UCSB URRAPT DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY A Practical Study in Social History BY JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S.J., PH.D. ASSOCIATE EDITOR OF "AMERICA," LECTURER FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF SOCI- OLOGY, AUTHOR OF " THE WORLD PROBLEM," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK P. J. KENEDY & SONS 1919 Imprint! JOSEPHUS H. ROCKWELL, SJ. Preepositus Prov. Marylandicz Neo-Eboracensis ibil SDfastat: ARTHURUS T. SCANLAN, S.T.D. Censor Librorum Imprimatur : ^PATRICIUS J. HAYES, D.D. Arcbiepiscopus Neo-Eboracensis NEO-EBORACI die 14, Ottobris, 1919 COPYRIGHT-IQIQ BY P J KENEDY & SONS PRINTED IN U-S'A CONTENTS' CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE vii I. EGYPTIAN LABOR UNIONS .... i II. GREEK AND ROMAN TRADE UNIONS 10 III. POLITICS AND VIOLENCE .... 18 IV. STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY . 26 V. FROM SERVITUDE TO FREEDOM . . 37 VI. RECASTING THE WORLD .... 47 VII. SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH ... 56 VIII. THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS 68 IX. PEACE GILDS 79 X. LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER 89 XI. ORIGIN OF MEDIEVAL GILDS . . . 102 XII. MERCHANT GILDS no XIII. A SCOTCH MERCHANT GILD . . . 125 XIV. ECONOMICS, RELIGION AND CHARITY 135 XV. A FIFTEENTH CENTURY GILD . . 146 XVI. FIRST CHRISTIAN TRADE UNIONS . 157 XVII. THE WORLD'S GREATEST LABOR MOVEMENT 165 XVIII. TRUE INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY . . 175 XIX. LIVE AND LET LIVE 185 XX. THE GOLDEN RULE APPLIED . . . 195 XXL LEARNING A TRADE 206 XXII. THE FIRST MODERN LABOR CLASS 220 XXIII. REVALUATION OF THE MIDDLE AGES 237 VI CONTENTS XXIV. Civic PAGEANTS AND PLAYS . . . 248 XXV. THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE . . 260 XXVI. CATHOLICS AND POLITICAL DEMOCRACY 270 XXVII. MODERN CATHOLIC GILD PROGRAM 285 XXVIII. THE GREAT CATASTROPHE . . . 294 XXIX. TRIUMPH OF WORKINGMEN'S CO- OPERATIVES 311 XXX. MODERN INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY . 322 A CATHOLIC SOCIAL PLATFORM . . 345 PREFACE BASED upon historic facts, the present vol- ume is purely constructive in its nature. It applies the acid test of experience to the great social issues and closes with a definite program of practical social action. Thoughtful men are daily realizing more fully that the only economic bulwark to safeguard the domestic peace of the nations is the establishment of a true democracy in our industrial life. The task of the writer has been to show how signally the ancient pagan civilizations failed in this re- gard at the very height of their artistic achieve- ments and national prosperity. With the aid of the Church, labor rose from slavery to serfdom, and from serfdom to democratic industry. These developments are carefully traced and the causes which interrupted this progress explained by the author. Abundant documentary evidence is of- fered, together with frequent citations gathered from the most impartial and reliable sources. The last few centuries immediately preceding the World War, viewed from the standpoint of democratic industry, may rightly be called the Dark Ages, in an economic and social sense. This Vlll PREFACE statement, which might once have been received with incredulous astonishment, is a truism in our day. Within them took place the full growth and unhampered evolution of that unrestricted concen- tration of wealth which contained, as all can now readily perceive, the seeds of social anarchy. It was not necessary, then, to delay upon these other- wise than to show the nature and reason of their failure. The aim of society must be to promote the pub- lic good, and not a mere deceptive national pros- perity absorbed by a privileged few. The au- thor's main purpose, therefore, was to point out the ideal to be followed in a true conception of democratic industry. From another point of view the argument for the present volume was thus stated years ago by a writer in the London Month: " Whilst a certain amount of negative criticism of Socialism and other theories cannot be dis- pensed with, most of our attention must be given to the expounding of positive doctrine. Work- ingmen are much more likely to be impressed by knowing what the Church advocates than by know- ing what she condemns. They will grasp all this the more readily and thoroughly if it is placed in its historic setting, if they learn something of what the Church has done in the past for society in general and the working class in particular." * 1 H. Somerville, Jan., 1913. PREFACE IX The book, it is hoped, will serve as a text in so- cial history as well as a volume for popular cir- culation. False history has been made the basis of false social philosophy. We must first cor- rect these distorted views before we can hope to lead the masses aright towards the attainment of the ideals which all true men will gladly follow. Of particular importance is the extensive chap- ter on Modern Industrial Democracy, with its many examples showing the nature and growth of the new democratic movement in industry, and pointing out its rightful development. DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY CHAPTER I EGYPTIAN LABOR UNIONS WE can well imagine the existence of labor organizations centuries before the building of the pyramids. The nat- ural longing after fellowship and the advantages of association between members of the same class or craft was almost certain to have exercised its influence, under one form or another, unless hin- dered by positive restrictions. The first historic references to trade unionism are, however, very vague and shadowy. As a legalized institution it is believed to have taken its origin almost simultaneously in Egypt, Greece and Italy, some six or seven centuries before Christ. The three great leaders mentioned, respectively, as its found- ers in these different countries are the Egyptian ruler Amasis, the Greek law-giver Solon, and the second legendary king of Rome, Numa Pompilius. Communities of craftsmen are mentioned in the Old Testament. Such were " the families of them 2 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY that wrought fine linen in the House of oaths," such, too, were the potters of King David, or one of his successors, who settled in Netaim and Gedera. 1 But no special reference is made to any developed trade organization. Yet owing to religious influences labor was held in far higher respect among the Jews of the Old Dispensation than among any of the other great Eastern nations of antiquity, whose stupendous monuments were erected at the cost of untold human misery, of blood and stripes and grinding oppression. In Egypt King Amasis, it is stated, considered the formation of legalized trade unions a necessity for obtaining an accurate knowledge of the number of his subjects and of their means of support. However this may be, we find that in course of time a systematic division of craftsmen into State corporations was established with a thoroughness unsurpassed in the imperial days of Prussia. Each trade had its own appointed chief or its head-men, whose duty it was to maintain the in- terests of the craft and to represent it before the public authorities. Laborers employed in the same crafts were quartered in the same sections of the city, or at least worked in shops located together along the same streets. The paternal interest of the Government in the trade of its citizens was in great part to be accounted for by the fact that besides a poll tax 1 I Paralip. iv: 14, 21, 23. EGYPTIAN LABOR UNIONS 3 and a house tax, the laborer was also obliged to pay a trade tax. These levies, it was under- stood, could be obtained from him only after a vigorous application of the collector's rod. His organization would therefore prove an invaluable aid in directing the Government in its work of wringing from the laborer the hard-earned product of his toil. Doubtless it likewise had its eco- nomic advantages for the worker, but they could hardly have been more than to save him at times from bonds, stripes or starvation. The stelae of the little town of Abydos still record for us to- day the names of the labor representatives of all the various trades that flourished along its busy streets millenniums ago, from the head-mason, Didiu, to the master-shoemaker, Kahikhonti. We are particularly fortunate also in possessing a detailed description of labor conditions in ancient Egypt from the hand of one of its own con- temporary poets. A translation of his verses was made into French by the famous Egyptologist G. Maspero, 2 whose researches are applied in the present article. Though depicting in striking and realistic language the misery of labor, the poet's attitude is one of cynicism rather than of profound human sympathy. Like all Egyptians of his class, from the haughty ruler to the snobbish scribe, he had been brought up to despise the manual worker. Yet the different types of artisans are made to '"History of Egypt," II, pp. 98-102. 4 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY stand out before us in his verse more vividly and with more minute realism of detail than even in the sculptures and paintings of this remarkable race. We behold there the metal worker, his fin- gers " rugged as the crocodile "; the stonecutter, who knows no rest until his arms drop from weariness, but who is cruelly bound in a cramped, unnatural position should he chance to " remain sitting at sunrise"; the barber who runs from street to street seeking custom, " and when he falls to and eats, it is without sitting down"; the ar- tisan, with his chisel, who labors at timber or metal all the day and " at night works at home by the lamp "; or the mason dragging huge blocks of stone, " ten cubits by six," who is " much and dreadfully exhausted," and when the work is fin- ished returns home, " if he has bread," only to find that his children have been beaten mercilessly in his absence. With barely the scantiest covering for their poor, wasted bodies, the workers shiver in the wind or swelter in the broiling sun. But their comrades, confined in the workshops, enjoy no better fate. In verses out-moderning the mod- erns the old Egyptian bard continues his picture of hopeless toil, implying in a mere allusion the whole hidden history of the bitter lot of woman beneath this galling yoke of paganism: The weaver within doors is worse off than a woman ; squatting, his knees against his chest, EGYPTIAN LABOR UNIONS 5 he does not breathe. If during the day he slackens weaving, he is bound fast as the lotuses of the lake; and it is by giving bread to the door-keeper, that the latter permits him to see the light. The dyer, his fingers reeking and their smell is that of fish-spawn toils, his two eyes oppressed with fatigue, his hand does not stop, and as he speeds his time in cutting out cloth, he has a hatred of garments. The shoemaker is very unfortunate; he moans ceaselessly, his health is the health of the spawning fish, and he gnaws the leather. The baker makes dough, subjects the loaves to the fire; while his head is inside the oven, his son holds him by the legs; if he slips from the hands of his son, he falls there into the flames. In vain shall we look for any understanding of democracy among the pagan Oriental nations. Least of all may we hope to find it in their con- ception and treatment of labor. Yet trade organizations were never more com- prehensively developed than under this govern- ment absolutism. On the testimony of the Greeks, even professional robbers had their own trade corporations, with duly accredited repre- sentatives at police headquarters. Their task was to " discuss the somewhat delicate questions to 6 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY which the practice of their trade gave rise," and to fix the ransom to be paid for any stolen article, which then was invariably returned to its owner: an institution equally convenient for police and citizens and the honest and honorable order of Egyptian highwaymen. 3 We may here advert in passing to similar gilds of even the most disreputable occupations, that ex- isted among the Turks in Bagdad under the early Sultans. Pocket thieves and others of their kith paid a stipulated sum to the police for the un- hampered exercise of their trade on certain oc- casions; but wo to them if they were neverthe- less caught in the act ! A double penalty was then exacted of them. It is of further interest to know that they belonged to the same general gild as the police officials. 4 While this appeals to our sense of the ludicrous, it may be well to look nearer home. The legalizing of modern profiteering in- terests, we might gently hint, for instance, is an even worse recognition of organized robbery car- ried on upon a far larger scale. Labor organizations have just one lesson to learn from the Egyptian labor gilds or trade unions. It is the danger of undue State intru- sion which in modern as in ancient life is bound 8 Ibid., p. 97. * Kosta Nikoloff, " Das Handiverk und Zunftivesen in Bul- garien ladhrend der tiirkischen Herrschaft, etc.," pp. 53, 54. EGYPTIAN LABOR UNIONS J always to end in tyranny. It is very simple for labor to hand over to the State, whether capi- talistic or communistic, its hard-gained liberties. But this once accomplished aside from a pass- ing crisis where liberties are surrendered for a time in the interest of patriotism it will there- after be difficult, if not impossible, to regain them. Given the little finger, the State will lay hold on the entire body. There is a reasonable State con- trol and a reasonable State ownership within proper limits. These may be extended as far as the common good requires, but no further. To transfer to the State the entire means of produc- tion is for labor to place its head in the lion's mouth. Gracious as the lion may appear, com- pared with the Egyptian crocodile, the laborer is wise in not entrusting his head to either, but in securing and maintaining his own liberty. Capi- talism, enforced communism and general State So- cialism alike exclude him from a reasonable per- sonal ownership. " Away from the servile State ! " must be his cry. Whether the means of production, on which his livelihood and liberty depend, are in the hands of a capitalistic regime or a communistic bureau- cracy will matter little in the end. There is but one way towards freedom, popular prosperity and democratic industry, and that, as was pointed out at the very conclusion of the World War by the 8 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY Catholic Episcopacy in America, lies in bringing about a social reconstruction in which the major- ity shall attain to a personal ownership and con- trol, wholly or in part, of the means of production. This must be our ultimate aim. ' 4 The majority must somehow become owners, or at least in part, of the instruments of produc- tion," was the final word of the Bishops of the United States speaking through the Administrative Committee of their National War Council. 5 The education suggested as necessary to reach this stage was the establishment and management by labor of cooperative productive societies and copartner- ship arrangements. In the former the workers will themselves own and manage the industries, in the latter they are to have a substantial share in the corporate stock and a reasonable share in the management. " However slow the attain- ment of these ends, they will have to be reached before we can have a thoroughly efficient system of production." Here, therefore, is the moun- tain of vision the American Bishops pointed out, where alone industrial peace and social justice can be attained and where popular prosperity shall flourish for all, provided that the code of Sinai is not forgotten nor the charity of Christ. Labor must yield up its desire of a maximum wage for a minimum service and capital must remember that: " The laborer's right to a decent livelihood is the 6 " Social Reconstruction," Reconstruction Pamphlet No. i, Jan., 1919. EGYPTIAN LABOR UNIO.NS 9 first moral charge upon industry," preceding all rights of the employer to profits, aside from the latter's own reasonable living. And neither may neglect the interests of the consumer. CHAPTER II GREEK AND ROMAN TRADE UNIONS MORE interesting than strictly historical is the description Plutarch has left us of the origin of the Roman labor gilds, which he attributes to Numa Pompilius. 1 To blend together by common interests the racial fac- tions in the newly founded city of Rome, and so to end the deadly party strifes between the Sa- bines and the Romans within the same walls, the politic ruler is said to have devised a plan of di- viding the citizens into groups according to their arts and crafts. The distinct craft gilds mentioned by this his- torian as founded during the reign of Numa are eight in number. A ninth was added into which were gathered all the remaining trades. Depart- ing somewhat from the customary interpretation of the Greek text, we may classify the eight Ro- man craft gilds as follows: i. flute players, 2. goldsmiths, 3. builders, 4. dyers, 5. tailors, 6. tanners, 7. coppersmiths, 8. potters. That all these trades existed in a specialized form at this early period, about the seventh century before our era, is seriously to be questioned. Other employ- i Plutarch, " Numa," 17. 10 GREEK AND ROMAN TRADE UNIO.NS II ments, moreover, which probably were then of greater importance, are not at all mentioned. One thing alone is historically certain: that a century before Christ trade unions existed at Rome which in the popular mind dated back to time immemorial. These ancient unions were re- garded with special respect by the Romans so that they outlived the laws which proved fatal to other organizations. According to a method suf- ficiently common at a period when historic criti- cism was not too exacting, the origin of the labor gilds was naturally ascribed to the rather mythi- cal Numa Pompilius to whom Rome was said to be indebted for other important public institutions. For similar reasons, doubtless, the Roman labor organizations were attributed by Florus to Ser- vius Tullius, the sixth legendary King of Rome. 2 Of the eight craft gilds enumerated by Plutarch three only are spoken of by various Roman his- torians as incorporated in the Constitution of Ser- vius Tullius: the builders, the coppersmiths, and the flute-players or horn-blowers. Whatever prominence may for a time have been given to these labor gilds, some centuries before the Chris- tian era, was due to their eminent usefulness to the Romans as a military nation. 8 The members of the remaining gilds not mentioned in connec- 2 Florus, I, 6, 3. 8 Etienne Martin Saint-Leon, " Histoire des Corporations de Metiers" pp. 3-5. 12 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY tion with these laws were evidently classed accord- ing to the wealth which they individually pos- sessed, or more probably did not possess. Such was the sole criterion of this Constitution. They soon found their place in the lowest stratum of the social layers and were without political significance. As artisans they were held in utter contempt by the classic pagan world. Such we find is the atti- tude assumed towards the craftsman throughout the entire range of Roman literature. " The la- borers are all engaged in a base occupation," says Cicero, " nor can there be anything honorable to a freeman in a workshop." 4 Shortly after the period to which tradition as- cribed the beginning of the gild system in Rome, Solon (born in 638 B. c.) introduced his sweep- ing reforms in Greece. They completely changed the conditions of capital and labor at Athens. The poor had there been ground down to such utter destitution and misery that they sold their very sons and daughters, and lastly, even their own bodies into slavery to the masters of bread, in whose hands were the keys of wealth. In this stress of popular despair, which threatened to culminate in a bloody revolution, rich and poor alike chose Solon for their archon. Unlimited power was conferred on him to introduce what- ever economic and constitutional reforms might be needed. As a consequence the law which re- 4 Cicero, " De Officiis," I, 42, 150. GREEK AND ROMAN TRADE UNIO.NS 13 duced the laborer to slavery in lieu of the payment of his debt was abrogated. He was given the right to vote, although he could not himself be elected to office, and was ranked in the fourth class of citizens. Slight as such benefits may seem to us, they were regarded as a great boon in their day. A Greek fourth estate had thus been created. To Solon likewise is ascribed by Gaius the Ath- enian law, considered as the charter of subsequent trade unions, which permitted the organization of societies, provided they were not hostile to the State. The Roman law engraved upon the Twelve Tables, which granted this same privilege, is regarded by Gaius as only a translation of the Solonic legislation. Sed haec lex videtur ex lege Solonis translata esse. 5 The gilds were in Rome commonly called col- legia, in Greece eranoi and thiasoi. Other names were likewise in use, but all these appellations, like the English equivalent, " gild," were applied to societies of almost every variety. While little is known of the statutes of the Greek labor organ- izations in particular, the constitutions and cus- toms of the gilds in general are perfectly familiar to us. We reproduce a description from a mono- graph study by H. Tompkins which comprises the salient characteristics of the Greek association. 5 Gaius, Fourth Book on the Laws of the Twelve Tables. Digest XLVII, Tit., 22, " De Collegiis et Corporibus." 14 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY It is not, of course, to be presumed that each of the details here given was to be found in every instance. Let us now consider what these companies were which are called by the name of eranoi and thiasoi, and of which the in- scriptions have revealed the number and importance. They were formed of members who met together to sacrifice to certain divinities and to celebrate their festivals in common; besides this they assisted those members who fell into neces- sitous circumstances, and provided for their funerals. They were at once religious associations and friendly societies. Sometimes they daringly partook of a political and commercial character. These private corporations, recognized by the State, had their presiding and other officers, their priests, their funds supplied by the contributions of members and the liberality of benefactors. They assembled in their sanctuaries and made decrees. They were found in great numbers in the important cities, and especially in the maritime ones. At Rhodes, for example, they were the Companions of the Sun, the Sons of Bacchus, of Minerva Lindienne, of Jupiter Atagyrius, of Jupiter Soter. 6 Although the reality was not always as idyllic as this picture represents it, and a statue of a god was usually sufficient to constitute the sanctuary, if we may so call their locals, yet the idea of a perfect Greek gild is here sufficiently expressed. Greater stress might, however, be placed upon the convivial nature of the banquets, which in the latter state of Greek and Roman society may al- most have been the principal reason for the exis- tence of such associations, and probably consisted in wild debauches and orgies. Political intrigues, 8 H. Tompkins, " Friendly Societies of Antiquity." GREEK AND ROMAN TRADE UNIO.NS 15 as we shall see, were frequently a prime motive. How closely the trade gilds approximated to the description here given it is difficult to say, yet they were doubtlessly conformed, as far as pos- sible, to the general gild ideal of their time. It is to Rome, however, that we must turn for a complete and systematic development of craft and merchant gilds. The inscriptions dealing with them are countless in number and amazing in their variety. Almost every division of trade seemed to possess its union. Tarruntenus Pa- ternus, who was Prefect of the Imperial Guard in 179, enumerates thirty crafts which were espe- cially privileged by the Government. Yet he men- tions such trades only as were connected with mili- tary works. It is commonly accepted that each of the occupations enumerated, mensores, medici, etc., was represented by a union. 7 Constantine in 337 extended special privileges to thirty-five trade corporations. It is interesting to note that a grouping similar to that of the Middle Ages was likewise observed at Rome, as in Egypt and elsewhere. The potters occupied the Esquiline, the silk-workers and per- fumers were settled in Tuscan Street, the oil-deal- ers and cheese-mongers had their booths in Vala- brum, and the silversmiths and tanners were located beyond the Tiber. 7 Tarruntenus Paternus, " Liber Primus Militarium." Dig. L., 6, 7. Liebenam, " Zur Geschichte und Organisation dei Romischen Vereimiuesen" p. 48. 1 6 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY As in the Middle Ages, so here also streets or sections of the city were often named after the tradesmen and merchants who displayed their wares in them. Thus we have Perfumers' Street, Harness-makers' Street, Corn-venders' Row, and Sandal Street. In the latter Apollo Sandaliarius, or Apollo of the Sandal-makers, had his shrine. The ancient Roman gilds were, according to general custom, placed under the special guard- ianship of some divinity. While merchants nat- urally turned to Mercury, the craftsmen most fre- quently dedicated their gilds to Minerva, the god- dess of the arts. Ovid in particular tells of the many various classes of workingmen and women who assisted in great throngs at the celebration of her feast. 8 The gilds, as we have seen, at times made the temples of a god their meeting places. Thus the merchant gild described by Livy, which met in the temple of Mercury, took for its feast the anniversary of the temple's dedication. The same author writes of a gild of flute-players, who went upon a strike because the censors forbade them to hold their banquets in the temple of Jupi- ter at Rome, as had been their custom from the earliest times. In great indignation they left the capitol in a body and betook themselves to another city, where they were well received. But when they had celebrated their feast, and were deep under the influence of Bacchus, oblivious of their 8 Ovid, "Fast.," Ill, 308 ff., 819-832. GREEK AND ROMAN TRADE UNIONS 17 cares and grievances, the citizens cast them to- gether into a cart and so returned them to Rome. There a reconciliation took place. 9 Liebenam re- fers to other classic authors who have different versions of the same story, but it serves at all events to illustrate existing conditions. Roman labor gilds were not to mark any final progress towards a more democratic conception whether of industry or politics. The reasons for their absolute and pitiable failure will be made plain in the following chapters. Livy, IX, 30. CHAPTER III POLITICS AND VIOLENCE NEITHER during the Republic nor dur- ing the Empire was it ever the intention of the Roman law to interfere with pure labor unions. But unfortunately the economic purpose of these institutions was too frequently forgotten by the gildsmen themselves and their political influence or physical mob-power was sold to the most unworthy demagogues or venal politicians, in return for immediate bribes, profits or assurances. The proper use of the vote on the part of the laborer to effect some social measures is not here called into question. It is not merely a right, but a duty. It was the false political character which Roman trade unions often as- sumed, the excesses to which they led and the dan- gers which they were thought to threaten to the State that brought about their dissolution from time to time. Yet even then the intention of the law was manifested by the fact that the steady an- cient craft gilds, which had continued for cen- turies, were not molested. Thus the historian Suetonius writes of Caesar that " He destroyed all the gilds except those which had been founded in 18 POLITICS A.ND VIOLENCE 19 ancient times." 1 Again of Augustus he says: " He dissolved the gilds, except such as were of long standing and legalized." 2 During the disturbed times and amid the hideous immorality of the last days of the Republic, pic- tured so graphically by Sallust, the gilds mingled largely in the intrigues of political life. Their services were courted, with bribes and promises we may presume, by every politician at election times. Ambitious men used them for their own dark purposes, and even Cicero, with all his dis- dain of the lower classes and the laborers, is said to have availed himself of their assistance. We can, therefore, understand the reason for such se- vere measures as the Lex Gabinia, which forbade all secret gatherings of the people, under penalty of death. Such laws were directed not against the gilds, but against political agitators and revolu- tionists, who cared for them only as stepping- stones to the acquisition of personal power. As W. Warde Fowler writes : It is curious to notice, that by the time these old gilds emerge into light again as clubs that could be used for political pur- poses, a new source of gain, and one that was really sordid, had been placed within the reach of the Roman plebs urbana; it was possible to make money by your vote in the election of the magistrate. In that degenerate age, when the vast ac- cumulation of wealth made it possible for a man to purchase his way to power, in spite of repeated attempts to check the 1 Suetonius, " Caes.," 42. 2 Suetonius, " Octav.," 32. 2O DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY evil by legislation, the old principle of honorable association was used to help the small man to make a living by choosing the unprincipled and often the incompetent to undertake the government of the empire. 3 Most interesting is the discovery at Pompeii of the electioneering posters of the trade gilds. The wealthy and luxurious city was throbbing with political life on the eve of the great catastrophe, and the labor unions were active in every section to secure the election of their favorite candidates. Signs like the following were prominently dis- played near popular taverns and public places, so- liciting the votes of the bewildered citizens: The Fishermen Vote for Pompidius Rufus as Edile. The United Goldsmiths Want Cuspius Pansa for Edile. The latter, as other similar notices indicated, was the choice of gilds as varied in their interests as the trade unions of the jewelers, the muleteers, the carpenters and the worshipers of Isis. Casellius Marcellus is put forward for the same office in a notice which would appear rather amus- ing in our day: His neighbors favor Casellius Marcellus. That the influence, however, of this politician ex- tended beyond the circle of his immediate friends is evident from advertisements showing that he 8 " Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero," pp. 46, 47. POLITICS A.ND VIOLENCE 21 had the support of the wagoners, farmers and other unions. Even Venus, the protecting god- dess of Pompeii, is made to declare herself in favor of his election: Venus Wants Casellius for Edile ! Neither did the gilds fail to put forth the usual electioneering promises. Thus in the year 73 the Bakers' Union of Pompeii canvassed for C. Julius Polybius, because " he brings good bread." Probably he had promised them to secure a reduc- tion in the price of grain, or other similar favors. Particular oddities are the announcements of such gilds as the " Night Drinkers " and the " Sleepy- heads," indicating in the former case, we may pre- sume, the propensity of the members to carouse until the morning. Certain women, likewise, as the placards show, were carrying on a vigorous campaign for their political favorites. There is nothing new beneath the sun, as all these discov- eries show! A list of the various political pos- ters was drawn up at Paris by P. Willems in 1887.* It was not, as would appear, such canvassing that the Roman statesmen dreaded, but rather the secret gatherings in which the gilds were made a cloak for ulterior and dangerous designs. They were the anarchist and I. W. W. tactics that not seldom led to the disruption of Roman trade *"Les Elections Municipales a Pompei." 22 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY unions and prevented the attainment of economic ends. In the provinces especially, the Emperors exer- cised the greatest watchfulness. A classical illus- tration is that which occurs in the famous corre- spondence between Pliny and Trajan. The for- mer, writing from Nicomedia, desires to obtain permission for the organization of a gild of crafts- men to serve as a fire department for the city. He recommends the project favorably, and argues that, since only about 150 members are to be ad- mitted, all of them craftsmen, he will be able to see to it that no unlawful purposes are pursued. 5 The Emperor, however, is not convinced. In his reply he states that all previous societies formed in that province, under whatever pretense, have invariably degenerated into political clubs. " Let us bear in mind," he says, " that this province, and in particular this city, have been disturbed by factions of just this kind." 6 Yet Trajan was not opposed to gilds as such, and conferred spe- cial privileges upon a bakers' union in Rome; nor were the gilds as uncommon in the provinces as a passage from Gaius might suggest. This tolerance however does not imply any respect shown for labor. Interest in the laborer for his own sake, or for the love of God whose image he bears, was unthinkable to the pagan 5 PIin. Ep. ad Trai., 33. 6 Trai. ad Plin., 34. POLITICS A.ND VIOLENCE 23 mind. Paganism was never concerned about the life and condition of the poor. Mr. Fowler rightly states the situation when he says: The statesman, if he troubled himself about them at all, looked on them as a dangerous element of society, to be con- sidered as human beings only at election times; at all other times merely as animals that had to be fed in order to keep them from becoming an active peril. The philosopher, even the Stoic, whose creed was by far the most ennobling in that age, seems to have left the dregs of the people quite out of account. Though his philosophy nominally took the whole of mankind into its cognizance, it believed the masses to be de- graded and vicious and made no effort to redeem them. 7 There was indeed little hope for labor under paganism. But even that glimmer of a brighter future was relentlessly extinguished when he turned from sound labor principles to espouse the cause of mere political demagogues. A cartoonist in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer significantly presents the labor issue. A marble monument, firmly based, majestically planned and executed with consummate skill, is pictured as partly pried loose from its pedestal. At its foot stands a Bolshevist laborer, trying to shatter its base beneath the vandal blows of his huge ham- mer. The symbol wrought in stone is emble- matic of a true, constructive labor unionism. It represents the figure of a strong woman, nobly conceived by the artist, dignified, intelligent, alert, with a child standing at her knee. Her head is 7 " Social Life at Rome." 24 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY lifted upward in serious thought and earnest pur- pose, while her eyes are earnestly questing the heavens for guidance. Her right hand upholds a flaming torch, not the symbol of anarchy and de- struction but of popular enlightenment; her left holds, in strong and graceful poise, the massive oval of her protecting shield on which are re- corded the immediate demands, made by her for the safeguarding of the worker's home. Such is the true gild concept. " Erected through years of constructive effort on the part of the workers and dedicated to fur- ther their just interests," is the legend inscribed on the pedestal. " After years of patient toil a constructive monument of the achievements of or- ganized labor was built, and each year finds more and valuable additions made to our masterpiece," says the Carpenter in reproducing this drawing. It is true that the ideal of labor unionism that it symbolizes is not fully realized, particularly on its religious side, yet in part at least it has been achieved. And is all this to be destroyed, ideal and achievement alike? "And for what?" Such was the question asked by the organ of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Standing by with idle hands, as the artist pic- tures the background of his scene, is a crowd of workers, men and women, whom starvation and despair may at any moment drive to deeds of vio- POLITICS AND VIOLENCE 25 lence. But this is neither more nor less than part of the cunningly devised plan of unscrupulous labor leaders who themselves incur no losses. In the distance loom the black scaffoldings of incom- pleted structures against the dark skies. " Throw away your constitution and strike with your class ! " is the cry sent up to the labor unionist by a blatant press, often supported out of the money of the anarchist rich, while the same demand comes in a rising treble from the red revolutionists. It is not through anarchy that the laborer can achieve his end, but by a sane progressive sys- tem of trade unionism that will not disregard the dictates of religion; by a rightful use of the ballot which shall assure him the legislative measures that can safely and surely help to bring about a true democracy in industry as in politics; and finally by a gradual education in cooperative en- terprises that will enable him to take an intelli- gent part in the ownership and management of the means of production on which his livelihood depends. So alone may we hope for peace, con- tentment and popular prosperity. CHAPTER IV STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY THE special privileges which from time to time were conferred upon the gilds by successive Emperors became in turn the occasion of abuses. Men often joined gilds with which they had no trade relations, purely for the sake of the proffered advantages, and even be- came members of many gilds at the same time. Hence stringent regulations followed, which led the way to State interference to such a degree that life in the gilds became almost intolerable. The lesson of the Egyptian labor corporations was now to be enforced by the misery of the Roman trade unionists. Once assumed, the paternalistic attitude of the State was never to lessen, but constantly to in- crease. The complete degeneration of the la- borer was to be the inevitable result. In return for privileges and immunities, the gilds were put into the service of the State. They had prac- tically become a State institution in not a few in- stances and were given special legal defenders at court and special judges, during the reign of Alex- 26 STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY 27 ander Severus. Membership in many of them finally became compulsory by law. Freedom of choice no longer existed in these " socialized " gilds, for men were born into them. They had become hereditary and there was no more hope of escape from them than from a Ro- man prison cell. Duties of every kind were im- posed upon the members. They were henceforth impressed more than ever into the service of the State. Most unpopular, however, were the sor- dida munera, or menial duties they were obliged to render to the public, duties which had no rela- tion whatever with the trades of the respective unions. They were to do chores of every kind for the State. The most oppressive imposition laid upon a great number of the gilds was the ob- ligation of providing free grain or bread for the plebeian population of the capital. Upon the gilds which were free from such service the State imposed high taxes in lieu of this obligation. The principal unions at the service of the pub- lic were the gilds of the shipmasters, the bakers, the swine-dealers and the lime-burners. The members drew their salaries from the State, were not subjected to torture when accused, and were later even freed from military service, as well as from other public and municipal duties. Strict property and inheritance regulations were im- posed in particular upon the shipmen, who were most necessary for victualling the Roman capital. 28 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY When a shipman's family became extinct another was designated in its place by the prefect. 1 Duties which in earlier days had been rendered by free compact had now become entirely compul- sory. The statute books are full of penalties for men who dared to shirk their portion of the work. Fugitives from the unions, who sought to emi- grate into the provinces in order to escape from this oppressive paternalism of the State, were re- turned like fugitive slaves by the provincial gov- ernors. So strict was the hereditary obligation of re- maining in the gild to which a citizen belonged that even a cleric, when found to have escaped from his corporation, was under a degenerate system of leg- islation obliged to return to it, if he had obtained a rank no higher than that of deacon. The spe- cial law to this effect was passed in the year 445. 2 This makes plain how the Church herself was shackled by the State, and how diffi- cult it was for her in such a decadent civilization to fight her brave struggle for humanity and broth- erhood, and to save what might still be saved. Most deplorable everywhere was the condition of the bakers' unions. The hardships which membership in them implied made it most desir- able to escape their thraldom. To render them less abhorrent special privileges were frequently 1 Cod. Theod. XIII, tit., 5. 2 Nov. Val. 15; also Cod. Theod. XIV, 3, n. STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY 2 9 granted, such as the exemption from the sordida munera. The fact, however, that men were ju- dicially condemned to such a gild tells its own sad story. Moreover, according to a regulation of Constantius, made in the year 355, any one who married a baker's daughter was compelled to enter the gild; and a law of Honorius, in 403, for- bade any baker to marry a woman not belonging to the corporation. The penalty in the latter case was no less than confiscation of property and de- portation. The conditions under this form of State pa- ternalism may give some indication of what, in another way, must be expected if an entire nation is enslaved under a servile State. This must of necessity come into existence if all the means of production are transferred from the capitalist to the State, in place of that happy readjustment which shall make of the majority of the work- ers, personally, part-owners at least in industry. The government bureaucracy, or in other words the successful politicians and clever demagogues, would practically possess complete control over the persons of the citizens. Those who would find least favor with them would be confronted with the most intolerable conditions until they too sub- mitted to the new servitude. What has been said of the development of the system of labor gilds in pagan times, even in its palmiest days, must not be permitted to leave the 30 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY impression, as we have already stated, that labor was ever honored save under the Christian dis- pensation, where the influence of the Church could be duly exercised; or under the ancient Covenant, in as far as the spirit of Jehovah was with the chosen people. A greater simplicity, it is true, prevailed in the earlier days of Greek and Roman paganism, before slavery had appeared in the vast proportions it was to assume in later cen- turies. This was particularly true of farm labor. Yet we recall the struggles which from almost the earliest times took place between the patri- cians and plebeians. 'The latter were not even admitted to the ancient Roman cults, until grad- ually, by dint of their numbers, they created trib- unes and, in 367 B. c., gained admission even to the consulship. But they were still excluded from the priestly colleges of pontifices and augures. Certain such functions remained to the last an exclusive privilege of the patrician class. This incidentally illustrates the vast difference between paganism and Christianity. So too the spirit of conquest excluded all democracy, since not the goods only, but the persons themselves of the con- quered were left at the merciless disposition of the victors. The knights, or equites, were later to become the real capitalists, from about the mid- dle of the second century before our era. They abused their political power at home to promote STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY 31 their own interests, while in Asia we are to find them carrying on the most usurious transactions. So, again, the speculators who enriched them- selves in the provinces bought up, in turn, the rich Italian lands and cultivated them with unfree labor. Thus the excessive accumulation of farm capital in the hands of a few became the curse of Rome. This was known as the latifundia sys- tem. In spite of the ancient legislation which per- mitted no one to possess more than 500 jugera of the Roman public land, modeled after the ancient Greek laws, the small farmers were gradually bought out. In opposition to this ruinous form of land-capitalism a land-reform movement was begun by Tiberius Gracchus, and carried on after him by his brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. Both in turn met their death in the agitation they aroused. As the last scene of this sad tragedy, we find the descendants of the farmers who had once cul- tivated the fertile neighboring lands, now reap- pearing as the proletariat of Rome, who must be kept from revolution by doles of bread and gladi- atorial shows. The debased rabble thus created were indulged to their heart's content with pag- eants of brutal bloodshed and the groans of dying men. The munificence of wealthy citizens, and particularly of the emperors themselves, provided them with the splendor of public buildings and an 32 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY excess of civic magnificence. 3 Underneath all this display was rottenness and untold misery, particu- larly on the part of the vast slave population, who were left without any shadow of human rights. The system of slavery was a fearful clog upon the labor movement. Slaves were the living ma- chinery of Greek and Roman capitalism. Thou- sands of human beings were often the possession of one man of fortune. They were the great body of the producers, whose labor, if the master so desired, was limited by their physical endurance only. Their strength and talent belonged to him entirely. They could, above all, be replaced at little cost. To wear out a slave in a few years was a policy often practised as more profitable than properly to provide and care for him. With this system the poverty-stricken freemen and freed- men were compelled to compete. The slave population of Rome in the early days of the Empire is estimated at about 1,000,- ooo, as against only 10,000 of the upper classes, who formed the Roman plutocracy and alone en- joyed the fruit of the enslavement of the entire world. There was no middle class, since the free laborers were all sunk into abject poverty. There was comparatively little work for them in the mansions of the rich that were filled with an army of slaves, but there were calls for their serv- 3 Guglielmo Ferrero, " Ancient Rome and Modern America," pp. 24-29. , STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY 33 ices from those who themselves were not able to purchase slave labor or were not provided with requisite craftsmen. Though the free worker did not, therefore, dis- appear entirely, as some imagine, yet his life was one of untold misery and degradation. No won- der then if he finally relinquished the struggle and degenerated into the class of " clients " who hung about the doors of the rich to maintain the pomp of the mansion, performed any menial labor and were treated little better than dogs, feeding on the bones that were thrown to them. No wonder if he fell still lower and descended to the level of the great mass of the people, the bulk of the pro- letariat, who lived in complete idleness and were supported by the State with doles of free grain, and later of bread and of oil. At times even vast sums of money were divided among them. Yet all this was not for any love of the people, such as moved the heart of Christ to multiply the loaves and fishes for the multitudes that had fol- lowed after Him, but to avert the persistent dan- ger of mob uprisings. They must be fed or they might grow restless and uneasy, and end by tear- ing to pieces the handful of idle rich who were rot- ting amid their fabulous wealth and indescribable luxuries, the spoil of a world laid prostrate at their feet. Hence the " bread and circuses," for the equally idle masses, the public baths where they might loll about, the sensuous theaters, -the 34 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY combats of gladiators and the human holocausts to satisfy their lust for blood. The demoraliza- tion which such a life produced can readily be un- derstood and its fearful reaction upon all classes of labor. But there are still other facts to be taken into account if we would fully comprehend the condi- tion of the free citizen who sought in some man- ner to retain his own self-respect by honest and useful labor. We must remember that the large capitalistic enterprises of the day were carried on by slaves. These, at the height of Rome's glory, could be purchased by the tens of thousands. They could be bought at the lowest prices, could be supported on the coarsest food, and were, ac- cording to Cato's rule, only to sleep and to work, while the lash was mercilessly plied to keep them from failing beneath the strain. Supplied with thousands of these wretched be- ings, who poured in wide streams through the por- tals of Rome with each new conquest, the wealth- iest of the Senators did not disdain to carry on great industrial enterprises of their own. " Im- poverished as industry in Rome ever had been and ever remained," writes Joseph Schings, " the poorer citizens nevertheless gradually succeeded in establishing various trades. As soon however as these promised to become remunerative the rich with their capital and slaves entered into competition, and mercilessly depressed the labor STATE PATERNALISM AND SLAVERY 35 of the poor citizen workers." 4 The position of the latter was made the more unbearable by the fact that the slaves themselves were a part of the capital with which free labor was forced into competition. The Roman law, moreover, main- tained against the laborer all the injustice of mod- ern individualism and confirmed in every way the absolute power of wealth. Worst of all there remained for the laborer the possibility of sinking into slavery himself, a fate too terrible for thought. Hence, too, the utter disdain with which the free laborer was regarded by the haughty Roman. " All gains made by hired laborers," was Cicero's dispassionate judgment, " are dishonorable and base, for what we buy of them is their labor and not their artistic skill. With them the very gain itself does but increase the slavishness of their work." 5 Such was the judgment of Rome and Greece. Such was the judgment of all the pagan world. It is not the purpose to enter into this subject in the present volume. A single quotation from the Father of History, Herodotus, will suf- fice: I cannot say if the Greeks have copied the Egyptians in their disdain for work, because I find the same contempt spread among the Scythians, Persians and Lydians; in a word, be- cause among the barbarians (i. e., all who were not Greeks) 4 " Socialpolitisc he Abhandlungen." Nos. IV and V, p. 44. 5 " Dt Officiis" I, 42, 150. 36 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY those who learn trades and even their children are regarded as the lowest of citizens. . . . All Greeks, especially the Lace- demonians, are educated in these principles. 6 We are told that in Athens a law was actually proposed to reduce all artisans to slavery. 7 6 Herodotus, II, 167. 7 Smithsonian Report for 1912, p. 599. CHAPTER V FROM SERVITUDE TO FREEDOM LABOR was a badge of disgrace in the eyes of paganism. The laborers themselves were considered as nothing more than proletarii, " child-bearers," a term which should be applied only as a mark of honor under the Christian dispensation, but upon which the pagan mind impressed the meaning still implied in it to- day. The masses were meant only to toil and slave that a few might live in ease and opulence. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon and all the greatest moralists and thinkers of pagan antiquity could not rise above this standard. Even the merchant was not ordinarily held in good repute. His position indeed was far more favorable. He might himself probably be a slave- holder possessed of no inconsiderable wealth. Yet it is none the less true that he too was des- pised by the Roman patrician unless he had amassed a fortune. Rome, like America, knew how to worship success. It has been shown by Nitzsch that until the war with Hannibal Roman senators themselves carried on trade; but always on an extensive scale. The reason for despising the small merchant, according to Cicero's view, 37 38 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY was that he could not ply his profession without practising deceit. 1 The rich bankers' gilds, on the other hand, whether in Rome or in the provinces, were always held in great esteem because of the wealth they possessed and were thus a powerful and influential factor in Roman life. Labor however could boast of no such position. Its organizations evidently accomplished little to- wards the economic amelioration of the lot of the free workers. It is true that the very exist- ence of the labor gilds through all the centuries of Roman history from time immemorial is a suf- ficient indication that the solidarity thus produced could not have been void of all results. Indi- vidualism, however, was supreme, as it again came to be under the Liberalism that followed the Re- formation. The common good was but little re- garded and the individual was exposed to the heathen law of the survival, not indeed of the fit- test, but of the strongest. The protection of the weak was no part of pagan ethics. Usury and extortion could be freely practised upon him. The conception of democracy was not even to enter into the workman's dream, much less into his life. Industrial democracy was a star that never swung into his ken. But if paganism prevented the full efficiency of the gild system, yet the convivial element was never wanting in these societies. It was permitted 1 Cicero, " De Offidis," I, 42, 150, 151. FROM SERVITUDE TO FREEDOM 39 their members to drown their miseries in acid wine. Even slave gilds had their banquets, carou- sels and orgies. Fellowship moreover was every- where fostered by the gilds. Members of the sodalicia, or fraternities, could not even appear against each other in court. 2 Similar customs must have also prevailed in the labor unions. Most important was the practice which dedi- cated every gild to some divinity whose feast was celebrated with great pomp and merry-making. Even when this religious instinct had been lost to a great extent, the statues of the god or god- dess must still have held their station in the meet- ing places. Pagan religion unfortunately could do little to restrain the passions of men. With its strong appeal to man's inferior nature it often served rather to degrade still further rather than to uplift its votaries. Yet such faint glimmerings of truth as it retained may still at times have thrown a ray of hope into the dreary life of the laboring classes. At the period with which we close our review the elements of dissolution were at work within the State. It is an absurd contention, put forth by the historian Edward Gibbon, and other atheist authors, that the decline of the Roman Empire was due to the introduction of Christianity. Only the preconceived purpose, that they must write to disprove the divinity of the Christian religion, 2 Mommsen, " De Collegiis et Sodaliciis Romanorum." 40 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY could lead to such extravagant misrepresentations. As Hilaire Belloc rightly says : The material decline of the Empire is not correlative with nor parallel to the growth of the Catholic Church, it is the counterpart of that growth, and, as one of the greatest of modern scholars has well said, the Faith is that which Rome accepted in her maturity; nor is the Faith the heir of her de- cline, but rather the conservator of all that could be conserved. Already under the pagan emperors a class of country slaves, coloni, existed who were ascribed to the soil, adscriptitii. They could be sold only with the ground to which they belonged. Such was the effect of purely economic conditions that made such methods less expensive as the supply of slaves decreased and their price rose. Under the influence of Christianity this at once suggested the possibility of a more humane legislation by which the slaves upon all the landed estates at last found a home and were assured inviolable fam- ily ties. In the cities likewise they came to be re- garded, even by the civil law, as human beings. 3 Thus a gradual emancipation was slowly being effected whose main humanitarian features must be ascribed to the Church alone. As Paul Allard shows, 4 the great improvement in the condition of the slaves which we find had taken place before the end of the fifth century can 3 H. Pesch, S. J., " Liberalismus, Socialismus und christliche Gesellschaftsordnung," p. 646. 4 " Les Esclaves Chretiens." FROM SERVITUDE TO FREEDOM 4! not be accounted for by any theory of evolution. Similarly the beautiful teachings of sdme of the pagan philosophers were confined to mere words and never reduced to practice, except to a very limited degree. It was mainly Christianity which without violence gradually transformed the con- dition of the slave. Slavery itself was so com- pletely embodied in the social institutions of the time that any attempt to sweep it away at once would only have ended in a bloody and futile revolution. The task of Christianity therefore was to begin by ameliorating the hard lot of the slave. In the fourth century great and saintly men like St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. John Chrisostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Lactantius and others arose to protest against the unnatural inequality thus in- troduced into human conditions. Under pagan- ism no marriage between slaves was acknowledged by the Roman laws. These laws on the other hand were constantly improved by the successive Christian Emperors so as to ameliorate the con- dition of slavery. The apostate Julian was the single exception in this regard during the fourth century. Before the Church slave and master were equal in the sight of God. Slaves not only could receive sacred orders but were actually ele- vated to the episcopacy itself. A slave was lifted up to the very Chair of Peter, holding the highest office that the Church could bestow. 5 Thus by 8 Pope Callixtus, A. D. 221. 42 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY the influence of the Church was labor restored to its true dignity in the minds of men. Two hun- dred years after the reign of the first Christian Emperor the Church had practically eliminated the evil of slavery, which the new wave of barbarian paganism was again to bring back until the Church could overcome it a second time. The gradual, prudent and effective action of the Church in favor of the most oppressed class of labor and, so likewise, for the betterment of the conditions of the free worker and the closer ap- proach of that democratic ideal which was to seek its expression in a true Christian democracy, is thus outlined by Abbot Snow, O. S. B. : At her suggestion the Christian emperors mitigated the harsh dominion, took away from the masters the power of life and death, gave the slave redress at law and legalized his marriage. The Church dignified the process of manumis- sion by obtaining that it should take place in the Church be- fore the altar. This gave facility and sacredness to the act, and the Church assumed the protection of the men thus freed, to shield them against further molestation. Council after Coun- cil in different countries made provision in favor of slaves. The churches were declared to be places of refuge for ill- treated slaves, securing thereby a fair investigation of their grievances. 8 The Church constantly urged the liberation of slaves as a pious work. St. Melania alone, as the writer states, gave freedom to 8,000. Slaves belonging to any of the churches were never to 8 " The Church and Labor," p. 9. FROM SERVITUDE TO FREEDOM 43 pass to other masters but to freedom only. Meantime they were carefully protected by strict ecclesiastical canons, and there was little anxiety on their part to exchange the state of safety and comfort, thus assured to them and their families, for the uncertain struggle that would face them with their freedom. 7 That the economic condition of the free worker was still so precarious is to be attributed solely to the fact that the conquest of the Gospel over the souls of men was far from complete. The plutocracy of Rome had been sunk too deep in luxury and hardened into unfeeling selfishness by centuries of merciless cruelty. It could not be en- tirely transformed. Yet the Church of Christ never failed to produce her saints and apostles who were a rebuke to their age, to its riches, its lust and its oppression. In his review of antiquity Huber thus briefly describes the effect of Chris- tianity: A new element of life, which at once seized upon the hearts of the people with wonderful strength, was given by the new religion to humanity, sick well-nigh unto death. A more strik- ing contrast cannot be imagined than that between the dom- inant spirit of pagan times and the principles and ideas of the new religion, which therefore must be looked upon as a stranger come to us from a higher world. At the period of the enormous moral decline manifested in the fall of antiquity, for which science knew no cure or remedy, the needed help was afforded mankind by a contact of the human with the Divine. 1 1bid., pp. 9 and 10. 44 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY The new religion declared that all alike, the mighty lord and the despised slave, were children of God, equal in the realm of grace. Mankind was to be only a single family under one Heavenly Father. On this unity was to be founded the Kingdom of God, the moral dominion of a world-wide community of Love. With what joy the oppressed and suf- fering must have hailed this message, as their new Gospel! Mankind was to be morally transformed. The world's servi- tude in the thraldom of pleasure was to be exchanged for the dignity of a moral freedom of the will ; self-seeking and op- pressive domination, for love and mutual helpfulness; relent- less and heartless exploitation, for mercy and kindness; slavery and degradation of human beings, for respect towards all man- kind; unbridled sexual lust, for chastity and abnegation; the disgrace of labor for its honor. 8 This transformation was not indeed to be ac- complished in a moment, nor yet in a century, throughout the entire world. It was never to be perfectly accomplished anywhere except where the teachings of Christ were accepted and prac- tised in their perfection. The human will was always to retain its freedom to choose evil in preference to good. Yet a new era in history had begun, a new human society had been created in which selfishness was to give place to love, in which the family and the individual were hence- forth to be held sacred and in which the goods of creation should be shared by all. " No power upon earth was able to stay the triumphant march of these ideas through the history of the world." It is only in proportion as the world returns to 8 Ibid., Huber, " Der Socialismus. Riickblick auf das Alter- thum," 70, 71. FROM SERVITUDE TO FREEDOM 45 the truth and charity of Christ that it can ever hope to solve the economic and social problems, which under different aspect and in different de- grees of intensity, are ever the same. Only a change of heart and a change of view, such as true Christianity alone can effect, will ever save the world economically and socially, no less than in a spiritual sense. From the very beginning the Church worked among the laborers and the slaves of the great pagan empire. It was the slave population that crowded most numerously into her Fold, the poor and the disinherited, though the rich who spent themselves for Christ, the patrician and the cen- turion, were not wanting. As she grew in strength, she still sought, as her divinely entrusted mission, to impress upon poor and rich alike the maxims of the Gospel with their great twofold precepts of the love of God and the love of our neighbor. Her task was to lessen by every means in her power the evils which she could not prevent, and to save for a new civilization whatever was good and noble in the old. Her mission, then as now, was to strike at error wherever she saw it affecting the faith or the morality of mankind, wherever she beheld endangered the supreme ideal of the brotherhood of man and the Father- hood of God. The seed of democracy had been sown by her upon the earth, the new seed of a system of gov- 46 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY ernment, whatever its outward form, that should recognize the dignity of every human being as made to the image and likeness of God; the seed, too, of a system of economics, whatever its spe- cial aspects, that should demand an ownership not limited to a few nor absorbed by a communistic State, but personal to the workers themselves. The attainment of it should depend upon justice, thrift and ability, aided and guarded by Christian laws. Thus, by the Catholic Church, at its very be- ginning, were laid the foundations of Democratic Industry on which the world must build again to- day if its structure is ever to be sound and lasting. CHAPTER VI RECASTING THE WORLD IMPERIAL Rome, like every worldly power before her, like Babylonia and Assyria, like Egypt, Persia and Tyre, rose to the height of her culture and glory only to pass through a slow decline to a hopeless fall. Black and men- acing, the waves of the barbarian deluge had long threatened to engulf her, until at last they broke their bounds. Nothing remained of all her for- mer pride and power save a waste of desolation and the solitary ruins where the night owl nested and the lean wolf preyed. Stately mansions and ancient palaces were of no interest to the savage races that had applied the torch to their walls and dragged away their last surviving victims into slav- ery. Forest and field were the home of the new conquerors who cared not for the marble baths of Rome and her luxurious theaters. Of all the glorious institutions of the past the Church alone remained, firm and unshaken. She, whose words had been but feebly heeded by a sen- suous and decadent Roman civilization, and who alone might still have saved the ancient world from its impending ruin, now began again through slow centuries to educate and Christianize the 47 48 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY savage conquerors of the earth. Everywhere we behold her sending forth her fearless missionaries and erecting the monasteries of her monks. They stood in the lone wilderness as the outposts of a renascent Christian civilization. Except for her, Europe might still to-day be plunged in a savagery such as existed on the continent of America before the Cross was planted there by the hand of Colum- bus. With the fall o.f Constantinople, the last isle of ancient learning would then have been swallowed up in the barbarian deluge. All the culture of Rome and Greece would not merely have been buried amid the ruins of the ancient world, unknelled, uncoffined and unsung, but even unchronicled and unremembered forevermore. History itself would have ceased to be with the passing of the world's literature, its art and archi- tecture. As Professor Thomas Nixon Carver of Harvard University rightly says of the great work, economic, social and religious, of her pioneer monks : One must not be unmindful of the splendid service per- formed by the monks of an earlier day in preserving the learning of the ancient world and handing it down to the newer civilization of modern Europe and America. Their part in the civilizing of the rude barbarians of northern Eu- rope entitles them to the respect of all mankind. The labor- ing monks especially call for our admiration. The clearing of the land, the draining of the swamps, the preservation of the arts of horticulture and agriculture, and the further de- velopment of both, was constructive work of the very highest order. Moreover, it was performed at a time when construe- RECASTING THE WORLD 49 tive industry was all but submerged by the general brutality and violence which prevailed over the whole of Europe. 1 Thus in that new civilization labor was human- ized, sanctified, dignified. The concept of Chris- tian democracy sprang up anew with the Catholic Church, a democracy of labor and industry so far as the world was then prepared to receive it. Greatest of all civilizers in this early age were the Benedictine missionaries. Almost every prov- ince invaded by the barbarians was in turn in- vaded and conquered for Christianity and civiliza- tion by these heroic munks, in whom we behold personified the highest ideal of both labor and learning. More eloquent than many volumes is the mere mention of the great Benedictine civi- lizers of the modern world: Augustine in England; Boniface in Germany; Anschar and Aubert in Scandinavia; Suitbert and Willibrod in Holland; Amandus, Remaclus and Ursmar in Belgium; Ruppert, Em- meran and Virgilius in Bavaria and Austria; Adalbert and Anastasius in Bohemia; Pilgrim and Wolfgang in Hungary; Gall and Pirmin in Switzerland; Leander and Isidor in Spain; Bruno in Prussia and Benno among the Slavs, and finally Law- rence Kalffon and Rudolph in Iceland are all names of great Benedictines who must be regarded as the first to lead the nations from the darkness of paganism to the light of the Christian faith and to the blessings of a civilized life. It is estimated that in France alone about three-eighths of the towns owe their existence to the work of the Benedictine monks. 2 1 " The Foundations of National Prosperity," by Richard T. Ely, Ralph H. Hess, Charles K. Leith and Thomas Nixon Car- ver, p. 306. 2 Dom Maternus Spitz, O. S. B., " The Order of St. Benedict and the Foreign Missions," Catholic Missions, Dec., 1917. 5O DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY If therefore we behold the earth emerging again from its deluge of barbarism it is due to these men of God and their fellows in the Faith. At the first view of the resurgent world we see man- kind groping about once more in the most primi- tive stages of material development. Slavery had naturally again been introduced by the barbarian. For a second time the Church became a mighty factor in bringing about its gradual disappear- ance. Her first act indeed was to stay the bloody hand of savage violence. As Agnes Wergeland, former Professor of History at the University of Wyoming, writes, her ministers preferred " see- ing the prisoner of war, the unredeemed hostage, the exiled culprit, enslaved rather than killed." 3 While there was life, there was hope for the un- fortunates and the possibility of still aiding them. She next successfully bettered their lot and loos- ened their bonds. And finally, in large measure through the very force of her teaching, slavery gave way to serfdom. We must remember that in the barbaric as in the classical pagan society the slave could not be married, he had no personal rights which the master was bound to respect and no place in so- ciety. Both in Germanic and Roman law he was " on the level of cattle and other mobilia." Need we wonder, then, to behold him brutalized and 8 Agnes Mathilde Wergeland, " Slavery in Germanic Society during the Middle Ages," p. 16. RECASTING THE WORLD 51 degraded under the new paganism as under the old? Marked by the collar about his neck, his closely cropped and bristly hair, his often de- formed and mutilated body, and his branded and scarred skin, the slave was indeed an object of pity under paganism. 4 The mightiest influence to come to his relief was that of the Church, though she could not at once transform the spirit of the barbarian conquerors. As the author last quoted says : Another stronghold of hope for the slave was the power of the Roman Catholic Church. What the king represented within the political sphere the bishop represented within the moral. There is no doubt that, but for the constant good offices of the Church through her ministers, the improvement in the condi- tion of the slave would have been of far slower growth. The bishop, of course, could, as little as the king, interfere with actual ownership or abolish slavery; but he tried to exercise a religious as well as a practical pressure upon the slave- holder. On the one side, mild treatment of the slave was al- ways spoken of as one of the important evidences of a Chris- tian spirit; on the other side, the churches and monasteries were recognized places of refuge for the fugitive or abused slave, the priest or abbot before giving the slave over exact- ing an oath or promise from the slave-owner not to do their refugee further harm. 5 Many quotations from different Councils can be given to this effect. Yet various churches and ecclesiastics, as we know, were large slaveholders. This is not surprising. " In this respect, as in~ * Ibid., p. 23. 5 Ibid., pp. 60, 61. 52 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY many others, the Church [by which word the writer refers to the individual churches, with their ma- terial needs] had to conform to the economic con- ditions of the time." Yet it everywhere remained true that : " In holding slaves as cultivators of her enormous estates the Church made servitude as comfortable an existence as it could ever be- come." 6 To this there was no exception. If monastery lands were used for selfish purposes, it could be done only in opposition to the teachings and the spirit of the Church herself. " Their ideal was not wealth, but welfare," says Father Bernard Vaughan, referring to these monks. ' They themselves being workers on the land knew how to sympathize with fellow toilers." This remained true to the end. Thus always the doctrines and principles of the Catholic Church were the very foundation of the new spirit of liberty that was to humanize the slave, safeguard his human rights and finally con- tribute so mightily to the destruction of slavery itself, and to bringing the world daily nearer to the true ideals of Christian democratic industry. It was from her monasteries that learning and art went forth over all the earth together with agri- culture and the crafts. They were everywhere the great centers of civilization not only from a religious, literary and social point of view, but also in a purely economic and industrial way. 9 ibid., p. 63. RECASTING THE WORLD 53 " As the monasteries," says the great German his- torian, Johannes Janssen, " had been for centuries the schools of agriculture and horticulture, so too they were the actual nurseries of all industrial and artistic progress. It was in these institutions that handicrafts first developed into art." 7 To the same effect Huber-Liebenau writes: "Immedi- ately upon the spread of Christianity churches and monasteries arose, and the latter were, until the fourteenth century, the nurseries of German industry and German art." 8 The same was true of every other land. Thus, to quote but a single instance where a volume might be filled with elo- quent testimonies, the historian of Belgium writes : If the conversion to the Catholic Faith was mainly the task of the missionaries, the introduction of civilization was mainly the task of monasteries. There the Benedictine monks played a very large part, both as civilizers and colonizers. Their monas- teries were, from the sixth century on, centers of economic and intellectual life. Whilst some of their monks attacked the thick forests of southern and central Belgium with axes, others en- gaged in literary labors in the monasteries' libraries, transcrib- ing the ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts, composing hymns and lives of saints, and opening schools for the education of the people. They planted in the very hearts of the people the roots of that strong religious spirit, which has steadily developed and which has become one of the characteristics of the national spirit of Belgium. Each monastery became a kind of model farm, where the population of the neighborhood could learn the best agricultural methods. In the monastery, too, they could find physicians who 7 " History of the German People," II, p. 2. 8 " Das Deutsche Zunftwesen im Mittelalter," p. 16. 54 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY knew how to take care of the sick. The monastery, being pro- tected by the respect that was inspired by the saint to whom it was dedicated, was also a place of safety in time of danger. Consequently, dwellings became more and more numerous around the monasteries, and villages developed under their in- fluence and protection. 9 More than this, while in many places the newly formed towns were forced to struggle for their liberties, or obtained them only after long de- lays, those founded by bishops and abbots, says Carlton J. H. Hayes, " received charters at the very outset." 10 So everywhere liberty went forth from the sanctuary close and the monastery walls in the meet company of learning and of la- bor. ' The movement for democracy in England was started by a monk," was the statement made in the Bible Room of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, by so " advanced " a Protestant minister as the Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis. "They (the monks) carried civilization and Christianity in their arms, right during the Middle Ages and down to our times." 11 The light of historic truth is gradually breaking through the darkness that had so long overclouded the post-Reformation mind. With the passing of old prejudices the facts of the past are emerging in the dawn of a clearer day. When the walls of Rheims Cathe- 9 Leon Van Der Essen, " History of Belgium." 10 " A Political and Social History of Europe," I, p. 37. 11 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 5, 1919. RECASTING THE WORLD 55 dral trembled to the shock of the exploding shells the world with one voice acknowledged that it could not equal or reproduce the glory of those monuments of art the Middle Ages had be- queathed to us. CHAPTER VII SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH THE slavery described in the preceding chapter was already shading off imper- ceptibly into a state of serfdom. Eco- nomic and religious reasons often combined to bring about the passing away of slavery. Where economic conditions had already prepared the way, as in the Roman days when the masters of landed estates often found it more conducive to their in- terests permanently to settle certain slaves upon the land and transform them into serfs, the Church utilized her opportunities in still further promoting the human rights of the unf ree laborer. So too, after the days of the barbarian conquest, it was through the influence of the Church that the personality of the slave came to be more re- ligiously respected and his family rights were rendered inviolate. A legal status was gradually assured him. He was granted property and even land. The serf of the Middle Ages could no longer be sold, although the soil to which he was insep- arably attached might be transferred with him to another lord. For his own benefit and for the support of his family he tilled the plot of 56 SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH 57 land set aside for him. On this too his perma- nent home was built. Though certain levies might be made on him for the lord's table, his main obligation was to offer a more or less definite proportion of his labor-time to the service of his master. Such was the essence of serfdom, at least in its latter stages. While in the early days serfdom was but a mitigation of slavery, and often very similar to it, we find it developing anew at a later time as a consequence of military necessity among pre- viously free populations. In fact, this entire pe- riod seems to be largely covered with a haze of uncertainty. Free owners of land may in many instances have voluntarily assumed a condition of dependence which preserved them from the vio- lence of pirates and freebooters and thus assured them the yield of their harvest, not to mention the personal safety accorded by this means to them- selves and to their families. Their land itself would naturally pass into the ownership of the lord. How far this accounts for the widespread condition of serfdom is difficult to say. But of all this the following chapter shall treat more fully. As in the case of slavery, so in that of serfdom the Church was often instrumental in again lib- erating the serfs and everywhere successful in bet- tering their condition. She provided for their moral and religious welfare and for the enforce- ment of laws protecting them. Economically 58 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY their lot was not necessarily bitter or hard. Their person and property were to be their own. Even their service to the feudal lord was more and more limited and was definitely restricted to cer- tain days, aside from special season and duties. To render the serf secure in his tenure of the soil the Church in Germany imposed a penance of three years' duration upon the master who arro- gated to himself the right of selling his serf. She made no distinction between the killing of a serf and a freeman. In England likewise special pen- ances were imposed for the manslaughter of a serf by a master. The Synod of Worms renewed in 868 a regulation which protected the serf even when guilty of capital punishment. " If any one has put to death, without judicial sentence, a serf guilty of a crime that is punishable by death, he is to atone for the shedding of blood by a penance of two years." The more the rights of the serf were imperiled, the more the Church came for- ward in his defense. Not only did she protect him against the abuse of power, but in his day of need she took him to her bosom, clothed, fed and sheltered him. As a practical illustration of the success achieved by the Church in the liberation of the serf as well as of the slave we need but turn to the Anglo-Saxon documents of England which have survived the wars and vicissitudes of more than a thousand years. SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH 59 Slavery was still the universal custom of the land when Catholicity achieved its triumph. When slavery had been abolished the condition of the early serf, attached to the soil, differed as yet but little from that of the slave, since both still remained completely at the mercy of their mas- ters. The Church alone was interested in the fate of one as of the other. But to abolish serf- dom by a stroke of the pen was no more possible than it had been to abolish slavery. In each case churchmen and monks accommodated themselves to the economic conditions of the times where these were not considered morally wrong in themselves. But as in apostolic days, so now the Church insisted upon the essential equality of all men before God, upon the precept of charity and the doctrine of universal brotherhood, and in particular upon the reward of mercy to be accorded to him who freed a brother from his bonds. Clerics themselves set the example, at times in a most signal manner. How quickly their lesson bore fruit is evident from the constant emancipation of slaves and serfs, often in great numbers, which instantly followed. That such actions were prompted by the faith which the Church had preached is clear from the purely spiritual reasons assigned in the ancient documents of manumission. " Geatflaed freed for God's sake and for her soul's need, Ecceard the smith and Aelfstan and his wife, and all their offspring born and unborn; and Arcil and Cole, 6O DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY and Ecgferd Eadhun's daughter, etc., etc.," reads a characteristic document. 1 In like manner Aelfred manumitted all his un- freed dependents " in the name of God and of His Saints," and prayed that they might not be op- pressed by any of his heirs or kinsmen. " But for God's love and my own soul's need will I that they shall enjoy their freedom and their choice; and I command in the name of the living God that no one disquiet them, either by demand of money or in any other way." 2 Often dreadful curses are pronounced upon any one who would dare to set aside such dispositions, especially when made in a last will: " Christ blind him that setteth this aside." And again: " Whoso undoeth this may he have the wrath of Almighty God and Saint Cuthbert." Such testa- tors had often during life been very kind to their serfs, so that doubtless in many cases it had been preferable to remain under their care and protec- tion. It is sufficiently common to find that such masters at their death not only freed their serfs but provided for them as a father would for his children. So Durcytel for his soul's benefit be- queathed a great part of his landed possessions to the church of St. Edmund, and part likewise to the bishop, " and let all my serfs be free, and let each 1 " Codex Diplomaticus," No. 925. *"Cod. Dipt.," Vid. Thorpe, Kemble, "The Saxons in Eng- land," I, p. 504. SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH 6 1 have his toft, and his meatcow and his meat- corn." 3 The spiritual benefits asked were both for this life and for the next, and often for the soul of relative or friend : " This book witnesseth that Aelfwold freed Hwatu at St. Petroc's for his soul both during life and after life." 4 " And I (Leofgyfu) will that all my serfs be free, both in manor and farm, for my sake and the sake of them that begot me (the souls of his parents)." 5 It was moreover in the church and in the pres- ence of the priest that manumission took place. " Here witnesseth on this book of Gospel," we read in the record of the monastery of Bath, " that Aelfric the Scot and Aethelric the Scot are made free for the soul of Abbot Aelfsige, that they may be free forever. This is done by wit- ness of all the monastery." 6 So we read of Bishop Wulfsige freeing a number of serfs, " for Eadgar the King and for his own soul, at St. Petroc's altar." 7 The register of this church is preserved for us, and similar books of manumis- sion were evidently kept in every church, like the registers of baptisms and marriages. What was true in Saxon England was no less true of other countries. S. Sugenheim, in his his- 8 " Cod. Dipl." No. 959. * Register, St. Petroc's Church. Kcmble. 8 "Cod. Dipl.," No. 931. 8 "Cod. Dipl.," No. 1351. . Dipl.," No. 981- 62 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY tory of the termination of serfdom in Europe, re- peatedly makes the same confession in spite of inveterate prejudices against the Church. He shows how in France the influence of the clergy was not seldom used to free the serf, or at least considerably to ease his burden. The frequent testamentary emancipations of serfs, often in great numbers, were, he tells us, " in almost every instance the work of pious and humane confessors or other priests." Like all historians, he admits the truth of the proverbial saying that in every land it was well to dwell under episcopal rule. Thus in Germany dependent church laborers were employed in their duties only three days of the week. The remaining time could be devoted freely to their own interests. So too in other countries the Church led the way. In France the emancipation of serfs and hereditary tenants took place earliest in the ecclesiastical dominions, where, indeed, the condition of the dependent classes was always the most favorable. 8 The efforts of the Church to ameliorate the lot of the serf or to free him entirely were, he be- lieves, perhaps nowhere more glorious than in Scandinavia. The resolution taken by Saint Cnut to abolish serfdom entirely throughout his do- minion he ascribes solely to the priesthood. " Of course," he adds, " the last portion of the eleventh 8 Sugenheim, " Geschichte der Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft und Horigkeit in Europa," p. 90. SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH 63 century was not yet ripe for this. The clergy nevertheless worked with indescribable zeal to hasten the time for it." 9 The institution of serf- dom, therefore, in spite of the frequency of eman- cipation by ecclesiastics or through their example and exhortation, could not at once be abolished. Particularly fortunate, however, were the laborers connected with religious houses. " Wherever monasteries arose," says Friederich Hurter, " progress began, the condition of the people was improved and friendly relations with dependents existed." Oppression, in ecclesiastical dominions, he adds, was an exception and freedom could be obtained more readily. 10 Even Socialist authors, therefore, when prepared to make independent and unbiased investigation must come to the same conclusion. " The Christian Church," writes Thomas Kirkup, " did much to soften and to abol- ish slavery and serfdom." " Not only did bishops and priests, by their word and example, everywhere bring about a kindlier treatment and even the emancipation of the serfs, persistently influence legislation in their favor, throw about their person the protecting power of the Church, inspire men with sentiments of justice and affection in their regard as for true children 9 Ibid., p. 501. 10 Cf., H. Pesch, S. J., " Liberalismus, Socialismus und christ- liche Gesflschaftsordnung," pp. 664-685. 11 " History of Socialism," 6th ed., p. 450. 64 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY of God and brothers in Christ, but they freely admitted them to the sacred office of the priest- hood. Indeed there was no dignity within the power of the Church to bestow which might not be attained by the humblest serf. The Protestant Historian Kemble thus writes of the Catholic clergy in Anglo-Saxon days : Whatever their class interests may from time to time have led them to do, let it be remembered that they existed as a permanent mediating authority between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, and that, to their eternal honor, they fully comprehended and performed the duties of this noble position. To none but them would it have been permitted to stay the strong hand of power, to mitigate the just severity of the law, to hold out a glimmer of hope to the serf, to find a place in this world and a provision for the destitute, whose ex- istence the State did not even recognize. 12 From what has already been said we are not surprised to find the statement made by this most thorough student of the period in question that the lot of the serf " was not necessarily or generally one of great hardship. It seems doubtful whether the labor exacted was practically more severe, or his remuneration much less than that of an agri- cultural laborer in this country (England) at this day (A. D. 1876)." 13 The Rev. J. Malet Lam- bert expresses a similar opinion of conditions of servitude at a later date. The spiritual and even the temporal provisions made for the serf, at- 12 " The Saxons in England," II, pp. 374, 375. 13 Ibid., I, pp. 213, 214. SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH 65 tached, according to the custom of the day, to the land of some conscientious Catholic master, might well be envied by countless laborers in our modern civilization. " In his hard life the serf of the Middle Ages," says von Berthold Missiaen, O. M. Cap., " experienced a sense of true internal happiness, more lightsome than any known to the modern world of labor. He was filled with a living, re- ligious faith, and felt himself possessed of a strong, serious moral power." Religion had spiritually liberated him and made him a freeman of God, the peer of knight and earl before the King of kings. Faith, indeed, was living and active in Anglo- Saxon days. We behold the spectacle of kings at the height of their glory renouncing all their tem- poral possessions and laying aside their crowns to devote themselves entirely to lives of self-re- nunciation; of noble ladies and princesses retiring from the world to live for God alone in the se- clusion of the cloister; of men of influence and power, with all the temptations of the world be- fore them, thirsting only to suffer and die for Christ. Such a spirit of necessity reflected upon the economic conditions of the age. Though the time had not yet come for the universal emancipa- tion of the serf, he was not unfrequently freed from bondage, as we have seen, and always treated with far greater consideration than could 66 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY have been shown him otherwise. An undeniable hardness which still remained in certain customs of the day must be explained by the difficulty of at once obliterating every trace of pagan spirit and tradition, and by the life of constant warfare and danger to which men were then exposed. To quote once more from the pages of Kemble : It was especially the honor and glory of Christianity that, while it broke the spiritual bonds of sin, it ever actively la- bored to relieve the heavy burden of social servitude. We are distinctly told that Bishop Wilfrid, on receiving the grant of Selsey from Caedwealha, of Wessex, immediately manumitted two hundred and fifty unfortunates whom he found there at- tached to the soil, that those whom by Baptism he had res- cued from servitude to devils might by the grant of liberty be rescued from servitude to man. In this spirit of charity the clergy obtained respite from labor for the serf on the Sab- bath, on certain high festivals and on the days which pre- ceded or followed them. The lord who compelled his serf to labor between the sunset on Saturday and the sunset on Sunday forfeited him altogether; probably first to the king or the geref a ; but in the time of Cnut, the serf thus forfeited was to become folkfree. To their merciful intervention it must also be ascribed that the will of a Saxon proprietor, laic as well as clerical, so constantly directed the manumission of a number of serfs for the soul's health of the testator. 14 The first duty of the Church, it must be borne in mind, was not to free the slave or serf, but to save his soul. Her chief effort, which was to be car- ried out in the face of all resistance, was to pro- cure for him conditions under which ample leisure and opportunity might be afforded him to serve 14 Ibid., II, pp. 211, 212. SERFDOM AND THE CHURCH 67 God becomingly and even perfectly. Equally with lord and king, he was declared by her to be in all truth her own spiritual child, sanctified in Holy Baptism, strengthened by the reception of her Sac- raments, made partaker of the same eucharistic Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass, destined to an eternal fellowship with angels and saints, and al- ready emancipated by the grace of God from the one slavery which alone is supremely terrible, the bondage of sin and Satan. Here then was that potent seed of Christian liberty already striking root. Within it were con- tained all the elements of a perfect social order. Bourgeoning forth centuries later, in a soil pre- pared by ages of Catholic culture, it was to blossom at length into the world's most ideal democracy, a true brotherhood in commerce and industry, made perfect in the unity of that one faith which Christ had founded. CHAPTER VIII THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS DURING the early ages of modern civiliza- tion trade gilds among our first Christian freemen were long to remain impossible for the simple reason that specialized trades were not sufficiently developed among them. The ear- liest gilds of the Middle Ages were therefore re- ligious and social in their nature. Often they were mainly devoted to the preservation of order and peace at a time when marauding and violence were common, when governments, as we have seen, were not yet centralized, and when the great cities of the future were only in their first process of formation or development. Civilization from the eighth to the eleventh century was indeed as remote from our own in kind as in time. The method of production which then prevailed is known to-day as the Family Sys- tem. Its essential feature consisted in the fact that each household produced all that was needed for its own consumption without the aid of ex- ternal agents. It was to be followed in the course of economic development by the gild system, the domestic system, and lastly by the stage of pro- duction, technically known as the factory system, 68 THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS 69 which continued unbroken to the World War. Life, in its economic aspect, was almost entirely agricultural. Near the little village were the fields where each family cultivated the strips of land assigned to it or owned by it. There were meadowlands where the cattle were pastured in common, and forests where each villager might gather or cut the wood that was needed. Under the most fully developed system in England, each family owned a number of narrow strips of land, not adjoining each other, but scattered over en- tirely different sections of the fields reserved for cultivation. No one could thus receive only the most fertile or only the poorest soil. Every one might have a fair proportion of both. At the period when this system had reached its complete development each strip was sown suc- cessively with a fall crop the first year and a spring crop the next, while the third year it was permitted to lie fallow. The result was an abundance of all the necessaries of life, if no disaster occurred to ruin the crops. Each family produced inde- pendently all that was needed for existence, for clothing, food and shelter. The Church provided in her turn for every spiritual want. The system was not ideal, neither, however, was it deplorable as conditions often existing in more modern times. The evils of the city slums were then unknown. The poet Goldsmith thus pictures it in his " De- serted Village " : 70 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY A time there was ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintained its man: For him light labor spread her wholesome store, Just gave what life required but gave no more: His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. How far or how long this developed form of organization, in which cooperation and private ownership were combined, existed under the dem- ocratic control of free farmers will doubtless be difficult to say. In the period when we find this system of cultivation widely employed throughout England, Germany, France, Hungary and other countries, the land is usually in the possession of a lord, whose residence is known as the manor. It may be merely a substantial dwelling or else a lordly castle overlooking the humble thatched roofs of the villagers beneath. The estate of a single nobleman might at times consist not merely of a single manor, with its group of farms that formed a primitive village, but of many such man- ors extending over a great tract of land or an en- tire district. Hence the name under which this phase of feudalism is commonly known, the Man- orial System. 1 While there were still independent farmers and tenant farmers, the majority of the population in the Norman days of England came to be known 1 Carlton J. H. Hayes, " A Political and Social History of Europe," I, pp. 28-36. Thomas Nixon Carver, "Principles of Rural Economics," pp. 37-44. James E. Thorold Rogers. THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS 71 as " villeins," a name significantly derived from " villagers." They were not slaves, since they could neither be sold nor deprived of their right to cultivate for themselves the strips of land which they tilled for their exclusive benefit. Neither were they tenant farmers, since they paid no rent for the land which they used and handed on to their children to be tilled by them in turn for their own benefit, as an inalienable right. Neither how- ever were they free, since they were " attached to the soil " on which they were bound to stay. They were serfs, therefore, yet their status, ap- parently, was superior to that of this class among the early Anglo-Saxons. In lieu of rent, since money was not then in circulation, they rendered personal service to their lord. A portion of arable land, reserved for the latter, was known as the " demesne." Here two or three days of the week the villein worked for his master, besides performing other duties as emergency might suggest, known as corvee. So too he afforded assistance to his lord at harvest time in what were then called the "boon-days," be- sides supplying him with certain provisions. Such therefore was the institution of villeinage, the more modern form of serfdom. At times, how- ever, the villein preferred to render up his personal lands, and to labor exclusively for the lord on his own farm or in his home, retaining possibly a small plot of ground and a garden for himself and his 72 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY family. Special classes of small tenants were the bordars, crofters and cotters. In the beginning a class of slaves still existed, but these soon disap- peared. In Germany, as also in France, there gradually developed the Great Maierhofe, with their num- bers of unfree laborers, the Horige cultivating the farms of the lords, and the Diensthorige attend- ing to housework and craftsmanship. Even from the earliest times, according to Walther Miiller, the latter might labor for their own profits when the domestic needs of their lords were satisfied. The manorial system in Germany will be dealt with more in detail in Chapter X of the present volume, " Labor under Charlemagne and After." The origin of the great power given to the lord has already been accounted for. The early settlements of the newly emerging civilization found themselves exposed to attacks from all sides. There were not only the marauding bands of rob- bers infesting the forests and ready at all times for pillage and plunder, but the pirate crews that everywhere sailed the high seas and, like the Homeric heroes of old, swooped down on the de- fenseless villages as their lawful prize, to rob, massacre or enslave the unfortunate inhabitants. Such was a gentleman's profession among the pagan Vikings. It was necessary therefore for men to group about a powerful leader and to se- cure the protection which in times of raid could THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS 73 be offered by the lordly manor and the unscale- able walls of a medieval castle. Its master was fighter and captain by profession. There too were the trained men of arms and the weapons ever ready at hand. It was therefore the neces- sary center of organization and defense, and the villagers gladly offered, in return for the protec- tion accorded them, the service of their toil on stated days and in certain seasons. Governments were not as yet evolved and cen- tralized, so that men would look in vain for as- sistance to the King. Their own lord was their natural and willing defender, while he himself rendered fealty to a still greater lord, on whose help he might be forced to call at any moment of extreme peril and in whom he could find a new center of a wider and far more powerful organiza- tion. Thus every man gave obedience and hom- age to one above him to secure the measure of co- operation required for self-defense. This therefore is the much-maligned feudal system which was a real blessing and necessity in its origin, and like every other system proved a burden and a just cause of discontent when its usefulness had ceased and its very reason for ex- istence had passed away. This time arrived when the King himself was able to defend his realm and preserve law and order. The nobility, which had steadily grown in power and wealth, now merely lived upon the toil of the peasantry with- 74 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY out rendering any adequate service in return. Hence the peasants often sought their freedom by fleeing to the newly founded cities, when these gradually developed, or at times rose in arms against their lords. Such was the bloody Peas- ants' War which practically ended for the time the growth of the Reformation. In defense of his own princes Luther threw the weight of his per- sonal power against the German serfs who had arisen against their lords and so crushed their hopes of freedom for generations to come. This they neither forgot nor forgave. Catholic as well as Protestant princes had misused their power and driven their serfs to desperation. In many cases the serfs purchased their own liberty. Personal service rendered by them to the lord was gradually replaced to a great extent by money payment or they became hired laborers. In France the great majority of the serfs had al- ready purchased their freedom by the fourteenth century, although in some few districts serfdom survived until the French Revolution. In Eng- land it had practically disappeared by the six- teenth century. In various other countries it was retained until the nineteenth century, and in Rus- sia even until the latter half of that century. The institutions here described naturally be- came more and more tyrannical and oppressive as they outlived their usefulness. Yet even in their decline during the later period of the Middle THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS 75 Ages they were preferable to conditions existing in modern cities during the " progressive " nine- teenth century. " Feudalism," admits Percy Stickney Grant, " gave the serf food, shelter and clothing in exchange for his labor and his military service. The serf had his stated place. He was a small partner in the concern and shared its profits." He then compares it with the wage system to the disadvantage of the latter: " In time of war the State can take over the worker's industrial or military service, but in time of peace it does not insure him subsistence." 2 The general method of production during the early Middle Ages was everywhere the same, in so far at least that each household, as we have seen, produced for itself whatever it needed to satisfy its own wants, without recourse to external manufactures. A few simple luxuries might at intervals be purchased by the lord of the manor or might later also find their way to the home of the peasant, but for the rest each family, or fam- ily group, such as manor or monastery, was pro- ducer and consumer alike. It felled the trees to build its dwellings. It spun the wool to make its garments. It planted and ground the corn to bake its own bread. With meadow and forest open to it, with its cattle, though not of registered breed, and its hives of bees, such as Virgil sang, 2 " Fair Play for the Worker," p. 22. 76 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY it might feast on the Scriptural butter and honey, and live contentedly arid happily in its state of the " simple life." Such was the bright side of this early life which had likewise its shadows and gloom. And yet, as Carlton J. H. Hayes says: On the other hand we must not forget that the tenement houses of our great cities have been crowded in the nine- teenth century with people more miserable than ever was serf of the Middle Ages. The serf, at any rate, had the open air instead of a factory in which to work. When times were good he had grain and meat in plenty, and possibly wine or cider, and he hardly envied the tapestried chambers, the be- jeweled clothes, and the spiced foods of the nobility, for he looked upon them as belonging to a different world. In one place noblemen and peasant met on a common foot- ing in the village church. There, on Sundays and feast- days, they came together as Christians to hear Mass ; and after- wards, perhaps, holiday games and dancing on the green, be- nignantly patronized by the lord's family, helped the common folk to forget their labors. The village priest, himself often of humble birth, though the most learned man on the manor, was at once the friend and benefactor of the poor and the spiritual doctor of the lord. Occasionally a visit of the bishop to administer confirmation to the children afforded an oppor- tunity for gaiety and universal festivity. 8 Not a few of the English manors, like similar establishments upon the continent, were in the possession of monasteries or of ecclesiastics. In the former case they may have been left to com- munities of religious by the wills of the Faithful or were bestowed upon them by the liberality of 8 "A Political and Social History of Europe," Vol. I, pp. 35, 36. THE FEUDAL AND MANORIAL SYSTEMS 77 kings or nobles. Churchmen and religious in such instances simply conformed to the universal custom of their day. Whatever greed or ambi- tion existed on the part of certain powerful pre- lates or abbots, it was the individual alone that was at fault. The monks themselves were, as a class, loved by the people. Of this we have abund- ant historical evidence. They were truly the stewards of the poor and their doors were ever open to the houseless wanderer. Referring to the Religious Orders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an Anglican historian, the Very Rev. W. R. W. Stephens, formerly Dean of Winchester, writes : They were large landowners, and this was in many ways a benefit to the people. The monks were continually resident, whereas the bishops and many of the lay proprietors were fre- quently called away from their estates on public affairs, and so hindered from looking closely after the welfare of their tenants. In districts where the towns were rare and small, the monastic houses must have been inestimable boons, not only to the traveler, who could obtain food and shelter there, but to the resident poor in the neighborhood. The condition of the people in many a secluded village or hamlet would have been wretched and barbarous in the extreme but for some monastic houses which had the means of remunerating labor and relieving distress. 4 The mistake of modern writers in dealing with this period too frequently consists in merely re- peating the inveterate prejudices of past centuries without any profound research into a subject so * " A History of the English Church," Vol. II, p. 272. 78 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY little understood. A twentieth century point of view moreover prevents them from ever realizing the vast difference in social, political and economic conditions and needs that separates those times from our own, and the equally vast difference of mental attitude towards the most vital questions under consideration. They will therefore no doubt be startled to know that so important an authority upon the economics of the Middle Ages as Damaschke assures us that a degree of general social welfare and true popular happiness was reached under the feudal system which surpasses our very conception. Even at its worst the feudal system was a vast progress over the best condi- tions of labor that had ever existed in the pagan world of classical antiquity. 5 As for more modern times, what was the end of all the vaunted civilization of the smug, self- satisfied nineteenth century except boundless dis- satisfaction, unhappiness and not seldom abject misery such as the Middle Ages never knew? A clarification of our social vision is sadly needed, and this we trust our study of those same ages at their height of development will give to us in the picture of that Christian democracy of industry that was at length to be reached as the economic realization of their Catholic ideals. 5 J. E. T. Rogers constantly refers to medieval labor condi- tions as relatively preferable to those of his day. " A History of Agriculture and Prices," etc. CHAPTER IX PEACE GILDS WE have studied the position of the un- free or partially freed laborer. Go- ing back again to the first centuries of the Middle Ages we can now in turn view the con- dition of the freemen of that early period as we behold them leagued together in the frith (peace) gilds of Europe, more than a thousand years ago. In the laws of King Ine, about the year 690, we first meet with the word gegyldan. We find it again in the laws of King Alfred enacted two centuries later. The meaning of that word seems now to be fairly clear. The gegyldan were comrades mutually responsi- ble for each other before the law, and leagued to- gether for self-protection as well as for the preser- vation of peace and order. The name Frith (Frieden in modern German) or " peace " gilds, is therefore often given to these institutions. They were gilds only in the wide sense of the word since they were not voluntary organizations. The freemen of the early Saxon towns were di- vided into groups of ten, known as tithings. Ten such groups in turn formed a hundred. The 79 8O DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY statutes regulating them were made the law of the land, and in the time of Athelstan we find them drawn up by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. " This is the ordinance," begins the official doc- ument, " which the bishops and reeves of London have ordained and confirmed among our frith gilds, both of thanes and of churls. ... Be it re- solved that we count every ten men together, and the chief one to direct the nine in each of those duties which we have all ordained; and afterwards the hundreds (hyndens) of them together, and one hundred-man (hynden-man, centurion) who shall admonish the ten for the common benefit." 1 The eleven officers were to hold and disburse the money, gild or geld, from which it is argued by some that the gild was named. We can readily, therefore, reconcile the two translations of gegyl- dan as gild-brethren 2 or pay-brethren. 3 Although the question of labor does not enter here, except very indirectly, the frith gilds are of great interest from a civic and economic point of view, no less than in their cultural and historic aspect. The earliest Saxon gild legislation which we pos- sess in the laws of Ine and Alfred is concerned with the payment of the wergild, or blood money, which was to be paid in those primitive times when 1 Judicia Civitatis Lundonitf, Athelstan V. Thorpe, I, p. 230. 2 Dr. Stubbs. 3 Schmid, " Gesetze," p. 589. PEACE GILDS 8 1 one man had killed another. Such laws were common among all the Germanic tribes. We find them among the Saxons, the Bavarians, the Ala- manni, the Frisians, the Visigoths, the Salian Franks and others. A definite price was set upon every head, from king to freedman. Among the Saxons, it is thought that the wergild to be paid for a noble who had been killed was 1,440 shill- ings; for a freeman, 240; and for a freedman who had once been in bondage, 120. Money values, of course, cannot even remotely be compared with those of the present day. A slave, according to the London statutes, was to be compensated for at the maximum rate of half a pound, or less, " ac- cording to his value." Since in many cases the man who had committed the deed could not pay his penalty, the relatives and the gildsmen were held responsible for a share. Thus, according to King Alfred's laws, if the man was without paternal relatives, but had relatives on his mother's side, the latter were to pay one- third of the blood money; his gegyldan, one-third and he himself the remaining portion. If he was without any relatives, the payment was to be made in equal shares by the gegyldan and himself. Without entering into the intricacies of this law, it is evident at once that the gild implied a soli- darity almost as close as a family bond. This conclusion is important since it gives a true insight into the nature of gild life. 82 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY In studying these conditions, we realize at the same time the difficulties encountered by the Church throughout the European world in " tam- ing and humanizing the countless petty chieftains and evolving Christian chivalry out of violence and brutality." The first mention of the gegyldan, it should be noted, is coincident with the victory of Catholicity over paganism. The earliest gilds, though far from perfect, were already in many ways a great power for good. Kemble says : If a crime were committed, the gyld were to hold the crim- inal to his answer ; to clear him, if they could conscientiously do so, by making oath in his favor, to aid him in paying his fine if found guilty. If flying from justice he admitted his crime, they were to purge themselves on oath from all guilty knowledge of the act, and all participation in his flight, failing which they were themselves to suffer mulct in proportion to his offense. On the other hand they were to receive at least a portion of the compensation for his death, or of such other sums as passed from hand to hand during the process of an Anglo-Saxon suit. 4 The object, therefore, of these gilds or tith- ings was to maintain the public peace; to preserve " the life, honor and property " of individuals; to bring the guilty to justice and provide defenders for the injured and the innocent, at a time when the power of the government was insufficient for these purposes. The power possessed by the gilds was legally delegated, and their retributive actions did not therefore correspond to the mod- * John Mitchell Kemble, " The Saxons of England " I, p. 252. PEACE GILDS 83 ern lynch law, which presumes to take justice into its own hands without any legal sanction. Private warfare, however, had been considered an inalienable right of the Germanic freeman in his pagan state. With his conversation every at- tempt was made to set legal limits to its continu- ance until it could be entirely abolished. Only where the existence of the family seemed to re- quire it did the laws of Alfred tolerate such war- fare, or where the offender made peaceful settle- ment impossible, in which case the injured party would have the support of the State. So again Edmund, towards the middle of the tenth cen- tury, deliberated with the counsel of his Witan: " First, how I might best promote Christianity. Then seemed it to us first most needful that we should most firmly preserve peace and harmony among ourselves, throughout all my dominion. Both I and all of us hold in horror the unright- eous and manifold fightings that exist among our- selves." 5 It must not, however, be supposed that the pay- ment of the wergild necessarily implied that hu- man life had been taken. It included every peaceful settlement of feuds by means of money and all the fines that might be exacted for any injury, personal or domestic, or even for the as- persion of a man's good name. 5 Ibid., I, pp. 251, 274. Eadm. Sec. Leg., Section i. Thorpe, I, p. 246. 84 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY The complete statutes, however, of the frith gilds under Athelstan, from which we have al- ready quoted, open for us a much wider view. We there come upon institutions of great eco- nomic, as well as legal, importance. They were not only the police departments of their day, free from all suspicion of graft, but the insurance com- panies, mutual benefit associations, purgatorial so- cieties, and even to a certain degree the courts of justice all in one for the happy gildsman. Though imposed from without, they already con- tain much of the spirit of the free gilds which were now soon to arise. One of their chief purposes was the recovery of stolen property. Where this was not possible compensation was made to the loser from the gild funds, or by a pro rata tax upon the brethren. A limit, however, was clearly set for the maximum amount to be paid for the unrecovered article. The pursuit of the thief was undertaken in com- mon. If caught, summary justice was executed upon him. A reward of twelve shillings, in fact, was set upon the open killing of a thief by any of the brethren. The utterly unprotected condition of the citizens, which laid them open to pillage and robbery, led to such severity. The property that could be stolen consisted mainly in live stock and slaves. If the latter " stole themselves," i. e., ran away, they met the fate of a thief when caught. To compensate the owner each gildsman who pos- PEACE GILDS 85 sessed a slave contributed id. or half a penny. In particular legislations we can see the efforts made by the Church to shield offenders, especially if young and amenable to correction, while the in- stitution of slavery, as well as the savage right of feud, was fast disappearing under her influence. She was doing what lay in her power to protect the unfortunate and promote Christian charity, ad- vancing the great work of Christian Democracy. The patience required to change certain im- memorial customs and traditions, originally con- ceived in the spirit of a religion that had wor- shiped in the name of Thor and Wodan and to substitute in their place the practices of a faith which meekly bowed the neck of the fierce war- rior beneath the sweet yoke of Christ, is often but little understood by the historian and critic. The frith gilds in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries were as far removed from paganism as the dawn from the darkness, but the full day had not yet broken. Religion, charity and brother- hood were already strong and dominant principles in their statutes. And yet we cannot be surprised that something of a pagan hardness should still remain over from a time which was not as yet so far removed. Governments, moreover, while un- able to protect the individual, believed themselves forced to countenance stringent measures and regu- lations that the country might not fall a prey to marauding bands of robbers. 86 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY Referring to the material aspect of the London ordinances, H. F. Coote writes : The regulations and provisions of this gild command our unqualified respect. They are irrefutable evidence of a high state of civilization. We have in them a scheme of mutual assurance, with all the appliances of carrying it out, combined with thorough comprehension of the true principle upon which such schemes are founded, and can alone be supported. For the gild not only satisfies itself that the claim is honest, but repudiates payment of it whenever the claimant has shown himself to have been contributory by his negligence to the loss of which he affects to complain. And, lastly, the gild, to secure the society against claims of unlimited and overwhelm- ing amount, establishes a maximum rate of compensation. 8 The religious element, however, was not for- gotten. " And we have also ordained," wrote the drafters of the London statutes, " respecting every man who gives his pledge in our gildship, that should he die, each gild-brother (gegylda] shall give a gesuf el-loaf for his soul (a loaf of bread offered to the poor in alms for the repose of the departed soul) and sing fifty (psalms) or cause the same to be sung within thirty days." 7 The offering of Masses for this purpose was of course, most common, as we find in the statutes of the true voluntary gilds which were now to come into ex- istence. It may be noted that in one instance the singing of the Psalter or the offering of a Mass is left to the choice of the gildsman. 6 Henry Charles Coote, F. S. A. " Transactions of the Lon- don and Middlesex Archeological Society," IV, p. 12. * Ibid. PEACE GILDS 87 Charity, too, although it began at home, did not remain there. The poor and afflicted were the objects of special consideration, and pilgrims were helped upon their way to accomplish their pious vows or to satisfy their devotion by kneeling at the tomb of our Lord or praying at the sites of His sacred passion and death in distant Palestine. It was evident that under these Christian influences the remnants of pagan harshness were soon to melt away like the last drifts of winter's snow be- neath the genial sun of the new springtime of Catholic charity. From the earliest origin indeed of the medieval gilds, a Catholic spirit was already breathing through them. Even in their most primitive days it was felt like a waft of Spring through the misty forests, awakening the newly organized institu- tions to a newness of freedom and a fulness of life and beauty which paganism could never know. If something of the chill and gloom of earlier tra- ditions doubtless still clung to them, it was gradu- ally yielding to the warmth of Christian charity and the light of Christian truth. The world was slowly being prepared for its first concept of the full scope of Christian Democracy. Frith gilds in fine were not limited to the Saxons in England, but were common likewise upon the continent. The same conditions called forth the same remedy. In France they were organized by the bishops. " Each diocese," writes Unwin, 88 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY " became the center of a large association which embraced all classes, peasant and noble, cleric and lay, town and country." They were known as La Paix, or La Commune de la Paix, a name identical in meaning with the Saxon frith gilds which we have here described. CHAPTER X LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER THE world gild itself, geldonia in Carlo- vingian Latin, occurs for the first time in the year 779. It is found in a law is- sued by Charlemagne, decreeing that no one should thenceforth presume " to bind himself by mutual oaths in a gild." From the mistakes made by the earliest copyists in transcribing this term we may reasonably conclude that it was not yet in common use. In 821 the lords of Flanders were cautioned, under penalty of heavy fines, to prevent their serfs from forming associations binding under oath. Similar injunctions were again issued in a capi- tulary of the year 884. The clergy as well as public officials were to instruct the serfs " not to enter into the combination commonly called a gild (quam vulgo geldam vacant), against those who may have stolen anything." x The serfs, in other words, were not to take the law into their own hands, but to leave its execution to the proper au- thorities. Such associations would doubtless have helped to protect them in those unsettled times, 1 Cap. A. 884. Pertz, I, 553. 89 90 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY but a serious menace was seen in them for the State. Modern authors in general vie with each other in their denunciations of Charlemagne for his at- tempted suppression of the gilds, confounding them with the craft gilds of later years. Centur- ies were still to elapse before economic and social, as well as political conditions, could make these organizations possible. Moreover, it was not against the gilds, but against the oaths, which he believed might lead to conspiracies and national danger, that the legislation was directed. Politi- cal and civic conditions were in a ferment. The centralization of power was real only in so far as it depended upon the personal influence of Charle- magne himself. Disruption in fact followed the very instant that the grasp of his own strong hand was relaxed in death. But another reason also existed for the suppres- sion of some of these early gilds. Their secret conclaves, it is believed, were in some cases merely a cloak for continuing the idolatrous practices which had survived from heathen times. That pagan organizations, somewhat similar in purpose to the gilds of the Frankish serfs and the Anglo- Saxon freemen, had existed among the ancient Teutons is sufficiently established. The old Ger- man warriors met and mingled their blood and drank it as a mutual pledge that they would defend and avenge each other. " Dost thou recall, LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER 9! Odin," says Loki in the Lokasenna, " how when our pledge began, we mingled blood together? " It is not surprising therefore that the Church should at times have been obliged publicly to for- bid such organizations, even as duty compels her to do in our day. Thus a canon of the Council of Nantes forbids " collectae vel confratriae, quas consortia vacant." It is unreasonable to inveigh against such regulations. Mistakes may undoubt- edly have been made, and even personally selfish motives may have swayed individual ecclesiastics; but the Church herself has from the first been the champion of all reasonable freedom of organiza- tion. Even the oath itself, which at every period was regarded an essential condition for admission to the gilds, was never in principle forbidden, and virtually never opposed by her in practice during the entire course of the Middle Ages. But the Church was no passive spectator of the progress of the gilds. Her fostering care was one of the mightiest factors in their development. As George Unwin says in relation to the earliest Prankish gilds : Apart from the reference to the mutual oath, nothing is said of the religious character of these associations; but in that age the cooperation, official or unofficial, of the clergy was an almost indispensable element of any 'popular organiza- tion. We also know that by the middle of the ninth cen- tury the clergy of the diocese of Rheims were allowed to superintend the formation of religious gilds bearing essen- tially the same character as those which, throughout the 92 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY Middle Ages, underlay every form of social and economic organization. 2 These religious gilds indeed are of the highest importance in the history of* labor, since from them in many cases the labor gilds were later to arise, directly or indirectly. Such was especially the case where the establishment of such unions, whether of tradesmen or of journeymen, was re- garded with suspicion, while the Church harbored and fostered them. In the time of Charlemagne many of the trades already existed; but the tradesmen themselves were largely of servile condition. They were often perfectly organized; but never by their own initiative. The serfs and other unfree laborers among whom must be numbered not only me- chanics, but even small dealers and professional artists were at times grouped according to oc- cupations by the lord to whose manor they were attached. Servants, hunters and shepherds were similarly organized. The entire institution was known as the Frohnhof or manor. The laborers thus employed were known as Horige or serfs. Each division was under its master, who had the power of exercising judgment and correction, un- less a misdemeanor occurred which was to be re- ferred to a higher official. The last court of ap- peal was the lord of the manor himself, whose power was limited, however, by the law of the 2 " The Gilds and Companies of London," p. 17. LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER 93 land. 3 It is evident that these organizations could in no sense be spoken of as gilds. The unfree craftsmen did not, however, work exclusively for their lord. Their duties were variously limited, and the remaining time was given to labor for their own profit. They might either dwell in the manor itself or in the vicinity. Many would probably take up their home in the lord's manor during the time devoted to his serv- ice. Charlemagne himself was liberally supplied at his various manors with skilled craftsmen and even expert artists : " workers in gold and silver, blacksmiths, shoemakers, turners, wagon-makers, carpenters, armorers, lace-makers, soap-boilers, brewers and bakers." Many interesting details regarding the system employed by him are to be found in the Capitulare de Villis of the years 809 and 8i2. 4 In the Lex Burgundionum it is definitely stated that the unfree craftsmen were not exclusively en- gaged by their masters, but were permitted pub- licly to practise their various trades. 5 Such, in the opinion of Miiller, was the custom during the en- tire period of serfdom. 6 They might sell their wares or their labor. In the " Vita Gebehardi," 7 3 Dr. Otto Gierke, " Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht," pp. 176-178. * Pertz, I and III. 6 " Liber Constitutionum." 6 Walther Muller, " Zur Frage des Ursprungs der Mittelalter- lichen Ziinfte," pp. 47, ff. 7 Cap. 19. 94 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY we read how the Bishop organized his craftsmen in the city of Constance according to their differ- ent trades, with a master set over each single craft. They were to spend certain days at the Mon- astery of Peterhausen, near the city, where they received their meals and performed the neces- sary work. They would then return to their shops and their homes in Constance. This gives us an excellent picture of the times and shows how bishops and abbots, here as elsewhere, conformed to the economic systems of their period, while all concede that under the abbot's jurisdiction were ever to be found the most ideal conditions of the day. The system here described was indeed far re- moved from the supreme ideals of Christian democracy applied to industry. Yet it was an im- measurable progress over the position of the laborer in the classic days of Rome and Greece, while it afforded the humble toiler a surer sub- sistence and a more quiet and contented life than he was to enjoy at a much later period under mod- ern capitalism. Pauperism and starvation were alike unknown. The lowliest worker and his fam- ily were always provided for and the supplies of the monasteries were everywhere at his command, should he stand in need of them. So, too, the beneficed clergyman was bound by canon law to spend on the Church or on the poor all that LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER 95 remained to him after his own proper sustentation. It was not the fault of the Church if he abused his opportunities. Even in Wolsey's favor, who lived at a far later period and represented the ex- treme of ecclesiastical ambition, Joseph Rickaby, S. J., writes: " It may be allowed that he spent his wealth nobly. And so did other great ecclesiastics of the age, which the plunderers of the next gen- eration did not. What is known at Oxford as ' the House ' is forever sacred to the memory of the Cardinal of Yorke." Not all German laborers were serfs in the early centuries here described. The number of free craftsmen was constantly increasing. There was also a considerable class of free farmers who owned the soil they tilled, as well as a number of free mark and village communities. Yet ordi- narily even these stood under the protection of some great lord. It must, in fact, be remembered here that the entire civilization of that period was built upon the one idea of service. The lord him- self was only less dependent than his serfs. It was the duty and the glory of each man, whether free or bond, high or low, to be faithful to the master who was over him. " I serve," could be the motto of the proudest lord. A greater freedom gradually prevailed among the serfs. Their service was reduced to a more limited number of days. It even passed from the 96 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY individual to the trade group, which could assign definite members to perform in turn the custom- ary duties, thus always leaving a number free to follow their own occupations. A tax was finally paid in place of personal service, and so serfdom itself passed out of existence. During the course of these developments the groups of workmen had formed their own organiz- ations under the care of the Church. Every Ger- man gild, as Gierke remarks, was religious, social and moral in its purpose, besides following its own specific aims. Even before their emancipation the serfs had obtained distinct rights which their lords were bound to respect. With their full free- dom achieved they naturally betook themselves in ever increasing numbers into the cities, which thus received a great labor population. Free gilds sprang into existence everywhere, each with its own chaplain, its own altar or chapel, and its ob- lations of candles, its offerings for Masses, and its benefactions to the poor. It must not, however, be concluded that we must therefore seek the origin of the gilds in the unfree labor groups, organized by the Prankish lords upon their manors. , This was but one of many factors which all combined to further the same Christian ideal. The essence of the gild was brotherhood, religion, mutual helpfulness and social fellowship among equals. Everywhere the same forces were at work. Everywhere the LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER 97 Church stood by, protecting, directing, leading up- ward to a larger freedom and a more perfect char- ity. Outside the Church violence and barbarity, sword and con- quest, the untamed powers of nature reigned unchecked, both before the time of Pepin and Charlemagne, and after them under their more feeble successors, and indeed long after the complete extinction of their race. In spite of the contempt for learning and culture, there existed still a deep reverence for religion and its ministers ; in spite of strong passions, faith was living. Monasteries were held in high honor as abodes of purer life, and persons high in rank took pleasure in visiting them, and frequently chose them as places of retreat for the remainder of their lives. Discipline and sound principles could come from the Church alone ; enlightened legislation could be her work alone; and under her influence alone could the con- ditions of society be improved. To her was due the mitigation and repression of slavery, the first organized care of the poor, the institution of the Truce of God, the establishment of places of education, and every true form of progress. Princes and people were eager to confide the weightiest interests to the clergy and to increase their external means of power and influence; for their learning and virtue they merited trust, and by their character and authority they were the most sure support of public order. The Church on her side did her utmost to obtain safeguards against the many attacks and acts of aggression of princes and nobles, who sometimes from desire of vengeance, oftener from mere covetousness, imprisoned bishops and priests, robbed them, misused them and thrust others into their places. 8 It was this constant interference of the State with the Church, beginning with the reign of Con- 8 Dr. Joseph Hergenrother, " Catholic Church and Christian State," I, pp. 256, 257. See: Ratzinger, " Geschichte der Kirch- lichen Armenpflege," pp. 141, ff. 98 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY stantine, the first imperial champion of Christi- anity, and continuing down to our time, that has ever hampered her power for good, thrusting un- worthy prelates in high places or preventing the great unselfish works of zeal and piety undertaken by others. Yet in spite of every difficulty from within or from without she has steadily carried down the ages the torch of Christian truth that lights the way to all true liberty. And here a little digression may be of interest to complete the picture of this early civilization. No later than the year 858 we find mention made of gilds of priests as well as of the laity in the ca- pitularies of Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims. 9 No restriction of any kind is placed upon them, ex- cept that they must not transgress the bounds of " authority, usefulness and right reason." Here therefore we have the attitude of the Church clearly defined at the very beginning of gild his- tory. When the limits thus described are fla- grantly transgressed, it is not only her right, but her duty to interfere. The salvation of souls is then imperiled. The social institution thus cen- sured has become a menace to society and religion. Since frequent mention is made of these gilds of priests that sprang up at the beginning of the Mid- dle Ages, and much misunderstanding exists upon this point, a word of explanation may well be of- fered. They were known by the name of Gilds of 9 Labbei Concilia, ed. Coleti, t. x., cap. 16, p. 4. LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER 99 the Kalends, because they met on the first day of the Roman month, the calendae. Their purpose was the discussion of pastoral interests. Thus the clergy of certain sections would meet for divine service, common deliberations and the usual feast which was one of the essentials of every medieval gild. Special objects, such as the maintenance of schools, the preservation of documents and archives, were likewise kept in view. The mem- bers are occasionally reminded in their statutes that their gilds exist " not merely that they may derive from them present advantages and tem- poral gains, but rather that they may obtain heavenly and eternal benefits." They are admon- ished to take their meal becomingly and with the fear of God. Pious reading and singing of hymns are suggested. A limited number of laymen were admitted into these gilds at a later period; but their wives, in spite of frequent requests on the part of their husbands were excluded, until in 1422, after many centuries, slight concession . 1 were made upon this point. They were such, how- ever, as hardly to modify the strictness of the or- iginal regulations. The main feature was that the wives of the lay members took their turns in offer- ing hospitality and services to the gild. That in the very earliest and semi-barbarous times abuses occasionally occurred at the meetings of these gilds is evident in particular from the capitulary of Archbishop Hincmar (852). It is IOO DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY entirely unwarranted, however, to draw the con- clusion, as has commonly been done in a very un- historical way, that such happenings were the rule and not the exception. During the many centuries of the existence of these gilds only a very few ref- erences to excesses can be found, and these oc- curred at the very beginning of gild history. They simply serve to illustrate in a striking man- ner the watchfulness of the Church over her chil- dren and her care to correct without delay what- ever is evil. It is from prompt ecclesiastical repri- mands that we have our knowledge of these mat- ters. The capitularies of Archbishop Hincmar (852) and of Bishop Walter of Orleans (858) are the sources of our information. The very documents in question, with their sound moral les- sons, afford the best evidence of the high ideals maintained by the Church at every epoch of his- tory. The facts we have alluded to prove nothing more than that the vices and passions of the pagan orgies of earlier times were still a danger to the recently converted Catholics, and that instances oc- curred in which even the clergy were not free from blame. With the more complete infusion of the Catholic spirit these abuses disappeared. The in- cidents therefore are only another splendid wit- ness to the power for good which the Church has ever exercised in the world. ' The power of religious sentiment," Emerson says, in describing that Christianity which " like a LABOR UNDER CHARLEMAGNE AND AFTER IOI chemistry of fire " drew a firm line between bar- barism and culture " The power of religious sentiment put an end to human sacrifices, checked appetite, inspired the Crusades, inspired resistance to tyrants, inspired self-respect, set bounds to serf- dom and slavery, founded liberty, created the re- ligious architecture : Yorke, Newstead, Westmin- ster, etc. works to which the key is lost with the sentiment which created them." With a reunion of the world in that one same Faith, as living to-day as in the day of the Apostles or of the builders of Oxford and of Chartres cathedral, can that golden key be found again. CHAPTER XI ORIGIN OF MEDIEVAL GILDS THERE is great divergence of opinion about the origin of the free medieval gilds which are next to engage our at- tention and wherein we shall find exemplified the highest conceptions of the dignity of labor and the truest realization hitherto attained of the dem- ocratic control of industry. Though apparently it matters little to the social student or reformer whether they were derived from ancient Rome or Greece, or sprang up from the soil itself of the respective European countries, under the influence of the Church, the question in reality is of vital significance. Whatever their earliest origin, it was the Church, as we shall see, which impressed upon them, and upon the civilization in the midst of which they developed, those marvelous Chris- tian characteristics which essentially distinguished them from every similar form of organization his- torians may find in Egypt, India or China, in Greece or Rome, and even among the barbarous tribes from which many of the great nations of modern Europe have sprung. It is true that long before the medieval gilds came into being, the Roman officia opificum, or 102 ORIGIN OF MEDIEVAL GILDS 1 03 trade unions, had existed not merely in Rome it- self, but also in the ancient cities of Gaul, Britain and other provinces under Roman dominion. This civilization, however, was soon to be swept away, and about such unions the history of the centuries that immediately followed is silent. Lit- tle can now be learned of economic conditions dur- ing these submerged epochs of history except that slavery was again made the practice of the bar- barian conqueror, and the slave was deprived, as in the former pagan days, of every human right. Yet the many analogies and even possible points of contact existing between the ancient and the medieval gilds have naturally given rise to a theory which would see in the medieval trade unions the lineal descendants of the ancient labor organiza- tions. In the same manner the merchant gilds of the Middle Ages are thought to be derived from the trading organizations of the Romans and the Syrians. Especially interesting is the fact that in the East classical traditions continued unbroken at Constantinople, and it is not impossible that Ro- man gilds may there at least have survived until the very fall of the city, towards the end of the Middle Ages. Certain it is that such gilds are found both under the Byzantine Emperors and in the days of Moslem rule. Mohammed him- self is said to have been a member of a merchant gild. The tradition which makes of him the IO4 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY founder of the Esnafs, as the Turkish gilds are called, is accounted for by the same process which ascribed to Numa or to Servius Tullius the insti- tution of the Roman craft gilds, or which attri- buted to ^Esop the fables that centuries before had been familiar to the old Egyptians. All that is needed is a historic nucleus. The Esnafs, as the gilds of Turkey and the va- rious Mussulman tribes are called, were not im- probably derived from such early institutions, and popular traditions made bold to trace them back to the days before the flood. Like the classical Christian gilds they acknowledged the need of re- ligion, but showed a true Mohammedan singular- ity, and at times perversity, in the choice of pa- trons. Thus to Adam were dedicated the gilds of bakers and tailors, to Noah the shipwrights and carpenters. Cain was the patron of the grave- diggers, Abel of the herdsmen and Nimrod of the smiths, while Mother Eve was patroness of the gild of washerwomen. 1 Enoch was regarded as the first weaver and Seth as the first button-maker and wool-dealer, the inventor of the shirt. 2 Westward the course of Empire takes its way. Along the same path, by a finely elaborated and seemingly plausible theory, certain writers have attempted to trace the progress of the gilds. 1 Garnett, " Turkish Life in Town and Country." 2 Kosta Nikoloff, " Das Handwerk und Zunftivesen in Bul- garien," etc. ORIGIN OF MEDIEVAL GILDS 105 What in fact could seem more simple than to map out this uninterrupted course of gild life through more than twenty centuries? Beginning with the days of the Roman King Numa, almost seven hun- dred years before the Christian era, we would thus trace it down to Augustus; from Augustus to Constantine; from the first Eastern Emperor to the last of the Byzantine monarchs. Finally from Constantinople we should see it spreading through- out the Orient, thence passing over into Lombardy, from Lombardy into Southern France, and from France into Germany and England! While this may forcibly appeal to the theorist, there is no historic evidence to make the gilds of the Middle Ages essentially dependent upon those of other civilizations. Influences from Roman and Byzantine sources may undoubtedly have been brought to bear upon them, whether directly or indirectly. Yet such influences were not sufficient to account for a system which seemed almost to partake of the universality of the Catholic Church itself, and which differed vastly in its entire spirit from all other forms of gild life which had pre- ceded it. While the Roman trade-unions during the last centuries of the declining Empire were purely ser- vile organizations, and the Eastern esnafs and the trade castes of India remained stagnant, the gilds which arose under the influence of the Catholic Church were a dynamic force. Nowhere perhaps IO6 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY was that freedom and spirit of brotherhood, which the Church has come to bring to mankind, better illustrated than in these gilds at the period of their most ideal development. They were the natural flowering of her teachings by which alone labor was truly honored and sanctified. Under her in- spiration nobles and captains, princes and rulers laid aside their robes of state and shining armor to don the poor patched habit of the monk. To the great Religious Order of the Benedictines, in particular, as we have seen, the civilization of barbarous nations was due. They drained the marshes and cultivated the arid land; they cleared the forests which were still the lurking places of wild beasts and more savage men; they tutored the fierce minds of the barbarian hordes, and with solemn chant and .holy word raised up men's hearts to God. Beneath their labors the waste wilderness became fertile with the benediction of golden harvests and the desert bloomed into an Eden of beauty. Soon hamlet and town arose about the monastery wall, and God was glorified throughout the land. Amid such influences many of the gilds of the Middle Ages took their origin. So intimate indeed was the relation between the Church and organized labor, and so inter- fused were the religious and economic purposes of the labor gilds that it is almost impossible to classify them. " The religious element," writes Gross, " a potent factor in the history of gilds ORIGIN OF MEDIEVAL GILDS 107 from their birth to their final extinction, is an al- most insurmountable obstacle to their logical clas- sification; for, as Wilda rightly observes, every gild comprehended within itself a religious one." 3 While the relation of the gilds with the Church is unquestionable, both as regards their origin and their development, an outline must at least be given here of the theory which would seek to trace them back to the old pagan sacrificial feasts of the nations among whom the early missionaries labored. The old Teutonic root of the word gild has two distinct meanings. It signified " to pay " and also " to sacrifice." The word, therefore, in its first meaning, might readily have been derived from the contributions, or " payments," which have al- ways been an essential part of the gild statutes in every age. Geld in German still retains this root meaning, and is the exact equivalent of our mod- ern English word " money " for the Anglo-Saxon gild. Writers, however, who insist mainly upon the sacrificial character of the first gilds naturally ac- cept only the derivation which confirms their own theory. According to Brentano, one of the fore- most champions of this view, gild meant originally the sacrificial meal made up of common contribu- tions; then a social banquet in general; and lastly a society. 3 Charles Gross, "The Gild Merchant," I, p. 176. 108 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY Christianity to sum up this theory in brief had not come to banish the cheer of life, but to hallow it. The old feasts were therefore still retained as paganism gradually disappeared. But Christ was worshiped and His saints were hon- ored in place of the idolatrous homage which had once prevailed. The banquets formerly held in connection with superstitious sacrifices were now opened with Christian prayers. The virtues of the Gospel expelled the vices of the pagan orgies. The Church in fine retained, and elevated to a higher sphere, whatever elements of brotherhood and mutual helpfulness had already existed under the old worship of the false gods. Such an argument may appear plausible. Yet here likewise there is no evidence which forces us to accept it. The banquets which were to become so striking a feature of the Christian gilds had already existed in the gilds of Rome and Greece. With a different spirit they reappeared in the love feasts of apostolic days. They were the natural expression of man's social nature, and like all other indifferent actions could be supernaturalized by religious motives. While instituted for manifold and specifically various purposes, the medieval gilds were invariably social and religious. Hence they naturally delighted in conviviality, without forgetting the public as well as private duties of worship. ORIGIN OF MEDIEVAL GILDS 109 Wilda, 4 one of the earliest authorities upon this subject and a foremost defender of the dual origin of the gilds, attributes them both to the heathen banquets and to the later influence of the Church. Gross, who takes issue with him upon the first part of this theory, fully admits the importance of the second. " However erroneous," he writes, " Wilda's theories may be in detail, he is doubt- less right in ascribing to Christianity a prominent part in the inception of the gilds." The Chris- tianity of those days was nothing else than the Catholic Church, the same in her teaching as we know her to-day. After what has already been said we can dis- pense ourselves from entering into the evolution- ary theories which deduce the gilds from the fam- ily. While admitting freely the possibility of many and various modifying influences, such as we have here described, it is sufficient to recur to the needs of human nature and the principles of Christianity as the chief sources from which sprang the medieval gilds. ./., XIII.) 48. Government loans should be made, where needed, to enable men to settle upon the land, either as owners or as tenants with long-time leases. " It is essential that both the work of preparation and the subsequent settlement of the land should be effected by groups or colonies, not by men living independently of one another and in depressing isolation." (American Bishops.) Attention should be given in particular to the fa- cilities of regularly fulfilling religious duties. A CATHOLIC SOCIAL PLATFORM 359 The problem of the farm laborer, too, is to be carefully studied. (W . P., XV.) 49. The principle of land nationalization is to be strongly condemned as unnatural, economically ruinous and undemocratic. The rights of the tiller to his soil must be held sacred. Keeping in- violate all just property rights, the laborer should " be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land." (Leo XIII, R. N.) (W . P., XVIII.) CAUSES OF SOCIAL DISASTER 50. The roots of the social problem penetrate deep. The evils of impurity, birth control and divorce corrupt the individual, the home and so- ciety. With these are associated the inordinate craving after pleasure, the shirking of duty, and the wide-spread wastefulness and excess of all classes, together with a desire for the utmost gain, regardless of the common good. (W. P., II, XI ;>./., IX.) 51. These evils, which naturally flow from a rejection of religion, are most intimately connected with all our economic and social disorders, whose last cause is godlessness. (W. P., XIV.) 52. Finally, there is the doctrine that would make of the State a fetish to which all human rights, whether of the family or of the individual, are to be relentlessly sacrificed. Hence follow State autocracy, bureaucracy, Socialism and all the 360 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY endless forms of State paternalism that threaten to submerge democracy. (D. I., I, IV, XXVI, XXIX, etc.) FIRST PRINCIPLES 53. The sacredness of all human life must be recognized, and the duty of conforming it to the Will of God. 54. The purity of family life must be restored, and the family, as the unit of society, must bravely assume its duties and responsibilities in a true Christian spirit. The future belongs to those who safeguard the home. 55. The pagan theory that the individual exists for the State and not the State for the individual, must be absolutely rejected. 56. Secularization of education must be op- posed as the greatest danger to modern society, together with all over-centralization and undue State interference, as tending to establish the most pernicious of all autocracies. To the parent alone, and not to the State, belongs, of itself and di- rectly, the responsibility for the upbringing of the child. 57. The safe-guarding of the just rights of Christianity, on which the future of civilization depends, is not possible without the development of a strong, alert, loyal and intelligent Christian press. The support and furtherance of this is a first duty. The law, on the other hand, should be A CATHOLIC SOCIAL PLATFORM 361 made to prevent the publication of untrue state- ments and reports, and protect from slander all, whether individually or collectively. 58. The success of Christian Democracy, which is purely social and not political, will finally depend upon the utmost organization and concentration of effort. Nor should Catholics neglect the full use of their political rights in the measure in which they are granted to every citizen, since by reason of their Divine Faith they " may prove themselves capable, as much as, and even more than others, of cooperating in the material and civil well-being of the people, thus acquiring that authority and respect which may make it even possible for them to defend and promote a higher good, namely, that of the soul." (Pius X. " Christian Social Ac- tion.") CONCLUSION 59. Besides the rules of social justice, the laws of Christian charity should bind together employer and employees, and all classes and ranks, into one Christian brotherhood. To accomplish this in its perfection, nothing can be of greater importance than that all should heed again the voice of that Mother from whom the nations have wandered, who begot them in the unity of a great Christen- dom in the ages of Catholic Faith. Her teach- ings are the same now as they were in the days of the Apostles, and as they will remain to the 362 DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRY end of time, yet always perfectly adapted to every changing period of history. For the promise of Christ to her can never be made void: " Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." (Matt. xxviii:2O.) (W. P., XXV.) 60. Hence she alone can never possibly mislead mankind, and there can be no surer hope for true and lasting reconstruction than the return of all to her, the one and only apostolic Church, the Church of our fathers. UCSB LIBRARY V X- A ^}r'!'''''''lll"llllll)lll|/l'||||