gild system conditions were vastly different. A master could not but intimately know each of the two or three journeymen whom, at the most, the gild statutes permitted him to employ. For each of these he held himself responsible in every Christian way, so long at least as the ancient Faith still flourished and was effective in the land.

The Church carefully instructed the master in his duty. Religiously she taught him to provide for the moral and spiritual development, no less than for the vocational education of his apprentice, even as he would see to the good upbringing of his own child. No secret of the trade was to be hidden from him. But with equal zeal he was to be watched and guided that he might learn to walk unflinchingly in the way of God's commandments. It was a true character training.

The journeyman, in turn, whom the master employed at his own side, was to be regarded as an elder son. He, too, was part of the household, sharing in all its joys and participating in all its sorrows.

At marriage the journeyman went forth from the master's house to set up at last his own little shop, somewhere along the quaint, narrow, winding streets of his little town, and become himself a master gildsman. That, indeed, was an ambition to be coveted and attained by every honest, worthy, skillful craftsman. During the years of his employment he had learned from the master whom he faithfully served, to love his craft, to love his neighbor, and, in fine, to love his God above all else. Surely, an education worth the while so long as gildhood was true to its ideals.

They were the days, therefore, when the worker achieved his highest dignity, and when real labor controversies were not merely unknown, but unthought of in the industrial life of those medieval towns. The supreme consideration of the gild regulations was always, first and foremost, the common good. Never was it to be the unlimited aggrandizement of the master. That, indeed, was made impossible by strict gild laws.

Despite the growth of the domestic system and the consequent increase of the number of journeymen engaged by a single employer, the close intimacy between master and men was never entirely lost. Even when a laboring class was finally coming into existence, such relations still continued, in at least a limited way. They began to be broken down only with the final advent of the factory system.

The moral responsibility of the employer for his employees did not, of course, cease then. Rightly understood, it exists today in both a spiritual and a temporal way. But that responsibility was now disregarded to whatever extent a purely selfish and equally godless profit motive dominated production in the large industrial centers, which henceforth rapidly developed with the continued growth of industry and the consequent discoveries of science.

Not merely did the family intimacies of the gild and the domestic system utterly disappear with the large number of "hands" employed in the new and constantly enlarged factories, but no attention was paid to the welfare of the workingmen. The changed relations of master and men were, as we know, to reach their culmination with the interposition of the financier in industry.

Hired foremen under hired management now came to stand between the worker and the master who employed him. That master was no longer an individual person, but a corporation, a trust, a merger. It is more than hinted that even the very words, "Capital" and "Labor," should be considered antiquated, owing to the largely impersonal nature of the new industrial organizations. But that is assuredly not the case, for we decidedly have, as the laborer well knows, a distinction between the labor body, which surely is real, and the share-owning body, which is equally real, and controlled by an inner circle of men of wealth and financiers, the most real of all. Pope Pius XI was right in still keeping in our own day the distinctive terms of "Capital" and "Labor," as they are kept throughout this volume.

Let me briefly trace the process of change that now occurred. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the "boss" and owner of the newly erected factory might commonly oversee the process of production, possessing possibly a deep personal interest in his own industry and a high degree of technical knowledge. He was entrepreneur as well as capitalist in the new venture undertaken by him.

But with the development of the corporation and the trust an almost complete dehumanizing of the entire factory system took place, so far as these organizations extended. The owner was now no longer a single physical person, a human being interested in worker, machine, and process of production, but merely a moral person before the law, a constantly increasing group of individuals, ignorant of manufacture in any of its phases, and concerned only with net profits and ultimate dividends. A small inner circle dominated the destinies of this apparently democratic institution.

Banker and coupon clipper had finally taken the place of the old gild master in the most highly developed phase of the new industry. The captain of industry himself disappeared and the personal employer vanished ever more completely from the worker's horizon in our large-scale industry. A more complete transition than this, from the medieval gild to the fully developed factory system of our day, can hardly be imagined.

These changes, it is true, were by no means universal in their completeness. The individual employer is not yet as entirely extinct as the dodo. None the less, our age is the age of the corporation, the trust, the chain store, and the merger. Of this there can be no doubt. The chasm between the worker and his employer yawns ever more widely.

Enormous Fortunes Versus Poverty of Many

From the consideration of the dangers that might readily develop out of these changed relations of masters and workmen, insofar as they already existed in his own day, Pope Leo XIII naturally passed to that further element of class conflict, which he then vividly beheld unfolding before his vision: "the enormous fortunes of individuals and the poverty of the masses."

Everything I have hitherto set forth in this historic outline, following strictly the sequence indicated in the Encyclical, leads up to the consequence described in those few words. It was that very contrast, in fact, together with the dangers threatening to develop out of this unbalanced situation in our modern life, which led to the writing of the Encyclical.

Here, clearly, in the misery of so many human beings, as contrasted by the Pope with the toppling fortunes of the few, was a terrible perversion of the order desired by God in human society. It implied, somewhere, a serious neglect of stewardship. It argued a violation of the fundamental laws of justice or of charity, if not too frequently of both. It showed that in the very social system itself the greed for profits had been allowed to usurp the Christian ideal of the common good. It was evidence that money had been valued more than men, dividends esteemed more highly than the happiness of human beings, and that wealth all too often had been exalted above the very love of God, which is the greatest and the first commandment, while the second is like to it: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Powerfully Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, summarized anew the words of his predecessor and drew his own picture of these un-Christian conditions, which he himself tells us led to the writing of the Rerum Novarum. The Pope declares:

"Towards the close of the nineteenth century the new economic methods and the new development of industry had sprung into being in almost all civilized nations, and had made such headway that human society appeared more and more divided into two classes. The first, small in numbers, enjoyed practically all the comforts so plentifully supplied by modern invention. The second class, comprising the immense multitude of workingmen, was made up of those Who, oppressed by dire poverty, struggled in vain to escape from the straits which encompassed them.

"This state of things was quite satisfactory to the wealthy, who looked upon it as the consequence of inevitable and natural economic laws, and who, therefore, were content to abandon to charity alone the full care of relieving the unfortunate, as though it were the task of charity to make amends for the open violation of justice, a violation not merely tolerated, but sanctioned at times by legislators. On the other hand, the working classes, victims of these harsh conditions, submitted to them with extreme reluctance, and became more and more unwilling to bear the galling yoke. Some, carried away by the heat of evil counsels, went so far as to seek the disruption of the whole social fabric. Others, whom a solid Christian training restrained from such misguided excesses, convinced themselves nevertheless that there was much in all this that needed a radical and speedy reform.

"Such also was the opinion of many Catholics, priests and laymen, who with admirable charity had long devoted themselves to relieving the undeserved misery of the laboring classes, and who could not persuade themselves that so radical and unjust a distinction in the distribution of temporal goods was quite in harmony with the designs of an all-wise Creator.

"They therefore sought in all sincerity a remedy against the lamentable disorder already existing in society, and a firm barrier against worse dangers to come" (QA, 2).

More and more the elements of conflict thus stood out in menacing opposition at the period which called forth the important Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Condition of Labor. Much of the progress since made in bettering those conditions had scarce begun as yet. But precisely in proportion as that contrast between "the enormous fortunes of individuals" and "the poverty of the masses" continues in our own day shall we still have with us that element of conflict so well described by the Sovereign Pontiff. In the same measure, too, shall we experience those outbreaks of an embittered class hatred which in so many parts of the earth has already resulted in deeds of revolutionary violence since the writing of the great Papal document. Particularly is this true wherever the sense of stewardship has been lost by the men in control and possession of the people's means of livelihood, where riches are lavished in senseless excesses and flaunted offensively before the eyes of the poor.

But there is yet another element of conflict which the Encyclical no less strongly brings to mind. With the misery of the impoverished and disinherited multitudes of his day deeply impressed on his paternal heart, the Pope of the Workingmen now gave timely expression to a warning and sobering thought for the unrestrained capitalist employer. He called timely attention to what was in fact to become the turning point of modern industrial history: "the self-reliance and the closer mutual combination of the working population."

Growing Self-Reliance and Organization of Workers

Pope Leo's discussion of the question of Labor's right to all reasonable freedom of organization, long denied the worker under the Industrial Revolution, must not be anticipated here. But a new spirit, as the Pope saw it, was beginning to animate the masses. It was a spirit good in itself, though it might readily be given wrong direction by false leadership. Labor realized that if the strength of Capital lay in the combination of resources, the strength of Labor similarly lies in the union and cooperation of its numbers. Unless, then, friendly understanding could in time be reached between organized Capital and organized Labor, for the common good of all the people, a new and mighty element of conflict was here in the process of formation.

The laborer was not now so entirely helpless as he had been at the outset of the Industrial Revolution, in the face of Liberalistic laws and Liberalistic theories. He was regaining initiative. He was no longer overawed by the mighty power of capital and machinery, with which he knew that he could not cope individually. He was acquiring confidence and self-reliance, based, on what the Pope had called "the closer mutual combination of the working population." Conditions, therefore, could not remain as they had been before.

If Capital was still controlling wealth and the political influence in the countries of the world, Labor was slowly becoming conscious of its own strength and its essential contributions to industry. Clearly the Pope foresaw the collision that must shake the world when these two forces would be fully developed and the fatal clash should come – unless their energies could be directed to the good of humanity.

In the name of religion and of civilization he sought to avert that clash. Such was and such is now the purpose of that Encyclical we are here studying.

A General Moral Deterioration

But there is one supreme obstacle in the way of peace and concord. It is the last of the elements of conflict the Pope enumerates "a general moral deterioration."

This is the most serious of all the obstacles in the way of social progress. Without God and His law no true social order can ever be built up. Morality cannot be separated from religion, on which it strictly and logically depends. Moral decline follows inevitably in the wake of religious decline.

No wonder, then, that out of the unhappy materialism and individualistic Liberalism of those socially Dark Ages of the early Industrial Revolution, should have developed what Pope Leo XIII so roundly terms "a general moral deterioration." It was the inevitable result, manifesting itself on the part of a rationalistic Capitalism in the complete dissociation of ethics and religion from every phase of industry, and on the part of materialistic Labor in the misguided rejection of Christian principles in its Socialistic literature.

In contrast to this, the influence of the Catholic religion, in the best days of the gilds, as modern economists and social authorities agree, had once made possible the acceptance in industry of those social principles which sought above all other temporal interests to secure, not individual fortunes, but the greatest common good. While these principles were not always perfectly carried into action, they were at least universally acknowledged wherever Christian Faith was living and effective.

Under the dominance of that same Christian teaching, accepted by high and low, the transition from the domestic to the factory system, could have been accomplished without any of that vast misery and untold suffering of the masses which the Industrial Revolution in reality implied at its inception.

Precisely, therefore, out of the moral deterioration, noted by the Sovereign Pontiff, had developed the injustice and inhumanity which characterized the Liberalistic social system of his day. No hope of a true and lasting reconstruction or of an enduring peace could ever be in sight until true religious convictions and moral principles would again be supreme. In school and press, in shop and factory, in mart of commerce, and halls of finance, in the leagues of nations and the congresses of peoples, Christ must once more find His place. His principles must reign supreme, summed up in the love of God and the love of our neighbor as of ourselves. Then may we look for the peace which He alone can give – peace between man and man, peace between state and state, peace between race and race. "My peace I give to you, My peace I leave with you." Prince of Peace, the Prophet called Him, for He alone is our Peace.

IV THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS (RN, 2; QA, 3, 13)

"The momentous seriousness of the present state of things just now fills every mind with painful apprehension," wrote Pope Leo XIII, confronted with the critical situation in the labor world of his time, a situation far from settled in any final and satisfactory way at even this date.

"Wise men discuss it," he continued, "practical men propose schemes, popular meetings, legislatures, and sovereign princes, all arc occupied with it – and there is nothing which has a deeper hold on the public attention." Under these circumstances he considered it imperative that the voice of the Church should be heard on the great social problem which emerged supreme above all others in his day as in our own – the problem of Capital and Labor.

On former occasions, when false doctrines had been misleading the minds of men and imperiling the public welfare, he had not hesitated fearlessly to speak out in the interests of the Church and of the commonwealth. From the See of St. Peter had issued successively those important documents for our modern times: on Political Power, on Human Liberty, and on the Christian Constitution of States. With these duties accomplished, the moment had come to speak at last on that most critical subject of all, the Condition of Labor.

Respective Spheres of Church and State

"The Sovereign Pontiff," wrote Pope Pius XI in his Encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, "approached the subject in the exercise of his manifest rights, deeply conscious that he was the chief guardian of religion and the chief dispenser of all that closely appertains to it. For the question at issue was one to which 'no solution could be found apart from the intervention of religion and of the Church' (RN,13). Basing his doctrine solely upon the unchangeable principles drawn from right reason and divine revelation, he indicated and proclaimed with confidence and as one having power, 'the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor' (RN, 1 ), and at the same time the part that was to be taken by the Church, by the State, and by the persons immediately concerned" (QA, 3).

In itself the fundamental principle underlying the competence of the Holy See to make official pronouncements on vital questions of the day can be briefly stated.

On subjects purely political, purely economic, or purely industrial, the Holy See as such has nothing to say. They belong for discussion to their own proper authorities and to the special experts in their various fields. In his Encyclical on the Christian Constitution of States, Pope Leo XIII, for instance, thus clearly defines the separate spheres of Church and State.

"The Almighty has apportioned the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine and the other over human things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits that are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, for each a fixed orbit, within which the action of each is brought into play by its own right."

The Encyclical then continues to define more minutely what precisely pertains to the province of the Church, and what to the State.

"Whatever in things human is of sacred character, whatever belongs, either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to civil authority."

Questions Both Economic and Religious

But the point is that in political questions, and in social, economic, commercial, and industrial matters as well, it very often happens that both temporal and spiritual issues are equally at stake. On such occasions it is the duty of the Church to safeguard in every way possible the spiritual interests involved, which concern the welfare and salvation of souls. These interests exist not merely where the freedom of divine worship is imperiled, but wherever considerations of justice or charity enter into the otherwise purely secular problems.

Such considerations, as is obvious, are inextricably interwoven with the industrial problem at its every stage. Wages, prices, hours of work, labor conditions, industrial hazards, strikes and lock-outs, treatment of women and child laborers, profits and dividends, methods of production affecting the working personnel or the common good of the public, preventable business crises, badly or carelessly regulated seasonal occupations, and all similar economic problems must intimately involve moral issues, questions of justice and charity. Practically no phase of their development can be without ethical connotations. This conforms with the common-sense judgment of mankind, which invariably speaks of them as just or unjust, fair or open to moral censure, inhuman in their nature or in harmony with the bond of brotherly love that should exist between all men, but in a particular way between those most closely associated in their common life or in their mutual vocational interests.

In his Encyclical, Singulari Quadam, Pope Pius X, the immediate successor of Pope Leo XIII, pertinently says:

"The social question and the controversies on the nature and duration of labor, wages, strikes are not purely economic in nature, and so susceptible of settlement extraneous to the authority of the Church."

In all these problems religious considerations must seriously and conscientiously be taken into account. Human rights and human obligations are at stake. Matters profoundly sacred in the sight of God and of His Church are under decision by Capital or Labor. It is needful, therefore, above all other things, that the voice of the Church be heard. So alone can men be sure of the correct moral and religious principles which enter fundamentally into the solution of their momentous problems. Far more is thus in question for both Capital and Labor than mere economic gain or loss.

Surely, then, it is not within the economic sphere of technical authorities, of capitalists or labor leaders, to pronounce the last word when here the Commandments of God and His eternal sanctions enter into the question. Neither natural nor divine laws may be disregarded any more freely in financial, commercial, and industrial matters than in purely domestic and private concerns. What else are employers than merely stewards of God, answerable to Him for every action and investment, precisely as in his own turn the hired laborer is ultimately responsible for the rightful performance of every industrial obligation, not to an earthly master, but to the one great and eternal Master of all?

Sacred Obligations of Capital and Labor

How seriously, we may often question, has the capitalist employer of our time taken to heart the lesson of Job, that Old Testament employer whom the Scripture extols so highly and whose words so beautifully express the attitude of the conscientious steward, whether under the Old Law or the New? It is true that he is speaking amid economic conditions vastly different from our own, yet his words are no less pertinent today in their application to every employer, to every man of wealth, means, and power who engages others in his service, than in the day when they were uttered. It does not matter under what industrial system the employer may exercise his economic authority, the principles here implied are always equally applicable.

"If I have despised to abide judgment with my manservant or my maidservant," says holy Job, "when they had any controversy against me, what shall I do when God shall rise to judge? And when He shall examine, what shall I answer Him? Did not He that made me in the womb make him also: and did not one and the same form me in the womb?" (Job xxxi. 13-15.)

We have here the clear recognition of those moral and religious obligations present in every relation between employer and employee, on which it is the right of the Church to pronounce. Neither party to an industrial engagement may take unfair advantage of the other. All will be judged alike as common children of one Father, on whom the earthly circumstances of wealth or power can make no impression. Only as the servant of God will the Christian employer make his decisions and only as the servant of God does the Christian employee carry them out: "not serving to the eye, as pleasing man," in the words of the great Apostle, "but in simplicity of heart, fearing God" (Col. iii. 22).

The religious equality of all before God, as existing in the Faith of Christ, is most strikingly proclaimed by that same Apostle when he writes: "For you are all the children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ" (Gal. iii. 26-28).

This unity of all in Christ, carries with it the consequent obligation of mutual consideration on the part of both Capital and Labor, of rich and poor alike, of the mighty and the weak. It carries with it not only the obligation of justice but that of charity between employer and employee. "But above all these," St. Paul adds, "have charity, which is the bond of perfection" (Col. iii. 14).

Let us, then, understand that there is not one special law for business and quite another for private matters. The Commandments of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount, alike, make no exception for any condition, circumstance, or relation in human life. God is Lord of all, and Christ is King of all, to be equally obeyed in every human act, whether in business, politics, finance, and industry, or in the more intimate concerns of our own private life and morals.

Hence, it is imperative that, in a matter so important as the labor question, and in one so constantly exposed to a thousand false judgments and wrong conclusions arising out of the strain and endless interplay of private interests and human passions, of greed, resentment, and ruthless class antagonisms, of boundless ambitions and destructive systems, there may at least, in the words of the Sovereign Pontiff, "be no mistake as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement."

Dangers in Discussion of Moral Principles

But the discussion of these principles, as the Pope immediately takes care to add, "is not easy nor is it free from danger." Needless to say, all history, no less than our own present conditions, bear ample testimony to the truth of these two vital statements, regarding both the difficulty and the danger of dealing with problems of Capital and Labor. The individualistic phases of Capitalism as well as the destructive doctrines of a false radicalism are ready exemplifications. As the Supreme Pontiff makes haste to add:

"It is not easy to define the relative rights and the mutual duties of the wealthy and of the poor, of Capital and of Labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators constantly make use of these disputes to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to sedition" (RN, 1).

Thus intrinsic and extrinsic reasons alike call for the calm, wise, unbiased, and experienced judgment of the Church, supernaturally motivated and seeking above all other institutions the true, lasting, and universal welfare of mankind.

To recapitulate, reaffirm, and amplify what has been said in this chapter let us conclude with the remarkably lucid exposition of the entire subject given by Pope Pius XI in his Quadragesimo Anno. Under the head, "The Authority of the Church in Social and Economic Spheres," the Holy Father says:

"But before proceeding to discuss these problems We lay down the principle long since clearly established by Leo XIII that it is Our right and Our duty to deal authoritatively with social and economic problems. It is not, of course, for the Church to lead men to transient and perishable happiness only, but to that which is eternal. Indeed the Church believes that it would be wrong for her to interfere without just cause in such earthly concerns; but she never can relinquish her God-given task of interposing her authority, not indeed in technical matters, for which she has neither the equipment nor the mission, but in all those that have a bearing on moral conduct. For the deposit of truth entrusted to Us by God, and Our weighty office of propagating, interpreting, and urging in season and out of season the entire moral law, demand that both social and economic questions be brought within Our supreme jurisdiction, insofar as they refer to moral issues.

"For, though economic science and moral discipline are guided each by its own principles in its own sphere, it is false that the two orders are so distinct and alien that the former in no way depends on the latter. The so-called laws of economics, derived from the nature of earthly goods and from the qualities of the human body and soul, determine what aims are unattainable or attainable in economic matters and what means are thereby necessary, while reason itself clearly deduces from the nature of things and from the individual and social character of man, what is the end and object of the whole economic order assigned by God the Creator.

"For it is the moral law alone which commands us to seek in all our conduct our supreme and final end, and to strive directly in our specific actions for those ends which nature, or rather, the Author of Nature, has established for them, duly subordinating the particular to the general. If this law be faithfully obeyed, the result will be that particular economic aims, whether of society as a body or of individuals, will be intimately linked with the universal teleological order, and as a consequence we shall be led by progressive stages to the final end of all, God Himself, our highest and lasting good" (QA, 13).

Who, then, can fail to see how imperative and indispensable in so delicate a work is the counsel and direction of the Church, whose divinely assigned function it is to preside over moral issues, as it is the natural sphere of industry to determine its own best technical methods? But the application of the latter must always be conditioned upon the full observance of the moral law, whose ultimate interpretation rests with the Church alone. "It is not easy to define the relative rights and the mutual duties of the wealthy and of the poor, of Capital and Labor." Such a definition can least of all be left to the self-interest of these two classes. For that, too, God has given us His Church.

V THE DOCTRINE OF LIBERALISM (RN, 2; QA, 32)

"All agree," states Pope Leo XIII, "and there can be no question whatever, that some remedy must be found, and quickly found, for the misery and wretchedness which press so heavily at this moment on the large majority of the very poor" (RN, 2).

Like the Divine Master, he had compassion upon the multitude and could not look upon their want and affliction, without hastening to their relief. The evils, as he knew, under which they had so long been suffering, were by no means inevitable, although falsely declared to be so by the Liberalistic economists of the day.

The Teaching of the Physiocrats

The Liberalism of Quesnay and his Physiocratic followers in France; of Adam Smith, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and their school in England; of similar groups in Germany, all in reality promoting, even though unintentionally, the exploitation of the masses on supposed philosophical principles, was neither sound in theory, nor was it at all pardonable in practice.¹ Particular employers, it is true, might not necessarily be held altogether accountable, because borne along in the current of competition, but the philosophy of Liberalism as such was without any question essentially pagan and opposed to Christian principles at every point. This system, therefore, it was which, in the first place, Pope Leo XIII fearlessly attacked in his Encyclical on the Condition of Labor.

The peculiar philosophy of industrial life implied in it began with the Physiocrats of the eighteenth century. Setting aside all intervention of government or other external organization in the economic order, they demanded the free, unhampered "rule of nature," or "Physiocracy," which is the exact Greek equivalent of that term.

Dr. Francois Quesnay (1694-1774), its author, was physician to Louis XV and Mme. de Pompadour. The book in which his ideas first spread through France, and in which this word itself first occurred, was published in 1765. But the sinister influence of his doctrine continued throughout the following century and thence reached on into our own. His book carried the high-sounding title: Physiocracy or the Natural Constitution of Government Most Advantageous to the Human Race.

This doctrine of nonintervention in economic life, giving full scope to the free working out of the law of supply and demand, and allowing unhindered license to human greed, preceded the developments of the Industrial Revolution in France, yet became only more intense with the progress of this. All human interests in the social life, it held, are harmonious and therefore nothing more is needed than the fullest liberty, excluding all artificial intervention of laws, labor organizations, labor unionism, or even welfare and educational efforts in behalf of the workingmen.

Law, they held, is intended merely to assure the conditions which render the development of social life possible, and these rest upon property, whether employed in commerce or industry. Out of the latter arise the relations between man and man. The only concern of government must consequently be to assure the liberty of contract by which individuals dispose of property. Outside of this, men may give the fullest and most unbridled rein to their own personal interests and passions of greed. No matter how much the worker is oppressed, underpaid, and subjected to impossible working conditions, it is not for the law to interfere so long as the labor contract remains intact between him as an individual and his employer as an individual. Such was the hopeless Physiocratic solution of the social problem, based on the equally fatuous supposition that the best results will inevitably flow from such a system, since "the interests of all men are harmonious." It was all a wonderful daydream that was taken seriously for more than a century and a half and has not yet been entirely dissipated!

The Result of the Physiocratic System

If the idea of God was not necessarily obliterated from the minds of all these men, yet the leaders of the movement were avowedly disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau. In a word, the new economic theory was the logical outgrowth of the irreligious philosophy of the eighteenth century, while its roots reached down deep into the sixteenth itself. In its last development it is simply the industrial application of Rousseau's false principle that: "Man, being essentially good, has but to follow the tendencies of his nature."

It is clear to what abhorrent crimes and outrages against society the unlimited application of such a philosophy of life must lead. Even Humanism itself, in our day, is the reaction against such assumptions, which in the economic order can be made to justify every excess of greed and selfishness. The most grinding extortions, practiced by the nineteenth-century capitalist, the most inhuman labor exactions imposed by them upon men, women, and helpless little children, could all be transmuted into acts of virtue by the principles of this materialistic Liberalism which the Holy See attacked.

In our own memory the same philosophy came to be known as the morality of the superman. Everyone, according to this code of ethics, was to develop to the fullest possible extent his own personality by giving unhampered license to the working out of his own natural instincts for self-expression and self-aggrandizement. It mattered not what others suffered in consequence.

Under such a morality the weak and powerless existed only for exploitation by the strong, as in the ancient paganism the slave population was presumed to live for the sole benefit of its masters. It was the Darwinian survival of the fittest turned into an ethical code. In a military sense, it meant oppression of the weaker nations by the stronger; in a financial sense, it signified the ruthless manipulation of stocks and the ruin of less powerful competitors or less criminally clever investors; in an industrial sense, it implied the sole consideration of unlimited profits, no matter at whose cost or whose misery they might ultimately be obtained. In all these things nature was having its course. With the application of that code of morality and its ruthless effects to our own day we are familiar.

Two Falacious Fundamental Principles

The Physiocratic, or "rule-of-nature" theory, thus underlying all the philosophies of Liberalism, Individualism, Manchestrianism, and laissez faire, crystallized into the two practical principles which we have already seen universally applied by it in the industrial order.

The first of these was the denial of the laborer's inalienable right to organize, interpreted by it as opposed to the free rule of nature, in the sense of an unhampered individual bargain between man and man.

The second was the denial of the State's equally essential right and duty to intervene in labor situations, wherever the need of the worker or the common good required it to do so, and no other solution could be found.

Out of the enforcement of these two false principles, or denials of natural rights, and still further, out of the rejection of that religion which alone could give sanction to these rights and speak to the consciences of wealthy employers and of the members of State legislatures, arose, in the main, all the injustice inflicted on the masses in the course of the Industrial Revolution. Pope Leo XIII expresses the two fundamental causes of this injustice when he says:

"The ancient workmen's gilds were destroyed in the last century, and no other organizations took their place. Public institutions and the laws have repudiated the ancient religion" (RN, 2).

Here, then, we come to the actual historic facts that rendered possible the intolerable economic conditions which arose in the eighteenth century and which still continued their baneful effects in the days of Pope Leo XIII, culminating in what he so forcefully described as "the misery and wretchedness which press so heavily on the large majority of the very poor."

He had struck home, with unfailing precision, at the true causes of those unhappy conditions, and of all the evil consequences which have flown from them down to our own time. Let us, then, briefly consider in turn each of these two causes.

Destruction of the Ancient Workmen's Gilds

The first mentioned by him is the destruction of the gilds:

"The ancient workmen's gilds were destroyed in the last century," that is, the eighteenth, since his own Encyclical on the Condition of Labor was written in 1891. The gilds had at that time vastly deteriorated. They were no longer the same wonderful institutions which we admire so profoundly in the resplendent thirteenth century, when without any question they were man's greatest achievement in industrial relations.

The just balance between the economic interests of their own members and the common good of society had in a high degree been reached in the early medieval gilds. As wide an opportunity for industrial independence as could well be possible had then been attained. A universal contentment existed throughout the labor world. Industrial exploitation, or the self-aggrandizement of a few at the expense of the many, was rendered impossible by the strictest gild statutes. To live and let live was the rule. No one could participate in labor's remuneration who did not fully participate also in the toil. This could be legitimately insisted upon because capital investments, in the modern sense, were at the period entirely unknown.

"At one period," Pope Pius XI recalls, "there existed a social order which, though by no means perfect in every respect, corresponded nevertheless in a eel-lain measure to right reason according to the needs and conditions of the times. That this order has long since perished is not due to the fact that it was incapable of development and adaptation to changing needs and circumstances, but rather to the wrongdoing of men. Men were hardened in excessive self-love and refused to extend that order, as was their duty, to the increasing numbers of the people; or else, deceived by the attractions of false liberty and other errors, they grew impatient of every restraint and endeavored to throw off all authority" (QA, 32).

Long before the eighteenth century this perfection of the gilds had been lost. Yet the principle, at least, of labor organization was still handed down, with the understanding that these associations must not in their nature be dangerous or pernicious to society. This principle, unceasingly defended by the Catholic Church and exemplified in the gilds, was itself at last denied by the new Liberalism. What had remained of the ancient organizations was thus finally destroyed, root and all. Strict laws, in addition, prevented the establishment of new labor organizations.

The coincidence of the beginning of the Physiocratic theories with the Industrial Revolution made the condition of affairs then existing truly ominous and baleful. It implied the unmerciful legal enforcement of the Liberalistic contract between the individual manufacturer, with his constantly increasing wealth, and the individual laborer, helpless in his own cause and haunted by the incessant fear of unemployment, knowing well what that would signify for himself and for his family.

Repudiation of the Ancient Religion

This brings us to the second cause of the injustice done to Labor. For, worst of all, as the Pope of the workingmen so truly pointed out, "public institutions and the laws" had definitely repudiated "the ancient religion." It was the one power in the world that still could have spoken with authority to the consciences of men. Unfailingly it had continued, from the first century to the present, to carry out the commission of the Divine Founder: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations." Nor must we imagine that it had failed now, merely because the voice of the Church was unheeded in the Babel of a money-crazed world.

Coming down triumphantly through the ages; surviving amid perils, persecutions, and schisms that must surely have wrecked any mere work of man, the Church had lost none of her vitality. She was adapted to the times, as she had been adapted to all the centuries, although her message was not always equally welcome in every place. She was still, as St. Paul describes her, and as she must ever be, despite human failings on the part of her children, the Bride of Christ, "a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle." Hers was the promise of Christ which could never fail: "Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 20).

Nevertheless, it is perfectly true that outwardly her influence for the good of souls and the welfare of society might be greatly impeded at any period. This, too, Christ had with no uncertainty foretold. Persecution and the sword forced the early Church to flee for protection to the darkness of the catacombs underneath the earth, while above her, pagan Rome gloried in its victories. But the pride of the Caesars has long ago passed away, and she exists. Arianism arose and for a time seemed successfully to wrest the world from her. It sat in the seats of the mighty and marshaled the armies of the world. But Arianism, too, has gone its way and is for most of us no more than a long-forgotten tale, while the Church endures, invincible.

She is as vigorous now as in the days when her Gospel was first preached in ancient Rome by Peter and by Paul and their blood was poured forth in her cause, no other than the cause of Christ Who founded her and promised to be with her even to the end of time.

It was unfortunate, then, that precisely when her lessons would have been most needed, in the nascent days of the Industrial Revolution, she was left without sufficient influence to make her message known or felt amid the economic chaos of the time. She alone could have overruled, by the power of her sublime doctrines of justice and of Christian charity, the inhuman materialistic philosophies, condemning labor to a life of little more than perpetual servitude.

It was equally for the good of employer and employed, as for the welfare of all society, that Pope Leo XIII raised his voice, insisting on the natural rights of man and the imperative need of the Church's teachings. Rightful liberty of industrial organization, by workers as well as by employers, together with the full observance of the Church's principles of justice, equity, and Christian charity on the part of all alike, are, then, the conditions laid down by him for a true popular prosperity, enjoyed not by the few alone but by the many.

Endnotes

1 For a further discussion of this subject cf. Thurber M. Smith, The Unemployment Problem, Chap. II.

VI LAISSEZ FAIRE THEORY AND THE CHURCH (QA, 6, 8)

To combat the two extremes of godless Liberalism and radical Socialism was the first purpose of the Pope, in order that thereafter he might set up in their place the true Christian social ideal.

Liberalism and Socialism are both destructive of the common good and dangerous to the welfare of society, but by far the more dangerous and pernicious of the two is Liberalism, since from this Socialism itself was begotten.

At the period here treated, Liberalism became known under many different names. Each of these conveys a slightly different connotation, and yet all agree in their substantial meaning. We now speak most familiarly of Liberalism under the tides of Individualism, Laissez faire, Manchestrianism, and the Physiocratic system.

The last name has already been explained in the preceding chapter as signifying a "rule-of-nature" system which would allow of no artificial legislation, labor unionism, or similar protective and ameliorative measures in the interest of the workingman. Each man was to bargain individually. Thus, it was believed, would be achieved "the greatest possible multiplication of production," which was the one supreme end this system had in view.¹ With that attained all was supposed to be attained. Such was the doctrine of all the numerous disciples of Quesnay, of men like Dupont de Nemours, Morellet, Le Trosne, Turgot, the Marquis de Mirabeau, and the rest.

In the meantime, the only duty of the State was to guard against all violation of the labor bargain, supposed to have been freely contracted between the individual, penniless wage earner and the individual, multimillionaire capitalist. That was the Physiocratic concept of liberty.

Individualism

It is plain at once, then, why this system could with equal right come to be known as Individualism. The insistence, as we have seen, was always upon the man-with-man contract, excluding all intervention except for the safeguarding of that alone. Beyond this the employer was not held to be bound by any commandments of justice or charity to pay more, under any circumstances, than the law of supply and demand required, and this practice was given relentless scope. It was ancient paganism, pure and simple, reduced to action in modern industrial life.

Imagining that they could dispense with God, the rationalist economists and employers of labor consistently ignored man's most sacred social responsibilities. It was the Darwinian struggle for existence turned into an accepted philosophy of life, with a stoic disregard for all the world of misery and human suffering that it entailed. Production increased, fortunes were piled up for the lucky few, and the social interests of the worker were simply ignored.

Describing this system of Individualistic Capitalism as it then held sway, Pope Pius XI uses these severe but well-weighed words:

"Capital, however, was long able to appropriate to itself excessive advantages; it claimed all the products and profits and left to the laborer the barest minimum necessary to repair his strength and to insure the continuation of his class. For by an inexorable economic law, it was held, all accumulation of riches must fall to the share of the wealthy, while the workingman must remain perpetually in indigence or reduced to the minimum needed for existence. It is true that the actual state of things was not always and everywhere as deplorable as the Liberalistic tenets of the so-called Manchester School might lead us to conclude; but it cannot be denied that a steady drift of economic and social tendencies was in this direction" (QA, 21).

Hence arose the so-called "iron law of wages" to which Pope Pius XI makes reference in the passage just quoted. Unbending as "iron" in its logic, it maintained that the worker may never look to receive any more than can simply suffice to keep him barely alive, and to beget children enough to supply the future labor market, that the production of goods may never fall off. On the basis of this supposed law he came to be known as a "proletarian," meaning a "child-bearer," whose offspring would keep the wheels of industry in motion, under the same conditions amid which his own life was sacrificed to the Mammonistic idol of increased production and increased wealth – a wealth kept forever in the hands of the few.

Yet this was the philosophy universally accepted by the liberalists of the time, however they might gloss it over by beautiful phraseology. It was the substance of the new political economy of Liberalism. Under it there was plainly no limit to the exploitation that might be practiced on the worker.

The laborer, it is true, was perfectly free to take or leave the unjust labor contract offered him. But he also knew that countless others were waiting eagerly to accept his job, should he refuse the conditions imposed on him, while woman and child labor could be had always in abundance and for the merest pittance. Behind him stood the specter of dire necessity, impelling him to accept "the free contract" offered him – or starve.

Labor unionism, which might have remedied the situation, was not only theoretically condemned, but was legally forbidden under Liberalism, while the State might not intervene on the worker's behalf.

The name Manchestrianism has also, quite becomingly, been affixed to this system, because its baneful effects were felt particularly in the early industrial developments centering in Manchester, the inferno of the new machine industry, unregulated by any consideration for toiling humanity. We have just seen the reference made to it by Pope Pius XI.

Laissez Faire

It was further known, and still continues most commonly perhaps to be known, as Laissez faire, "hands off," as we might translate the term into English, because no labor organization, no State intervention was to prevent the full, free contract between individual employer and individual laborer. The first to use this term was Turgot, who coined the famous formula: Laissez faire, laissez passer.

The eighteenth-century Liberalism, under whatever name we call it, which only gathered a more fearful force in the years that followed, was fearlessly attacked by the Holy See as a system based on a philosophy of irreligion and godlessness. Its practical expression, in social life, was to give to everyone full scope for the mast unlimited self-aggrandizement, no matter at whose cost, provided only that contracts were "freely" concluded and legally observed. Not moral, but mere physical liberty was here in question, since the laborer, whenever obliged to work for less than a living wage, is coerced by want and not acting freely, except in a physical way. Such a contract, as Pope Leo XIII later observes in his Encyclical, is void and not binding on the workingman. But Liberalism took no account of moral principles.

"Manufacture, produce, set all the wheels of industry in motion, enlarge your markets, enrich your nation, get wealth, wealth, wealth; the more the better!" That was the clamor of the economic doctrinaires of the times. "Reduce the wages of the workers, extend the number of their hours, get all that the demand for jobs will make possible. Bring in the wife and mother; chain to your machines the little children that their fingers, too, may learn to keep busy in producing wealth. There is no God in Heaven, and, if there were your conscience need not reproach you. There is question here only of a free and therefore a perfectly just and honest bargain. You are in fact contributing most nobly to the nation's wealth, while properly amassing riches for yourself. The more the better! You are a public benefactor. It is all for labor's best as for your own. So alone can we achieve the perfect social harmony. There is no labor problem."

That was the false and despicable doctrine of the Physiocrat, the economic Individualist, the Manchestrian capitalist, the champion of Laissez faire, laissez passer – in a word, the defender of that baneful Liberalism which Pope Leo XIII and his successors in the Papacy have singled out for their most relentless attacks.

The Church's Attack Upon Liberalism

"With regard to the civil power, Leo XIII boldly passed beyond the restrictions imposed by Liberalism," writes Pius XI, "and fearlessly proclaimed the doctrine that the civil power is more than the mere guardian of law and order, and that it must strive with all zeal 'to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, should be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity" (RN, 26). It is true, indeed, that a just freedom of action should be left to individual citizens and families: but this principle is only valid as long as the common good is secure and no injustice is entailed. The duty of rulers is to protect the community and its various elements; in protecting the rights of individuals they must have special regard for the infirm and needy" (QA, 8).

Describing, then, the new turn of events which followed upon the attacks unceasingly directed by the Holy See against the Individualistic doctrine of nonintervention in economic matters on the part of the State, the Pope continues:

"We do not, of course, deny that even before the Encyclical of Leo, some rulers had provided for the more urgent needs of the working classes, and had checked the more flagrant acts of injustice perpetrated against them. But after the Apostolic Voice had sounded from the Chair of Peter throughout the world, the leaders of the nations became at last more fully conscious of their obligations, and set to work seriously to promote a broader social policy.

"In fact, the Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, completely overthrew those tottering tenets of Liberalism which had long hampered effective interference by the government. It prevailed upon the peoples themselves to develop their social policy more intensely and on truer lines, and encouraged the elite among Catholics to give such efficacious help and assistance to rulers of the State that in legislative assemblies they were not infrequently the foremost advocates of the new policy. Furthermore, not a few recent laws dealing with social questions were originally proposed to the suffrages of the people's representatives by ecclesiastics thoroughly imbued with Leo's teaching, who afterwards with watchful care promoted and fostered their execution!" (Ibid.)

All social legislation is not, of course, attributed to the Church alone but she has had a great part in stimulating the conscience of the world, and developing that branch of jurisprudence, as the Pope says, "unknown to earlier times, whose aim is the energetic defense of those sacred rights of the workingman which proceed from his dignity as a man and as a Christian. These laws concern the soul, the health, the strength, the housing, workshops, wages, dangerous employments – in a word, all that concerns the wage earners, with particular regard to women and children. Even though these regulations do not agree always and in every detail with the recommendations of Pope Leo, it is none the less certain that much which they contain is strongly suggestive of the Rerum Novarum, to which in a large measure must be attributed the improved condition of the workingmen" (ibid.).

Thus, for instance, the Pope specifically calls attention, in another place, to the international labor code which at the end of the Great War was written into the final treaty by the assembled representatives of the nations. "Many of their conclusions," Pius XI states, "agreed so perfectly with the principles and warnings of Leo XIII as to seem expressly deduced from them" (QA, 6).

Among the provisions of this document, for instance, the following have been selected in a compilation made by the N.C.W.C., in this same connection:

" 'Labor should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce.' The right of association for all lawful purposes by the employed as well as by the employers.' The payment to the employed of a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood in their time and country.'

" The adoption of an eight-hour day or a forty-eight-hour week as the standard to be aimed at where it has not already been attained.' The adoption of a weekly rest of at least twenty-four hours, which should include Sunday wherever practicable.' The abolition of child labor and the imposition of such limitations on the labor of young persons as shall permit the continuation of their education and assure their proper physical development.'

" The standard set by law in each country with respect to the conditions of labor should have due regard to the equitable economic treatment of all workers lawfully resident therein.' Each State should make provision for a system of inspection in which women should take part, in order to insure the enforcement of the laws and regulations for the protection of the employed.'"

Not only was the need of labor legislation most determinately insisted upon by Leo XIII, in opposition to the Laissez faire philosophy and practice of his day, but, as Pius XI further shows, he fought no less strenuously to bring about the complete demolition of the second tenet of Liberalism in all its practical consequences, the denial, namely, of the natural right of labor organization. The paragraphs of Pius XI referring to these facts shall be taken into consideration more fully later.

But what should be especially noted here is the fact that the brave and uncompromising stand taken in defense of outraged justice and truth by the Holy See, in the days of Leo XIII, called then for a degree of heroism which few will appreciate today. The principles so heroically maintained by the Catholic Church at that early period are now widely recognized, in theory at least if not in practice. It is to the honor of the great Pontiff that he stood forth bravely, a leader of the leaders in the vast struggle for the rights of the oppressed and the exploited, and so deserved the glorious title he will forever bear in history, "The Pope of the Workingmen."

Endnotes

1 Mercier de la Riviere, L'ordre naturel, p. 61.

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