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Toward Social Justice

oA Discussion and Application

of Pius XFs

" Reconstructing the Social Order”

By

REV. R. A. McGOWAN
Assistant Director, Department of Social Action

National Catholic Welfare Conference

Printed for the

SOCIAL ACTION DEPARTMENT
NATIONAL CATHOLIC WELFARE CONFERENCE





Toward Social Justice

A Discussion and Application

of Pius Xl’s

"Reconstructing the Social Order”

By

REV. R. A. McGOWAN

Assistant Director, Department of Social Action

National Catholic Welfare Conference

Printed for the

SOCIAL ACTION DEPARTMENT

NATIONAL CATHOLIC WELFARE CONFERENCE

by

The Paulist Press

New York, N. Y.





TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One—The Regime and Its Origins page
I. Financial Dictatorship 7

II. Individualism 11

III. Destruction of the Guilds 15

Part Two—A First Purpose of Economic Life
IV. The Good of All and Each in Living Conditions 21

V. Distributed Ownership 23

VI. Income 28

Part Three—Partial Measures
VII. Collective Bargaining 35

VIII. Legislation 46

Part Four—Economic Life an Organism
IX. The Good of All and Each in Work I 52

Part Five—The Full Program
X. An Organized Economic Life 59

XI. The Form and Aims 63

XII. The Industrial Recovery Act 65

XIII. International Economic Life 73

Part Six—The Motive Power and Guide

XIV. Catholic Action 78

Appendix 93



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INTRODUCTION

The guide this booklet seeks to follow is Pius

XI’s Encyclical of May, 1931, “Reconstructing the

Social Order.” A different plan of the subject is

followed. The numbers interspersed through the

text refer to pages in the National Catholic Welfare

Conference edition of the Encyclical. Not all its

teachings are included here. Not all that is here is

in the Encyclical. It is hoped, however, that noth-

ing in this booklet will seem out of harmony with

that glorious document.



Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2016

https://archive.org/details/towardsocialjustOOmcgo



PART ONE

THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS

I. Financial Dictatorship

P
IUS XI in his Encyclical on “Reconstructing the Social

Order” speaks of several different economic regimes.

There was the Guild System of the Middle Ages. There was

the unlimited competition of modern times that continued to

our own day and in some industries still lasts. There is our

present regime marked by concentrated power. And there will

be, if the Holy Father’s desires are realized, an economic order

better than anything gone before. It will found itself in eco-

nomic morality, distributed property, economic organization

and government supervision. It will be a new, organized and

democratic economic life.

The size of the industrial tool—spade or steam shovel,
spinning wheel or woolen factory, fork or gang plow, pack ani-

mal or locomotive, strong arm or electricity—is not the thing
that makes one economic regime differ from another. Nor is it

the size of the market area—whether a town and its surround-
ing country making and using nearly everything therein con-

sumed, or a market area that is the round world. When the

tools are large and the market area vast, the problem is

bulkier and more tangled and presents special conditions. But

it was not essentially a different problem when hand tools pro-

duced for a village market.

One economic regime differs from another essentially by

reason of human relations. There was slavery before the ma-

chine age. There was Individualism before the machine age.

There was a cooperative moralized society before the machine

age. There can be any of these within the machine age. Not

the machine but the human beings and the human rules make

the difference.

The present age is one of concentrated economic power.

Not alone is wealth accumulated
,

but immense power and

despotic economic domination is concentrated in the hands of

a few. (P. 32.)
1 Wealth is compact. About 2 per cent of

lAll quotations in italics and page references not otherwise specified are from

Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical, “Reconstructing the Social Order.”

7



8 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

the American people own 60 per cent of the wealth; 33 per

cent own 35 per cent; and 65 per cent own 5 per cent.

The concentration of power is even greater. Some 200 non-

banking corporations control nearly half of the non-banking

corporate wealth. About 100 banking corporations control

nearly half of the banking wealth.

Moreover, those few who hold the despotic economic domi-

nation are frequently not the owners
,
but only the trustees and

directors of invested funds, who administer them at their good

pleasure. (P. 32.) They are directors and officers who need

own but little of what they dominate.

Some speak of these industrial corporations as ruled by

their executives. They speak of our regime as a domination by

executives who somehow have taken power without ownership.

The executives know differently; for they rule usually at the

sufferance of the banks. “Eight New York banks have 287
insurance directorships; 301 other banking directorships; 521

public utility directorships; 526 railroad, steamship and air-

plane transportation directorships; 846 manufacturing director-

ships. Twenty-four New York banks have 6,250 directorships.

Fifteen New York banks had 1,762 directorships in 1899;

3,426 in 1913; and 5,432 in 1931. The Chase National Bank

directors have 133 transportation directorships; 236 manufac-

turing directorships; 73 public utilities directorships; 63 other

banking directorships; 82 insurance company directorships;

266 miscellaneous corporation directorships. These banks are

themselves interlocked.” (Address by Senator Norris, Con-

gressional Record, February 23, 1933.)

For this power (despotic economic domination) becomes

particularly irresistible when exercised by those who, because

they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and

determine its allotment. (P. 32.) Ours is a banker-ruled so-

ciety. Executives produce property returns and interest and

commission on loans and build up greater financial empires for

others.

Yet there is no single banking and industrial empire. Wit-

ness the Morgan-Rockefeller rivalries, though indeed there are

combinations between them. This concentration of power has

led to a threefold struggle for domination. One of these seeks

dictatorship in the economic sphere itself. (P. 33.)

A certain measure of competition still remains even when

it is only the competition of rivals for economic dictatorship.



THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS 9

But by and large we are a monopolistic country. We have

anti-trust laws. We have also bootleggers of monopoly.

“Rules of reason” and Presidential immunity long ago opened

the gates. Now in an emergency we have formally set up a

system of trade association combinations under government su-

pervision.

Rival dictators and budding monopolists contend for con-

trol of government, federal, state and city, in the second phase

of the threefold struggle for domination. They struggle to ac-

quire control of the State so as to have free right-of-way and

special advantages over everybody else. Anyone in public office

knows this. Anyone with his eyes open cannot escape know-

ing. Political power becomes enslaved to the dominant eco-

nomic power. (P. 33.)

In a world-wide market area what more natural than for

another struggle to take place

—

the clash between States them-

selves. (P. 33.) There is “economic nationalism”—tariffs and
quotas and rigging the money-exchange market. There is

“economic imperialism”—the British, French, Italian, Japa-
nese, Portuguese, Belgian and Dutch empires and the American

empire. There is bankers’ imperialism—the Chinese consor-
tium, the Morgan Anglo-American bankers’ alliance, and the

bankers’ imperialism of the war debt settlements. And there

impends the logical outcome of this struggle of the nations

—

war.

Both as a result of the second struggle, to control govern-

ment, and the third struggle, of governments among themselves,

one evil glares: The intermingling and scandalous confusing of

the duties and offices of civil authority and of economics have

produced crying evils and have gone so far as to degrade the

majesty of the State. (P. 33.) The old believers in a do-noth-

ing government were wrong. Government has a place in eco-

nomic life. But now its activity grows all the time. And not,

be it known, usually and normally to protect labor and con-

sumers, but to strengthen and enrich bankers, manufacturers

and business men and to protect them from one another.

The whole economic life has become hard, cruel and re-

lentless in a ghastly measure. (P. 33.) Hard and cruel and

relentless it has surely become. The richest country in the

world in the richest age in the world did not pay half its

wage workers a decent living wage in the years before the

crisis. Then it threw some ten to fifteen million of them



10 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

upon the streets. And every few years millions were workless

in the piping pre-depression years. Farmers, also, know the

cruelty of the system. Small business men know its relentless-

ness. Big business men know well its hardness. Bankers

know its ghastliness.

The conditions of social and economic life are such that

vast multitudes of men can only with great difficulty pay at-

tention to that one thing necessary, namely their eternal salva-

tion. (P. 40.) The inclination to do wrong is as old as Adam.

But the human rules of handling economic life—the economic
regime—may tempt and induce wrong or may help a person do
right. For example, slavery. For example, cut-throat compe-

tition. A hard, cruel and relentless economic regime comes
from hard, cruel and relentless men who are centers of con-

tagion.

The uncertainty of economic conditions and of the whole

economic regime demands the keenest and most unceasing

straining of energy on the part of those engaged therein; and

as a result, some have become so hardened against the stings

of conscience as to hold all means good which enable them tc

increase their profits, and to safeguard against sudden changes

of fortune the wealth amassed by unremitting toil. (P. 41.)

People in industry and business live in an earthquake zone.

They want thick walls of dollars to make their houses strong.

They violate their conscience to build the walls thicker. Their

conscience becomes sick. It dies. The law becomes their

conscience and the law is dust. The very regime encourages

economic immorality.

Easy returns, which an open market offers to any one,

lead many to interest themselves in trade and exchange, their

one aim being to make clear profits with the least labor. By

their unchecked speculation prices are raised and lowered out

of mere greed for gain, making void all the most prudent calcu-

lations of manufacturers. (P. 41.) The stock market adds

to the uncertainty.

The regulations legally enacted for corporations, with their

divided responsibility and limited liability, have given occa-

sion to abominable abuses. The greatly weakened accounta-

bility makes little impression, as is evident, upon the con-

science. The worst injustices and frauds take place beneath

the obscurity of the common name of a corporative firm.

Boards of directors proceed in their unconscionable methods



THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS 11

even to the violation of their trust in regard to those whose

savings they administer. (P. 41.) The corporation’s divided

responsibility and the often unknown directorship of companies

induce laxity.

Goods are lied about in advertisements. The lowest pas-

sions are aroused for profit’s sake. (P. 42.)

The pace is set. Those who do not want to follow it must

turn their backs on quick success and on the self-satisfaction

of conspicuous waste and must bear up under ridicule. They

must somehow be able to fight the conscienceless. (P. 42.)

Labor imitates the rest. Employers are tricksters; why

not they? Employers underpay; why not underwork? Em-

ployers want shoddy work; why not make it shoddier? Em-

ployers buy poor brick; why lay brick fast or make the wall

plumb? Employers treat them like cogs; why not be a clod?

(P.42.)

Employers throw men and women, boys and girls, all to-

gether pell-mell in factory and office. They, the pillars of so-

ciety, do not respect the workers; why then should the work-

ers respect themselves? (P. 42.)

The workers live in great warrens or in drab and desolate

steel, coal and textile towns or in dreary dry-goods boxes in

industrial suburbs. Their housing and the whole economic

regime undermine their family life. (P. 42.)

How universally has the true Christian spirit become im-
paired, which formerly produced such lofty sentiments even in

uncultured and illiterate men! In its stead, man’s one solici-

tude is to obtain his daily bread in any way he can. And so

bodily labor, which was decreed by Providence for the good of

man’s body and soul even after original sin, has everywhere

been changed into an instrument of strange perversion: for

dead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed,

where men are corrupted and degraded. (P. 42).

II. Individualism

What the next regime will be, no one knows. The regime

that went before we know. In some industries or parts of in-

dustries, it still remains. The present is a concentration of

power, domination, monopoly and economic dictatorship, exer-

cised principally by those who control credit. Its precursor

was Individualism, limitless competition.



12 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

You assuredly know . . . and you lament the ultimate conse-

quences of this Individualistic spirit in economic affairs. Free

competition is dead; economic dictatorship has taken its place.

(P. 33.) This was inevitable. For unlimited competition is

economic war. It decimates the competitors. Limitless free

competition . .
.
permits the survival of those only who are the

strongest
;
which often means those who fight most relentlessly,

who pay least heed to the dictates of conscience. (P. 33.)

What was the nature of that Individualism which is now

only a survival? First, it was ignorant or forgetful of the so-

cial and moral aspect of economic matters. ... (P. 29.) It

did not believe that economic life is a thing of right and wrong.

It astoundingly held that if people went ahead without think-

ing of right and wrong when they bought, sold, borrowed, lent,

hired and were hired, then everything would somehow add up

all right. This was its philosophy. Many did not believe in
the philosophy; that, they thought, was for the book-writers;

as for themselves, they were satisfied to get theirs in extraor-

dinary feats of individual initiative. But, astoundingly also,

some actually believed in the philosophy and thought that

somehow final good would come out of an accumulation of

several billion acts, each of them evil. They thought that eco-

nomic matters possess in free competition and open markets a

principle of self-direction better able to control them than any

created intellect. (P. 29.)

The first characteristic of Individualism was immorality,

the old capital sin of covetousness.

But there is this fact to be underlined. Covetousness was

counted a virtue. It molded the human rules of economic

life so as to give itself free rein.

Economic life is objectively a delicate cloth. Better, it is

objectively an organism, a tree, a body. If a wheat farmer

grows all the wheat he can plant, care for and harvest without

regard to other wheat growers and without regard to wheat

consumers, he is a fool and he hurts himself and hurts other

wheat growers and, sooner or later, by the harm done wheat

growers generally, hurts everybody and hurts the very con-

sumers who had at first gained by the price cuts. Or if the

owners of industry take too much in profits, their goods after

a time cannot be sold.

An industry is made up of its materials, its equipment

and its technical ability. It is made up of the human beings



THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS 13

whom it engages. They work to furnish goods to the con-

sumers and for the other purposes for which a person works.

Distinct as individuals, each of them, with distinct rights, abili-

ties and interests and with a personality that carries over into

non-working life, yet they are a corps, a natural society, a

unity. They speak the same language: They do the same

kind of work. Their interests tie together. They should be

organized as a unit.

Individualism denied this. Individualism held that every

man is the enemy of every other man. He is to mulct the con-

sumer and charge all the traffic will bear. If he is an em-

ployer he is to mulct his employees and pay the least the traffic

will bear. But also every other employer is his sworn enemy.

Economic society is made up of atoms, the Individualist says.

A few may combine into molecules; but even then each atom

in the molecular partnership or corporation is to look out for

the main chance.

Individualism did another thing to give its immorality free

play. Liberalism (the older European name for this regime)

. . . regarded . . . unions of workingmen with disfavor, if not with

open hostility. (P. 11.) American Individualism took the same

attitude as European Liberalism, although not so intensely as

did the French Revolution in its formal edict against unions.

Here it has shown itself chiefly in the courts—in the old con-
spiracy cases, but chiefly in injunction cases. It has shown

itself in illegal strike-breaking by city and state police and by

the national guard.

Individualism did still another thing. Liberalism . .
.
pro-

claimed the doctrine that the civil power is . . . the mere guard-

ian of law and order. ... (P. 9.) Government was a police-

man that overlooked the less glaring offenses of business indi-

vidualism and concentrated on unadorned stealing and non-

economic murder. It intervened only to help all home business

against all foreigners, by tariffs and the like and by wars, and

to help certain domestic business men by special favors. This

latter, however, was considered unfair and not good practice.

As for the consumers in general, they should abide by the

rule: “Let the buyer beware.” As for luckless or less capable

or more honest business men, they should come under the an-

cient rule (ancient, that is, in modern times): “Competition

is the life of trade,” or that other no less ancient and mysteri-

ous rule: “Business is business.” And as for the propertyless



14 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

workers, they should know that the unalterable rule of free

contract applies to them, standing in line at a factory-gate

waiting their turn for work, with the same impartiality as to

the employer who refuses their two dollar offer and suggests a

dollar seventy-five cents.

This state of things . . . the wealthy . . . looked upon ... as

the consequence of inevitable and natural economic laws, and

. . . 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. (P. 4.) Not

unions, not laws to establish justice and common sense, but

bread lines, soup kitchens and an ever swelling, ever more

organized system of charity.

For capital . . . claimed all the products and profits and left

to the laborer the barest minimum necessary to repair his

strength and to ensure the continuation of his class (P.

19)
;
and what capital claimed it could get. 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 ... a steady drift of economic and

social tendencies was in this direction (p. 19); and the trend

was in this direction all over the world. (P. 32.)

Human society appeared more and more divided into two

classes. (P. 4.) Americans wish to deny the class struggle.

It sounds foreign and un-American. Yet the class struggle

does not begin from the workers’ side. The employers wish

to hire labor at the cheapest rate. For this they struggle

against the employee who struggles for more money or fewer

hours of work or both. His struggle may be the twitching and

cringing of a lone individual. Yet it is still a part of the class

struggle. The class struggle need not be organized. It need

not be grasped or understood by either side. It is simply a

fact of human life today.

It thrusts itself forward as time goes on. The participants

become conscious of it. They organize to struggle better.

They draw in allies. The struggle grows bitter. It pierces all

society. All life is rent by it. It is a curtain raiser for revo-

lution.

And a government which began with trying to do nothing

finds itself submerged and overwhelmed by an infinity of affairs

and duties. (P. 26.) It continues to help the business men. As

the system grows into monopoly and concentration of power,



THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS 15

government is called on to help the monopolists. Witness the

railroad guarantees. It is called on to try to protect little

business men from the monopolists and the banks. Witness

the divorce of commercial banks from industrial directorates.

It is called on to try to help little business men against one an-

other. Witness the Federal Trade Commission. It is called

on to help the consumers. Witness the regulation of public

utility rates. It is called on to help the farmers. Witness

the present farm program. It is called on to help labor. Wit-

ness the hour laws, the minimum wage laws, workmen’s com-

pensation laws, unemployment insurance. Witness now the In-

dustrial Recovery Act in both its business and labor phases.

All these phenomena of Individualism, except cut-throat

competition, remain in an era of vast combinations which is its

son and heir; and even competition has remained in some in-

dustries.

III. Destruction of the Guilds

Individualism did not exist always. It had a well-known

historical origin. The present plutocracy is a normal conse-

quence of the unlimited competition that preceded it. Indi-

vidualism, on the other hand, arose by a sharp break with the

preceding regime. One might even say that plutocratic

monopoly is simply the maturity of Individualism and not es-

sentially new. But when Individualism came in great sweeps

that moved from one area to another until it covered the whole

world, it came as a new thing.

Before it arrived there was a highly developed social life

which . . . flourished in a variety of prosperous institutions or-

ganically linked with each other. (P. 26.) Through Indi-

vidualism social life lost entirely its organic form, (P. 26.) its or-

ganized corporativeness. And the stages in the war that Indi-

vidualism waged and won are traceable in history.

Without over-simplifying this war, the stages were two. The

determining elements in each stage were also two. A change
in the material side of economic life came at each stage in the

battle. At each stage a spiritual change, a change in ideas,

came. In the first stage the new ideas won out only in part. In

the second stage the new ideas won enough to dominate every-

where.

The first material change was the Age of Discoveries and

Colonization from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, It



16 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

meant three things. The market area grew from the village

and town and, at largest, from an intra-continental trade to

something close to a world-marketing area. It meant also a

greater wealth, since one area supplemented the resources of

another. Finally it meant larger producing units and larger

trading units to meet the greater wealth and the greater trad-

ing area. In other words, the old material element of economic

life—the range of resources and trade, the type of equipment
and the technique of work—changed.

Europe was the agent of the Era of Discoveries. Europe

knitted the material world together in the modern age, as far

as it was knitted together at all. Europe dominated the newly

discovered and colonized regions. Europe thereby expanded.

Rather, it exploded. The old Europe was a relatively static

self-contained continent. It had built institutions to handle

a village, town, small city, river valley, land highway and in-

land sea life to accord with its geography and its still primitive

means of communication. The material basis of even a full

continental life did not yet exist. Suddenly Europe was part

of a world. Suddenly the small concentric spheres of its trade

were cracked wide open.

Seville that had sold to Seville and the countryside now

sold to Mexico City, Lima and Manila. London that had sold

to the Thames Valley and the English fairs and the Low Coun-

tries and the Hansa towns sold to the James River settlements

and Cape Cod.

Also the centers of balance shifted. Europe was shaken

as by an earthquake. Seville, then Holland, then London—

these outposts of Europe—became the center of the world, as
the slide of the earth’s surface left the Italian cities, the Rhine

towns, the North Sea towns and the Danube towns tombs of

the living dead for long years to come.

Europe had met another such twisting of its life ten cen-

turies before when Rome fell. It had become chaos both in-

side the old Roman Empire and in the continental areas that

the barbarians had long settled. During the intervening ten

centuries Europe had been building a social system under the

guidance of certain main ideas. It had not yet built fully satis-

factory institutions. But it was still on its way.

The ideas were in the main these. Human beings are in-

dividual entities and have individual rights. Human beings are

brothers and their rights are limited and are semi-social rights



THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS 17

to meet the good of others in one’s own occupation and the

good of the users of one’s product or service. Rights and du-

ties are matters of the moral law; brotherhood and individual

dignity are matters of the moral law. Therefore, the teacher

of the moral law, the one Church in which all Europeans be-

lieved, must teach the nature of these rights and duties in con-

siderable detail and inspire lives, and people must listen, use its

channels of grace, and obey. People must work out these rules

of right and wrong in the terms of their own occupation and

dealings. They must also do the naturally sensible thing and

organize themselves as economic units to develop and enforce

these rules. Further, government must help them and help the

whole community.

The flowering of this attitude toward life, though the

flowers had many damaged petals, was the guilds of the cities

and towns. In certain areas the peasants had already moved

forward to a similar organic structure against the domination

of the feudal lords of whom they once had been serfs.

How was this Europe, this mistress of a new world, this

changing Europe which had to adapt its old institutions to the

new world-market area, how was this earthquaken continent

to act now in its crisis? Was it to go ahead in the same spirit,

hold to the same ideas, work them out in terms of the new

kind of life, refashion the moral rules to meet the new kind

of trade and production, expand the guild, and coalesce the

governments so that they could do their part together in the

new larger unity? It did none of these things in the crisis.

It had, for some time, been corrupt; it became more so. Part

of it went pagan and gloried in the social scheme of a pagan

antiquity which nowhere had ever built a worthwhile social

system. Whole areas in the north cut themselves off from the

source of their inspiration, grace, unity and authoritative teach-

ing. Even Spain and Portugal, newly invigorated by the final

defeat of another religion and culture, tried in narrow and pa-

gan nationalism to seize for themselves, alone, the whole new

worlds of the Far East and the West whose discovery had been

the very cause of Europe’s crisis.

Increasingly the Catholic countries succumbed to kings and

landlords or drifted into stagnant back-waters. Spain’s first

glorious century, and more, of colonization and social building

was followed by lethargy and corruption under the iron hand

of royal and aristocratic supremacy. All Europe was in tur-



18 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

moil. The bad seventeenth century went into the worse

eighteenth.

The Catholic areas did not turn their backs utterly upon

the old concept of a moralized, organized and governmentally

cooperating social life. That remained for the Protestant coun-

tries. It remained particularly for the Calvinist denominations

after the first flair of John Calvin’s holy city of Geneva. Prot-

estantism in general gave the positive impetus to modern Indi-

vidualism. Calvinism became the spear-head.

An amazing Christianity was developed that put the vir-

tues of individual thrift and industry as the crown of the

Christian life and made financial success the sure sign on earth

of that special exclusive predilection of God which Calvinists

held was the sole means of salvation and of which they could

never be sure. It encouraged individual action as against joint

action. It encouraged intense preoccupation, save on Sunday,

with financial success, while on Sunday a person could comfort

his doubts of predestination by thoughts of his week-day suc-

cesses. It taught men individual interpretation of the law of

God; and where better to interpret God’s law than in the

means of business success, the sign of God’s grace? It sepa-

rated “the saints” from the sinners; and “the saints” could not

unite with the sinners, could only fleece them.

English Dissenters, French Huguenots, Dutch Calvinists,

Swiss Calvinists, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians set the pace in

their own countries and increasingly throughout the world.

Jews, moved by their own religion and traditions and by the

Ghetto separateness which they had both wished and had had

thrust on them, made up the other spiritual element in the

early rise of Individualism.

Individualism grew in the eighteenth century. There was

concentration of wealth. There was economic immorality.

Economic organization in the Protestant countries had almost

uniformly been destroyed. In the Catholic countries the or-

ganization was plutocratic, exclusive and rigid. Landlordism

had grown. Governments did not work for the common good.

And then in the late eighteenth and 'the early part of the

nineteenth century another set of material changes came; the

ideas of Calvinism spread the world over; and when the nine-

teenth century was well launched Individualism held the field.

The Industrial Revolution was the new material change. It

permitted an intense cultivation of the world-market and the



THE REGIME AND ITS ORIGINS 19

world’s resources where the Age of Discoveries had merely

plowed the sod. The machine and steam-power necessitated

large units of production. The world was spinning on a new

axis.

Calvinism was reinforced by Rationalism and Deism in the

Protestant countries. In the Catholic countries, Rationalism

became the ruling cult of economic relations and the then

moribund social order was destroyed to make way for the full

and free reign of individual greed. At the very time when a

new material framework of life was coming into existence, the

doctrines of Rationalism had already taken firm hold of large

numbers
,
and an economic science alien to the true moral law

had soon arisen, whence it followed that free reign was given

to human avarice. (P. 42.) The French Revolution, ra-

tionalistic and bourgeois, set that pace for all the Catholic

countries which earlier had been set by the Reformation and

Calvinism.

On account of the evil of Individualism . . . the highly de-

veloped social life which once flourished in a variety of pros-

perous institutions organically linked with each other, has been

damaged and all but ruined. (P. 26.)

For at one period, in the Middle Ages and, to a degree, in

the Catholic countries in early modern times, there had existed

a social order which, though by no means perfect in every re-

spect, corresponded nevertheless in a certain measure to right

reason according to the needs and conditions of the times.

(P. 31.) That it perished was not due to the fact that it was

incapable of development and adaptation to changing needs

and circumstances, but rather to the wrong-doing of men. Men
were hardened in excessive self-love. ... (P. 31.) In their

selfishness they 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 im-

patient of every restraint and endeavored to throw off all au-

thority. (P. 31.) A stern insistence on the moral law, en-

forced with vigor by civil authority, could have dispelled or

perhaps averted these enormous evils. (P. 42). But govern-

ments in a mighty rush, sometimes after cataclysm, went the

way of Individualism.

And the tremendous wealth of an accessible world, de-

veloped by the science and invention of an industrial age, fell

into fewer and fewer hands. By an inexorable economic law,



20 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

it was held
,

all accumulation oj riches must jail to the share

of the wealthy , while the workingman must remain perpetually

in indigence or reduced to the minimum needed for existence.

(P. 19). Human society appeared more and more divided into

two classes. (P. 4.)

The first, small in numbers, enjoyed practically all the com-

forts 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. (P.

4 ->

The capitalist economic regime . . . with the world-wide

diffusion of industry, has penetrated everywhere. ... It ha\s in-

vaded and pervaded the economic and social sphere even of

those who live outside its ambit, influencing them, and, as it

were, intimately affecting them by its advantages, inconveni-

ences and vices (P. 32); and nowhere more glaringly than in

our own country which was born of English and Dutch Cal-

vinist Individualism and English Cavalier landlordism and

which came of age in the era of Deism and Rationalism.



PART TWO

A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE

IV. The Good of All and Each in Living Conditions

Individualism establishes as a first purpose of economic life

that all wealth in resources and equipment and all human eco-

nomic ability exist for each individual to control and use with

little or no regard for others. In its benigner moments, Indi-

vidualism maintains that it works out to final good. We know
now that this is false. Free competition, good when limited,

i. e., when not utterly free competition, could not properly

direct economic life. This has been abundantly proved by the

consequences that have followed from the free rein given to

these dangerous individualistic ideals. (P. 29.)

The benigner purpose of the Individualist rationalization,

transferred from a remote future to the immediate and con-

tinuous present, is a first purpose of economic life. For then

only will the economic and social organism be soundly estab-

lished and attain its end
,
when it secures for all and each those

goods which the wealth and resources of nature , technical

achievement, and the social organization of economic affairs

can give. (P. 25.) And while period differs from period in

ability to produce and therefore the standard of living must

vary from period to period, these goods should be sufficient to

supply all needs and an honest livelihood, and to uplift men

to that higher level of prosperity and culture which, provided

it be used with prudence, is not only no hindrance but is of

singular help to virtue. (P. 25.)

In our own period economic life should give all and each a

standard of living that is high, because the wealth and re-

sources of nature and technical achievement are on the high-

est plane the world has ever seen. That does not mean equally

high standards for all. Absolute equality within single coun-

tries or over the world is not necessary for the purpose to be

realized and it would violate in other ways individual rights

and the common good. Absolute equality is not in question.

What is desired is that use of the materials, resources, equip-

ment and technique to produce, and that distribution of the

product which will give all a high standard of physical and

21



22 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

mental living and help toward a high standard of moral and

spiritual living.

The final aim is the perfect order which places God as the

first and supreme end of all created activity and which regards

all created goods as mere instruments under God, to be used

only in so far as they help towards the attainment of our su-

preme end. (P. 43.)

Here is a whole philosophy of economic life. It is as re-

mote from “hard, cruel and relentless” domination or from

universal cut-throat economic warfare as it could possibly be.

It states that resources, equipment and ability exist for all as

well as each and for each as well as all. Communism glorifies

the “all” and forgets the “each.” Individualism glorifies the

“each,” makes a few gigantically wealthy and financially so

able to satisfy desires that even Gargantua would be surfeited,

and forgets the “all.”

Implicit here is an idea of the extraordinary importance

of the common good and of each individual. At the root is an

idea of what a human being is and what the human race is.

It is based on the conviction that a man holds the dignity of

humanity because his body possesses a soul which is undying

and that this combination of body and soul needs other per-

sons if he is to live at all and live properly. Out of his native

dignity and his no less native necessity of social life comes the

purpose of the economic part of life.

The economic part of life is both individual and social; it

follows the individual-social nature of human beings. Eco-

nomic life is a composite of relations which, to be sound, must

preserve the dignity and importance of each individual and

the dignity and importance of all individuals. Out of this

double idea grows both the purpose of economic life—to give
all and each the high standard of living they need for physi-

cal, mental, moral and spiritual strength and development

—

and the human rules to accomplish the purpose.

Christianity reinforces the universal concept of individual

dignity, and societal necessity and dignity, and adds new ele-

ments. The individual is given new dignity by being a coun-

terpart of the human nature of Christ, by being the sole ob-

ject, as- it were, of the redeeming death of Christ on the cross,

and by the resurrection and reward, or punishment, of the body.

Society is given new dignity by the entrance of Christ into the

human society; by His death for all as well as each; by the



A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE 23

spiritual union, the society, that He created between God and

the glorious in Heaven, those still being purged and the mili-

tant on earth; and by His resurrection.

The basic dignity and importance of each man and all men

was never, in fact, understood enough to be the mainspring of

economic society until it was reinforced and added to by

Christ’s birth, as man, and His death upon the cross for all.

The old pagan world was essentially individualistic. The an-

cient Jewish world lived apart. And when the Christian world

split, Individualism came again and nowhere more flagrantly

than among the Calvinists who had decided that Christ died

for a few. The few were themselves, blest in Heaven and blest

with this world’s goods; as for the rest of men they were

damned to eternal fire, and, if there was any justice, damned

to poverty on earth.

If both the common good and the individual good make up

the purpose of economic life, then three conclusions seem to

follow immediately. One is that whatever rights exist in eco-

nomic life must look both to the individual good and the com-

mon good. A second is that a social organization of economic
life must exist in some form so to produce and distribute that

the individual and the common good are both cared for. A
third is that society as a whole must be organized to help at-

tain the same end.

V. Distributed Ownership

Resources and equipment have to be owned by some one,

some group, organization or society, society as a whole. They

cannot be uncontrolled. The title to their use and to the

returns from them, as work is applied to them, has to rest

somewhere. Otherwise, anyone who came along, if he were

strong enough to get it and hold it, could seize a thing and

use it against all comers. There would be utter anarchy.

The system or systems of ownership adopted must meet

the test of the good of each and all—the individual good and
the common good. At the present, one system predominates

and almost holds the field. It goes by the name of private

ownership, but it is really concentrated and absolutistic con-

trol by credit power and by the minority of owners. A rela-
tively few are owners in city industry and trade, wherein the

central control of economic life rests; still fewer are in con-



24 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

trol; and their control is almost absolute. They can use the

resources and equipment as they wish; and since human work

needs resources and equipment to produce the commodities

and usually also the services, they have been able within limits

to use human labor as they have wished.

This regime has been highly satisfactory to them. It is

relatively satisfactory to the lesser holders of stock who do not

administer that which they own shares in, but who, with fluc-

tuations, get returns and have the right of sale of their certifi-

cates. It is eminently unsatisfactory to the rest of the popu-

lation.

It is unsatisfactory to the rest of the population because

it does not meet a primary purpose of economic life and of the

resources and equipment. For, in the social unity of mankind,

wealth and resources exist for the good of all; and the goods

which the\ Creator has destined for the human race (p. 16.)*

must stand under a system of ownership that serves the pur-

pose of all and not the purpose of a few only.

If private ownership is to remain, it must be a new form

of private ownership that will meet the demands of the com-

mon good. It must serve the purpose of human beings to live

physically and mentally well and morally and spiritually well

so that they will give greater glory to God here and so that

the undying part of them will give greater glory to God when

the body and soul separate.

It is not that concentrated ownership is essentially unjust,

any more for that matter than slavery is essentially unjust.

The system itself is not to be condemned. And surely it is not

vicious of its very nature. (P. 32.) It is rather that, normally,

concentrated ownership becomes absolutistic. It does not serve

the common good, as human beings are fashioned. It violates

right order whenever capital so employs the working or wage-

earning classes as to divert business and economic activity en-

tirely to its own arbitrary will and advantage without any re-

gard to the human dignity of the workers, the social character

of economic life, social justice and the common good. (P. 32.)

It functions that way today.

The first inclination a person has when he decides that ab-

solutistic and concentrated ownership does not serve the pur-

pose is to think of alternatives. One is distributed and social-

ized personal ownership. The other is no ownership, whatso-

ever, in the means of work. Another is a division of the field



A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE 25

between socialized*, distributed personal ownership and public

ownership.

Certainly under any circumstances personal ownership to

fulfil its social purpose, the good of all, has to be a socialized

personal ownership. There is at all times a two-fold character

oj ownership. (P. 17.) It is individual or social accordingly

as it regards individuals or concerns the common good. (P.

15.) This is true also of public ownership; rightly it is social

with an individual slant. Rightly, also, private ownership is

personal with a social slant. In fact to deny “the social and

public aspect of ownership” and thus deny the purpose of the

things owned is essential to Individualism and to its heir, the

new economic dictatorship.

The final reason of personal ownership of resources and

equipment is that such ownership is necessary if the dignity

and importance of the individual is normally to be assured.

The alternative to personal ownership is absolute and complete

social ownership. That may serve the good of a fictional

“all”; but the individual and his family become swallowed up

in the community and become subject to the rulers of the com-

munity. They have no refuge. The representatives of the

community (whether they are representatives of a real ma-

jority or not) rule a man and rule his family, politically and

economically. They are policeman and judge. They are em-

ployer and merchant. Any divergency from the community’s

standard or the politicians’ standard means rebellion. Normally

a person would be both political subject and economic slave.

And yet the emphasis must be laid upon the social charac-

ter of ownership
;
and means have to be found to make that em-

phasis actual. The reason for such emphasis and for the im-

perativeness of means to make the social character of owner-

ship a living thing is precisely the reason why personal owner-

ship should itself exist. Personal ownership is such a source of

strength that unless it exists the community swallows the indi-

vidual. But unless it is a socialized personal ownership, a few

individuals swallow the community.

There is no implication that a certain measure of commu-

nity ownership is wrong. Indeed by reason of the very pur-

pose of resources and equipment, which is the common good as

well as the individual good, certain forms of resources and

certain types of equipment are so important to the community,

and personal ownership of them gives individuals such tre-



26 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

mendous power over the community, that there is no common-

sense alternative to public ownership. Certain forms of prop-

erty must be reserved to the State, since they carry with them

an opportunity of domination too great to be left to private

individuals without injury to the community at large. (Pp.

35-36.) Under industrialism the number of the resources and

types of equipment, which are so important to the common

good that the community as a whole cannot let them out of its

hands, is far greater than in a handicraft system of production

and communication. Compare, for example, the importance of

electrical power and all the purposes to which electricity is put

with the myriad resources and sources of energy that former-

ly were employed to do inadequately the work that electrical

power now does.

The test for knowing which properties should be publicly

owned is pragmatic. Which of them can not be entrusted even

to socialized and distributed personal ownership? And the diffi-

culty in applying such a test today is that socialized and dis-

tributed personal ownership does not exist in industry. The

temptation is always strong, because of the omnipresent evils

of concentrated and absolutistic ownership, to say that more

and more property ought to be owned by the community. But

if a community followed that line of action it would still have

to socialize and distribute the remaining personal ownership

;

and if it went too far in community ownership it would oppress

the dignity and importance of the individuals who are, after all,

the community, and would thus defeat its own desires. There

seems but one adequate method. It is to proceed with both

types of action—socializing and distributing personal owner-
ship and, where such is seen, beforehand or immediately, in a

certain few cases to be ineffective, to establish community own-

ership and, as experience shows, add or not add, as the facts

demand, further installments of public ownership. But the em-

phasis and the preference should be given to socialized and dis-

tributed personal ownership.

Distributed ownership is necessary for the same reason that

personal ownership itself is necessary. All the arguments for

personal ownership are arguments that it should be widespread

and the habitual possession of the common man. For if owner-

ship is not distributed, the power that the few owners possess

is so great that one purpose of ownership—the good of all

—

will not be obtained. Not every kind of distribution of wealth



A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE 27

and property amongst men is such that it can at all, and still

less can adequately, attain the end intended by God

.

(P. 20.)

So is it at the present time.

The immense number of propertyless wage-earners on the

one hand, and the superabundant riches of the fortunate few on

the other, is an unanswerable argument that the earthly goods

so abundantly produced in this age of industrialism are far

from rightly distributed and equitably shared among the vari-

ous classes of men. (P. 21.)

This is the aim which Our Predecessor urged as the neces-

sary object of our efforts: the uplifting of the proletariat. (P.

21.) The phrase “uplifting the proletariat” does not bring out

the full force of the Pontiff’s thought. It is rather the redemp-

tion of the unpropertied—redemption from their lack of prop-
erty by their obtaining property. Wealth, . . . constantly being

augmented by social and economic progress, must be so distrib-

uted amongst the various individuals and classes of society that

the common good of all, of which Leo XIII spoke, be thereby

promoted. In other words, the good of the whole community

must be safeguarded. (P. 20.) And unless property is dis-

tributed, let nobody persuade himself that the peace and tran-

quillity of human society can be effectively defended against the

forces of revolution! (P. 22.)

In 1919, the Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction

stated: “The full possibilities of increased production will not

be realized so long as the majority of the workers remain mere

wage-earners. The majority must somehow become owners, or

at least in part, of the instruments of production. They can

be enabled to reach this stage gradually through cooperative

productive societies and copartnership arrangements. In the

former, the workers own and manage the industries themselves;

in the latter they own a substantial part of the corporate stock

and exercise a reasonable share in the management. However

slow the attainment of these ends, they will have to be reached

before we can have a thoroughly efficient system of production,

or an industrial and social order that will be secure from the

danger of revolution.”

In 1920, the Pastoral Letter of the American Hierarchy

stated the same principle and amplified it. “This recommenda-

tion is in exact accord with the traditional teaching and prac-

tice of the Church. When her social influence was greatest, in

the later Middle Ages, the prevailing economic system was such



28 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

that the workers were gradually obtaining a larger share in the

ownership of the lands upon which, and the tools with which,

they labored. Though the economic arrangements of that time

cannot be restored, the underlying principle is of permanent

application, and is the only one that will give stability to indus-

trial society. It should be applied to our present system as

rapidly as conditions will permit.”

The workers’ rise to ownership is still to be accomplished.

And the idea calls for more emphatic assertion and more in-

sistent repetition on the present occasion because these salutary

injunctions of the Pontiff (Leo XIII) have not infrequently

been forgotten, deliberately ignored, or deemed impracticable,

though they were both feasible and imperative. (P. 21.)

VI. Income

The virtue that impels action for the common good is called

social justice. The virtue that impels the even-handed and

strict giving to every man his due is called commutative jus-

tice. Both forms of justice apply to the distribution of income.

At present the sole income of nearly all the unpropertied is

their wage or salary. Under a system of distributed property

ownership, wages and salaries would not preempt the field of

interest.

The first rule on wages or salaries seems one of strict, or

commutative, justice. The wage paid to the workingman must

be sufficient for the support of himself and of his family. (P.

23.) This is the doctrine of the living wage. And while it is

right for others in the family to work in the farm home or in

the husband’s small store or workshop, it is not right for moth-

ers and children to work in big industry. The father should

get a wage or salary large enough to meet adequately ordinary

domestic needs. (P. 24.) The Bishops’ Program of Social Re-

construction antecedently supplements this as to women. They

have the minimum right to a wage “adequate to decent indi-

vidual support.”

The reason in both cases is that their work is their sole

means of meeting their basic needs; and their dignity and im-

portance as human beings forbid their being compelled to work

for less. The man’s normal basic need is family support. The

woman’s normal basic need is individual support. This is a



A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE 29

minimum wage; but the Bishops’ Program added: “Those

women who are engaged at the same tasks as men should re-

ceive equal pay for equal amounts and qualities of work.”

A second rule qualifies the living wage doctrine but in quali-

fying it makes it clearer and ultimately surer. The condition

of any particular business and of its owner must also come into

question in settling the scale of wages; for it is unjust to de-

mand wages so high that an employer cannot pay them without

ruin, and without consequent distress amongst the working peo-

ple themselves. (P. 24.) If a business cannot pay a living

wage, then, with qualifications, it need not for the time being.

Two reasons would make it impossible for an employer to

pay a living wage. One reason is his own fault and is no ex-

cuse. If the business makes smaller profit on account of bad

management, want of enterprise or out-of-date methods, this is

not a just reason for reducing the workingmen’s wages. (P. 24.)

Another reason is not his own fault
;

it is because the business is

overwhelmed with unjust burdens, or because it is compelled to

sell its products at an unjustly low price. The unjust burdens

might be excessive taxes or tariffs. The unjustly low price

might be due to cut-throat competition or monopolistic oppres-

sion. Then those who thus injure it are guilty of grievous

wrong; for it is they who deprive the workingmen of the just

wage, and force them to accept lower terms. (P. 24.)

In both cases a kind of action should be taken that will be

only mentioned now. Let employers, therefore, and employed

join in their plans and efforts to overcome all difficulties and ob-

stacles, and let them be aided in this wholesome endeavor by

the wise measures of the public authority. (P. 24.) What is

meant is cooperation of management and labor to overcome the

bad management, the want of enterprise, the outgrown meth-

ods, the unjust burdens and the unfair prices; further, what is

meant is the cooperation of government with them to cure the

evils of the company or the industry.

If they fail then they must counsel together in a spirit of

mutual understanding and Christian harmony between employ-

ers and workers whether the business can continue or. whether

some other provision should be made for the workers. (P. 24.)

A third rule is one of social justice in behalf of the common
good. It is the rule that such a scale of wages and salaries

should, if possible, be set up as will offer to the greatest num-

ber opportunities of employment and of securing for themselves



30 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

suitable means of livelihood. (P. 25.) It is the rule that

wages and salaries should be set with a view to the economic

welfare of the whole people. (P. 24.)

Employment and unemployment depend a great deal upon

the wage scale. All are aware that a scale of wages too low, no

less than a scale excessively high, causes unemployment. (P.

25.) In a particular industry the wage scale might be so much

higher than other wage scales or other forms of income that the

industry could not sell its product. In one country, the wage

scale might be so much higher than that of other countries that

there is unemployment when there is reliance upon foreign

trade.

In the tremendous wealth of the United States and its great

reliance upon the domestic market and in the tremendous weak-

ness of the workers, not excessively high wages but excessively

low wages and the excessively low salaries of the lesser salaried

workers is one of the major causes of unemployment. That

fact has become a commonplace now. It was not a common-

place back in 1919 when the Bishops’ Program of Social Re-

construction, arguing for higher wage rates generally, said:

“The large demand for goods which is created and maintained

by high rates of wages and high purchasing power by the

masses is the surest guarantee of a continuous and general op-

eration of industrial establishments.”

The reasoning underlying the idea is simple. The product

has to be sold. Productiveness is tremendously large. The

products are standardized products and not delicate hand-

wrought luxuries. They have to be distributed widely. Wage

and lesser salaried workers make up a large part of the popula-

tion. If their income does not bear a direct ratio to the in-

creased production, then these standardized quantity-produc-

tion goods will not be sold at home. And if profits are large,

the profit-takers cannot consume their money-share of the pro-

duct and, because of their money and because they want more

profits and power, they build more productive equipment to

produce still more goods which they cannot use and which they

will not let others have enough money to use. The goods will

not sell abroad indefinitely because the home country does not

want to take indefinite amounts of foreign goods in exchange

and because other countries are competing for the same for-

eign markets. A temporary mirage-prosperity can be built,
like a movie set, through loans to domestic installment buyers



A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE 31

and through credit to foreigners. Trying to pay back the loans

exposes the false-front.

A reasonable relationship between different wages here en-

ters into consideration. (P. 25.) For if an upper group of

wage workers takes so much that other wage workers live on a

low standard, then the goods produced are not sold and unem-

ployment results.

Intimately connected ... is a reasonable relationship be-

tween the prices obtained for the products of the various eco-

nomic groups: agrarian
,
industrial

,
etc. (P. 25.) Price parity

also must prevail if the goods are to be sold. The low price of

farm products relative to industrial products for a decade and

more has kept farmers from buying their proportion of the in-

dustrial product and has been a major cause of the depression.

What is tragically true of agriculture is true likewise in the

price relations between one industrial product and another.

The same principle of parity between wages and production

and parity among the various wages, applies equally to hours

of work in general and to the hours of different groups. Be-

cause of the gigantic development of industrial resources, equip-

ment, and technical and managerial ability, a drastic reduction

of hours is necessary to give every one work. As general pur-

chasing ability increases, however, hours should increase. On

the other hand, as productivity increases still more, hours

should decrease. The test goes back to the purpose of eco-

nomic life—that standard of living (of which leisure is a part)
for all and each which the resources, the equipment and the

technical ability can give.

What developments future increased productivity can allow

in standards of living and leisure no one knows. Certainly,

high standards of food, clothing, shelter, leisure, and the com-

forts and amenities of life are now possible for all. Certainly

high standards of leisure, culture and spiritual growth for all

are also possible. And as productivity grows, vistas of a still

higher welfare for all open up which now can only be dimly

seen.

The “all and each” who are to receive the high standard

of living are not simply those who come under the sovereignty

of the United States. The “all and each” are the people of all

the world. The people of the United States cannot for their

own safety, cannot in charity to others and cannot in their



32 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

obligation to promote the common good of all the world rise in

comfort and leisure except as the comfort and leisure are re-

flected, to a degree, in higher standards for other peoples. For

the interdependence of the peoples requires that the problem

be solved by international growth and not exclusively by na-

tional gtowth and action.

One result of establishing parities between wages and pro-

duction and between hours and production, and of establish-

ing parity among prices would be a reduction of the returns

to property both in the interest rates on loans and bonds and

in dividends on preferred and common stock. It could not

be otherwise, so long as the lending and owning class is sepa-

rate from the working class and is a minority. More has to be

paid to workers, as such, if the goods are to be bought. A
minority of owners cannot consume the mass production com-

modities; high mass production demands high consumption by

the masses. Even if there were no class division and the

workers were in large part the owners, still the regular distri-

bution of high wages and salaries would be necessary for the

regular distribution of a regular production.

Yet there is an anomaly in trying to distribute in the form

of wages and salaries enough money to buy up the product.

Who knows beforehand what the product will be? If wages

and salaries are to move along with the increased product and

if the quantity of production is unknown, all that is possible

is a good guess at the wage and salary rate and then distri-

bution to workers at the end of stipulated periods of an addi-

tional amount to represent increased productivity.

More specifically, by the principles oj social justice one

class is forbidden to exclude the other from a share in the

profits. (P. 20.) Here is condemned the aim of some of the

working people and of certain theorists who say that all returns

belong to labor. But it is the practices of the owners and es-

pecially the dominant credit and owning class that are con-

demned. The “common good,” social justice, is the standard

of measurement. The distribution of created goods must be

brought into conformity with the demands of the common good

and social justice. (P. 21.)

There is another criterion of the socially just wage. It is

that the wage should be high enough to permit savings and

ownership. Every effort . . . must be made that at least in

future a just share only of the fruits of production be per-



A FIRST PURPOSE OF ECONOMIC LIFE 33

mitted to accumulate in the hands oj the wealthy, and that

the workers receive sums sufficiently ample so that by thrift

they may increase their possessions and by the prudent man-

agement of the same may be enabled to bear the family bur-

den with greater ease and security, being freed from that hand-

to-mouth uncertainty which is the lot of the proletarian.

(P. 22.) By “proletarian” is meant the unpropertied worker.

The common good demands that wage-earners of all kinds be

enabled by economizing that portion of their wages which re-

mains after necessary expenses have been met, to attain to the

possession of a certain modest fortune. (P. 25.) The wage-

earners of all kinds are both the wage-earners and the sal-

aried employees.

All this would seem to assume a permanent wage contract

modified only to the extent of a gradual growth in ownership

through the difficult process of thrift alone. But the wage

contract should itself change into a form of partnership. It

should change not because it is essentially unjust for a per-

son to work for wages for another. The partnership contract

is not the only just contract. But in the present state of

human society, . . . We deem it advisable that the wage-con-
tract, when possible, be modified somewhat by a contract of

partnership. ... In this way wage-earners are made sharers in

some sort in the ownership, or the management, or the profits.

(Pp. 22-23.)

The Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction in 1919

advocated copartnership as one means of distributing owner-

ship. A more novel elaboration of the idea is presented by the
International Union of Social Studies (a group of Catholic

theologians and economists) in a proposal that is tied up with

wage payments due because of the greater prosperity of in-

dustry, or, in the terms here used, due to the greater produc-

tivity of industry. It is found in their Code of Social

Principles.

The proposal is that the sum due to the increased pros-

perity (productivity) can be determined and paid at the end

of a period and paid, not in money, but in equities in stock.

The money would be used to buy out capital stock. In its

stead there would be issued a new kind of “labor stock” in

the concern. This would slowly but surely result in the can-

cellation of all capital stock and the destruction of all absentee

ownership. Industry would be owned by the persons engaged



34 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

in it, not in equal shares of ownership but with ownership

held, nevertheless, by all.

The Christian Labor movement in Italy, before the Mus-

solini revolution, proposed a logical further development of

the idea. When a person holding “labor stock” leaves a con-

cern, the option for its purchase should belong to the persons

at work in it. The organizations of the workers would exer-

cise the voting proxies of their members until through develop-

ment the system became a complete cooperative.

There should be a progressive decrease of the return re-

ceivable by property alone. Property is entitled to a reward

in proportion to the services of its owners. But as mere own-

ers their service is small. It is the service of supplying those

who work with means of work by past savings. Certainly all

the variable returns of an industry or concern are not due

them. Probably a permanent two per cent return is enough to

pay them for their service. The rest of the possible returns

of an industry should go in reducing prices so as to establish

parities in all prices and to give a special reward to those

who work, from the directors and executives down through

the whole body of workers.



PART THREE

PARTIAL MEASURES

VII. Collective Bargaining

When a person faces the problem of how income and own-

ership can be widely distributed, he faces instantly a double

problem. One is how to obtain part of the purpose when the

forces fighting the purpose are entrenched in power. Even

by revolution only a part can be obtained immediately. If

one rejects revolution, all that is sought is a gradual accumula-

tion of partial results until final victory comes. The second

problem is how to make the partial victories actual means to

the complete achievement of victory.

If a person seeks common ownership of practically all the

means of production and distribution, his partial victories and

immediate partial accomplishments can hardly have a relation

to his full victory. A small measure of government ownership
may not at all lead on to universal government ownership;

it may simply clarify the situation and put an end to argu-

ments for full Socialism. The social legislation that Socialists

in common with others seek has no direct relation to the build-

ing of a Socialist society. In fact the Socialists who ask for

a measure, only, of government ownership and the ordinary

range of protective labor legislation have usually abandoned

all thought of complete Socialism. The Communists, stick-

ing to a program of complete Socialism, have no illusions that

partial victories are steps toward their complete program.

They, however, are always put to it to make the immediate

demands, and still prove that they are not putting these for-

ward as mere battle cries of discontent and arguments for the

revolution, while people suffer.

When a right distribution of income, a right distribution

of hours of work and a right distribution of wealth (with what-

ever measure of government ownership is necessary) is the

aim, then partial victories are real victories and actual steps

toward the final goal. For example, increases in wages, even

if only in relation to the cost of living, and more so if they

are in relation to the increased productivity of the country,

are real gains. In fact partial victories become the only wise

35



36 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

victories, since they alone can give the experience needed to

use fuller victories wisely.

In a class society, such as is created by Individualism and

such as attains to maturity in the present domination, the first,

normal and necessary method for wage and lesser salaried

workers is the labor union. They must obtain power. Singly

they are weak. It is their weakness as lone persons that has

given so many of them less than living wages, kept wages from

increasing in relation to productivity, kept them from sharing

equitably in the returns of industrty, and prevented their ris-

ing to ownership. Their weakness has made possible the pres-

ent concentrated income, wealth and power of the few.

Unionism is the plainest commonsense. The workers are

unpropertied. They do not own things to work with; others

own and control the means of work. As for them, they have

their ability to work. The owners need their labor to put the

means of production to use. If they each go singly for jobs

and pay, the owners can pit one of them against the other.

They must work, for that is the only way they can live. They

must hire out their labor. As lone individuals they are so

weak that they are not free men at the moment of getting

employment or afterwards. Only by joining together with

others, and in fact with all others who can do the work avail-

able, are they free men able to determine that their wage or

salary and their hours will meet the purpose of economic life

and their own dignity and importance in the scheme of

things.

Workingmen's associations should be so organized and gov-

erned as to furnish the best and most suitable means for attain-

ing what is aimed at, that is to say, for helping each member

to better his condition to the utmost in body, soul and prop-

erty. (P. 11.) The aim is to make actual the good of all and

each in economic life. The unions should exist and their

method of organization and rules of action should be so fash-

ioned as best to attain the end.

The same liberty must be claimed for the founding of asso-

ciations which extend beyond the limits of a single trade.

(P. 28.) One reason is simply that if the people of one trade

or of one industry are to control their labor in that one trade

or industry, they must control not only the supply of workers

who are actually in the industry but all who might enter it.

And another reason is that unless there is a parity between



PARTIAL MEASURES 37

the wages and salaries in all branches of work, then one group

may rise for a time, only to fall later through the impact, for

example, of unemployment due to the low incomes of others.

The only way to attain such parity is by the organization of

all and the inter-relation of the various organizations.

In the past twenty years a great many labor organizations

have been formed within single business corporations. Almost

uniformly they have been organized by the employer and

thereafter, for the most part, controlled by him. They have

been formed almost always to avoid dealing with an effective

labor union. These organizations are called company unions.

The name fits them.

Being company unions, they cannot meet the employer

freely. He hires whom he wishes and fires whom he wishes.

The employees do not control their own labor because they do

not control all the employer’s available labor. They can all

quit his employment or he can discharge all of them. In

either case he can usually find substitutes. The labor “mar-

ket” is not divided off by single companies. Their organiza-

tion is. It is, therefore, essentially inadequate.

The officials of the company union are employees of the

company. If they talk too freely to the employer about wages

or hours or about any condition of the work, they can be dis-

charged or otherwise penalized. It is doubtful whether they

will even talk freely; for they know that someone else holds

the pencil that can check them off the pay roll.

If they may talk freely, it is rare if they can talk capably

in behalf of wage increases or decreases of hours and marshal

their arguments with information, intelligence, strength and

tact. Not everyone can do that. The company union limits

the range of choice of representatives. They must all be found

in the single company. Men and women are needed who know

outside wage conditions; but to learn that they must know

how to use libraries and read statistics and how to talk with

and write successfully to numberless scattered and often ob-

scure persons over the country. -They must know how to

formulate the information in terms of the particular company.

They must possess the gift of parrying and thrusting in the

round-table conversations with the executives of their com-

pany and with the lawyers, public relations counselors and

statisticians whom the company employs. They must be

strong without being belligerent. They must be tactful with-



38 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

out being weak. Such qualities the company union must find

in its own narrow circle.

Such extraordinary persons are never just found; they are

developed. In the company union plan they are to develop in

the environment of each and every company. They are to

develop under the watchful eye of executives who promote and

demote, put on part time and on full time, hire and fire. The

chances of such men and women appearing and growing to the

stature of good negotiators are slim. They will soon either

learn which side of their bread has butter on or learn that

neither side has butter.

The company union is a trick, a green-goods game. A

labor union must be a union of labor and not a union of a

few laborers who happen to have gotten jobs in one company.

That does not mean that all workers are to be lumped to-

gether, indiscriminately, without regard to trades or indus-

tries in one organization. It does mean that whatever the

divisions, they cannot be organized effectively on a smaller

basis than a whole trade or a whole industry and it means

that all the separately organized trades and industries must

be closely federated.

Sound unionism requires also that the union administer it-

self. It should choose its own officers. These officers should

in important positions be free of any or all the employers in

the trade or industry. They should therefore receive their

living from labor.

Sound unionism requires that the union have a treasury.

If the negotiation comes to a deadlock, then the union must

be free to tell the employer that the men do not accept those

terms of work and will not work. To do that successfully,

the union must usually be able to support the workers until

the company comes to terms. The company must know that

the union has such power.

Or consider the common enough case of particular com-

panies that cannot pay a living wage because of reasons de-

tailed above—bad management, lack of enterprise or out-of-
date methods, unjust burdens from without the company, or

unfair prices for the company’s products or for the whole in-

dustry’s products. If the evils exist within the single com-

pany alone, a company union must find men among its own

number able enough to point out the evils and suggest im-

provements in management and methods. The union must



PARTIAL MEASURES 39

then be strong enough to insist upon the improvements. Oth-

erwise the case goes by default and the employees, unjustly

treated by inefficient employers, have no way of getting the

barest minimum of justice. They succumb.

Or if it is outside burdens and unfair prices that prevent

the company from paying a living wage, then the single com-

pany union is as ineffective as the single company in nearly

every type of case. Perhaps the cause of the low prices is the

low wages of other unorganized or company-organized workers.

The remedy for the default cannot be administered at all

by the employees. They merely accept. The normal remedy:

Let employers, therefore, and employed join in their plans and

efforts to overcome all difficulties and obstacles, and let them

be aided in this wholesome endeavor by the wise measures of

the public authority (P. 24) is impractical if the company

union is the sole agency.

Existing bona fide labor unionism in the United States

consists of the unions in the American Federation of Labor,

the four engine and train brotherhoods on the railroads and a

few other unions, notably the Amalgamated Garment Workers.

They seek to organize all the workers in a trade or industry.

They administer themselves. They choose and pay their own

officials. They negotiate through trained negotiators. They

store up a treasury for emergency purposes.

If the defects in these unions are not so irreparable as to

require that they be scrapped and other unions built in their

place, the logical thing for every wage worker and every lesser

salaried worker is to join them. Where there is no union now

for a particular trade or industry, the logical thing is to or-

ganize a new union and then federate with other unions as

closely as js necessary to meet the facts. If the existing unions

are wholly defective, then the logical thing is to scrap them

and build effective organizations.

This is not only a right. .It appears to be a duty. The duty

is based in the necessity of unionism as the first normal means

of making economic life meet the purpose God intended for it.

A man with a family is obliged to take care of his family.
They should have all the goods they need for a good physical,

mental, moral and spiritual life. He should give it to them.

The union is a necessary means of his giving it to them. He

is obliged to use all the necessary means of living up to his

duty.



40 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

If there is not a wide distribution of the production of

industry, there will be unemployment. He may be one of

those unemployed. The family will then suffer, whether or

not they go on the charity rolls when unemployment comes.

The union is a necessary means of increasing wages and de-

creasing hours in relation to industrial productivity.

If he has not a family, normally he should marry and rear

a family. If he is the exception, he is still obliged to use the

normal means of avoiding unemployment. Moreover, he is

obliged not to do anything that will hurt others who have a

family. If he works for less than a family wage and for less

than enough to provide the safeguard against unemployment,

then he is hurting others by his competition. He is unfair to
them.

The same stands true of the whole range of labor’s rise to

participation in profits, management and ownership, to the fair

distribution of profits and to the equitable and widespread dis-

tribution of ownership.

The tragedy is that there are certain glaring defects in the

American labor unions. Some are defects of practice. Some

are defects of structure. Some are defects of spirit, reflected in

practice and structure.

There is graft and racketeering in certain local unions.

Excessive salaries are paid to certain national officials who tend

to perpetuate themselves in office. It is hardly enough to ex-

cuse such practices by saying that these are common faults

of American life from which every American institution will

suffer. The excuse is true but not satisfying. Nor is it

enough to excuse the fraternal order and religious factions in

the unions by saying that these reflect American customs. Nor

is it enough to grow philosophic about machine-made elections

and excessive salaries. And it is not enough to point out the

obvious truth that there is less graft and racketeering in labor

unionism than in politics or business, less fraternal order and

religious discrimination in labor unionism than in politics, less

machine-made voting than in fraternal orders or in politics,

and a smaller number of excessive salaries than almost any-

where else. For the fact is that any of this is too much in a

type of organization that should be different.

These evils are publicized. In certain cases, for example,

of racketeering, what is ascribed to a labor union is not the

action of a labor union at all. Yet the evils exist.



PARTIAL MEASURES 41

The real reason for these evils is not that the unions are

reflecting American vices. The reasons lie elsewhere. One is

that the unions have not fully reflected the American needs of

labor. And the other is that American conditions handicap

unionism. One reason is inside the unions. The other is in-

side American labor. The two reasons interact on each other.

American labor unions are too loosely confederated and

the unions are predominantly too narrowly subdivided by

trades. Excessive subdivision by trades and looseness of con-

federated action seem the main structural defects. They are

organized for the most part after a model molded in the

eighties. At that time there was a labor union organization,

the Knights of Labor, which tended to bulk together skilled,

semi-skilled and unskilled. Strikes were frequent and their

success was not marked. The skilled trades found themselves

handicapped by carrying along the unskilled who had none

of the bargaining strength of scarcity of skill to help them.

Skilled unions began to form separately and to federate, but

so loosely that their separate strength as skilled workers would

not be diluted in negotiations or strikes by the unskilled and

semi-skilled.

That pattern of unionism is followed today with a few ex-

ceptions. It is followed when, far more than in the eighties,

the American manual worker is predominantly in the non-

skilled trades. The skilled unions try to extend their theo-

retical jurisdiction to include the non-skilled workers in their

general line. But the difficulties still remain. To organize, for

example, the automobile industry on the craft union basis, a

huge number of unions each claiming a jurisdiction over work-

ers, some of whom really follow the trade while others follow

an infinitesimal part of it, are required all to cooperate. But

the separate unions are not accustomed to cooperating so

closely and the skilled workers are not accustomed to thinking

of automatic workers as members of their trade, which they

are not. And so the unions have thus far fumbled around,

talked of what they were going to do and plan, and then

never have done it.

They have, it is true, the burden or organizing people of

many nationalities and languages, although this, through immi-

gration quotas, is being lessened. They have, it is true, the

burden of carrying unionism to the Individualist farmers who

for three decades migrated in large numbers to the cities. They



42 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

encounter the vast reaches of a fluctuating and often sparsely

settled continent. They have to face concentrated wealth and

the still greater concentration of power in the hands of the

banks. But the structural defect still remains of great im-

portance. It has to be cured if the problem of American em-

ployees is to be met, and all and each obtain the living to

which they are entitled.

The structural defect grows out of a defect in spirit. For

the fact is that no part of labor can rise very far above the

rest without being sooner or later dragged down. The skilled

trades thought and still, to a degree, think that they are strong

in their own right. If for no other reason, they are dragged

down by unemployment unless the rest rise. Or they are

dragged down by the competition of the others. In the ex-

clusiveness of their pride in their apprenticeship and trade

they hope to save themselves, alone, and, as a second thought,

perhaps by the sheer weight of their better wages and hours

lift all the rest. Instead the weight of all the rest has been a

millstone.

Moreover, the limited program of higher wages and shorter

hours does not meet the needs of the working people. Such a

program keeps labor in a subordinate class. The claims of

capital upon the whole varying returns of industry, the claims

of owners or, more exactly in big industry today, the claims

of the minority of owners and the creditors who control indus-

try, and the chasm between them and the propertyless are part

of labor’s problem. These are not confronted by the wages-

hours program.

Yet outside the range of their defects they are good or-

ganizations. They do good work. Their leaders are, in the

great predominance, honest; and they are able men within

the limitations of the movement. The logic of the case is for

every wage worker and every lesser salaried worker to join his

appropriate union and, when there, fight for the aims of the

union, which, within the limits of their defects, are his aims,

and fight also for a change in program and structure to make

them complete.

Probably less than 15 per cent are now organized. It is a

first necessity that all workers organize.

Still other groups of employees than the automatic work-

ers and the unskilled have gone almost untouched by organiza-

tion. One group is the clerical workers and sales workers in



PARTIAL MEASURES 43

stores. While they work usually for what is called a salary,

the conditions of their work and the amount of the salary put

them in the same general group as the wage workers. They

have with much consistency avoided unionism although, with

whatever modifications are necessary for their somewhat dif-

ferent conditions, they need it every bit as much as manual

workers. Their wages and steadiness of employment are often

at about the level of lower paid factory workers.

An increasing number of them are women. The growth of

clerical and sales work in the twenty-five years before the de-

pression was phenomenal. It opened up positions peculiarly

fitted to women and girls and changed the make-up of Ameri-

can labor.

These sedentary and genteel types of work induce among

workers a type of mind that does not lend itself to the col-

lective bargaining and activity of the union. When so many

in these occupations are women and girls contemplating de-

parture from gainful work by marriage, the difficulty of or-

ganizing them is the greater.

As for the men in these types of work, they often contem-

plate promotions to the executive positions that have become

so numerous. Large numbers among them, both men and

women, hold a special responsibility and are in the confidence

of their employers. Membership in unions seems to them out

of the question. And yet their first interest is at a point that

requires unionism for its protection. Probably, however, they

will not effectively organize until the rest of labor becomes

much better organized.

The executives and technicians, beneath the rank of the

direct representatives of the employers, need organization as

well. They are employees even when they are overseers, as the

lesser executives are. Their rightful place is in the labor move-

ment.

Necessary for labor, organization is necessary for the em-

ployers too; they need organization to prevent cut-throat com-

petition among themselves both in labor conditions and in

prices. But, more directly to the issue of the distribution of

income, they need organization to work out with organized em-

ployees those wage and salary scales, for example, which will

give the living wage, the maximum employment wage and
those hours of work that are proper to the industry. They

need organization to protect themselves from unjust demands.



44 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

They need organization to work out the inefficiencies in their

industry and to relieve it from unjust burdens.

There should be thorough organization of both employers

and employees in every industry. Then, within the limits of

the class division, they should meet together, make collective

agreements to fit whole industries or subdivisions of indus-

tries and settle by peaceful methods and agreement disputes

that arise over the terms of the contract. In a branch of

the clothing industry another custom has arisen of having

an impartial arbiter who decides disputes over the terms of

the contract that cannot be settled without an appeal.

And yet collective bargaining faces a seeming dilemma. If

employees are to share equably in the productivity of industry

itself and rise to ownership, the danger is strong of their divid-

ing themselves and losing a united consciousness of common in-

terests in whole industries and trades, and thus weakening or

destroying collective bargaining. Productivity and profits vary

from company to company and from industry to industry. As

an employee class, not responsible in any formal way for pro-

duction, they can do nothing about this even when the mate-

rial elements, as they often do, permit a narrowing gap between

the profits of one industry and another and one individual

concern and another. Ownership itself adds another element

of division. One person would own more than another. The

whole system of high basic wages and salaries might be broken

down by a greater interest in profit-sharing and employee own-

ership.

The dilemma seems part way resolvable within the limits

of collective bargaining. The solution lies in a policy regard-

ing profit-sharing and employee ownership that will require

employees to turn over the profit-share and stock equities to

the trusteeship of their union. For example, a collective con-

tract is established requiring a certain wage rate and a certain

share of the profits at the end of every year. The union will

supervise the whole contract to see to it that the employees

actually receive their honest profit-share. The contract will

also include the provision of the Code of Social Principles re-

garding the profit-share being paid in equities in capital stock.

The union will be the voting trustee of its members’ equities

throughout the whole industry. Right of sale of the stock will

be limited, even to the point of the individual’s giving a per-

petual option to the union, exercisable when he leaves the in-



PARTIAL MEASURES 45

dustry or trade, the union binding itself to be the agent of re-

sale to working members, only, of the industry or trade.

Yet this proposal assumes a number of things. It assumes

organization of the employees throughout a whole industry,

including the clerical workers and those executives under the

rank of direct representatives of the employers. It assumes

that all share in the profits in the same proportion in relation

to their contribution to the industry and concern, as deter-

mined by their actual salary and wage. It assumes a strong

and united labor movement in which all elements will be co-

hesively marching toward the same goal. Moreover, the chief

executives should themselves be brought into a profit-sharing

plan.

It assumes also a new spirit among employees both as to

their rightful position in economic life as to ownership, and as

to actual willingness to share in the responsibilties of the whole

administration of economic life. It assumes a spirit of close

comradeship among them.

What is more, if collective bargaining alone is to secure

this, two other things seem needed. The government will not

be a passive onlooker. It will either help or hinder or perhaps

even prevent such a forthright plan of shifting the ownership

and control from a few, largely outsiders, to the many actually

at work. Indeed, to secure it at all and certainly to secure it

peacefully, the government must help.

Second, the employees in their unions must face the prob-

lem of how they can make profit-sharing honest. To accom-

plish that they must be equipped with the power and the abil-

ity not only to examine the books but must grow to the posi-

tion of joint administrators of industry itself. For the logic

of properly distributing income and ownership leads to the

control of the productive process itself from which the income

is derived and in which the ownership is centered.

Collective bargaining about wages and hours alone implies

simply obtaining good terms for an inferior class. But collect-

ive bargaining about profit-sharing and ownership-sharing im-

plies that the members of the inferior class think of themselves

no longer as a subject class but as a rightful partner in all

economic life.

The necessity of organizing in industry is true of other oc-

cupations. (P. 13.) It is true, particularly, of farming. Not

only should farm laborers and farm tenants be organized, after



46 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

the manner of the class organization, but farm producers should

be organized along the lines of their separate commodities or

closely allied groups of commodities. A farmer is, at once, a
producer, a marketer and a seeker of credit. He may be a

good producer and wrest from the soil rich crops. But then

when he goes to market he meets a thing wholly different from

his ordinary life. A commercial atmosphere hangs over every-
thing. However shrewd, he is a Moses at the fair. He meets

a world unknown to him. It is a vast central market moving,

in part, at the behest of material facts and human forces orig-

inating thousands of miles away and, in part, at the behest of

great processors’ organizations that he, a lone individual, can-

not match. He must for his own safety be part of an or-

ganization strong enough to meet, at least in part, the vast net-

work of forces that fix the prices of the crops he has toiled

over and from which alone he lives.

VIII. Legislation

In the discussion of the living wage and certain of the

barriers in its way and in the discussion of the union as a

means of surmounting these barriers, it was indicated that

government action of some sort was necessary and should be

employed. This cut directly across the accepted dictum of

Individualism carried over by its heir, the present domination.

If government action is needed to help secure the living wage,

then it may be needed for other things.

The proper range of government action is wide. The State

is not a mere policeman. The civil power is more than

the mere guardian of law and order. (P. 9.) It is not a mere

umpire of the battle royal of cut-throat competition. It must

strive with all zeal “to make sure that the laws and institu-

tions, the general character . and administration of the com-

monwealth, should be such as of themselves to realize public

well-being and private prosperity.” (P. 9.) It is not rightly

the slave of the new dictators. The state . . . should be the

supreme arbiter, ruling in kingly fashion far above all party

contention, intent only upon justice and the common good,

. . . not a slave, bound over to the service of human passion and

greed. (P. 33.)

The duty of rulers is to protect the community and its



PARTIAL MEASURES 47

various elements; and in protecting the rights of individuals

they must have special regard for the infirm and needy. (P. 9.)

For the rich do not need government protection so much;

their wealth protects them. “The mass of the poor have no

resources of their own to fall back upon and must chiefly de-

pend upon the assistance of the State. And for this reason

wage-earners, since they mostly belong to that class, should be

especially cared for and protected by the government.” (P. 10.)

Government action has its dangers. Perhaps the greatest

of all today is that the new domination will use government

not alone to help itself against business rivals here and abroad,

but also to subject further the home population, or large ele-

ments in it and prevent them from using either economic power

or legislation to grow toward the realization of the full pur-

pose of economic life. A still greater danger is that under the
guise of legislation beneficial to the workers, compromises may

be agreed to that would cut the ground away from any hope

of real advance. The situation is the more dangerous because

normally those who hold economic power control in the long

run the legislation. So far from being a cure-all, legislation,

by itself, can do very little when the economic power in the

community is as concentrated as now. Economic power among

the propertyless workers must itself grow and must advance

with legislation.

Yet legislation is necessary. The solution of the dilemma

seems to lie, first, in a growth of economic organization apart

from government and, second, in making the unions of the

working people and the farm cooperatives partners in the ad-

ministration of all legislation that directly concerns them. At

the present social rulership, ... in violation of all justice, has

been seized and usurped by the owners of wealth. This ruler

-

ship in fact belongs, not to the individual owners, but to the

State. (P. 35.) Yet their rulership over society will overcome

the political rulership in spite of all laws unless there is growth

in social power by the unpropertied and the farmers in the

organizations. In fact the unpropertied must rise en masse

to participation in ownership, the final source of economic

power, or the economic power of the few will remain the real

social rulership of the community. Rising to ownership is,

however, a matter of growth. Unionizing and using both the

union as partners in administration of labor laws and the farm

cooperatives in the farm laws are immediate steps. If taken,



48 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

they will moderate the dangerous but necessary progress of

legislation.

The danger is all the greater because the legislation needed

is so far-reaching. Now after Individualism has run its course,
and domination and mass production have revealed their in-

ternal contradictions, and domination has shown itself so hard,

cruel and relentless and has usurped social rulership, organiza-

tion alone can hardly win out without legislation. If it does

win, it will do so through long and protracted and bitter strikes,

through bloodshed and riots, and perhaps through revolution.

Legislation must itself temper what may easily become the

private war of organized labor and organized capital, a pri-

vate war that may then become a civil war. Government is,

rightly, the representative of the common good and its func-

tion extends both to obtaining it by positive action and to pre-

venting its being ultimately obtained (or not obtained) by

wrong action.

Much of the legislation will have to issue from the federal

government to meet national problems. Indeed some of it will

originate in international conferences in the new economic in-

terdependence of the world. The problem of local government

becomes therefore acute. But when economic organizations

are used as the partial administrators of the laws and are

raised to the dignity of public institutions and arms of gov-

ernment, then the underlying purposes of local self-government

can be cared for, in part, by the economic organizations.

Government has a relation to property ownership itself. A

purpose of ownership is the common good—the good of all
and each. Owners are in duty bound to take the common

good into consideration. Government is to define in detail

these duties (p. 17) of owners in relation to the common

good. Some of the obligations are clear in the divine and

natural law. Some are special applications so that the com-

mon good will be made the rule. Provided that the natural

and divine law he observed, the public authority, in view of

the common good, may specify more accurately what is licit

and what is illicit for property owners in the use of their pos-

sessions. (P. 17.) For
u
the defining of private possession has

been left by God to man’s own industry and to the laws of

individual peoples

”

(P. 17.)

There is much latitude here. It is true that
u
the right to

possess private property is derived from nature, not from man;



PARTIAL MEASURES 49

and the state has by no means the right to abolish it, but only

to control its use and bring it into harmony with the interests

of the public good.” (P. 17.) But the form that personal-

social ownership takes and the rights inhering in it are to meet

the common good, and the common good is a matter of right

and wrong in a certain environment. History proves that the

right of ownership, like other elements of social life, is not abso-

lutely rigid. ... (P. 17.) Many forms have existed in the

past. The problem is to accomplish that form of personal-

social ownership (remembering that public ownership also is

necessary) which will meet the good of all and each here and

now.

“The State may not discharge this duty in an arbitrary

manner
.”

(P. 17.) Personal-social ownership must be kept

intact. “Man’s natural right of possessing and transmitting

property by inheritance must remain intact and cannot be

taken away by the State from man.” (P. 17.) It is unlaw-

ful for the State to exhaust the means of individuals by crush-

ing taxes and tributes. (P. 17.) It is a grievous error so

to weaken the individual character of ownership as actually to

destroy it. (P. 16.)

However, when civil authority adjusts ownership to meet

the needs of the public good it acts not as an enemy, but as

the friend of private owners; for thus it effectively prevents the

possession of private property, intended by Nature’s Author

in His Wisdom for the sustaining of human life, from creating

intolerable burdens and so rushing to its own destruction. It

does not therefore abolish, but protects private ownership, and,

far from weakening the right of private property, it gives it

new strength. (Pp. 17-18.) The absolutistic form it has

taken has created intolerable burdens. The institution is, in

fact, rushing to its own destruction. And legislation is needed

to save it and make it an instrument for the good of all and

each.

Free competition and still more economic domination must

be kept within just and definite limits . . . under the effective

control of the public authority, in matters appertaining to this

latter’s competence. (P. 34.) The tradition of the country

has been, until recently, to put only the limits of outright

theft upon either competitive business or monopoly, save in

the public utility field, while there the valuation accepted has

meant excessive rates.



50 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

The whole program of labor legislation dealing with the

protection of life, health, strength, housing, work places, wages

and dangerous work and with the special protection of women

and children (P. 10) comes under the functions of government.

Special helps of government to work out a living wage for all

are in its province. (P. 24.)

Certain forms of property must be reserved to the State ,

since they carry with them an opportunity of domination too

great to be left to private individuals without injury to the

community at large. (Pp. 35-36.) Public ownership still can

be successfully fought by being called Socialism. In fact just

demands and desires of this kind contain nothing opposed to

Christian truth, nor are they in any sense peculiar to Social-

ism. (P. 36.)

At this stage in the discussion it is possible to indicate only

certain limited types of legislation which look almost exclu-

sively to the question of distribution of income. The new In-

dustrial Recovery Act, particularly, requires consideration of

another element, the element of production, before its place in

the scheme of things is seen.

To work out these legislative principles in terms of Ameri-

can conditions and needs, such a program of legislation as this,

granting its decided gaps, seems to meet some of the require-

ments:

I—To care for the unemployed:
Increases of the federal relief fund to help the states

and cities care for the nationally created problem of

unemployment.

Further federal public works, beyond the three bil-

lion amount, so as to stimulate business and em-

ployment.

II—Social insurance and protection of organizations:
Uniform state laws providing unemployment insur-

ance and old age pensions and administered by the

trade associations, the labor unions and the govern-

ment so these will be more effectively administered

and with less violation of human freedom and with

encouragement to economic organization.

State laws, like the new federal law, limiting the

handicaps to labor unions and labor union practice

set up by the injunction policy of courts.

Very high taxes on large incomes, excess profits and



PARTIAL MEASURES 51

large inheritances with corresponding reductions in

other forms of taxes so that taxes will fall upon those

best able to pay.

III

—

The extension of the Industrial Recovery Act to in-

clude the regulation of stock structure and profits,

this provision as well as the labor codes to be ad-

ministered by boards composed of the trade associa-

tions and the unions under the supervision of the

government.

IV

—

Further experimentation with the present farm law,

seeking to establish a parity of prices between farm

products and other products, and the strengthening

of the relations of government to the farm coopera-

tives in the administration of the law.

Farm and home mortgage moratoria and public re-

financing of them at low interest rates.

V—Valuation of public utilities for rate-making purposes
at original cost. Public ownership of all major elec-

tric power sources.

VI—Mutual insurance of bank deposits by the banks.
It must be kept in mind, however, that such a program of

legislation is open to several very serious objections. Assum-

ing that each particular piece of this program of legislation has

nothing wrong with it, still it is palpably a piecemeal and

partial attack upon a gigantic and unified problem and by its

very limitations can go only so far and then only in remedy-

ing particular problems. In so doing it also “submerges and

overwhelms” government with “an infinity of affairs and

duties” even though, under the program, government devolves

a considerable amount of the administration upon the economic

organizations, the trade associations of the employers, the

unions of labor, and the crop cooperatives of the farmers.



PART FOUR

ECONOMIC LIFE AN ORGANISM

IX. The Good of All and Each in Work

The problem as thus far stated is this: How to attain a
main purpose of wealth, equipment and work, the giving to

all and each all the goods they need for a good physical, men-

tal, moral and spiritual life. How to attain a distribution of
income that will follow this purpose through the payment of

living wages to all, through the payment of the maximum em-

ployment wage, through proper parities in wages and prices,

and through labor’s sharings in profits. How to attain that
distribution of ownership itself and that measure of public

ownership which will meet the common good. How to use the
chief methods, organization and government, to attain the right

distribution of income and wealth. (This stands over and

above the character, desires and spirit of the men and women

who make up the organization and the government.) How in
the long run to put the emphasis upon organization.

But certain elements are not included at all in such a state-

ment of the problem and so far have only been briefly touched.

The statement of the problem emphasizes distribution of

the income after the income is produced. It emphasizes distri-

bution of the ownership of the means of producing the income.

It considers organization and government as agencies toward

accomplishing a proper distribution. Implied here is, however,

another element of central importance that makes the whole

problem of attaining the purpose of economic life appear in a

new light.

The maximum employment wage, the wage parities and the

price parities assume another fact of economic life. They as-

sume the interdependence of person and person in each line of

production and service, the interdependence of all the lines

of production and service and the interdependence between the

occupations and the consumer. They assume a quasi-unity of

economic life. For, where this harmonious proportion is kept

,

man's various economic activities combine and unite into one

single organism and become members of a common body, lend-

ing each other mutual help and service. (P. 25.) The prob-

52



ECONOMIC LIFE AN ORGANISM S3

lem of actively directing something that is veritably a social

organism, a truly social and organic body (P. 23), for the good

of all and each is moved to the forefront.

Working life reveals itself, thus, as an organic union of its

members around their work and their means of work. It re-

veals itself as a union for the common good. It reveals itself

as a humanly directible thing for this human purpose. Here

is something to be considered not solely from the angle of dis-

tributing its product for the good of all and each, but from

the angle of it itself directing its own internal life as an organic

body of human beings who interdependently use the resources

and the equipment, with a hitherto unmatched technique, to

work and produce goods and services for the purposes, here and

hereafter, of all their brothers and each of their brothers.

Here is a concept of an order, a system, an objective inter-

dependence of human beings in social-economic life. Order

... is unity arising from the apt arrangement of a plurality of

objects . . . and true and genuine social order demands vari-

ous members of society , joined together by a common bond.

(P. 27.) Compared with this attitude an essential vice both

of Individualism and the new domination shows itself. For

they destroy the objective and natural social unity, order and

system of the human beings who make up each line of economic

life and all of it together, and they further destroy the unity

that binds each line of production and service and all of them

together to the consumers of the product or the service.

For the proper ordering of economic affairs cannot be left

to free competion alone. From this source have proceeded in

the past all the errors of the “Individualistic” school. This

school
,
ignorant or forgetful of the social and moral aspects of

economic matters, teaches that the State should refrain in

theory and practice from interfering therein, because these

possess in free competition and open markets a principle of

self-direction better able to control them than any created in-

tellect. Free competition, however, though within certain

limits just and productive of good results, cannot be the ruling

principle of the economic world. (Pp. 28-29.) The free

competition of Individualism cannot properly direct the eco-

nomic factor. Individualism looks upon economic life as a

thing moved and directed by the chaotic passions of free com-

petition and open markets, and holds that these passions of un-

restrained individuals can direct economic life better than the



54 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

intelligent and purposeful coordination of human beings in a

unity. We now know that this is false. Individualism could not
distribute rightly. Nor could it match production and distri-

bution. The result of chaotic passions is chaos. The failure

has been abundantly proved by the consequences that have fol-

lowed from the free rein given to these dangerous individualis-

tic ideals. (P. 29.)

The new domination cannot do it. Still less can this func-

tion be exercised by the economic supremacy which within re-

cent times has taken the place of free competition ; for this is

a headstrong and vehement power, which, if it is to prove

beneficial to mankind, needs to be curbed strongly and ruled

with prudence. It cannot, however, be curbed and governed

by itself. (P. 29.) Under the rule of its “unbridled ambition

for domination,” “economic life has become hard, cruel and

relentless in ghastly measure.” Its life is struggle for power

and for more power. Such is not and cannot be the source of

purposeful, intelligent and coordinated production for the com-

mon good and for the interdependent unity of human beings.

Instead, resources, equipment and technique are subjected, and

the human beings who work and the human beings who con-

sume are subjected to the unbridled ambition for domination

of the holders of concentrated power.

Unless human society forms a truly social and organic

body; unless a social order (and also the governmental order)

protect the exercise of work; unless the various forms of hu-

man endeavor, dependent one upon the other, cooperate and

reciprocally complete each other; unless intellect, the means of

work and labor combine together and form as it were a

unity; unless all this happens, man’s toil cannot produce its

due fruit. (P. 23.) Production itself, in other words, is

stunted and deflected unless economic life exists as an organic

unity. Essential to the process of producing those goods which

will give all and each the good physical, mental, moral and

spiritual life that they are entitled to is the social organiza-

tion of the process of producing the goods from the resources,

equipment and technique. What the nature of this social or-

ganization should be in the present environment is an involved

problem. But it is neither Individualism nor the new dictator-

ship.

Not only, therefore, a high standard of living and of leisure

but work itself, production itself, is of basic, importance.



ECONOMIC LIFE AN ORGANISM 55

Bodily labor . . . was decreed by Providence for the good of

man’s body and soul even after original sin. (Pp. 42-43.) Sys-

temizing economic life to introduce sound and true order within

it is necessary; and economic life will be faidty and imperfect,

unless all man’s activities harmoniously unite to imitate and,

as far as is humanly possible, attain the marvellous unity of the

divine plan, placing God as the first and supreme end of all

created activity, and regarding all created goods as mere in-

struments under God, to be used only in so far as they help

towards the attainment of our supreme end. (P. 43.) Gain-

ful work is not thereby belittled nor is human dignity lowered.

(P. 43.)

Work is holy. The process of producing and serving is part

of man’s purpose in life to work God’s earth and the resources

he discovers in it by means of the equipment and the skill that

the generations have transmitted to him in order both to sup-

ply the needs of all and of each and to develop the body and

soul of all and each. Now dead matter leaves the factory en-
nobled and transformed, where men are corrupted and de-

graded. (P. 43.) There should be a social order that will

make work, itself, as well as income and ownership, meet the

good of all and each.

Commonly it is said that the problem of production has al-

ready been solved and all that remains is to solve the problems

of distribution. What has been solved is the problem of me-

chanical productivity. Resources and equipment exist for a

giant output quickly producible. But two other problems have

not been solved. One is the problem of whether human beings

will consent to the intense regimentation that exists under mass

production when the production methods are dominated by the

few; and therefore whether the whole scheme of mass produc-

tion will not go downhill by the road of open revolt or a

decline in interest by the human element. And another prob-

lem arises from the fact that the exercise of the mind and the

will at work is reduced more and more under mass production,

controlled as it is by the dominating hand of the agents of

concentrated wealth and power. Therefore a purpose of work

within the work itself, not in its material results, is thwarted.

A need of human nature is not met.
A more tangible difficulty in the field of production exists.

It is that the productivity, so long as its control is in the hands

of men who want maximum profits, will be permanently re-



56 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

duced to that point which will give them maximum profits.

They restrict production because otherwise they would flood

the market with goods whose prices would be so low that they

could pay themselves only a restricted profit or no profit at

all. Their purpose is not to produce goods for human use but

to produce goods for sale for profit. And the maximum profit

motive defeats the whole purpose of the resources, equipment

and technique both as to the consuming of the goods for hu-

man welfare and as to the spiritual and psychological condi-

tions of work.

Both evils are key evils of the present regime. By a con-

centrated control of the process of production ruled by the

maximum profit motive, the quantity of the product can and

will be limited. All and each do not and will not receive all

the goods that the resources, equipment and technique can pro-

duce. And these will not so produce, until a social organiza-

tion of economic life exists.

Moreover, work itself will be deflected to a wrong purpose.

Dominated by the sabotaging interests of the few, the human

mind and will of the people actually in industry, from the

executives and engineers on through all the types of work, will

be dehumanized.

There would be no great difference as to the effects of the

process of production upon human beings if regimentation un-

der politicians or regimentation under engineers is substituted

for regimentation under financiers. Financiers may even be

preferable. The politicians would possess, as now, the insuf-

ferable insolence of elected persons and civil service dignitaries.

The engineers would be harder and more relentless, if less pa-

tently cruel.

Regimentation of labor is not only the order of the day.

The idea grows. Traditionally it has been put forward by the

social communists emphasizing control of production by society

as a whole. They have been sharply divided from the anar-

chist communists who have looked only to separate small pro-

ductive groups and from the syndicalist communists who have

looked to the rule of society by large economic organizations

alone. The social communists, now divided into Communists

and Socialists, have held the view that production must be

regimented under a unified central authority to produce effi-

ciently. They have admitted that this means loss of freedom

at work and the surrender of many a human quality that tra-



ECONOMIC LIFE AN ORGANISM 57

ditionally has been held good. But they have contended that

man is born to live outside of work and that work is nothing

but a burden. If loss of freedom at work and loss of other

traditionally respected qualities is necessary for mass produc-

tion, then let these pass away. The loss will be met by gran-

deur of life apart from work and by utter freedom in consum-

ing the immeasurable goods that regimented mass production

can provide. (P.37.)

A great many who still call themselves Socialists have given
up this view and have moved into a semi-syndicalist position

in which they speak of a combination of governmental and or-

ganizational control over economic life under common owner-

ship. They thus avoid in their thinking the older idea of abso-

lute social control over work held by the official representa-

tives of the community as a whole. In practice, however, a com-

munist society could hardly avoid the evil of excessive con-

trol of work and of production by outsiders. The final source

of power—ownership of the means of life—would rest in the
community. The community would tend toward exercising its

power. Individuals and lesser groups might grow restive and

might even rebel. They would lack power to succeed. They

would have to succumb.

The Socialist idea as to control of production has been

taken over by others who do not believe in common ownership.

The dictatorship of finance has indeed encouraged such an idea.

But the very process of automatic machine work that now pre-

vails induces it. It is common enough now for persons to think

of the labor problem solely in terms of labor’s income and such

a distribution of an ever-growing product, ever more “scientifi-

cally” managed, as will let all live a good life—outside of work.
People are to be automatons in industry, working few hours in

utter subjection to the rule of technicians (under the rule,

themselves, of someone else), but living a life as consumers in

utter luxury and ease. This was a concept underlying the

Technocratic craze. In modified form, it is a common view.

Actually, work is a part of life. In the scheme of life work

is good, good for both body and soul (P. 42). Life is not only

a “consumer” life. All life, working life as well as consuming

life, exists so that a person may develop and evolve to the full

all his facuities to the praise and glory of his Creator. Social

control of a kind and a degree is necessary to correspond to the

social nature of the work, of the materials and of all life. But



58 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

to divide life into two parts, work and “living,” and put one

under compulsion of the most excessive kind and put the

other under a false liberty is against both the social nature

of a person and his individual rights and welfare. It is in com-

plete contradiction to the Christian view of life and Chris-

tian doctrine. (P. 37.) Along with the cognate Socialist

idea that society and social authority are a mere convenience

and contrivance for the material and temporal advantages of

mankind, instead of being natural and of divine origin and for

man’s whole good, both here and hereafter, it is this that puts

even the moderate Socialism, which advocates only a measure

of public ownership and which has rejected the class war con-

cept of social life and social change, in essential contradiction

with Catholicity. (P. 38.)

As for Communism, it practices regimentation in economic

life and utter freedom in the rest of life, although it has not

produced its mountains of goods for luxury and ease
;
and it

talks social communism’s customary new mixture of social and.

organizational control. It offends in three other ways: the

abolition of personal-social ownership, the class war and revo-

lution, and hatred of religion. (P. 34.)

Excessive unification is a rejection of the organic character

of working life. It makes of economic life solely a unity rather

than a unity made up of interdependent individuals and groups.

There are in fact three levels. There is the individual with his

own personality and rights; and the final strength he needs is

a system of widely distributed ownership. There is the per-

son’s functional group, the occupation, the line of production

and service; and the strength here lies in organization. There

is the whole community represented by the government; and

its strength is in the law and its power to imprison and to

attain ownership of a thing needed for the community. All

three levels have to be taken into consideration to make eco-

nomic life, which is objectively and naturally an interdependent

thing, really the social organism that it ought to be. The cen-

ters are these: some form of organization of each line of pro-

duction and service; some form of incorporation of the now

regimented employees into the organization; some form of

inter-organization of all the organized lines of production and

service; and some form of governmental supervision.



PART FIVE

THE FULL PROGRAM

X. An Organized Economic Life

In some way every element in the productive process must

be brought into the general administration through responsible

representatives. In some way must be used the information

and the interest and the sense of personal responsibility for

the success of the undertaking which every worker now pos-

sesses in spite of the mental climate of both absolutistic owner-

ship and the machine process that tends to freeze his initiative

and enthusiasm.

The separate industries and all of them together are ob-

jectively societies of interdependent human beings. They are

social units. The separate companies and plants are lesser

units in the society of the industry and in the society of the in-

terdependent industries. As nature induces those who dwell

in close proximity to unite into municipalities, so those who

practice the same trade or profession, economic or otherwise,

combine into vocational groups. These groups, in a true sense

autonomous, are considered by many to be, if not essential to

civil society, at least its natural and spontaneous development.

(P. 27.) A bond of union exists among all within one and the
same group who join together to produce goods or give a serv-

ice. (P. 27.) The very act of working together in a certain

line of work binds them together. The very fact that their

true purpose is the common good binds them together. And all

the lines of production are bound together by the objective

dependence of one commodity or service upon all others and

by the common good which is the true purpose of all. (P. 28.)

To obtain the common good each line of work must be

organized. If each separate unit in a line of work went out

honestly and, within its limits, intelligently to attain the com-

mon good, it could not do> so; for to do so, it would have to

know what every other unit in the line of work was doing and

planning to do. The well-known example of wheat farmers

shows this fact. And unless all were equally honest, equally

informed and equally intelligent the whole scheme of things

would be thrown out of joint by the sins, misinformation or

59



60 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

unintelligence of some. They would produce too much or not

enough.

Unless there is some kind of organized inter-relationship

between the various lines of work so that they can know and

plan together, one line will, in fact, run too far ahead of an-

other and the whole delicate and subtle structure will be thrown

out of joint.

And, again, every element in each industry and in all to-

gether will have to contribute its knowledge and ability and be

represented directly in the separate organizations of the sepa-

rate lines of production or service and in the inter-organiza-

tion, or else, if for no other reason, the whole organism will be

thrown out of joint by the pride, greed and power of the rest.

Nor does this mean equality of power between individual and

individual or between separate types of work. It does, how-

ever, mean a distribution of power and of responsibility within

each line of work and within all together.

Apart from this, there is no refuge from either Individual-

ism or private financial dictatorship except absolute control by

the government. As for government, there is a fundamental

principle of social philosophy, unshaken and unchangeable,

and it retains its full truth today (P. 26.), to wit: Just as it

is wrong to take from individuals things they can do with their

own resources and industry and turn these over to the com-

munity, so also it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance

of right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate

to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by

smaller and lower bodies. (P. 26.)

The government is not equipped to be an industrialist. It

may own certain means of work. It may and should regulate

and supervise and often cooperate with the persons actually

doing the work. But in any case, save in emergency, and even

when public ownership of certain resources and equipment is

demanded for the common good, actual administration is not

within its function or its capabilities. When it does so it is

deflected from its true purpose.

One of the gravest evils of governmental life today, and an

evil that tends to grow all the time, arises from the very ab-

sence of an organized economic life. On account of the evil of

Individualism, . . . things have come to such a pass that the

highly developed social life which once flourished in a variety

of prosperous institutions organically linked with each other,



THE FULL PROGRAM 61

has been damaged and all but ruined
,
leaving thus virtually

only individuals and the State. (P. 26.) The destruction of

the organized economic life in the guilds of the Middle Ages

meant that social life lost entirely its organic form. (P. 26.)

Government, therefore, has at long last become submerged and

overwhelmed. The logical and normal thing is to organize

separately the groups that are actually giving their lives to the

performance of a service or the production of a commodity and

to organize all of them together and entrust them, under gov-

ernment supervision and help, to do the job. Instead, domina-

tion and the remnants of Individualism forbid government

from doing the natural and normal thing. And so government

alone remains and the perpetual increase of the burdens of

government turns it from its own purpose so as either to help

the victims or to help the dictators or to save the surviving

competition from its own suicide.

By turning over to the economic groups, organized by func-

tion and then inter-organized, the work that they are fitted to

do, the work will be done. Government can and should help

by directing
,
watching

,
stimulating and restraining

,
as circum-

stances suggest or necessity demands. (P. 26.) It should pro-

tect and defend the social-economic organism. Then govern-

ment can carry out with greater freedom, power and success

the tasks belonging to it, because it alone can effectively ac-

complish these. (P. 26.)
;
and the abler and more effective will

then be the economic life itself in its social organization and

the happier and more prosperous the Condition of the State.

(P. 27.)

The solution of the central governmental problem of today

rests in the restoration of the economic order, the organized

and inter-organized lines of production and service, to a true

place in social life as natural and autonomous units of social

life—every bit as natural and autonomous as the society of
persons living as physical neighbors within cities and towns.

Such organization will also bridge and finally close the

chasm across which now the classes fight, and across which

they will fight still more in the future unless there is change.

The social organization of economic life brings the two together

in a matter that is partially of interest to both. It unites them

by function. The unions and the employers’ associations re-

main
;
for their interests are now in large part opposed by rea-

son of the concentrated ownership and absentee control, and



62 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

the maximum profit motive of the few. But if the two classes

meet together only and always to dispute about differences,

there is nothing but class struggle.

Class organization is essential to class interests. Class or-

ganization should be as close to being complete as is possible.

Without unions, the workers are lambs led to the slaughter.

But with class organizations alone, both owners and workers

are lions. The bargaining transforms this labor market into an

arena where the two armies are engaged in combat and to this

grave disorder, which is leading society to ruin, a remedy must

evidently be applied as speedily as possible. (P. 27.) The re-

organization of the two classes into a council for the adminis-

tration of their common industry helps to overcome the class

struggle by uniting them in a common interest.

It is, in fact, necessary in the process of the class struggle

itself, if the good of all and each is to be obtained. When an

industry or a company cannot pay a living wage, the employers

may be content to let the industry or the company drift. The

employees are penalized. Unless they share in the administra-

tion of an industry they cannot help to correct its bad manage-

ment, want of enterprise or out-of-date methods or help lift its

unjust burdens or cure its price cutting. If they are to receive

a maximum employment wage, they cannot know what the

wage scale should be unless they are on the inside of the in-

dustry itself. If they are to share equably in the profits, they

should by all standards share in the control of the conditions

whereby profits are made. And if they are to advance to

ownership the logic of growth requires that they advance in

administrative power over their industry also. Collective bar-

gaining plus actual participation in the actual administration

of their industry are two parts of one single and necessary pro-

gram of action by the unpropertied workers.

But if the purpose of the class organization is, on the other

hand, ultimate revolution and Communism, then there should

be collective bargaining only and it should take on its bitter-

est form. Or if the purpose of collective bargaining is the

permanent inferiority of the unpropertied, seeking a wage that

makes life not too unliveable and work not too unsteady—then
collective bargaining of a mild but of a completely organized

sort is all that is needed. Yet collective bargaining, if practi-

cally complete on both sides, does not rest in the mild form.

It becomes an agency either of discontent and revolution or of



THE FULL PROGRAM 63

gradual growth within the system of personal-social ownership.

Direct sharing by collective bargaining unions in the admin-

istration of industry itself, through representation on joint

councils of the industry, is the only sure road to the gradual

change of society from its present melange of dictatorship and

competitive struggle onward to a cooperative life.

Thus brought into the administration of industry, their

organizations can safely and ably attack the problem discussed

before—how employees, the executives, both major and minor,

the clerical workers, and the manual workers can unitedly,

safely and surely rise by means of profit-sharing into owner-

ship. They can do so by reason of their economic power, by

reason of the logic of their increased responsibilities and by

reason of their growing power over governmental policies. The

growth in income and ownership that is necessary if the good

of all and of each is to be secured by a proper distribution of

the product of the resources, equipment and work can hardly

be obtained without the social organization of economic life.

Certain gains can be registered without it. And these lesser

gains are worth working for. But the central necessity is a

new organization of economic life.

Then the lesser chasm can be bridged, as well, that divides

now the executives and technicians from all the rest in an in-

dustry and a concern. They now represent the owners and

profits. They can then represent themselves, their talents and

knowledge, the good of the industry and the good of the con-

sumers of their product. One of the spiritual tragedies of the

present regime is the conflict between an able man’s desire

to do good work and serve the public and the people in his

industry and the compulsion he is under to turn out maximum

profits at the cost of limited production, unused talents, sup-

pression of his fellow-workers, and profiteering prices.

XI. The Form and Aims

Not only as a means whereby the full measure of social jus-

tice is obtainable in the future, through the gradual steps that

alone insure effectiveness and permanency, is such an organized

life necessary. The steps to final victory are themselves worth-

while. They are worthwhile in the better distribution of in-

come and property. They are worthwhile in the lessening of

the class struggle. They are worthwhile in freeing the govern-



64 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

ment of its excessive burdens and freeing the people of the ex-

cessive activity of government. The better distribution of in-

come and property will react upon the problem of production

and help furnish it its outlet.

The organization of both groups to administer their sepa-

rate industries and the joint economic life of the country will

serve directly to stabilize industry itself. The maximum profit

motive that perpetually sabotages production will be handi-

capped by the representation of employees and their oppor-

tunity to limit profits. More than that, their major interest

as workers is steady work and income under good conditions.

Brought into the administration of their industry and of all

economic life, they will be in a position to make their major

interest effective.

Only through such organization does it seem possible for

common men under the new technology to make their work

develop and evolve their faculties and be for the good of their

body and soul. Through their representation in the general

administration of their whole industry they will be able to use

better their minds and wills at work by sharing in the de-

termination of the general production policies of their whole

industry. As time goes on the new national set-up would

carry with it a participation by the employees in the manage-

ment of the individual units. This has already been tried and

found of great value in the skilled trades through union rep-

resentation in the formulating of the production policies of

management, for example, in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

shops. It will be of value in automatic industry also. There

is a human element in the long-time efficiency of the automatic

industries which the technicians of the machine overlook and

which the technicians of industrial psychology may mistakenly

theorize about unless they have the direct views, honestly and

ably presented, of free representatives of the employees.

Moreover even in the technique of the work itself, rank and

file automatic workers have a knowledge that comes from an

intimacy with the daily task which for efficiency’s sake needs

to be taken into consideration in determining production

policies.

Such representation will never permit the individual ar-

tistry of the old handicrafts. The methods of machine work

and division of labor require a different technique. But effi-

ciency will grow if rank and file members of even the most



THE FULL PROGRAM 65

automatic and most minutely divided industry have an oppor-

tunity to present their views through their representatives.

Moreover the soul of man, his will and mind, and his body,

can breathe more freely, and grow and develop, in such work

whereas under any form of regimentation, capitalistic, techno-

cratic or communistic, his soul is starved.

Such an organized economic life is not the corporative state

as it has developed in Italy. (P. 30.) The differences are in

the main three. Governmental power over the corporative

societies of the industries and services is excessive; govern-

ment would do less and the organized social-economic order

would do more than in the Italian scheme. The constituents

of the corporative societies—the syndicates of the employers
and the syndicates of the employees—are themselves State-
created and no effective right of organization exists within the

councils of the industries and services; under the proposal

described here the Councils would come into existence by aid

of the State and would be “public institutions” but the con-

stituent organizations of the Councils would be the voluntary,

self-created bodies now in existence or yet to be voluntarily

formed. Finally the aim would be the whole program of

social justice and not the self-defeating compromises that stop

short of profit-sharing and the rise of the unpropertied to

ownership.

XII. The Industrial Recovery Act

For the purpose of meeting a tragic emergency, which is

at once the child of this generation and an heir of a long train

of crimes, there has been passed a federal Industrial Control

law. It provides for direct encouragement by the govern-

ment in organizing associations of employers in each line of

production and in organizing labor unions of employees.

Economic organizations have a life of their own. They are

hard to kill. Should government encouragement be withdrawn

when the emergency passes, they will live on, even if not with

the same strength. And the organization of the employers in

each industry, whether competitive of the old school or rival

aspirants for monopoly as in the new, is so necessary and gov-

ernment supervision of them is so necessary that the law will

probably stay on, with amendments, if and when the emer-

gency passes. Control by organized industries under govern-

ment supervision seems, therefore, relatively permanent.



66 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

The law recognizes certain of the requirements of the situa-

tion. It recognizes the need of an organization of industry to

end cut-throat competition and the struggle for outright eco-

nomic dictatorship. It recognizes that production has to be

planned and regulated. It recognizes that planning has to be

done by people who know industry and not by ukase of legis-

lators or government officials. It recognizes that the govern-

ment has a function in this set-up to prevent harm to labor

and the consumers. It recognizes that a code has to be

worked out to protect labor from destruction. It recognizes

that a labor code has to be supple and that it cannot be fully

written in the law. It recognizes the need of labor organiza-

tion and collective bargaining both in writing the code and

making the employers live up to it and in establishing a wage

that will permit more than a bare living.

It provides for a minimum wage and maximum hours; it

provides that the right of joining a union cannot be denied by

the employer; and it provides for labor representation in the

governmental hearings held to decide the precise terms of the

labor code. It provides also for governmental action to assist

organized employers and organized labor in working out the

code. If an industry adopts no code, the government may step

in. as needed, and formulate a code, itself. When the code is

adopted it gains the force of law through a licensing provision

and other penalties.

Whatever may actually materialize under the law in the

process of its administration, what is contemplated in labor re-

lations is a vast system of organized labor and organized em-

ployers, collectively bargaining with each other under gov-

ernment supervision and, failing collective bargaining, the forc-

ing of minimum wage rates and maximum hours upon the in-

dustry after a hearing.

Essential to its successful functioning is the almost com-

plete organizing of all employees in every industry and the

organized action of all labor in each industry to work out a

code that will be acceptable. In fact the closer the labor or-

ganizations in an industry approach industrial unionism as

distinct from unionism by separate crafts, the more effective

they will be under the law. The government deals with whole

industries. The employers organize by whole industries.

Labor will have to organize in this manner where possible,



THE FULL PROGRAM 67

and where not possible the unions will have to merge their

work to a point not yet experienced.

In this law, a step has been taken toward the partial real-

ization of one main purpose of economic life through two

irrans of attaining the purpose—collective bargaining and leg-
islation. If it lays emphasis on the minimum wage, it does

not state or imply that the minimum wage fixed, which often

is far less than a family living wage for men or an individual

living wage for women, is the maximum. The way remains

open to the maximum employment wage, and to sharing in

the gains of industry and ownership. It lays emphasis upon

collective bargaining and rightly gives the support of govern-

ment to unionism. It performs to a degree the function of gov-

ernment in protecting the weak and the poor and in promoting

the common good. It is in these respects admirable.

But it has a glaring vice which, save for one future pos-

sibility that may or may not come to pass, is of the greatest

danger. The vice is that it organizes and legalizes domination

of the production and prices of an industry by its present

owners, under whatever government supervision is possible.

The real control rests, formally, openly and by government

approval, with the Individualists and the dictators of modern

business.

The future possibility that may cure the vice is such a

sudden growth of strength by the unions and such a clarifi-

cation of their aims that they will ask for and obtain repre-

sentation in the control of the trade association itself. They

may so grow. The American Federation of Labor is on rec-

ord in favor of the principle of such representation in its Port-

land program, “Industry’s Manifest Duty,” even without any

mention of the idea when the bill was in process of passage.

They may, indeed, have abstained so as to obtain something,

from which then they might advance to the fuller program.

For in the weakness of the American labor movement such

silence probably appealed to them as strategically wise.

What is held out as the saving clause in the law is gov-

ernment supervision. In the short-run such supervision can

be relied on, in part, perhaps even beyond what one might

hope for; in a recognized emergency the will to act and the

power to act become strong. But in the long-run, government

supervision is of minor value when government is confronting

organized groups that represent among themselves practically



68 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

the entire power of ownership and control of the means of

production of the country and whose interest is maximum

profit and power. Government will tend, at best, to become

an umpire among the various industrial units so as to help

each of them pay profits steadily. Its protection of consumers

and labor will tend to fall into second place and become largely

a means of keeping the combined industrialists from killing

the goose that lays the golden egg. The purpose of economic

life is checked.

It is even dubious how successful an umpire in this limited

field government can be. The maximum profit and maximum

power motive of the controlling owners and banks would still

flourish. They would have to limit production and establish

the equivalent of quotas of the total product for each unit.

When profits are small or nil, the difficulty is not great. But

their greed and pride will tend to break through the quotas so

as to make more profits and gain more power in the com-

munity. And if they agree to quotas, then there will be a

general limitation of production and a general sabotage of

the resources, equipment and technique so as to net all the

highest profit. In either case, the resources, equipment and

technique will not serve their real purpose. In other words,

the regime will probably not balance production and distri-

bution; if it does it will do so at a low level.

The class struggle will grow. It will be hard for the unions

of the employees to rise to collaboration with the representa-

tives of the owners and creditors and then grow into sharing

in profits and ownership, once the new regime has solidified

under the encouragement of the law. Under such formally or-

ganized employer domination of industry there is more danger

of the class struggle’s growing bitter and violent and clamor-

ous for revolution than of its becoming that honest discussion

of differences based upon the desire of social justice which is an

approach towards the mutual cooperation (P. 35.) of the whole

organized industry, owners and employees alike.

If the government tries to fulfill its proper function, this

form of industrial control will add still further to its burdens

and will sink it under the “infinity of affairs and duties,”

which had already overwhelmed it in an effort to protect con-

sumers and labor from the organized power of the dominant

class. The problem of representative government will not be

solved. It will be made more complex,



THE FULL PROGRAM 69

The root of the matter is this: Industrial control by or-

ganized employers alone neither produces all the goods that

the wealth, resources and equipment can turn out, nor gives

all and each all the goods needed for a good physical, mental,

moral and spiritual life. It does not because it is not a social

organization of economic life but a tyrannical and dictatorial

control under the supervision of a necessarily inadequate gov-

ernment authority. Nor does it make work itself serve the

dignity of human nature in work. On all grounds it fails.

The corrective is to make industrial control social by bring-

ing into the general planning control of each industry (and of

all industries, jointly—a feature not in the law) the repre-
sentatives of every other element in the industry. Govern-

ment should establish such social organization, industrial coun-

cils, modern guilds, organized industries; for the aim of social

legislation must ... be the reestablishment of vocational groups

(P. 27.), more accurately, the “re-establishment of Organized

Occupations.” To end the conflict between the opposed

classes and stimulate and promote the harmonious cooperation

of Organized Occupations,

—

this is the primary duty of the

State and of all good citizens. (P. 27.) These Organized Oc-

cupations bind men together not according to the position they

occupy in the labor market
,
but according to the diverse func-

tions which they exercise in society. (P. 27.) The Industrial

Control law does not do this.

The Councils should be organized on the basis of the exist-

ing organizations or those to be voluntarily formed. For just

as the citizens of the same municipality are wont to form asso-

ciations with diverse aims, which various individuals are free

to join or not, similarly, those who are engaged in the same

trade or profession will form free associations among them-

selves, for purposes connected with their occupations

;

and the

same liberty must be claimed for the founding of associations

which extend beyond the limits of a single trade. (P. 28.)

The government should give considerable latitude to the in-

dustry in the creation of its own Council
;
for men may choose

whatever form they please, provided that both justice and the

common good be taken into account. (P. 28.)

The classes should work together as closely as possible in

the administration of the industry; but regarding cases in

which interests of employers and employees call for special

care and protection against opposing interests, separate delib-



70 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

eration will take place in their respective assemblies and sepa-

rate votes will be taken as the matter may require. (P. 28.)
And all the various industries should in their unified organiza-

tions cooperate with other industries similarly organized to

meet their inter-relations and the interdependence of economic

life.

Nor is such an organized economic life complete without

an organized agriculture to administer itself and to cooperate

with other industries. In the United States, the facts of farm

ownership, the size of farms and the character of farm or-

ganizations seem to require that the constituent bodies of a

Farm Council be the crop cooperatives. Where, however,

there is a farm-labor class, susceptible to organization, their

organized unions should likewise be brought into the general

Council of the industry and its parts. Agriculture does not

stand separate from the other industries nor they from it.

Indeed, the occupations that are neither industrial nor

agricultural are subject to the same inner compulsion to or-

ganize for self-administration, protection and advancement as

are the others. A socially just future under mass production
will mean a growth of these occupations. The means of physi-

cal subsistence on a high level requires even now fewer and

fewer hands. The technological revolution in the more basic

occupations has meant that more persons are relieved for

other work. A social organization of industry and agriculture,

however, if these were the only ones organized, might try to

dominate the rest of the community and subject the other occu-

pations. In doing so they would ultimately ruin society and

themselves. But they might be content, as ruling classes usually

are, to reap short-time gains and let a future generation or

even their own later lifetime take care of itself. The profes-

sions and the handicrafts should take their place in the or-

ganized economic life.

The Industrial Control law leaves out the inter-relations of

the industries, provides for agriculture separately, and over-

looks utterly the professions and the handicrafts. It is an

emergency law. Additional emergency measures have been set

up in agriculture in which the government deals in part with

the crop cooperatives and in part with the processors of farm

products. As to agriculture, therefore, the way is perhaps

open to its future incorporation in a nationally organized and

integrated economic system and order. The law will have



THE FULL PROGRAM 71

to look to such integration in the future. It will have to

look to the incorporation of the other Organized Occupations,

since those who practice the same trade or profession
,
economic

or otherwise (P. 27.), are equally under the impulse and neces-

sity of organizing.

The Councils would unitedly then make up an economic

order, each organized function of which and the federated or-

der as a whole would be in a true sense autonomous. (P. 27.)

If autonomous, they are not, however, independent of govern-

ment. Government’s function remains. It will guide, it will

watch, it will urge, it will curb. (P. 26.) But it will not sub-

stitute itself for the economic order. (P. 30.) In the indus-

tries that it at any time owns, the personnel engaged in each

should likewise form a self-administrative body and take their

organized part in the organized economic life.

The aim of such a social-economic order, operating under

government supervision, is the accomplishment of the purpose

of economic life through proper conditions in production and

through that distribution of the income and ownership of in-

dustry which will give all and each all the goods they need

for a good life here and hereafter. To accomplish the purpose

safely and surely after the long era of Individualism and the

present age of dictatorship, the process will have to be grad-

ual. But it cannot be slow because of the danger of the utter

collapse of our present scheme of things. The social-economic

order will measure the production necessary for a high stand-

ard of living and will provide for the production. It will

permit no one to go below a living wage. It will, from in-

dustry to industry, measure and enforce those wage rates and

hours of work which will provide maximum employment. It

will set minimum and maximum prices. It will establish pari-

ties in prices among the different commodities. It will drasti-

cally reduce the present return on property, part of the re-

duction being taken by price cuts and part of it by distribut-

ing profits to those at work in industry. It will squeeze out

the watered stock and bonds on which dividends and interest

are claimed. It will administer whatever forms of social in-

surance are necessary.

It will guide the progress of the electrical revolution and

the other forms of the technological advance, including the

decentralization of industry and the increasing use of auto-

matic machinery.



72 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

The shift of occupations will be its concern. Not only

the shift due to technical advance is a problem; in an organized

social order the merely commercial, financial and advertising

positions will also decline in number. Such functions will grow

less. These persons have a claim upon the economic life of

the community for satisfying work and income. The process

of adjustment will be intricate. Training of people for new

types of work will be a work of the economic organization.

It will have to guide ownership itself into new channels so

as to transform personal ownership not only into social own-

ership, but secure its distribution and make it not a paper cer-

tifying a claim of absentees to permanent profits but a real

working ownership by people in industry itself. As the or-

ganized industries and services proceed in their work with gov-

ernment help and supervision, one gigantic problem will face

them. It is the problem of wresting control from the financial

oligarchy which has dominated their industries and of estab-

lishing a serviceable means of credit. Perhaps banking is one

of the things that ought to be a government monopoly. Per-

haps a better thing would be for each of the industries and

services to establish a banking system of its own, integrated

in a general banking system for the integrated social order.

Certain industries will reveal themselves, as the organized

life proceeds, as of such power over the community that they

cannot be owned by individuals and have the community safe.

It is even probable that certain industries which are now

thought of as peculiarly adapted to public ownership will reveal

themselves as industries in which widespread ownership should

alone prevail. The opposite may also appear. For example,

industries that in the technical changes require tremendous

capital and few workers to produce a basic need will probably

require public ownership far more urgently than an industry

in which more persons are engaged and the capital per worker

is not so large even though its importance is greater than the

other industries.

In a country as varied and as large as ours, national or-

ganization is too bulky and slow-moving to meet the situation.

This is a country and at the same time it is sections, or re-

gions, and lesser subdivisions including urban areas. Eco-

nomic organization has to follow the economic facts. It can-

not be blue-printed beforehand. It is an organic thing, a body,

a corporate union of people, lasting through generations and



THE FULL PROGRAM 73

growing and adapting itself to the needs. And because of

the sectional life and the subsections and the urban areas,

where certain local units exist, as in construction work, the

process of growth will mean the decentralization of an eco-

nomic organization that began as a 'national undertaking.

Government in its various units will remain the supervis-

ing body. New governmental units may develop, such as inter-

state groupings in the sections. New activities will fall to city

governments to meet their local functions in a locally organ-

ized economic life. The state governments, as exclusive bodies

acting apart from the life of their section, seem fated to de-

cline in importance.

The form of economic life which the Industrial Control law

creates cannot last. It will move in one of three main direc-

tions. It will move upwards toward employees’ partnership

in the control of each Council of an industry. Or it will move

downwards, in one direction, toward greater governmental

suppression and control of labor for the purposes of the minor-

ity of owners and credit-power. Or it will move downwards in

another direction toward Communism. In the conditions of

the United States the last direction is hardly possible in any

recognizable future, however much the agitation may grow in

behalf of a Communist United States. The probabilities lie

between a real labor partnership or the suppression of labor.

The latter means the open triumph of the Age of Financial

Dictatorship. That means, then, either revolution, or an ac-

ceptance of social decay as the rule of American life, or, later

on, an heroic advance from a far lower stage than today to

something more worthwhile, and perhaps the cycle over again

confronting at some vaguely future time the problem of

establishing partnership in an organized social organism that

will be founded in social justice and have social charity as its

soul. An heroic advance may, indeed, never come after a

period of degradation. If it comes it may come in tragedy.

XIII. International Economic Life

Yet the last time the people of the western world had a

social-economic order not too far from what was reasonable in

structure, right in practice, consistent in purpose and Chris-

tian in spirit and guidance, a tragic mistake was made as the

underlying material element of the time began to change. That



74 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

mistake has remained ever since a continuous but as yet un-

heeded warning. They did not extend the order to the ever-

growing continentalizing of European economic life. They

capped the evil by giving to Spanish and Portuguese national-

ism the whole incipient world trade with the Far East and

the Americas at the beginning of the modern world. A great
social-economic order ended. To this day we have not had

another.

Individualism succeeded it. Domination succeeded Indi-

vidualism. The capitalist economic regime . . . with the world-

wide diffusion of industry, has penetrated everywhere. ... It

has invaded and pervaded the economic and social sphere even

of those who live outside its ambit, influencing them, and, as

it were, intimately affecting them by its advantages, incon-

veniences and vices. (P. 32.)

As regards the relations of peoples among themselves, a

double stream has issued forth from this one fountainhead:

on the one hand, economic nationalism or even economic im-

perialism; on the other, a not less noxious and detestable

internationalism or international imperialism in financial affairs,

which holds that where a man’s fortune is, there is his country.

(P. 33.) Tariffs and quotas and the apparatus of colonies,

subject to home governments and home plutocrats and to

bankers’ imperialism, have long been the order of the day.

The nations apply their power and political influence, regard-

less of circumstances, to promote the economic advantages of

their citizens. ... (P. 33.) As for the rest of the world, it

can fend for itself. Economic forces and economic domination

are used to decide political controversies between peoples.

(P. 33.) The normal consequence, as normal as spring fol-

lowing winter, is war.

In economic matters the nations are largely dependent one

upon the other, and need one another’s help. (P. 29.) In-

stead, they treat one another as enemies. Even in peace time

there is continuous economic war. Yet the principle that

economic life exists for the good of all and each does not

end at national boundaries. And the principle of the natural

rightness and necessity of a social-economic organization un-

der government supervision refers to the interdependent eco-

nomic life of the whole world.

The fact of interdependence is plain. The Age of Discov-

eries and Colonization, the Age of the Industrial Revolution



THE FULL PROGRAM 75

and now the present enormous technological revolution have

created it. The world is objectively and potentially almost

a single trading, producing and investing unit. Countries de-

pend on one another for resources, for invention, equipment,

and technical ability, for finished products, for credit. An eco-

nomic depression engulfing at once almost the whole world

proves the interdependence.

It is an interdependence in which there is a multitude of

varieties. There is variety in resources. There is variety in

accessibility. There is variety in the possession of the new

equipment. There is variety in technical ability. There is

variety in the type of business ability that the present and the

recent regimes have required. And these varieties are continu-

ously changing all the time. More and more areas are moving

into the new technical area to make the world more and more

interdependent.

The human rules that handle the interdependence deny the

interdependence. Absolutistic ownership denies it. Economic

nationalism and imperialism deny it. Bankers’ imperialism

denies it. The consequences in the economic interdependence

of the world are tragic. They defeat the purpose of world as

of national economic life—that quantity and type of produc-
tion which will make work a means of growth and that dis-

tribution to all and each of all the goods they need for a good

physical, mental, moral and spiritual life.

The new mass production demands not only nation-wide

but world-wide mass distribution if the products are to be used.

The socially just maximum-employment wage must be put

into effect everywhere. Otherwise the mass production com-

mits suicide and there is depression.

Development of underdeveloped areas requires purposeful

and intelligent help and planning from areas already developed.

Where either nationalism or national imperialism or bankers’

imperialism dominates, the planning and help either are not

given at all or are given wrongly. The diversities are not

lifted to a proper standard. They are not guided toward

unity but toward the maximum profit and power of a few

persons and a few governments. Overproduction results in

some lines. Certain backward areas remain backward. Other

areas and their peoples are cruelly and senselessly exploited in

the process of development. The hardness, cruelty and re-

lentlessness of the new economic domination within the rela-



76 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

tively advanced countries is even ghastlier among peoples new

to industry and new to the absolutistic rules that govern in-

dustry to the defeat of the common good.

And yet the varieties in the world from area to area re-

quire different standards of living from place to place and

different degrees of freedom of access to resources and equip-

ment and consumable goods. At the same time there are cer-

tain minimum requirements and the common good—their com-
mon good as well as the common good of others—demands
that these minimum requirements be gradually increased. In

other words the immediate aim is minimum standards sub-

ject to progressive increase. In some way the full aim must

be accomplished.

It must be accomplished for a double reason. If it is not

accomplished, the lower standard areas will drag down the

rest in an interdependent world; if the natural purpose of

economic life is defied, retribution comes, sooner or later, on

this earth to the peoples that defy it. A second reason is that
if other peoples are kept inferior, they are made tools of oth-

ers’ profit and power. Yet they are equally worthy and equally

human with everyone else.

To attain this purpose in an infinitely various world, in

its new and relatively cohesive interdependence, presents an

ever-changing and intricate and subtle series of problems. Gov-

ernments can do their part in international conferences and

continuing bodies. In a particular country the economic life

has to be administered by the persons in economic life itself

who know it and whose function it is to conduct economic life,

even while government action of a supplementary sort is neces-

sary. So too in world economic life. The principles demand-

ing a social organization of economic life apply to world life

as well as to the national and the subordinate^ regional and

city life. In some way not only should the various nations set

up a social-economic order for themselves but there has to be

an increasingly close federation of the separately organized

national economic orders throughout the world under closer

and closer federation of governments.

The extreme subtlety of the problems raised by world in-

terdependence and variety demands infinite patience for their

solution. They demand also the social organization of the

economic life of the world, which alone would possess the

knowledge and the power to exercise the patience for a pur-



THE FULL PROGRAM 77

pose. “A healthy economic cooperation” is demanded. It

comes through “common counsel and endeavor.” It is reached

through treaties and “institutions” and the chief of the insti-

tutions is the social-economic organization itself.

The agenda of the world social-economic order will include

tariffs and quotas and access to raw materials and areas of

settlement. It will include the development of under-devel-

oped areas through controlled capital investments. It will in-

clude the quantity of the world’s production. It will include

price parities. It will include the gradual destruction of im-

perialism in both of its phases, national and banker. It will

include the distribution of the product of the world at an

increasingly high level throughout all peoples. It will include

the distribution of wealth itself. The adjustment of the rela-

tions of the different standards of production and living from

area to area will present its knottiest problem from which, as

from a hub, other problems will radiate. For the aim is to

make actual and human that new material economic inter-

dependence of peoples which for the first time in history is so

close to completeness.

Short of the organization and activity of a new social-

economic order, the governments should continue their confer-

ences to do what they can to reduce tariffs and the dangerous

burden of armaments, to cancel or scale to a minute sum the

intergovernmental war debts, to establish an unfluctuating and

internationally accepted standard of currency, to reduce im-

perialistic power, to assist international access to raw mate-

rials, equipment and areas of settlement, and to build up mini-

mum labor standards all over the world. Their work will be
inadequate both because governments are unfitted for it and

because, short of a new social order within the various coun-

tries, they will be ruled by Individualism and the new domina-

tion and their international correlatives, nationalism, impe-

rialism, and the bankers’ power. What they do will have to

be carefully watched. But they can do something and if here,

as in domestic social legislation, representatives of the labor

unions are brought into the conferences and into the admin-

istration of the agreements, then the results will be far better.



PART SIX

THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE

XIV. Catholic Action

The final reason why the last social order fell was that

when it started downhill and then met tremendous material

changes which required not only rejuvenation but a remaking

of the order itself to suit new facts, the people did not have

the stamina of spirit to do the job. Egotism, pride and greed

dominated them. They were tricked by the temporary pros-

perity that came with an utter individual freedom of the com-

mercial passions and utter nationalism. The same cause that

destroyed one social order can prevent the remaking of

another. Both the process of re-creating social order and the

process of compelling it to fulfill its purposes require a change

in spirit and a change in morality. (P. 31.)

One principle guiding the social organization of economic

life has to be social justice, that virtue which impels action for

the common good. All the institutions of governmental and

social-economic life must be imbued with the spirit of social

justice. This social justice must above all be truly operative

or it will not even be organized, or if organized it will fail.

Its purpose is the common good. Unless the members want

the common good, then their social organization will not func-

tion. If they are possessed by social justice, then social jus-

tice will build up a juridical and social order able to pervade

all economic activity. (P. 29.)

The public institutions of the nations must be such as to

make the whole of human society conform to the common

good
,

i. e., to the standard of social justice. If this is done

,

the economic system, that most important branch of social

life, will necessarily be restored to sanity and right order.

(P. 34.) If it is not done, then that most important part of

social life will continue unsound and chaotic.

It is not a question only of devotion to a general sentiment.

It is a question of the concrete application of a spirit to a par-

ticular set of facts. Some would have it that the spirit will

find its way without organization. It does not do so in fam-

ily life; there is a definite monogamous family organization.

78



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 79

It does not do so in religion; there is the Church. It does not

do so in civic life; there is government. Neither can it in

economic life. The spirit is necessary. But organization is

also necessary if the spirit is to operate. “The juridical and

social order,” i. e., the governmental and social-economic order

and system of economic life, is necessary.

Social charity should be, as it were, the soul of this or-

der. • • • (P. 29.) Social charity brings about a union of

hearts and minds. (P. 44.) A unison among the members is
the main principle of stability in all institutions, no matter

how perfect they may seem (in their form of organizations and

regulations), which aim at establishing social peace and pro-

moting mutual aid. In its absence, as repeated experience

proves, the wisest regulations come to nothing. (P. 44.)

Social justice and social charity are in combination the true

directive principle of economic life and of its necessary organ-

ization. Without them the organization does not come into

existence save by force and without them the organization fails

and falls. But if social order is established again and if it

is pervaded by social justice and social charity, then it will be

possible to say, in a sense, of this body what the Apostle said

of the Mystical Body of Christ :
u
The whole body being com-

pacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth,

according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh

increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in charity.”

(P. 29.)

This directive principle of social justice and social charity

must be grounded. Its ground is the profound conviction that

all are members of a single family and children of the. same

Heavenly Father, and further, that they are “one body in

Christ and everyone members one of another.” (P. 44.) A
sense of our common humanity raised, universally, to member-

ship in Christ’s body and to membership, one of another, in

Him is the foundation.

Catholics built the last social order. It was Catholics also

who did not meet quickly the changing world that opened the

Modern Age, and who even met it wrongly in part by not in-

ternationalizing the separate minute social orders of the cities.

It was Catholics, or former Catholics, who spread to the Cath-

olic countries the Individualism of Protestantism, of Calvin-

ism particularly, and of the Deism of the eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries. And what a lamentable fact . . . that there



80 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

have been
,
and that there are even now some who, while pro-

jessing the Catholic Faith, are well nigh unmindjul of that

sublime law of justice and charity which binds us not only to

give each man his due, but to succor our brethren as Christ

Our Lord Himself ; worse still, that there are those who out of

greed for gain do not shame to oppress the workingman. In-

deed there are some who even abuse religion itself, cloaking

their own unjust impositions under its name, 'that they may

protect themselves against the clearly just demands of their

employees. (P. 39.)

Such men are the cause that the Church, without deserv-

ing it, may have the appearance and be accused of taking sides

with the wealthy, and of being little moved by the needs and

sufferings of the disinherited. (P. 39.) Catholics themselves

have given the Church a bad name and have driven from the

Church in many a country masses of men and whole fami-

lies. (Pp. 38-39). Because of the degeneracy of other Cath-

olics the latter thought that the Church which freed the slaves,

and freed the serfs in many a region and was freeing more,

and which made and animated the guilds in their glory, was

against them. Because many Catholics in positions of prom-

inence refused to learn and follow the social teachings of their

Church, there has been mass defection from the Church in

many a country.

And yet the reestablishing of social order and the solidify-

ing of the purpose of economic life which were desired by those

who fell away, are defended much more cogently by the prin-

ciples of Christian faith, and are promoted much more effica1

ciously by the power of Christian charity. (P. 36.) For this

longed-for social reconstruction must be preceded by a pro-

found renewal of the Christian spirit, from which midtitudes

engaged in industry in every country have unhappily departed.

Otherwise, all our endeavors will be futile, and our social edi-

fice will be built, not upon a rock, but upon shifting sand.

(P. 40.)

Economic life must be inspired by Christian principles.

(P. 43.) “If society is to be healed now”—We use the words
of Our Predecessor—Yin no way can it be healed save by a
return to Christian life and Christian institutions,” for Chris-

tianity alone can apply an efficacious remedy for the excessive

solicitude for transitory things, which is the origin of all vices.

When men are fascinated and completely absorbed in the



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 81

things of the world, it alone can draw away their attention and

raise it to Heaven. And who will deny that this remedy is

not urgently needed by society? (P. 40.)

For this pitiable ruin of souls , which , if it continue, will

frustrate all efforts to reform society, there can be no other

remedy than a frank and sincere return to the teaching of the

Gospel. Men must observe anew the precepts of Him Who

alone has the words of eternal life, words which, even though

Heaven and earth be changed, shall not pass away. (P. 43.)

Mere sordid selfishness, which is the disgrace and the great

crime of the present age, will be opposed in very deed by the

kindly and forcible law of Christian moderation, whereby man

is commanded to seek first the Kingdom of God and His Jus-

tice, confiding in God's liberality and definite promise that

temporal goods also, in so far as he has need of them, will be

added unto him. (Pp. 43-44.)

Catholics created a social order, once, when the Faith made

Europe. It was the nearest approach to a golden age of labor

that the world has ever known. They can do so again. In

doing so they will have to have the blessing of God and . . .

the cooperation of all men of good will. (P. 30.)

In creating a new social order, Catholics will obey the

Church when the Church teaches the moral principles of eco-

nomic life. They will then add to their knowledge of moral

principles their special “technical, commercial and social com-

petence” and make the applications of the moral principles to

their environment. There is here a basic distinction between

the morals of economic life and the economics of economic life.

The Church has the right and the duty to deal authori-

tatively with social and economic problems. (P. 14.) It has

that right and duty not by reason of the economics of eco-

nomic life. For it is not of course the office of the Church

to lead men to transient and perishable happiness only, but to

that which is eternal. Indeed
u
the Church believes that it

would be wrong for her to interfere without just cause in

such earthly concerns
”

(P. 14.) The so-called laws of eco-

nomics, 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. ... (P. 15.) These are merely

a matter of ways and means of getting something done and

one learns them through knowing the nature of resources and



82 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

equipment and the qualities of body, mind, will and emotions.

But the morals of economic life are subject to the Church.

There is such a thing as right or wrong in economic life and

relations. 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. (Pp. 14-15.) A part
of the moral law, knowable by man’s reason and derived from

the nature of things themselves and the individual and social

nature of man, is precisely the end and object of the whole

economic order assigned by God the Creator. (P. 15.) The

moral law alone . . . 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 par-

ticular to the general. (P. 15.) Leo himself clearly stated

what could be expected from the Church.
(i

The Church in-

sists, on the authority of the Gospel, upon those teachings

whereby the conflict can be brought to an end, or rendered,

at least, far less bitter. The Church uses her efforts not only

to enlighten the mind, but to direct by her precepts the life

and conduct of each and all. .. .” (P. 7.) The final purpose

of economic life is the purpose both of the Church and of

man. It is 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. (P. 15.)

The return of social order is primarily in the hands of the

laymen and laywomen who are a direct part of economic and

governmental life. The Church is to teach them the moral

principles. They are then to apply the moral principles to

the environment in the light of their knowledge of economic

and governmental life and within the possibilities of the vari-

ous situations. They are in the labor unions and the employ-

ers’ associations. They are in the heat of political life. Into

those fields, except in their moral principles, the Church does

not intrude.

To teach laymen and laywomen the moral principles, great

reliance is placed in the federated Catholic lay organization,

operating under the Church, which is Catholic Action. This

lay organization, Catholic Action, is not a labor union or em-



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 83

ployers’ organization, nor a political party; the distinction be-

tween the morals of economic life and the economics of eco-

nomic life is carried over into the means of the actual remak-

ing of order. Catholic Action’s relation to economic life is

that it imbues with these principles and trains for the Apos-

tolate under the guidance and direction of the Church.

(P. 31.) It does not do the actual remaking. It trains Cath-

olics to do it. Particularly it trains workers to be the first and

immediate apostles of the workers and it trains employers

and men of trade to be apostles to their own number. (P. 46.)

There is the greater need in the United States for this

special training in lay organizations because the character of

our country requires secular economic organizations and secular

political parties. Not that anywhere, even where there are

Catholic economic organizations or political parties, are these

Catholic in the fullest sense of the word, operating under the

direction of the Church. They are not Catholic Action but the

action of Catholics. They operate under the Church only in

their moral principles. But the economic organizations that

are Catholic or, as they are often called, “Christian,” conduct

within themselves, often, a part of the education in Catholic

social teaching that is necessary if they are to remake social

order, perfect it and secure its purpose. In the United States,

because there are no such organizations, the function of the

federated and united lay organization, Catholic Action, is the

greater. Indeed, it is, here, imperative and obligatory that

the social teaching of the Church be imparted in lay organiza-

tions that aim at giving their members a thorough religious

and moral training. (P. 12.)

In the United States there is a vast number of lay organ-

izations of all kinds. There are none which have the sole pur-

pose of continuously training their members in the social teach-

ing of the Church. The logic of American conditions seems

to call instead for an organization of existing organizations of

all sorts so that all of them can be led jointly to give their

members the needed training. Instead of a new organization,

a council or federation of all the existing bodies seems the

logical step.

This is, in fact, the program laid down by the Bishops in

their formation of the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

The program seeks to federate all Catholic organizations na-

tionally, and in dioceses and deaneries, and to have parish rep-



84 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

reservation. The national bodies are the National Council of

Catholic Men and the National Council of Catholic Women.
They function under the whole body of the Bishops nationally,

under the single Bishops in the dioceses and deaneries and un-

der the parish priests parochially. They are official Catholic

Action in the United States. All along they are autonomous.

The purposes of such federated organizations are as wide as

the purposes of the Church. Unfortunately the organizing is

as yet incomplete.

In such Councils there exist the means for a general pro-

gram of training in Catholic social teaching that will reach

everyone. Special committees should indeed exist in them to

stimulate and guide the training so that all who need it will

obtain it and so that the training will be complete and correct.

Guided by these special committees, themselves made up

of convinced apostles of the obligation and the tremendous

importance and value of training in Catholic social teaching,

the program can be put over.

The members of these committees should not be chosen as

many another committee is named, simply by picking per-

sons without considering their special interest and ability or

their consecration to the cause of Catholic social teaching. If

chosen haphazardly, the committee will be so much dead-

wood and, far from being fit to lead the Councils of the or-

ganizations into a general program, they will fumble about

lethargically and nothing will be done. They will not lead

such a program for others because they have not led them-

selves.

It is your chief duty, Venerable Brethren, and that of your

clergy, to seek diligently, to select prudently, and train fit-

tingly these lay apostles, amongst workingmen and amongst

employers. (P. 46.) The Bishops and, under them, the priests

are by their function the general supervisors of such a pro-

gram of moral training precisely because it is a moral training

in the teaching of the Church and because training in morality

is the ordained function of Bishops and priests. The lay or-

ganizations are autonomous but not independent; they are in

this work an arm, a sharing, in the work and purpose of the

Church. Attached to each committee in a diocese there should

be a priest appointed by the Bishop to help advise and stimu-

late the committee’s work.

This does not mean that he alone among the priests should



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 85

engage in this work. All priests should be interested and

should help. In every industrial city and in every rural area

there should be at least one, and in large centers many, espe-

cially active in helping to stimulate and guide the whole vast

program of self-education of adults within the united lay or-

ganization. In the framework of the Men’s and Women’s

Councils they would act with the deanery committees. We
earnestly exhort in the Lord the beloved sons who are chosen

jor this task, to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the for-

mation of the men entrusted to them. (P. 47.)

Such priests working with the committees should have spe-

cial training and special abilities. For no easy task is here

imposed upon the clergy, wherefore all candidates for the

sacred priesthood must be adequately prepared to meet it by

intense study of social matters. (P. 46.) And the priests

especially selected for this work by the Bishops should be

endowed with a keen sense of justice, ready to oppose with real

manly constancy unjust claims and unjust actions

;

avoiding

every extreme with consummate prudence and discretion.

(P. 46.) The task . . . is . . . difficult. (P. 45.)

The lay organization, Catholic Action, in the Councils of

Men and Women, is itself autonomous. And in the field of lay

education the priests at work with the committees are not dom-

inant. They are not the committees. They are not Cath-

olic Action. Catholic Action is the action of laymen’s own

organizations and laywomen’s own organizations. A line
exists between the autonomous character of Catholic Action

and independence. The line has to be hewed to in this work

of Catholic Action as well as in every other work.

The work of the lay organizations and the priests can go

beyond the program of education. Action also is a part of

the work. The only action not germane to Catholic Action

or to the work of priests, as priests, is the acting force of the

economic organization and the political party. They can help

lead public opinion. They can take positions for and against

certain proposals or happenings, and work for and against

them, under the conditions of the United States, in the forum

of public opinion, before legislative committees and in other

ways. The field of work is broad.

Their chief work is education in economic morality. In

their action they should put in the forefront things that are

directly derivable from the moral principles of the great plat-



86 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

forms of Catholic social teachings. Here is, in fact, a great

danger in the work both of lay organizations and of those

priests especially engaged in the field of Catholic social teach-

ing. A highly technical proposal, for example, is widely dis-
cussed. It has undoubtedly a moral basis but its chief char-

acteristic is not the moral but the purely economic. A mem-
ber of a lay organization or a priest becomes interested in

it. It is, for example, a quick solvent, true or fake, for a

particular problem; or it is given the impossible powers of a

cure-all. In either case the primary function of the lay or-

ganization or the priest, as moral teacher, is removed to the

background.

The lay organization’s program of education is turned away

from the principles and program to follow a will-o’-the-wisp.

Since the lay organization’s program is primarily educational

so that its members will have principles to guide them, the

farther the action removes itself from direct applications of

the moral principles, the less effective is the program. In fact,

the members will soon think that nqt the program of Cath-

olic social teaching but an idea that runs off at a tangent which

may or may not be good is what is important. Many will

disagree with it. They will become disgusted with Catholic

social teaching. If, however, first things are put first, then

both the priests’ work and the work of the lay organizations

will move along swiftly.

Certain methods of intellectual training have been tried

and proved. One, the best, is the discussion method. A group
meets together regularly and learns by reading and by discuss-

ing together an account of Catholic social teaching. They fol-

low an outline so that they will learn in consecutive order

and not waste time in aimless rambling. There is a leader of

the discussion. They talk the points over. They talk them

over in the light of their experiences. They vary the program

by occasional papers which are in turn discussed.

Or they follow this method. They select one or two per-

sons to state briefly the points for discussion of the evening.

Then all join in the discussion.

The discussion group or committee should return to its

parent organization at regular intervals and report its findings

and conclusions so that the whole organization will get some-

thing more than a taste of Catholic social teaching. The



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 87

whole organization can then join in the discussion so as to

bring out points in clearer light.

The simple lecture method is hardly enough even if it is

a series. The lecture should at least be followed by questions

from the floor so that all will participate in the meeting.

Another method is the distribution of pamphlets and books

on Catholic social teaching.

As for the special spiritual training, besides frequent at-

tendance at Mass and frequent reception at Holy Communion,

there are Week-End Retreats, where the spiritual compulsion

to the ordering of social life is emphasized in addition to

other spiritual obligations and opportunities.

A special effort should be made to conduct the educational
program so as to train certain groups particularly. One group

is the working people. A second group is the employers. A
third group is the farmers. A fourth group is those follow-
ing professions that influence public opinion and action upon

economic life.

In the group method of education in Catholic social teach-

ing, it will often be found well to conduct the program of self-

education in sections by dividing the groups according to their

economic position. Employers alone, executives alone, cleri-

cal workers alone, manual workers alone (perhaps then re-

divided, when they are in considerable numbers) and farm-

ers alone, according to their various subdivisions, could pro-

ceed along the lines of learning Catholic social teaching in the

light of their common experience. They should, however, come

together frequently to exchange their views. A definite check
should be set up to prevent them from simply reconfirming

their prejudices and labeling them Catholic social teaching.

And in this case again, care will have to be taken to keep the

group both from running off at a tangent and from stopping

part way in the teaching and from over-emphasizing one point

in its own interest. A person can hardly help but think of
Catholic social teaching in terms of his own experience. The

thing that has to be prevented is to keep persons from think-

ing of it in terms of their own interests. The danger is the

greater when the apparently necessary plan is adopted of divid-

ing along lines of economic experience and position.

Certainly the ideal way is to conduct the program in a

unified manner in the country at large, in the dioceses and in

the deaneries in connection with formally organized Catholic



88 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

Action in national, diocesan and deanery councils reaching into

the parish and the city-wide organizations. The machinery

will then exist for the full work.

Every approach to the full work is that much gain. The

San Francisco Academy has produced able exponents of Cath-

olic social teaching. The German Catholic organizations in

the Central Verein have done great work for well over a gen-

eration. Single parishes have their groups studying and learn-

ing Catholic social teaching. Single inter-parochial lay organ-

izations are at work. Groups of organizations in a cluster of

neighboring cities and towns are now mapping out programs

of education. The League for Social Justice is inspiring those

whom it enrolls to undertake in their organizations a campaign

of Catholic social training. The Federated Alumni are pro-

moting a similar program.

All these are good. But what is needed is a unified and

joint drive to make the program reach every element in eco-

nomic life. A vast program of lay training in Catholic social
teaching is a prime necessity.

For let us not permit
,
Venerable Brethren and Beloved

Children, the children of this world to seem wiser in their gen-

eration than we, who by God’s goodness are Children of Light.

We see these men cunningly select and train resolute disciples,
who spread their false doctrines daily more widely amongst

men of every station and of every clime. (P. 48.)

The program of education should center in Pius XI’s En-

cyclical on “Reconstructing the Social Order.” That Encycli-

cal is, however, difficult because it is, as it were, a second vol-

ume of Leo XIIFs “Condition of Labor,” prefaced by a sum-

mary of the latter. The N. C. W. C. Department of Social

Action has, however, two services to assist the study. One is

a study outline of the whole Encyclical. The other is a series

of mimeographed Aids to Study Clubs, available to leaders of

groups, which explain and annotate section by section the vari-

ous parts of the text. The N. C. W. C. has still other study

outlines available.

The traveling academy and public forum on Catholic social

teaching, which the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems

conducts, should be attended by representatives from these

groups. Conferences are held during the year in the various

regions of the country so as to be available to as many as

possible. The program follows, consecutively, the main ele-



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 89

ments of the industrial problem and the main elements of

Catholic social teaching. Employers, officials of the labor

movements and lay and clerical exponents of Catholic social

teaching appear at each session of a two-day meeting to dis-

cuss together the ways and means that should be followed to

usher in a larger measure of justice, wisdom and peace.

The regional conferences bring to the surface of the com-

munity its special knowledge and special talents and in a

formal way center the thought of all the elements in industrial

life upon the present character and origin thereof, the basic

purposes of economic life, the detailed standards, the meth-

ods partially serviceable, the full means of establishing eco-

nomic order and justice and the program of education in Cath-

olic social teaching. These conferences have proved them-

selves of first importance in education toward Catholic social

teaching.

For special guidance and interpretation, there is the 1919

Pastoral Letter of the American Hierarchy, the 1919 Bishops’

Program of Social Reconstruction, statements of the Adminis-

trative Committee of the National Catholic Welfare Confer-

ence and their 1933 “Statement on the Present Crisis”—ex-
amples of the work of Bishops the world over to interpret and

comment upon this doctrine
,
and apply it, according to the

mind and instructions of the Holy See, to the special circum-

stances oj the various nations. (Pp. 7-8.)

There is great need of more and more highly trained lay-

men and women and priests who will scientifically elaborate

the social sciences in the spirit of the Church’s teaching so as

to bring out its application to changing facts. They will then

furnish the material both for the program of education and

for the actual re-creation of social order and the securing of

the purpose of economic life. (Pp. 8-9.) A corps of fully
equipped Catholic social-economic scientists is greatly needed.

They will show the way and hold the light upon the dark

path to social remaking.

Catholic social-economic teaching is not cloistered to eco-

nomics alone. In the light of the natural necessity of a moral-

ized social order supervised by government, a person looks at

all history in a new light. He sees, for example, United States

history as not simply a struggle of pioneers in a new world

confronting an ever-receding geographical frontier, turning in,

then, upon themselves to meet the ever-expanding frontier of



90 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

science applied to industry, struggling once for freedom from

a monarchical England and battling, later, in civil war to see

whether slavery or a free society would rule the West and

the whole country. He sees all of these as examples of the

steady growth of Individualism both in a New World and in

a new industry, making its way onward to gigantic develop-

ment, while it wrecked many of its sons, and then meeting

cataclysm in which it had to turn its back, openly and know-

ingly, upon much of a tradition that it once gloried in. He

sees Latin American history as an effort in the early days to

apply within the limits of Spanish nationalism the social teach-

ing of the Church; as then becoming a decadent and formalis-

tic lip-service to those teachings; as, then, trying to go over

to modern business Individualism in an era of so-called anti-

clericalism which was, at heart, opposition to the economic

teaching of the Church; and, finally, now, as being at a turn-

ing point, not knowing where to fly from the new economic

and political imperialism that has in consequence overwhelmed

it. He sees it as a compression of the history of the last 1,500

years of Europe.

Sociology receives in its social categories a new primary

social group, the group engaged in a certain line of production

and service. Possessed of a standard for the economic group

(not class), it can measure the deviations from the normal,

analyze its decline and growth, place the normal and the de-

viations from it in its whole scheme of social groups and note

the effect upon the stunted life of the family, of society as a

whole and of whatever other social groups it analyzes.

In the Catholic colleges, universities, and seminaries and in

tutoring Catholic students in non-Catholic colleges—all of
which need still further strengthening in their social studies

—

they have a large field of work. Another field is in the Cath-

olic Conference on Industrial Problems. Another is in writing

for the learned and, should they have the facility, writing for

popularization in books, pamphlets and magazine and news-

paper articles. Another is in the lay organization, Catholic

Action.

Apart from the distinctly Catholic public, the possibilities

are endless. For Catholic social teaching is not an exclusive

doctrine. Economic life is to be remade according to sound

philosophy (P. 26.)
;
the organization it should follow is the

natural form of organization and the purpose it should live up



THE MOTIVE POWER AND GUIDE 91

to is its natural purpose. There is nothing exclusively Cath-

olic in it except in so far as the help of Christ and the Church

are normally needed to bring out the truth upon even the nat-

urally right thing to do in morals. Catholic social teaching

has already become to a degree part of the intellectual heritage

of the whole human race and is advanced and advocated not

merely in non-Catholic books and journals
,

but frequently

also in legislative assemblies and in courts of justice. (P. 8.)

Because of its eminent reasonableness Catholic social teaching

appeals to all.

Yet Catholics should be in the forefront. They have the

principles. They have the help of Christ and the Church to

know the principles and to follow them. And the perfecting

of the natural order of society, once it is organized, comes

alone through practicing the sublime precepts of the Gospel.

(P. 26.)

The task ... is .. . difficult. . . . Many are the obstacles

to be overcome on either side, whether amongst the higher

classes of society or the lower. Still, let them not lose

heart, nor in any way allow themselves to be diverted by any

art from their purpose. For to face stern combats is the part

of a Christian, and to endure labor is the lot of those, who,

as good soldiers of Christ, follow closely in His footsteps.

(P. 45.)

There is ground for hope. The growth of religious devo-

tion the world over, from which springs charity for all, gives

reason to confidently look forward to that complete and much-

desired renewal of human society, and to
u
the Peace of Christ

in the Kingdom of Christ
.”

(P. 45.) The Church is active.

Catholic Action, the organized laity sharing in the Church’s

work, is growing. We exhort all these in the Lord to spare
no labor and be overcome by no difficulty, but daily more to

take courage and be valiant. (P. 45.) The ranks of the

workers reveal glad signs of coming social reconstruction.

(P. 45.) Hope rests in the young among them and in those

labor leaders who, sacrificing their own interests, and anxious

only for. the good of their companions (P. 46.), are wisely

bringing their just demands into harmony with the prosperity

of their whole industry and do not let themselves be stopped in

this by any obstacle or misgiving. Further, many young men,

destined soon by reason of their talents or their wealth to hold

distinguished places in the foremost ranks of society, are study-



92 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

ing social problems with growing earnestness. These youths

encourage the fairest hopes that they will devote themselves

wholly to social reforms. (P. 46.)

Certainly there is the greatest need now of steadfast sol-

diers of Christ who will work with all their strength to save

the human family from the dire ruin in which it will plunge

if that order of things, which tramples no less upon the laws of

nature than those of God, is, in contempt of the teachings of

the Gospel, allowed to prevail. (P. 47.) No stone, then,

must be left unturned to avert these grave misfortunes from

human society. (P. 47.) Towards this one aim must tend all

our effort and endeavor supported by assiduous and fervent

prayers to God. For, with the assistance of Divine Grace, the

destiny of the human family lies in our hands. (P. 47.)

Unity is absolutely necessary. Catholics do much work in

remaking social order and reestablishing its natural purpose.

But this admirable and self-sacrificing activity not unfrequently

loses some of its effectiveness by being directed into too many

different channels. (P. 48.) We still work separately. We
work often at cross purposes. Even we fail sometimes in that

union which means union with the mind of the Church.

Let, then, all men of good will stand united. Let all those

who, under the pastors of the Church, wish to fight this good

and peaceful fight of Christ, as far as talents, powers and sta-

tion allow, strive to play their part in the Christian renewal

of human society, which Leo XIII inaugurated in his immortal

Encyclical “Rerum Novarum.” Let them seek, not themselves

and the things that are their own, but the things that are Jesus

Christ’s. Let them not urge their own ideas with undue per-

sistence, but be ready to abandon them, however admirable,

should the greater common good seem to require it: that in all

and above all Christ may reign and rule, to Whom be honor
and glory and power forever and ever. (P. 48.)



APPENDIX

Excerpts front

A STATEMENT ON THE PRESENT CRISIS1

By

The Bishops of the Administrative Committee of the

National Catholic Welfare Conference

False Philosophy

“The social philosophy prevailing during recent centuries has

carried human society far from its safe moorings. That phi-

losophy—if, indeed, it be worthy of the name—which has ruled
governments, groups and individuals for the past three hundred

years has not taken as its guide the moral law, has not consid-

ered the rights of man. Money, not man, has been the supreme

consideration and the justifying end. That philosophy has

aroused opposition and has given rise to errors and exaggera-

tions that are anti-Catholic and anti-Christian.

“That same demoralizing philosophy defended, and defends

today, unrestrained individual economic freedom and the eco-

nomic dictatorship that has succeeded it. That philosophy per-

mits individuals, corporations and nations to accumulate as

much wealth as they can, according to the unfair methods of

modern business, and to use such accumulated wealth as they

see fit. It honors and proclaims as sovereign rulers of economic

empires men who have succeeded in amassing unjustly these

fabulous fortunes.

“That philosophy has broken down or forbidden the estab-

lishment of protective organizations. It has broken down or

forbidden an organized economic life to administer the produc-

tion of wealth and its distribution in accordance with social jus-

tice and the interdependence of economic relations. It has de-

nied Government its right to guard justice and the common

good. It has given greed a free hand.

“That philosophy denied and denies, in reality, the oneness

and the solidarity of mankind. In its light, wealth, business

and the power that material prosperity gives, are in themselves

supreme ends. Human rights must be sacrificed to those ends,
and humanity itself must become the mere instrument in the

production of wealth, not the master controlling it. Such a phi-

losophy has always been and will ever be false and un-Chris-

tian in principle and application. It has literally taken God out

of the world.” (Pp. 7, 8.)

lNational Catholic Welfare Conference, 1312 Massachusetts Avenue NW., Wash-
ington, D. C. 1933.

93



94 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

Wages, Income and Ownership

“The working-man is entitled to a family wage, which must

be an amount sufficient not only to support husband, wife and

children in frugal and decent comfort, but to provide against

sickness, unemployment, infirmity and old age. His right to or-

ganize must not be interfered with. His right to an equitable

share in the profits, as a wage-earner, must receive due consid-

eration. His right to bequeath and to inherit, and his right to

employment under normal moral conditions, should be assured.

“Social justice, working in behalf of the common good, re-

quires that the masses not possessing property rise to a degree

of ownership. The chasm between owners—the relatively few
—and non-owners—the vast majority—must be bridged by a
distribution of ownership through thrift and a real sharing of

profits, not merely a profit-sharing in name. Profit-sharing

through stock ownership, or through partnership contracts, in

our large corporations has in too many instances proved either

disastrous or of little value to employees laboring under the dis-

advantage of being minority stockholders. Indeed, as Pius XI

says, the time seems to> have come when the wage contract

should itself be somewhat modified by a contract of partnership.

This, however, should be a measure of true partnership.” (Pp.

23, 24.)

Unions

“Labor and trades unions offer one means of obtaining jus-

tice in wages and salaries. The normal working of such organ-

izations, whether singly or as a federation of unions, should be

to promote the general welfare and to .insure for all workers,

whether skilled or unskilled, maximum employment, adequate

remuneration, the protection of their rights as men and as citi-

zens, and security against accident and indigence.” (P. 24.)

The New Social Order

“Government in the fulfilment of its functions should assist

in the organization of the various economic groups. These or-

ganized groups, without injustice to themselves, but seeking al-

ways the common good, can be so constituted as to fulfil prop-

erly their own function of production and the distribution of

their services. Such an organization of the various economic

groups along the lines of their separate industries and fields of

endeavor should embrace representatives of every element in



APPENDIX 95

the economic group. Imbued with justice, with love for the

common good and with social charity, such an organized eco-

nomic life can free the State from the danger it faces of becom-

ing an all-engrossing and all-enveloping power. As Pope Pius

XI says: The aim of social legislation must be the reestablish-

ment of vocational groups. . . . The State should leave to these

smaller groups the settlement of business of minor importance.

It will thus carry out with greater freedom, power and success

the tasks belonging to it, because it alone can effectively accom-

plish these, directing, watching, stimulating and restraining as

circumstances suggest or necessity demands.’ But Government,

to quote again, should not ‘arrogate to itself functions which

can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies’

—

bodies that would comprise the organized and autonomous eco-

nomic life.” (P. 26.)

Economic Nationalism

“As the means of communication and transportation become

more perfect day by day, the economic interdependence of na-

tions becomes more apparent and presents increasingly difficult

international problems. The entire human race has the right of

access on reasonable terms to the resources, markets and settle-

ments of the whole earth. . . . Economic nationalism may have

the gravest consequences, and, if carried to extremes, may be

profoundly immoral. International cooperation in debt agree-

ments, markets for finished goods, access to raw materials, and

movement of population on a reasonable basis are necessary.

Even our country, with its wealth of natural resources and its

highly developed industrial technique, cannot stand alone. The

oneness and solidarity of mankind make economic isolation im-

possible. That truth should lead our nation to make such

agreements as are necessary for the immediate and future wel-

fare of her own people and for the happiness of mankind. Wars

are born of international injustice, isolation and rivalry. Inter-

national life, relations and responsibilities should be recognized

and entered into according to the principles of social justice

and social charity.” (Pp. 13, 14.)

Study

“Our priests and selected groups of the laity, members of

the professions, employers and leaders of trade and labor

unions, should study most carefully the plan for the restoration



96 TOWARD SOCIAL JUSTICE

of the social order outlined by our Holy Father, whose voice is

the voice of the living representative of Christ upon earth.

With providential foresight and more than worldly wisdom he

has definitely pointed out the way to the true Christian social

order. . . . These and many other questions receiving public at-

tention can advantageously be studied by leagues, societies and

groups, according to their capacity, but naturally the emphasis

will be placed on the moral aspect, which is the supreme con-

cern of the Church.” (P. 20.)
2

Catholic Action

“The National Council of Catholic Men and the National

Council of Catholic Women, so often commended by the Bish-

ops at their annual meetings, have, against great odds, done

much for Church and country. They deserve fuller recognition

and the generous support of Catholics of all classes. The field

of Catholic Action invites them to a wider participation in the

work of the hierarchy, under the direction of the Ordinary of

each diocese.” (Pp. 28, 29.)

2For information about study outlines; special help to study clubs, bibliographies,

pamphlets, etc., dealing with Catholic social teaching and particularly Pius XI’s “Re-

constructing the Social Order,” write National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1312

Massachusetts Avenue NW., Washington, D. C.