IV. The Church and the Workman.

The condition of labour in Europe to-day has no counterpart in previous centuries. Slavery has been abolished, serfdom has disappeared, the crafts have passed away. In their place a system of commerce, vast enough to be as a fairy dream to the old craftsmen, is wielded by two tyrants and oppressors, Capital and Credit. The personal dominion of the master, the personal service of the serf, the personal relations in the crafts, have yielded to the impersonal domination of invisible capital. The real employers of labour are irresponsible shareholders whose interest is aroused only when their dividends dwindle. The specific connection between master and workman has nearly vanished. The labourer is free from humiliating subjection, he is free from the land, he is free to make his own contracts, but he is not free from hunger. His body is not sold in the market, but the vigour of his muscle and nerve are marketable articles, and its price fluctuates with the value of the fuel for the machine that he drives. His comfort, his energy, his life are pulverised between two millstones of competition, competition amongst workmen and competition amongst companies. Thousands clamour for work and eagerly accept an inadequate pittance to stave off hunger. Manufacturers in an English town will sweat a half-penny from that pittance in order to sell their goods in Burmah a farthing cheaper than their rivals. Machines do the work of muscle, steam takes the place of nerve power, and men are accounted part of the mechanical gear. Year by year communication becomes more rapid, telegraphs and gigantic ships make the whole world within touch, and rivalry grows keen, not merely between

shop and shop, or firm and firm, or town and town, but between nation and nation in a feverish rush to gain an advantage.

This state of things has been developed by capital, by the possibility of gathering together large sums to carry out vast industrial undertakings. The enormous production, the wide distribution, the magnitude of the operations, make an individual workman insignificant, to be used or discarded to suit price or profit. The workman has to struggle against this mighty power, for his work, for his wage, for his food, for his time, for his home, for his family, for healthy workshops and sound machinery, for provision against injury and old age. His misery in the dens of crowded cities can vie with the wretchedness of any age. In the best of factories his present is uncertain and his future unsecured-strike, financial failure, or accident may leave him without bread for weeks. He is only an atom in a mass of commercial intricacy over which he has no control.

The relations between capital and labour and the condition of the workman, are admitted to be deplorable by every man of thought; but the ramifications of the complex system, the dependence of one industry upon another, and of all upon currency and credit, and the exigencies of competition render a solution of the problems extremely difficult. Earnest men of every stamp have suggested remedies. Anarchists would destroy everything in carnage and pillage, and start afresh on the ruins. Socialists of every grade would reconstruct society on a different basis. Statesmen and philosophers have devised schemes for alleviating this or that hardship. The press teems with panaceas and palliatives. Legislatures have enacted measures to restrict the callous exactions of capital. Associations have been organized for relieving the pressure of the incidents of labour. The workmen themselves have combined to defend their natural rights, and at times open war is declared between capital and labour. The general aspect of all these theories and exertions reveals a state of perplexity and impotent effort. The issues are too vast and too far-reaching, the problems are too intricate,

and difficulties vary from year to year. What has the Church done to assuage the lot of the workman? Her mission does not extend to create governments or to constitute society. She is Catholic, and accepts any form of government, empire, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, republic, and she strives to direct all in the principles and dictates of morality. So also she has not been commissioned to constitute society, to direct commerce, to prescribe the conditions of industry, to dictate the method of using the forces of nature; but she accepts existing industrial arrangements, pronounces where they diverge from the principles of justice, exposes and condemns oppression, and extends her sympathy, her charity, and her active influence and exertion to mitigate the hardships of any system.

What, then, has the Church done to mitigate the evils of the present day? First of all the Sovereign Pontiff, the Head of the Church, has proclaimed with no uncertain voice the iniquity of the oppression of capital. In 1877, when Archbishop of Perugia, he issued a pastoral on the evils of the time, in which these words occur: "The modern schools of economics have considered labour as the extreme end of man, whom they account as a machine of more or less value, according as he aids more or less in production. Hence no consideration for the normal man, and the colossal abuse that is made of the poor and lowly by those who seek to keep them in a state of dependence in order to grow rich at their expense. And even in countries which have the reputation of being foremost in civilization, what grave and repeated complaints do we not hear of the excessive hours of labour imposed on those that must earn their bread by the sweat of their brow? And does not the sight of poor children, shut up in factories, where, in the midst of their premature toil, consumption awaits them-does not this sight provoke words of burning indignation from every generous soul, and oblige Governments and Parliaments to make laws that can serve as a check to this inhuman traffic?" These few words indicate how the heart of Cardinal Pecci melted at the prevalent distress of the workman, and this was the

man whom, within twelve months of the utterance, God chose to rule the Church in times of trouble for the workman. In the first year of his Pontificate he issued an encyclical in which he sounds the note of warning against Anarchism, Communism, and Socialism as dangerous to society, rich and poor; and exhorts the Bishops to encourage associations of artificers and workmen under the protection of religion.

He received deputations of workmen with paternal affection, assured them of his interest and sympathy, and of his anxiety to soften the lot of labour. He spoke thus to the French workmen in 1889: "What We ask of you is to cement anew the social edifice by returning to the spirit and doctrines of Christianity, reviving, at least in substance, in their manifold and beneficent attributes and under such forms as the conditions of our times admit of, those corporations of arts and trades, founded upon a Christian ideal and inspired by the maternal solicitude of the Church, which formerly provided for the material and religious needs of the working classes, facilitated their labour, took care of their savings and economies, defended their rights, and supported in due measure their legitimate demands." In 1891 he issued the celebrated encyclical devoted entirely to the labour question, and it commanded the attention and respect of the world. Its contents are well known. He defines the duties and responsibilities of employers and workmen, and his thorough knowledge of the difficulties of the situation and his sympathy for the labourer are conspicuous throughout. Take note of the following: "But all agree, 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. The ancient workman's gilds were destroyed in the last century and no other organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws have repudiated the ancient religion. Hence by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been given over, isolated and defenceless, to the callousness of employers and the greed of unrestrained competition. The evil has been increased by

rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is, nevertheless, under a different form but with the same guilt, still practised by avaricious and grasping men. And to this must be added the custom of working by contract, and the concentration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a few individuals, so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than slavery itself." These words were addressed to the whole Church and the whole world, and the speaker, the subject, and the circumstances give them a weight that intensifies their strength. All the utterances of the Vicar of Christ testify to the interest, the vigilance, and the efforts of the Head of the Church on behalf of the workman.

The influence of the action of the Sovereign Pontiff has been evident throughout Europe. By his encouragement of efforts for the benefit of the working classes, by his affectionate reception of deputations of workmen, and by his frequent appeals for Catholic organization he has shewn the strength of his sympathy, and by his masterly treatment of the whole subject in the encyclical, he has proved that he has deeply studied the situation. This study, in the midst of the crowd of ecclesiastical and political matters that commanded his attention, is an earnest of the importance and urgency of the social question. Other Popes have spoken on the subject, and their words have been filtered through pastorals of bishops and addresses of priests before they reached the body of the faithful; but when a Pope speaks to-day, his words go. direct to the labouring-man through the medium of the press, pervading everywhere. The voice of Leo XIII. on labour, was heard by every working-man as well as by bishops and priests. It brought encouragement to those who were active in the cause of the labourer, it gave confidence to those who hesitated, it stirred up a Catholic spirit to emulate the organizations of the middle ages, and it turned the attention of the Church as his true friend and protector. The result has been, to create, or help on, a general Catholic movement in each country, to take effective means to relieve the oppression of the modern

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