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SOCIALISM AND LABOR 
 
 AND OTHER ARGUMENTS 
 
 SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND PATRIOTIC 
 
 BY 
 
 RT. REV. J. L. SPALDING 
 
 Btsfjop of 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 1902 
 
REKSE 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 A. C. MCCLURG & Co. 
 1902 
 
 PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1902 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. SOCIALISM AND LABOR i 
 
 II. THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. . 33 
 
 III. ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? . 51 
 
 IV. CHARITY AND JUSTICE 69 
 
 V. WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION . 96 
 
 VI. EMOTION AND TRUTH 117 
 
 VII. EDUCATION AND PATRIOTISM 128 
 
 VIII. ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY 13? 
 
 IX. CHURCH AND COUNTRY 149 
 
 X. LABOR AND CAPITAL . 160 
 
 XL WORK AND LEISURE 172 
 
 XII. THE MYSTERY OF PAIN i? 8 
 
 XIII. AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE . . 189 
 
 XIV. ST. BEDE ,,.... 201 
 

 SOCIALISM AND LABOR 
 
 AND OTHER ARGUMENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 / T > HE interest which all who think take in 
 * the laboring classes, whether it spring 
 from sympathy or fear, is a characteristic feat- 
 ure of the age. 
 
 Their condition seems to be the great anom- 
 aly in our otherwise progressive and brilliant 
 civilization. Whether when compared with the 
 lot of the slaves and serfs of former times that 
 of the modern laborer is fortunate, is not the 
 question. He is not placed in the midst of the 
 poverty and wretchedness of a rude and bar- 
 barous society, but in the midst of boundless 
 wealth and great refinement. He lives, too, in 
 a democratic age, in which all men profess to 
 believe in equality and liberty; in an age in 
 which the brotherhood of the race is proclaimed 
 by all the organs of opinion. He has a voice 
 in public affairs, and since laborers are the ma- 
 jority, he is, in theory at least, the sovereign. 
 
2 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 They who govern profess to do everything by 
 the authority of the people, in their name and 
 for their welfare; and yet, if we are to accept 
 the opinions of the Socialists, the wage-takers, 
 who in the modern world are the vast multi- 
 tude, are practically shut out from participa- 
 tion in our intellectual and material inheritance. 
 They contend that the poor are, under the pres- 
 ent economic system, the victims of the rich, 
 just as in the ancient societies the weak were 
 the victims of the strong; so that wage-labor, 
 as actually constituted, differs in form rather 
 than in its essential results from the labor of 
 slaves and serfs. And even dispassionate ob- 
 servers think that the tendency of the present 
 system is to intensify rather than to diminish 
 the evils which do exist; and that we are mov- 
 ing towards a state of things in which the few 
 will own everything, and the many be hardly 
 more than their hired servants. In America, 
 they admit that sparse population and vast nat- 
 ural resources that as yet have hardly been 
 touched helped to conceal this fatal tendency, 
 which is best seen in the manufacturing and 
 commercial centres of Europe, where the capi- 
 talistic method of production has reduced 
 wage-earners to a condition of pauperism and 
 degradation which is the scandal of Christen- 
 dom and a menace to society. 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 3 
 
 The present condition of labor is the result 
 of gradually evolved processes, running through 
 centuries. 
 
 The failure of the attempt of Charlemagne 
 to organize the barbarous hordes which had 
 overspread Europe into a stable empire was 
 followed by an era of violence and lawless- 
 ness, of wars and invasions, from which so- 
 ciety sought refuge in the feudal system. The 
 strong man, as temporal or spiritual lord, was 
 at the top of the feudal hierarchy, and under 
 him the weak formed themselves into classes. 
 The serf labored a certain number of days for 
 himself, and a certain number for his lord. In 
 the towns the craftsmen were organized into 
 guilds which protected the interests of the mem- 
 bers. The mendicant poor were not numer- 
 ous, and their wants were provided for by the 
 bishops and the religious orders. 
 
 Then the growth of towns and the develop- 
 ment of trade and commerce brought wealth to 
 the burghers, who became a distinct class, while 
 domestic feuds and foreign wars, especially 
 the Crusades, weakened and impoverished the 
 knights and barons. The printing-press and 
 the use of gunpowder in war helped further to 
 undermine the feudal power, while the discov- 
 ery of America, the turning of the Cape of Good 
 Hope, and the Protestant revolution threw all 
 
4 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 Europe into a ferment from which new social 
 conditions were evolved. The peasants who 
 had been driven from the land by the decay of 
 the great baronial houses, and the confiscation 
 of the property of the church, flocked into the 
 towns or became vagabonds. The poor became 
 so numerous that permanent provision had to 
 be made for them, and poor laws were conse- 
 quently devised. It was the contemplation of 
 their misery which caused Sir Thomas More 
 to write the following words, which sound as 
 though they had been taken from some modern 
 Socialist address : 
 
 " Therefore, I must say that, as I hope for 
 mercy, I can have no notion of all the other gov- 
 ernments that I see or know than that they are a 
 conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of man- 
 aging the public, only pursue their private ends, 
 and devise all the ways and arts they can find 
 out; first that they may without danger preserve 
 all that they have so ill acquired, and then that 
 they may engage the poor to toil and labor for 
 them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them 
 as much as they please. And if they can but pre- 
 vail to get these contrivances established by the 
 show of public authority, which is considered as 
 the representative of the whole people, then they 
 are accounted laws." 
 
 The master-workman who in the middle ages 
 employed but two or three apprentices and as 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 5 
 
 many journeymen, gave way to a class of capi- 
 talists, enriched by the confiscated wealth of the 
 church, by the treasures imported from America 
 and the Indies, and by the profits of the slave- 
 traffic, who at once prepared to take advantage 
 of the stimulus to industry given by the open- 
 ing of a vast world market. As late as the 
 middle of the last century, however, manufac- 
 turing was still carried on by masters who em- 
 ployed but a small number of hands, and had 
 but little capital invested in the business; and 
 the modern industrial era, with its factory sys- 
 tem, properly begins with our marvellous me- 
 chanical inventions and the use of steam as a 
 motive power. Machinery made production on 
 a large scale possible, and threw the whole busi- 
 ness into the hands of capitalists, while laborers 
 are left with nothing but their ability to work, 
 which they are forced to sell at whatever price 
 it will bring. The capitalist's one aim is to 
 amass wealth, and he buys human labor just as 
 he buys machinery or raw material, at the low- 
 est rate at which it can be obtained. It is either 
 denied that the question of wages has an ethical 
 aspect, or it is maintained that the competition 
 among capitalists themselves, which under the 
 present system of production is inevitable, 
 compels employers to ignore considerations of 
 equity. Hence it comes to be held that what- 
 
6 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 ever increases profits is right. The hours of 
 labor are prolonged, the sexes are intermingled, 
 children are put to work in factories, sanitary 
 laws are violated ; wares are made in excess of 
 demand; and, in consequence of the resulting 
 glut of the markets, wages are still further low- 
 ered or work is stopped; and the laborers, 
 whether they continue to work or whether they 
 strike, or are forced into idleness, are threat- 
 ened with physical and moral ruin. The fur- 
 ther development of the system is, in the opinion 
 of many observers, towards the concentration 
 of capital in immense joint-stock companies and 
 syndicates, whose directors, by buying compet- 
 ing concerns and also legislatures and judges, 
 make opposition impossible, and render the con- 
 dition of laborers still more hopeless. 
 
 This brief sketch of the history and nature 
 of industrialism is sufficient to account for the 
 existence of the various socialistic theories and 
 movements of the present day. The word So- 
 cialism, which first came into use in the early 
 part of the nineteenth century, stands rather for 
 a tendency than for a definite body of principles 
 and methods, and this tendency is one of which 
 men of very different and even opposite opin- 
 ions approve: and a Socialist may be a theist 
 or an atheist, a spiritualist or a materialist, a 
 Christian or an agnostic. The general impli- 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. / 
 
 cation is the need of greater equality in the con- 
 dition of human beings. The aim, therefore, 
 is to bring about a social arrangement in which 
 all will receive a fair share of the good things 
 of life ; and the best way to secure this, Social- 
 ists commonly think, is to render the will of 
 the individual more completely subordinate to 
 that of the community. The methods by which 
 this may be accomplished are not necessarily 
 violent or revolutionary. In the opinion of 
 many serious writers, Socialism is the logical 
 outcome of tendencies which are held to pre- 
 vail throughout the civilized world. Our views 
 of liberty, equality, and fraternity, they say, 
 must necessarily lead not merely to the reign 
 of the people, to a universal democracy, but 
 must embody themselves in a State which will 
 own both land and capital, and will control 
 both production and distribution; for only in 
 this way can all be made free and equal, and 
 the brotherhood of the race become something 
 better than ironical cant. Already the State 
 has widened its sphere of action. It has passed 
 laws to regulate industry, it has taken charge 
 of education, and there are many indications 
 that the tendency is to assume that whatever 
 concerns the health, happiness, and morals of 
 the people should be subject to State control. 
 The massing of capital in great corporations is 
 
8 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 the beginning of a movement, it is thought, 
 which will end in the transference of all capital 
 to the one sole corporate State. The different 
 labor unions and cooperative societies are re- 
 garded as schools in which the working classes 
 are receiving the education needed to prepare 
 them for the task of universal intelligent co- 
 operation. The Socialists hold, also, that the 
 moral progress of the modern world points in 
 the same direction. There is a wider sym- 
 pathy, a new sense of justice, a desire to come 
 to the help of the weak and wronged, a con- 
 sciousness of the responsibility, not of individ- 
 uals alone but of society, which must lead to 
 a readjustment of the social order in accord- 
 ance with the sentiments of the more humane 
 temper which is characteristic of our age. And 
 is not all this, in part at least, a result of the 
 teaching and example of Christ himself, who 
 came to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal 
 the infirm and to bring relief to the overbur- 
 dened, and who thus gave the impulse which 
 has finally developed into our humanitarian 
 faith, hope, and love? A large number of So- 
 cialists, it is true, are atheists and material- 
 ists, but the earnest desire to discover some 
 means whereby justice may be done the people, 
 whereby they may be relieved from their pov- 
 erty and misery, and the resulting vice and 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 9 
 
 crime, is in intimate harmony with the gentle 
 and loving spirit of Him who passed no sor- 
 row by. 
 
 From the general principle that it is the duty 
 of the rich and strong to use at least part of 
 their wealth and strength in the service of their 
 fellow-men, and first of all in the service of 
 the poor and helpless, no good or wise man 
 will dissent. Here, then, is a common ground 
 whereon all, whatever their philosophic and 
 religious opinions and beliefs may be, can meet. 
 Disagreement arises only when we come to dis- 
 cuss how this may best be done. If, however, 
 the discussion is to be useful, it is necessary 
 that we first get a true view of the condition of 
 the classes to whose relief we wish to come. 
 
 Are the evils from which they suffer really 
 as great and desperate as the Socialist agi- 
 tators would have us believe? Are laborers 
 worse paid, worse fed, worse clothed, and worse 
 housed than, for instance, in the early part of 
 the nineteenth century ? Do they labor a greater 
 number of hours, and is their work more severe 
 and exhausting now than then? 
 
 Is the tendency of present conditions to make 
 them unintelligent, brutal, and reckless? Is the 
 actual economic system an organization of the 
 ruling classes to keep the laborers in poverty 
 and permanent subjection? Is it a fact, in a 
 
IO SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 word, that we are drifting towards a state of 
 things in which the few shall own everything 
 and the many nothing? 
 
 If these questions are to receive an affirma- 
 tive answer, then the method of production 
 by private competitive capital should be con- 
 demned, for it not only, in this case, works 
 injustice to large multitudes, but must, if per- 
 mitted to continue in operation, finally lead to 
 social ruin. It is easily intelligible that those 
 who believe that private capitalism is essentially 
 vicious, should look to Socialism as a ground 
 for hope, and that they should find in the sup- 
 posed tendencies of the present economic de- 
 velopments a reason for thinking that the reign 
 of individualism is nearing its end. 
 
 The democracy, upon which light is stream- 
 ing from many sources, which all the forces 
 and struggles of society are helping to organize 
 more thoroughly, and which is rapidly becom- 
 ing conscious of its superior power, could not 
 be expected to accept as permanent a system 
 which makes of the mass of the people a herd 
 of proletarians, dependent upon uncertain wage- 
 labor. Already, under democratic influence, 
 the State has assumed functions formerly per- 
 formed by individuals, families, and minor 
 communities, and under the pressure of the 
 growing sense of the responsibility of society 
 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 1 1 
 
 for the welfare of all its members, it tends to 
 widen the sphere of its activity and to take 
 greater control of the lives of citizens. 
 
 And as it always happens when the stream 
 of tendency sets strongly in a given direction, 
 those who oppose not less than those who favor 
 hasten the coming of the new order. Events, 
 in fact, solve the great problems, and our dis- 
 cussions are but the foam that crests the waves. 
 Thus, it is conceivable that the efforts of com- 
 petitive capital to save itself by forming colos- 
 sal companies and syndicates, may be found in 
 the end to facilitate the transference of the 
 whole to the collective management of society. 
 
 The era of the small producer, it is plain, 
 has passed away. Indeed, the greatest suf- 
 ferers among laborers, at present, are the vic- 
 tims of what is known as the Sweating System, 
 which is an unhealthy survival of the method 
 of domestic production. If the choice, then, is 
 between the massing of capital in a few hands 
 and its complete control by the State, there can 
 be little doubt as to what the final decision 
 will be. 
 
 But the question whether the Socialist view 
 of the actual condition of labor and of the ten- 
 dencies of the present economic order, is the 
 true view, still remains to be answered. 
 
 There are reasons which should lead us to 
 
12 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 look upon the assertions of the Socialist agita- 
 tors with a certain distrust. The temper of re- 
 formers is enthusiastic, and hence they almost 
 inevitably exaggerate the evils they seek to 
 correct. The crowd is fond of reckless state- 
 ment, and its leaders not unfrequently win and 
 hold their preeminence by the boldness with 
 which they deal in passionate rhetoric. It is 
 well known, too, that when patients begin to 
 improve they become irritable; and this is true 
 also of suffering bodies of men. The hopeless 
 become resigned. The negro slaves began and 
 ended the day's work to the sound of their own 
 melodies; and when women were treated like 
 slaves the indignities they suffered called forth 
 no clamorous protests. The discontent and agi- 
 tation which now exist among the working 
 classes are not, then, a proof that their condi- 
 tion is altogether evil or that it is growing 
 worse, while the testimony of the leaders in 
 the labor-movements is, for the reasons I have 
 given, open to suspicion. 
 
 No enlightened mind doubts the superiority 
 of our civilization to that of all preceding cen- 
 turies, and yet when was there ever so much 
 fault-finding as now with the evils and short- 
 comings of political, social, and domestic life? 
 
 We have even a literature which proclaims 
 that life itself is worthless; and there are evi- 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 13 
 
 dently a number of readers who are interested 
 in arguments which go to show that marriage, 
 free institutions, popular education, civiliza- 
 tion, and Christianity have all broken down 
 and failed to bring the good they promised 
 and which the human heart craves. 
 
 Our gains seem to have served only to make 
 us more conscious of what we still lack, and 
 in the light of our intellectual, moral, and ma- 
 terial progress we easily persuade ourselves that 
 what has been achieved is little more than the 
 promise of better things to be. Then our im- 
 plements of almost magical power and delicacy, 
 and the ease and rapidity with which by their 
 aid we are able to overcome mere physical 
 obstacles, have made us impatient. We rebel 
 against the teaching which inculcates the wis- 
 dom of making haste slowly, and we imagine 
 that by teaching people to read and write, and 
 by proper legislative enactments, we may do 
 away with ignorance, poverty, and crime as 
 easily as we drain swamps or recover ex- 
 hausted soil. In this our temper is unphilo- 
 sophic and misleading. Social development 
 depends upon laws which legislation can modify 
 only to a limited extent, and a prerequisite to 
 all effective and desirable social transforma- 
 tions is a corresponding change in the character 
 of both the masses and their rulers and em- 
 
14 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 ployers. Now, alterations in the character of 
 a people are the result of slow processes, car- 
 ried on through successive generations, and 
 hence it is a mistake to suppose that a change 
 in the machinery of government will suddenly 
 produce an equivalent change in the thought 
 and conduct of men. The futility of mere 
 paper constitutions has been proven by experi- 
 ments which leave no room for doubt. Mexico, 
 for example, has had republican institutions 
 since the early part of this century, but the 
 condition of the masses of its people is little 
 better than was that of the slaves in the South- 
 ern States. 
 
 Putting aside, then, as impracticable all 
 schemes for bringing on an era of universal 
 comfort and contentment by mechanical changes 
 in the constitution of society, let us strive to 
 get a clear view of the results and tendencies 
 of the actually existing system of competitive 
 capitalistic production. 
 
 In the first place, it is a fact that, neither in 
 Europe nor in the United States, is there a 
 chasm between the enormously rich and the 
 very poor, but there is a gradation of posses- 
 sion from the beggar to the great capitalist. 
 Most of what is said about the poverty and 
 misery of the working class is applicable only 
 to what has been called the social residuum, 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 15 
 
 which may be compared to the stragglers and 
 camp-followers of an army; and the social 
 gulf is not between rich men and steady, thrifty 
 laborers, but rather between these latter and the 
 crowd of loafers and criminals. That the cause 
 of this disparity of condition is moral rather 
 than economic, whoever observes may see; and 
 this fact gives emphasis to the great truth that 
 all real amelioration in the lot of human beings 
 depends on religious, moral, and intellectual 
 conditions. Money does not make a miser rich 
 nor its lack a true man poor. The most com- 
 petent authorities, basing their opinion upon 
 exhaustive statistical study and careful obser- 
 vation, hold that the condition of laborers 
 during the industrial period has been one of 
 gradual improvement. In England, from 1688 
 to 1800, there was an increase of less than fifty 
 per cent in the number of laborers, and an in- 
 crease of six hundred and ten per cent in their 
 total earnings; and from 1800 to 1883 workers 
 increased a little over four hundred per cent 
 and their income about six hundred per cent. 
 Wages have risen both in amount and in pur- 
 chasing power. The hours of labor have be- 
 come fewer and the rate of mortality has 
 decreased. " Taken as a whole/' says Profes- 
 sor Levi, who is a recognized authority on 
 questions of statistics, " the working classes of 
 
1 6 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 the United Kingdom may be said to be stronger 
 in physique, better educated, with more time at 
 their command, in the enjoyment of greater 
 political rights, in a more healthful relation 
 towards their employers, receiving higher wages 
 and better able to effect some savings, in 1884 
 than they were in 1857." And in England the 
 conditions are less favorable to the laboring 
 classes than in some other countries, far less 
 favorable than they are in our own. It is 
 densely populated ; it imports much of its food ; 
 nearly all the land is owned by a few thousand 
 families; its workmen have been crippled and 
 dwarfed by laws made in the interest of em- 
 ployers; and production and distribution are 
 regulated according to the principles of free 
 trade, which we here in America, at least, are 
 taught to believe has a tendency to lower 
 wages. 
 
 In the United States, it is plain, there is no 
 gulf between the very rich and the very poor, 
 but a gradation of widely distributed wealth. 
 More than eight million families are land- 
 owners, and of the thirteen million families 
 among whom the wealth of the country is di- 
 vided, eleven million families are said to belong 
 to the wage-earning class. We have, indeed, a 
 few enormously rich men, but it will be found 
 difficult to hold these great fortunes together, 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. I/ 
 
 and if plutocrats should persist in abusing 
 the power which money gives, the people will 
 know how to protect themselves against the 
 tyrants. 
 
 If private property is not a crime, and that 
 it is not even radical Socialists admit, then 
 wealth however great, if it be honestly acquired 
 and justly used, must be respected. Much of 
 the material progress of our country is due to 
 the energy and foresight of men who, if they 
 have grown rich themselves, have made pos- 
 sible the comfortable and independent exist- 
 ence of thousands. Diatribes against wealthy 
 men oftener spring from unworthy passions 
 than from any sense of wrongs inflicted by 
 them. Duties and responsibilities are personal, 
 and the poor are bound not less than the rich 
 to do what they are able to promote the com- 
 mon welfare. The obligation of service is uni- 
 versal, and to encourage jealousy and hatred 
 of the rich among the poor is to do harm to 
 the interests and character of both. If the rich 
 are sometimes selfish and heartless, they are 
 quite as often generous and helpful. Like other 
 men, they are conscious of the irresistible lean- 
 ing of human nature to the side of justice, and 
 if a sort of all-embracing good-will is charac- 
 teristic of Americans, we may hope that all 
 efforts to cause class-hatred to prevail here will 
 
1 8 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 prove futile. At all events, the condition of 
 laborers under the regime of competitive pro- 
 duction, whatever grievances they still may 
 have, are not so desperate as to make us will- 
 ing to run the risk of putting in jeopardy the 
 two things we have learned to value the most 
 Liberty and Individuality. 
 
 Many of our social arrangements are doubt- 
 less provisional only. In various ways our age 
 is transitional, and such an age is necessarily 
 one of exceptional hardship for the weak; but 
 in an era of change the last thing the wise will 
 counsel is the rushing into visionary and un- 
 tried schemes of reform; and such a scheme, 
 where there is question of a whole people, the 
 New Socialism certainly is. In small commu- 
 nities even the Socialist theory has been found 
 impracticable except where celibacy has been 
 made a condition of membership. The social 
 order is an organism infinitely complex, the 
 outcome of many forces, whose action and in- 
 teraction, beginning in the obscure and mystefi- 
 ous regions where life and mind first manifest 
 themselves, have been going on for unnum- 
 bered ages; and it has so intertwined itself 
 with man's very nature that we may say he is 
 what he is in virtue of the society of which he 
 is the product. By it our language, our litera- 
 ture, our laws, and much of our religion have 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 19 
 
 been developed. To make desirable, or possible 
 even, a radical change in this order, such as 
 that implied by Socialism, our nature itself 
 would have to become other. Until this changes, 
 man will continue to believe that he has the 
 right to own property, and he will continue to 
 look upon the possession of a home and of 
 other things whereby an independent existence 
 for himself and his wife and children is secured, 
 as among the chief boons of life. The owner 
 of the poorest cabin would not barter it for the 
 promises of the Socialist paradise. The pas- 
 sion for independence, for liberty, which, in- 
 born in our portion, at least, of the Aryan race, 
 has been strengthened and intensified by cen- 
 turies of heroic struggles, makes us averse to 
 social schemes which, if practical at all, can 
 succeed only by controlling and regulating all 
 the affairs of life, by turning the whole nation 
 into an industrial army, where each one is under 
 orders to keep the place and do the duties as- 
 signed him. There is nothing we so much dis- 
 like as interference we who think it better 
 to be insulted than to have even advice prof- 
 fered. In America we know our politicians too 
 well to be able to believe that captains of in- 
 dustry, under the control of a supreme council, 
 to whom power vastly greater than that which 
 politicians and bosses have ever exercised would 
 
20 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 necessarily be given in a Socialist government, 
 could safely or wisely be entrusted with the 
 management of all our nearest and dearest 
 concerns. 
 
 If, indeed, the root-principle of the New 
 Socialism, as set forth by Marx, and before 
 him by Ricardo, that labor is the sole source 
 of value, and that therefore capital is robbery, 
 were true, it would certainly be a powerful 
 argument against the existing economic order, 
 and would drive honest men to look with ap- 
 proval upon projects to substitute in its place 
 some method of production and distribution 
 which would not be in open conflict with the 
 current ideas of morality. Neither religion nor 
 humanity permits us to acquiesce in a system 
 of organized plunder, and if this is what com- 
 petitive capitalism is, the transformation of 
 society, by revolution if need be, is an end for 
 which all good men might well labor. If we 
 assume, with the school of Ricardo, that all 
 wealth, all exchange value, is the result exclu- 
 sively of labor, then to the laborers all wealth 
 rightfully belongs, and capitalists have acquired 
 what they possess by the spoliation of the true 
 owners; and the collectivism of Marx, who 
 proposes to turn all land and capital over to the 
 State, which undertakes to pay every one the 
 full worth of his work, is a logical development. 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 21 
 
 Political economists, however, now generally 
 agree in holding that the theory of Ricardo, 
 which makes labor the only source of value, is 
 untenable; for capital, which is required for 
 production, must be accepted as a factor in de- 
 termining values, and its owner therefore is 
 entitled to a fair reward for the service his 
 capital renders. It may be said that capital 
 itself is the result of labor, but it must be ad- 
 mitted that it is also the result of abstinence 
 from consumption. While one man consumes 
 the equivalent of his entire work, another con- 
 sumes but part, and thus gradually accumulates 
 a capital, which he invests in some machine, 
 for instance, and thereby acquires a right to 
 whatever value the machine may add to manu- 
 factured products. His machine has become 
 his fellow-laborer, and if large and perfect 
 enough, will do the work of many men. What 
 right can the State have to take from him this 
 labor-saving instrument, which he has invented 
 or paid for with money honestly earned? 
 
 The fallacy of the Socialist assumption lies in 
 attributing to labor a value of its own, inde- 
 pendently of the worth of its product. The 
 labor spent in doing useless things has no value ; 
 at least, no social value. He who makes what 
 nobody wants has his labor for his pains. The 
 question is not what amount of labor an object 
 
22 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 has cost, but what service can it render. A 
 man may devote years to learning to walk the 
 tight-rope, but if I do not care for such attain- 
 ments and exhibitions, I will not pay to see 
 him perform. Values, then, cannot be esti- 
 mated in terms of labor, which is nevertheless 
 the task the Socialists have set themselves. 
 How shall we determine the worth of the labor 
 expended in perfecting a plan such as that which 
 led Columbus to discover America? What is 
 the worth of Newton's labor in evolving the 
 theory of gravitation, of Shakspere's in writing 
 " Hamlet/' of Wagner's in composing " Parsi- 
 fal," of Gutenberg's in making his type, or of 
 Watt's in building his steam-engine? Without 
 the genius of inventors and discoverers, without 
 the foresight and enterprise of investors and 
 capitalists, there would be little for laborers to 
 do, and society would drift into general poverty. 
 Far, then, from being the sole source of value, 
 labor, to have worth, must be provided with the 
 raw materials and forces of nature; must be 
 stimulated and directed by intelligence, and must 
 produce things which human beings want ; and 
 capital, which is not so much the result of labor 
 as of abstinence from consumption, which leaves 
 a surplus of the labor product to be invested in 
 profit-bearing enterprises, necessarily shares also 
 in the determination of values. The present 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 2$ 
 
 economical system, then, is not, as Socialists 
 affirm, organized injustice, though it must be 
 admitted that it often leads to wrongs which 
 cripple the lives of multitudes, and produce an 
 incalculable amount of physical and moral evil. 
 Indeed, the present inequalities in the distri- 
 bution of wealth affect the moral sense so 
 painfully that we cannot look upon them as 
 irremovable. We may not, however, trample 
 on rights to secure greater distributive justice, 
 or approve of schemes which if they promise 
 a greater abundance of material things to the 
 poor, would lead to a general enfeeblement 
 and lowering of human life. In a Socialist 
 State, in which the universal ideal is that of 
 physical well-being and comfort, the sublimer 
 moods which make saints, heroes, and men of 
 genius possible would no longer be called forth. 
 If all should receive the same reward, whatever 
 their labor, spontaneity would come to an end 
 and progress cease, and such an equality would 
 finally come to be a universal equality in indo- 
 lence, poverty, and low thinking; while from 
 an ethical point of view, it would seem to be 
 unjust that the same reward should be given 
 to every kind of labor. 
 
 If different rewards are given for different 
 kinds of work, the practical difficulties in deter- 
 mining the social value of the different kinds 
 
24 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 of labor appear to be insuperable, especially 
 when we consider that in the Socialist State 
 there are to be no special payments, no money 
 to serve as a universal standard of value. What 
 shall be the basis of comparison for fixing the 
 relative value of the work of a carpenter, a 
 nurse-maid, a schoolmaster, and a minister of 
 religion? If it be said that each shall receive 
 according to the amount and social utility of his 
 or her productive labor, how is this rule to be 
 applied? Every product is the result of the 
 operation of many forces, natural, mechanical, 
 and human, and to decide what part of the value 
 is due to the labor of any special workman is 
 extremely difficult, if not impossible. If we 
 accept the formula, " To each in proportion to 
 the number of hours of his work," which is said 
 to be in the strictest sense the theoretical basis 
 of Socialism, then skilled and unskilled labor 
 will be paid alike ; and since the acquirement of 
 skill is the result of long and painful processes, 
 who would take infinite pains when by so doing 
 he would gain nothing? And how shall we 
 apply this time-measure to agricultural labor, 
 to domestic service, to woman's work in the 
 family, where she has at once the offices of 
 wife, mother, nurse, and housekeeper? If 
 skilled labor receives a greater reward than 
 the unskilled the principle of equality is aban- 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 2$ 
 
 doned, while the relative values of the two kinds 
 of labor must be arbitrarily assumed. 
 
 Not only, then, is the Socialist theory of the 
 source of value unsatisfactory, but the methods 
 by which it is proposed to bring about a more 
 equal distribution of wealth are either imprac- 
 ticable or, if applied, would lead to greater evils 
 than those from which we actually suffer. 
 There would, indeed, have to be a radical change 
 in man's moral nature before it would be safe 
 to entrust to any body of men such power as 
 the managers of the Socialist State would in- 
 evitably acquire. It is with power as with 
 money those who love it never have enough ; 
 and in fact if the whole economic management 
 of society, together with the education of the 
 young, were turned over to a special governing 
 and directing class, its power w r ould necessarily 
 have to be almost unlimited. The whole people 
 would be marshalled like an army, and unques- 
 tioning obedience would be demanded and en- 
 forced. The right of the people to elect their 
 officers gives no assurance that their favorites 
 will be worthy or capable. What universal suf- 
 frage does to bring the best and the wisest into 
 power is now well known. The policy and the 
 candidates of the people are the policy and the 
 candidates of wire-pullers and bosses. They 
 who should once get hold of the vast and com- 
 
26 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 plex machinery by which it is proposed to gov- 
 ern the Socialist State would most probably 
 remain in power; and when we reflect that all 
 the printing-presses of the country would be 
 under their control, and that there would be no 
 reason for the existence of political parties, it 
 is difficult to see how they could be driven from 
 office. The selfishness which, under the regime 
 of competitive capitalism, makes so many em- 
 ployers of labor heartless and tyrannical, would 
 assert itself also in the new order ; for a change 
 of government is like a change of clothes, it 
 leaves the man what he was. It is incredible 
 that the perversity of human passion may be 
 corrected by mechanical appliances. Its source 
 lies within, where lie also the aids to noble life ; 
 and until there is a universal change of heart, a 
 social theory which assumes that every man 
 loves all men as much as he loves himself is 
 Utopian. Observant minds belonging to differ- 
 ent schools of thought agree in holding that 
 in the modern world egotism is more intense 
 than it was in the middle ages, at least so far as 
 there is question of the love of money, which 
 now is the form all our selfish passions naturally 
 take; for money means power, it means self- 
 indulgence, it means the satisfaction of vanity, 
 it means honor and place. Mere intellectual 
 training is powerless to correct this vice or to 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 2/ 
 
 bring about any great moral improvement. It 
 tends to change the form of vice rather than to 
 make us virtuous ; or, if we should take a more 
 hopeful view of what secular education is able 
 to do, the time is certainly distant when the 
 masses can be called educated, in any real sense 
 of the word. 
 
 Though we cannot accept the fundamental 
 principles of Socialism or Collectivism as true, 
 and though we are persuaded that society cannot 
 successfully be established upon them as a basis, 
 there are none the less bonds of sympathy be- 
 tween us and the Socialists. The desire, which 
 in the case of many of them is doubtless earnest 
 and sincere, to come to the relief of the poor, to 
 find some means by which their lot may be made 
 less miserable, springs from a divine impulse. 
 It is Christian and human; and the anti-reli- 
 gious spirit of modern Socialism comes from an 
 unphilosophic and unhistoric view of the forces 
 which create civilization and give promise of a 
 better future. Atheism and materialism fatally 
 strengthen and intensify man's selfish passions, 
 by merging life's whole significance and worth 
 into the present transitory existence. If there 
 is no order of absolute truth and right, no future 
 for the individual, then pleasure is the chief 
 good, and both instinct and reason impel to 
 indulgence and to the overthrow of society, if 
 
28 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 society makes the enjoyment of life impossible. 
 Hence the socialism of materialists and atheists 
 logically leads to anarchy. Nothing could be 
 more sad than that the multitude should be 
 driven to look for deliverance from their wrongs 
 and sorrows to leaders who deny God, and 
 man's kinship with the infinitely true and per- 
 fect One; who tell them that there is no living 
 heavenly Father, but only an unconscious Earth- 
 Mother, on whose senseless body Life and Death 
 play their horrid farce. The grasping avarice 
 and heartless methods of employers and capital- 
 ists, who generally profess to be Christians, are 
 arguments against religion which the preachers 
 of atheism find effective in addressing the vic- 
 tims of our present economic system ; while the 
 decay of faith has greatly diminished the per- 
 suasive force of appeals in favor of resigna- 
 tion and submission. Those who lose faith 
 and hope and love, lose patience too; and it is 
 futile to preach the sacredness of wealth to the 
 poor when their miserable lives are the sad 
 witnesses to the immorality of the means by 
 which it is acquired. 
 
 Who can read the history of rack-renting in 
 Ireland, or the story of the Sweating System in 
 the " Bitter Cry of Outcast London/' with- 
 out feeling that a social order which makes 
 such things possible ought to be changed or 
 destroyed ? 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 29 
 
 Who can consider the mental, moral, and 
 physical state of certain classes of emigrants 
 who land upon our shores by the thousand, with- 
 out asking ourselves whether the countries from 
 which these people come are civilized and Chris- 
 tian? Has the passion for humanity which 
 Christ came to inspire, and which was a living 
 principle in his early followers, died in Chris- 
 tian Europe ? There the very poor certainly are 
 excluded from our spiritual and material inheri- 
 tance, and it would seem that the standing ar- 
 mies which are kept up by the various powers 
 are maintained rather for the purpose of holding 
 the impoverished masses in subjection than for 
 defence against foreign aggression. It is as 
 though the ruling classes in Europe had entered 
 into a conspiracy to foment national jealousy 
 and hatred, that they may have a pretext for 
 keeping intact their military organizations, 
 which, while they overawe the people, help to 
 reduce them to still greater poverty and wretch- 
 edness. There Socialism may have a meaning, 
 and since there are never wanting with us people 
 who think it the proper thing to take whatever 
 infection may prevail in Europe, it was inevi- 
 table that certain dilettants and idiosyncratics 
 should seek to persuade us that America too 
 ought to have its Socialism. We began, how- 
 ever, as the most completely individualist people 
 
30 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 of which history makes record, and our experi- 
 ence has not tended to weaken our faith in the 
 power of freedom, intelligence, and industry to 
 solve the great social problems. Should our 
 plutocrats, instead of making themselves public 
 benefactors, become public malefactors, a mod- 
 ification in the laws of inheritance, together 
 with other legal measures which would readily 
 suggest themselves, would be sufficient to abate 
 the nuisance. For the rest, we are convinced 
 that the great aim should be not to provide 
 for all men, but to train and educate all men 
 to take care of themselves. The tendency of 
 good government is to make government less 
 necessary, and the influence of the religion of 
 Christ not only creates purer morals and sym- 
 pathies, but it also mitigates the conflict between 
 the Church and the world. 
 
 As men become more enlightened and human, 
 they perceive that the aims of the best civil 
 government are not really distinct from those 
 of true religion. Man's salvation here and 
 hereafter is the end for which all society exists, 
 and hence it is the duty both of the Church and 
 the State to labor for freedom, knowledge, and 
 righteousness; in other words, for humanity. 
 The nineteen centuries which have passed since 
 Christ was born have put new forces into our 
 hands, which, if we but use them with wisdom 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 31 
 
 and in the spirit of Christian love, may teach 
 that the Saviour came not to redeem the indi- 
 vidual alone, but to transform society. We 
 have at our disposal the vast treasure of science, 
 which is ever increasing, and which, if we but 
 have understanding and a heart, may be made 
 to bless alike the rich and the poor with greater 
 knowledge of the causes of physical evil, of 
 hygienic and sanitary laws, which shall become 
 more and more able to forestall disease. We 
 shall make education universal, but we shall 
 educate with a view to health of body and soul 
 quite as much, at least, as with a view to sharpen 
 the mental faculties. We shall gradually come 
 to understand that there is no conflict between 
 religion and science, but that both are mani- 
 festations of God's wisdom and love, meant to 
 console, strengthen, and save man. The min- 
 ister of religion will love knowledge and the 
 man of science will be reverent and devout. 
 When cooperation becomes universal not among 
 laborers alone, but when the men of wealth 
 and the men of toil, the men of religion and 
 the men of science, the spiritual guides and 
 the temporal rulers, all unite for the common 
 good of the whole people, a new era will dawn. 
 All will then recognize that intelligence and 
 morality are the basis of human life; and that 
 as right intelligence leads to faith in God, so is 
 
32 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 that faith the fountain-head of the generous and 
 fervid moods which make righteousness pre- 
 vail. We shall understand more thoroughly 
 that the causes of vice and crime are the chief 
 causes also of poverty and all other social evils. 
 
 And while this truer view will weaken con- 
 fidence in the mechanical appliances and patent 
 remedies of reformers and empirics, it will 
 confirm our faith in the efficacy of pure religion, 
 of right education, and of whatever else nour- 
 ishes and strengthens the faculties within. 
 
 Then shall a more perfect society grow 
 round us a society complex and various, yet 
 free and orderly, rich in art, vocal in literature, 
 strong in sympathy, victorious through the 
 power of holiness and love. 
 
II. 
 
 THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 
 
 T7ENELON spoke from his generous heart 
 * when he said, " I love my family more 
 than myself, my country more than my family, 
 and the whole world more than my country." 
 Unfortunately, the converse of this is true of 
 men in general, who love themselves first, their 
 families next, then their country, and the whole 
 world hardly at all. Hence the inefficacy of 
 arguments intended to show that abuses in 
 which an age takes delight will bring harm to 
 posterity. Those who prefer the lower to the 
 higher self will make no sacrifices for the good 
 of their descendants, as one who is indifferent 
 to the living will surely be unmindful of the 
 dead and the unborn. We care nothing for 
 ancestors who are a few degrees removed from 
 us, unless their lives furnish food to our vanity, 
 and it is not probable that any man is made 
 unhappy by pondering on the destiny that 
 may await his great-grandchildren. Declaimers 
 against the evils of the age, who predict the 
 3 
 
34 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 not distant downfall of the State or of civili- 
 zation, alarm no one, because few have faith in 
 such forebodings, and fewer still care to trouble 
 themselves about the condition of mankind a 
 hundred years hence. The masses of Euro- 
 peans and Americans are little concerned for 
 the welfare of the populations of Africa and 
 eastern Asia; they are too far away. And 
 time separates even more than space. 
 
 Here in America, to within a quite recent 
 date, we have been so wholly under the influ- 
 ence of unreasoning optimism and youthful 
 self-complacency, that prophets of evil have 
 appeared to us to be simply men of unsound 
 mind. As a people we have been, and probably 
 still are, believers in the fundamental error that 
 denies the original taint in man's nature; and 
 hence we are persuaded that, in a society like 
 ours, where the restraints, oppressions, and in- 
 justices of past ages have ceased to exist, the 
 tendency to higher modes of thought and con- 
 duct, to purer and worthier life, is as irresistible 
 as the laws of nature. The enthusiasm with 
 which men hailed the advent of the rule of the 
 people, and the promise of boundless good to 
 the race with which the new order of things 
 was ushered in, together with a knowledge of 
 the terrible and indescribable evils that unjust 
 laws and tyrannical governments have brought 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 35 
 
 upon mankind, were sufficient to blind them to 
 the common facts of personal experience, and 
 to hide from philosophers a truth known to 
 every mother and every nurse, that man is born 
 not only weak and ignorant, but with such a 
 tendency to what is vicious that each genera- 
 tion of children, if left to the impulse of their 
 will, would inevitably relapse into barbarism. 
 
 The bent of human nature is toward what 
 is beneath, and the natural course of society 
 is downward. If we consider the history of 
 our race, we find emergence from barbarism 
 to be the fortunate lot of exceptional people, 
 who by some divine impulse are borne upward, 
 and, having reached a certain height of civili- 
 zation, hasten to descend, not, indeed, along 
 the rugged paths of heroic daring and self- 
 denial by which they mounted the summit, but 
 in the open and easy way of sensual delights. 
 Among the most privileged nations, only the 
 smallest number attain to excellence, and their 
 high endowments, whether moral or intellec- 
 tual, depend upon unceasing effort. The great 
 body of their fellow-countrymen are held to be 
 civilized on account of their association with 
 these better specimens of the race, just as a 
 vulgar man is called noble because he descends 
 from ancestors who are believed to have been 
 really so. Few men love the best, or seek the 
 
36 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 highest, or strive to shape their lives upon the 
 model of exalted ideals; and the truly excel- 
 lent, whether in conduct, literature, or art, is 
 never popular. The crowd neither follow in 
 the footsteps of the noblest characters, nor read 
 the best books, nor love the master-works of 
 genius. It may, indeed, be said to be a law of 
 human nature that attraction from below is 
 stronger than attraction from above. The mul- 
 titude live in the senses, not in the soul; and 
 the life of the senses is contact with material 
 objects. Hence the fatal tendency to superficial 
 views of life and to low notions of conduct. 
 How long and patiently must not a man labor 
 to bring his natural endowments to some kind 
 of perfection? And the moment he ceases to 
 toil marks the beginning of degeneracy. But 
 this tireless struggle is hard to weak nature, 
 and the multitudes yield to the current, and 
 are carried farther and farther away from the 
 heights their young eyes looked up to with 
 hope, all aglow with the light of ideal worlds. 
 The same law prevails in families. But very 
 few rise to eminence, and they, having pro- 
 duced two or three men of mark, break up and 
 are lost in obscurity. 
 
 It is difficult to understand why we should 
 imagine that there is in human nature a prin- 
 ciple of indefinite progress? There is, indeed, 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 37 
 
 in the world to-day more knowledge than there 
 has ever been, more wealth, more comfort, more 
 liberty; but, apart from the fact that all this is 
 in great measure attributable to the influence of 
 Christianity, which was accepted as a super- 
 natural faith, supplying supernatural motives 
 and helps, the essential quality of human life 
 lies elsewhere than in knowledge, wealth, com- 
 fort, and liberty. Men and nations fail, not for 
 lack of these, but for lack of moral strength. 
 Conduct, to use a current phrase, is three- 
 fourths or four-fifths of human life; and man 
 is to such an extent a moral being that failure 
 in conduct is essential, hopeless failure. The 
 sense of life, of its goodness, its joyousness, its 
 inestimable worth, springs from right-doing, 
 not from fine thinking, or the enjoyment of 
 political freedom, or the possession of wealth. 
 Pure hearts are glad, and they who tread the 
 paths of duty find God's world sweet. This is 
 not a theory, but a truth that all men may 
 verify by actual experiment, and to it the un- 
 varying testimony of the past bears witness. 
 That moral life is joy, peace, gladness, content- 
 ment, fullness of life, is the teaching of all the 
 greatest thinkers of the world; and it is also 
 the actual experience of every human being 
 who walks obedient to the voice of God's stern 
 daughter, Duty. This is not to say that right- 
 
38 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 doing necessarily makes people happy, but that 
 it gives them a deeper sense of the value of life 
 and of its sacredness, a better insight into the 
 goodness of all things, a knowledge that evil 
 is accidental, and in no way able to deprive 
 man of the blessedness that comes of being in 
 conscious harmony with the eternal laws of 
 God's universe. To be morally right is to be 
 absolutely right, because the infinite truth of 
 what is, is more nearly revealed to the con- 
 science than to the intellect; and the more 
 closely we conform to the law within, the more 
 God-like does the whole world external to 
 ourselves grow to be. In this way moral ex- 
 cellence, awakening the deep and boundless 
 harmonies that sleep within the soul, brings us 
 near to the heart of love and creates faith in 
 immortal life. When character is the result of 
 conformity with eternal laws, we feel that this 
 union is everlastingly true, good, and fair; and 
 hence that our real self belongs to an order 
 of things that is imperishable. Therefore the 
 good are strong, and so, happy, since weak- 
 ness is misery. 
 
 Just as right-doing leads to completeness of 
 life and to belief in life everlasting, so wrong- 
 doing begets a dis-esteem of life and unbelief 
 in man's God-like destiny. " Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die/' are the words of 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 39 
 
 those who fail in conduct. The more we live 
 in the senses, the less becomes our faith in the 
 value and duration of life. Hence the reckless- 
 ness of those who have thrown aside moral re- 
 straint, and the fatal facility with which they 
 take their own and others' lives. Thought, to 
 be true and healthful, must complete itself in 
 act. It is not, therefore, its own end, but aims 
 at something beyond. In the same way faith, 
 hope, and love tend to action, to morality, to 
 righteousness ; and thus from all sides the truth 
 is borne in upon us that the test of human worth 
 is to be found in character, and not in a culti- 
 vated mind, or a brilliant imagination, or in 
 beauty of body, and much less, of course, in 
 things that are purely material, as money and 
 machinery. Progress, then, is not possible 
 where there is moral decadence, since conduct 
 is three-fourths of life, and character the real 
 test of man's worth. The literary excellence 
 and refined civilization of the age of Augustus 
 and of the age of Louis XIV. were not only 
 wholly powerless to arrest the decay of Roman 
 and French society, but served rather to hasten 
 its dissolution; and history testifies to the truth 
 that the possession of wealth destroys the vir- 
 tues by which it is created. 
 
 If we turn to our own country, and to what, 
 unfortunately, we must still call an experiment, 
 
4O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 to determine whether the best possible kind of 
 government may become an enduring fact, we 
 cannot fail to perceive that, to be able to form 
 an enlightened opinion as to the success or fail- 
 ure of this noblest effort at self-government 
 ever made by mankind, the truth that I have 
 here sought to develop must be borne in mind. 
 Human worth is moral worth; man's proper 
 measure is character; conduct is three- fourths 
 of life ; right-doing brings the deepest and most 
 lasting content and gladness to the heart of 
 man, and thus creates a sense of completeness 
 and harmony that nothing else can give. 
 Righteousness is strength. As the physical 
 forces of the boundless universe work together 
 in every drop of water to give and maintain 
 its form and nature, so the infinite power that 
 makes goodness the best, cooperates with every 
 man who obeys conscience, to uphold and con- 
 firm his heart. Goodness of life tends to length 
 of days, to health, to success. Man lives by 
 faith, hope, and love; and fidelity to conscience 
 keeps him close to the clear-flowing fountain- 
 head of faith, hope, and love. To think finely 
 is well; to dream nobly is also good; and to 
 look with a glad heart upon the beauties of the 
 universe gives delight; but not in doing any 
 of these things, but in doing right, lies the 
 worth and goodness of life. And this great 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 41 
 
 principle affects families and nations as it af- 
 fects individuals. Conduct leads a whole people 
 along the rugged and difficult ascent of prog- 
 ress; and, without it, neither knowledge, nor 
 wealth, nor numbers, nor machinery, nor fer- 
 tile soil, nor healthful climate, nor all these 
 together, with whatever else there may be that 
 is good and helpful, can save them from deca- 
 dence and ruin. Whether alone or one of a 
 multitude, man fails not for lack of anything 
 else than virtue. 
 
 That a democratic form of government ought 
 to be the best, the proverb, " If you wish a thing 
 done, do it yourself," would seem sufficiently to 
 prove. Again : Since the end of government is 
 to promote the welfare of all the governed, and 
 since each man is more than any one else inter- 
 ested in his own behalf, and since interest in a 
 subject or a cause awakens attention and be- 
 gets intelligence in matters therewith connected, 
 it would seem to follow that to give to all men 
 a due degree of influence in the government is 
 the surest way to promote the welfare of all. 
 And this conclusion gains weight when we re- 
 flect that whoever hopes more from his own 
 industry and merit than from fortune and favor 
 is a natural republican. On the other hand, 
 there seems to be no doubt that the government 
 of the best men is really the best government; 
 
42 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 and, since this is so, that a democratic govern- 
 ment, where the people are corrupt, is neces- 
 sarily a bad government, because the vicious 
 will not only not elect the best, who will not 
 stoop to their level, but, by virtue of the law of 
 affinity, will choose the baser sort of men. It 
 was this kind of democracy that repelled Landor, 
 " Because," said he, " I have always found 
 it more jealous of merit, more suspicious of 
 wisdom, more proud of riding on great minds, 
 more pleased at raising up little ones above 
 them, more fond of loud talking, more impa- 
 tient of calm reasoning, more unsteady, more 
 ungrateful, and more ferocious; above all, be- 
 cause it leads to despotism through f raudulence, 
 intemperance, and corruption/' 
 
 As the liberty of criminals means license, so 
 the freedom of the immoral means corruption. 
 Declaimers are fond of affirming that man nat- 
 urally loves liberty, when the truth is, he only 
 naturally hates restraint. Liberty is obedience 
 to law; and is it not absurd to assert that men 
 are naturally obedient to law, when religion, 
 education, civil authority, criminal codes, and 
 other means have to be continually employed 
 to enforce respect for authority? Do savages, 
 barbarians, and children love the moral re- 
 straint without which it is not possible even to 
 think of liberty? Have not men in all ages 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 43 
 
 called liberty the opportunity to seek their own 
 interests and gratify their passions by inflicting 
 wrongs upon their fellow-beings? All virtue is 
 rare, but love of liberty is a virtue, the flower 
 and fruit of a life-long devotion to rectitude, to 
 unselfish purposes and aims as large as the love 
 of Christ. Let us not imagine, then, that a free 
 government such as ours rests upon the natural 
 instincts of the human heart. We love the 
 highest when we see it, but the low cannot see 
 the highest, and only the best know the best. 
 Our great good fortune lies in our infinite 
 wealth of opportunity. Whoever feels within 
 himself force of mind or heart or body, finds 
 work to do that brings reward; and as he 
 moves forward, avenues open out at every step 
 that lead or promise to lead to much that men 
 most eagerly desire. Through these thousand 
 channels the flood of energy finds outlets, and 
 catastrophes are avoided. But opportunities 
 diminish with the growth of population and 
 the development of the country; and with the 
 whole world rushing in upon us, we shall soon 
 have to find a way to control destructive agen- 
 cies which our physical resources and sparse 
 population now render comparatively harmless. 
 We must prepare to meet this emergency. We 
 have seventy-five million people; our wealth is 
 greater than that of any other nation; our 
 
44 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 machines are the most perfect; and the com- 
 forts of life are here within the reach of larger 
 multitudes of men than have ever enjoyed 
 them. All this has come like the leaves in 
 spring-time, and like the fruit in summer; but 
 numbers do not constitute excellence, and ma- 
 chinery does not fashion souls, and comforts 
 do not nourish heroes. If the outcome of our 
 civilization is simply to be the greatest possible 
 number of well-clad and well-fed human beings, 
 there is little need of giving serious thought to 
 such a lubberland of mediocrities; and we may 
 as well agree with Renan, who thinks us far- 
 ther removed from true social ideals than any 
 other people, or with Carlyle, who maintains 
 that the stupendous feat we have hitherto ac- 
 complished is to bring into existence in an in- 
 credibly short time more millions of bores than 
 have ever before made earth dismal. 
 
 To develop the highest man, and, if it may 
 be, multitudes of the highest men, is in every 
 way more desirable than to dig gold or build 
 railways; and if we are to stand in the van of 
 all the world, we must have other proofs to 
 show than our money, our corn, our numbers, 
 and our machines. " The end of all political 
 struggle/' says Emerson, " is to establish mo- 
 rality as the basis of all legislation." It is mani- 
 fest that our politics have become essentially 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 45 
 
 immoral. Neither party dares to touch any 
 question that is higher or holier than that of 
 tariff or no tariff, looking upon a wretched 
 financial problem as the only vital interest for 
 a people who lack not money, but virtue. The 
 eternal principles of justice and morality are 
 ignored, and our electoral contests have degen- 
 erated into mere struggles for office; and to 
 suggest that conscience ought again to assert 
 itself in American politics is to make one's self 
 ridiculous. And all the while the evidences of 
 moral decadence stare us in the face. There 
 is the general decay of faith in God and in 
 the worth of life that is the unfailing mark 
 of weakening character and sinking morality. 
 Nothing is longer certain for us but what we 
 see or touch, so that the whole ideal world, 
 which is our only true world, is become a 
 dream ; and the young start out in life with no 
 higher aims than to get money or office. Noth- 
 ing is left among us that is venerable, or great, 
 or divine. We look upon God's universe with 
 the spirit of irreverence in which the author of 
 " Innocents Abroad " beheld the shrines of re- 
 ligion and art in Europe and Asia. Our smart- 
 ness renders us incapable of admiration, of 
 awe, of reverence. We know what the stars 
 are made of, and think them not more wonder- 
 ful than an electric light. 
 
46 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 The press of our great cities is the 
 chronicle of our life. What does it record? 
 Murders, suicides, robberies, thefts, adulteries, 
 fornications, divorces, drunkenness, gambling, 
 incendiarism, fraudulent bankruptcies, official 
 peculations, with now and then a collision of 
 trains and destruction of life and property by 
 mobs. This fills the news columns. In the 
 editorials we meet with reckless assertion, crude 
 generalization, special pleading, ignorant or dis- 
 honest statement of half-truths, insincere praise 
 and lying abuse of public men, frivolous treat- 
 ment of the highest and holiest subjects all 
 thrown into that form of false reasoning and 
 loose style which is natural to minds that have 
 not time to learn anything thoroughly. And 
 this half -mental and half -bestial brothel-and- 
 grog mixture, brought from the great cities by 
 special trains to every household, falls like a 
 mildew upon the mind and conscience of the 
 people, taking from them all relish for litera- 
 ture,' all belief in virtue, all reverence for God 
 and nature, until one may doubt whether we 
 have not lost the power of intellectual and 
 moral growth. 
 
 We have no one institution great enough to 
 inspire the love and enthusiasm that are the 
 soul of national unity. Our public life regards 
 material interests alone; our theory of educa- 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 47 
 
 tion is narrow and superficial, aiming chiefly to 
 develop smartness, the least desirable quality 
 of mind, and more sure than any other to foster 
 vulgarity ; and thus we have no ideal to elevate 
 and guide us or fill us with faith in our des- 
 tiny. In the meantime, the manners of Europe 
 threaten us, and we are permitting the rapid 
 growth of social customs that are helpful 
 enough to tyrants, but pernicious in a demo- 
 cratic republic. Austere manners lead to polit- 
 ical liberty and uphold free governments; but 
 a people given over to sensual delights, to fool- 
 ish frolicking and dissipation, love license more 
 than freedom, and, if you but give them wine 
 and a show, care not what master rules over 
 them. The Puritans of New England had the 
 truest instinct of political liberty, and that 
 instinct made them serious, earnest, austere, 
 averse alike to childish gayety and to loose con- 
 duct. It were better for us, if our liberty is 
 dear to us, to have the Puritan Sabbath than 
 the Pagan Sunday of parts of Europe. There 
 must be brought into our public life something 
 to appeal to minds and consciences as well as 
 to interests; for it is the disgrace of a nation 
 that its chief concern should be a question of 
 money, and that the significance of political 
 contests should lie in the emoluments of office; 
 and while this state of things continues, the 
 
48 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 best men will remain aloof from the struggle, 
 and leave the direction of public affairs in the 
 hands of the baser sort. We need an ideal to 
 which all noble minds and generous hearts may 
 rally, and this ideal here in America at the pres- 
 ent day can neither be intellectual nor religious ; 
 it must be moral. We are too essentially prac- 
 tical to be deeply interested in intellectual truth, 
 and our religious divisions are so various and 
 so far-reaching that a great national regenera- 
 tion springing from a common faith is not now 
 possible; but there is still left in the mass of 
 the people a deep moral earnestness, which, if 
 it can be called into action, may yet lift the 
 whole nation to higher and purer life. Our 
 two great parties are the principal obstacle in 
 the way of such a movement. It is not possible 
 to arouse the American people thoroughly, ex- 
 cept through political agitation, and both these 
 parties which have become simply mills to 
 grind the people's corn to make bread for office- 
 holders oppose the whole weight of their or- 
 ganized power to every honest effort to bring 
 about a moral reformation. So long as the 
 multitude is led by them, our worship of ma- 
 jorities will throw an air of quixotism over 
 every attempt to stem the torrent of corruption. 
 The welfare of the nation demands that the one 
 or the other cease to exist; that a new party, 
 
THE BASIS OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT. 49 
 
 springing from the deep yearning of multitudes 
 for purer and nobler national life, and upheld 
 by the enthusiasm inspired by high moral aims 
 and purposes, may take its place. 
 
 We will not here discuss the problems that 
 the new party will have to solve. They will 
 relate to moral rather than to material inter- 
 ests. There is, first of all, the question of edu- 
 cation. The avoidance of religious teaching in 
 the common schools has deprived them of moral 
 influence, and they cultivate a faculty instead of 
 forming men. Then there is the question of the 
 liquor traffic. The most hideous phase of our 
 political life is that which comes of its associa- 
 tion with bar-rooms, and the remedy for Ameri- 
 can pauperism is not a wage or rent theory, but 
 economy and sobriety. There is, also, the ques- 
 tion of woman-suffrage. The experiment will 
 be made, whatever our theories and prejudices 
 may be. Women are the most religious, the 
 most moral, and the most sober portion of the 
 American people, and it is not easy to under- 
 stand why their influence in public life is 
 dreaded. They are the natural educators of 
 the race, and they and their children are the 
 chief victims of drunken men; and since men 
 have been unable or unwilling to form a right 
 system of education or to find a preventive of 
 intemperance, there can be no great harm in 
 
 4 
 
5O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 giving, in these matters at least, an experi- 
 mental vote to women. Then there is the ques- 
 tion of the licentious and obscene press, as 
 unlike a free press as a sot is unlike a true man, 
 which is a more deadly and insidious poison 
 than the adulterated liquor that a deluded people 
 pay for the privilege of drinking. 
 
 With us, material interests take care of them- 
 selves, since the whole energy of the people turns 
 upon the development of our physical resources ; 
 and hence the duty of those who have faith and 
 hope in the destiny of America lies elsewhere. 
 In the presence of a whole people thinking 
 chiefly of money ; talking of it, yearning for it, 
 toiling, lying, cheating, to get hold of it ; adul- 
 terating food and drink to make it; displaying 
 it in all its vulgar glitter in their homes and 
 equipages and on their bodies; discussing and 
 solving all problems, even questions of the soul, 
 from a financial point of view; making money 
 the measure of the value of time; determining 
 the worth of education by the power it develops 
 to amass wealth, and even going so far as to 
 hold a man's money the nearest equivalent of 
 himself, in the presence of such a people 
 there is need of power to proclaim, as with the 
 voice of God, that the goodness of life lies in 
 right-doing, and not in lucre. 
 
III. 
 
 ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 
 
 TJATTLES, conflicts, and dangers of all 
 -"*-* kinds have a mysterious charm for the 
 mind, because life, whether animal, intellectual, 
 or moral, whether individual or social, is devel- 
 oped and attains strength and excellence only 
 through struggle; and it would lose half its 
 charm could we strip it of the element of danger, 
 the risk of loss, the hope of gain, which are 
 never absent where men contend for the mas- 
 tery. Though victory is the end of fighting, we 
 love the combat more than the victory, and when 
 the battle is won or the game is lost our interest 
 dies ; just as the story comes to an end when the 
 fretful stream of love merges into the tame 
 sea of marriage. The objects for which we con- 
 tend change, but our love of contention never 
 ceases to exist, in spite of the poet's saying that 
 repose is the central feeling of all happiness. 
 Effort, which is born of struggle and conflict, 
 is to life what motion is to water it keeps it 
 pure and fresh; and an individual or a society 
 
52 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 which gives over the battle for higher things, 
 fatally sinks to lower plains. 
 
 The bloody warfare, which is the delight of 
 savages and barbarians, has ceased to have any 
 charm for the civilized man of the nineteenth 
 century; but he finds himself in the midst of 
 keener and intenser conflicts, from which, if he 
 would live, he cannot escape. Among savages 
 and barbarians the life of the individual is 
 merged and lost in that of the tribe or horde, 
 but, as civilization advances, the individual does 
 not dwindle but grows. The tendency is to 
 enable him to choose his own mode of life and 
 to maintain himself in his position, to break the 
 bonds which hinder the use of his faculties and 
 to send him forth into the arena where the mil- 
 lions contend for wealth or place, and where 
 the better few strive for intellectual and moral 
 superiority. He becomes a reader, a thinker, 
 an independent agent; he helps to mold public 
 opinion and shape the destinies of his fellow- 
 men. In this way civilization brings on the 
 reign of the people, and makes it impossible 
 that any strongest man should control a nation. 
 But the reign of the people in setting mightier 
 forces at work renders more gigantic struggles 
 inevitable. Here in America, freedom of 
 opinion and of conscience has been won ; the 
 battle for political and civil liberty has been 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 53 
 
 fought and gained ; and other problems present 
 themselves to the human mind which never truly 
 appreciates what it possesses, but by the law of 
 development, as by the hand of God, is led on 
 to new victories. Social questions are now 
 uppermost in men's minds, as political questions 
 absorbed the thought of the eighteenth century. 
 Hereditary privilege has vanished; there is 
 liberty of thought and expression; every man 
 has a right to vote ; and still the golden age has 
 not come. Man holds the forces of nature in 
 his hands; by their aid he has increased his 
 wealth to an incredible degree; he has brought 
 the ends of the earth together; and still there 
 are millions who are poor and wretched. What- 
 ever our condition may be as contrasted with 
 that of past ages, the world is still full of evil 
 and discontent. For the first time in their his- 
 tory the Christian nations have created a phil- 
 osophy of despair, so that it has become possible 
 to doubt whether life itself is not a curse. What 
 numberless patent remedies and panaceas for 
 our troubles have been blazoned forth! The 
 alphabet was to be the key to the garden of Par- 
 adise; but the multitude have been taught to 
 read and write, and only clamor the more vocif- 
 erously that they perish in desert places and 
 quagmires. 
 
 Alcohol, it has been asserted, is the supreme 
 
54 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 evil ; and yet the countless millions of Moham- 
 medans and Buddhists are sober, but unspeak- 
 ably wretched. And so each sect raises its cry 
 affirming or denying, and in the confusion of 
 tongues reason grows bewildered. God is 
 solemnly called the Supreme Tyrant, society a 
 universal crime, property a boundless theft, and 
 marriage the worst foe of love. All faiths seem 
 tottering to the verge of shifting opinion, and 
 in their frenzy many would hardly think it a 
 loss if the earth itself were shattered. What is 
 it, anyhow, but an ant-hill lost in space? 
 
 Such notions as these find sporadic utterance 
 here, but they do not represent the thought or 
 sentiment of any considerable body of Ameri- 
 cans. We are not theorists and dreamers, but 
 workers, who are reasonably satisfied with our 
 work. This country, it may be said without 
 incurring the reproach of philistinism, is a 
 blessed land : nowhere else are such opportu- 
 nities offered to all men ; nowhere else do such 
 multitudes find it possible to escape from igno- 
 rance, poverty, and the impotence of blind 
 endeavor, into the pure light of free, orderly, 
 and growing life; nowhere else is there more 
 general good-will and sympathy in spite of the 
 mingling of heterogeneous nationalities and 
 conflicting creeds. 
 
 How quickly the angry passions of our Civil 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 55 
 
 War have sunk to rest, however much dema- 
 gogues have sought to keep them alive! No 
 hatred can long flourish here. The poor do not 
 hate the rich, and the rich as a body are not 
 indifferent to the wants of the poor. Our 
 wealthy men are the children of the poor, and 
 their children or grandchildren will either perish 
 utterly or go to work again with the laboring 
 masses. Thus the money line, which is really 
 the only line with us that separates class from 
 class, is not a fixed boundary dividing hostile 
 armies. We have, after all, but a sprinkling 
 of very rich men, who have their uses, even 
 when they are unintelligent and narrow-minded, 
 or personally worthless. Capital is the army 
 of a commercial age, and capitalists are necessary 
 to undertake and carry on great enterprises; 
 they fill the places of the captains of warlike 
 ages. A railroad king may inflict financial ruin 
 upon individuals and be unjust to his employees, 
 but he will develop the country and bring ma- 
 terial blessings to thousands. Even stock- 
 waterers and railway-wreckers probably do 
 more good than harm to the general public. 
 But the great capitalists, as I have said, are 
 few, and in America pauperism is accidental. 
 The people are neither paupers nor millionaires, 
 but workers, whose energy and thrift secure 
 them a competence. Seven million seven hun- 
 
56 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 dred and fifty thousand of these are farmers, 
 while only about half that number are engaged 
 in manufacturing. Three-fourths of these 
 farmers own the land they cultivate, and the 
 general tendency is to diminish rather than to 
 increase the size of farms. Our laborers, too, 
 receive higher wages and live in greater plenty 
 than those of any other country. The story of 
 our material progress reads like a dream, and 
 we who are now living see but the beginnings 
 of this incomprehensible work; and in many 
 other respects our course is forward. Each gen- 
 eration begins the life-struggle from a higher 
 plain. The multitudes who arrive here from 
 Europe feel the quickening influence of our life, 
 and their nobler faculties awaken. Thousands 
 each year revisit their native lands and feel like 
 strangers there, so thoroughly have they become 
 imbued with the American spirit. They are not 
 only satisfied with our political institutions, but 
 find it difficult to imagine that they were ever 
 able to bear the shackles and restraints of less 
 liberal governments. If ours is the country of 
 rich men, why do the poor, from the ends of the 
 earth, flock to our shores? If capitalists exer- 
 cise here a tyrannic power, why do the oppressed 
 of every land seek refuge with us? In truth, 
 we occupy the foremost position among the free 
 nations of the world, and wherever political 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 57 
 
 development is taking place it is in the direction 
 in which we are leading. Our people either 
 know this or feel it instinctively, and they really 
 have no fears at all as to the fortune of the 
 Republic. 
 
 There is no other government which rests so 
 completely upon the assent and approval of the 
 governed, and that is the strongest foundation. 
 Shall they who know and feel this grow alarmed 
 because a fanatic has thrown a bomb into a 
 squad of policemen? Or shall they have mis- 
 givings as to the future of democratic govern- 
 ment because, now and then, here and there, in 
 times of excitement mobs gather and deeds of 
 violence are done? If such things can be a 
 serious danger to the Republic, our condition is 
 indeed pitiable. What peculiar forms of fanat- 
 icism may develop in individual cases no one can 
 foresee, but anarchical doctrines must die out 
 here from lack of a suitable environment. They 
 have not sprung from our soil, but have been 
 imported from social conditions wholly dissim- 
 ilar to ours, and the masses of our laborers have 
 as little sympathy with them as the wealthy 
 classes have. The preaching of such doctrines 
 is undoubtedly criminal, and ought to be pun- 
 ished by law; but our society must undergo 
 radical changes before this fanaticism can be- 
 come a menace to our institutions. Our politi- 
 
58 SOCIALISM AND LABOR-. 
 
 cal life lies in the supremacy of the law, and 
 any party which attempts to defy its sovereign 
 majesty will be mercilessly crushed; for the 
 supremacy of the law means internal peace, the 
 protection of life and property, and the freedom 
 of the individual, and it is precisely to secure 
 these objects that our government exists. *A 
 fanaticism such as that of the anarchists can 
 grow and extend itself only under an arbitrary 
 and tyrannical power. Only the sense of the 
 most terrible wrongs can create so unnatural 
 and extreme a temper. The destructive tenets 
 of the Nihilists and German Socialists are the 
 correlatives of Siberian dungeons and military 
 despotism; but they cannot become contagious 
 here, because the food needed for the propaga- 
 tion of the germ is not supplied. 
 
 Our labor troubles are of an altogether dif- 
 ferent nature from this scarecrow of anarchy 
 and socialism, and they are more serious. It 
 is our mission to give larger liberty and fuller 
 life, not to a privileged class but to the whole 
 people. That the race should live for a few men 
 is not tolerable from our point of view, and our 
 destiny compels us to strive to bring about a 
 social condition in which all men shall live for 
 every man. Now the lot of the laborer is not 
 here or anywhere what we know and feel it 
 might be and ought to be. The laborers, who 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 59 
 
 in proportion as their minds have been awak- 
 ened, have become conscious of the hardships 
 and limitations to which they are subject, feel 
 this more keenly than any other class, and hence 
 they have formed innumerable organizations to 
 protect their rights and promote their interests. 
 It is utterly futile to make an outcry against 
 these trades-unions and combinations of unions. 
 They exist, and the ends for which they exist, 
 in spite of incidental abuses connected with their 
 working, are praiseworthy, and there is no 
 power which can put them down. 
 
 To attempt to resist or thwart the legitimate 
 claims of working men, is to provoke a state 
 of things which might become a serious menace 
 to the prosperity of the country. The problem 
 is complex, and to look for some easy, ready- 
 made solution is idle. In virtue of a law which is 
 inherent in human nature, the poor are bent upon 
 getting rich, and the rich on growing richer. 
 To get money, and as much money as possible, 
 is the aim and end both of the employer and the 
 employed, and hence there arises between them 
 an inevitable conflict. The capitalist is ready 
 to take advantage of every opportunity to lower 
 wages, the workman of every opportunity to 
 demand higher pay; and thus the almost irre- 
 sistible tendency is to form themselves into op- 
 posing armies, whereas the only hope of a better 
 
60 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 state of tilings lies in their being friends. Labor 
 creates capital, and capital gives labor a field 
 to work in. 
 
 But of what avail is a truth like this when 
 there is question of controlling passions which 
 are stronger than reason ? High and vital prin- 
 ciples must be kept in view, and above all, the 
 question must be examined without anger or 
 partisan bias. We should not grow weary of 
 telling rich and poor that there are better things 
 than money ; that the best things, as love, virtue, 
 intelligence, cannot be bought; that he whose 
 chief aim in life is to get money and its equiva- 
 lents is an inferior sort of man ; that the truest 
 and the deepest contentment comes of the con- 
 sciousness of right-doing, and not of the knowl- 
 edge that we have so many dollars; and that 
 with but little a true man may lead a not un- 
 worthy life, and escape the weariness and fears 
 inherent in the possession of riches, which wean 
 the heart from the heavenly fountains of admi- 
 ration, hope, and love. Truths like these to be 
 effective must be taught by religion and litera- 
 ture, and we who find it impossible to escape 
 the commercial spirit, with its single standard 
 of value, must look to these spiritual powers to 
 give us ideals which may lift us above the flat 
 wastes of materialism. They also alone can 
 properly teach that beauty is useful, that admi- 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 6 1 
 
 ration and reverence are essential to noble life, 
 and that to rest in sin or ignorance is the sign 
 of death. Let us also not cease to proclaim that 
 neither God nor churches nor states will save 
 the vicious and the idle from the consequences 
 of their crime and folly ; that it is of the nature 
 of right conduct and true work not only to 
 bring success and sufficiency, but to give health, 
 contentment, and strength as well. If the one 
 good is money with what it will buy, then feuds 
 and hatreds must be perpetual. Our wants are 
 infinite, and if you take from man the ideals 
 given by religion and literature, a hundred mil- 
 lions will leave him still a beggar. A false view 
 of life is our radical defect. Our political prob- 
 lems always hinge on some money problem, our 
 educational system looks primarily to the fitting 
 men for money-getting, for our young men 
 success means riches, and our very worship im- 
 plies that the poor are unfit for the kingdom 
 of heaven. Thus we lose sight of man and 
 think only of money; we increase our wealth, 
 while faith and hope and love and intelligence 
 diminish; we build great cities to be inhabited 
 by little men; we are keen to drive a bargain 
 and slow to recognize a noble soul; we have 
 eyes for bank-notes, and we move dumb and 
 unraised beneath the starlit heavens. If it were 
 possible that a great philosopher or poet should 
 
62 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 arise among us, some foreigner would have to 
 point him out to us ; but we know our own, our 
 men of boundless wealth, whom we envy and 
 despise. So long as our whole national life- 
 struggle continues to be carried on around this 
 single point of finance, what hope is there of 
 avoiding fatal conflicts? The rich will worship 
 their god Mammon alone, and the poor will plot 
 and scheme to shatter the idol ; and mechanical 
 contrivances, such as arbitration boards and 
 legislative enactments, will leave the root of the 
 evil untouched. 
 
 It is essential that we should know that the 
 real and final test of a government, as of a re- 
 ligion, is the kind of man it produces, and not 
 the amount of money. We must return to the 
 ideals of our forefathers, who preferred free- 
 dom, intelligence, and strength to wealth, and 
 who dedicated this land to higher manhood, and 
 not to fatter mammonhood. Our politics, our 
 literature, our whole national life, must be more 
 concerned for man than for his money. No one 
 doubts the importance of the interests of trade : 
 we all desire that our manufacturers should be 
 able to compete with other nations in the markets 
 of the world; but if the interests of trade and 
 competition involve the degradation of millions 
 of our fellow-citizens, we shall cry out that the 
 Sabbath was made for man and not man for the 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 63 
 
 Sabbath. The interests of the working man are 
 primary; the interests of capital are secondary. 
 If the trades-unions shall succeed in forcing 
 politicians to recognize that financial interests 
 are not the only or principal human interests, 
 they will have conferred a benefit upon the 
 nation. Men, and not measures, are the first 
 need of every society, and therefore all social 
 schemes should look first to the forming of true 
 men. But, in truth, only men create and educate 
 men, and one of the delusions of the age is that 
 this can be done by some sort of mechanical 
 contrivance. Hence we look to legislation and 
 government control to do what only vital forces 
 can effect, and after the failure of each enact- 
 ment some new scheme is tried, until law itself 
 is in danger of falling into discredit. Better 
 laws are desirable, but a true view of life is 
 indispensable, and no state mechanism can prop- 
 erly take care of full-grown men and women 
 who have not learned how to take care of them- 
 selves. The growing disposition to look to the 
 general government for aid in every emergency 
 is a symptom of disease; it is an outgrowth of 
 habits and principles, contrary to the spirit of our 
 institutions. 
 
 The tendency of good government is to make 
 government unnecessary, since it trains people 
 to habits of industry, self-reliance, and order. 
 
64 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 The strong and energetic love freedom. A 
 social state in which the whole life of the indi- 
 vidual is absorbed and controlled by some ex- 
 ternal ruling power, can seem good only to the 
 feeble and inactive; and this is the aim of the 
 modern Socialists, and their theories. These 
 have sprung from false and exaggerated senti- 
 ment, or from lack of mental soundness and 
 breadth of view, and are a menace to all that is 
 most healthful and manly in human nature and 
 Christian civilization. The end of society is not 
 to secure to all men the highest possible amount 
 of physical comfort and sensual enjoyment, but 
 to give to all men the best possible opportunities 
 of developing their physical, intellectual, moral, 
 and aesthetic endowments; and this is done by 
 stimulating individual energy, and by leaving 
 the highest prizes to be won by effort and 
 struggle. Paternal government is, no doubt, 
 best for children and slaves, but the nobler races 
 have preferred freedom even to the tenderest 
 care. 
 
 There is in innumerable minds, who have a 
 horror of the current socialistic doctrines, an un- 
 conscious leaning toward socialism, which is 
 seen in the tendency to enlarge the powers of 
 the State. The founders of the Republic held 
 that the State should assume no authority over 
 the individual, save such as is indispensable to 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 65 
 
 the general welfare; and how far we have de- 
 parted from this wise and generous view! 
 
 The State has taken control of education, and 
 is thereby weakening one of the most essential 
 and vital social forces the sense of responsi- 
 bility in parents. It has, in consequence, been 
 led to exclude religious instruction from the 
 process of education; has, indeed, abandoned 
 the work of education, and contented itself with 
 some sort of mental training which sharpens the 
 intellect but leaves the moral nature untouched 
 and unraised. As a result, the young lose rever- 
 ence, lose the power of discerning what is high 
 and noble, and are only a more enlightened sort 
 of barbarians. Had the State confined itself to 
 encouraging and assisting the religious denomi- 
 nations to found and maintain schools, and to 
 giving aid to private educational enterprises, it 
 would have acted in harmony with our theory 
 of government, and we should be to-day a 
 worthier, more religious and not less enlight- 
 ened people; while, from an economic point of 
 view, education would have been made vastly 
 cheaper. In the same way the tendency is now 
 to give the State control of public charities and 
 works of reform, whereas the proper method to 
 pursue is to have the State encourage and assist 
 denominational and private beneficence. 
 
 The recent labor agitations serve to show how 
 5 
 
66 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 naturally our thoughts turn to State socialism 
 whenever danger seems to threaten. If the 
 State owned all railroads, it is asserted, troubles 
 such as have disturbed the peace and prosperity 
 of the country during the last few months would 
 not occur. But in thus enlarging the functions of 
 the government, we would double the number 
 of its officials, and greatly increase the influence 
 of professional politicians, who in various ways 
 are doing more than all other classes combined 
 to bring discredit upon democratic institutions. 
 They are the men who praise the people and 
 betray their interests, who flatter the working 
 men and take the bribes of capitalists and 
 wealthy corporations. They make possible the 
 wholesale gambling, the stock-watering, the 
 railway wrecking, the corruption of the judi- 
 ciary and the legislature, which are in so many 
 instances the agencies used in accumulating 
 colossal fortunes. And the knowledge of this 
 scandalous state of things, more than any other 
 cause, favors the propagation of socialistic doc- 
 trines, and leads the people to hold the govern- 
 ment in slight esteem, and to think there would 
 be no great harm in taking from the money 
 barons their ill-gotten goods. Thus the politi- 
 cians are helping to undermine respect for law 
 and belief in the sacredness of property. If 
 there is no hope except in them, then there is no 
 
ARE WE IN DANGER OF REVOLUTION? 6? 
 
 hope at all. Politicians work through major- 
 ities, whereas minorities shape the higher des- 
 tinies of nations; and it is all important that 
 we should learn that a man is not necessarily 
 visionary, or weak in mind, because he does not 
 run with the crowd. Gordon writes, in his 
 " Memoirs," that the British Empire has been 
 built up by adventurers, and not by the gov- 
 ernment. The principle involved in this fact 
 lies at the root of our social faith. The blood 
 which courses in our veins impels us to put our 
 trust in God and in our single might ; and hence 
 the normal tendency of our institutions is to 
 increase the worth and influence of the indi- 
 vidual, and to narrow the sphere and action of 
 government. If we lose confidence in ourselves, 
 and in every emergency look to the government 
 for help, how shall we escape the slavish mind 
 and coward heart? 
 
 The greatest peril to be feared from labor 
 organization is that the working men will be 
 led to put overmuch trust in these mechanical 
 contrivances, and will cease to look to the vital 
 sources of strength. When they have learned 
 to confide their dearest interests to a trades- 
 union, it will not be difficult to persuade them 
 to surrender themselves, body and soul, to a 
 socialistic State. Good government may secure 
 freedom and opportunity, but the effort, sobri- 
 
68 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 ety, and intelligence of the individual can alone 
 give worth and dignity to human life. Let 
 political economists still insist upon their iron 
 laws of wages, of supply and demand, but let 
 us not lose our faith in free-will; for so long 
 as we believe that there is an element of freedom 
 in the individual, we shall feel that social evolu- 
 tion is not wholly fatal; and if much depends 
 upon inexorable laws, much also depends upon 
 the faith, hope, love, knowledge, pity, and 
 courage of man. Sympathy, the spirit of hu- 
 manity, the Godward mind, have wrought the 
 miracles which political economy cannot even 
 explain. Having done much, not for ourselves 
 alone but for all nations, let us keep a brave 
 heart, and believe that where all men think and 
 act, the common sense of most will prevail, and 
 wisdom, virtue, and nobler manhood be the 
 result. It is a religious duty to work for the 
 good of this country, and it is not easy to 
 imagine that any one can love God or man and 
 hate America. 
 
IV. 
 
 CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 
 
 r^HE love of self is the radical passion of 
 A human nature. It is the love of life and 
 of that which constitutes the good of life, and 
 it is strongest in those who are most alive, in 
 whom the vital current is deepest and might- 
 iest. It is the inner source of strength in high 
 and heroic souls, whether they seek to utter 
 themselves in word or in deed, whether they 
 strive for fame or for power or for union with 
 God, through faith and devotion to truth and 
 righteousness. Whatever the aim and the 
 means, the end all men propose and follow is 
 their own happiness, a more intense and enduring 
 sense of their own life. Personality is enrooted 
 in the love of self, and the higher the person the 
 more completely does he identify himself with 
 all that is other than himself. Savages, in their 
 feeble attempts to think, consider things to be 
 self-existent, each standing apart and indepen- 
 dent, and hence the love of self is in them a 
 selfish love. As they are incapable of perceiving 
 
7O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 that their relations to nature and to society are 
 essential elements of their being, they imagine 
 that the good of life for each one is separable 
 from the general welfare. Hence they easily 
 become false, cruel, treacherous, and revengeful. 
 They lack humanity; they are the victims of 
 instinct and impulse. They have the kind of 
 social sense which is found in gregarious ani- 
 mals, but they are unable to ascend to the con- 
 ception of the universal law which binds the 
 whole race into a brotherhood. The degree in 
 which individuals and societies rise above this 
 separateness of childish and savage thought is 
 a measure of the degree of their progress in 
 religion and civilization. All advance is an 
 ascent from the primitive and superficial self 
 toward the true self, which is born of the union 
 of the soul with truth, justice, and love. It is 
 a process of self-estrangement, of self-denial, of 
 self-abandonment. They alone enter the land 
 of promise who quit the low and narrow house 
 of their early thoughts and desires, and struggle 
 with ceaseless effort and patience to reach the 
 kingdom that is founded on the eternal principles 
 of righteousness. They believe and know that 
 peace, joy, and blessedness, which are the end 
 to which the love of self points, can be attained 
 only by those who seek and find the good of 
 life in the service of the Father who is in heaven, 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 71 
 
 and of His children who are on earth. Self- 
 seeking is transformed into self-devotion; a 
 little world of petty cares and sordid interests is 
 abandoned, and the enduring world wherein 
 alone souls are at home opens wide its portals 
 to receive us. In isolation, the individual is 
 never great or impressive. To be so he must 
 identify himself with truth and justice, with 
 beauty and love. He must feel that he lives and 
 battles in the company of God and in that of the 
 noble and good, in some cause which is not 
 merely his own, but that of mankind. 
 
 He could never become man at all were it 
 not for the society and help of his fellows. The 
 human child would perish at once were it not 
 received, at birth, into the arms of intelligence 
 and love ; and its prolonged infancy would issue 
 in nothing higher than savagery, were it not 
 fostered by beings in whom instinct has been 
 superseded by reflection and the sense of respon- 
 sibility. In Christendom the individual enters 
 the world as the heir of all time. For him the 
 race has suffered and groped and toiled through 
 ages that have sunk into oblivion. For him 
 countless generations have fashioned language 
 the social organ into an instrument fitted 
 to express all that he can feel or know. The 
 clothes he wears, the home that shelters him 
 and makes him self-respecting, every implement 
 
72 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 he uses, every contrivance that ministers to his 
 comfort and security have been fashioned in the 
 process of unnumbered centuries, by the pains 
 and privations, by the sufferings and deaths, of 
 tribes and peoples to whose labors he gives no 
 heed. 
 
 If he is born into a world where religion, 
 science and morality, law, order and liberty, 
 make it possible that he should lead a life of 
 reverence, wisdom, and purity, and have rights 
 and possessions which are defended by pub- 
 lic opinion and the power of the combined 
 strength of all ; where his home is sacred, where 
 his conscience is respected, where opportunity 
 for the exercise of every talent is given, he owes 
 all this not in any way at all to himself, but to 
 others. And if in the midst of this world he 
 himself is to have worth and significance, joy 
 and peace, he must turn from himself and seek 
 a better self through devotion to his fellow-men, 
 whether they be in his home or in his church 
 or in his nation or anywhere on God's round 
 earth. He can have no real importance unless 
 he ally himself with truth and justice and love, 
 the knowledge and practice of which are within 
 his reach because he is a member of a social 
 organism. He is not self-made, he is a product 
 of all the forces which have been at work in the 
 universe from the beginning. He partakes of 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 73 
 
 what nature provides, and he gathers the fruits 
 of the seeds that saints and sages and heroes 
 have sown up and down the world from imme- 
 morial ages. He is made strong and enduring 
 by the struggles and labors of the race to which 
 he belongs. 
 
 For him the martyrs have died, for him the 
 poets have sung, for him the patient, tireless 
 investigators have revealed the secrets which 
 have given to the mind control of the forces that 
 lie in the heavens, and in the earth. Mankind 
 has lived for him; it is his duty to live for 
 whomsoever he can help. His proper home is 
 above nature: in the domain of reason, in the 
 realm of freedom, in the kingdom of righteous- 
 ness, in the spiritual world; where that which 
 we communicate becomes doubly our own, 
 where knowledge begets knowledge, where love 
 kindles love, where charity burns the more, the 
 more it becomes self-diffusive. A man cannot 
 be wise or good or strong for himself alone. 
 He is formed and confirmed by the virtues he 
 imparts even more than by those he receives. If 
 his heart be set on material things, he may 
 gather them for himself, may grow hard and 
 exclusive, ignoble and base ; but if his supreme 
 desire be for the things of the soul, he must 
 communicate the blessings he gains, or they will 
 vanish. In the home, in the church, in the 
 
74 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 nation, the important thing for each one is 
 the help he gives, the benefits he bestows. He 
 who is not a source of faith, of courage, of 
 joy for those about him, has no well-spring 
 of divine life within himself. He must educate 
 if he would be educated; he must ennoble if 
 he would be made noble; he must diffuse reli- 
 gious thought and love if he would become 
 religious. 
 
 Every worthy form of individual activity is 
 altruistic. The money paid is never the equiva- 
 lent of the work done ; and whether the laborer 
 be farmer or builder, physician or teacher, he 
 must look beyond the price he gets to the good 
 he does; he must interfuse good-will and the 
 desire to be of help with all he does and with 
 all he receives for what he does, or he will 
 shrivel into something that appears to be alive, 
 but is dead. It must be his object to realize him- 
 self, not chiefly in his primitive physical self 
 with its material needs and sordid interests, but 
 he must bend all his energies to rise from the 
 low bed whereon nature has laid him to the 
 sphere where God manifests himself as Truth 
 and Love, as Beauty and Righteousness, as Life 
 Everlasting. Then he shall find himself in ac- 
 cord with the things that are permanent, with 
 the good that is absolute; then shall he learn 
 sympathy with all who live and are hard pressed 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. f$ 
 
 and beset with doubts and temptations, who are 
 overburdened, whose feet are caught in the 
 meshes of sin, whose hands hang helpless be- 
 cause joy in work is denied them. 
 
 Then shall he forget altruism and awaken to 
 love to the love that poised the heavens and 
 holds the stars in place ; that speaks to us when 
 we look on flowers and ripening harvests and 
 the faces of the fair and innocent; when we 
 think of home and country and the graves of the 
 dear ones who have fallen asleep to the love 
 which drew the Eternal Father from the infinite 
 unseen to clothe himself with flesh, to walk with 
 His children, to die for them, that henceforth 
 every soul might understand that Love is the 
 absolute fact behind, above, and beyond all that 
 appears; that it is the charity of God; yea, 
 God himself. What is a way of believing and 
 thinking may be made also a way of feeling and 
 acting. A passionate devotion to the salvation 
 and welfare of men is aroused in innumerable 
 souls, who, smitten with a sacred enthusiasm, 
 leave father and mother and home and country 
 that they may become the servants of the out- 
 cast, the abandoned, the fallen, of all whom 
 inevitable circumstance and pitiless law over- 
 whelm and crush. 
 
 To this new mood and temper no condition, 
 no state in which a human being may be placed, 
 
76 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 appears to be hopeless. The saving power ot 
 infinite love is infinite. When reason despairs, 
 the heart still believes and hopes; and the best 
 and the noblest are not those who calculate, but 
 those who with divine confidence yield to the 
 impulses which descend from worlds to which 
 the understanding cannot rise. This is the 
 power which moves and consecrates the lives of 
 mothers and of all true lovers, of patriots and 
 saints, of virgins and martyrs. Life is not a 
 balance sheet it is a breathing of God, awak- 
 ening souls to service and to love. When a man 
 is prepared to live and to die for some good 
 cause that is all the world's, and not alone his 
 own, he has become a dweller in realms which 
 lie beyond the reach of the mere intellect. To 
 these heights the life and teaching of Christ 
 have lifted innumerable souls, enabling them to 
 love and serve not merely the beautiful, the 
 brave, and the generous, but to love and serve 
 those who have nothing amiable in themselves, 
 who are stricken with poverty, vice, and disease, 
 who distrust and hate us, who are our enemies 
 and their own. His coming is like the coming of 
 spring. The snows melt, the icy bands break, 
 the waters leap and sing, the earth awakens 
 from its death-like lethargy and clothes itself 
 in many-tinted vesture, the young are joyful, 
 and the old grow young again. So in the hu- 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 77 
 
 man world of faith and hope, of thought and 
 conduct, of love and service, Christ unseals the 
 fountains of sympathy and helpfulness and 
 mercy which lie in the heart of man, but which 
 cruelty and greed and tyranny had congealed. 
 In the ancient world, patriotism, which was its 
 special virtue, consecrated the instinct of hatred 
 for the foreigner. The earth was divided 
 among savages, barbarians, and civilized men 
 whose moral code was founded on a philosophy 
 of selfishness. Man's divine origin and destiny 
 were forgotten, the sacred meaning and worth 
 of life were ignored. The gods were not be- 
 lieved to take interest in human morality or 
 human welfare, and for the best of men there 
 was no refuge from the ruin wrought by greed 
 and lust and tyranny, save in a kind of stoic 
 indifference and despair. The virtues of mild- 
 ness, mercy, serviceableness, chastity, and lowly- 
 mindedriess were considered weaknesses and 
 defects. When Christ embodied in His deeds 
 and words the vital truth that God is a Father 
 who verily loves His children; that He is all- 
 holy; that righteousness is life; that only the 
 pure in heart can know Him; that those who 
 hunger and thirst to do His will enter His 
 kingdom, which is open to the meanest and most 
 abandoned, if they but repent and have faith 
 and charity, there was a revelation from heaven, 
 
78 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 the opening of a fountain of immortal life in 
 time and in eternity. 
 
 Enthusiasm, devotion, and love have no real 
 object, no meaning, no worth, if man's life is 
 but an apparition, an exhalation from a charnel 
 house, a pathological growth, a mere dream of 
 life in a universe essentially and eternally dead. 
 One who believes not in God must cherish a 
 thousand lies to save himself from despair. 
 How can he who beneath the universal appear- 
 ance that lures him sees but the deception, the 
 trickery, the vileness, the vanity, which it veils, 
 have a great mind or a loving heart? But this 
 is what he must see if in all and above all he 
 sees not God. Now, in Christ, the Eternal 
 Father is made visible, and henceforth all may 
 know that He is and that He is Love. The more 
 we love one another the more plainly is this truth 
 revealed to us. Love is the vital element of holi- 
 ness, the spring and secret of righteousness, and 
 there is no blessedness except in living and 
 serving in the spirit of Christ. 
 
 Whatever change time may have wrought in 
 opinions and in social conditions; whatever 
 progress may have been made in scientific 
 knowledge ; whatever new machinery, whatever 
 hitherto unutilized forces may have been placed 
 at the disposition of man, it is still and must 
 forever be true that nothing but the spirit of 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 79 
 
 Christian love can give us the power rightly 
 to cheer, console, strengthen, guide, uplift, il- 
 lumine, and purify one another. The money 
 man spends on his lusts and vices might abolish 
 poverty and fill the world with beauty, but not 
 unless it were administered by hands of intelli- 
 gence and love. None of the many schemes to 
 overcome the misery and degradation which 
 spring from vice, crime, and pauperism can 
 attain the end without the ceaseless aid of right- 
 loving men and women. Love not only bears 
 all things, hopes all things ; but it rejoices with 
 the truth, and is quick to discover how help may 
 be given. 
 
 Let the lovers of God and of man stand forth, 
 and let the first word we speak to them affirm 
 that without knowledge and science and wis- 
 dom and skill they can do little, are more apt, 
 with all their zeal and fervor, to do harm than 
 good. They do not love truly who neglect any 
 means whatever whereby they may make them- 
 selves more able to be of service. It is easy to 
 give money, but love cannot be bought, and the 
 giving of money is not sufficient proof of love. 
 Men spend lavishly to gratify the animal pas- 
 sions, which are the destroyers of love. 
 
 They alone love who take a personal in- 
 terest in those whom they would benefit, who 
 reinforce their failing lives, not with bread 
 
8O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 alone, but with sympathy and affection, with 
 faith and courage, with joy and gladness. We 
 feed domestic animals, but we are useless ser- 
 vants if we do nothing more than feed God's 
 poor who are our brethren. We must put our- 
 selves in their place. Like students, we must 
 acquaint ourselves with their origins and en- 
 vironments; like friends, we must enter into 
 their failures and sorrows; like true men and 
 women, we must consider that whatever afflicts 
 them concerns us also. Love overcomes all, 
 subdues all things to its own divine purposes., 
 It makes use of the sciences and the arts, of in- 
 stitutions and mechanical contrivances, to pre- 
 vent or cure disease, to mitigate suffering, to 
 make the air and the earth wholesome, to con- 
 struct and build, to irrigate and drain, to im- 
 prove in all possible ways the conditions and 
 environments of human life. We may not be 
 able, like the apostles and early disciples, to 
 work miracles, but centuries of Christian 
 thought and endeavor have, as the Saviour 
 foretold, given us the power to perform even 
 greater wonders. Knowledge has increased the 
 efficacy of faith ; science has widened the boun- 
 daries of the empire of love. The change which 
 has taken place in our attitude toward the crimi- 
 nal is but an instance of a general transfor- 
 mation of opinion with regard to all who are 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 8 1 
 
 bound by the chains of ignorance, vice, and 
 poverty. 
 
 We do not, like the savage and the barbarian, 
 deal with the violators of law in the spirit of 
 retaliation and vindictiveness ; nor do we think 
 it enough to immure them and render them 
 harmless, but we hold it to be our duty to re- 
 form them; and above all, so far as this may 
 be possible, we consider it a sacred obligation 
 to do away with the causes which breed crime 
 and misery. To do good to enemies is now 
 recognized to be the duty of society not less 
 than that of individuals. We have come to 
 understand that the real criminal is often the 
 social body itself rather than the man or woman 
 it corrupts and then punishes. Here is an as- 
 cent into the world of reason, mercy, and right- 
 eousness, an unfolding of the divine purpose 
 as made known by the Saviour, who revealed 
 the sovereign nature of truth and love. His 
 influence, more than all other causes, has lifted 
 the multitude to a higher plane, where the spirit 
 of sympathy and helpfulness breathes unhin- 
 dered. We hold at least in theory, however we 
 may fall in practice, that mankind are a family, 
 that both the Church and the State are a home 
 where all should be cherished, that the greater 
 the weakness and misfortune the greater should 
 
 be the care. We have abolished legalized slav- 
 6 
 
82 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 ery, and the better among us are urged as by 
 a divine voice to think no sacrifice too great 
 whereby the condition of multitudes of toilers 
 may be made more tolerable, more hopeful. We 
 recognize that the rights of man are the rights 
 of woman also, and slowly we are gaining in- 
 sight into the truth that whatever is wrong for 
 her is wrong for him. As it is our duty to pro- 
 tect children because they are weak and help- 
 less, it is our duty to protect all who are weak 
 and helpless. The young are by nature incap- 
 able of caring for themselves, and therefore the 
 home, the Church and the State accept the re- 
 sponsibility of providing them with nourish- 
 ment and nurture. The adult man and woman 
 should not be weak or ignorant or vicious, and 
 we feel that it is not their own fault chiefly, but 
 the fault of the home, the Church and the State 
 if they are so. We would therefore make help- 
 lessness, ignorance, and vice impossible. Reli- 
 gion inspires love, confidence, and courage, and 
 science lights up the way of life with the torch 
 of knowledge. As disease is largely prevent- 
 able, we believe that vice, pauperism, and crime 
 are also preventable. The law of causation is 
 universal, and the cause being known, the find- 
 ing of a remedy ought to lie within the reach of 
 intelligence and love. Our progress consists 
 largely in the discovery of remedies for igno- 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 83 
 
 ranee and impotence. Quinine, drainage, and 
 sanitation have made vast regions habitable, 
 where hitherto healthful life had been impos- 
 sible. The discovery of the causes of many of 
 the worst diseases has shown us how they may 
 readily be prevented or cured. The knowledge 
 of the causes of evil, whether physical or moral, 
 necessarily leads to the inquiry how they may 
 be suppressed or controlled. The cosmical and 
 geographical conditions which interfere with 
 the normal development of human endowments 
 we can hardly hope greatly to modify. In the 
 tropics the race is and probably will always be 
 indolent, ignorant, weak, and sensual. Hered- 
 ity, too, plays a great part in the destiny of each 
 one. We are in mind, as in body, largely what 
 we have assimilated or what heredity which is 
 the outcome of endless assimilations makes us. 
 Those who are born with a taint in the blood, 
 with perverted instincts and enfeebled wills, 
 not only fall into vice more easily than others, 
 but they are also more difficult to reclaim. If 
 man shall ever learn to do for his own kind 
 what breeding and training enable him to do 
 for various strains of domestic animals, he will 
 have discovered an effective means for prevent- 
 ing crime and misery. But what he calls his 
 rights, which often are but his prejudices and 
 passions, will probably continue to keep him 
 
84 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 from treating his own species with the wis- 
 dom with which he manages inferior creatures. 
 Reckless and senseless marriages are an inex- 
 haustible source of evil. Many of our people 
 enter into wedlock as thoughtlessly as they take 
 a stroll or fall asleep, and the result is quarrels, 
 contentions, divorces, and children reared in 
 an atmosphere which blights their tender lives. 
 Hence crime among the young is increasing far 
 more rapidly than the population grows. So 
 long as this poison fountain remains open, so 
 long will vice and pauperism continue to breed 
 degradation and wretchedness. Homes that 
 are hells thwart the wisest efforts to reform 
 abuses. They hinder the school, weaken the 
 church, and undermine the social fabric. Our 
 chaotic and lax marriage laws encourage and 
 facilitate imprudent marriages, but the origin 
 of the evil lies deeper. Institutions, it has been 
 said, are in the control of men; public opinion 
 in that of women. Women decide how we shall 
 build and furnish our houses, what we shall eat 
 and wear, what we shall find beautiful and en- 
 tertaining, where we shall live, what we shall 
 read, whom we shall consider friend or foe, 
 what beliefs or prejudices we shall hold, what 
 religion we shall have. From them we learn 
 our mother tongue, from them our notions of 
 right and wrong, of propriety and justice. If 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 85 
 
 they were more large-minded, more intelli- 
 gent, more unselfish, more serious, more lov- 
 ing, three-fourths of the depravity and sin 
 which make life a curse would disappear. The 
 fountain-head of social good or evil, of vice 
 and crime, or of honor and virtue is in the 
 home; and the wife and the mother make or 
 unmake the home. Whatever view we may 
 take as to whether man or woman was the 
 more guilty primal offender, woman bears the 
 greater responsibility for the wrongs and mis- 
 eries which afflict and oppress the modern 
 world, since the force of public opinion, which 
 is in her keeping, is mightier than riches and 
 armies and laws. More than any age since the 
 beginning of time we have given opportunity 
 to woman, have placed her in the seat of influ- 
 ence and power; and shall she prove false, or 
 frail, or ungrateful, traitorous to the vast con- 
 fidence which all that is noblest and most chiv- 
 alrous in man has led him to repose in her? 
 
 Doubtless her increasing dominion has helped 
 to arouse in our public life greater sympathy 
 and tenderness, a more complete revulsion from 
 cruelty, whether to man or beast. But more 
 than pity we need justice, which is the first and 
 greatest charity. The most grievous injustice 
 which oppresses us, of which the weak and the 
 poor, the laborers and their wives and children, 
 
86 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 are the chief victims, has its source in the politi- 
 cal corruption which taints our whole public 
 life, and more especially the conduct of our 
 municipal affairs. It not only stamps upon our 
 name a brand of infamy in the eyes of foreign 
 nations; it disheartens the best among us, and 
 makes reform seem impossible. It not only im- 
 poverishes, but it disheartens and dechristian- 
 izes the laboring populations of our cities. It 
 is the foe of civilization, of religion, of moral- 
 ity; of God and of man. It thrives in the 
 mephitic air of saloons and brothels and gam- 
 bling hells. It makes the rich its accomplices 
 and compels the respectable to connive at its 
 iniquities and infamies. It perverts the public 
 conscience, it destroys the sense of responsibil- 
 ity, it renders efforts at reform abortive. In 
 the presence of this moral plague even the 
 wisest and the bravest are bewildered and dis- 
 couraged. No subject is more worthy of the 
 attention of those who are interested in the im- 
 provement of social life and conditions. Legis- 
 lation can accomplish little unless it be supported 
 by a more humane, a more enlightened, a more 
 Christian public opinion. Here again, there- 
 fore, we need the assistance of noble-minded and 
 educated women. If in the home, in the school, 
 and in the church, where woman's influence is 
 potent, if not paramount, the sentiment that cor- 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 87 
 
 rupt politicians are more criminal than convicts, 
 be awakened and fostered, good will have been 
 done. Were it possible that the daily press 
 should take a sincere and serious interest in 
 whatever concerns the public morals, what a 
 beneficent power it might exert! But this can- 
 not be hoped for while the newspaper continues 
 to be chiefly a commercial enterprise ; for when 
 the primary consideration is pecuniary profit, 
 it will be deemed proper to publish whatever 
 may excite curiosity, even though it pander to 
 morbid cravings and prurient propensities. In 
 the actual conditions, the machinery and insti- 
 tutions created to deal with the violators of 
 the laws are, in a large measure, the agencies 
 whereby vice and crime are produced and dif- 
 fused. The delinquents who are incarcerated 
 are chiefly the poor, who had they money to 
 pay the fines would escape imprisonment. The 
 heaviest punishment is inflicted on the most 
 helpless, and frequently on the least guilty ; and 
 thus the morally weak, the victims of unfortu- 
 nate environments, are degraded, hardened, and 
 made habitual offenders. Nearly one-half of 
 the several millions annually arrested become 
 chronic criminals. In the face of the theory 
 that punishment should be reformatory and 
 preventive, the fact remains that in our hands 
 it is still largely a cause of corruption and of 
 
88 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 the spread of vice. Our city prisons and sta- 
 tion houses are often nurseries of crime, and 
 this may be affirmed also of many of our county 
 jails and poorhouses. A recognized authority 
 on this subject has said that if there is an in- 
 iquity in the land to-day it is the county jail 
 system ; that there is no greater iniquity in the 
 world than the jail system of the United States. 
 But the discussion of this and analogous ques- 
 tions would carry us beyond our present aim. 
 It is enough to have called attention to the fact 
 that it is the part of wisdom to refuse to yield 
 unreservedly to our American spirit of opti- 
 mism. All past ages when compared with our 
 own were, in a sense, ages of ignorance, and 
 there may be reasons for thinking that the man 
 of the future will place our century in the same 
 category. A dark age certainly it shall be called 
 when considered from the point of view of con- 
 duct, when character is held to be the only suffi- 
 cient test of enlightenment. The immature and 
 the degenerate prefer pleasure to virtue and 
 power, and those who prefer money to truth 
 and love are also immature or degenerate. 
 Greed, not less than sensuality, marks epochs 
 in which all things are verging toward ruin. 
 We are at present under the tyrannous sway of 
 the spirit of commercialism and expansion, and 
 our very thought is made subservient to the 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 89 
 
 ideal of vulgar success; but those who have 
 best insight have a fine scorn of current opin- 
 ion. They are able to do without its approval, 
 and they end by receiving it. 
 
 Emerson says that America is God's great 
 charity to the race; but true religion working 
 with the added power which science gives is 
 greater than America: it will purify, ennoble, 
 and transform our life into some likeness to the 
 divine ideals, which as yet we but vaguely dis- 
 cern. We have already learned that a man's 
 chief value does not lie in his ability to conquer 
 with sword and shell, and we are coming to 
 understand that it lies just as little in his ability 
 to manipulate machinery or to get money. 
 
 Comte thinks that Christianity is the conse- 
 cration of egoism; and it is a fact that it re- 
 gards primarily the individual and asserts the 
 supreme worth of personality. But it also in- 
 sists that the individual can rightly develop and 
 find himself only in devoting his thought and 
 life to the love and service of God and his fel- 
 low-man. It would found on earth a kingdom 
 of heaven in which obedience to the will of the 
 Eternal Father (which is good-will to man) 
 shall be an all-controlling constitutional prin- 
 ciple and law; and beneficence the universal 
 means of personal and social advancement. We 
 must be benefactors that we may become able 
 
go SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 to love our fellows, for if we incline to hate 
 those whom we wrong, more surely are we 
 drawn to love those to whom we do good. 
 
 They who live with whatsoever things are 
 true, just, gracious, pure, and amiable, continue 
 to grow in mental and moral power; and the 
 good of life lies in the mental and moral dispo- 
 sitions which a spiritual faith and disinterested 
 conduct create and foster within us. As matter 
 is but life's setting, not its substance, so if we 
 would go to the succor of those who fail in right 
 living we must give them our interest, sym- 
 pathy, confidence, and affection more than our 
 money. The special vice of the thriftless and 
 delinquent is heedlessness and recklessness. We 
 must train them to forethought, attention, and 
 consideration ; and personal influence, not alms- 
 giving, is the proper means whereby this may be 
 accomplished. If we would save them, we must 
 save them from themselves. The purest charity 
 consists in doing the spiritual rather than in 
 doing the corporal works of mercy, since the 
 essential good is the good of the soul. Let us 
 have confidence in whatever increases the power 
 of the soul; confidence therefore in the virtues 
 of religion, which are faith, hope, and love; 
 confidence in knowledge, science, freedom, and 
 labor, persuaded that riches are good only when 
 they are the possessions of the wise and good. 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. g\ 
 
 It is easier to be generous than to be just. The 
 generous win approval, while the just are often 
 misunderstood and suspected of lack of heart. 
 The poor love the poor because they give their 
 thought and time to one another. They do not 
 love the rich because the rich give them only 
 money. Mere advice has little efficacy, for what 
 we all need in nearly all situations is not so 
 much a clearer view of right, as a more fervent 
 desire, a more determined will to do right; 
 and advice cannot supply this. No system of 
 dogma or morals, however much it be preached, 
 can regenerate the world. If men are to be 
 converted and transformed, they must be 
 brought close to Christ himself, must learn to 
 know and love Him, as St. John and St. Luke, 
 St. Francis and St. Vincent de Paul knew and 
 loved Him ; they must be brought to believe and 
 feel that as He is one with the Father, so are 
 we all verily God's children. If reason alone 
 controlled us the world would be a waste. If 
 the universe of metaphysics and of science were 
 not an abstraction, it would be a hell where faith, 
 hope, and love would become impossible; for 
 these are nourished and kept alive, not by specu- 
 lation and research, but by unselfish service, 
 generous deeds, and heroic endeavor. 
 
 Among the ancients the unfortunate were 
 held to be accursed, hateful to the divinities, and 
 
92 SOCIALISM AND LABOR, 
 
 consequently without title to the pity of men. 
 In nothing has Christ wrought a more radical 
 change than in the world's attitude toward the 
 weak and heavy laden. He withstood the super- 
 stition and mercilessness to which centuries had 
 given a kind of religious sanction, and taught 
 by word and deed that the more sinful, the more 
 ignorant, the more abandoned our fellows are, 
 the greater their claim on our attention and 
 service. His life and doctrines have produced 
 a mighty and beneficent revolution in their be- 
 half; and yet much of the old hardness and 
 injustice still survives both in society and in 
 innumerable individuals who call themselves 
 followers of the all-loving and all-helpful 
 Saviour. What multitudes there are who pass 
 by and ignore the misery and suffering they 
 cannot but see, who despise the poverty- 
 stricken, who are hard and bitter toward the 
 erring; how many who imagine they serve 
 God by hating and maligning one another ; who 
 are hindrances to the spread of the kingdom 
 for whose coming they pray! As when we 
 look in a mirror we try to see ourselves in a 
 favorable light, so when by introspection we 
 attempt to get a glimpse of our inner being, 
 we instinctively take the points of view which 
 best reveal our qualities and hide our defects. 
 If we should strive honestly to see ourselves 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 93 
 
 as we are, self-complacency would quickly die 
 within us. 
 
 If we were true Christians we should be able 
 to labor for our fellows with such confidence 
 and enthusiasm that nor baseness, nor ingrati- 
 tude, nor faithlessness, nor apostasy from light 
 and love of however many of those we seek to 
 help would have power to cool our ardor or 
 diminish our zeal. Though the world about us 
 should appear to crave for nothing but money 
 and sensation, we would none the less dedicate 
 whatever of ability God has given us to redeem 
 our brothers from themselves; and if in the 
 end we should have accomplished nothing, we 
 should at least have escaped an ignoble life. 
 
 The purest pleasure is to give pleasure, and 
 the highest glory belongs to those who labor 
 earnestly, both by thinking and by doing, to 
 make truth, justice, and love prevail. The uni- 
 verse was made for every one of us, and for 
 each one the world will be fair and pleasant in 
 the degree in which he strives to make it so 
 for others. It is not possible to respect one's 
 self and to make no sacrifice for one's fellow- 
 men. In coming closer to one another to help 
 those who need help, we shall make ourselves 
 more capable of seeing and confessing the truth 
 which the life and work and words of Christ 
 reveal. 
 
94 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 What is true of us as individual men and 
 women applies with equal force to our national 
 life. The ends to which as a people we are called 
 to devote ourselves are religion, education, jus- 
 tice, and charity. If we fail in this, wealth and 
 numbers and the conquest of distant lands will 
 have no power to save us from ruin and shame. 
 Nothing but a civilization resting on a basis of 
 righteousness and morality can make popular 
 government permanent. If we are to look, not 
 to the triumphs of the moment, but to lasting 
 results for which the whole world shall be grate- 
 ful, we must trust to the largest thought and the 
 purest love; for so surely as God is, so surely 
 are they destined to prevail. Tyranny is the foe 
 of liberty; greed, of justice; brute force, of 
 mercy and goodness; and wars, which spring 
 from the barbarous passion for conquest, from 
 covetousness, from the savage's delight in vic- 
 tory won by cunning and physical strength, 
 pervert judgment, destroy right feeling, and 
 foster the vices which weaken, harden, and blind 
 the people, and lead the way to destruction. 
 Unless we remain sensitive to moral distinctions, 
 unless we prefer justice and mercy to dominion 
 over the kingdoms of the earth, we shall enter 
 the open ways along which the republics and 
 empires of the past have rushed to shame and 
 destruction. If, then, we love America; if we 
 
CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 95 
 
 believe in the brotherhood of mankind, in equal 
 opportunity and freedom for all of God's chil- 
 dren, let us turn from dehumanizing greed, from 
 vainglory and pride, to follow after truth and 
 justice and love. 
 
V. 
 
 WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 man can write worthily of woman who 
 does not approach his subject with a kind 
 of religious reverence; and a true man will 
 ever treat woman, both in life and in litera- 
 ture, not with justice merely, but with gener- 
 ous sympathy. Into her arms we are born, on 
 her breast our helpless cries are hushed, and 
 her hands close our eyes when the light is gone. 
 Watching her lips, our own become vocal; in 
 her eyes we read the mystery of faith, hope, 
 and love ; led by her hand, we learn to look up 
 and to walk in the way of obedience to law. 
 We owe to her, as mother, as sister, as wife, 
 as friend, the tenderest emotions of life, the 
 purest aspirations of the soul, the noblest ele- 
 ments of character, and the completest sym- 
 pathy in all our joy and sorrow. She weaves 
 flowers of heaven into the vesture of earthly 
 life. In poetry, painting, sculpture, and reli- 
 gion, she gives us ideals of the fair and beau- 
 tiful. Innocence is a woman, chastity is a 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 97 
 
 woman, charity is a woman. And yet, true as 
 all this is and is felt to be throughout Christen- 
 dom, such views and sentiments, when consid- 
 ered in the light of history, seem to be little less 
 than absurd. The poets have sung divinely of 
 woman, but man has treated her inhumanly. 
 At the origin of society she is everywhere a 
 drudge, a slave, a chattel. Among the Baby- 
 lonians, we know from Herodotus, it was the 
 custom to offer women for sale to the highest 
 bidder, and every woman was required, at least 
 for a time, to put a price on her virtue. With 
 the Lydians this was a universal practice. The 
 Syrians, to the immolation of children to idols, 
 joined the compulsory sacrifice of woman's 
 honor. Strabo affirms that even the most 
 distinguished families among the Armenians 
 presented their daughters to the goddess of de- 
 bauch in the temple of Anaitis; and the same 
 writer tells us that a law of the Medes required 
 every man to have not less than seven wives. 
 That polygamy and infanticide were common 
 among the Persians is a fact to which Herodo- 
 tus testifies, who also says that the Scythians 
 were promiscuous in their relations with women, 
 were conjugal despots, and immolated widows 
 on the graves of their husbands. And Strabo 
 asserts that the ancient Hindoos bought their 
 wives, treated them as slaves, and burned them 
 
 7 
 
98 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 when their husbands died. Among the Mon- 
 gols, community of women was consecrated 
 both by law and custom. In Egypt, Diodorus 
 tells us, unlimited polygamy was lawful to all 
 except the priests; and the support of the 
 family, by the rudest labors, and often by the 
 sale of virtue, devolved upon woman, while 
 the men stayed at home to nurse and knit. In 
 Greece woman held a less degraded position. 
 She was not the slave of her husband, but, with 
 the exception of a certain class of public women, 
 she was reared in ignorance and confined to the 
 nursing of children and to domestic drudgery. 
 When her husband entertained his friends, she 
 was not permitted to sit at table. The Grecian 
 view of marriage is physico-political. Even in 
 the heroic epoch of Homer, there is no trace 
 of the sentiment of love as it is known to us. Of 
 the many suitors of Penelope, not one seeks to 
 render himself worthy of her love. The famous 
 passage in which Homer describes the parting 
 of Hector from Andromache, depicts the great 
 hero's concern for his son, rather than for his 
 wife; and Andromache is embraced by Pyr- 
 rhus, the son of the slayer of her husband. 
 Menelaus takes Helen back in complete indif- 
 ference, after she had lived ten years with Paris. 
 Telemachus rudely tells his mother to go back 
 to her spinning-wheel, and that to speak among 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 99 
 
 men belongs only to man. The husband bought 
 his wife, and the woman taken captive was re- 
 duced to slavery and sold as a chattel. Woman's 
 work in the Homeric period was to draw water, 
 to wash, to grind corn, to make the fire, and to 
 perform all the most menial and even indecent 
 labors for men. Hesiod, who probably belongs 
 to this period, calls women " an accursed brood, 
 and the chief scourge of the human race." And 
 ^Eschylus, at a later date, declares that woman 
 is the direst scourge both of the State and the 
 home. The daily prayer of Socrates was a 
 thanksgiving to the gods that he had been born 
 neither a slave nor a woman; and Aristotle 
 teaches that woman is by nature the inferior of 
 man. Plato, in his " Republic/' takes a purely 
 political view of woman, and would have the 
 propagation of the human race made subject to 
 the principles that guide stock-raisers in the 
 breeding of animals. In the historical age of 
 Greece, a slight improvement in the legal posi- 
 tion of woman was accompanied by her social 
 degradation. Virtuous women were kept in 
 ignorance and seclusion, and the place of honor 
 was given to courtesans. The companionship 
 of Socrates and Theodota, and Plato's presence 
 in the house of Aspasia, without even the re- 
 motest suspicion that such a state of affairs was 
 reprehensible, make it unnecessary to use other 
 
100 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 arguments to show the ineffable degradation to 
 which woman had been brought in the most 
 brilliant epoch of Grecian civilization. 
 
 In the earliest days the Romans bought or 
 captured their wives ; and women were not per- 
 mitted to own or inherit property. Romulus 
 gave the husband absolute authority over the 
 wife, even to the right of life and death. Eg- 
 nacius Menecius was scarcely blamed for kill- 
 ing his wife, though she had been guilty of 
 nothing more grievous than merely tasting 
 wine. " Slacken the rein," said Cato, speak- 
 ing of woman, "and you will afterwards strive 
 in vain to check the mad career of that unrea- 
 soning animal." The Romans habitually con- 
 trasted the majesty of man (majestas virorum) 
 with the imbecility, frivolity, and weakness of 
 woman (sexus imbecillis, levis, impar labori- 
 bus}. As they drowned weak and deformed 
 children, so they treated woman as an inferior 
 and a slave. In Rome, as in Greece, as the 
 laws were made more just to woman, her moral 
 and social degradation was intensified. There 
 is nothing sadder in human history than the 
 condition of women during the decline of the 
 Roman State. A depravity of which it is im- 
 possible to speak without becoming indelicate 
 grew like a leprosy into the lives of women of 
 every class, until, as Plutarch says, they seemed 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. IOI 
 
 to have been born only for luxury and sensual- 
 ity. Asiatic slaves of surpassing beauty were 
 introduced into every patrician house, and 
 Roman matrons, throwing aside even the ap- 
 pearance of decency, delivered themselves up 
 to the most revolting vice. Seneca says, "They 
 vied with men in licentiousness." There was a 
 universal aversion to marriage, and a weariness 
 of life itself. The Roman Empire had become 
 a slough of blood and filth. 
 
 If we turn to the barbarous populations from 
 which the modern Christian nations have been 
 developed, we find no marked change for the 
 better in the condition of woman. Certain 
 authors, in their zeal to deny all beneficent in- 
 fluence to the Christian religion, have sought 
 to make it appear that the present position of 
 women in the civilized world is, in a great 
 measure, to be ascribed to the reverence in 
 which it is supposed woman was held by the 
 Teutonic tribes that on the downfall of the 
 Roman Empire gained control of a large part 
 of Europe. They form this opinion upon in- 
 formation derived from Tacitus, who, in his 
 account of the manners and customs of the 
 Germans, says: 
 
 " They think there is in women something holy 
 and prophetical ; they do not despise their counsels, 
 and they listen to their predictions. In the time of 
 
IO2 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 the divine Vespasian we have seen the greater part 
 of them regard Velleda as a goddess." 
 
 But Tacitus here alludes manifestly to a 
 superstitious belief in woman as a sorceress 
 and prophetess, and any conclusions that we 
 may attempt to draw from his words as to 
 woman's social position among these barbar- 
 ous tribes must be valueless. Similar beliefs 
 and analogous customs, as Guizot has remarked, 
 have existed among many savage and barbar- 
 ous peoples. Tacitus, indeed, expressly says in 
 another passage, that the authority of Velleda 
 was due to a superstition among the Germans 
 that led them to look upon many women as 
 prophetesses; and the witchcraft of the middle 
 ages, and even that of New England, at a later 
 day, for which Christianity has been held ac- 
 countable, was the survival of an ancient pagan 
 superstition, which it required centuries to erase 
 from the popular imagination. It must be borne 
 in mind, too, that Tacitus had never crossed the 
 Rhine, and that his knowledge of the social 
 customs of the barbarians was derived from 
 others, whose accounts may or may not have 
 been trustworthy. Again, Tacitus wrote in the 
 mephitic air of Roman corruption, and the in- 
 dignation with which the moral degradation of 
 his countrymen filled him must have led him to 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 103 
 
 paint in brighter colors the life of barbarians 
 who could not have been so depraved as the 
 civilized men whom he knew. We know, at all 
 events, that the lot of woman among the Teu- 
 tonic tribes was what it has always been among 
 barbarous peoples. The slayer of a woman cap- 
 able of bearing children was made to pay a fine 
 of about six dollars; if she was too young or 
 too old to become a mother, the fine was put at 
 two dollars. It is the old Greek view, in which 
 woman is valuable because without her it is not 
 possible to have man. The husband bought his 
 wife, and if she became unfaithful he drove 
 her with rods through the village in a state of 
 nudity. The sentiment of modesty and holy 
 shame, which is so essential a part of Christian 
 reverence for woman, could hardly have existed 
 among these populations, since we know from 
 Tacitus that custom permitted the men and 
 women to bathe promiscuously. Polygamy was 
 conceded in principle, since kings and nobles 
 were permitted to have several wives. " A 
 slave," says Strabo, " woman was compelled to 
 toil for her husband during his life, and at his 
 death she was immolated on his grave, that she 
 might continue to serve him in another world." 
 Among the other barbarous peoples of Europe, 
 woman's lot was still more deplorable. Caesar's 
 account of the tribes that inhabited England 
 
104 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 gives us an insight into a state of depravity to 
 which history can hardly furnish a parallel. 
 
 It is not difficult to account for this world- 
 wide inhumanity of man to woman. Through- 
 out all pre-Christian history the law of superior 
 strength was the rule of conduct. The strong- 
 est governed, and governed in virtue of their 
 strength, and not in virtue of any moral sanc- 
 tion or divine authority. 
 
 This is at all times true of savage and barbar- 
 ous hordes ; and it is, in a general way, true of 
 the pagan States of Greece and Rome. The 
 notion that man has duties to his fellow-man, 
 even though he be wholly in his power, did not 
 enter into the view of human life. Captives, 
 therefore, might be put to death, or reduced to 
 a state of slavery worse than death. The slave 
 was a chattel; the master was free to treat 
 him as he treated his ass or his dog. Among 
 pagans, the later stoics were the first to teach 
 that masters are bound by ties of moral obliga- 
 tion to their slaves, and how far these views 
 may have been the result of Christian influ- 
 ences it is not easy to determine. When 
 strength is made the measure of right, woman 
 is inevitably driven to the wall. Nature, in 
 making her a mother, makes her weak takes 
 a part of her blood, her mind, and her heart to 
 give it to another. Child-bearing and child- 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 105 
 
 rearing place her at a disadvantage. Were she 
 even physically stronger and mentally more 
 capable than man, the infirmities and the duties 
 inseparable from her sex would make it im- 
 possible for her to cope with him in the life- 
 struggle. Hence, wherever the law of strength 
 has been accepted as the rule of life, man has 
 treated woman as Petruchio proposed to treat 
 Katherina : 
 
 " I will be master of what is mine own, 
 She is my goods, my chattels ; she is my house, 
 My household stuff, my field, my barn, 
 My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything." 
 
 The savage went wife hunting, as he went wolf 
 or bear hunting, and brought the captive home 
 to be his slave. The barbarian, too, captured 
 his woman in war, or bought her. The civi- 
 lized pagan was a polygamist, or at least looked 
 upon himself as wholly free from all obliga- 
 tions of marital fidelity. 
 
 If this is, in general outlines, the history of 
 woman except in Christendom, it is pertinent 
 to ask whether the Christian religion bears any 
 causal relation to her actual position in the civi- 
 lized world. When Christ came, woman, like 
 the slave, was everywhere without honor, with- 
 out freedom, without hope. Men, bearing the 
 curse of their own depravity, sank into the 
 
106 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 depths of moral infamy to which they had re- 
 duced the poor and the weak. Surrounded by 
 human herds to whom vice in its most degrad- 
 ing forms had become a second nature, they 
 breathed an atmosphere of corruption, in which 
 the moral sense perished. Life grew to be a 
 kind of remittent fever alternating between lust 
 and blood. Here and there a stray voice pro- 
 tested, but only in tones of despair. The masses 
 of mankind the slave and the woman had 
 been reduced to a state so pitiable that possibly 
 nothing short of the coming of God himself, in 
 sorrow and in weakness, could have inspired 
 the courage even to dream of better things. 
 Hope had fled; the world was prostrate; in 
 the mephitic air of unnatural sensual indul- 
 gence the soul was stifled; woman had lost 
 even the attractiveness of sex, and a thousand 
 slaves could hardly feed the stomach of Dives. 
 To such a world Jesus Christ came, and took 
 Lazarus in His arms, and called upon all who 
 believed in God to follow Him in the service of 
 outraged humanity. Before any moral progress 
 could be hoped for, new ideas had to be grafted 
 in the human mind, ideas as to what man is in 
 himself, as to what is due to him in virtue of 
 his very nature; new doctrines concerning the 
 duties of all men to all men, and especially of 
 the strong to the weak, of the rich to the poor, 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. IO/ 
 
 of man to woman. Christ sees the soul. The 
 soul determines the value of human life, and 
 the soul of the child, of the slave, of woman, is 
 as sacred as the soul of Caesar. " There is 
 neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond 
 nor free ; there is neither male nor female. For 
 you are all one in Christ Jesus." That which 
 is supreme in Christ is love. He pours the 
 boundless love of God into the channels in 
 which human life flows. In His presence up- 
 glows the purest, the strongest, the most un- 
 quenchable love that exists or has existed on 
 earth; and He turns this stream of divine 
 charity into the desert of human wretchedness 
 and woe, to refresh and gladden the hearts of 
 the poor and the forlorn, of the slave and the 
 beggar, and of woman, the great outcast of 
 humanity. He sends those who love Him to 
 feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to 
 clothe the naked, to ransom the captive, to visit 
 the sick. Wherever a human being suffers 
 wrong or want, there is Christ to be loved and 
 to be served. Homer is not so much the father 
 of all our poetry, nor Socrates so much the 
 master of all our intellectual discipline, as is 
 Christ the fountain-head of the humanitarian 
 love that makes men helpful to the weak and 
 the wronged. In lifting the soul into the full 
 light of God's presence, He not only gave a new 
 
IO8 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 measure of the value of life, but a new meaning 
 to authority. The supremacy of force is sup- 
 planted by the supremacy of truth and justice, 
 of love and mercy. Slaves and beggars will 
 now appeal from emperors and senates to God, 
 in the name of the soul, redeemed by Christ. 
 Henceforth, to be man is to be God-like; to be 
 an emperor is to be human. In the light of 
 this truth, woman becomes the equal of man. 
 Hence polygamy is abolished, and marriage is 
 of one with one, and for life. Wedded love 
 becomes sacramental love, and the tenderness 
 with which Christ loves His Church becomes the 
 symbol of the love of husband for wife. " He 
 that loveth his wife/' says St. Paul, " loveth 
 himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, 
 but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ 
 doth his Church." Thus the family becomes a 
 lesser church, the home a sanctuary, and woman 
 is God's providence, sitting by each man's 
 hearth-fire. Eve withdraws, and the Virgin 
 Mother is made the ideal woman. No Amazon 
 here, no Spartan mother, no stern mother of 
 the Gracchi, no goddess of sensual love, no fair 
 slave of man's animal appetites; but woman, 
 pure, gentle, tender, loving, patient, strong; the 
 world's benefactress, because, through her, di- 
 vine manhood lives on earth, and peace, love, 
 mercy, and righteousness prevail. With this 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. IOQ 
 
 new ideal of womanhood, the exaltation of the 
 beauty and moral worth of perfect chastity is 
 intimately associated. The selfishness of man, 
 which is chiefly shown in the indulgence of 
 his sensual passions, is woman's most terrible 
 enemy. Love is pure and gentle;- lust is coarse 
 and brutal. Love is born of the soul, and not 
 of the senses; and when this celestial flower 
 first blooms under the eyes of a pure youth and 
 a fair maiden, they are lifted to infinite heights, 
 and the sad side of love is the disenchantment 
 that comes when they are awakened from their 
 dream. Nothing tends more to exalt the pas- 
 sion of pure love than reverence for virginity, 
 real belief in the sacredness of womanly 
 virtue. Those only are worthy of the love of 
 woman who, like King Arthur's knights, bind 
 themselves 
 
 " To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds." 
 
 This exaltation of perfect chastity is the most 
 emphatic assertion of the truth that woman does 
 not exist simply for man; that the sphere of 
 her activity is not bounded by the duties of wife 
 and mother. She may love Jesus Christ, and, 
 with no man for her husband, become a minis- 
 tering angel of light and love to the wide world. 
 
110 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 Purity, meekness, patience, faith, and love 
 which are the virtues that our blessed Lord 
 most emphasizes are, above all, womanly vir- 
 tues. He does not exalt intellect, courage, and 
 strength, but gentleness, and lovingness, and 
 helpfulness. The Christian hero even, like all 
 heroines, shows his supreme strength in suffer- 
 ing rather than in doing. To the most wretched 
 phase even of woman's existence the Saviour 
 has brought the healing of His heavenly grace. 
 In all literature, sacred and profane, there is 
 nothing so touching, so tender and consoling, 
 as the Gospel episode of Magdalene; and he 
 who looks with more complacency upon Aspasia 
 with Plato at her feet than upon Magdalene at 
 the feet of Jesus is self-condemned. If we take 
 a view of Christian history in the light of the 
 ideals that Christ has given us, there is, of 
 course, disappointment. The ideal never be- 
 comes real in this earthly existence, and since 
 even the best reach not these heights, the multi- 
 tude, of course, remain far below. Ideals are 
 like the mountain-peaks that gleam amid the 
 azure heavens; we look up to them with de- 
 light, but the ascent wearies, and when on the 
 summit we find the air too fine for our coarse 
 breathing, and in the solitude we miss the crowd 
 and grow lonely. Nevertheless, on these snow- 
 capped heights are born the spring showers and 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 1 1 1 
 
 the summer rains, which nourish the growing 
 corn and the ripening grain. But if Christian 
 society has not realized its ideals concerning 
 woman, it has never been without their elevating 
 and refining influence. To the action of the 
 Church in the middle ages we are indebted for 
 the monogamic family, which lies at the basis 
 of our civilization and is the stronghold of all 
 that is best in our social life. Had not popes 
 and bishops withstood kings and barons when 
 they sought to continue the polygamous prac- 
 tices that among the German barbarians were 
 lawful, monogamy would have perished among 
 the ruling classes of Europe; and with the 
 development of popular power, had such devel- 
 opment then been possible, woman would have 
 fallen to the place that she to-day occupies in 
 Mohammedan countries. Indeed, the preserva- 
 tion of all western Europe from the blight of 
 Mohammedanism is due to the action of the 
 Church, which united and was alone able to 
 unite the warring factions of western semi- 
 barbarians, and to hurl them, century after cen- 
 tury, against the strongholds of the hordes 
 whose dream of heaven was a place of sensual 
 delights. 
 
 The objection has often been urged, that in 
 making man the head of the family the Church 
 is unjust to woman. But the family is an or- 
 
112 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 ganic unity, and cannot exist without subordi- 
 nation and authority. Either the husband or the 
 wife must be the depository of domestic author- 
 ity, and unless it can be shown that woman is 
 better fitted than man to exercise this power, no 
 injustice has been done. Physically man is 
 stronger than woman; he is better able to con- 
 front the world and to do the work by which the 
 members of the family are maintained in health 
 and comfort. Historically, society grows out 
 of a warlike and barbarous state of life; and 
 since women are less fitted for war than men, 
 the defense of property and rights is naturally 
 intrusted to those whose hands hold the sword. 
 But it is not necessary to examine into the 
 genesis and evolution of society to find reasons 
 for giving the headship of the family to man; 
 we need but look into the heart of woman to see 
 there an impulse as strong as life to look up to 
 and follow the man she loves. Between man 
 and woman there ought to be no question of 
 superiority or inferiority; they are unlike, and 
 in nothing do they differ more than in their 
 relative power to escape from their impressions. 
 A woman understands only what she feels, 
 whereas a man may grow to be able to look at 
 things as they are in themselves, remaining the 
 while indifferent to their relations to himself. 
 Hence women are superior to men in those vir- 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 113 
 
 tues in which the essential element is right 
 feeling. They believe more, hope more, and 
 love more than men. They are more compas- 
 sionate, more capable of remaining faithful to 
 those who are unworthy of their love, because 
 they consider only the love they feel, and give 
 comparatively little heed to its object. Men, on 
 the other hand, are superior in the virtues that 
 spring less from sentiment and depend rather 
 on the nature of things, their eternal fitness, 
 as justice, fortitude, equanimity, wisdom, pru- 
 dence. This difference in character determines 
 their position in domestic and social relations; 
 nor would there be gain for either man or 
 woman if they could be made less unlike. The 
 charm, as well as the helpfulness, of their rela- 
 tions lies in their differences, and not in their 
 likenesses. They are complementary; each 
 needs the qualities of the other, and their wants 
 are the bond of union. The opposition of men 
 and women to so-called woman's rights comes, 
 doubtless, in many instances from a belief that 
 to throw woman into public life is to make her 
 less womanly. Nor gods nor men love a man- 
 nish woman or a womanish man. The un- 
 fairness with which woman is treated in the 
 legislation of the mediaeval epoch may be traced 
 to the barbarous ideas concerning woman that 
 
 partially survived in Europe centuries after our 
 8 
 
1 14 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 ancestors had been converted to Christianity; 
 nor has this injustice even yet disappeared from 
 the statute-books of the civilized nations. The 
 causes that have led to the improvement of 
 .woman's condition among the Christian nations 
 are, in general, the same that have developed 
 our civilization. Whatever influences have been 
 active in the abolition of slavery, in securing 
 popular rights, free government, protection for 
 children and the poor, in bringing knowledge 
 within the reach of all, and thereby spreading 
 abroad juster and more humane principles of 
 conduct, have also wrought for the welfare of 
 woman ; and it is not necessary to point out how 
 intimately all this progress is associated with 
 the social action of the Christian religion. The 
 spirit of chivalry is the outgrowth of the Chris- 
 tian ideal of womanhood. To maintain that 
 Christianity crushed out " the feminine element, 
 and, more than all other influences combined, 
 plunged the world into the dark ages/' is to 
 indulge in a kind of declamation that, for the 
 past half-century at least, has become impossible 
 to enlightened minds. To say that the doctrine 
 of original sin throws the guilt exclusively or 
 chiefly on woman, is merely to affirm one's igno- 
 rance of Christian teaching. St. Ambrose, one 
 of the four great doctors of the Western Church, 
 declares that woman's fault in the original fall 
 
WOMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 115 
 
 was less than that of man, as her bearing was 
 beyond question more generous. And then the 
 Catholic Church at least teaches that Mary has 
 more than made good any wrong that Eve may 
 have done. To assert that in the Christian reli- 
 gion " the godhead is a trinity of males " is to 
 be at once ignorant and coarse. God is neither 
 male nor female, as in Christ there is neither 
 male nor female. To proclaim that the Chris- 
 tian religion teaches that " woman is an after- 
 thought in creation, sex a crime, marriage a 
 condition of slavery for woman and defilement 
 for man, and maternity a curse/' is to mistake 
 rant for reason, declamation for argument. In 
 fact, the advocates of woman's rights too often 
 take this false and therefore offensive tone. 
 They speak like people who have grievances ; and 
 to have a grievance is to be a bore. They scold ; 
 and when women scold, whether in public or in 
 private, men may not be able to answer them, 
 but they grow sullen and cease to be helpful. 
 To be persuasive, woman must be amiable ; and 
 to be strong, she must speak from a loving heart, 
 and not from a sour mind. Whoever is thor- 
 oughly imbued with the spirit of Christianity 
 must sympathize with all movements having as 
 their object the giving to woman the full pos- 
 session of her rights. No law that is unjust to 
 her should exist in Christendom. She should 
 
Il6 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 not be shut out from any career that offers to 
 her the means of an honest livelihood. For the 
 same work she should receive the same wages 
 as a man, and should hold her property in virtue 
 of the same right that secures to him the pos- 
 session of his own. For wrong-doing of what- 
 ever kind she should not be made to suffer a 
 severer punishment than is inflicted upon man. 
 The world will continue to be unjust to her 
 until public opinion makes the impure man as 
 odious as it makes the impure woman. 
 
 The best interests of mankind, of the Church 
 and the State, will be served by widening and 
 strengthening woman's influence. The ancient 
 civilization perished because woman was de- 
 graded, and ours will be perpetuated by a pure, 
 believing, self-reverent, and enlightened woman- 
 hood. Woman here in the United States is 
 more religious, more moral, and more intelli- 
 gent than man ; more intelligent in the sense of 
 greater openness to ideas, greater flexibility of 
 mind, and a wider acquaintance with literature ; 
 and whatever is really good for her must be 
 good for our religion and civilization. She 
 " stays all the fair young planet in her hands." 
 
VI. 
 
 EMOTION AND TRUTH. 
 
 [Address delivered on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 
 establishment of the diocese of Peoria.] 
 
 TT7HATEVER stirs emotion disturbs judg- 
 ment. This most beautiful May time, a 
 great concourse of people, a throng of bishops 
 and priests in symbolic vesture ; music, pleading 
 for power to utter the thought and love of the 
 Eternal, or bursting forth in swelling volumes 
 of sound that roll and rise, borne on viewless 
 wings, to the throne of God; rites and cere- 
 monies, hallowed by association with the divin- 
 est faith and the noblest memories, with the 
 heroic sufferings and triumphs of millions of 
 men and women the fine flower and fruit of 
 humanity who century after century for more 
 than fifty generations have taken their stand on 
 the world-wide battlefield, steadfast until swal- 
 lowed in the vortices of visible things, to re-live 
 in the ever-enduring universe of pure spirits 
 all this exalts the imagination and lifts to 
 spheres where feeling is spontaneous and delib- 
 eration difficult. 
 
Il8 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 For most of us who are gathered here the 
 day itself brings recollections which for each one 
 are tender and moving, as with varying shade 
 and circumstance they twine around the found- 
 ing of parishes, the building of churches and 
 schools and homes of mercy and beneficence, 
 that in more than a hundred towns and villages, 
 and on wide prairies amid the growing corn and 
 the ripening harvest, have risen at the call of 
 faith and at the promptings of a generosity that 
 seems to annul selfish impulse, so long as there 
 is good to be done recollections of youthful 
 courage, high hope, and pertinacious labor un- 
 dertaken for what each one believed to be most 
 divine, and endured for the love of what is 
 holiest. It is inevitable, therefore, that emotions 
 swell within us, which dispose us to accept as 
 truth words which sober reason is reluctant to 
 approve. But best reason rests in Love, from 
 which the universe has sprung, of whose deepest 
 heart certainly our religion is born; and since 
 from this same source the sentiments which in- 
 spire us to-day rise like a fountain's pure, light- 
 seeking waters, why may we not believe and 
 affirm that what such emotion has awakened and 
 bodied forth in word and deed is very truth? 
 Not indeed logical or scientific truth a skele- 
 ton of formulas and facts but the truth which 
 is borne in upon the soul when mothers sing 
 
EMOTION AND TRUTH. 119 
 
 their children to sleep, when lovers sitting side 
 by side watch the sun sinking beneath the hori- 
 zon, and the stars as one by one they smile from 
 infinitude on the homes of men; such truth as 
 the flowers speak, when from their lowly beds 
 they look up and laugh before us ; such as chil- 
 dren reveal and impersonate when heaven is 
 mirrored in their pure eyes and innocent faces. 
 
 If truth were but the naked fact, where should 
 there be found room for the ineffable charm 
 which interfuses itself with the glow of dawn 
 and sunset, with the light that falls from starlit 
 skies and from the countenances of those we 
 love; for the passion and patience, the trust 
 and longing, the sacrifice and aspiration, which 
 impel the soul to transcend the limitations of 
 time and space and which give to human life 
 its power and blessedness? 
 
 When we recall the years that are no more, 
 the paths we trod in childhood, the concert of 
 voices that in the long ago made the woodland 
 ring with music, the quick current of youthful 
 blood athrill with high hopes and noble resolves, 
 and suddenly are made aware that it has all 
 dissolved into emptiness and become as though 
 it had never been, it is not possible to remain 
 cold and impassive. When we turn to the be- 
 ginning of our early manhood, as issuing with 
 sublime self-confidence from the portals of 
 
I2O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 our Alma Mater, we vowed to walk and work 
 with Christ, to illumine, to guide, to strengthen, 
 to console, and to save men, and are made 
 deeply conscious how little our purposes have 
 fulfilled themselves in deeds, we are softened 
 and sobered, grow lowly-minded and meek, 
 like those who contemplate ruins which the 
 centuries have wrought. In such mood all 
 vanity and self-complacency die within us, and 
 words of praise and commendation sound like 
 mockery. 
 
 The achievements of even the genuinely 
 great, if they be considered in the light of the 
 Eternal, are insignificant. 
 
 Were God not, the whole race of man would 
 be no better than the parasites that batten on 
 decay. But God is, and they who have best 
 insight best know that man's worth is meas- 
 ured by the degree of his kinship with Him, 
 without whom he would be but a semblance and 
 unreality. 
 
 If in any one of us there be aught that may 
 win approval or awaken admiration or thankful- 
 ness, whether it be truth, or honesty, or mildness, 
 or intelligence, or strength of mind, or rectitude, 
 or courage, or perseverance, or humility, or 
 love, or piety, or unselfishness, it is of, through, 
 and for God, from whom all life springs, to 
 whom all hope looks, toward whom all yearn- 
 
EMOTION AND TRUTH. 121 
 
 ing moves, on whom all faith rests, in whom all 
 hearts find repose. 
 
 In the twenty-five years on which we now set 
 the seal of eternity, whatever may have been 
 well done by any one of us has been done for 
 Him and by His help. The field is His, the 
 seed is His ; His the rain and the sunshine ; His 
 the vital force that has built unto itself a body 
 and brought about the harmonic play of all the 
 members of the organism. We have been but 
 His servants, and had we not been at all, He, 
 had He so willed, would have found others and 
 better. Our only merit is that of servants, and 
 true service is our only blessedness. 
 
 The service we have chosen is that which the 
 Eternal stooped to earth and wore human flesh 
 to perform. It is the most beneficent, the holi- 
 est, the helpfullest, the most needful which it 
 can fall to the lot of man to do. The task set 
 us is to make ourselves and others Christ-like 
 and God-like. 
 
 If those who profess to lead a religious life 
 have the morals of the crowd or worse, they 
 are the most contemptible and are, in fact, the 
 most despised of men ; but those who have the 
 soul, and not merely the name of priest, are 
 divine men are, in word and deed, God's 
 faithfullest witnesses to the Truth that liberates, 
 to the Love that saves and beatifies. 
 
122 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 41 Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest 
 Cannot confound nor doubt Him nor deny ; 
 Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, 
 Stand thou on this side, for on that am I." 
 
 No unworthy thought has impelled us to 
 commemorate this day with solemn rites and 
 grave words. Few of us are so immature as 
 to attach importance to a mere demonstration. 
 None of us are so frivolous as to imagine that 
 what is said of a man has meaning or value 
 other than that derived from what he is; and 
 what he is, not himself even, but God alone 
 knows. 
 
 There may be merit in collecting so many 
 thousand dollars and in paying mechanics for 
 fitting together so many stones and so many 
 pieces of wood, but where the aim and end are 
 spiritual, praise for doing such things is not to 
 the purpose. Neither the heart nor the proper 
 work of such a one is in matter, which has mean- 
 ing for him only in so far as it is made to serve 
 higher interests, by becoming the nourishment 
 or the symbol of the soul. He knows that what 
 each one, and the social body as well, most needs 
 is not wealth, nor privilege, nor cunning, nor 
 favor, but larger, braver, holier, sweeter life 
 more sympathy, more courage, more wisdom, 
 more love. Those prevail who are stronger than 
 their fellows stronger through faith and de- 
 
EMOTION AND TRUTH. 123 
 
 sire, through knowledge and virtue, through 
 self-control and devotion to truth and justice. 
 God is a Spirit, and those whose character is 
 built on the principles which faith and hope 
 make certain, which best reason approves, are the 
 powers by which His reign is established and 
 made perpetual. His servants conquer, not with 
 the sword, not with money nor with the things 
 money can buy, but by the soul, which, enrooted 
 in Him, contemplates all things in the light of 
 Eternity, and is calm and unmoved while the 
 pomp and pageantry pass by to sink forever 
 beyond the reach of all-penetrative thought. 
 Men, like children, are attracted by a world of 
 shows ; they are busy with vanities, and attach 
 importance to trifles. But from the central 
 heart of religion the divine voice declares that 
 only the things which minister to the soul's wel- 
 fare have worth; that there is no genuine life 
 but that which unfolds itself heavenward, and, 
 like the tendril for the solid stem, reaches after 
 God. Had we temples built of gold and adorned 
 with every kind of precious stone; though the 
 music of the masters, uttered by masters ap- 
 pealed to us ; though from canvas and stone and 
 high-raised pulpit genius spoke to us, it were 
 all but show and sound if it did not lift the soul 
 nearer to our Father in heaven. God's men are 
 spiritual men, and the only religious progress 
 
124 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 is progress in faith and love, in wisdom and 
 virtue. 
 
 What we commemorate to-day, we of the 
 diocese of Peoria, bishops and priests, brothers 
 and sisters, and the people whose servants we 
 all are, what this company of distinguished men 
 have come from many sees to help us to cele- 
 brate worthily, is our labors for the moraliza- 
 tion, the purification, and the spiritualization 
 of human life, is our devotion to the things 
 that make for righteousness and peace and life 
 everlasting. 
 
 If we have built churches, it is that the people 
 may gather there, and through worship and the 
 reception of the sacraments and the hearing of 
 the Word may be refreshed, nourished, and 
 renewed in their innermost being. If we have 
 established schools, it is that the little ones, 
 whom the blessed Saviour loved, who are our 
 joy and our hope, may grow up in an atmos- 
 phere in which learning blends with piety, 
 knowledge with faith, true thought with chaste 
 life, love with obedience. If we have founded 
 homes for those whom loss or sin or age or 
 poverty has made helpless or miserable, it is 
 because we know that they are our brothers and 
 sisters, and that we do best for our Heavenly 
 Father and for ourselves in serving them. 
 
 This is what we cherish most and most love. 
 
EMOTION AND TRUTH. 12$ 
 
 If Peoria and the diocese of Peoria are dear to 
 us, and God and we all know they are, it 
 is so not chiefly for the beautiful site, the health- 
 ful climate, the fertile soil from which the corn 
 bursts like song from happy hearts; it is so 
 above all for the spirit of freedom, of good-will, 
 of helpfulness, which breathes here as unhin- 
 dered as the gentle wind that kisses the prairie 
 into life and bloom; they are dear for the op- 
 portunity which is given here to all alike to 
 upbuild character, to confirm will, to cultivate 
 the mind, to follow after the better things of 
 which faith and hope are the heralds. 
 
 If to-day for a moment,, even in thought, I 
 may separate myself from any one of those who 
 during the twenty-five years that have now be- 
 come a part of the unchangeable past have gath- 
 ered about me in still increasing numbers and 
 with hearts ever more willing, I will say that 
 the affection I bear them and the joy they give 
 me which, like the ripening fruit and the 
 mellowing wine, grow more precious as time 
 lengthens are born, not so much of the suc- 
 cess with which they have accomplished what- 
 ever they have been asked to do, as of their 
 spirit of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, of 
 their courage and ability, their magnanimity 
 and single-heartedness, their never-slumbering 
 watchfulness over the good name of the diocese 
 
126 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 and that of its priesthood. When the office of 
 bishop was offered to me, if I hesitated to accept 
 the burden and the honor, it was largely (if my 
 memory deceive me not) from a dread lest my 
 opinion of man's high estate, as revealed in the 
 lives of priests and nuns, should be lowered by 
 the more intimate knowledge of them which 
 necessarily comes to those who are placed in 
 authority over them. A personal experience of 
 twenty-five years is a broad basis for the judg- 
 ment of an individual, and it is a source of 
 inner strength and freedom to me to be able to 
 feel and to say, in perfect sincerity, that, though 
 priests and nuns are not exempt from the infirm- 
 ities which inhere in all that is human, I have 
 found them to be the kindliest, the most unsel- 
 fish, the most loyal, the most pure-minded, and 
 the most devoted of men and women. Never 
 have I appealed to them in vain, when I have 
 appealed to the God-like in man. They have 
 confirmed my faith in human nature, and in the 
 worth and sacredness of life. 
 
 They have made me more certain that we are 
 all the children of an Almighty and all-loving 
 Father, from out whose thought and care we 
 can never die. 
 
 Let me conclude, in my own name and in 
 that of the whole diocese, with the expression 
 of sincere thanks to his eminence, the Cardinal 
 
EMOTION AND TRUTH. 127 
 
 Archbishop of Baltimore, to the most reverend 
 archbishops and bishops, and to the reverend 
 clergymen who have done us the honor to be 
 our guests to-day and to heighten by their 
 presence and sympathy the significance and the 
 joy of this celebration. 
 
VII. 
 
 EDUCATION AND PATRIOTISM. 
 
 A S they alone are Christians who strive 
 *** earnestly to lead a high and worthy life, 
 so only those who are seriously intent on mak- 
 ing themselves wise, strong, and virtuous are 
 patriots. Words are idle unless they are filled 
 with meaning by the deeds of those who utter 
 them. A soldier may die in battle, and be only 
 a mercenary; but he who so lives as to make 
 men thankful that he is their fellow-citizen is a 
 patriot. By making use of the opportunities 
 which liberty offers, one may amass vast wealth, 
 and be an enemy of freedom ; but he who frees 
 himself from within by overcoming ignorance 
 and greed makes us think well, not only of 
 himself, but of his country also. Children love 
 their parents, not when they praise them, but 
 when by their intelligent and virtuous behavior 
 they make them happy : and so those who boast 
 of the greatness of their country do not there- 
 fore love it; but its true lovers are those who 
 strengthen and glorify it by their wisdom, hon- 
 
ED UCA TION AND PA TRIO 7YSM. 1 29 
 
 esty, unselfishness, sincerity, and courage. If 
 in a foreign land we see an American who is 
 drunk, or loud and vulgar, we are forced to 
 confess that he is not a true, but a false and 
 traitorous American; and here at home the 
 miserable victims of greed, who offer and take 
 bribes, who combine to crush the weak, who 
 to increase their trade make war on a defense- 
 less people, are not true Americans, but false 
 and traitorous Americans. The characteristics 
 of a true American are good-will, sympathy 
 with the helpless and oppressed, intelligence, 
 uprightness, energy, courage, and industry ; and 
 if we love our country and desire to make its 
 institutions permanent, we must labor to cul- 
 tivate these virtues in ourselves and in those 
 whom we are able to influence. The love of 
 education, in the deep sense of the word, and 
 the love of country are one and the same love. 
 Nothing but education, domestic, religious, and 
 scholastic, can form the virtues which make 
 patriots. 
 
 Primarily, education is growth; and growth 
 is made possible and promoted by nutrition. 
 The food we take and assimilate makes us what 
 we are. In the case of the body this is plain. 
 We grow and maintain strength, by throwing 
 day by day into the life-current the substances 
 of which the body is composed. If this ceases, 
 9 
 
130 SOCIALISM AND LAB OK. 
 
 we cease to grow and begin to decay. The tak- 
 ing of nourishment is not something which is 
 done once for all it is a habitual process, 
 which goes on whether we eat or abstain, 
 whether we wake or sleep. This is also true 
 of our spiritual being. The mind grows by 
 what it feeds on habitually, day by day; and 
 the kind of nourishment it assimilates, and the 
 thoroughness with which it assimilates, deter- 
 mine its quality and power. 
 
 The proper nourishment of our spiritual being 
 is not knowledge or speculative truth. What 
 we merely know hardly enters into the fiber of 
 our higher nature. Hence the information we 
 get in school about the surface of the earth and 
 the stars, about kings and wars, about algebraic 
 and geometric problems, about philosophies and 
 literatures, neither makes a deep impression nor 
 is long remembered. Such information does 
 not so attract us as to cause us to live with it 
 and find in it our habitual nourishment. It 
 has therefore little to do with the formation of 
 character. When we ask what kind of man 
 one is, we do not mean to inquire about his 
 information or his possessions, but about his 
 character; and to get insight into his charac- 
 ter we wish to learn, not what he knows, but 
 what in his inmost soul he believes, hopes, and 
 strives for his tastes and preferences, his 
 
ED UCA TION AND PA TRIO TISM. 131 
 
 bearing and behavior, the breadth and depth of 
 his love, the largeness and fullness of his sym- 
 pathies, his attitude toward the temporal and 
 Eternal. 
 
 Thus character is primarily moral it is 
 what a man is, not the kind of clothes he wears 
 or the kind of information he possesses. It is 
 a result of nutrition and growth, and can no- 
 wise be formed by mechanical processes; and 
 since character is the man himself, it is pre- 
 cisely this moral growth which it is the chief 
 business of the school to promote; and if it 
 fail in this, it fails radically. A characterless 
 man is neither good in himself nor good in his 
 relations to any part of the social environment. 
 Character is formed by cultivating a taste for 
 what is true, good, and fair, a love for jus- 
 tice, honesty, and kindliness, for reverence, mod- 
 esty, and courage; a loathing for dirt, physical 
 and moral, in thought, word, and deed ; a scorn 
 of lies, hypocrisy, and cant, by filling the 
 young with profound faith in the worth and 
 sacredness of life, by helping them to feel how 
 divine a thing it is to be alive when one has 
 hope and enthusiasm, is chaste and loving, wise 
 and helpful. In learning to know their teachers 
 the pupils should be able to perceive and love 
 in them the fairest and noblest virtues. Heroic 
 and saintly men and women also, as they are 
 
132 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 portrayed in literature, should be often brought 
 before them. Thus they shall come to live not 
 only in an atmosphere of high thoughts, but 
 in the presence of the worthiest whom history 
 makes known; and they shall little by little 
 gain insight into the truth that life is more 
 than its circumstance, that right and honorable 
 life is the only prosperity, the only wealth, and 
 that the worst misfortune and punishment is to 
 be base. When the vital strength which issues 
 in right conduct has become habitual with them, 
 instinctive, a second nature, then we may urge 
 them with all confidence to build on this foun- 
 dation whatever else may exalt, refine, and en- 
 rich human life; we may push them, according 
 to their endowments, to make themselves ora- 
 tors, poets, statesmen, captains of industry, men 
 of science, inventors, discoverers, leaders in re- 
 ligious and social movements, confident that the 
 more they upbuild their individual power the 
 more shall they become general benefactors and 
 true patriots, men who shall find their happiness 
 not in hoarding money, but in diffusing good, 
 in promoting religion, morality, education, and 
 whatever else tends to the common welfare. 
 Without misgivings we may seek to inspire 
 them with faith in the worth of intellectual 
 culture, with the confidence that they shall be 
 able to compass it, and with the love of the ex- 
 
EDUCATION AND PATRIOTISM. 133 
 
 cellence which it procures. We may point out 
 to them that the noblest work is that which man 
 performs with his noblest faculties; that if 
 the vicious are slaves, the ignorant are bond 
 servants, fatally doomed to do the world's 
 drudgery; that the chances of success, even in 
 the ordinary affairs of life, are as two hundred 
 and fifty to one, in favor of college-bred men 
 and women. We may show them how a culti- 
 vated mind is a perpetual invitation and oppor- 
 tunity to raise one's self to higher and more 
 profitable occupations, to acquaint one's self 
 with the best thought contained in the best lit- 
 erature, and thus to make one's self at home 
 with the noblest minds of all ages and coun- 
 tries ; how in thus opening up an inexhaustible 
 supply of spiritual nourishment, it gives one 
 the freedom, not of a city, though the most 
 glorious, but of the world, from the dawn of 
 history, even to the present hour. We may go 
 on to explain how much longer vigor of mind 
 endures than vigor of body. The manual 
 laborer is, I suppose, in his prime from the 
 age of twenty-five to thirty-five years; he is 
 old before he is fifty. The mental worker does 
 not reach his prime before he is fifty, and, if he 
 is a serious student, his value may increase till 
 he is seventy and more. His period of growth 
 (and growth is gladness) is very much longer 
 
134 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 than that of the uneducated; and his work 
 has greater worth both for himself and for the 
 social environment. 
 
 If the average of moral and intellectual cul- 
 ture were higher, we should be able not only to 
 procure the needs and comforts of life with 
 less effort, but we should have the wisdom and 
 strength to deny ourselves many things which 
 are harmful and mere waste of individual and 
 collective force. All the luxuries involve dissi- 
 pation of vital energy and deterioration of the 
 quality of life; but among the luxuries no sen- 
 sible man will place the great works of art, 
 which spring from the highest activities of the 
 soul, and without which our whole existence 
 must sink to lower levels. What more strik- 
 ing instance could there be of the crude kind 
 of thinking in vogue among us, than that a 
 university professor should deem it not absurd 
 to place a great money-gatherer on the same 
 footing with a great poet? The one is a me- 
 chanical, the other a vital man. Riches are 
 akin to fear, to cowardice and death; but the 
 highest thought rightly expressed is the fine 
 essence of the purest life stored up for all who 
 are able to appreciate and admire, even to the 
 remotest age. 
 
 But however high we may place genius 
 and intellectual culture as educational powers, 
 
EDUCATION AND PATRIOTISM. 135 
 
 when there is question of patriotism we must 
 come back to the moral element in human 
 nature, to the sense of duty, to character. The 
 essential is not what we know, but what we 
 believe and love and do with all our hearts. 
 George Washington was not a man of genius 
 or of the best intellectual culture, but he was 
 a great character honest, simple, true, dis- 
 interested, incorruptible. He thought not of 
 private gain, nor of personal glory, nor of the 
 aggrandizement of his country, but believing 
 with all his heart in the right of the people to 
 govern themselves, he gave his time, his wealth, 
 his life, to make such government actual and 
 permanent. It could not have occurred to him 
 that Americans should ever seek to conquer a 
 people struggling for independence to him, 
 who had inscribed upon his victorious banner 
 the Declaration of Independence. He could not 
 have dreamed that the extension of trade and 
 the enriching of trusts should ever be deemed 
 by Americans a justification of wars of con- 
 quest. He had a noble soul, he had a great 
 heart, he had honest convictions, he had the 
 courage of his opinions. Li we compare him 
 with Julius Csesar, he is altogether inferior in 
 intellectual grasp and power, but wholly supe- 
 rior in character in the qualities which make 
 a man wise, helpful, and beneficent. The one 
 
136 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 overthrew a Republic to build an empire, 
 which quickly became the shame and ruin of 
 the world; the other founded a republic which 
 has been a refuge and blessing for all the vic- 
 tims of tyranny in the whole wide world, a re- 
 public for whose prosperity and continuance 
 all pure, gentle, loving, and Christian souls in 
 the whole wide world must pray. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY. 
 
 [Address delivered in Peoria at Mass-meeting in memory 
 of the death of President McKinley.] 
 
 TN the presence of the grief and humiliation 
 ^ of a great nation, one would wish to be 
 silent. Words cannot give right utterance to 
 what we feel. They are apt even to strike us 
 as but noise and sound, to distract and disturb 
 rather than to strengthen and console. There 
 is not question here of the passing of a man, 
 however true, however good, however noble he 
 may have been. The occasion does not call for 
 clamorous denunciation or vulgar abuse; much 
 less for appeals to the beast of prey that ever 
 lurks in the human breast. Crime is not a 
 remedy for crime; lawlessness is not a correc- 
 tive of lawlessness. A great people and petty 
 thoughts or revengeful feelings go ill together. 
 The strong do not rail ; the brave make no out- 
 cries. In proportion to one's power should be 
 his forbearance and self-control. If our dead 
 President was great, he was great through his 
 
138 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 kindliness, his forgiving spirit, his desire to be 
 of help, his modesty and lowly-mindedness. 
 His greatness sprang from his Christian faith 
 and character, rather than from any surpassing 
 intellectual endowments. If we grieve for his 
 sad taking away, let our thoughts and senti- 
 ments be such as he would approve. To die as 
 he died can hardly be deemed an evil for him. 
 For more than half a century he had led a life 
 of honesty, purity, and honor; he had served 
 his God and his country from his earliest years ; 
 he had reached the topmost height to which an 
 American citizen may aspire. He had the re- 
 spect of the whole people; and those who dis- 
 agreed with him in matters of policy were glad 
 to accord him the high merit of a disinterested 
 patriotism. In the midst of a whole world 
 who thus honored him, while still in the full 
 vigor of manhood, untouched by the palsying 
 and blighting hand of age, he is suddenly 
 stricken by one whose mental and moral nature 
 had been wholly perverted. He dies in the ful- 
 fillment of kindly offices ; he dies in the midst of 
 the people who loved him and whom he loved; 
 he dies after many years of life of noblest ser- 
 vice and without stain. His task is done; his 
 fame is secure; and his example remains with 
 us to show us what a true American should be. 
 When the generous and the good have been 
 
ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY. 139 
 
 placed on the summit of earthly things, their 
 memory abides as a possession forever. The 
 calamity which has befallen, has befallen not 
 him, but the nation. When dire misfortunes 
 overtake individuals or a people whom inner 
 power makes great, they convert what might 
 utterly destroy baser natures to means of good. 
 We shall therefore seek to find the uses there 
 may be in this adversity. The cry of shame and 
 rage which has been heard throughout the whole 
 land is intelligible. It is the instinctive utterance 
 of the love we bear our country and of the in- 
 finite abhorrence we feel for whoever or what- 
 ever may do it hurt. Within our inmost souls 
 we are persuaded that America is God's greatest 
 earthly gift to His children; that He has des- 
 tined it to be the training ground of a nobler 
 race, the home of a more Christlike and diviner 
 humanity, whose beneficent influence shall be 
 as self-diffusive as love, and as wide-spreading 
 as the unending globe. When, therefore, a 
 crime is committed against the one man who is 
 the symbol and the representative of the whole 
 national life, we are filled with amazement, we 
 are confused with astonishment, we are roused 
 to indignation, and in our mad bewilderment 
 we lose sight of the fundamental principles on 
 which our government rests. Declaimers and 
 demagogues think to win favor by violent Ian- 
 
I4O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 guage, and even from the chairs which have 
 been established to teach wisdom, rash counsels 
 are given. When shall we acquire that repose 
 which is a mark of maturity, the imperturbable 
 mind which belongs to those who have faith in 
 an overruling Providence and are certain of 
 themselves ? 
 
 There are no patent remedies for social evils. 
 What we sow we reap, whether there be question 
 of individuals or of nations. We cannot remain 
 habitually indifferent to the supreme interests 
 of religion and justice, and when emergencies 
 come upon us, save ourselves by devices and 
 contrivances. We do not need more or new 
 laws : what we need is a new spirit a more 
 real faith in God, a more real love of our fellow- 
 man, more honesty, more chastity, more unsel- 
 fishness. We need a religion that will not lead 
 us to think it enough to skin and film the ulcer- 
 ous place, but that will impel us to probe deep 
 and cut away the gangrenous flesh that poisons 
 the fountains of life. 
 
 As a people we are wanting in respect for 
 those who are clothed with authority; we lack 
 reverence; we are too ready to persuade our- 
 selves that all is well so long as wealth and pop- 
 ulation increase ; we wish to be flattered, and we 
 turn away from the truth-speakers who love us, 
 to listen to the demagogues who would lure us 
 
ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY. 141 
 
 to ruin. We seek facile solutions of the great 
 problems, and distrust whoever, for instance, 
 declares that to teach the young to read, write, 
 and cipher is not to educate them; that educa- 
 tion consists essentially in the building of char- 
 acter, which is what a man is, and not what 
 he knows. We forget that morality, and not 
 legality, is the only foundation on which a free 
 government can securely rest. When corrupt 
 influences determine legislation, laws cease to 
 be regarded as binding. Men yield to force, but 
 in their hearts they rebel against, the injustice. 
 
 When immoralities and crimes become gen- 
 eral, minds are perverted and consciences made 
 callous. How is it possible to read day after 
 day of the suicides, the murders, the lynchings, 
 the robberies, the divorces, the adulteries, the 
 prostitutions and corruptions with which the 
 newspapers are filled, and not to lose the sense 
 of the sacredness of human life? 
 
 Vice propagates itself far more easily than 
 virtue, as men take disease, but not health, from 
 one another ; and if whoever is guilty of crime, 
 or of misdeeds of whatever kind, is at once ad- 
 vertised to the world in millions of sheets as an 
 object of curiosity, of interest, and at times of 
 admiration, how can the readers of such things 
 retain balance of judgment and a sensitive con- 
 sciousness of the heinousness of sin? 
 
142 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 It is easy to put to death the wretched man 
 who has committed the outrage which has filled 
 us all with consternation; it is easy to denounce 
 and difficult to exaggerate the inhumanity, the 
 fiendish nature of those who would destroy the 
 whole fabric of society, our very civilization, 
 the beliefs, the laws, the forces, which make us 
 men and give value to life ; it is easy in the hour 
 of national affliction to gather in numerous as- 
 semblies throughout the land to utter our grief 
 and to express our abhorrence. And all this is 
 well, springing as it does from what is best 
 within us; but it has little efficacy. It will do 
 good only if it helps to make us good. We can- 
 not destroy anarchy by enacting more rigid 
 laws; much less by resorting to violence. 
 
 " God bless every undertaking/' said Presi- 
 dent McKinley in 1897, " God bless every 
 undertaking which revives patriotism and re- 
 bukes the indifferent and lawless." And in 
 1894: " With patriotism in our hearts there is 
 no danger of anarchy and no danger to the 
 American Union." 
 
 There is the patriotism of instinct, that which 
 binds a man to the land of his birth and to the 
 home about which cluster his earliest and sweet- 
 est memories; and there is the patriotism of 
 reason and religion, whereby we are made con- 
 scious that our dearest interests, temporal and 
 
ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY. 143 
 
 eternal, are vitally associated with our country, 
 with its prosperity and security, its honor and 
 welfare. The patriotism of instinct needs little 
 encouragement; it is implanted by nature and 
 is self-developed; but that of reason and reli- 
 gion must be cultivated and cherished with cease- 
 less care and vigilance, as reason and religion 
 themselves are living forces only in the self- 
 active. 
 
 To this higher patriotism none but the wise 
 and good are true ; and false to it are not those 
 alone who commit crime against the majesty 
 and sacredness of the State, but false to it are 
 all who are vicious themselves, all who by word 
 or example sow the seeds of vice. The germ 
 of anarchy is in every wrongdoer, in every law- 
 breaker. It is in those who propagate irreli- 
 gion, who undermine man's faith in God and 
 in his own spiritual nature, for the moral code 
 of the people is their religion. What is right 
 or wrong for them is what they believe, not 
 what they know, to be so. For all of us, indeed, 
 duty is a thing of faith, not of the pure reason. 
 Religion has rocked the cradles of all the na- 
 tions, and infidelity, issuing in insatiable greed 
 and sensuality, has dug the graves of those that 
 have perished, sophistry and indulgence destroy- 
 ing what had been built by faith and virtue. 
 There is the principle of anarchy in the mobs 
 
144 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 that gather to torture and murder with fiendish 
 cruelty the unfortunate beings for whose pun- 
 ishment laws have been enacted. There is the 
 germ of anarchy in the homes of those who 
 marry as recklessly, and separate with as little 
 compunction, as animals breed. It is in the 
 boodleism which in our cities fosters prostitu- 
 tion, the criminal saloon, the dance hall, and the 
 gambling den. It is in our street fairs, when 
 they are made a pretext for pandering to the 
 lowest passions of the crowd. It lurks in the 
 very constitution of our competitive system, if 
 this system leads us to prefer markets to men, 
 riches to the dignity and honor of human beings ; 
 if it so turns us away from the ends and ideals 
 for which the wise live as to make of the nation 
 a money-getting mob, where the few are dwarfed 
 and crippled by their enormous possessions, 
 while the multitude seek to drown their sense of 
 misery in alcohol and degrading pleasures. It 
 is not conceivable that this should be the fate 
 of us, the heirs of all ages, us, the latest birth 
 of time. Rather shall we lay to heart and be 
 convinced in our inmost souls of this truth, 
 uttered by one of the best inspired teachers of 
 our age : " There is no wealth but life life, 
 including all its powers of love, of joy, and of 
 admiration. That country is the richest which 
 nourishes the greatest number of noble and 
 
ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY. 145 
 
 happy human beings; that man is richest who, 
 having perfected the functions of his own life 
 to the utmost, has also the widest helpful in- 
 fluence, both personal and by means of his 
 possessions, over the lives of others." 
 
 There is not now, nor has there ever been, 
 a civilized people. Ignorance, sin, depravity, 
 injustice, cruelty, deceit, greed, and selfishness 
 have always prevailed and still prevail in the 
 world. The majority has never loved, nor does 
 it now love, truth and mercy and purity and holi- 
 ness. But we, more than any other people, are 
 dedicated to the securing of the largest freedom, 
 the fullest opportunity, the completest justice to 
 all to men and women, to the strong and the 
 weak, to the rich and the poor. These are the 
 principles which we proclaimed when first we 
 took our place in the family of Christian nations ; 
 these are the principles which our greatest and 
 most representative men, whether orators or 
 statesmen or warriors or poets, have with deep- 
 est conviction asserted to be the embodiment of 
 the spirit of America. This is the meaning of 
 our life; this is the key to our destiny. Our 
 conception of democracy is not that it is, like 
 some of the barbarian empires of the past, an 
 irresistible power whose mission is to overrun 
 and subjugate, to conquer and lay waste. On 
 the contrary, from our point of view democracy 
 
 10 
 
146 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 is a beneficent force. It rests on faith in human 
 nature ; on the educability of all men, if they be 
 but rightly environed and attended. 
 
 Institutions are preserved by the principles 
 from which they originate, and if our country 
 is to grow, not in wealth and numbers alone, 
 but in inner power and worth, we must adhere 
 with unalterable fidelity to the great truths 
 which inspired our fathers when they founded 
 the Republic. Nay, since it is the nature of vital 
 truth to develop, we must see more clearly than 
 it was possible for them to see, that the Republic 
 means justice to all, good-will to all, helpfulness 
 to all ; and first of all, to those who are overbur- 
 dened, who are insufficiently equipped, who are 
 sorely tried. The cry of the laborer is for jus- 
 tice, not for charity; and it is a cry which all 
 the good gladly reecho. But let us remember 
 that men are just only when they love. Sym- 
 pathy gives insight, and where this is lacking 
 we are blind to the injustice our fellows suffer 
 and we do them wrong with easy consciences. 
 The impulse now, as of old, is to seek to over- 
 come evil with evil. The world is so full of per- 
 versity that the only way, it would seem, in 
 which society can protect itself is to cut off 
 for a time or for ever those who sin against its 
 laws. But no punishment, however severe, can 
 destroy the roots from which grows the tree 
 
ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY. 147 
 
 that bears the bitter fruit ; and if in any part of 
 the world men should ever become rightly civ- 
 ilized, they will overcome evil with good. They 
 will not condemn men to do work which they 
 cannot do with joy, work which takes away 
 heart and hope, which cripples the body and 
 darkens the mind. They will suffer none to live 
 in ignorance who might have knowledge ; none to 
 live in vice who might be made pure and holy. In 
 their cities there will not be found districts where 
 no innocent or healthful creature can breathe 
 and not become tainted. There shall be no 
 fortunes built on dead men's bones and cemented 
 with blood ; no splendid dwellings around which 
 shriek the ghosts of women whose toil did not 
 bring enough to save them from lives of shame. 
 It is toward all this that we must strive and 
 struggle, if we are not to be recreant to our 
 most sacred duties, false to the mission which 
 God has given to America. 
 
 In the shadow of the gloom that falls on the 
 hearts of all the people, as what was mortal of 
 the most religious, the most God-fearing of our 
 presidents is lowered into the grave, let the 
 eternal principles of freedom and justice, of 
 truth and love, of religion and righteousness, 
 gleam on us with fuller beauty and power, like 
 stars from the raven bosom of night. 
 
 Let us rouse ourselves from the torpor which 
 
148 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 benumbs our spiritual being. Let us forget a 
 little our petty and selfish interests and pleas- 
 ures, that we may become able to enter into the 
 larger life of our country, each working as a 
 separate individual force for the good of all. 
 So shall the calamity which has befallen startle 
 us into newness of heart and mind, making us 
 more solicitous for the common welfare, more 
 careful lest we ourselves give offense; so shall 
 there be more love and piety in our homes, more 
 reverence and docility in our schools, more 
 faith and religion in our churches, more wisdom 
 and virtue in our public life. And in this way, 
 and possibly in no other, shall we be able to 
 make such crimes as this, which has filled us with 
 horror and dismay, for ever impossible. 
 
IX. 
 
 CHURCH AND COUNTRY. 
 
 'IT 7 HEN a bishop gets an auxiliary it is time 
 for him to begin to grow silent, even 
 though in our councils we have declared that a 
 bishop's chief office and duty is to preach. But, 
 as the steed that has been familiar with the 
 gleam of bayonets and the thunder of battle 
 will still, amid the peaceful fields and quiet 
 homes of men, at the faintest breath of some 
 martial strain, feel again the warlike fire re- 
 kindle, so indeed it would be hard for me to 
 keep silence when you ask me to speak of the 
 things which for many years I have tried to 
 love best the Catholic Church and the Ameri- 
 can Republic. Are they not the symbols of 
 what should be most dear to true and well- 
 born souls the love of God and the love of 
 one's fellow-men? 
 
 It is a habit with us to speak of the triumphs 
 and glories of the Church in ages which are 
 gone. We love to tell the story of her martyrs 
 and confessors, of her saints and founders of 
 religious orders; we dwell gladly on her mar- 
 
150 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 velous success in converting the barbarous 
 races that have grown into Christendom, in 
 purifying morals, in softening manners, in con- 
 secrating and protecting woman, in founding 
 schools, in preserving the treasures of classi- 
 cal literature, in fostering the arts; in leading 
 migratory tribes to choose fixed homes, to fell 
 the forest, drain the marsh, build cities and put 
 themselves under the rule of law. Her name 
 has indeed been associated at times, during the 
 lapse of nineteen hundred years, with things 
 upon which we cannot dwell with pleasure or ap- 
 proval, but her general course and influence have 
 made for righteousness, peace, charity, reverence, 
 chastity, obedience, mildness, modesty, kindli- 
 ness, and habits of cheerful industry. What she 
 has been able to do in other ages and other lands 
 she is still able to do for us here and now ; and 
 though we rise in dignity of being in propor- 
 tion to our power to live in thought in the past 
 and the future, yet since life is chiefly action, 
 our first concern is with the present. In the 
 Church there is an exhaustless fountain-head of 
 spiritual energy, since in her, as the Saviour 
 has taught us to believe, there abides the very 
 Spirit of God. But if this energy is to mani- 
 fest itself in the world, it can only be through 
 God-like men. To such it was intrusted in the 
 beginning, by such it was spread throughout 
 
CHURCH AND COUNTRY. 151 
 
 the earth, and by such alone can its divine heal- 
 ing be communicated to the sick and hungering 
 souls of the people. On us it depends whether 
 the sacred ark shall ride in safety, bearing the 
 holiest and most priceless treasures, on the ris- 
 ing waters of the modern democracy; whether 
 again as of old, the priest shall not merely point 
 the way to heaven, but be also a pioneer in all 
 the paths that lead to wider knowledge, truer 
 freedom, and more wholesome living. 
 
 Now, all the great things that mold and 
 transform human life religion, patriotism, 
 friendship, love, devotion to heroic men and 
 right causes must be cared for and followed 
 for themselves, and with all one's mind and 
 heart, or their power to strengthen, uplift, and 
 purify is lost. Shall we, the leaders of the 
 Church in America, be able to turn resolutely 
 from the false lights of momentary success, of 
 material progress, of pride in mere numbers 
 and showy buildings, to the inner sources of 
 power, to knowledge and wisdom, to purity 
 and love, to modesty and mildness? Shall we 
 be able to free ourselves from the awful pres- 
 sure of a public opinion which believes in noth- 
 ing but money and shrewdness as a means 
 to money an opinion that 
 
 " Hangs upon us with a weight 
 Heavy as frost and deep almost as life " ? 
 
152 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 Shall we be able to reach and maintain a 
 living and passionate faith in an estate higher 
 than that of men- a faith which shall make 
 us reverent, devout, patient, and self-denying; 
 which shall impel us to desire and labor for the 
 things that lead to life, and to put far away the 
 things that lead to destruction? If so, then in 
 making ourselves worthy to be called ministers 
 of Him who died for all, we shall find that we 
 have become capable of rendering the highest 
 services to the State of which we are citizens. 
 
 If we do not work for bread with our hands, 
 we are bound under penalty of becoming crimi- 
 nal, to labor with brain and heart, to strengthen, 
 purify, and enrich human life; and the basest of 
 those who fail in this are the false shepherds of 
 souls, who, having pledged themselves to the 
 care and nurture of the spirit, sink into indo- 
 lence and ignorance, while the people perish of 
 inanition or are devoured by the beast of prey 
 that lurks in each one's bosom. There must 
 be work of hand that men may live, and there 
 must be work of brain and heart that they may 
 live worthily and nobly. It is not necessary 
 that we should live, but it is necessary that, 
 being alive, we should live well; and hence 
 the tasks intrusted to the scholars, the teachers, 
 and the priests of a people are the highest and 
 most indispensable. The desire to teach, to 
 
CHURCH AND COUNTRY. 153 
 
 teach those who do not know it, the truth that 
 is freedom, the knowledge that is power, the 
 wisdom that is peace and joy, lies at the heart 
 of the purest and divinest yearnings to be of 
 help; and therefore the greatest teachers have 
 been and are the chief lovers and benefactors 
 of the race. 
 
 In whom should this yearning, as of a god, 
 be found if not in the Catholic priest whose 
 good fortune it is to labor for the salvation of 
 the souls and the temporal welfare of men in 
 the American Republic? 
 
 What has such power to make the noblest 
 efforts at once possible and effectual as the con- 
 sciousness of living in the midst of a free, gen- 
 erous, and brave people? What inducement to 
 make ourselves more and more fit for the work 
 we have chosen is so powerful as the sense of 
 success in accomplishing the task? What is so 
 good as to follow after high aims in the midst 
 of a people who are more alive than men are 
 elsewhere on earth ? 
 
 In many ways our country is dear to men 
 of many minds. Like a most richly endowed 
 soul, it has gifts for all who are not unworthy. 
 The millions who have been bound in the triple 
 chains of servitude, poverty, and ignorance feel, 
 as they put their feet on our shores and breathe 
 our air, that the night is past and the dawn is 
 
154 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 come. Here opportunity beckons, here occa- 
 sion waits, here hope invites, here the general 
 condition of things urges us to make ourselves 
 men. 
 
 Where else shall we find, I will not say, so 
 much tolerance, for tolerance implies evil, 
 implies necessity, implies indifference, but 
 so much good-will, so much loving-kindness, 
 so great readiness to go to the help of the 
 weak and suffering? Where else is so much 
 light thrown upon the whole life of the people? 
 And however offensive and even harmful the 
 glare which the public press flashes upon evil 
 deeds may be, yet is light not only the best 
 policeman, but the chief purifier and quickener, 
 the most fatal foe of filth and disease, whether 
 of body or of soul. Where else are all men so 
 given to the ways and arts of peace, so little 
 crazed by the bray of trumpets and the glitter 
 of steel, so little blinded by the flame of war- 
 like glory, which is fed by the gases of the 
 putrescent bodies of the slain? 
 
 We have no dynasty to defend with our 
 blood, no empire to be held together by great 
 standing armies, no religious quarrels which 
 we think it possible to settle by wager of 
 battle; yet is there no danger that we shall be- 
 come effeminate, for it requires a higher and 
 truer courage to live for one's country in a 
 
CHURCH AND CO UNTR Y. 155 
 
 right spirit than to die for it on the field of 
 carnage. 
 
 Where else is there a people so eager to 
 learn, so confident in the power of education 
 to transform individual and social life, so quick 
 to test whatever new thing may give promise 
 of help? Where else is property so safe, well- 
 being so widely diffused, woman so educated 
 and honored? Reasons enough, indeed, these 
 are for loving our country ; but those who love 
 may not be free from watchful and anxious 
 care, and the more priceless the treasure, the 
 more vigilant should be its guardians. History 
 is full of the stories of fallen republics. Those 
 of Athens and Rome and Venice flourished, 
 and then fell to ruin. Shall our own have the 
 same fate, or shall it, obedient to the heart 
 prayer and inmost desire of all noble souls, 
 endure while its mountains stand and its rivers 
 flow? 
 
 Only truth can make and keep individuals 
 free, and righteousness alone can serve as an 
 everlasting foundation of national liberty. In 
 vain our numbers multiply, in vain our wealth 
 accumulates, in vain our lines of commerce 
 weave themselves into a network that enmeshes 
 the globe, if we ourselves decay, if we lose firm 
 grasp of the spiritual verities which constitute 
 the worth and honor of human life. There are 
 
156 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 doubtless signs of degeneracy on many sides, 
 nor is there in this cause for surprise. 
 
 We have been successful to a marvelous de- 
 gree; and the tendency of success is to nourish 
 conceit and to undermine good sense. We have 
 become the richest of the nations ; and it is the 
 tendency of wealth to corrupt and harden the 
 heart. A great English writer says of Ameri- 
 cans : " This is their specialty ; this their one 
 gift to their race to show men how not to 
 worship, how never to be ashamed in the pres- 
 ence of anything " ; and in so far as there is truth 
 in his words, the source of the evil is to be 
 sought for chiefly in our uninterrupted success 
 and in our fabulous wealth. We are tempted 
 to consider the authority of gold as higher than 
 the authority of God, and a man's circumstances 
 as more important than the man himself. 
 
 Are not the foundations of the home grow- 
 ing weaker, and has not our popular education 
 failed to accomplish much that we had most 
 earnestly hoped for and expected? " The idea 
 of a general education/' says Ruskin, " which 
 is to fit everybody to be Emperor of Russia, 
 and provoke a boy, whatever he be, to want to 
 be something else, and wherever he was born 
 to think it a disgrace to die, is the most entirely 
 and directly diabolic of all the countless stu- 
 pidities into which the British nation has of 
 
CHURCH AND COUNTRY. 157 
 
 late been betrayed by its avarice and irreli- 
 gion." In this matter, at least, there seems to 
 be something like an alliance between the 
 British nation and the American people. 
 
 But true thoughts are thoughts that inspire 
 hope and courage; and whatever leads us to 
 think meanly of ourselves or of our country is 
 to be put away as evil. Good men, like good 
 books, are those that fill us with confidence in 
 the triumph of truth and justice and love, and 
 so help us to conquer in the battle against 
 doubt and sensuality and greed. Great souls 
 are brave souls, and the wise understand that 
 it is better to find fault with one's self than 
 with one's country or one's age. There is no 
 joy but in strength strength of body, strength 
 of mind, strength of heart. Weakness is the 
 true opposite of virtue, which, if it be not 
 strength, loses its name and essence. If we 
 would influence and improve men, if we would 
 ourselves grow better, we should cherish brave 
 thoughts, speak brave words, do brave deeds. 
 If we are lovers and doers of good, we must 
 make ourselves also amiable; for else we shall 
 easily teach men to distrust or even to hate the 
 best things. The unlovableness of the pious 
 does more harm to religion than the mocking 
 of infidels. 
 
 For myself, the more I learn to know the 
 
158 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 past, the more confident I become that God is 
 still leading His children to higher and holier 
 things. It is His world, and not the devil's. 
 He is with us, and why should we grow de- 
 spondent or afraid ? I envy none but the young, 
 but those who in the full vigor of early man- 
 hood salute the century that now opens the 
 gates of a wider and fairer future for mankind. 
 Wordsworth, standing on the threshold of the 
 nineteenth century, when all men's minds were 
 aglow with thoughts and hopes of liberty and 
 fraternity, exclaimed: 
 
 " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was very heaven." 
 
 Nor was he wrongly inspired; for though 
 our century has not accomplished all that the 
 poet dreamed, yet when its history is summed, 
 it shall stand forth as the one in which the 
 Christian peoples made the greatest and most 
 real progress in knowledge, in freedom, and in 
 power. Had we nothing to set to its account 
 but the growth and consolidation of the Ameri- 
 can Republic and the revivification and spread 
 of the Catholic religion throughout the English- 
 speaking world, it were enough. And when I am 
 tempted to envy the young, and to cry out that 
 youth be given me again, it is not that I may 
 be bathed afresh, as in my early days, in the 
 
CHURCH AND COUNTRY. v 159 
 
 golden light of new-born worlds, when all the 
 hills were clothed in mystic hues and all the 
 valleys filled with flowers, when the earth it- 
 self seemed ready to break forth into a uni- 
 versal shout of joy, into an all-bewitching smile 
 of beauty. Not for this, nor for the free heart 
 and the mind at ease that recreate a paradise, 
 would I be young again, but that I might bend 
 the full force of pristine vigor to the upbuild- 
 ing of my own being; that I might reduce my 
 whole endowment to faculty, and having made 
 myself a man, might devote myself to the ser- 
 vice of the Catholic religion and the American 
 Republic in the new century, which bears omens 
 of mightier conflicts and nobler triumphs than 
 men have ever known. 
 
X. 
 
 LABOR AND CAPITAL. 
 
 * I V HE people of America have many things 
 -*" to be thankful for. The material re- 
 sources of our country are so great that as yet 
 neither we nor the world at large have been 
 able to measure their extent. Hidden store- 
 houses of wealth are continually being re- 
 vealed to us. We are energetic, industrious, 
 brave, and untiring. We are convinced of the 
 supremacy of mind over matter, and we make 
 ceaseless and increasing efforts to educate the 
 spiritual faculties of the whole people. We are 
 averse to war and believe that disputes be- 
 tween nations, as between individuals, should 
 be settled by discussion and arbitration. We 
 are opposed to standing armies, believing that 
 the national wealth and intelligence should be 
 devoted to the improvement and culture of the 
 citizens, and not to conquest and destruction. 
 We have no powerful neighbor to repel or over- 
 throw. Our comparative exemption from war 
 has made possible the rapid development of our 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. l6l 
 
 country. The love of peace, which is a charac- 
 teristic of the American people, manifests itself 
 also in religious good-will and toleration. As 
 dynastic wars are for us out of the question, 
 so are religious wars. The spirit of forbear- 
 ance and helpfulness manifests itself in our 
 customs and habits as in our legislation. In 
 no other country is property more secure; in 
 no other is it so generally diffused. Nowhere 
 else is opportunity for woman as for man so 
 universal; nowhere is there such faith in the 
 national destiny; nowhere has the fusion of 
 peoples differing in many and important re- 
 spects been brought about so rapidly or so 
 satisfactorily; nowhere are the multitudes so 
 eager to learn or so quick to avail themselves 
 of new discoveries and inventions. The mil- 
 lions from foreign lands who have founded 
 homes here are making other millions in the 
 Old World thankful that America exists. We 
 are indeed a source of hope and confidence to 
 all, in whatever part of the earth, who love jus- 
 tice and liberty, who believe in a higher and 
 more blessed social and religious future for 
 mankind. Already we are the possessors of 
 greater wealth than any other nation possesses 
 or has ever possessed; and though a few men, 
 whose names stare us in the face from the pages 
 of the newspapers, have fortunes that seem al- 
 ii 
 
1 62 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 most fabulous, there is diffused among the 
 masses of the people a well-being and comfort 
 such as exists in no other land. This may be 
 perceived in the housing of the people, in their 
 clothing, in the wholesomeness of their food, 
 and above all in the spirit of courage and hope- 
 fulness which pervades our whole life. 
 
 There is no gulf between the rich and the 
 poor, but a gradation of generally distributed 
 possessions. 
 
 Nevertheless it is obvious that when there is 
 question of American life, a merely optimistic 
 view is a shallow and false view. There are 
 great and widespread evils among us, as also 
 tendencies which if allowed to take their course 
 will lead to worse evil. TheVe is the universal 
 political corruption. There is the diminished 
 sense of the sacredness of property. There is 
 the loosening of the marriage tie and the sink- 
 ing of the influence of the home. There is a 
 weakening of the power to apprehend spiritual 
 truth, and a consequent lowering of the stand- 
 ards of value, a falling away from the vital 
 principles of religion, even while we profess to 
 believe in religion. There is, indeed, enough 
 and more than enough to keep all who cherish 
 exalted ideas of the worth of human life and 
 who love America lowly-minded and watchful. 
 
 One of the most certain signs of decadence 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 163 
 
 is a failure of the will, and one might think that 
 we are threatened with this. Our ability to 
 react against abuses is growing feebler. The 
 social organism is so vast and so complex that 
 it seems hopeless to attempt to interfere, and 
 so we permit things to take their course, abdi- 
 cating the freedom and the power of will in the 
 presence of an idol which we call Destiny. The 
 more public opinion is shaped by the ideals of 
 evolution as the supreme law of life, the less 
 capable we become of bringing reason and con- 
 science to bear on human affairs, of recogniz- 
 ing God's presence in the world, and holding 
 to truth and love as something higher and 
 mightier than a universe of matter. 
 
 The course of things is, indeed, but partially 
 subject to human control. Human progress 
 nevertheless depends chiefly on human intelli- 
 gence and energy, which, if they cannot create, 
 can shape and guide. The one means of pro- 
 moting the welfare of man is labor or effort. 
 It alone can develop his mind, can form his 
 character, can protect him from the blind forces 
 of nature, and provide for him what is neces- 
 sary for his comfort and dignity. The end of 
 labor is the strengthening and enrichment of 
 life, and the best measure of its value is the 
 effect it produces on man, individually and col- 
 lectively. The end is not abundance of riches, 
 
1 64 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 but noble life, healthful, pure, intelligent, brave, 
 and loving. No wealth can enrich the brutal 
 and the base; no possessions can purchase joy 
 or peace for the slaves of appetite. Where right 
 human life is led, a life of faith, hope, and 
 love, of thought and self-control, of industry 
 and self-denial, to live with as few material 
 and animal wants as possible ennobles man. 
 To learn to live with as little as possible and 
 to waste nothing that is needful is the sum of 
 practical wisdom. Socrates was happy in think- 
 ing how many things the world is full of which 
 he did not need. Simple pleasures are the best. 
 Expensive luxuries harm those who indulge in 
 them, and bring misery to many. The highest 
 ambition springs not from the desire to rise in 
 the world, but from the will to lead an honest 
 helpful life, whatever one's circumstances. One 
 may be a wise, good, and happy man, or a 
 foolish, wicked, and miserable man, whether 
 rich or poor. We must have food, shelter, 
 and clothing that we may live; but we should 
 live not to be fed and housed, but to grow 
 in knowledge and virtue, in helpfulness and 
 holiness. 
 
 For the most fortunate men life is full of 
 difficulties and troubles ; for the poorest it may 
 be filled with light, peace, and blessedness. 
 
 To be a man is to think as well as to work, 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 165 
 
 and the more intelligence there is in the work 
 the better shall it be for the workers. 
 
 Reason as well as religion impels those who 
 work with the head and those who work with 
 the hands to cooperation, not to conflict. The 
 interests of both are best served when they are 
 friends. If labor is not directed by ability it is 
 sterile. The notion that those who work with 
 the hands are the sole producers of wealth is a 
 fallacy which should deceive no one. The vast 
 increase of wealth in the modern world of in- 
 dustry and commerce is the result to a far 
 greater degree of ability than of labor. It has 
 been produced chiefly by the comparatively few 
 men of exceptional gifts, who have invented 
 machines, organized enterprises, opened mar- 
 kets, and thus given work and sustenance to 
 millions who but for them would never have 
 been born. Capital itself, which makes our 
 great undertakings feasible, is largely stored 
 ability ability embodied and made perma- 
 nently fruitful in the means of production and 
 distribution. Columbus did not sail his ships, 
 but had it not been for his genius they would 
 not have sailed at all; and had the mutinous 
 crew thrown him overboard, they would have 
 drifted to death and the New World had not 
 been discovered. The natural sources of wealth 
 had existed in America for countless ages, but 
 
1 66 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 the savages who dwelt here lived in poverty and 
 wretchedness because they lacked men of ability 
 to lead them to the conquest of the riches of 
 whose existence they were ignorant. 
 
 Capital is like an exquisite musical instru- 
 ment valueless if there is no one who knows 
 the secret of its uses, and the men of ability 
 who know how to use capital wisely are as rare 
 as excellent musicians. Laborers may be com- 
 pared to soldiers, who conquer only when they 
 are disciplined, equipped, and commanded by 
 men of ability. It has been calculated that 
 two-thirds of the wealth produced in the nine- 
 teenth century were due to ability, and but one- 
 third to the work of those who toil with their 
 hands. This applies to spiritual not less than 
 to material wealth. The great advances of 
 mankind, in whatever sphere, have been made 
 through the genius and under the leadership 
 of a few highly endowed individuals the 
 prophets of better things, the subduers of the 
 foes of man, the pioneers of progress. Land 
 and labor are the primary sources of wealth, 
 but its production in the modern world is due 
 chiefly to ability, working with capital, which 
 it more than any other agency has created. 
 Nothing is more wonderful than the hand, but 
 its almost miraculous power is due to the fact 
 that it is the instrument of the brain. 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. l6/ 
 
 In former times the men of ability were 
 drawn to devote themselves to war or govern- 
 ment or philosophic speculation, but now more 
 than ever before they throw themselves into in- 
 dustry and commerce, making the pursuit of 
 riches their life-aim. This is the career which 
 seems to promise the most immediate and the 
 most substantial results; and the really able 
 men are so few and the work to be done is so 
 immeasurable and so complex, that the demand 
 for these exceptional individuals is greater than 
 the supply. Every great enterprise, every great 
 business concern, needs for its success what they 
 alone can give. Hence they command salaries 
 which seem to be exorbitant; hence they grow 
 rich, become capitalists and form combinations 
 of capital, which appear to many to be a menace 
 to the freedom and welfare of the whole people. 
 Competition, which begins as a struggle for ex- 
 istence, finally becomes a desire to crush and 
 dominate, becomes a warfare, which if less 
 bloody is not less horrible or cruel than that 
 which is carried on with shot and shell. As in 
 battle the generals, however humane they be, 
 think only of victory and are heedless of the 
 suffering and the loss of life, so in the struggle 
 for industrial and commercial supremacy, the 
 men of ability, the leaders and capitalists are 
 wholly bent on the attainment of their ends, 
 
168 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 and easily lose sight of the principles of justice 
 and humanity. 
 
 It is this that makes the organization of 
 workmen into labor- and trades- unions inevit- 
 able and indispensable. The consciousness that 
 if they do not protect and defend themselves 
 they will be ground by the wheels of a vast 
 machine or reduced to a condition little better 
 than that of slaves, compels them to unite lest 
 they be deprived of the common rights of man. 
 In ancient times laborers were slaves, it is not 
 long ago since multitudes of them in our own 
 country were slaves; and however the fact be 
 disguised, the natural tendency of greed, of the 
 love and pursuit of material things as the chief 
 good of life, is to deaden the sense of justice 
 and humanity, to make the strong, the men of 
 ability, feel that they have the right to do 
 whatever they are able to do. They are not 
 necessarily unjust or cruel, but they become the 
 victims of a false belief and the agents of a 
 system which is as pitiless as a law of nature. 
 
 One of the chief forces by which this ten- 
 dency is held in check is the religious principle 
 and feeling that men are the children of God, 
 and have inalienable rights; that work should 
 enable the worker to lead a life not unworthy 
 of a rational being; that riches which are pro- 
 cured at the cost of human misery and degra- 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 169 
 
 dation are accursed; that what constitutes the 
 proper value of individuals and of nations is 
 spiritual and not material ; that there is eternal 
 wrath in store for all who trample upon moral 
 and intellectual good that they may add to their 
 possessions. These truths are accepted by the 
 public opinion of the civilized world, and hence 
 there is a general sympathy with laborers in 
 their efforts to obtain justice and to improve 
 their condition. All who observe and reflect 
 recognize that their lot is hard, that they bear 
 an undue share of the burdens of life, that they 
 are often forced to do work which is destructive 
 of health and happiness, and that they are ex- 
 posed to greater vicissitudes of fortune than 
 others. 
 
 All this, however, would accomplish little for 
 their improvement if they themselves remained 
 indifferent, if they did not organize, if they did 
 not discuss and come to a fuller consciousness 
 of their grievances, if they did not by strikes 
 and other lawful means make strenuous efforts 
 to increase their wages or to prevent them from 
 falling, if they did not agitate for fewer hours 
 of work and whatever else may give them 
 leisure and opportunity to cultivate their spirit- 
 ual natures and thus to make themselves cap- 
 able of enjoying life in a rational and Christian 
 way. Economic laws, which are immutable, 
 
170 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 make it impossible that wages should rise be- 
 yond a given point, or that wealth should be 
 so distributed as to make all men rich. The 
 multitude are poor and can never be rich. It 
 is indeed fortunate that it is impossible that the 
 masses of mankind should ever be able to lead 
 an idle and luxurious life. It is a law of human 
 nature that man shall work and abstain, if it 
 is to be well with him ; that to do nothing and 
 enjoy much is impossible. Political Economy, 
 like government, rests on a basis of morality. 
 Moral character alone can give a man self-re- 
 spect, courage, hope, cheerfulness, and power 
 of endurance. Hence the laborers, and all who 
 identify themselves with their cause, should 
 have a care first of all that they be true men 
 provident, self-restrained, kindly, sober, frugal, 
 and helpful ; and that this may be possible, also 
 religious. The foe of labor is not capital, but 
 ignorance and vice. In the whole English- 
 speaking world, at least, its worst enemy is 
 drink. More than a combination of all em- 
 ployers, the saloon has power to impoverish 
 and degrade workingmen. In their own ranks 
 the traitors are those who preach irreligion and 
 anarchy. The influence of Christianity has 
 been and is the chief power which has brought 
 the world to recognize the rights of the en- 
 slaved, the poor, the weak, of all who are heavy- 
 
LABOR AND CAPITAL. 171 
 
 laden and over-burdened. It aroused and it 
 alone can sustain enthusiasm for humanity. If 
 this faith could die out, what would remain but 
 the law of the survival of the fittest, that is, of 
 the strongest, the most unscrupulous, the most 
 reckless of the sufferings and sorrows of their 
 fellow-men? These are the men who prosper 
 among savages, in barbarous states, and in 
 periods of anarchy. 
 
 But it is not conceivable that the civilized 
 world should turn from the principles which 
 Christ proclaimed, whose development and dif- 
 fusion must in the end substitute for universal 
 competition the war of all upon all the co- 
 operation of all with all, not merely or chiefly 
 for the winning of the bread that nourishes the 
 body, but above all for the spread of the higher 
 life of truth and love, of purity and goodness. 
 In America, assuredly, we have good reason to 
 take a hopeful view of the future. No foreign 
 power can offer hindrance to our progress in 
 the fulfillment of our God-given tasks, which 
 are not only to secure equal rights, liberties, and 
 opportunities to all the people, but so to educate 
 and inspire all the inhabitants of this great con- 
 tinent that they may all work together to shape 
 here a nobler manhood and womanhood than 
 the world has ever seen. 
 
XL 
 WORK AND LEISURE. 
 
 IFE is energy: we feel ourselves only in 
 *-' doing, and when we inquire what a man's 
 value is we ask what is his performance. The 
 deed is the proof of faith, the test of character, 
 and the standard of worth. To do nothing is to 
 be nobody, and to have done is to have been. 
 True work fixes attention, develops ability, and 
 enriches life ; it strengthens the mind, forms the 
 will, and inures to patience and endurance. It 
 is what we do and suffer to overcome nature's 
 indifference and hostility to man's well-being 
 and progress; it is the means whereby what is 
 not ourselves is taken hold of and made to do 
 us service. True work, then, is furtherance of 
 life, and it cannot be rightly understood unless 
 it be looked at in this light. To know the worth 
 of work we must consider first of all what is its 
 effect upon the worker. If it warps, cripples, 
 and degrades him it is not true work, though 
 he should thereby amass vast wealth or gain 
 great reputation. That work is best which helps 
 
WORK AND LEISURE. 173 
 
 to make men and women wise and virtuous; 
 and that which breeds vice is worst, is little better 
 than idleness, which is evil because it breeds 
 vice. The political and social conditions which 
 are most favorable to work that elevates and 
 enriches and purifies human life approach 
 nearest to the ideal; the political and social 
 conditions which involve the physical deterio- 
 ration and the mental and moral degradation 
 of multitudes are barbarous, and unless they are 
 improved must lead to the ruin of the State. 
 From this point of view, which is the only true 
 point of view, our present economic and com- 
 mercial systems are subversive of civilization. 
 They sacrifice men to money ; wisdom and vir- 
 tue to cheap production and the amassing of 
 capital. They foster greed in the stronger and 
 hate in the weaker. They drive the nations to 
 competitive struggles which are as cruel as war, 
 and in the final result more disastrous; for 
 their tendency is to make the rich vulgar and 
 heartless, and the poor reckless and vicious. As 
 stratagems and lies are considered lawful in 
 war, so in the warfare of commercial compe- 
 tition opinion leans to the view that whatever 
 may be done with impunity is right. The adul- 
 'teration of food and drink, the watering of 
 stocks, the bribing of legislators, the crushing 
 of weaker concerns, the enforced idleness of 
 
174 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 thousands who are thereby driven to despair 
 and starvation, are not looked upon as lying 
 within the domain of morals, any more than the 
 shooting of man in battle is considered a ques- 
 tion of morality. The degradation and ruin 
 of innumerable individuals are implications of 
 the law of competition, just as in the struggle 
 for existence there is a world-wide crushing and 
 destruction of the weak by the strong. On the 
 other hand, the capitalists, the captains in the 
 armies of laborers, are, under the present sys- 
 tem, driven like the workmen themselves. The 
 necessity of ceaseless vigilance and effort keeps 
 them under continual strain. Like those they 
 employ, they become parts of a machine, and 
 therefore partial and mechanical men. The 
 sense of inner freedom dies within them, the 
 source of the purest joy runs dry, and they are 
 made incapable of thinking great thoughts or 
 of walking in the light of high ideals. They 
 are the victims of their own success, and, hav- 
 ing great possessions, are poor in themselves. 
 The work, then, which we are doing, and the 
 conditions under which we are doing it, whether 
 we be rich or poor, are unfavorable to the best 
 kind of life. 
 
 We are the slaves instead of being the masters 
 of our work; we have forgotten that work is 
 a means and not an end ; as the money for which 
 
WORK AND LEISURE. 175 
 
 we work is a means and not an end. Believing 
 that work and riches are the ends of life, we 
 work with feverish hurry, and our greed grows 
 as our possessions increase. God, says Eurip- 
 ides, hates busy-bodies and those who do too 
 much. We are too busy, we do too much. And 
 the temper our restless activity creates makes 
 us incapable of leisure, which is the end of 
 work. The man is worth, not what his work is 
 worth, but what his leisure is worth. By his 
 work he gains a livelihood, but his leisure is 
 given him that he may learn how to live, that 
 he may acquire a taste for the best things, may 
 acquaint himself with what is truest and most 
 beautiful in literature and art, in science and 
 religion, may come to a knowledge of how he 
 may find himself, not chiefly in the narrow 
 circles of his private interests, but in the wide 
 world of noble thought and generous emotion. 
 For every man who rises above the vulgar life 
 is divided into two parts, the one to be devoted 
 to means, the other to ends. On the one side 
 he places the things of practical concern, trade, 
 business, and politics; on the other the things 
 which are ends in themselves, the upbuilding 
 of his own being with the help of religion, phil- 
 osophy, science, and art. Whoever permits the 
 occupations whereby he gains a livelihood to 
 absorb his whole thought and energy is neces- 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 sarily an incomplete man. He lacks openness 
 of mind, breadth of view, the sense of beauty, 
 and the disinterested love of knowledge. His 
 perception of spiritual truth is dimmed, and he 
 is made incapable of the purest and most gener- 
 ous emotions. To give him something of all 
 this, leisure, if rightly used, may serve; and 
 hence I say the man is worth what his leisure 
 is worth. 
 
 But who makes a wise use of leisure? The 
 pleasures to which it is devoted are dissipations 
 rather than recreations. The theatre might be 
 a school of refinement and taste, but it is, in 
 fact, rather a school of coarseness and vulgarity. 
 As for the club, Cicero said, nearly two thou- 
 sand years ago, that those who have no love of 
 study join clubs. The dinner habit is as fatal 
 to physical and moral health as the newspaper 
 habit is to intellectual culture. Sir William 
 Temple thought life would be endurable were it 
 not for its pleasures; and so our busy Ameri- 
 cans feel that it would be bearable were it not 
 for its leisures, in which they bore and are 
 bored. 
 
 As for those who do the rough work of the 
 world, fewer hours of toil will hardly be of ben- 
 efit to them, if their leisure be spent in saloons 
 and in the company of the vicious. Work 
 must be done, work of hand, that we may 
 
WORK AND LEISURE. 
 
 have the means of living ; work of head, that our 
 life may be worth having; and this is the nobler 
 work. A man's importance is determined by 
 his usefulness, and the most useful are not those 
 who provide food for the body, but those who 
 nourish and exalt the spiritual faculties ; as the 
 greatest people is not the richest people, but the 
 people that has the greatest number of noble, 
 generous, fair, and enlightened men and women. 
 Such men and women are found only where 
 leisure is looked upon as a heavenly gift, as an 
 opportunity to upbuild one's being, to prepare 
 one's self for complete living. 
 
 12 
 
XII. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 
 
 Put pain from out the world, what room were left 
 For thanks to God, for love to man ? 
 
 Browning. 
 
 / TT N HERE is hope and courage in the air of 
 -* America. No other people has carried 
 optimism to such extremes. We refuse to listen 
 to talk of failure, or to entertain despondent 
 thoughts, holding nothing impossible. This 
 splendid confidence is found not alone in our 
 attitude toward material things. In brief time 
 we have subdued a continent and amassed in- 
 credible wealth, but we feel certain that we shall 
 be able also to overcome ignorance, poverty, 
 crime, and evil of whatever kind. We believe 
 that this is God's world and that we are His 
 most fortunate children. Is not America a 
 happy land, where good and better days are now, 
 and yet to come? 
 
 If we cannot shut our eyes to sorrow and 
 misery we look to find in them some soul of 
 goodness. As darkness is light's relief, death 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 179 
 
 life's foil, so we like to think that evil exists 
 that we may be impelled to learn to know and 
 love the truth and beauty which are everywhere. 
 In our optimism there is doubtless something 
 of the Israelite's satisfaction with this present 
 world, of his delight in a land flowing with milk 
 and honey; but there is also in it much of his 
 moral earnestness, of his belief in righteous- 
 ness, in work done well and done in a Godlike 
 spirit. We are not dreamers, but doers; and 
 genuine doers are brave and cheerful and con- 
 fident. Those who feel it were better never to 
 have been born, feel too that to do nothing is 
 happiness. But for us he who does nothing is 
 nobody ; and in our deepest heart we understand 
 that those alone who act in obedience to the 
 voice of duty really do anything worth while: 
 the essential good being moral and religious, 
 nothing else having power to create in the 
 human breast a harmonious world or to give 
 lasting joy to man. 
 
 The things which have value are innumer- 
 able, and the lacking of any of them we may 
 call evil. Whatever satisfies the reason, the 
 heart, the imagination, whatever ministers to 
 health and comfort, whatever offers opportunity 
 to increase knowledge or power has worth. The 
 useful, the agreeable, the beautiful, the true are 
 valuable ; but that which is indispensable, with- 
 
ISO SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 out which all else is vain, is moral good, what 
 conscience says ought to be, what we recognize 
 as duty. 
 
 Duties are of three kinds: duties of self- 
 respect, of justice, and of benevolence. Self- 
 respect is violated by lying and sensuality; 
 justice by whatever harms the rights of another, 
 whether rights of property or of reputation; 
 benevolence by failure to succor our fellows in 
 their corporal and spiritual needs. To be a man 
 one must rise above merely animal existence, 
 must reverence the reason, the soul which makes 
 him human, and must therefore be truthful, 
 temperate, and chaste; and since humanity can 
 come into being and prosper only in society, he 
 must fulfill the social duties of justice and benev- 
 olence. These are principles which all men ac- 
 cept in the inner sanctuary of conscience, and 
 against which only those who are blinded by 
 passion or led astray by a sophistical spirit will 
 attempt to argue. Remove from a city drunken- 
 ness and prostitution, theft and dishonesty, lying 
 and deceit, the hardness and inhumanity which 
 greed and sensuality produce, and you have a 
 happy community one in which peace and or- 
 der, self-respect and justice, sympathy and lov- 
 ing-kindness prevail; one in which woman and 
 the child are held in honor, in which old age is 
 accompanied by reverence and service, in which 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. l8l 
 
 the poor and the sick are relieved and consoled. 
 And yet in such a community there would still 
 be evil, there would still be suffering, sorrow, 
 and death. 
 
 Why, then, if we could suppress moral evil 
 would the mystery of pain still remain? If a 
 wholly satisfactory explanation of this problem 
 could be given, all the weary weight of this un- 
 intelligible world would be lifted from our 
 minds and hearts. 
 
 If it is not possible to sweep this black cloud 
 from the heaven of human consciousness, we 
 may at least see rays of light gleam through its 
 rifts. If we look, first of all, into its impene- 
 trable centre where the darkness is most dense, 
 into the realms of moral evil, of sin, we may 
 understand that in a world in which no one could 
 do wrong, no one could do right; that if men 
 are to have freedom of will, without which 
 they would not be men, they must have the 
 power to abuse it. What is the highest thing in 
 the world, that which properly constitutes hu- 
 manity ? It is character. Now character cannot 
 be created, it must be formed in the midst of 
 temptation and struggle, in the heat of battle, 
 where, if there is victory, there must also be the 
 possibility of defeat. God may create an inno- 
 cent being, but not a perfect character. That 
 human goodness may come forth in full power 
 
1 82 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 and form there must be free choice, there must 
 be the conflict by which alone moral energy is 
 produced ; and if conflict, therefore pain, suffer- 
 ing, and failure. And is not a world in which 
 there is much wickedness and sorrow, but 
 which is also filled with heroic and Godlike men 
 and women, higher than one in which there 
 should be nothing superior to the innocence and 
 ignorance of childish natures? 
 
 Of the Captain of our Salvation, the inspired 
 word says : He was made perfect through suf- 
 ferings. There is indeed no other way that leads 
 to moral excellence. Self-denial, the bearing of 
 the cross, the wearing of the thorny crown, the 
 gibes and mocks of the rabble, the consenting to 
 death rather than to wrong these are the 
 means whereby character is built, whereby saint- 
 liness is made to spring in the soul, whereby the 
 world is redeemed. We are all apprentices, and 
 suffering is our great teacher and master. A 
 man is worth what he has borne. They who 
 have not passed nights of bitter anguish, who 
 have not moistened their bread with tears, know 
 not the heavenly powers. None are wise who 
 have not received the baptism of sorrow. In 
 luxurious climates, where man has nothing to 
 do but to eat and sleep, he is little more than an 
 animal. 
 
 .What is the universal law of progress but 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 183 
 
 struggle, effort, labor? And what is this but 
 pain? If there were no obstacles how should 
 there be energy and courage? If Nature pre- 
 sented no difficulties how should man be made 
 intelligent? Pain is danger's signal. It floats 
 above the entrance of the haunts of vice and 
 shame; it waves for the glutton, the drunkard, 
 the adulterer, the tyrant, for criminals of every 
 type. On it is inscribed in letters which none 
 but the blind can fail to read : The wages of sin 
 is death. 
 
 Suffering is the mother of wisdom, of pity, 
 of mercy, of the most generous moods and the 
 most tender emotions. They who have never 
 suffered are unfeeling as well as ignorant. The 
 young are cruel because they have not been 
 civilized by sorrow; and they whom sorrow 
 hardens or depraves were ignoble from the 
 start. What joy is there, higher than that of 
 children, which does not derive its fine flavor 
 from the memory of hardships borne and diffi- 
 culties overcome? We cannot feel that any- 
 thing is properly ours unless we have made it 
 our own, by industry, patience, perseverance, 
 and foresight, by self-denial and courage. 
 Nothing we inherit rightly belongs to us unless 
 we re-act upon it, suffer for it. 
 
 Evil is the foe we have to fight, and by fight- 
 ing, convert to means of good. By such combat 
 
1 84 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. * 
 
 alone is advance made possible. All progress, 
 intellectual, moral, and material, is through 
 conflict with ignorance, passion, and the obsti- 
 nacy of nature. From less to more, from evil 
 to good. This is the law of human develop- 
 ment, individual and social. 
 
 But it is in vain that we appeal to philosophy 
 to persuade ourselves that evil is but a means to 
 good, and that all is well. In such a world as 
 this, indeed, good and ill are so intertwined and 
 blended, that we cannot imagine them existing 
 in separateness ; but none the less they are dis- 
 tinct and opposite. The ideal which must for- 
 ever invite us is that of a society in which there 
 shall be no sin nor sorrow nor wrong. To the 
 coming of this kingdom of heaven on earth the 
 noblest look; to bring it nearer the most gen- 
 erous devote all their strength. This is their 
 aim, whether they put their trust in the im- 
 provements of institutions or in evolution or 
 in education or in religion. The object is to 
 overcome and suppress whatever is hurtful to 
 man, for we measure all values by human stan- 
 dards; and as we should not think storms, 
 earthquakes, and floods evil, if they wrought 
 no harm to man, so we could not believe God 
 himself to be good if He were not good to man. 
 
 Wide and deep as life is life's curse and woe. 
 Millions still believe that those alone are wise 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 185 
 
 who strive to destroy the will to live, and who 
 desire to sink back into the unconscious; that 
 the best is not to be born, or being born, at once 
 to die. But this religion of despair is as foreign 
 to Christian souls as it is to right reason. We 
 know well all life's sadness, all its vanity and 
 misery ; but we know also its joy and sweetness, 
 the infinite possibilities it opens to us since the 
 Eternal Father is but the perfect Life. 
 
 In our great cities we see the ruin wrought 
 by heartlessness and greed, by drunkenness and 
 prostitution, by corrupt politicians and gamblers, 
 desolation worse than that caused by famine, 
 pest, and war (for the moral evil is blacker and 
 the causes more permanent) ; yet are we not 
 disheartened but rather incited to new efforts 
 to save bodies and souls from the human devils, 
 whose existence no man or woman can doubt. 
 They are the foes of life, and we are life's lovers 
 and defenders. As they help the animal and the 
 fiend in the breast to kill the man, we appeal 
 to the man to stand forth a living soul, breathed 
 on by God. 
 
 The opportunities of laymen for religious 
 work are in some respects greater than those 
 of priests. In the manifold relations they have 
 with one another, in their social intercourse, in 
 their business, means for doing good are given 
 them which are granted more sparingly to the 
 
1 86 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 clergyman. If we trace the history of conver- 
 sions, we shall find in many instances that they 
 are due to the silent influence of a layman or of 
 some gentle and pure-hearted woman. How 
 often have churches and schools been established 
 because two or three devoted families have be- 
 lieved and made it possible. One might think it 
 almost tragical that the masses should be shut 
 out from the world of high thought and noble 
 emotion which lies in the great literatures; but 
 is it not still more tragical that the multitudes 
 who heard Jesus gladly, who are ahungered and 
 athirst for God, should be so little acquainted 
 with the wealth of joy and love and strength 
 there is in Catholic faith? 
 
 This must be so, so long as they remain but 
 passive members of the Church of the Church 
 which needs the hearts and minds and energies 
 of all its children, whose welfare and progress 
 depend on the moral condition and spiritual ac- 
 tivity, not of the priesthood alone, but of all 
 Catholics. It is one of the glories of America 
 that here every man and woman may, if they 
 will, find fruitful work to do. This is one of 
 the things that make it the most attractive of 
 all lands, drawing to itself the millions from all 
 the earth. In the Catholic Church, too, there is 
 work for every man and woman ; and if oppor- 
 tunity is denied to anyone, it is not because the 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PAIN. 1 87 
 
 Church is not wide and great and rich enough, 
 endowed as she is with the treasures of the 
 mind and heart of Christ, but because those 
 who happen for the time to shape her course 
 and policy, are narrow and unintelligent. A 
 more living participation of all Catholics in the 
 work of the Church is one of our most urgent 
 needs, and whoever might have power to awaken 
 in them a longing for this larger and higher 
 life, and open a way for them in the Church to 
 exercise an influence in the things which concern 
 man's permanent and most essential interests is 
 the leader whom we should all hail with delight 
 and follow with enthusiasm. What brilliant 
 examples of enlightened and beneficent lay ac- 
 tion in Catholic affairs we have had in the nine- 
 teenth century! It was O'Connell who led the 
 Catholics of Ireland, and I may say of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking world, out of the bondage of the 
 penal laws. Mallinkrodt and Windthorst were 
 the captains of the hosts that triumphed in the 
 Kultur Kampf. Goerres more than any other 
 man brought about the Catholic revival in Ger- 
 many nearly a hundred years ago. In France 
 Joseph de Maistre and Chateaubriand reawak- 
 ened enthusiasm for the Church which seemed 
 to have perished in the general ruin wrought by 
 the Revolution. Brownson is the most vigorous 
 writer who has advocated Catholic principles 
 
1 88 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 in America. In England Dr. Ward, the most 
 loyal and devoted of believers, surpasses Car- 
 dinal Newman in metaphysical insight and in 
 logical cogency. How nobly Ozanam and Mon- 
 talembert served the cause of religion! What 
 these have done, why should not many do, ac- 
 cording to the measure of their gifts? 
 
XIII. 
 
 AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE. 
 
 [Address delivered at the Altgeld Memorial Meeting, 
 April 20, 1902.] 
 
 ' I V HE disinterested sympathy which we feel 
 - for genuine men is a testimony to our 
 own worth, for it proves our faith in character 
 as the paramount good, the solid foundation of 
 man's likeness to God. When we think of the 
 dead whom we have known and loved, we think 
 not of their strength or beauty of body, not 
 of their wealth or position, not of the circum- 
 stances of their lives, but we think of the self 
 that made them what they were of their spirit, 
 of the intellectual and moral habits which made 
 them wise, brave, true, loving, and helpful. 
 They may have lived in poverty, in feeble 
 health, in prison; they may have suffered cal- 
 umny and persecution; they may have died as 
 malefactors; but if in them there was a divine 
 something, an utter devotion to any vital truth 
 or principle, a sacred and disinterested enthu- 
 siasm for some good cause, an unwavering and 
 unwearying pursuit of ends which are forever 
 
SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 right, their memory is safe. The clouds shall 
 break away and the light which guided them 
 shall shine for thousands; and even their ene- 
 mies shall learn to admire and be grateful. 
 
 In assembling to honor the memory of Gov- 
 ernor Altgeld, to profess our faith in his per- 
 sonal worth and in the value of what he has 
 said and done, we honor ourselves, for there is 
 no better proof of noble nature than apprecia- 
 tiveness of noble men. 
 
 To be drawn to a genuine man it is not neces- 
 sary that without reserve we accept his opinions 
 or approve all his actions. All that is required 
 is faith in his intelligence, his honesty, his cour- 
 age, his good-will, his disinterestedness. It is 
 better to be wrong, inspired by the sense and 
 love of right than to be right, impelled by 
 motives of policy and the worship of vulgar 
 success. 
 
 Altgeld doubtless had the qualities which 
 make men interesting and give them influence 
 over their fellows. His aims were high, and 
 the industry and perseverance with which he 
 pursued them were altogether exceptional. 
 
 He was eager, all-earnest, untiring, self-for- 
 getful, and devoted. He feared no foe, shrank 
 from no obloquy, turned aside from no danger. 
 Though a politician, he was without policy, 
 never asking himself what might be expedient, 
 
AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE. \g\ 
 
 but looking only to what he believed to be true, 
 just, and honorable. Though born in Europe, 
 no other public man of his day was so genuinely 
 and so thoroughly American. No question that 
 concerned the general welfare eluded his alert 
 mind. His eye was everywhere, and saw every- 
 where, through shams and shows into the heart 
 of things. He had a fine scorn of mere wealth, 
 title, and position, and would have taken delight 
 in a beggar who might have had power to make 
 him wiser or better. He abhorred cant, pre- 
 tense, hypocrisy, and lies. He would not have 
 flattered a king for his crown, nor a plutocrat 
 for all his gold. If a cause was just it com- 
 mended itself to him all the more because it was 
 unpopular. Like all genuine men, he was 
 modest and without conceit. No honors and 
 no office could rob him of his plain and simple 
 manners. A farmer's boy, a soldier, a lawyer, 
 a politician, a governor, he compelled every sit- 
 uation in which he found himself to minister to 
 the enlargement of his mind and the molding 
 of his character. Deprived of the opportunity 
 of early education, he developed the mental self- 
 activity which is the only means of mental cul- 
 ture, and his intellectual curiosity became at 
 once comprehensive and discriminating. No 
 other politician among us has been so attracted 
 to the things of the mind. Without a knowl- 
 
192 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 edge of the classical languages, he was fasci- 
 nated by the classical literatures. Ability, talent, 
 genius, character, were what he most admired. 
 No other public man in our country has written 
 anything that I should so gladly commend to the 
 perusal and study of our youth as Altgeld's 
 " Essay on Oratory," which he published but a 
 year ago. If we make certain reservations with 
 regard to the style, it has everything to stamp 
 it a classical treatise on the subject. In this 
 brief composition he reveals himself more com- 
 pletely than in anything else he has written. 
 We have here the passionate lover of eloquence, 
 one whose thoughts are as urgent as the growth 
 of wings, who, believing in the healing virtue 
 of the truth he knows and loves, would com- 
 municate it with such directness, force, persua- 
 siveness, and charm, that all shall be compelled 
 to hearken and become partakers of the divine 
 gifts. For him oratory is the greatest of the arts 
 greater than music, than poetry, than paint- 
 ing, than sculpture. The orator must gather 
 into unity and harmony all that other artists 
 achieve separately must be at once musician, 
 painter, poet, sculptor, architect; must be able 
 to take the human mind and heart and imagina- 
 tion for his instrument and play upon it all the 
 infinite divine cadences of rhythm and reason. 
 He must stand forth before men as a man clothed 
 
AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE. 193 
 
 with the resonance of the thunder-crash and with 
 the searching power of the forked lightning; 
 must sing to his audience and command them 
 and subdue them to his every mood and thought ; 
 must have power to transport them into the 
 midst of sublime scenes, of tumultuous oceans, 
 of white and eternally serene mountain peaks; 
 he must know all the melodies that soothe like 
 the lullabies of mothers ; must be able to plead 
 as only love can plead, to rouse like a clarion's 
 note; must be able to find his way through the 
 labyrinthian windings of the heart of man, with 
 all its passions and prejudices, and issue forth 
 heralded as a conqueror. His words must be 
 as full of music as a poet' s, as clear-cut as a 
 statue, as symmetrical as the noblest monument, 
 as rightly ordered as an army in battle array; 
 his thought must unfold itself like the budding 
 leaves and the blossoming flowers ; and from the 
 centre and heart of it all he must rise and reveal 
 himself, not as an actor but as a man and mes- 
 senger sent by God to proclaim truth and vindi- 
 cate the right. He must have a knowledge of 
 history, of literature, of religion, of science, of 
 the world. He must be all alive with the sub- 
 ject he discusses. If his thoughts be not new, 
 they must glow with a light not seen before; 
 and they must be pure and high that they may 
 appeal to what is best in man. He must utter, 
 13 
 
194 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 not what the arithmetical understanding would 
 suggest, but what the soul would speak to souls. 
 His language must be beautiful; his words 
 simple, chaste, and crystalline ; his phrases must 
 sparkle and glow like jewels on the brow of 
 beauty. But he must ever bear in mind that 
 mere vesture can not hide the unreality and 
 vacancy of what is false and vulgar. Right 
 words are born of true thoughts; and true 
 thoughts of noble life. Those alone who take 
 infinite pains can hope to become orators. There 
 is no seeming trifle which may be neglected, 
 for perfection is the result of attention to little 
 things. He who would excel must inure himself 
 to the labor of writing and rewriting what he 
 would utter. The pen is to the mind what the 
 plough is to the field. Ploughs do not sow the 
 seed, but without the culture they give it will 
 not thrive and yield rich harvest, however fertile 
 the soil. When meditation and composition 
 shall have made him familiar with every phase 
 of his subject, lucid order, accurate expression, 
 and copious language will come as the fountains 
 burst and leap in spring. Having aroused and 
 illumined his own spiritual being, he will have 
 a message and the skill rightly to deliver it to 
 his audience; and not to them only, but to the 
 wider world to which the wings of the press 
 shall bear his words. 
 
AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE. 195 
 
 The public-speaking which has politics and 
 business for its subject is useful and important, 
 but Fame blows not her trumpet above the 
 heads of those who do this work. They are 
 talkers, not orators ; fortunate if they talk logi- 
 cally, forcibly, to the point, while they keep 
 themselves free from slang and other offense 
 against the laws of speech. But he who would 
 utter memorable things in perfect form must 
 dwell in higher regions where gleams the light 
 of ideal aims and ends; must think no labor 
 too great, no self-denial too hard, if it help him 
 to become a master. Like the mighty Grecian, 
 he must love solitude, be willing, if need be, 
 to dwell in caves by the resounding shores of 
 the loud ocean; must take for his companions 
 the immortal minds who have left record of 
 themselves in books. He must abstain, train 
 himself like an athlete, and accustom himself 
 to all exercises that invigorate and sharpen the 
 intellect or harden and supple the body. He 
 must stand aloof from the crowds and despise 
 the applause of the vulgar and the notoriety 
 which is within the reach of criminals and prize- 
 fighters. He must be wholly serious and sincere 
 and keep his conscience pure, though he have 
 not bread to eat. Great manhood alone can 
 make great oratory possible. Above all, the 
 orator must be a lover of truth and justice. His 
 
196 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 sympathies must go forth to the toilers who do 
 the world's work and are God's children. Wher- 
 ever there is oppression and wrong, he must be 
 ready in the name of the Lord to defend and 
 make good. 
 
 All this springs from the purest spirit of 
 Altgeld's life. He himself lacked some of the 
 important qualities which contribute to a public 
 speaker's success and eminence. His presence 
 was not commanding; his voice lacked sonor- 
 ity, modulation, and persuasiveness ; his gesticu- 
 lation was awkward and constrained; his style 
 was unpolished; his imagination prosaic; his 
 literary culture defective. He had not the 
 scholar's fine insight and thorough knowledge 
 of the best that has been thought and said ; and 
 yet withal he was more truly an orator than 
 almost any other public man of his day. Elo- 
 quence lies not in words and manner, but in the 
 man himself; and Altgeld was all athrill with 
 the passion, earnestness, and emotion which 
 awaken and fix attention while they create inter- 
 est. It was not merely the things he believed in, 
 admired, and loved, but rather the thoroughness 
 and intensity of his convictions, that lifted him 
 to higher planes of thought and feeling, and 
 gave to his utterances a significance and charm 
 which are beyond the reach of rhetoricians and 
 demagogues. With all his heart he loved truth 
 
AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE. 197 
 
 and hated lies ; loved justice and hated iniquity. 
 As he was capable of giving his life for what 
 he held to be right, so had he infinite power of 
 scorn for tricksters and spoilsmen, for palterers 
 and beggars of the approval of men. He knew 
 the blessedness of being hated and calumniated 
 for fidelity to conscience. The best men are 
 made great by the obstacles they surmount, by 
 the enemies they withstand. Nearly all our 
 speakers tread the paths of dalliance, hold their 
 ears to the ground to catch the murmur of the 
 crowd, make brave shots at safe objects, apolo- 
 gize if by chance they uttef the naked truth; 
 but here was one for whom right and wrong 
 are parted by eternal laws, for whom compro- 
 mise is treason, and connivance apostasy from 
 God and the soul. Pallid, feeble in body, over- 
 worked, and overwrought by the intensity of his 
 own nature and too eager mind, he faced corrup- 
 tion and a hostile opinion begotten of the spirit 
 of Mammonites and time-servers with the heroic 
 courage of confessors and martyrs. He knew 
 better than anyone that throughout America 
 and Europe his name was associated with doc- 
 trines and practices which he abhorred, that he 
 was a safe mark for the conscienceless fling of 
 every hireling of the press, that to be his friend 
 was to incur suspicion of not being respectable, 
 but he faltered not; and though fallen on evil 
 
198 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 days and slandered by evil tongues, though over- 
 taken by poverty and sneered at by the idolaters 
 of success, he continued to confront with daunt- 
 less courage all the fosterers of lies and corrup- 
 tion, all the contrivers of oppression and wrong, 
 all the apologists of conquest and inhumanity. 
 He had a heart as tender as a woman's ; a soul 
 as dauntless as a hero's. Whatever concerned 
 the poor, the weak, the disinherited, had his 
 earnest attention and sympathies. His faith 
 in the people was profound, and he believed that 
 democratic government may be so organized and 
 administered as to make it a blessing to all, and 
 first of all to those who most need protection 
 and fair opportunity because they are the most 
 defenseless and the most easily wronged. He 
 studied the question of education, and thoroughly 
 understood that liberty of teaching is the foun- 
 dation on which all our other liberties rest. He 
 did not, I think, sufficiently understand nor 
 has any other American statesman sufficiently 
 understood that if education does not form 
 character and promote conduct, it fails in the 
 most vital point. Intelligence is not enough ; it 
 is not the most indispensable thing in human 
 life, individual or social ; but when one considers 
 the infinite misery and ruin which have been 
 wrought and which continue to be wrought by 
 ignorance and stupidity, he is persuaded that 
 
AN ORATOR AND LOVER OF JUSTICE. 199 
 
 it is not possible to have too much zeal for 
 the diffusion of knowledge and the spread of 
 enlightenment. No other governor of Illinois 
 has devoted so much serious thought or so much 
 good-will to the management and improvement 
 of our penal and reformatory institutions, and 
 the great good he has done in this matter can 
 hardly be other than permanent. How jealous 
 he was of our constitutional rights and liberties ! 
 How quick to resent even the appearance of 
 infringement upon them! 
 
 He knew and felt intensely that the good 
 which we cherish for ourselves we should not 
 take from others; and hence he abhorred all 
 wars of conquest, however specious the pretexts 
 with which the real motives are cloaked. He 
 applauded the expulsion of the Spaniard from 
 Cuba that the inhabitants of the island might 
 have opportunity to establish a government of 
 their own; and he held that justice and honor 
 and every genuine American impulse demand 
 that the same right should be conceded to the 
 Filipinos. What ineffable disgust, what right- 
 eous wrath the crimes of some of our officers 
 and soldiers (which have affixed a brand of in- 
 famy on the name of America) would have 
 aroused within him! 
 
 It was altogether fitting that he should die 
 while pleading for the Boers the most heroic 
 
200 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 patriots and the victims of the greatest crime 
 against liberty and justice, against humanity 
 itself, which has been committed within the 
 memory of living men; a crime which Ameri- 
 cans more than any other people would have 
 denounced to the whole world with clamorous 
 indignation and abhorrence, had not conscience 
 made cowards of us all. 
 
 Here, then, let me close, while I salute, with 
 admiration, respect, and reverence the memory 
 of a genuine and heroic man the truest ser- 
 vant of the people and the most disinterested 
 politician whom Illinois has known since Lincoln 
 died. 
 
XIV. 
 
 ST. BEDE. 
 
 [Delivered at the dedication of St. Bede College, 
 Peru, 111.] 
 
 ^T^HE founding of St. Bede's College by the 
 -* order of St. Benedict in the Valley of the 
 Illinois is not merely an interesting event, it is 
 also a fact which is pregnant with promise of 
 good. 
 
 From this spot we have a view of a country 
 which is as fair as it is fertile, and which, 
 already populous, is destined to become the busi- 
 est hive of human industry. Beneath the black 
 soil lie inexhaustible coal-measures hardly 
 blacker. The climate is at once wholesome and 
 invigorating, and the people who have taken 
 possession of this favored region have in their 
 veins the blood which for more than a thousand 
 years has nourished the hearts of conquerors 
 and subduers. They belong to that race which 
 has never quailed before hostile man or forbid- 
 ding nature, and which has acknowledged as 
 its superior only the almighty God. The State 
 
202 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 of Illinois, which half a century ago was almost 
 a wilderness, is now cultivated like Belgium or 
 Lombardy. Its villages are counted by the 
 thousand, its towns by the hundred; and 
 whithersoever we turn we behold streaming in 
 the air the black pennon of the mighty engine 
 which bears over the trembling plain bounteous 
 gifts to pour them into the lap of peoples which 
 are separated from us by oceans and by every 
 divergence of tongue and character. We are in 
 the heart of the great continent, in the centre of 
 commerce and manufacture, with lines of com- 
 munication, east and west, north and south. 
 There are interests too, of a more spiritual na- 
 ture, which cluster here to dedicate this spot 
 to religion and to the cause of education. Along 
 this valley passed the early explorers and dis- 
 coverers, who seemed already to foresee that 
 the rivers which make an open highway between 
 the lakes and the gulf, were destined by Provi- 
 dence to help to bring about a union of hearts 
 and minds among millions of men, who should 
 have but one law as they adore but one God. In 
 the plain which lies beneath us the holy Sacrifice 
 was offered and the gospel was preached when 
 the colonists of New England were still engaged 
 in fierce conflicts with the Indians, when feuds 
 and revolts were threatening the existence of 
 the struggling settlements of Virginia and 
 
ST. BEDE. 203 
 
 Maryland, when Manhattan Island (which the 
 Dutch had bought from the natives for twenty- 
 four dollars) did not contain a population of 
 fifteen hundred souls. From the College win- 
 dows " Starved Rock " looms before us, over- 
 looking the valley where stood the original Kas- 
 kaskia when Father Marquette, the discoverer 
 of the Mississippi, established the mission of the 
 Immaculate Conception, and on Holy Thursday, 
 in the year 1675, in the presence of two thou- 
 sand warriors and countless women and chil- 
 dren, said the first Mass ever celebrated in 
 Illinois. This, alas, was the last act of his noble 
 and heroic life, for almost immediately after- 
 wards he set forth on his journey northward 
 only to be taken from his birchen canoe to die 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 He was followed by Father Allouez, the 
 founder of many missions, who, on the third of 
 May, 1676, erected in the midst of the village a 
 cross twenty-five feet high, which stood for 
 years in the plain that stretches away from the 
 little town of Utica. Here, too, Father Ri- 
 bourde, a noble Burgundian and the companion 
 of La Salle, preached the gospel, and fell be- 
 neath the tomahawk, when the Illinois fled 
 before the terrible Iroquois. Here also labored 
 Father Rale, who more than a quarter of a 
 century later was murdered by the English, 
 
2O4 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 while offering his life as a sacrifice for his be- 
 loved Abenakis. Associations of yet another 
 kind which are more intimately related to the 
 history of our own country, also gather here; 
 for the spot on which we stand was once the 
 property of our greatest orator, of him whose 
 lofty thought and majestic style have clothed 
 the constitutional principles of our government 
 with the splendor of genius, Daniel Webster, 
 our least mortal mind, who in his high pre- 
 science foresaw the diruption of our country, 
 and saw that God would make it whole again. 
 Those who have chosen this spot as the site 
 of a college and monastery have not acted with- 
 out wisdom. The sons of St. Benedict inherit 
 a taste for the beauties of nature. Their cradle 
 on Monte Cassino overlooks the dreaming hills 
 and the rich valleys which stretch far away to 
 dip themselves in the blue waters of the Bay of 
 Naples; and from that eminence, where they 
 supplanted Apollo, the god of light and beauty, 
 they have taken flight and, like the honey-laden 
 ever-busy bees, have settled upon a thousand 
 heights, and on a thousand plains, to make 
 them vocal with the ceaseless song of praise and 
 the most pleasant noise of labor. The very 
 ruins of the places where they abode make beau- 
 tiful and consecrate the regions which lie about 
 them. The highest symbol and embodiment of 
 
7: BEDE. 2O5 
 
 man's spiritual and infinite nature, of his faith 
 in God and moral consciousness, is the Church ; 
 but the mightiest and most heavenly leader of 
 the champions of the soul, of the followers of 
 the Blessed Christ, is Saint Benedict. If we 
 look to what he has accomplished he stands forth 
 from the ranks of the saints, as Caesar stands 
 forth from the ranks of the heroes. As the 
 great Roman shaped the course of Empire for 
 more than a thousand years, so the founder of 
 Western monasticism directed for centuries the 
 progress and development of Christian life and 
 civilization. More than all others he understood 
 how to harmonize man's yearning for temporal 
 power and dominion, for knowledge and free- 
 dom, with the genius of the religion of Christ, 
 whose eye is forever bent on the eternal and 
 infinite. The history of his order is the highest 
 evidence that faith and love, humility and pa- 
 tience, are the saving principles. They fertilize 
 the earth, illumine the mind, strengthen the 
 heart, and people heaven with elect souls. From 
 his brotherhood sprang the two popes who in 
 their influence upon the Church take precedence 
 of all others Gregory the Great and Gregory 
 VII. St. Maur, a disciple of St. Benedict, 
 carried the order to France, where in a short 
 time it absorbed the flourishing communities 
 founded by St. Columbanus, and spread rapidly 
 
206 SOCIALISM AND LABOIt. 
 
 throughout the Prankish kingdoms. St. Augus- 
 tin carried it to England, and it became the 
 paramount influence in converting and molding 
 the Anglo-Saxon race. St. Wilfrid, St. Willi- 
 brord and St. Boniface carried it to Holland and 
 Germany, and these great Benedictines hold 
 their undisputed place in history as the apostles 
 of the Teutonic peoples. From the tomb of 
 Boniface at Fulda, the monastic brotherhood 
 spread through the whole Fatherland, as in 
 England it spread from Canterbury ; and wher- 
 ever the monks encamped, the forest was felled, 
 the marsh was drained, the school was built, 
 and the barbarous populations were brought 
 under the influence of religion and law. 
 
 In the midst of universal ignorance these 
 monasteries became the centres of learning, the 
 storehouses of all that remained of sacred and 
 profane literature; and from them there issued 
 forth a ceaseless stream of enlightened teachers 
 and wise rulers. The knowledge of what was 
 then accomplished led Charlemagne to decree 
 that a school should be attached to every mon- 
 astery and every cathedral throughout the em- 
 pire. In this apostolic epoch, in the history of 
 the order, the Benedictines were the heroes who, 
 amidst the irruptions of lawless hordes, amid 
 the clash of arms and the wild confusion of 
 unrestrained cruelty and lust, stood undaunted, 
 
ST. BEDE. 2O7 
 
 their hearts raised to heaven, while their hands 
 held the plough and the pen. They were the 
 men of light and reason, who looking up to the 
 Father in heaven, put their trust in knowledge 
 and labor: they appealed from the brutal cour- 
 age of the barbarian, who exulted amid the ruins 
 he had made, to the all-conquering moral power 
 of religious faith, which makes man patient and 
 strong in the consciousness that he works with 
 God to upbuild an enduring society, where those 
 who know and love dwell with the Eternal. 
 These monastic schools taught the whole cycle 
 of human knowledge: philosophy, theology, 
 mathematics, natural science, poetry, rhetoric, 
 and music, as well as classical and sacred liter- 
 ature. Of Alcuin, one of these monks, the 
 friend and counsellor of Charlemagne, Guizot 
 says : " He is a monk, a deacon, the light of 
 the contemporaneous church; but he is at the 
 same time a scholar, a classical man of letters." 
 When we reflect that the Benedictines, in their 
 heroic age, to perfect faith, to blamelessness of 
 life, to dauntless courage, to the spirit of tireless 
 labor, joined the best culture of mind then pos- 
 sible, we need not stop to examine into the 
 causes of their phenomenal success. In spite 
 of the jealousy and envy which great merit ex- 
 cites, true worth wins its way to the heart of 
 man. We fatally turn to those who have the 
 
208 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 power and the will to help us; for we all are 
 weak, and would be strong ; we all are ignorant, 
 and would have knowledge ; we all are timid 
 and confused, and would follow those who have 
 an eye to see and a heart to lead. When men 
 are pure, devout, and humble, and also enlight- 
 ened, intrepid, and active, the world will hearken 
 to their voice and drink the inspiration of their 
 lives; and those who, by habitual self-denial 
 attain to knowledge and virtue, become the nat- 
 ural guides and rulers of their fellows. In what 
 marvelous degree the order of St. Benedict has 
 succeeded in giving such men to the world we 
 may see at a glance. By the middle of the four- 
 teenth century, twenty-four of its members had 
 sat upon the Chair of St. Peter, two hundred had 
 been cardinals, seven thousand had been arch- 
 bishops, fifteen thousand had been bishops, and 
 upon more than fifty thousand the title of saint 
 had been conferred by the voice of the people 
 or the Church. To them chiefly the world is 
 indebted for the conversion of the Germanic 
 peoples, for the upbuilding of the kingdoms of 
 France and England ; to them for bringing under 
 cultivation vast tracts of waste land, for training 
 innumerable barbarous populations to till the 
 soil ; to them for keeping alive in the West the 
 traditions of intellectual culture and for pre- 
 serving the classical writings. Every monas- 
 
ST. BEDE. 209 
 
 tery, according to the rule of St. Benedict, was 
 to have a library, and every monk to possess a 
 pen and tablet. To them also the world is in- 
 debted for their fearless insistence upon the 
 principle that neither obscure birth, nor poverty, 
 nor bodily weakness is a barrier to eminence; 
 that opportunity should be given to slaves and 
 beggars, who, if they are found worthiest, 
 should be made popes and kings. To them, 
 notably to Gregory the Great, Guido D'Arrezzo, 
 and Ockenheim, we are indebted for the cultiva- 
 tion and improvement of sacred music, of which 
 our modern music, the disinctive art of the 
 nineteenth century, is but a development. I will 
 not, however, insist upon the services which the 
 Benedictines have rendered, nor shall I attempt 
 to conceal the abuses, which, here and there, and 
 again and again, have crept into the order dur- 
 ing the fourteen centuries of its existence. 
 
 A religious order is but a human institution, 
 and the Church itself, which is of divine origin, 
 has its epochs of weakness and decadence. I do 
 not now recall the name of the cardinal, who, 
 when there was question of giving the highest 
 ecclesiastical sanction to the society of Jesus, 
 opposed it on the ground that the good done 
 by religious orders in the fervor of their early 
 years is more than counterbalanced by the harm 
 they do when, as it always happens, discipline 
 14 
 
210 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 becomes relaxed and the heroic virtue of the 
 founders and first disciples gives place to indif- 
 ference and self-indulgence. Whatever truth 
 there may be in this view, it did not meet with 
 the approval of the Pope, although a committee 
 of cardinals, of whom Reginald Pole was one, 
 had but two years before made a report to 
 him, in which they declared that they were of 
 opinion that all the religious orders should be 
 suppressed. 
 
 It was a disciple of St. Benedict, himself a 
 saint, and a monk and a pope as well, Gregory 
 the Great, who wrote : " It is better to have 
 scandal than a lie " ; and the monks who wrote 
 the annals of their orders did not seek to conceal 
 the abuses which had crept into them. " I con- 
 tend/' says St. Bernard, " not against, but for 
 the monastic order, when I expose the vices of 
 men who make part of it." It was left to the 
 half-doubting faith of weaker ages to imagine 
 that the best way to make wrong right is to deny 
 its existence. 
 
 It is but truth, however, to say that the abuses 
 which have enfeebled and tainted the life of so 
 many orders, have been misunderstood and ex- 
 aggerated. They have nearly always arisen from 
 the invasion of the temporal power. Kings and 
 princes and statesmen, under the vicious system 
 known as the Commende, which began to prevail 
 
ST. BEDE. 211 
 
 early in the middle ages and spread widely 
 throughout Europe, claimed the right to place 
 their favorites as superiors over religious houses, 
 and under the rule of such men the vices of the 
 world fatally made their way into the sanctuaries 
 of religion. But when the worst is said even of 
 those whom the world thus corrupted, all that 
 can be truthfully affirmed is that they became 
 self-indulgent and indolent, following the bent of 
 human nature, which inclines to the love of ease 
 and of the good things of earth, drifting down 
 to a sluggish life of mere sensation and thought- 
 lessness. " Vain will be any endeavor/' says 
 Montalembert, the historian of " The Monks 
 of the West/' " to alter the distinctive character 
 of their social historical part, which is that of 
 having lived to do good. Humanly speaking, 
 they have done nothing else : all their career is 
 occupied with peopling deserts, protecting the 
 poor, and enriching the world. Sadly degen- 
 erated towards their decline, much less active 
 and less industrious than in their origin, they 
 never became less charitable. Where is the 
 country, where is the man whom they have in- 
 jured? where are the monuments of their op- 
 pression? the memorials of their rapacity? If 
 we follow the furrow which they have dug 
 through history, we shall find everywhere but 
 the traces of their beneficence/' But to have 
 
 i 
 
212 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 done is of small account. Ingratitude to in- 
 dividuals is but a form of that universal un- 
 thankfulness which makes us look with a pity 
 akin to contempt upon whatever thing or insti- 
 tution which, having been great and strong, is 
 now reduced to nullity. Men will not love the 
 Church or its religious orders for what may 
 have been done by them. The old, who are 
 sinking beneath life's rapid current, may seek 
 to prolong a feeble existence by cherishing mem- 
 ories of things that have passed away, but the 
 young and vigorous turn with eager expectancy 
 to what is now capable of nourishing the mind, 
 the heart, and the soul. Our religion is divine, 
 not because it has blossomed forth in former 
 ages, in the lives of virgins and apostles, of 
 martyrs and confessors ; nor yet because through 
 its inspiration, genius in every form of artistic 
 expression has clothed the highest thought with 
 perfect beauty breathing harmony, giving 
 movement to stone, speech to canvas, and to 
 human language the power to utter immortal 
 truth and Godlike love, in cadence and melody, 
 which like the music of higher worlds, like the 
 cradle-songs of childhood's lost paradise, linger 
 forever in memory to soothe, uplift, and console 
 the heart of man; but it is divine because it 
 contains the germs of an everpresent, infinite 
 life, which seems to wane and die only to be 
 
ST. BEDE. 213 
 
 born again, amid other environments, with a 
 vigor and a beauty which are always fresh and 
 delightful 
 
 And it is the glory of the order of St. Benedict 
 that though like the Church, it has again and 
 again seemed about to be overwhelmed by the 
 calamities of the times and the force of human 
 passion, yet like the fair mother of souls, it has 
 again and again in the long course of ages, risen 
 superior to fate, and gathering into its ranks 
 the children of new generations, addressed itself 
 to deeds of light and beneficence. 
 
 When nearly three centuries after its founda- 
 tion, the troubled and barbarous state of the 
 world had led to a relaxation of discipline 
 in innumerable monasteries, St. Benedict of 
 Amian arose and finally succeeded in reforming 
 almost the entire order, which then entered 
 upon its most brilliant period of service to the 
 cause of religion and civilization, of science and 
 literature. 
 
 When the Empire of the Franks was invaded 
 by the Normans and the Huns, from the West 
 and the East, who pillaged the convents and 
 dispersed the monks, the general ruin brought 
 disorder also in the cloisters. The ninth and 
 tenth centuries are the age of darkness and con- 
 fusion. But even in this epoch of chaos a new 
 and salutary movement was begun among the 
 
214 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 Benedictines. Hitherto each monastery had 
 stood alone and independent; but now mother- 
 houses were constituted, which imposed their 
 rule upon the affiliated convents and watched 
 over the observance of discipline. Upon this 
 plan the congregation of Cluny was established 
 in France, the congregation of Camaldoli in 
 Italy, the congregation of Vallombrosa in Tus- 
 cany, and the congregation of Hirschau in Ger- 
 many, which have all a great and noble history. 
 In England a similar reformation was 
 brought about by St. Dunstan, who caused 
 the old life in its peace and fruitfulness to 
 flourish again. During the eleventh century 
 new branches sprang from the parent trunk 
 such as those of Granmont and Citeaux, the 
 latter of which the genius and courage of St. 
 Bernard pushed so vigorously forward that it 
 rapidly spread through Europe, and within a 
 century of its foundation embraced eight hun- 
 dred rich abbeys; and when towards the end 
 of the twelfth century its immense wealth began 
 to act unfavorably upon discipline, John de la 
 Barriere, after a considerable lapse of time, suc- 
 ceeded in effecting a reform which gave rise to 
 the Feuillants in France and to the Bernardines 
 in Italy. Another salutary reformation brought 
 about by Didier de la Cour in the Convent of 
 St. Vanne, in the sixteenth century, renewed 
 
ST. BEDE. 215 
 
 the religious life of the Benedictine monasteries 
 of Lorraine, Alsace, and Burgundy. Intimately 
 associated with St. Vanne is the reformation 
 introduced into the convent of St. Augustin of 
 Limoges in the early part of the seventeenth 
 century, giving rise to the celebrated congre- 
 gation of St. Maur, which embraced a hun- 
 dred and twenty-four abbeys, the centres of a 
 literary activity that extended to every branch 
 of science, and enriched the world with works 
 which will remain as monuments of patient 
 research and profound erudition. 
 
 The French Revolution, upheaving and over- 
 turning everything, suppressed the Benedictine 
 order in France, Spain, and Germany; as in 
 England the Protestant Reformation had swept 
 away its hundred and eighty-six abbeys and 
 priories. But this order has again sprung to 
 life and established itself in the chief countries 
 of Europe. It was introduced into Pennsyl- 
 vania in 1846 by a colony of monks from Ba- 
 varia; and from the Abbey of St. Vincent it 
 has spread through the country in many direc- 
 tions; and that its activity has not ceased the 
 opening of this College of St. Bede to-day is 
 evidence enough. 
 
 Here, indeed, there is little to recall the condi- 
 tions, physical, moral, and intellectual, which 
 existed when the Benedictine monasteries and 
 
2l6 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 schools were established throughout Europe in 
 the early middle ages. No barbarous hordes 
 will come to destroy these buildings ; kings and 
 princes will not have power to appoint here un- 
 worthy superiors, and the people by whom they 
 are surrounded are neither ignorant nor pagan ; 
 for the marvelous material development of the 
 West has not been unaccompanied by religious 
 and intellectual improvement. If the thousands 
 of Indians who heard the first Mass said in 
 Illinois have with their descendants passed away 
 to sink into the ocean of oblivion and nothing- 
 ness, the faith has not perished with them. On 
 the contrary it lives in this great State with an 
 energy and freshness which might make us for- 
 get that it comes down to us from ages when 
 our rude ancestors had not yet emerged from 
 their dense forests to overrun the world and to 
 fill it with terror and ruin. There are in Illinois 
 to-day more than six hundred Catholic churches 
 and nearly seven hundred priests, and our 
 schools, asylums and institutions of beneficence 
 are scattered all over the State. And to perceive 
 how rapid is the development of our ecclesiasti- 
 cal organization, we need but consider that in 
 this diocese of Peoria, where at the time of its 
 formation, fourteen years ago, there were not 
 fifty priests, including those who were in the 
 five counties since added to it, there are now a 
 
ST. BEDE. 217 
 
 hundred and thirty, and that whereas then there 
 were not in its present territory more than ninety 
 churches, there are now a hundred and seventy ; 
 and it is but truth to say that among the strong 
 and active people in the midst of whom we live, 
 none are more intrepid, more laborious, more 
 eager to take advantage of whatever opportu- 
 nities are offered to promote the spiritual and 
 temporal welfare of their fellow-men than the 
 Catholic priests. They instruct, they guide, 
 they build, and while they insist upon righteous- 
 ness and plead for interests which are eternal, 
 nothing that concerns the welfare of man is 
 foreign to their thought. I will not speak of 
 their patriotism, for to boast of one's patriotism 
 is to lay one's self open to suspicion, and is 
 besides as much a breach of good taste as to 
 boast of one's virtue; but I think I may say 
 without risk that they believe in freedom and in 
 education as they believe in God and in Christ. 
 
 In their name and with them, Right Reverend 
 and Reverend Fathers, I welcome you to this dio- 
 cese of Peoria. You come, in a sense, to be our 
 teachers and guides; for whatever fervor of 
 faith and piety, whatever illumination of mind 
 is shed from here, will warm and light us all. 
 
 The principles which underlie the religious 
 life are divine. It is forever and everywhere 
 right to be gentle and lowly of heart, to be obe- 
 
2l8 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 dient to law, to be chaste in thought and act, to 
 prefer the good which lies within us to whatever 
 is merely external. To pray, to toil, to study, 
 to write, to speak, to live plainly and to think 
 nobly, because such life is Godlike and because 
 it brings blessings to men this is your aim, 
 this your vocation: to spread peace and faith, 
 freedom and good-will, science and art, light 
 and life this is your work. 
 
 " Your rule/' says the most eloquent voice 
 ever uplifted in advocacy of religious truth, " is 
 an epitome of Christianity, a learned and myste- 
 rious abridgment of all the doctrines of the gos- 
 pel, all the institutions of the holy fathers, and 
 all the counsels of perfection. Here prudence 
 and simplicity, humility and courage, severity 
 and gentleness, freedom and dependence emi- 
 nently appear. Here correction has all its firm- 
 ness, condescension all its charm, command all 
 its vigor, and obedience all its repose ; silence its 
 gravity, words their grace, strength its exercise, 
 and weakness its support; and yet always, my 
 fathers, he calls it a beginning to keep you al- 
 ways in holy fear." You bring to our young 
 and vigorous life, the charm and mystery of the 
 past, the poetry, and romance of the marvelous 
 creative middle age. You knew the Rome of the 
 Caesars before it had been despoiled by the in- 
 vader and the envious tooth of all -destroy ing 
 
ST. BEDE. 219 
 
 time. You were present when century after cen- 
 tury the onrushing hordes trampled whatever 
 was great or beautiful beneath the hoofs of their 
 wild steeds. You saw the new order begin 
 to take form, as islet after islet emerged from 
 the chaotic waste, and hearkening to the voice 
 of religion, men dared again to hope. You saw 
 the splendid pageantry of that wondrous world 
 which lives again in the pages of Froissart and 
 Shakspere, of Bocaccio and Dante. Emperors 
 and kings, queens and princesses, have taken the 
 habit of your order and become your brothers 
 and sisters. You have spoken truth to popes 
 and defied tyrants. Of all the heroes whom Car- 
 lyle has praised, none I think, was so near to 
 his heart, as Abbot Samson, that typical Bene- 
 dictine, whose foot was planted on the solid 
 earth to maintain all justice and to defend all 
 right, and whose faith in the unseen world was 
 as sure and serene as though he had gazed upon 
 it with bodily eye. You are of ancient and noble 
 lineage; the awful weight of a glorious past 
 rests upon you ; adown the centuries a cloud of 
 virgins and apostles, of martyrs and heroes, 
 whisper in the silent regions of the soul, bidding 
 you gird yourselves for the ceaseless struggle 
 for moral freedom from enslaving passion, for 
 mental illumination that will dispel all-con- 
 founding ignorance. The one great purpose of 
 
22O SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 all institutions of learning is to bring young and 
 sensitive natures into living, daily and hourly 
 contact with generous and enlightened minds. 
 This is the vital part of education, and all else 
 is mere machinery. Ah ! may the eager yearn- 
 ing youths who shall crowd these halls find here 
 as friends and teachers, men, the bare thought 
 of whom shall have power, like fame, to raise 
 the clear spirit " to scorn delights and live 
 laborious days." 
 
 But to exhort is to reproach, and I gladly turn 
 to the sweet and placid countenance of our Ven- 
 erable Bede, as he is brought before me by the 
 most meditative and thoughtful of poets : 
 
 " But what if one, through grove or flowery mead, 
 Indulging thus at will the creeping feet 
 Of a voluptuous indolence, should meet 
 Thy hovering shade, O Venerable Bede ! 
 The saint, the scholar, from a circle freed 
 Of toil stupendous, in a hallowed seat 
 Of learning, where thou heard'st the billows beat 
 On a wild coast, rough monitors to feed 
 Perpetual industry. Sublime Recluse 
 The recreant soul that dares to shun the debt 
 Imposed on human kind, must first forget 
 Thy diligence, thy unrelaxing use 
 Of a long life, and in the hour of death 
 The last dear service of thy passing breath." 
 
 Bede is the fairest and noblest figure of the 
 age to which he belongs. Born in an obscure 
 
ST. BEDE. 221 
 
 corner of the world, of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 which half a century before was still hidden in 
 the darkness of ignorance and idolatry, he 
 stands forth not only as a historical writer of 
 the first rank, the sole source of our knowledge 
 of a people whose deeds have changed the earth 
 and filled it with their fame; but he is also a 
 scholar of wide culture, intimately acquainted 
 with whatever in his day was best worth know- 
 ing. A theologian, an exegete, a historian, 
 writing and speaking at pleasure in prose or 
 verse, in Anglo-Saxon or in Latin, he knew be- 
 sides whatever it was then possible to know of 
 philosophy and science. Quotations from Plato, 
 Cicero, Seneca, from Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius 
 fall from his pen as readily as the words of the 
 gospel itself. He is, in truth, as Edmund Burke 
 entitles him, the " Father of English learning," 
 the typical scholar such as the English univer- 
 sities have always sought to produce. In the 
 midst of a life of ceaseless intellectual toil he still 
 preserves the fresh fervor of his youthful piety, 
 closing the list of his literary labors with this 
 touching prayer : " Oh, good Jesus, who hast 
 deigned to refresh my soul with the sweet 
 streams of knowledge, grant that I may one day 
 mount to Thee, who art the source of all wis- 
 dom, to remain forever in thy divine presence." 
 And what simple winsomeness there is in these 
 
222 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 
 
 words concerning himself : " Having been sent 
 by my family at the age of seven years, to be 
 educated, I have ever since lived in this monas- 
 tery, where I have diligently pondered the Scrip- 
 tures ; and while observing the rule and chanting 
 daily in choir, I have always felt it to be a 
 pleasant thing either to learn, or to teach or to 
 write." His death was as beautiful as his life 
 was fair and fruitful. During all his illness he 
 ceased not from teaching and dictating, and 
 when the evening of the last day was come, one 
 of his disciples said to him : " Beloved master, 
 there remains but one word to write." " Write 
 it quickly," he answered ; and when it was com- 
 pleted the disciple said : " Now it is finished." 
 ' You say truly, it is finished," the Saint replied. 
 " Take my head in your arms and turn me, for 
 I have great consolation in looking toward the 
 holy place where I have prayed so much." Then 
 he passed to the unseen world. 
 
 Oh, happy omen, that this college and mon- 
 astery are to bear a name so full of warmth and 
 light ! Here too shall be found servants of God, 
 lovers of men, bright stars of the monastic 
 brotherhood, who, here where the echo of the 
 war whoop died away but yesterday, shall walk 
 in the ways of peace and of wisdom, shall teach 
 knowledge and shed upon fair young souls the 
 light of faith and the glow of heavenly love. 
 
ST. BEDE. 223 
 
 As the harvest reaped in these fertile fields is 
 sent over seas and oceans to nourish millions ; 
 as the coal underlying our feet is distributed 
 through distant regions of the North, to warm 
 and cheer the homes of thousands, so shall there 
 gather here from year to year a swarm of youths 
 athirst, who, drinking deep at this open fountain 
 of truth and spiritual life, shall scatter through 
 the land centres of influence from which high 
 thought, true courage, and noble aims shall 
 radiate. If I, who by birth, by training, and by 
 love, not less than by the visible environments 
 of my actual home, belong to the West, may be 
 permitted to express an opinion upon the char- 
 acter of the western people, I will say that those 
 persons mistake who imagine that the energy 
 which has wrought the material transformation 
 of which the wide world is witness, is that of a 
 people which can ever rest content with merely 
 material achievements. Whether our origin be 
 Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, or German, we come of 
 the world's best blood, belong to races to whom 
 the ideals of religion and culture, of freedom 
 and righteousness have ever appealed with 
 irresistible force. 
 
 If, with incredible industry we have, within 
 half a century, leveled the mountains and filled 
 the valleys and made straight the ways, who 
 can doubt that all this has been done to enable 
 
224 SOCIALISM AA?D LABOR. 
 
 a free people, unhindered and unhampered, to 
 enter upon the infinitely more arduous task of 
 rising to heights of intellectual and moral ex- 
 cellence? The spirit of democracy bids us look 
 at the man, not at his birth or surroundings: 
 but if while we think lightly of aristocratic 
 descent, of the trappings of office, the vain sound 
 of titles, and the vulgar show of wealth the 
 best culture of mind and the noblest devotion of 
 soul leave us unsympathetic and unmoved, what 
 power can save us from becoming hopelessly 
 common and inferior? Ah! we shall not rest 
 content until religion infuse through all our life 
 the charm of reverence and gentleness, of 
 modest and polite breeding, making impossible 
 the coarseness and vulgarity which are still so 
 manifest ; until the best culture, opening to our 
 view the whole past of the race and all the 
 realms of nature, break down the hard and nar- 
 row walls which confine every ignorant soul, 
 giving to each one of us the dignity, greater than 
 that of princes, which belongs to virtue and 
 wisdom. The impetus given to our material 
 development is so irresistible that we cannot 
 imagine its progress should be arrested ; and the 
 machinery of our political life will be kept in 
 some kind of order, we cannot doubt, by the 
 patriots who are ever willing to sacrifice their 
 ease for the care and worry of office; but what 
 
ST. BEDE. 22$ 
 
 we need above all things, and what I believe we 
 most yearn for, is the man, the influence, the 
 institution, with power to nourish the life of the 
 soul; to give us faith, hope, and love; to give 
 us wide knowledge and great thoughts; to 
 strengthen and refine our sense of beauty; to 
 make us appreciative of whatever is true or 
 divine or fair or noble. 
 
 For some such purpose, this college has been 
 founded. May God's blessing rest upon it; may 
 good men's hands be outstretched to help it; 
 may those who year after year shall enter its 
 halls return to their homes, like merchants from 
 distant lands, laden with rich store of wisdom 
 and love ; and some day, when we who are here 
 shall sleep with our fathers in the cool earth, 
 let a loving hand write above its portals Bede's 
 epitaph : 
 
 " O Bede, God's servant and bright star 
 Of the monastic brotherhood ! 
 From regions which do lie afar, 
 To the whole Church thou hast brought good." 
 
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