The Church and Labour 
 
 A SERIES OF SIX TRACTS 
 
 REV. L. McKENNA, S.J., MA. 
 
 -5^79-3 
 
 SANi . .:a. calif, 
 
 nacw it?orh 
 
 P. J. KENEDY h- SONS 
 
 1914
 
 ^^^^^/5- 
 
 :-«*iv^4id>i^«^4MPM.^*
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 No. I — The Church and Labour . . . l 
 
 No. 2 — The Church and Working Men . .21 
 
 No. 3 — ^The Church and Working Women . .41 
 
 No. 4 — The Church and the Working Chii,d . 61 
 
 No. 5 — The Church and Trades Unions . . 81 
 
 No. 6— The Church and Social, Work . .105
 
 Ntfjtl ©bstat : 
 
 WILLIAM HENRY, S.J., 
 
 Cena, Theol. Def, 
 
 Empn'mi potest : 
 
 »i« GULIELMU3, 
 
 Archiep. Dublinen., 
 
 Hibeyniae Primas
 
 " THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. " 
 
 IT was for the use and benefit of the whole human 
 race that God destined the material resources 
 which He placed in the world. To-day there is a 
 monstrous inequahty in the distribution of these 
 resources. A comparatively small number of men hold 
 a disproportionate amount of them. In France, for 
 instance, a hundredth part of the nation owns half of 
 the nation's wealth. In England and the United States 
 one-tenth of the people hold nine-tenths of the whole 
 country's property. 
 
 The wealthy few now rule the world. 
 The contrast They have done so before, but never 
 
 to-day between precisely in virtue of their wealth. 
 
 the wealthy few They were patriarchs, patricians, chief- 
 tains of clans, feudal nobles acknow- 
 ledging responsibihties and bearing heavy burdens. To- 
 day wealth making no sacrifices for the pubhc good, 
 rules in its own right, and exercises a more despotic 
 sway than any form of authority hitherto known. It 
 has armies and fleets at command. It has myriads of 
 placemen, or would-be placemen, in utter dependence. 
 It is highly centralised, and can exert a great power at 
 any point. It can at any moment cast thousands of 
 households into intolerable misery. Yet, though cen- 
 tralised, it is not open to attack. It does not, as the 
 kings of old, dwell in castles that can be stormed by an 
 angry people. On the contrary it stands as the embodi- 
 ment of legality, order, security, peace — even of popiilar 
 will. CapitaHsm, using the work of the labouring classes, 
 has vastly increased the wealth of the world ; yet it 
 strives to prevent these labouring classes from benefiting 
 by this increase. It is constantly drawing up into itself 
 that wealth and diverting it from useful purposes. To
 
 2 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 crown all, by its wild pursuit of pleasure and its ostenta- 
 tious luxury, it renders still less bearable the lot of the 
 dispossessed. 
 
 Over against this small number of very 
 
 and the poor rich men there are the vast masses of 
 multitude. the poor. In Prussia two-thirds of the 
 wage-earners receive less than i8s. a 
 week. Fifty per cent, of the American people are in 
 severe poverty. At Paris every seventh and in London 
 every twelfth person is a pauper dependent on State 
 aid. Every great city has a large population living in 
 homeless, hopeless, helpless squalor and wretchedness. 
 To use the words of Pope Leo — " A very small number 
 of rich men have been able to lay on the masses of the 
 poor a yoke little better than slavery itself." 
 
 This suffering state of the poor is all the more galling 
 as it is in ironic contrast with the power which in theory 
 they possess. They have votes — they are appealed to as 
 the ultimate depositories of all power, yet nowhere have 
 they been able to exert that power for the redress of 
 their grievances. 
 
 Is it any wonder, then, that the rich 
 
 The struggle and the poor should form two hostile 
 
 between these camps, that they should feel for each 
 other bitter hatred, that their hatred 
 should break out in war ? And such war ! Those ter- 
 rible strikes ! Factories shut down, vast systems of 
 machinery idle, trade ruined, the social life of nations 
 paralysed; homes broken up, men growhng and breaking 
 into violence, women pining with anxiety and hunger, 
 children starving. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the old questions which agitated 
 the world should have lost much of their interest ? It is 
 not now quarrels between princes or rival claimants to 
 thrones, it is not even commercial or territorial dis- 
 putes between nations that cause most anxiety in the 
 council chambers of the world. It is the question as to 
 whether the constitution of our present societj' is not 
 fundamentally wrong, it is the question as to how the 
 wealth of each nation should be distributed among
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 3 
 
 its members ; it is the social, or — what is the same thing 
 — the labour questioii, that urgently presses for solution 
 in every country. 
 
 The struggle over this question is 
 in Ireland. raging not merely in France — to-day 
 as ever the leader in revolutionary 
 action — but in Russia, which has just emerged from the 
 Middle Ages, in England, the land of tradition and slow 
 change, in Germany, fettered by her iron military 
 organisation. Now this struggle, raging on the Conti- 
 nent and in England, is a real and very pressing danger 
 for us in Ireland too. Indeed it has been going on 
 among us, but it has been disgiused under the form of a 
 national struggle. Our whole social system is part of 
 the social system of England, the classic land of capital- 
 istic abuse, but hardly any except the suffering strata of 
 that system are to be found in Ireland. The population 
 of Ireland consists chiefly of a relatively large middle 
 class struggling against great difficulties, and of a rela- 
 tively enormous proletariat strugghng desperately on 
 the verge of pauperism. Both these classes have united 
 against the abuses of capital, but in doing so they have 
 directed their attacks, not against cap'tal as such, but 
 against capital as represented by a foreign Government. 
 Thus in Ireland the struggle between capital and the 
 suffering classes has not had hitherto the character of a 
 social war, which it has on the Continent. The suffering 
 classes have not been led to confuse the abuses of capital 
 with the rights of property, and with the principles on 
 which all society is founded. 
 
 But circumstances are rapidly changing. It is likely 
 that the two forces now locked in a life and death 
 struggle on the Continent will soon be engaged in a fierce 
 conflict in Ireland too, ranged under the same banners, 
 urged on by the same battle cries, animated by the same 
 bitter feehngs on each side. 
 
 The strikes, rapidly becoming more frequent, notably 
 the great strike of eighteen months ago, which paralysed 
 the life and trade of the country and was accompanied 
 by disorder in many of our towns, seem to show that 
 
 T*
 
 4 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 there is a spiiit of discontent and a craving for change 
 deep down in the hearts of our labouring population. 
 Indeed a slight acquaintance with the labouring classes 
 leaves one in no doubt on the point. 
 
 Now, that the poor classes should be 
 
 The danger to discontented is not astonishing. Their 
 
 Society coraes discontent is well-founded. Their desire 
 from the Qf change is legitimate and praiseworthy. 
 
 oftlnfnspSfng' Society is sick to death. She must be 
 
 Capital and cured. But her disease is not more 
 
 Labour. dangerous than the remedies which men 
 
 — on the one side selfish and unfeeling, 
 
 on the other side desperate, envious, and vengeful — 
 
 propose to apply. 
 
 The real danger that threatens the world comes from 
 this, that both the mighty forces now struggling foi 
 mastery — ^labour and capital — reject the moral and 
 religious bonds without which society cannot hope to 
 hold together. 
 
 On the one side, wealth claims to do as it pleases 
 regardless of consequence to the poor. On the other, 
 numbers claim a divine right to rule. Liberalism* in one 
 or other of its forms is the favourite doctrine of wealth ; 
 Sociahsm in some form tends to be the gospel of Labour. 
 Liberahsm justifies the rich in exploiting the poor ; 
 Sociahsm justifies the poor in robbing the rich. Liberal- 
 ism commends itself to the rich man, for it flatters his 
 avarice and pride ; Socialism appeals to the poor man, 
 for it sets before his eyes the alluring prospect of a state 
 where all having little work to do will enjoy in equal 
 measure the good things of life. 
 
 * By the terms Liberalism, Liberal, etc., frequently occurring 
 in these pages are meant certain doctrines or ideas the general 
 tendency of which is explained on pages 9-10. These terms are 
 often loosely used with reference to those who favour demo- 
 cratic institutions, and even to those who are generous in their 
 private dealings with their neighbours. Needless to say that 
 such are not the meanings of these terms as used in the following 
 pages. Still less is any reference intended to the principles 
 which are claimed as distinguishing the political party which in 
 England is known as the Liberal Party,
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR, 5 
 
 If Capital can carry out its principles of Liberalism, 
 the majority of mankind, the middle class as well as the 
 poor, must sink to a still more hopeless depth of servi- 
 tude, destitution, misery and crime. If Labour realises 
 its Socialistic schemes, our property, our liberty, our 
 family life, our peace, all that we hold most dear, will 
 be attacked. Human society — that most dehcate organ- 
 ism in which physical environment and economic force 
 and the myriad influences of men's desires, passions, 
 prejudices, customs, render the result of even the 
 slightest interference impossible to conjecture — is to be 
 handed over to be experimented on by fanciful theorists 
 and revengeful fanatics and unscrupulous schemers. 
 Revolution always tends to fall into the hands of 
 extremists ; and it is the wild, revolutionary Socialism 
 of the Continent, and not the milder forms of English 
 Socialism, which is likely in time to win the support 
 of the masses. 
 
 Yet of the two — Liberalism and Socialism — Liberahsm 
 is, perhaps, the more dangerous. Sociahsm is indeed 
 only a reaction, and not even the worst form of 
 reaction, against the accursed Liberalism which, 
 smce the eighteenth century, has been making havoc 
 of society. 
 
 You will, perhaps, say : " What has 
 The duty of the the Church to do with all this ? Two 
 Church. great political forces are pitted against 
 each other. Why should the Church 
 interfere ? She does not intervene when two nations are 
 at war ? Why should she intervene when two classes of 
 society are at war? PoUtics are not her domain. 
 Should she not be indifferent to all forms of govern- 
 ment ? Pohtical economy is not her sphere. Why, 
 then, should she meddle with the modern social 
 question ? " 
 
 I answer to this, in the first place, that those who speak 
 thus are in very suspicious company. Such language, 
 or something very like it, is addressed to the Church 
 by both the partisans of Liberalism and those of 
 Socialism.
 
 6 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 Socialist writers are as much opposed 
 Liberalism the ^° ^^^ Church as they are to Capitahsm. 
 enemy of The official philosophy of Sociahsm on 
 religioa. the. Continent, and for the most part in 
 England too, rejects all religion. " The 
 Church," they say — I quote one of its official organs in 
 France — " urges men to be indifferent to earthly 
 welfare and to work for eternal happiness, while we 
 Socialists hold the very opposite thesis, for we propose 
 to the suffering earthly comfort." Hence it concludes: 
 " The ends proposed by Sociahsm and by religion are 
 perfectly irreconcilable." The language of many of the 
 leaders of Socialism in England, and of the most widely 
 read Sociahst paper in England is similar. Every- 
 where the Sociahst cries to the people. "Seek ye first 
 the Kingdom of Earth ! Do not bother about the Kingdom 
 of Heaven." Indeed such words have been heard in 
 the capital of this Cathohc country. 
 
 The partisan of Liberalism is just as 
 . . decided as the Sociahst in resenting all 
 
 enemySrdigion. "^terference of the Church. He tells her 
 that she has no earthly right to inter- 
 fere in the sphere of pohtics or political 
 economy, or social science ; and in particular he insists 
 that she has no right to speak to him as to the way he 
 should make his money or spend it or conduct his 
 business. 
 
 The minds of many Catholics, espe- 
 
 Liberalisra has cially of those who, like us in Ireland, 
 
 infected the live in a somewhat Protestant atmo- 
 
 public mind even sphere, have been vitiated by this 
 rn Ireland. j^-, \- u- u v. i i ■ 
 
 Liberalism which has ruled m every 
 
 Court and Cabinet in Europe for the 
 
 past one hundred and fifty years, and has infected the 
 
 literature, the thought, the instincts, and the customs 
 
 of the age. Many Cathohcs who pass as religious, 
 
 and even as pious men, consider it to be large- 
 
 mindedness and enlightenment to hold that the Church's 
 
 authority should be limited to strictly religious matters, 
 
 and her action to purely religious functions. They
 
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 7 
 
 feel some irritation when the pastors or priests of the 
 
 Church presume to speak of the social or political or 
 
 business relations which ought to exist among men. 
 
 Yet, though the Church's authority is rejected by 
 
 both parties in the social struggle, and by many of her 
 
 own misguided children, she has no choice but to 
 
 boldly assert that authority, and to set forth her 
 
 principles. 
 
 In the first place, the miserable and 
 
 rru ^^^. i. degrading destitution to which such a 
 The isnapcn , ° ^ . . r ^i i 
 
 cannot be large proportion of the human race is 
 
 indifferent to condemned, their " state httle better 
 
 the sufferings of than slavery," (to use the Pope's expres- 
 
 e poor. sion), cannot leave her indifferent. 
 
 People in acute suffering can think of 
 
 nothing but their suffering. They cannot attend to the ^r? 
 
 affairs of the soul if their attention is absorbed by the 
 
 suffering of the body. " A certain amount of comfort," fe^ 
 
 says St. Thomas, " is necessary for the practice of ^' 
 
 virtue." It is natural, therefore, that the Church CS 
 
 should be anxious that all men should enjoy at least ^ 
 
 that measure of comfort and welfare which will enable C:;; 
 
 them to attend to her words of salvation. ^ 
 
 But it is not merely as though the Church found it !=- 
 
 expedient to interfere. She takes a bolder, a prouder 
 
 stand. ,' ■ 
 
 She has been set in the world by God " t^^ 
 
 as the authoritative exponent of truth, c^ 
 
 It is her doty to and has been ordered by God to teach t^' 
 
 vi^ckAltvume ^^^ *^^^^ ^° ^^^ nations. She finds the Cj!^ 
 
 two parties that divide the world both Ctj 
 
 ahke denying that truth. Each has its ^ 
 
 own remedy for the social problem, but both ahke Km 
 
 insist on regarding it as a purely economic problem bi 
 
 to be solved independently of the eternal principles ^' 
 
 of justice and moraUty. Neither fear of persccu- ^ 
 
 tion at the hands of irrehgious rich nor fear of vio- <^ 
 lence at the hands of the mob can make her hesitate 
 to proclaim those principles. She, therefore, confident 
 in the authority given her by the Creator of all society,
 
 8 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 and obeying the commands of Christ, her founder, 
 declares that the doctrines of both parties are wrong. 
 
 It requires very httle consideration to see that the 
 materiahsm which underhes the various forms of both 
 Sociahsm and Liberahsm, and which rejects all inter- 
 ference of the moral law, especially in social matters, 
 is utterly at variance with the fundamental doctrines 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Every Christian knows that God, the 
 Creator, is the final and supreme end of 
 
 because social man ; that the obhgation laid on each 
 relations have a individual to strive towards that end 
 •moral aspect. • i i . -, jx- j j • 
 
 '^ IS absolute and unconditioned, domina- 
 ting man's existence at all times and in 
 all his acts. All man's activities from the noblest ones, 
 acts of faith and hope and love which have God as their 
 term, to the apparently unimportant or merely material 
 ones such as eating or v/alking, are all dominated by 
 man's final end, and have no other value or meaning 
 except in so far as they enable man to rise to God. They 
 are, therefore, endowed with a moral character, or at 
 least have to conform to a moral standard. 
 
 Now, in creating man, God might have attached each 
 individual to Himself alone, so that each man should 
 attain his final end by acts of a purely individual char- 
 acter, just as though he were the only man in the world. 
 But God has not so created man. He has so formed 
 human society that men's acts have not merely an 
 individual, but a social character. He has multipUed 
 the points of contact between the individuals that form 
 society. He has surrounded each man with a network 
 of multitudinous influences rights and duties. He has 
 placed between Himself and each individual a host of 
 others, so that each man has to strive to God by acts 
 that affect others. 
 
 If, then, even acts which do not affect our neighbour, 
 are dominated by moral laws, much more must the 
 activities of social life be dominated by them. The 
 phenomena of economic life have indeed a material 
 aspect ; they can be expressed in terms of physical
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 9 
 
 science, but they are made up of human and not of 
 purely physical activities, and therefore are to be 
 governed by moral laws, and therefore fall within the 
 authority of the Church, the Divine interpreter of that 
 law. 
 
 For instance, if manual labour were a mere pastime, 
 not affecting anyone but the workman, it would btill be 
 susceptible of moral attributes, it would be in any 
 given case either right or wrong. But as it is necessary 
 for the well-being — for the very existence of man, and 
 absorbs a great part of the energies of the human race, 
 and creates myriads of relations between man and m9.n, 
 it necessarily becomes the matter of multitudinous 
 obhgations and rights, and the Church is within her 
 sphere when she defines those obhgations and rights. 
 
 In so doing the Church is not trenching on the domain 
 of civil society. She is merely declaring with authority 
 the solution of the various questions involving morahty 
 or rehgious truth which the constitution or the develop- 
 ment of civil society presents for solution. 
 
 This is the prerogative given her by 
 God. She has always claimed and 
 Her interference exercised it, and it is more than ever 
 most necessary necessary that she should do so to-day. 
 0- ay- jYie fierce struggle which convulses 
 
 modern society, the struggle between 
 wealth obstinately clinging to privilege, and poverty 
 challenging that privilege in passionate indignation, has 
 raised questions of the profoundest moral consequence, 
 questions affecting the lives and the consciences of every 
 individual in every nation. Liberahsm on the one hand 
 and Sociahsm on the other have formulated codes of 
 doctrine which are completely opposed to God's law, 
 and which the Church is imperatively called on to con- 
 demn and combat. 
 
 Liberahsm, perhaps the more dan- 
 LlberallBm gerous of the two, exaggerates the im- 
 portance of individual liberty. It 
 regards man as in the first place naturally good, and in 
 the second, naturally impelled to improve his circum-
 
 10 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 stances. It therefore demands full liberty for him. It 
 expects that the result will be the improvement of the 
 individual and at the same time the improvement of 
 society, the aggregate of individuals. Its general ten- 
 dency is to consider each man as a being apart from 
 others, detaching him from his social hfe and abstract- 
 ing from his social relations. 
 
 Against this the Church teaches that 
 
 condemned by such hberty is utterly subversive of 
 
 the Church, human society, that it leads to anarchy. 
 
 She teaches that man has duties, natural 
 and essential du*ties to his neighbour ; that man is to 
 attain his final happiness by acts which have an effect 
 on those surrounding him ; that these acts call for moral 
 control, and that this moral regulation is all the more 
 necessary as man's nature is vitiated and inclined to 
 evil. She teaches that man is called on to fulfil his 
 numerous obligations as a member of the various natural 
 and necessary societies in which God places him, the 
 family, the city, the nation ; that he is subject to the 
 authority which directs each of these societies to its 
 proper good ; she teaches that it is her prerogative to 
 declare men's duties to each other in these societies, 
 and the moral relations of these societies one to the 
 other. Human freedom thus hmited by social obhga- 
 tions becomes true liberty. 
 
 If LiberaUsm exaggerates hberty, 
 Socialism SociaHsm tends to destroy it. Socialism 
 
 subordinates the individual to the State, 
 as though the individual were made for the State, as 
 though the State were not rather a mere system planned 
 for the good of the individual. 
 
 To suit the working of the Sociahst State, the personal 
 dignity of the individual human being, his supernatural 
 destiny, his essential duties to God, are ignored ; his 
 rights to property are unduly curtailed ; all his legitimate 
 hberties, liberty of association, liberty of conscience, 
 liberty of choice as to a state of life, liberty of education, 
 are restrained beyond due measure ; the functions of 
 the family are interfered with.
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 1 1 
 
 The Church has no choice but to 
 alio condemned, condemn every such system which pro- 
 poses to ignore or destroy the institu- 
 tions and the relations which God ordained as essential 
 to every form of society. 
 
 The Church, then, has the right 
 
 and the duty of condemning both the 
 
 The power of parties which are now striving for the 
 
 the Church to j-^astery of the world. But will her 
 
 cure social evilB. .^^^^fg^g^^g be of any effect? Has 
 
 she the power of bringing back peace 
 to distracted society ? 
 
 Well, her Popes and pastors look forward to the 
 results of her interference with an exuberant confidence ; 
 and significant, too, is the fact that many writers who 
 hate and reject the Church, admit the mighty influence 
 she has in the world, and note with alarm that that in- 
 fluence hardly ever promised to be so powerful as it 
 promises to-day. "It is certain," writes one of them, 
 " that the Church never had a better chance of estab- 
 lishing her sway than at present." " The danger is in- 
 creasing," wrote another great infidel author ; " Pope 
 Leo XIII. is preparing a crusade which another Pope 
 may bring to triumph." 
 
 Yes, the Church undertakes to bring back order into 
 the present chaotic state of society, and she has the 
 power to do so. It is not the first time that she has had 
 to grapple with the labour problem — and the labour 
 problem is the social problem — and has solved it. 
 
 It met her at her entrance into the 
 world. At the beginning of the Chris- 
 She has done so tian era all labour was slave labour, 
 inthepast when L^l5Qyj.gj.g ^gj-g ^^^^ bought and sold 
 
 Blavery. ^^ dogs or horses, and were the absolute 
 property of their owners. They were 
 treated exactly as their owners thought fit to treat 
 them. They had no redress, no rights of any kind. 
 Their very children were not their own, but their 
 masters'. Think of the result of such a system on the 
 minds and characters of both masters and slaves ; on
 
 12 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 the masters' side callousness, cruelty, luxury, pride, 
 idleness ; on the side of the slaves spiritlessness, 
 cowardice, flattery, falsehood, hatred. Such was the 
 unpromising state of society when the Church came to 
 reform it ; and remember that slaves far outnumbered 
 freemen, and that to deliver them was to work a greater 
 revolution, a more complete subversal of the constitution 
 of society than even a Sociahstic revolution would be 
 to-day. Remember, too, how weak the Church was, how 
 apparently unequal to the task. At first twelve poor 
 fishermen, and for a hundred years after, only a small 
 number of poor and despised men, mostly slaves, 
 " weavers, washermen, illiterate clowns," as a Roman 
 writer of the time scornfully calls them. Yet the Church 
 little by httle mitigated the awful condition of the 
 working classes, the slaves, and finally brought about 
 their complete emancipation. 
 
 Such a gigantic work took time, but in time the 
 Church gave the poor labouring slave his wife, his chil- 
 dren, his home. She gave him his wages to be his own, 
 she gave him prosperity and content. 
 
 What means did she use to thus trans- 
 
 The means she form the world ? Only the peaceful 
 employed. means taught her by Christ. She made 
 no pompous declarations of the rights 
 of man. She did not summon the millions of suffering 
 slaves to rise, slaughter their terrified owners, and 
 reduce society to anarchy. No ! she made masters feel 
 that they were not superior in the essential dignity of 
 manhood to their slaves, and she made slaves feel that 
 they were not inferior in the essential dignity of man- 
 hood to their masters. She taught them both ahke, 
 masters and slaves, that they were members of one 
 family, that of Jesus Christ ; that they were, both alike, 
 sent into the world for one purpose only, to serve God ; 
 that by performing their duties to each other, duties of 
 service in the one case, duties of kindness in the other, 
 they would gain the same eternal reward and meet in 
 perfect equahty before God. The idea that labour is 
 something to be ashamed of could not Uve in the Church
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 13 
 
 founded by Christ the carpenter. She loved the poor 
 slaves with a special love. Many of her children in 
 the early days were slaves. She entrusted her divine 
 mysteries to their hands and raised one of them to be 
 her ruler, Christ's Vicar on earth. When she had 
 softened and humanised the relations between masters 
 and slaves she was easily able to persuade those who 
 owned slaves to hberate them, and thus httle by httle 
 she banished slavery from the world without shock or 
 violence. 
 
 Thus did the Church solve the Labour problem as it 
 presented itself to her in her early days. In the feudal 
 ages it presented itself again under another form, and 
 again she solved it. 
 
 The great lords and barons who ruled 
 
 th^ 1 h Europe sought to oppress the towns 
 
 nroblenfin'ttie situated within their territories. To 
 Middle Ages resist their unjurt exactions the Church 
 formed the trade guilds. These were 
 originally religious confraternities, but the Church re- 
 organised them for the protection of the tradesmen. Each 
 guild comprised all those of the same trade within the 
 town, and formed of them a strongly compacted body 
 held together by religious feeling and by a family spirit. 
 Each guild had a monopoly of its trade in the to\\ai, and 
 limited competition within itself by minute regulations as 
 to wages and conditions of work. Each guild reheved 
 by its care and its material resources any of its members 
 (and, in case of need, the families of any of its members), 
 who were afflicted by distress of any kind, sickness, 
 bereavement, old age, even imprisonment. 
 
 Thus, while the Church held sway in Europe, work 
 was held in high esteem, labourers were well content, 
 wages were good and constant, excessive toil was re- 
 stricted, strikes were needless, the homes of the poor 
 united and happy, that social monstrosity, a strong 
 man starving, was unknown ; a spirit of rehgion and 
 family union and solidarity secured social peace. 
 
 In time the Reformation, with its offspring the 
 Liberal philosophy of the eighteenth century, spread its
 
 14 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 fatal errors. A false spirit of liberty arose to disrupt 
 Christian society. The guilds lost their ancient spirit 
 and strength, and had in Western Europe fallen into 
 decay when the French Revolution finally destroyed 
 them. 
 
 Again, to-day the eternal labour 
 
 To-day the sad problem under a new form has grown 
 
 state of the to be the problem of the world. Again 
 
 labouring it must be solved if the world is to be 
 
 classes at peace. 
 
 The workman is not now a slave. He 
 is free to make his contract, but he is often not free 
 from hunger. His body is not sold in the market-place, 
 but his hfe and strength are marketable objects, and 
 their price may be run down to a starvation rate. He 
 is not bound by any bond of serfdom to work for any 
 lord or noble, but he is bound by his craving for hfe 
 to work for a master who will often just keep him from 
 starving. His strength, his comfort, his hfe are crushed 
 between two mill-stones — above, competition among 
 employers ; below, competition with machines. Machines 
 are inanimate workers, slaves of steel and iron, which 
 replace the living artisan of long ago. Those who tend 
 them have harder and certainly more wearing work 
 than the tradesmen of past ages ; and though they may 
 get good pay, they may at any moment be thrown out of 
 employment by the commercial crises that occur so 
 frequently. They have no feeling of security, for, if 
 their strength fails them, any Insurance scheme is a poor 
 substitute for the reliable and (above all) the thoughtful 
 and sympathetic support which the tradesman of old 
 could look for from his guild. If their strength fails 
 they must go down and be trampled on in the struggle 
 of life. Worst of all, our modern industrial system, 
 which gives the fortunate minority of labourers work, 
 though precarious, drives the helpless majority out 
 of work altogether, or almost altogether, and leaves 
 them in the street to starve or beg. The consequence is 
 that vast multitudes of men and women are not merely 
 poor, but destitute ; not merely afflicted by the ordinary
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. I5 
 
 sufferings of humanity, but are doomed to the yoke 
 of wretchedness and misery all their lives, a yoke — to 
 use again the strong expression of the Pope — " little 
 better than slavery." Their brooding anger finds expres- 
 sion in strikes, riots, inflammatory speeches and a revo- 
 lutionary Press, SociaHst orators and writers do not 
 create this discontent. They find it in existence, and 
 existing with good cause too. They only increase it, 
 inflame it, profit by it. They win the allegiance of 
 the people by appealing to their rightful sense of injury 
 and to their passions of envy and vengefulness. They 
 rouse them to a fury of destructiveness by showing them 
 the alluring prospect of Socialistic equahty and happiness. 
 It is not now as in the revolutionary 
 
 epochs of 1789 and 1848, when par- 
 s a danger ticular thrones or particular forms of 
 to all Society. , , , ^ .^ i xt iu 
 
 government were threatened. Now the 
 
 discontent of the masses moves them 
 to pull down the whole fabric of civihsed society. The 
 peace and happiness of every individual is threatened, 
 the sacred shrine of his family hearth, his rights to his 
 property, his rights to the fruits of his labour, his per- 
 sonal freedom, his association with his fellows, in fact 
 all the energies which create the wealth necessary for 
 the poor as well as the rich, and all the laws which 
 should guard social harmony and prosperity. 
 
 In face of Socialism the modern 
 
 The State State is practically powerless. Sociahsm 
 
 ^°^Mrest ° ^^ ^^ ^^^^ more than it is a party, and 
 
 Socialism ^^^ modern State has no right, and 
 
 claims no right to combat ideas. It 
 
 professes to guard liberty of thought and speech. How 
 
 then can it check the writings and speeches of SociaUsts ? 
 
 It has for its law the will of the majority. What right 
 
 has the majority of to-day to forbid the majority of 
 
 to-morrow from being SociaHst if it wishes ? 
 
 Even if the State, contrary to its principles, does 
 ban Socialistic doctrines, it is powerless to enforce the 
 ban. Against Anarchy which contradicts the idea of 
 the State, the State has arms, or at least arguments.
 
 l6 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. . 
 
 Against Socialism which merely exaggerates the notion 
 of the State, and seeks to extend its powers, the State 
 finds it difficult to act. As a proof of this, remark that 
 Socialism is strongest in France and Germany — precisely 
 the two countries where the State, a Jacobin republic 
 in the one case, a military imperialism in the other, is 
 most despotic and centrahsed. 
 
 No ! there is only one power on earth 
 The Church the that can solve this social problem — the 
 only hope of power that has solved it more than once 
 social already. The Church of God, Author 
 
 regeneration, of all society, teaching God's law with 
 the authority of God, and having at 
 her command the resources of devotedness and enthu- 
 siasm which God's service and God's grace can inspire, 
 is the only hope for social peace. 
 
 In the dark days of the eighteenth 
 Modern and nineteenth centuries, when Liberal 
 Catholic social philosophy was working anew the en- 
 reformers, slavement of the people, the Church 
 alone produced writers of genius and 
 discernment, such as dv, Bonald, Lamennais, de Maistre, 
 who warned society that in rejecting Christian justice 
 and charity she was preparing her own destruction. 
 
 Some thirty or forty years ago, there 
 Social arose all over the Cathohc world an 
 
 activity of extraordinary movement of mind and 
 the Church, action. Her pastors, such as Manning 
 in England, Korum and Ketteler in 
 Germany. Langenieux and Pie in France, Gibbons and 
 Ireland in America, and a brilliant band of Catholic 
 laymen ^uch as de Mun and de la Tour du Pin in France, 
 Windthorst in Germany, Decurtins in Switzerland, 
 Vogelsang in Austria, raised their voices in eloquent 
 pleading for the rights of the poor, and proposed mea- 
 sures of redress which sounded Sociahstic in the ears of 
 the many Catholics who at that time had forgotten the 
 true social doctrine of the Church. 
 
 All over the Continent, as though a new spirit had 
 been breathed into the Church, multitudes of priests.
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. I7 
 
 and especially multitudes of lay folk of all ranks and 
 conditions of life, nobles, merchants, artisans, faithfulty 
 following the Church's spirit, devoted themselves to the 
 cause of the poor, agitating for their rights, providing 
 works to help them, and binding them together in Unions. 
 Then these thousands of earnest 
 -, 1- 1 e Christian workers, bishops, priests, and 
 
 PoDeLeoXm ^^^ ^°^^ ^^■^^ ^^ ■^^^■''" ^ leader, no less a 
 leader than Christ's Vicar on earth. Pope 
 Leo XIII., who in that year wrote his 
 famous Encyclical Rerum Novarum. 
 
 The whole world listened to the voice 
 
 Its reception of the man who spoke as the Vicar of 
 
 by the world. Christ, the founder of society. His 
 voice was listened to by sovereigns, by 
 statesmen, by men of every calling, of every rank, of 
 every degree of culture, of every school of thought, by 
 those outside the Church, as well as by those within, 
 with a reverent attention, never before perhaps accorded 
 to any Pontifical utterance. 
 
 The Anghcan Bishop of Manchester at a large meeting 
 declared, " The Pope has put his finger on the sore spot 
 of the social system. He must be Hstened to, or the 
 world will have to expiate its negligence by fearful pun- 
 ishment." The journal, Vorwaerts, the principal organ of 
 Socialism in Germany, speaks thus: "The Pope has 
 anticipated the Princes and the Governments of civilised 
 States, and he has solved the Social problem." " Yes," 
 it of course adds, " as far as it is possible for the present 
 powers of the world to solve it." And M. Barres, a 
 French writer, a freethinker, says : " Now that the En- 
 cycHcal has appeared, I cannot imagine how there can 
 be any anti-clericals. Let some years elapse to allow 
 old quarrels to be forgotten, and Democracy will never 
 again regard a priest as an enemy." 
 
 There were, indeed, some interested people, even 
 among Cathohcs, and some timid spirits, who were 
 frightened by the Encyclical. They would have had no 
 objection to the poor being instructed as to their duties, 
 but they did not like that the Pope should speak so
 
 l8 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 strongly as to their rights. They thought it a dangerous 
 thing for the Pope to approve many of the demands of 
 the poor, even though he condemned Sociahsm — the chief 
 of those demands. 
 
 But the Church will not champion any abuse, nor 
 bind herself to any class. She speaks in the name of no 
 class or rather of all classes. Nay, if, in the struggle 
 between the power of wealth and the power of the people, 
 the Church had to intervene as a champion and not 
 as a mediator it is not to the side of wealth that the 
 teaching of her Gospel or the traditions of her history 
 would incline her. 
 
 To high and low, rich and poor, with 
 It is an the force and majesty of St. Paul, the 
 expositioa Pope expounds the laws of social right 
 of Catholic and Christian charity. He treats of 
 social doctrine economic questions, of wages, of work, 
 of association, of profits, of all subjects 
 which now impassion society, but he treats of them 
 from the standpoint of Christ who cares for the full 
 and complete interests of man, not from the narrow 
 standpoint of SociaUsts and Liberal writers who both 
 see in man only the functions of producing and con- 
 suming. 
 
 Though the Encychcal coming from the Vicar of 
 Christ will never be found in error, it does not purport 
 to be a detailed code of all social doctrine nor the last 
 word to be said upon it. As regards many questions it 
 only traces general directions and has been the occasion 
 or rather the inspiration of new and more minute studies 
 of social questions among Catholics. 
 
 The Encyclical is, however, not 
 
 and it is an merely a declaration of Christian prin- 
 
 appeal for ciple. It is a clarion call to action. It 
 
 social action summons the whole Church to resume 
 
 on the part the social functions from which for two 
 
 of ecclesiastics centuries she has been kept aloof. It 
 
 calls on her to be once more the refuge, 
 
 the champion, the teacher, the friend of all who need 
 
 her and especially of the suffering poor.
 
 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. I9 
 
 Since the Encyclical the Bishops in every country 
 by their pastoral letters and Synodal decrees show 
 themselves more than ever earnestly interested in the 
 social conditions of the countries they live in. In most 
 seminaries special courses are given on social questions, 
 and special priests set apart to study them more deeply. 
 Priests, with the encouragement of their Bishops, 
 occupy themselves with the numerous works which aim 
 at improving and transforming the present conditions of 
 the poorer classes. Such works are not now considered 
 in any country on the Continent as unfit objects of 
 priestly zeal and energy. 
 
 But the Catholic clergy is not the 
 
 Cathohc Church. The Church is the 
 
 and ot layfolk. ^^^^ ^^ ^jj ^^^ faithful, and lay folk 
 
 are her members not less than priests. 
 Christ in the person of his Vicar calls viponall her people, 
 lay people no less than priests, to take part in this glorious 
 work. 
 
 Nobly has his call been answered. 
 Results of this Not merely organisations for the pro- 
 appeal, tection of purely rehgious interests, 
 such as leagues for the defence of reh- 
 gious education, leagues against drunkenness or evil 
 literature, leagues to protect young girls when travelhng ; 
 nor yet many charitable institutions such as are gene- 
 rally understood by that name, orphanages, asylums, 
 hospices, night refuges, hospitals ; but social works 
 of a more constructive and preventive character, such as 
 organisations for the saving of infant hfe, for the care of 
 nursing mothers, creches, housekeeping schools for 
 girls, technical schools for boys and girls, clubs for the 
 education and moral protection of the young, mutual 
 societies of all kinds, co-operative societies of con- 
 sumption and of production, loan funds, cheap restau- 
 rants and cheap dwellings for the poor, registry offices, 
 consumers' leagues. Trade unions especially for the 
 protection of unskilled labour and of women ; clubs for 
 the study of Cathohc social principles, Cathohc pam- 
 phlets, reviews, newspapers, congresses — all these works
 
 20 THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. 
 
 and scores of others are springing up in splended pro- 
 fusion all over the Continent, and are increasing daily in 
 strength and effectiveness, founded and directed, some 
 of them by lay people, many of them, perhaps even 
 most of them, by priests. 
 
 Thus is the Catholic Church, obedient 
 Nature of social to the call of Christ's Vicar, striving 
 work. in the words of St. Paul, " to restore 
 
 all the world in Christ," to build up the 
 shattered fabric of Society once more and to make of it 
 a fair dwelUng where all can hve and serve God in hap- 
 piness, as far as happiness is possible in this passing 
 world. 
 
 Christ calls on all of us to share in this work, and 
 surely we should not hesitate to obey Him. It is a 
 noble work, an inspiring work, and one rich in the 
 blessings of time and of eternity. It is a work 
 which will further our own interests, for we shall 
 be opposing to the forces that seek to rob us of our 
 liberty, our property, our peace, our religion, the forces 
 which will place comfort if not wealth, and the possibihty 
 of virtuous hfe within the reach of us all ; it is a work in 
 which our energies cannot be wasted, for we have an 
 infallible guide in Christ's Church ; like all works of 
 charity it is twice blessed, for it brings consolation to 
 those who give and to those who take, and w^hatever it 
 may cost us in thought, in time, in trouble will be 
 rewarded beyond measure, for as each of us will pass 
 through the gates of death he will find Christ welcoming 
 him on the threshold of Heaven : " Come, thou blessed 
 of My Father ; enter into the Kingdom prepared for 
 you ; I was hungry and you gave Me to eat, I was 
 thirsty and you gave Me to drink ; I was naked and you 
 covered Me ; homeless and you took Me in. Amen, I say 
 to you that what you have done to these My least 
 brethren you have done to Me." Anien.
 
 « THE CHORCH AND THE WORKMAN. " 
 
 IF all the world's wealth were dis- 
 tributed to-day in equal shares 
 ineanality ol among the men and women on the 
 
 men earth, in a month's time the world 
 
 would be again divided into rich and 
 poor, and the social question would be again calling for 
 solution. Men, from their birth, tend to be unlike and 
 unequal. If we reflect how men differ from each other in 
 physical strength, in keenness of sense, in retentiveness 
 of memory, in power of intellect, in firmness of will, in 
 the nature and strength of their passions and dispositions, 
 their tastes and opinions, we can easily see that they can 
 never be kept on a level. One will rise, another sink ; 
 one will strive, another despair ; one will work, another 
 idle ; the strong or the clever — that is, the few — are 
 certain to surpass or overbear or circumvent their 
 neighbours. The inequahty of men and their passions 
 cannot be legislated or arranged out of existence. 
 
 It is thus no new thing in the world's 
 The mnltitade history that the many are poor and the 
 was always few rich. It was thus in every nation 
 poor but not that history tells of. But it was not 
 always destitute, always the case that the few were in 
 luxury and the many in destitution. 
 It was not so in our country when we 
 -*or example, had our own civilisation. Though 
 in old-time slavery existed in the old Irish system, 
 Ireland as everywhere else at the time, it was 
 restrained by the law, and the slave 
 never seems to have sunk to the level of a beast of burden 
 as elsewhere. Neither did slave-labour destroy free- 
 labour. Labour as such was not despised. The free- 
 artisan, if he was very skilled, ranked high in the social 
 scalp. The more useful classes of artisans had lands 
 
 a
 
 22 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 assigned to them for their support; others were paid 
 wages fixed by law. All of them had perfect hberty to 
 form corporations within the tribe for the defence of 
 their interests. The Irish system rigidly hmited the 
 powers of the chieftains and of the rich, and guarded 
 jealously the rights and welfare of the poor. This 
 explains why the Irish chieftains were often willing 
 enough to give up their position as chieftains and accept 
 instead the less restricted status of feudal lords under 
 the English Crown, while the poor clansmen are found 
 clinging desperately, even until the end of the seventeenth 
 century, to the ancient Irish system. 
 
 Neither was it the case that the few 
 
 and in the were in luxury and the many in desti- 
 
 medieval times, tution when the Church held sway in all 
 
 European society in the Middle Ages. 
 
 Consider, for instance, the state of the town labourer 
 of those days. He always belonged to some guild. 
 When young he was apprenticed to a master and was 
 instructed by him in his trade, lodged, fed and clothed 
 by him as one of his own children. His wages were 
 regulated by the guild, and were not allowed to sink 
 beneath what would ensure him and his family a decent 
 comfort. His master was not goaded on to oppress 
 him with excessive work ; for the competition of master- 
 workmen (employers or contractors, as we should say), 
 was itself restricted. If any of them undertook a contract 
 on terms which the guild as a whole considered injurious 
 to its general interests, the guild cancelled the contract. 
 Every tradesman had in his guild not merely a society 
 of mutual aid, but a society which considered it a reli- 
 gious duty to take care of all its members and of their 
 families. Religion so animated the guilds that when 
 reading their statutes one might almost imagine that 
 they cared for nothing but their souls' welfare ; yet we 
 know that they practically ruled all the towns of Western 
 Europe in the Middle Ages, and played a leading part in 
 the politics of the time. 
 
 Thus the labouring man in the ages of faith, meeting 
 his fellows constantly at the rehgious festivals of the
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 23 
 
 guild in the Church, or at the deliberations of the guild 
 in the guild-hall, discussing the interests of the guild 
 as a whole, or the affairs of those of its members who 
 required help, felt himself a member of a larger family, 
 could look forward with security to a comforted and 
 honoured old age, and knew that if he died in manhood, 
 his family would be provided for by his brethren. 
 
 These guilds, as I have said, lost their vigour after 
 the Reformation, and died away in most places in the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 They were, however, in any case, doomed to disappear 
 when the invention of steam-power transformed the 
 vvhole industrial world. 
 
 Our modern system has great advan- 
 Deplorable tages ; production has been increased 
 condition of a hundred-fold, means of communica- 
 the poor in tion and of distribution have multiplied 
 modern days, indefinitely, capital can be easily mobi- 
 hsed, articles of consumption have been 
 cheapened, and the standard of hving has been raised. 
 But at what a cost ! A complete moral and social 
 divorce has been effected between employer and work- 
 man. The real employers of much of the world's labour 
 are shareholders who have no personal bonds of interest 
 with their employees, and care only for a large dividend. 
 When employers deal directly with labourers they are 
 inclined to consider labour as a purely physical force, 
 their only concern being to get it as cheaply as possible. 
 The development of machinery while improving the con- 
 dition — though leaving it precarious enough — of a 
 minority of labourers, has doomed vast numbers of 
 them to destitution. It is said that within the past 
 sixty years machines have increased about five-fold 
 while the number of workers has not even doubled. In 
 all countries there is a vast proletariat whose condition 
 is admitted by all thoughtful men to be deplorable, 
 and, as Pope Leo says, " It is imperative to find some 
 remedy, and that quickly, for the misery and wretched- 
 ness that press so heavily on the large majority of the 
 very poor." The words of the Sacred Scripture, " Thou
 
 £4 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 Shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow " have 
 been made false in our day, for many thousands, working 
 as no human being should have to work, cannot gain 
 their daily bread withal. 
 
 It is with a view to remedying this 
 
 Pope Leo XIII. scandal that Pope Leo in his Ency- 
 
 declares the clical on labour speaks to individual 
 
 duties of employers, and lays down the obhga- 
 
 employers. tions which he upon them with regard 
 
 to those who work for them. " The 
 
 obligations of masters are," he says, " to pay a just 
 
 wage to their men ; not to injure their lawful savings 
 
 by violence or fraud, or by open or hidden usury ; to 
 
 allow them freely to practise their religion ; not to 
 
 expose them to corrupting allurements or to the danger 
 
 of scandal ; not to entice them from a love of family and 
 
 from careful thrift ; not to impose on them work unsuited 
 
 to their age or sex." 
 
 Notice that there is no question of charity here. 
 Charity cannot replace justice. If the worker does not 
 get a proper wage it is injustice, and injustice calls for 
 justice, not for charity. A wage that allows a worker to 
 starve should be supplemented, not by a gift, but by 
 an increase of pay. The poor man does not ask for alms, 
 but for work and wages, and who will say that his sense 
 of personal dignity is over-sensitive or his demands 
 extravagant ? 
 
 The payment of a just wage is the first of the duties 
 
 declared by the Pope to rest on the employer. It is 
 
 also the most important, for if observed it will ensure 
 
 the others. The payment of proper wages will, more than 
 
 almost anything else, lead to an equitable distribution 
 
 of wealth among men, and thus bring peace to the world. 
 
 Now, it is to be feared that even 
 
 Even Catholic Catholic employers have sometimes 
 
 "'"ftTI ?se^° ^°°^^ notions as to their obUgations in 
 
 ^otions^of^ ^^^^ matter. One who remonstrates 
 
 their duties- ''"^^^^ ^^ employer for giving a poor 
 
 wage, may get some such answers as 
 
 the following : (i) " The money I give and the work I
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 25 
 
 get for it are two purely material things. They have 
 nothing to do with conscience or religion. Business is 
 business. Business must be run on business hnes " ; or, 
 (2) " My money is mine to do what I Hke with it. No 
 one can dictate to me how I am to use it " ; or, (3) " My 
 workman's labour is an article of commerce ; I make a 
 bargain with him for it. The State can punish me if I 
 break my agreement, but beyond that, no one has a 
 right to interfere "; or, (4) "My men freely consent to 
 work at my price. Why should I give them more ? 
 They do not ask it " ; or, (5) " If they are not satisfied with 
 my wages let them go. I can get hundreds dehghted 
 to take their places " ; or, (6) " My wages are plenty for 
 my men if they are not married. Why should I have to 
 support their famihes ? Their families don't work for 
 me. If a man goes and burdens himself with a wife 
 and family, it is his own look-out ; I need not pro- 
 vide for his improvidence " ; or (with a philanthropic 
 pose), (7) "I admit my wage is not a very big one. 
 I could afford to give more, but small as it is, it is 
 better than none. If I did not keep my business going 
 my men would probably not get any work at all. 
 In fact I am doing them a service by giving them even 
 this small wage." 
 
 Such answers may be thoroughly business-Uke, but 
 they are thoroughly unchristian. They may have the 
 authority of clever and successful and wealthy men 
 behind them, but they have not the authority of God 
 behind them. They are used in thoughtlessness by 
 Catholics who do not reflect on the false principles im- 
 plied in them. They are merely odd ends of phrases 
 picked up parrot-Hke from the literature and speech 
 of the modern commercial world. 
 
 This setting up of business principles 
 
 These notions as principles of morahty, this supplant- 
 
 are inspired ing of the laws of God by the laws of 
 
 by modern book-keeping is the result of the econo- 
 
 Liberalism. mic Liberalism which has permeated 
 
 and has been rotting the whole fabric 
 
 of our society. The partisans of this school of Liberahsm
 
 26 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 tend to deny the existence of moral relations in the labour 
 contract. They hold that the value of work is deter- 
 mined exclusively by the law of supply and demand. 
 According to their principles, if a workman through 
 stress of competition is willing to accept a starvation 
 wage, the employer is justified in giving it. No one, 
 they say, need give more for a thing than its price, and 
 the price of that man's labour, they say, is reduced, 
 just as the price of any article which becomes too 
 common on the market, or which people do not par- 
 ticularly want. Each one, they say, is free to work at 
 any wage he chooses, and none is bound to pay 
 anything beyond the wage which he can get a man 
 to accept. 
 
 The principles of this Liberal, or, as it is called in 
 England, " Manchester " School, lead almost inevitably 
 to what is known as " the iron law of wages " — that is, 
 that wages must always remain in or about what is 
 absolutely necessary for the mere subsistence of the 
 labouring class. According to this theory, wages 
 cannot remain for long much above this hne, for 
 employers, rivalling each other in cheap production, 
 would bring them down to the line ; they cannot keep 
 below this hne for long, because if the labouring class 
 diminish in numbers the decrease in the supply of labour 
 will make its price rise again. 
 
 Now no Catholic can hold this brutal 
 
 The Church view. We cannot hire a horse's strength 
 
 condemns these without hiring the horse, nor the steam 
 
 false notions, power of an engine without the engine, 
 and so we cannot hire the labourer's 
 energy without hiring the labourer himself — a human 
 being. To have regard, in a labour contract, to the 
 body of a man, his physical strength and health, his 
 purely individual needs, and to abstract from all that 
 is implied in the fact of his being a rational free and 
 social individual, is to treat the labourer as a mere 
 animal — not as a man. 
 
 The Cathohc cannot so treat his workman. He 
 must remember that his workman is his fellow-
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 2", 
 
 creature, with feelings passions and weaknesses just 
 as he, with hke interests and responsi- 
 The Catholic bihties, joys and sorrows, hopes and 
 view of the disappointments, pleasures and pains. 
 b^ef *°°^ Moreover, he must remember that 
 the employer ^^th he and his workmen are children 
 and his hands. °^ ^^ same Heavenly Father, that 
 they are both Christians, that is, im- 
 itators of Christ, that they are doing the same work on 
 earth, the service of God, and look for the same reward 
 in Heaven. 
 
 He will have to remember the words of God in 
 Deuteronomy : " Thou shalt pay the labourer the price 
 of his labour the same day before the going down of the 
 sun, because he is poor and with it maintaineth his 
 hfe, lest he cry out against thee to the Lord, and it be 
 reputed to thee as a sin," and the words of Ecclesias- 
 ticus : " He that defraudeth the poor is a man of blood. 
 He that taketh away the bread earned by sweat is Hke 
 unto him who killeth his neighbour," and St. Paul's 
 words, " Masters, do to your servants that which is just 
 and equal, knowing that you too have a Master in 
 Heaven." 
 
 Every Catholic must hear the law 
 
 Pope Leo XDI. of God spoken to him by God's Church, 
 
 declares and and that law as regards this matter of 
 
 proves the wages has been, not of course changed, 
 
 pSra ^^^ declared to him more explicitly, and 
 
 fair wage. urged more insistently on him by the 
 
 great Papal Encychcal of 1891. The 
 
 following is the passage in it on this matter of a just 
 
 wage : " A man's labour has two characteristics. First, 
 
 it is personal, inasmuch as the exertion of strength 
 
 belongs to the individual who puts it forth. Secondly, 
 
 it is necessary, for, without the result of labour a man 
 
 cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of Nature. 
 
 Now, if labour be considered in so far as it is personal, 
 
 it would be within the labourer's right to accept any 
 
 wage whatever ; for, just as he is free to work or not, 
 
 he is free to accept a small wage, or no wage at all.
 
 25 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 However, the workman's labour is not merely his per- 
 sonal attribute, but it is necessary, and this makes all 
 the difference. The preservation of life is the bounden 
 duty of all. It follows that each has a right to procure 
 what is required to live, and the poor can procure it in 
 no other way than by work and wages." And then, 
 " Though workmen and employers should, as a rule, 
 agree freely as to wages, there is a dictate of natural 
 justice more imperious and more ancient than any 
 labour contract, namely, that wages should be sufficient 
 to support a frugal and well-behaved man. [In another 
 place he speaks of this as a wage that will ensure " a 
 frugal comfort."] If through necessity or fear of a 
 worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions 
 because the employer will give him no better, he is the 
 victim of force and injustice." 
 
 These words are perfectly plain. An employer is not 
 justified in treating his workmen's labour as a market- 
 able commodity, the price of which can be indefinitely 
 reduced by the law of supply and demand. 
 
 It is strange that here in Ireland anyone should claim 
 to settle his wages by competition alone. Most of us 
 remember our country convulsed in a civil war when 
 the tenants, backed by almost the whole nation, rose up 
 in protest against the claims of many landlords to get 
 as much money for the use of their land as unrestrained 
 competition would give them. Just as the rack-rent, 
 to which the peasant in despair had to consent, was an 
 act of extortion, so to offer a sweating wage to the 
 labourer, who has no choice but to accept it, is an act 
 of injustice. 
 
 The doctrine of the Pope refers to an 
 Explanation of ordinary unskilled workman. It sup- 
 some points poses normal conditions, namely, that 
 in this the workman be an adult man of ordi- 
 declaration. nary strength, and that he put forth 
 average energy during an ordinary 
 working day. If he were unrehable, or a bungler, or of 
 less than ordinary strength, an employer might, of 
 course, offer him less than the hving wage. He should.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 29 
 
 however, give him that proportion of it which his work 
 bears to that of an average man. Moreover, the labourer 
 is supposed to be ordinarily sober and thrifty. The 
 employer need not pay a wage sufficient to provide for the 
 wants of the shiftless or wasteful or drunken workman ; 
 but, on the other hand, he must not assume the practice 
 of any extraordinary thrift or self-denial or the supple- 
 ment of out-of-hours work. 
 
 These points being clear, the doctrine 
 
 Doctrine of of the EncycHcal may be stated as 
 
 the Encyclical, follows: An average workman, even 
 
 an unskilled one, doing an average 
 
 day's work, has a strict right in justice to a wage which 
 
 will assure him a decent livelihood, and he has this right 
 
 even though, owing to the number of the unemployed 
 
 ready to take his place, he would be willing to accept 
 
 much less. 
 
 Justice, as you know, implies an 
 Explanation equivalence between what is given and 
 and proof of it. what is received. In this case the Pope 
 claims for the labourer's work an in- 
 trinsic value based not merely on its objective element — 
 the product of the work, but on a subjective element as 
 well — namely, the personal needs, duties and natural 
 rights of the labourer. A wage, therefore, to be just, 
 must be equal to this intrinsic value of the work. In 
 other words, a wage to be just must give the workman 
 at least that state of comfort which is ordinarily neces- 
 sary so that he may perform his duties to God and his 
 neighbours. Surely this doctrine must appear reason- 
 able. Every man has a right in justice to at least that 
 amount of the world's goods which will enable him 
 without excessive difficulty to attain the end for which 
 God placed him in the world, namely, to serve God 
 and to fulfil his obhgations to those about him. Now, 
 a man cannot without excessive difficulty attain this 
 end unless he gets sufficient to enable him to hve in 
 frugal, decent comfort. Under the conditions that 
 exist all over the world at present many have no other 
 means of enjoying such a state of comfort than by
 
 30 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 working for wages. Therefore they have a strict right 
 that their wages should be at least sufficient to ensure 
 them this moderate comfort. 
 
 Or, to put it in another way. If a thing has been given 
 man primarily for a certain end, its intrinsic utihty, its 
 true value or worth, is at least its efficiency for the 
 attaining of that end. Therefore the workman's energy 
 which is given him by God for the acquiring of at least 
 a reasonable state of comfort, has as its equivalent, at 
 least the amount of money which will ensure him that 
 comfort. Consequently, since the poorer classes have 
 no other means, in the present conditions of the world, 
 of obtaining that comfort than by working for wages, 
 every man has a strict right to demand as the equivalent 
 of his labour at least a decent living wage. 
 
 That man's strength has been given to him to obtain 
 at least a reasonable well-being is evident. Without 
 such a well-being man could not ordinarily fulfil his 
 duties to God and his neighbour. God would, therefore, 
 be obliging him to perform those duties under normally 
 impossible conditions — which would be an absurd con- 
 tention. 
 
 The Pope gives as a reason why the workman has this 
 strict right to get a decent wage from his employer, the 
 fact that he has no other means of livelihood than work 
 done for wages. This does not mean that the right to 
 a minimum wage comes directly from man's right to 
 live, nor even from a positive and determinate right to 
 work, but that it comes from the natural and necessary 
 character of the labourer's work under present-day 
 conditions which leave him no other means of liveli- 
 hood than his work. Thus, antecedently to the wage 
 contract, a labourer's right to a proper wage is an im- 
 perfect and indeterminate right. He has no right to 
 go to any particular employer and demand work and 
 proper wage. By the wage contract his right becomes 
 determinate and complete, and imposes on the employer 
 a strict obligation to pay the full equivalent of the work, 
 and the wage contract is valid only when such an 
 equivalent is agreed to.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 3 1 
 
 So far the doctrine of the Encyclical is quite plain. 
 A workman must get a wage sufficient to keep him in 
 decent comfort. 
 
 But what is "decent comfort"? Is 
 Is the minimum the workman to be considered with re- 
 just wage a gard to his own purely personal needs, 
 " family wage " or is he to be considered in his normal 
 or an" individual situation as the head, the provider of a 
 wage " ? family ? In other words, at least an 
 individual hving wage is certainly pre- 
 scribed as obligatory ; but does the Pope go further and 
 prescribe a "family wage" ? 
 
 By a " family wage " is meant such an 
 ™^ . amount of money or money's worth as 
 
 "famUywage"?^^^^ enable a workman— when helped 
 by his wife working in such a way as not 
 to interfere with her essential duties 
 of motherhood and housekeeping — to enjoy a decent and 
 healthy home ; to buy good workday and holiday clothes 
 for himself, his wife and children ; to supply them with 
 good food in plenty ■ to educate his children — an average 
 number of them — till they are of age to do for them- 
 selves; to enjoy the comforts and amusements which are 
 usual according to the conditions of life in his class ; 
 and to lay by something for the protection of him- 
 self and his family against the ordinary accidents of 
 fortune. 
 
 It is to be noted, of course, that one and the same 
 amount of money might in one place enable a man to 
 Hve in content, and in another be a starvation wage. 
 The purchasing power of money and the conventional 
 necessities of life will differ in different countries. In 
 fact, within the same country they will be different in 
 different towns and in different districts, and they will 
 not be the same in the town as in the country side 
 adjoining it. It would be evidently impossible to give, 
 with a view to general guidance any more exact indica- 
 tion of the amount of a family wage than I have given. 
 
 As I have said, then, the question arises, is this family 
 wage obligatory in justice ?
 
 52 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 The answer is certain. Catholic autho- 
 
 A "family rities agree on this, that a full family 
 
 wage " is due to wage is due to the labourer, that it is 
 
 the workman wrong, and may be grievously wrong, 
 
 but It is not ^Q withhold it, and that it is due 
 
 whether^ it whether the labourer be, as a fact, 
 
 is due in married or not. 
 
 commutative There are, however, Cathohc autho- 
 justice. rities who hold that this family wage is 
 due as a matter of " social justice " or 
 " legal justice," not as a matter of " commutative jus- 
 tice." The existence of this opinion has the practical 
 consequence that when such a wage has not been paid 
 no obligation of restitution can be imposed on the 
 employer. 
 
 Furthermore, this " family wage " is not 
 
 " Family wage " necessarily a " just wage." It is the strict 
 
 may be less minimum, below which an employer 
 
 than a may not go without injustice when 
 
 " just wage." engaging even the least skilled of his 
 
 hands. He may be obhged in justice 
 
 to give far more. 
 
 The Pope teaches us this when he points to the per- 
 sonal character of the labourer's work. As a personal 
 possession his strength, hke any other object he may 
 possess, they be made the matter of a bargain. He may, 
 therefore, go into the labour market, and sell his labour 
 at as high a price as it will fetch. He may unite with 
 other labourers to raise that price. 
 
 Such a price, regulated by the laws of supply and 
 demand, but not sinking beneath the level of a family 
 wage, becomes the just price of labour. Thus, then, 
 though an employer, able to pay a family wage, cannot 
 in justice offer less, he may be bound, in justice, to give 
 much more. He cannot give to even the least skilful 
 of his hands less than will enable them to hve with their 
 famiUes in reasonable comfort, but he is bound to give 
 his skilled hands (his carpenters, masons, and clerks, 
 for instance,) much more ; he is bound to give them the 
 full market price of their services.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 33 
 
 In the light of this teaching we see 
 
 When can an how perverse and unchristian are the 
 
 employer plead answers which I have supposed the 
 
 inabUity to pay employer to make when trying to jus- 
 
 this just wage ? tify his refusal to pay a proper wage. 
 
 But I like to think that such heartless 
 answers would not often be given here in Ireland, where, 
 thank God, the pubHc mind is aUve to the obligations 
 of religion. The excuse which Catholic employers in 
 Ireland will most frequently give is a different one. 
 
 They will say, " I know that my wages are poor. If 
 I could give better I should be dehghted to do so, but I 
 cannot." 
 This excuse may be quite sufficient or it may not. 
 In deciding whether such an excuse is sufficient or 
 not in a particular case, we must bear in mind that the 
 doctrine of the Encyclical is stated as a doctrine of 
 natural law, and therefore has reference only to ordinary 
 and normal circumstances. It is hable to modification 
 in extraordinary circumstances. 
 
 It lays this obhgation of the family wage on an 
 employer only when the general state of the trade in 
 which he is engaged renders such a wage possible. I 
 say " the general state of the trade," because the 
 failure of a particular venture on which an employer 
 embarks, the lessening of his profits, or their slow 
 reahsation are not reasons which justify him in reducing 
 his wages below the minimum due in justice. The very 
 notion of wages implies that the workman is not his 
 employer's partner; and therefore, just as he has no 
 right to share the profits which his employer's extra- 
 ordinary cleverness or good luck might produce, so he 
 cannot be made to suffer losses due to his employer's 
 bad management or bad luck. 
 
 If, however, the business in general is in a bad condi- 
 tion, owing to some industrial crisis, or owing to the 
 abnormally low vitahty of the commerce of the country, 
 so that employers carry on at a loss or with small pro- 
 fits, they would be free in conscience to give less than 
 the minimum family wage ; nay, it might be a charity ,
 
 34 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 for them to give a less wage rather than send their 
 workmen a-begging. 
 
 When, therefore, a man says that he cannot pay a 
 family wage he may have a perfectly legitimate excuse. 
 If he cannot he is not bound. No one is bound to do the 
 impossible. 
 
 But it would be well to press him a little, so as to find 
 out a little more clearly from him what he means by 
 saying that he cannot. 
 
 If he means that the general state of his business is 
 so bad that it leaves him only a small profit on his 
 capital, that his profits just enable him to keep in the 
 social rank in which he is established, that they just 
 supply him, when hving economically, with the means to 
 house and clothe and educate his family in a decent 
 way, conformable to the state of life he has come to 
 regard as his, then his excuse is vahd. 
 
 _ , ,. A moment's consideration will show 
 
 of tMs *^^ ^^^'^'^ ""^ ^^'^' 
 
 The absolute necessities of life of any 
 
 two men are about the same, food to eat and some kind 
 of housing and clothes to protect them from the weather. 
 But there are other things which are called (and rightly 
 called) necessities — they are known as conventional 
 necessities — and these differ greatly for individuals 
 according to their different positions in the social order. 
 It is clear that the employer or business man, owing 
 to his up-bringing, his education, his habits of hfe, 
 the scale of expenditure to which he has been always 
 accustomed, or to which he has grown accustomed, 
 comes to regard, and is right in regarding, as necessary 
 for him many ^hings beyond the means of bare hvehhood. 
 These necessities for his decent hvehhood will include 
 more of the good things of the world than what a 
 working-man would consider necessary for a decent 
 hvehhood in his class. If such men were deprived of this 
 larger, more splendid, more comfortable style of exist- 
 ence, they would feel, not as if they were merely dis- 
 appointed in ambition, but would feel themselves 
 pinched and straitened and depressed beneath their
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 35 
 
 normal and proper standard of living, just as the labourer, 
 who does not get a family wage, feels that he is forced 
 to hve below his proper and normal state of decency 
 and comfort. 
 
 Now, both the employer and his workman have, in 
 the abstract, equal rights to get from the profits of the 
 business the means of enjoying a proper comfort, each 
 according to his state in life ; but if the profits of the 
 business are not sufficient to satisfy the rights of both, 
 the employer may, of these two rights, each equally good, 
 prefer that of himself to that of his workman. He is 
 quite justified in so doing. 
 
 Consequently a man who, owing to a generally bad 
 state of trade, sees that if he gives a family wage he 
 may have to give up business, or at least fall from his 
 normal position in the world, can plead with truth that 
 he cannot give it. He may then pay a smaller one, 
 though of course he is bound to pay as much of the full 
 family wage as he can afford in the sense I have explained. 
 Owing to the wretched state of Irish 
 
 This plea of trade it often happens that employers, 
 
 inability often especially those in a small way of busi- 
 
 valid ness, can quite justly plead inabihty 
 
 to pay a family wage. It sometimes, 
 
 however, happens that such a one when he pleads 
 
 inabihty, really means something very different. 
 
 He may say, for instance, " I should 
 like to pay my hands better, but I 
 but often invalid, cannot. My first duty is to myself and 
 my children. I wish to rise out of the 
 social rank in which I am. I wish to get on in the 
 world hke my neighbours " ; or he may say, " I am 
 going to extend my business and open out new lines, 
 and for this purpose I have to reduce working expenses, 
 and especially my wage bill, to the lowest," or " I have 
 some profitable investments in view for which every 
 penny I can save is important. I cannot, therefore, pay 
 my hands properly yet." 
 
 Such excuses are quite invalid If the labourer had 
 to wait for his proper wage until his employer's social
 
 36 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 ambitions or desire of wealth were fully satisfied he 
 would have to wait for ever. 
 
 The right of a working-man to a decent Hvehhood is 
 a higher and more imperative right than the right of 
 his employer to advance his family in the social 
 order. 
 
 No employer can defraud his labourers of their just 
 wage in order to lead what for him would be an extra- 
 vagant and luxurious style of hfe, or in order to acquire 
 capital for fresh investments. He undoubtedly has the 
 right to pursue his worldly ambitions, to improve his 
 social and economic condition, to raise his style of 
 living, to indulge in more expensive housing, equipages 
 and amusements, to give a more expensive schooling 
 to his children, but he acquires that right only after 
 he has acquitted himself of his obhgations of justice ; 
 and one of these is the proper remuneration of his 
 employees ; until he can pay them a family wage he must 
 limit his expenses to what is necessary for maintaining 
 himself and his family in decent comfort in their present 
 station in Ufe. 
 
 An example not quite parallel, but 
 
 An example, sufficiently so, will help to bring home 
 the reasonableness of this. Let us sup- 
 pose that a merchant owes a large sum of money. His 
 creditor has a strict right in justice to get the money 
 and presses for payment. To his astonishment the 
 merchant says to him, " I am very sorry to disappoint 
 you, but I cannot pay you at present. I am about to 
 extend my business and set up on a larger scale. After 
 some time I have no doubt but that I shall be able to 
 pay you more easily " ; or perhaps he says : " I cannot 
 pay you now. I am saving up all the money I can to 
 invest it in an affair that has been recommended to me. 
 When I shall have made money out of this investment 
 I will pay you." If the merchant answered thus he 
 would doubtless be brought into court and forced to 
 pay his creditor, and quite rightly too. Though he has 
 ■undoubtedly the right to pursue his ambitious schemes, 
 i^e piust pay his lawful debts first.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 37 
 
 The reason why it has been neces- 
 Why the Pope ^^^Y *o speak at some length of the 
 speaks chiefly duties of employers, especially in the 
 of employers' matter of wages, is first, that the Pope 
 duties. in his Encyclical on labour has thought 
 it necessary to dwell at length on this 
 point ; and, secondly, that the false principles of Liberal- 
 ism are in the very air we breathe, and infect the prin- 
 ciples of Catholics. Catholic employers may, therefore, 
 be doing great harm to society, and committing great 
 injustice, and yet may not reaUse or even advert to the 
 harm or the injustice. 
 
 On the other hand, though workmen have their 
 grave duties to their employers, and though they, too, 
 are guilty of much injustice, it has not been thought 
 necessary to dilate upon their duties or their crimes, 
 because this occasion is one on which instruction rather 
 than exhortation is intended, and because workmen, 
 when they act unjustly, generally know perfectly well 
 that they are doing so. 
 
 The Pope, when instructing the world 
 
 Duties ol on this labour question, lays down 
 
 workers. very shortly the obvious and clear 
 
 duties of the workman. In his words 
 
 they are " to perform wholly and faithfully the work 
 
 which has been equitably agreed on ; not to injure 
 
 masters in their property or persons ; to abstain from 
 
 acts of violence even in defence of their rights ; and 
 
 never to turn their demands into disturbance." 
 
 Now, workmen in Ireland know per- 
 In Ireland few fectly well these plain duties. There 
 workers have a.re few real Socialists among Irish 
 Socialistic"^ workmen. There are some who imagine 
 notions of themselves Socialists, but who have no 
 their duties correct notion of what Socialism is. 
 Some call themselves Socialists because 
 their sense of humanity condemns the contrasts of 
 ostentatious luxury and squahd destitution in the world 
 about them. To condemn such contrasts is not Social- 
 ism — God condemns them and His Church condemns
 
 38 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 
 
 them. Many call themselves Sociahsts because they 
 wish for certain reforms in the state of the poor, reforms 
 which the Catholic Church is more anxious for than any 
 SociaUst. Some would wish the State or Municipahties 
 to take over the providing of many things of common 
 utihty, cheap houses for the poor, bread, milk, and 
 some other things, and imagine that this is SociaHsm. 
 Such schemes have sometimes succeeded (notably in 
 the hands of CathoHc Municipahties, as that of Vienna), 
 at other times they have failed. They may be wise 
 or not as economic projects, but assuredly they do not 
 constitute Socialism. 
 
 We in Ireland, rich or poor, have no real leaning to 
 Sociahsm. We are all attached to the principle of 
 ownership ; and if there is one thing more than another 
 which we think it right and natural to own, it is land, 
 the very first thing which Sociahsm would remove from 
 private ownership. The Irish workman wants to have 
 his own house, his own piece of land, if possible ; he 
 wishes for full authority in his own family, he chngs 
 to his legitimate hberties, liberty of personal action, 
 liberty to practise his rehgion, hberty to educate his 
 children as his conscience directs, hberty to associate 
 with his fellows for his protection, hberty to make 
 bargains, hberty to leave his httle property to those 
 he wishes ; and he has no objection to others, richer than 
 himself, possessing the same rights and hberties. He 
 only objects to others using their wealth to injure him, 
 or to their so monopolising the wealth of the world, 
 as to deprive him of his proper comfort, and in all this 
 he has the instincts of a true Catholic. 
 
 No ! the Irish working-classes are not really per- 
 verted by any Sociahst or Anarchist principles. Of 
 course they may, and often do go astray in matters of 
 detail, for instance with regard to the rights or wrongs 
 of a particular quarrel with employers, or of a par- 
 ticular strike, but as regards general principles, they 
 have perfectly correct notions of their duties and 
 rights.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKMAN. 3g 
 
 Therefore when labourers in Ireland 
 
 but they often commit injustice they commit it mostly 
 
 act unjustly with their eyes open ; at least if their 
 
 eyes are blinded, it is by passion, and 
 
 not by false teaching. 
 
 From this there follow two consequences : first, that 
 employers, who — as I have said, often through thought- 
 lessness or ignorance — make an ill use of their power 
 are responsible for much of the sin and injustice on the 
 part of their workmen, and thus it is all the more neces- 
 sary to teach them or remind them of their duties ; 
 secondly, that the Church is called on to condemn 
 severely the workmen for the crimes against justice 
 which they commit with such full consciousness of their 
 guilt. 
 
 This duty she has never shirked, and 
 
 and the Church gj^g ^^n perform this duty in Ireland 
 
 severely with the more freedom and outspoken- 
 
 *^°the^m^^ ness because she has always been — and 
 
 the Irish poor know that she has always 
 
 been — their protector against oppression. 
 
 She, therefore, must condemn and threaten, with all 
 
 the authority that God gives her, the workman who is 
 
 deceitful, envious, vengeful. She must condemn the 
 
 unscrupulous demagogues who go about fomenting 
 
 disturbance and rousing the working-class to evil courses 
 
 which will not serve their true interests in this world, 
 
 and will endanger their bodies and souls in the next. 
 
 She must condemn the labourers who in receipt of fair 
 
 wages scamp their work, or waste time, or will not work 
 
 except under supervision, or injure their employers' 
 
 machinery or materials, or make unreasonable demands, 
 
 or go on strike needlessly or without proper warning, or 
 
 have recourse to violence in striving to redress their rights. 
 
 In checking the evil passions of the 
 
 rh h • working-class the Church is working 
 
 actine*for^the ^°^ ^^^^ regeneration of all society, 
 
 interests of all ^^^ ^°^ least for the welfare of the 
 
 workers themselves ; for surely they 
 
 will more easily win their rights if they claim
 
 40 THE CHURCH ANU THE WORKMAN. 
 
 them with the irresistible voice of Unions — Unions 
 which are strong, firmly knit, based on solid principles, 
 conscious of a just cause and acting with a deep sense 
 of responsibiUty, Unions that will promise — and get 
 employers to believe them when they promise — that 
 they will give honest work for fair wages. 
 
 The wealth of the world, on which 
 Prosperity ol all the whole human race has to subsist, 
 classes to be is the product of two forces. Labour and 
 sought in Capital. Social order should come not 
 the practice of go much from an even balance of these 
 '"naitolall *^° powers opposing each other — 
 though such a balance is necessary — as 
 from their harmonious working together. Each per- 
 forms a necessary function. Each is indispensable to 
 the other. Neither is the enemy of the other nor yet 
 its servant. Each has duties to the other, and the 
 prosperity of the world depends on the discharge of 
 these duties. Such is the ordinance of God who made 
 society. God, in the words of St. Paul writing to the 
 Ephesians, speaks to both of these great parties. He 
 speaks first to the Christian workmen : " Be obedient 
 to them that are your masters in the simplicity of your 
 hearts as to Christ, not serving to the eye as it were 
 pleasing men, but as the servants of Christ, doing the 
 will of God from the heart . . . knowing that whatso- 
 ever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he 
 receive from the Lord " ; and then he speaks to masters : 
 " And you, masters, do the same things to them, for- 
 bearing to threaten, knowing that the Lord both of 
 them and of you is in Heaven, and that there is no 
 respect of persons with Him."
 
 " THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING 
 WOMAN." 
 
 IN hardly any respect does our modern 
 industrial system contrast more 
 
 of sharply or more unfavourably with the 
 
 wage-earning past than in the enormous number of 
 women to-day. women whom it forces to work for wages. 
 In most countries from 30 per cent, to 
 40 per cent, of the total number of women have to work 
 thus. In Ireland if we reckon those who work in fac- 
 tories and workshops, those who work for hire on farms 
 or in farm-houses, those who work in their homes at goods 
 to be sold in shops, household servants, those engaged as 
 clerks or shop assistants, those who are occupied in 
 teaching or in the pubUc service, there cannot be less 
 than three-quarters of a miUion of women in receipt 
 of wages. 
 
 Clearly therefore the question of women's work, its con- 
 ditions and remuneration, concerns the vital interests 
 of societv. 
 
 When God imposed on our first parents 
 
 Law 0! work ^^^ j^^ ^^ j^ ^^ ^^^ merely inflicted 
 
 omversal -^ ^, tt ■, ■ ■, 
 
 it as a penance on the race. He ordamed 
 
 it as the way in which the race was to develop and fulfil 
 the objects of its existence. 
 
 but different Now, as there is a difference between 
 in its the functions which men perform and 
 
 application to those which women perform in the de- 
 men and women, velopm en t of the race and in the pro- 
 moting of its welfare, it is clear that the law of work, 
 though it binds all human beings, has a different apphca- 
 tion to men and to women. Hence any apphcation of 
 3
 
 42 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 that law of work which would be incompatible with 
 women's nature — for instance, the imposing on women 
 of work which by its character or by its severity would 
 endanger women's social functions — would be con- 
 trary to God's ordinance and would be essentially 
 wrong. 
 
 Again the Creator indicates the natural and normal 
 spheres of man's work and of woman's work when He 
 said to the man, "Cursed is the earth in thy work. With 
 labour and toil shall it bring forth bread for thee," and 
 to the woman, " in sorrow and pain shalt thou bring forth 
 thy children." To the man he assigns external work, 
 the production of wealth; to the woman, motherhood 
 and its consequences, home work and the training of her 
 children. 
 
 Home is the As Pope Leo XIII. declares — "A 
 
 normal sphere woman is by nature suited for home 
 
 of woman's work. This it is which is best adapted 
 
 work, to preserve her modesty and secure the 
 
 good up-bringing of her children and the well-being of 
 
 the family." 
 
 The home is, therefore, the normal sphere of woman's 
 activities, but it does not follow that every work outside 
 that sphere is unjust. She is often called on, and even 
 bound, to work outside this, her normal sphere. 
 
 though she has In all periods of the world's history 
 ^'always to some there have been certain kinds of work 
 
 extent worked which women, especially unmarried 
 outside her home, women, have done outside their own 
 homes. As soon as slavery disappeared the workwoman 
 and the maidservant appeared. Even in the heyday of 
 the Christian agec there were women's work-guilds, 
 chiefly for the making of linen and of women's clothes, 
 and in all ages and places much of the easier kinds of 
 work connected with agriculture have been done by 
 women working for wages. 
 
 Moreover the growth of modern in- 
 and especially dustry has removed from beneath the 
 
 to-day is forced fm^-ii]y ^ooi most of the occupations that 
 
 do so. j,gp^ ^j^g housewife busy in days gone 
 
 by. The steam loom has made the spindle and distaff
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 43 
 
 useless, the workshop has lessened the work of the 
 
 needle, factories and shops have ruined the old-time art 
 
 of house-keeping. The home now tends to be the place 
 
 where one merely sleeps and eats, not the place where 
 
 one works. The poor woman and the rich woman alike 
 
 procure from outside the things which of old they used 
 
 to make themselves, but the poor woman has to go forth 
 
 to gain by her wages the means of procuring those things. 
 
 What she used to make in her house she now makes outside 
 
 it, or she makes its equivalent in her wages. She has not 
 
 ceased to work. She has only changed her place of work. 
 
 Also, it seems as if the necessities of life require womcH 
 
 to work more than they used to in the past. It is true 
 
 that the average wages of men have risen during the 
 
 19th century by about 75 per cent., while in the same time 
 
 the price of food has only risen by about 40 per cent., 
 
 while the prices of most manufactured articles have gone 
 
 down to half of what they were. But, on the other hand, 
 
 it is to be remembered that the machine-made goods of 
 
 to-day are not as durable as the handmade ones of the 
 
 past, that the price of lodging seems to have greatly 
 
 increased, that unemployment takes from the nominal 
 
 value of the higher wages of to-day, and (most important 
 
 of all) that the progress of the world has created many 
 
 new needs, new requirements of hygiene and food, new 
 
 amusements, new comforts, the absence of which, 
 
 though not felt as a grievance by those of two or three 
 
 generations ago, would be an intolerable grievance for 
 
 even the poor of to-day. 
 
 The poor woman then has to work. 
 Such work is j£ ^^le has no one to support her, the case 
 often her duty. -^ ^^^^^.^ j^ ^^^ -^ j^^rried, she is her 
 
 husband's " help," to use the word of Genesis. If then 
 her husband fail, in whole or in part, to fulfil his natural 
 function of the provider, she, the co-founder of the house, 
 the partner, on whom equally with her husband God 
 lays the responsibiUty of the family, must take up the 
 task. 
 
 Often, too, perhaps, indeed, most often, the wife even 
 of the strong workingman is forced to work in order to 
 
 3*
 
 44 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 supplement her husband's wages. This, of course, simply 
 means that men, the proper providers of the home, 
 very commonly do not receive a family wage. If they 
 did their wives could confine themselves to their house- 
 work; and, as a fact, where such a family wage is given, 
 it is nearly always found to be the case that the wife does 
 remain at home, and finds abundant occupation in her 
 home duties. 
 
 This consequence of our social progress, the going forth 
 of the woman from her home to work, is, as I have said, 
 abnormal, but it is certainly not opposed to the law of 
 work as applied to women. 
 The effects of It may, however, be opposed to it in 
 such work its effects, and, alas! often is. The 
 are often inhuman Liberahsm, that has inspired 
 ruinous the commercial world since the Industrial 
 Revolution, has made the history of woman's labour, 
 especially in the first half of the 19th century, one of 
 the darkest and most disgraceful pages in human history. 
 Public humanity has insisted, in defiance of Liberalistic 
 principles, on the passing of many laws to restrain the 
 abuses practised on woman workers, but even yet their 
 condition remains more than an abnormahty, it is a 
 social heresy. 
 
 Even where all the requirements of the labour laws 
 are conscientiously observed, where precautions are 
 taken against imposing on women work unsuited to 
 them, where the dangers to morality health and sobriety 
 are guarded against — and I am confident that Cathohc 
 employers fulfil their obligations in this matter — even 
 then there still remain (it cannot be denied) certain evils 
 inherent in the very nature of the factory and the work- 
 shop, evils which do considerable harm, moral and 
 phvsical. to women workers. 
 
 especially in Then, again, the solidity of the family 
 
 breaking up is gravely compromised by the absence 
 
 the family. of the woman, and especially of the wife, 
 
 from the home. The family is the centre of every man's 
 
 life, the consolation of his heart, the motive force of his 
 
 work, the fruitful source of future generations, the
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 45 
 
 pledge for the continuance and prosperity of the State. 
 And the woman is even more than the man the very soul 
 of the family. Remove her and the principle of unity 
 of the home is broken, individuals will suffer and dete- 
 riorate, the State will disentegrate and decay. 
 Even home-work Modern industry not merely wrecks 
 often ruinous, many homes by driving woman forth 
 " Sweating to work. It has managed to Wight and 
 system." destroy many homes even while leaving 
 the woman in them. There are wealthy men, or large 
 companies of men, owning manufactories or large shops 
 who get much work done by women working in their own 
 homes. One would expect that in all fairness such women 
 should be better paid than if they were working in a 
 factory or workshop, for they save their employers heavy 
 expenses of hghting heating rent and the hygienic 
 conditions required by the law. Yet such poor women 
 are the very slaves and drudges of the modern world. 
 They work under conditions which cannot be so easily 
 regulated by the protective agencies of the State ; they 
 do not benefit by even the attenuated bonds of human 
 sympathy that unite the owner of a factory with his 
 hands ; they are less able to unite for their mutual 
 protection ; they are the first to suffer by having their 
 work taken from them, or their wages cut down at the 
 sUghtest depression in trade ; they are completely at the 
 mercy of unscrupulous employers. 
 
 Thus has arisen that awful "sweating system" which 
 is crying to Heaven for vengeance on our society, that 
 hideous exploitation of women, with its cruel killing work, 
 its inhuman hours, its hunger, its heart-breaking, its 
 despair, its diaboUcal temptations, its slow murder of 
 children and women. 
 
 Shameful exploitation of women is 
 Other evil one result of economic Liberalism ; there 
 effects ol is another result not much less of a curse. 
 
 . J^°.!} Wonian, kept from her proper duties, 
 industrialism , t j i ^ ivc r 1 c 1 u 
 
 «„ ,.,/.rv.a» has had her views 01 hte talsined, her 
 on wuiueu. 1 • , ■ ■ • i • i • 
 
 ambitions set in a wrong direction. 
 
 In pressing women into the rough and tumble fight for
 
 46 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 existence, in putting before her, as her ideal, the modern 
 virago instead of the gentle maid of Nazareth, in setting 
 her up not as a help but as a rival of man, the modern 
 world is working its ruin. We see the result. The children 
 of the present generation have not the respect for their 
 parents, nor the obedience to them which even the last 
 generation had. We are alarmed at the increasing 
 frequency of divorce and at the increasing contempt for 
 the marriage bond, while the whole state of our society 
 tends directly to this. Society is crumbhng, collapsing 
 because the bonds of charity and justice and family 
 dutv are strained and loosening. 
 
 The Church's It is the work of the Church to-day, as 
 anxiety for of old, to reform society so that all may 
 
 the working enjoy a state of Christian contentment 
 woman. and may serve God in peace ; and to no 
 part of that work does she apply more energy and earnest- 
 ness than to the reconstitution of family life, and 
 to the saving of woman from the dangers that 
 threaten her dignity and her position and functions in 
 societj^ 
 
 First, the Church raises her voice in 
 
 The Church vvarning to individual consciences. She 
 
 reminds recalls to employers their solemn duties of 
 ptnnlovprs 01 
 
 their duties to Justice with regard to the women who 
 their women work for them ; she threatens with God's 
 workers, eternal anger those who put women at 
 work unsuited to them, those who 
 manage their factories or workshops or offices or 
 households so as to prejudice the morality or the 
 health of their women workers ; she recalls to the minds 
 of shareholders that they have responsibiUties with 
 regard to those poor women whom they have never 
 seen, but from whose labour they get their dividends. 
 She reminds all employers of women's work, shopkeepers, 
 manufacturers, owners of workshops, managers of offices, 
 mistresses of households, everyone who directly employs 
 women, or who, as shareholders in companies, appoint 
 representatives to employ them — she reminds all such 
 of their strict obhgation to pay a decent wage.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 47 
 
 and especially It is with regard to this last point, to 
 
 of their duty the matter of wages, that Cathohc em- 
 
 to pay a just ployers, as well as others, have most to 
 
 wage. reproach themselves, and it is therefore 
 
 nccessaiy to show how the authoritative word of the 
 
 Church, the great Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII., apphes 
 
 to women's work in particular. 
 
 An individual ^^ is perfectly certain from the words 
 living wage due of the Encyclical that an employer is 
 
 in justice to bound as a matter of strict commutative 
 the woman justice to pay his man-labourer at least 
 worker. an individual hving wage, that is, one 
 that will supply all his individual and personal wants. 
 It is also certain that a woman worker has a strict 
 right in justice to a similar wage, one sufficient for 
 her personal and individual needs. As to whether a 
 woman's needs are less than those of a man, and con- 
 sequently as to whether her individual living wage 
 may be lower than a man's, I shall say a word after- 
 wards. 
 
 The reasons which render an individual living wage 
 obhgatory are identical in the case of a man and a woman. 
 Both have, when poor, no other means of livelihood 
 than wages received for work. Both have therefore a 
 strict right that these wages should be enough to keep 
 them in decent and proper comfort. 
 A family wage As I said last day, it is certain (though 
 
 not so due not from the Encyclical) that an em- 
 to her. ployer is, in the case of his man-labourer, 
 bound to pay more than this individual wage, that he 
 is bound to pay him a family wage. A woman, however, 
 has no right to this family wage, as she is not the normal 
 and natural provider of her family. 
 
 The lowest wage therefore which an employer can offer 
 in security of conscience to his adult woman worker, of 
 average strength, even quite unskilled, is a wage that 
 will assure her decent housing and clothes, good food, 
 and something over to brighten her present life with 
 some joy, and her future with some hope. The law of 
 supply and demand may raise the just price of her work
 
 48 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 above this vital minimum, but must not drive it 
 lower. 
 
 Of course this principle of humanity 
 
 Employers often and justice is denied by the unscrupulous 
 
 do not admit employer — and there are many such — 
 
 ^ their who holds himself at Uberty to pay his 
 
 obligation to women any wretched wage which their 
 
 • ^^^-^^ , desperate necessities may drive them 
 
 individual ,- „<- tt + it. • i r 
 
 living wage to '° accept. He scouts the idea of any 
 
 their female obligation in justice as it would deprive 
 
 hands him of the commercial advantages which 
 
 he enjoys in dealing with his women, 
 
 advantages much greater than those which he enjoys 
 
 when deahng with h^s men. 
 
 Women are more at their emplo3'er's 
 
 and take mercy than men. They are more resigned 
 
 advantage of ^q their misery than men. They have, 
 
 women s compared with men, little taste or talent 
 
 +„ Z!L-?!v.i.« for agitation and organisation. They 
 to exploit them. ° j-jjii i.,- 
 
 are more divided by class distinctions. 
 
 Tlicy ciistrubi; each other more. More generous than men 
 in every other respect, in this they are more self- 
 centred. 
 
 The}^ are more easily cowed by bull5nng, and more 
 frightened by fear of the consequences of resistance. They 
 have not the fighting spirit of men. Their very fidehty 
 and family affection often increase their helplessness. 
 If they have a little sister or brother, or aged parent 
 or sick husband to support, they will suffer any privation, 
 put up with any wretched pittance rather than jeopardise 
 the interests of those dear to them. Besides, many of 
 them looking on work as a temporarj^ necessity from 
 which they nope to be freed by marriage, do not go 
 through any apprenticeship, or seriously quahfy them- 
 selves by technical training in a skilled trade. For all 
 these reasons they are almost quite unable to form 
 Unions, the only efficacious defence of the labouring 
 classes against exploitation. 
 
 No wonder then that women's work being left at the 
 mercy of economic laws is wretchedly remunerated, and
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 49 
 
 that the vast majority of the sweated industries are 
 
 women's industries. 
 
 Theories some- There are some principles invoked to 
 
 , times advanced defend the underpayment of women 
 
 to defend against the charges of injustice and 
 
 underpayment cruelty. 
 
 (A) womln's ^^ ^^ °^^°^ ^^^^ ^°^ instance that 
 work T less women's work is not equal to that of 
 valuable than ^^^ ^^^'^ ^^ therefore to be less well 
 man's work, paid. 
 
 The axiom ^°^^ ^^^ know the axiom " Equal work 
 
 " Equal pay deserves equal pay." The accurate 
 for equal meaning of it is, that two people doing 
 work " in the same time the same amount of 
 work ni an equally good way should be equally re- 
 munerated. 
 
 Such a principle appears to be just. It is appealed to 
 even by the employers of sweated labour. Such men, 
 where piecework is done in the homes of the workers, 
 generally give exactly the same price for an article 
 whether made by a man or a woman. Though such an 
 employer invokes the principle because it suits his in- 
 terests, and though the wage he gives to both men and 
 women is shamefully unjust, still his contention that he 
 need not pay the man more than the woman for the 
 same work seems fair. Or again, if a man gets 3s. for a 
 day's work why should a woman get only is. for the same 
 day's work done equally well ? 
 
 though not Yet the formula " Equal wage for equal 
 
 universally work " just and fair as it appears, is not 
 true to be taken as expressing a universal 
 
 obiigauon m justice. 
 
 You will easily see how this is so. The minimum living 
 wage must be paid to every worker, but the amount 
 between this minimum and the just wage varies, and is 
 to be determined by the higgling of the market. For 
 instance, both an unskilled labourer and a plumber must 
 get their minimum wage ; but the just wage of a plumber 
 is raised bj'- the circumstances of the labour market 
 beyond the just wage of the unskilled workman.
 
 50 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 Now, in the same wa)^ the higghng of the market 
 may run up the rate of man's wages above the rate of 
 woman's wages. An employer is bound to give his woman 
 employee at least a hving wage. He is bound to pay her 
 what may be more. He is to give her the just price of 
 her labour, but the higghng of the market may leave 
 this just price of woman's labour at a lower point than 
 the current price of the same work done by a man. 
 Consequently in the numerous occupations, such as 
 those of siiop-assistants, clerks, servants, teachers, 
 where it may happen that a woman's work is quite equally 
 effective as that of a man, and yet brings in a wage very 
 inferior to that of a man, we may hold that the woman's 
 inferior wage is not necessarily unjust. Also, if an 
 emploj^er dismiss a man, and take on at a smaller 
 wage a woman who can do the work equally well, 
 he is not necessarily to be condemned off-hand for 
 injustice. 
 
 He may, of course, be compelling the woman to 
 undertake work unsuited to her sex or strength, or the 
 inferior wage given her may be less than the just wage, 
 or even less than the minimum living wage — ^in all which 
 cases he will be committing a grave sin of injustice — but 
 there will not be any injustice in the mere fact of his 
 giving her a smaller wage than he has been giving the 
 man whom she replaces. 
 
 Many trades, or many departments of certain trades, 
 which were once in the hands of men, have passed into 
 women's hands owing to the wilhngness of women to 
 accept lower wages than men would put up with. In 
 some of these cases the work is unsuited to women, 
 and the employers who so transferred the work from 
 men to women acted unjustly. In other cases the work 
 is not unsuited to women, and the employers in thus 
 replacing men by women are not guilty of any injustice 
 if they pay their women a proper wage. It is to be 
 feared, however, that such replacing ofmen's labour by 
 women's labour has generally taken place simply because 
 women could be got to work at a wage below the limit 
 of justice, a wage that men would not accept.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 5I 
 
 As a general rule however, the work in which men 
 are engaged and the work in which women are engaged 
 are quite distinct from each other, and so different in 
 character that employers can generally deny that they 
 remunerate work differently according to the sex of the 
 worker. 
 
 I have said that the principle of equal 
 
 is in general pg^y fQj- equal work is not one of universal 
 
 a principle application. Still it is in the main a 
 
 ]us ice principle of justice and fair play. If it 
 
 could be impressed on the public conscience as a rough 
 
 working rule it would do much to check the shameful 
 
 exploitation of woman's labour, and it would put some 
 
 restraint on the very widespread abuse of paying even 
 
 highly-skilled women less than quite unskilled men. 
 
 A corollary of this principle is that, 
 (as is also a where two workers, or two classes of 
 corollary of it) workers, contribute by different opera- 
 tions to the production of an article, the 
 relation between their wages should be roughly equal 
 to the relation between their shares in the production 
 of the article. Such a principle would be, of course, 
 generally unworkable as a practical guide, for the import- 
 ance of the co-operation of any Worker or set of workers 
 is generally impossible to estimate ; still it would 
 be easy to show that this principle of fair-play is flagrantly 
 violated in many industries. It is often the case that 
 women perform all the important and laborious processes 
 in the production of certain goods, and that men per- 
 forming some quite subsidiary and easy process, carry 
 off the Hon's share of the wages. 
 
 A woman's The principle of equal pay for equal 
 
 work is often work would be, I say, a rough criterion 
 
 less valuable as to the observance of justice in the 
 
 than a man's, payment of wages. 
 
 Fur mstance, in the case of unskilled work, though 
 
 a man has a right to a family wage and a woman a right 
 
 only to a personal living wage, the relation between these 
 
 two wages probably would roughly represent the relation 
 
 between the quantity of work done by each. Not merely,
 
 52 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 however, in those kinds of labour which demand physical 
 strength, but in those which merely call for accuracy, 
 sureness of touch, despatch, and even in occupations 
 such as the tending of a shop or the keeping of accounts, 
 it is found by experience that a man's labour is generally 
 (though by no means always) superior in various respects 
 to that of a woman. The difference between their wages 
 may sometimes roughly represent their comparative 
 efficiency, though it is unfortunately quite certain that 
 far more often it is due merely to the greater ease with 
 which women's labour can be exploited. 
 (B) "A woman's A second theory — which we may call 
 
 wage is only a " the theory of supplementary wages " — 
 
 supplementary is often advanced by employers to de- 
 wage." fend themselves from the charge of 
 cruelty or injustice. The theory is this, that a woman's 
 wage need not be big because it is only a supplement of 
 her husband's or her father's wage. 
 
 Some carry this theory very far. The daughter, they 
 say, hves on her father's wages, the wife on her husband's, 
 and if either of them take it into her head to work, it 
 is not through necessity, but in order to get pocket-money 
 or to indulge in superfluous pleasures. 
 
 If such were the case, namely, that a woman works 
 merely to obtain superfluous luxuries, it would undoubt- 
 edly follow that no injustice would be done in remunerat- 
 ing such work by a diminutive salary. To use the words 
 of the Pope, her work would be merely " personal " and 
 therefore it " would be within the labourer's right 
 to accept any rate of wages whatsoever," and it would 
 be within the employer's right to haggle over the rate of 
 her wages as he would haggle over the price of an 
 article in a shop. 
 
 This is Undoubtedly, too, it does happen some- 
 
 sometimes times that a young woman takes a posi- 
 true tion as a shop assistant or a clerk simply 
 
 in oraer lo provide herself with pocket-money. Also a 
 young woman who is easily supported by her father may 
 take up lace-making or some industry of the kind to 
 enrich her wardrobe, or to have more money to spend
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 53 
 
 in amusing herself. Indeed this is (in some places at 
 least) common enough among the daughters of well-to-do 
 people, and even of people in a higher station of hfc. 
 They sell their work cheap, and are too "grand" to 
 haggle over its price, forgetting in their selfishness or 
 thoughtlessness that, few as they are, they are doing a 
 real injury to their less fortunate sisters by depressing 
 the price of such work. It sometimes happens that a 
 workingman's wife when her household work is over 
 may do a little work to enrich the household stock, 
 though she stand in no need of doing so. 
 
 Such " amateur " workers may be indeed, absolutely 
 speaking, fairly numerous, but compared to the countless 
 multitudes who work through dire necessity, they are a 
 mere handful. To imagine that the womankind of the 
 wage-earning classes do work as a dilettante occupation 
 is to deliberately shut one's eyes to the realities of the 
 world about one. 
 
 There are other employers who do not push this 
 theory] quite so far. They admit that women have to 
 work through necessity, but they say that, as their 
 fathers or husbands are earning wages — insufficient but 
 still wages — a small wage, earned by the daughter or the 
 wife, will bring up the family budget to what is enough 
 for the comfort of the family, and that, therefore, a small 
 wage is not an unjust one in the case of women. 
 
 but geoprally ^^ ^^' °^ course, far from being the case 
 iaise and that every woman has cither a husband 
 cannot be or a father working to support her. 
 
 acted on by Many have neither the one nor the 
 employer. other, but even in the case of those who 
 have ilie une or the other this plea of the employer will 
 not avail him. 
 
 When a married woman works for an employer, her 
 employer is bound, as a matter of justice, to give her, 
 not wiiat will bring her husband's wage up to the level 
 of a family wage — her husband's wage is no concern 
 of her employer — but what would keep her, even if un- 
 married, in decent comfort. The fact that she has a 
 husband has nothing to do with her employer. What
 
 54 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 he has to remember is this, that she gives him her work, 
 that she has a right in strict justice to get from him the 
 value of it, and that that value, as we have seen, is her 
 individual living wage. 
 
 With regard to the grown girl who lives in her father's 
 house, the case is stronger still. If her father partly 
 supports her it is more than he is bound in justice to do. 
 The family wage, to which I have shown that her father 
 is entitled, is only what will enable him to bring up his 
 children till they are of age to work for themselves. No 
 one ever dreamt that it should be sufficient to support 
 a family of girls indefinitely, or until they get married ; 
 and the employer if it were a question of paying the girl's 
 father vrould be first to scout such a ridiculous idea. 
 
 You see how contradictory is the position which som.e 
 employers adopt. On the one hand, they say they need 
 not give an)'thing to their man-labourer beyond his 
 personal wage, that they need not give him anything 
 for the support of his family. On the other hand, when 
 asked to pay a member of his family they say they have 
 already paid for the support of that member. They 
 cannot have it both ways. They cannot enjoy the 
 advantages which would be theirs if they paid a family 
 wage — indeed, which would be theirs only if they paid 
 much more than a family wage — and, at the same time, 
 refuse to pay such a wage. 
 
 Therefore when the daughter of a workingman grows 
 up, say to the age of i8 or 19, and is able to do an adult 
 woman's work, she ought not to be dependent on her 
 father's work, and her employer has no right to take 
 advantage of her father's wilhngness to encumber his 
 little budget with her support. She works for her 
 emplo5/erandhasaright to get the value of her work, and 
 that value is at the least what would support her (even 
 if she got nothing from her father) in frugal comfort. 
 For the vast majority of women earning wages, their 
 earnings mean for them food, clothes, housing, the 
 necessaries of life. It might be laid down as a general 
 principle that an employer must always consider every 
 grown girl or woman, whose labour is to be had in the
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 55 
 
 labour market, as one who works through necessity ; 
 that he is not therefore at hberty to beat down her wages 
 as low as he can ; that she has a right to demand, and 
 does in fact demand — no matter what in her timidity 
 or shame she may say to the contrary — the full value 
 of her work, and that that value is at the least what 
 would maintain her in reasonable comfort. 
 
 For consider the classes of women who work. The 
 majority are probably unmarried girls who are too old to 
 remain a burden on their father's slender resources. They 
 have no one on whom they can depend, and too often (as 
 in Ireland where the marriage rate is lower than almost 
 anywhere in Europe) have little prospect of finding a 
 husband to support them. Multitudes, too, are widows, 
 often with young famiUes to feed and clothe and house 
 upon their earnings. 
 
 Lastly, there are the married women whom the goad of 
 necessity drives forth to work. If the husband got a 
 family wage his wife would not — at least generally would 
 not — have to do anything but mind her house. But a 
 family wage is, to say the least, not universal outside 
 the ranks of skilled and organised labourers who can 
 force it from their employers, and therefore the married 
 woman is often forced to eke out her husband's wages 
 by her own hard work. We must remember, too, that 
 her wages so earned, even if they bring up the total 
 family earnings to the level of a family wage, are always 
 eaten into by the wastage and the many expenses which 
 are entailed by her absence from home. 
 
 How often, indeed, are the needs of the wife equal 
 to those of her unmarried or of her widowed sister ! Her 
 husband is often not a model. His wages often go into 
 the till of the publican or the pocket of the betting agent. 
 He may be an incapable workman unable to find employ- 
 ment, or he may be thrown out of work by the crises 
 that so often occur in trade, or he may be disabled 
 or sick for lengthy periods. If his wife is to be 
 treated as a supplementary wage-earner, how can she 
 face the heavy responsibilities which then devolve on 
 her ?
 
 56 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 (C) " A woman's A man, as we have seen, has a right 
 
 needs are less to a wage which will enable him to 
 
 than a support himself and his family. A 
 
 ^iiatt's." woman on the other hand has a right only 
 
 to the smaller wage which will ensure her own personal 
 
 support. But some employers, ignoring the obligations 
 
 of the workmen's family wage, and paying them a wage 
 
 which would just suffice to support them individually, 
 
 pay women workers much less still, on the ground that 
 
 women's needs are less than those of men. 
 
 This contention is, as a general rule, true. 
 How far this Woman eats less and drinks less than a 
 - case. ^^^^ ^^^^ gj^g ^Qgg j^Q^ smoke. But in all 
 else, lodging, dress and the rest, she has much the same 
 expenses as a man. Moreover, there often exist circum- 
 stances which tend to bring her needs up towards the 
 level of men's needs. If she work at home for instance 
 she has heavy expenses of hght and heating from which 
 a man working outside or in a factory is exempt. Then, 
 too, if she be married her work is interrupted from time 
 to time by prolonged absences which bring down the 
 value of her nominal wage. Then again in certain occupa- 
 tions she has to dress with a regard to style and elegance, 
 which entails expenses from which the soberer -and more 
 constant style of men's clothes exempts them. 
 
 There is probably not such a big difference between 
 men's and women's needs as certain interested people 
 would have us beheve. A woman's food and drink — I 
 suppose habits of ordinary sobriety — will account for 
 about three-fourths of her wage. On the other hand, 
 a woman's food and drink ought not normally to be less 
 than three-quarters of a man's. Supposing that a woman's 
 other needs are equal to a man's — and we have seen 
 that they are often greater — this would mean that her 
 total needs would be four-llf ths of a man's. Even putting 
 her food at two-thirds of a man's, her needs would still 
 be eight-elevenths of a man's. Yet we know that in most 
 trades she never gets four-fifths or even eight-elevenths, 
 but at most two-thirds or half of a man's wage. If in 
 such trades the man were getting a family wage such a
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN, 57 
 
 disproportion might not be excessive, but he very often 
 
 does not get a family wage, and this disproportion 
 
 simply means that the woman is not getting nearly 
 
 enough. Indeed I have not put the woman's case strongly 
 
 enough, for you will all know of cases where she does 
 
 not ppt even half of what an unskilled man will get. 
 
 Woman's The real fact which cannot be bhnked, 
 
 weakness the is that a woman 's wage is so low compared 
 
 main cause of to a man's, not because her needs are so 
 
 her oppression, much less, but because her power of 
 
 self-protection is less, because she can be exploited much 
 
 more easily than a man. 
 
 When can There are in Ireland I know, thank God, 
 
 employers justly conscientious employers who pay their 
 
 plead inability to women workers a proper wage. All honour 
 
 pay a proper to them, and God's blessing be on them 
 
 ^wage to women ? for resisting the temptations that beset 
 
 them and the bad examples that are about them. There 
 
 are others that do not pay a proper wage. If such men 
 
 say that they cannot afford this wage they are adopting 
 
 a more reasonable hue of defence than the ones I have 
 
 referred to. They may or may not be justified in alleging 
 
 their inabihty to pay a proper wage. It may often happen 
 
 in Ireland that small employers are so justified. I gave 
 
 in the preceding lecture the principles by which in any 
 
 particular case this plea of inabihty is to be judged vahd 
 
 or in vahd. 
 
 It however requires only a slight ac- 
 
 Thosewhocan quaintance with the world about us to 
 
 *^pay a proper see that there are employers who grow 
 
 j wage and do j-i^h and very rich on the sweated labour 
 
 not are guilty ^^|- y^Qj-nen, and who could therefore 
 
 oism. quite well afford to pay them a proper 
 
 wage, and yet do not pay it. Such men have no excuse. 
 
 They are robbing their women Workers, They are safe 
 
 indeed from the pohce court, safe because laws have 
 
 not yet been framed — as thej^ assuredly will be in the 
 
 near future — to render such injustice impossible, but 
 
 not safe from the wrath of God ; and all their social 
 
 or commercial power will not avail them, when, at the
 
 58 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 hour of their death, God will avenge on them the 
 sufferings of their victims. 
 
 The Church, therefore, intervenes to 
 The Church most .^^^^^ women's just rights. She speaks, 
 anxious to safe- r *. t ^^ j. ■ j- ■ t ^ i 
 
 guard famUy life '^^:^^ °l ^^^' *°. ^dividual employers, 
 and to protect ^c^Jir^g them their duties to their women- 
 women workers workers, and threatening them with 
 God's wrath if they neglect their duties. 
 Again, in the Encyclicals of her Popes, Leo XIII. 
 and Pius X., in the letters of her Bishops, in the sermons 
 of her priests, in the books of her authors, the Church 
 is incessantly calhng on States and Statesmen to pass 
 laws which may preserve family life and safeguard the 
 dignity of women and her functions in society against 
 the pressure of industrial competition. This is one of the 
 first objects of every Catholic political party in the Parlia- 
 ments of the Continent. 
 
 You all remember that beautiful page 
 Christians ^^ ^^^ Gospel where we read that Christ, 
 ' gazing on the multitude in the desert, 
 says : " I have compassion on this multitude, because 
 they are with Me now twelve days and have not what to 
 eat. I will not send them away fasting lest they faint 
 by the way." And then we read how He took the five 
 loaves and the fishes, and multiplying them by His 
 omnipotence, fed the four thousand men, besides women 
 and children. 
 
 Oh ! may Catholics lay to heart the lessons which 
 Christ then wished to reach ; may they learn to think of 
 the poor, to pity them, to help them, and especially the 
 poor women who cannot so easily help themselves. 
 
 Christ dwelt on the sufferings of these poor people in 
 the desert. He felt in imagination their hunger. He 
 foresaw their fainting by the way as they dragged them- 
 selves wearily back to their villages. How little do we 
 think of the poor about us ! How httle we know of them ! 
 We see them in the streets. If their poverty was a passing 
 inconvenience we might do something, but, because 
 it is a cHnging cloud of sorrow that chills and darkens 
 their whole lives from cradle to grave, we merely throw 
 them an alms — a kind of gesture of despair — and turn
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 59 
 
 to think of pleasanter things. The poor Uve in the next 
 street to us, and we know as Httle of them as if they 
 hved in some distant country. We do not reflect on their 
 feeUngs, their sufferings, their fears, their resources, 
 their difficulties, their temptations. 
 
 Christ teaches us to pity the poor. " Misereor super 
 hanc turbani." " I have pity on this multitude." He 
 has made men to help each other and in order to help 
 they must first have love and pity. " By this shall all 
 men know that you are My Disciples, that you love one 
 another." The words seem almost ironical. How seldom 
 do we prove in that way that we are His Disciples ! 
 How often it happens that we do not act as Christians ! 
 What do I say ? How often we do not act as human 
 beings should act ! We care only for those of our house- 
 hold. But even the brute beasts love their offspring and 
 their parents. It is man's privilege and his duty to 
 embrace in his love those outside his home. 
 
 Christ teaches us to help the poor. Sad indeed would 
 be the state of the poor were it not for the poor, for it is 
 the poor who help the poor most often. Very beautiful 
 is the sight of the poor giving to the poor, but it is a sad 
 sight too, for it forces one to reflect that many who 
 could more easily give, and should give, do not give. All 
 of us can give something. 
 
 God gave some men wealth, but it is wealth burdened 
 by many debts, debts of justice and of charity. The 
 owners of wealth are not its absolute ov/ners. They are 
 only its stewards, and will have to account to God 
 for every penny of it. An honest man will refrain from 
 taking money that does not belong to him. " God has 
 not given it to me," he says. Yet he will often chng 
 fiercely to that which is his, and will feel wronged if God, 
 who has given it all to him, asks back a small part of it 
 as charity for His poor, or demands it as justice. 
 
 even on those There are many of you who cannot 
 who are not rich ^^jyg ^f your money, but there is none 
 to undertake sowal^f you who cannot give of the charity 
 
 protection o! ^^ V^^"^ thought, your care, your 
 women. work. 
 
 Our Holy Father Pope Leo XHI. felt some of that
 
 60 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING WOMAN. 
 
 sacred compassion which filled and still fills the heart 
 of Christ. In especial he, the father of the Christian 
 family, was moved with pity for the multitudes of his 
 daughters lying wounded and helpless beneath the cruel 
 crushing injustices of modern industriahsm, and he knew 
 that he would not appeal in vain to their sisters of 
 happier condition to come to their rescue ; and our 
 present Pope Pius X. has often repeated this appeal. 
 
 Their appeals have not been in vain. There has always 
 been a wealth of charity in Catholic women's hearts. 
 Their individual acts of kindness will be richly rewarded 
 by Christ, but individual charity can only touch — can 
 hardly make an impression on the deep black mass of 
 misery that burdens and disgraces every town and every 
 countryside in the land. To introduce a strong solvent 
 into that mass of misery, charity must be organised, 
 must become social work. 
 
 To this social work and especially 
 Catholics in work for women, CathoUcs, and especially 
 other lands Catholic women, have devoted themselves 
 have done much. ui t j- 4.1. n 
 
 Why not in nobly. In every country on the Con- 
 Ireland also ? f ii^ei^f — would I could say quite as much 
 for Ireland ! — thousands and thousands 
 of Catholic women, rich and poor, humble and noble, 
 devote much of their time and sacrifice much of their 
 pleasures. They give their serious thought to examining 
 the conditions of life of their poorer sisters, they visit 
 them in their homes, they gather them together, form 
 them into classes which they often teach themselves, 
 they have them taught trades, they inspire them with 
 hope and courage in face of Ufe's dif^culties, with mutual 
 helpfulness and mutual trust, they organise them in 
 various societies of mutual help, and they unite them 
 in associations for the defence of their rights against all 
 oppression. 
 
 Such works are the bread which Christ through the 
 mouth of the Pontiff demands of Catholics, for the poor 
 to-day, far more than alms. This is the bread which the 
 power of God will multiply four thousandfold in generous 
 hands. The example of our Cathohc brethren in other 
 lands teaches and encourages us to found such works.
 
 " THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD." 
 
 ONE day— you will all remember the 
 scene — Oar Lord on one of His 
 Christ with the journeys through the Holy Land 
 
 little children comes to a little village. The villagers, 
 as is the way in the East, gather round 
 the stranger, and with all the more curiosity and ex- 
 citement as they have heard of this man as a great 
 teacher and a great wonder-worker. The men leave 
 their fields, the women leave their housework, and, 
 taking their children go out and form a group about 
 Him. He seats Himself in one of the open spaces and 
 begins to teach them His doctrine. As He speaks to 
 them (or, rather, talks with them), the Uttle children, 
 attracted by His gentle ways and kindly face, lose their 
 shyness and press close in upon Him. They take hold 
 of His hands and cUmb upon His knees and interrupt 
 Him with their artless chatter. Each of the mothers 
 gets Him to bless her own little one. His Disciples, 
 knowing how tired He is, grow impatient. They 
 strive to draw the children away and they chide their 
 mothers, but He stops them, saying, " Suffer little 
 children to come to Me." 
 
 And indeed we can understand why He loved to 
 have those little children about Him. Christ hated 
 sin, yet He lived in a world of sin. The men and 
 women whom He met at every moment reeked with 
 sin. The sight of their souls, fouled with impure 
 thoughts and wicked deeds distressed Him ; on httle 
 children alone could His eyes rest with refreshment 
 and gladness. Looking into their eyes He could see 
 down into the crystal-clear depths of their souls. How 
 precious to His Heart were they ! Men and women 
 were already spoiled. But these little ones ! Oh ! if 
 4 
 
 ARA. C
 
 62 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 He could only preserve them ! If He could only have 
 them grow up as they were, in safety and innocence ! 
 He would guard them as the apple of His eye. 
 
 The Church dwells with pleasure on 
 
 is typical of that scene of the fathers and mothers 
 
 the Church's bringing their children to Christ that 
 doctrine. -^^ might teach them and bless them, 
 for that scene beautifully typifies her doctrine. 
 
 The parent alone has the right and 
 
 The Church the duty of caring for the child. No 
 ever the power on earth can dispute that right 
 
 Guardian of ^j^j^ ^^^ parent. The parent has the 
 
 the family. ^^^^ ^^ brmging the httle ones to Christ 
 
 so that He may teach them and bless them for Eternal 
 
 hfe, and Christ will not allow anyone to prevent the 
 
 parent from bringing them to Him. 
 
 The Church has, therefore, always jealously guarded 
 the rights and liberties of the family. She does not 
 contest with the State — how could she? for the authority 
 of the State is from God too — its claim to see that the 
 rights of the children to material well-being and to 
 education are not violated by unworthy parents ; but 
 she has always condemned with her God-given authority 
 any attempt of the civil power to encroach on that 
 divine institution, the family. 
 
 And what a wonderful institution it is, the Christian 
 family ! The father, with his strong and abiding love 
 for wife and children, bravely shielding them from 
 all harm, planning and working unceasingly to provide 
 them with all they need, and in turn finding in them his 
 consolation, his rest, his strength, his joy, his pride. 
 The mother unselfishly working out her divine mission, 
 equally responsible and equally consoled, the stay and 
 the joy of her husband and the trainer of her little 
 ones. 
 
 And what a training the Christian mother gives ! 
 Sacrificing herself to the children to whom she has 
 given hfe, she saves their hves a hundred times in the 
 early days of their existence, and as they grow she 
 ministers to their needs and comforts. Gently and 
 firmly she represses their leanings to evil, and draw
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 63 
 
 out their good dispositions by a thousand ruses of which 
 a mother's heart alone has the secret ; she opens their 
 intelHgence, forms their judgment, purifies their hearts, 
 excites their energy, leading them sweetly to love God 
 and their neighbour, and to stand by duty amid the 
 temptations of hfe. 
 
 The Church has, therefore, always striven to ensure 
 that neither custom nor law nor economic circumstances 
 should ever impair the perfect freedom of the family in 
 performing its proper functions. She wishes that the 
 father should be able to provide all things necessary 
 for the proper well-being of his home ; that the mother 
 should have leisure to manage her household and to 
 train her children ; that the children should find beneath 
 the family roof-tree the protection and the maintenance 
 they require, till they in turn be strong enough and 
 matured enough, in body and mind and character, to 
 go forth into the world. 
 
 Such has always been the Church's 
 
 For instance, ideal. There have been periods in the 
 
 m old-time world's history when Christian society 
 
 * *^ realised in great measure this ideal. 
 
 In our own country, more than anywhere else in the 
 world, was the family solidly welded together and its 
 rights guarded by Christian custom and just laws. Not 
 merely were bonds of immediate relationship made firm 
 by mutual legal obligations and responsibihties, and 
 extended by means of fosterage, but these binding prin- 
 ciples were applied in their measure to more distant 
 relationships, and finally to the whole tribe. The strong 
 family unity and affection which characterises Irish hfe, 
 especially Irish country hfe, is a remnant that has sur- 
 vived the grinding to pieces of our civilisation in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 In England and on the Continent, 
 
 and in the where society was differently organised. 
 
 Feudal ages, family life was fostered by the feudal 
 
 system, especially in the rural districts. 
 
 As for the towns, their organisation and management 
 
 were in the hands of the guilds which, guided by tht 
 
 Church, always set the greatest store on the preser- 
 
 J*
 
 64 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 vation of a vigorous family life among their members, 
 A grown man was never considered as an isolated indi- 
 vidual, but always as the head, actually or in prospect, 
 of the household. His wages were fixed with a view 
 to enabling him to meet his family obligations. The 
 price of his handiwork was fixed to ensure such wages. 
 The conditions of his work, its duration, its intervals, 
 its place, were regulated so as not to interfere with the 
 discharge of his primary obligations to his family. 
 In the women's guilds care was taken that the condi- 
 tions of their work should not be prejudicial to their 
 strength or their good morals. 
 How different How different is the state of things 
 to-day is the to-day ! The family is attacked, dis- 
 state of the integrated, scattered — to what an extent 
 children of the in some countries we, in Ireland, thank 
 poor, God, can hardly reahse. The wide- 
 
 spread immorality of the day attacks 
 the very basis of the family. Infidehty attacks it, weak- 
 ening parental authority by evil laws of succession, and 
 interfering with the sacred liberties of parents in the 
 education and the religion of their children. Socialists 
 attack it, as it stands between them and their dream 
 of universal State management. 
 
 Worst of all perhaps, modem in- 
 
 especially owing dustrial development attacks it, depriv- 
 
 to modern ing fathers of the wages necessary for 
 
 industrialism, the decent support of their households ; 
 
 driving forth mothers from their homes 
 
 to work ; forcing young children too into the demoralising 
 
 factory, or out on the streets, and causing them to grow 
 
 up without care or training. 
 
 Think of the squalid degrading life 
 Slum life. of the poor quarters and the slums 
 of the modern city, multitudes of 
 human beings huddled together in dingy hovels and 
 demorahsing tenements that endanger all the decencies 
 of hfe, all striving frantically with each other for daily 
 bread — men with men, women with men, children with 
 both — finding in intoxication their only pleasure, their 
 only escape from their misery.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 65 
 
 industrialism has not given of its riches to Ireland, 
 but it has wrought its terrible work upon our poor 
 people. It has not given us thriving towns or a grow- 
 ing population, but it has given us slums in abundance, 
 and has rotted our towns with the black plague of 
 pauperism. 
 
 How can the delicate flower of family virtue thrive 
 in such a fetid, fever-laden, sunless air ? How can the 
 garden of the world bring forth flowers and fruit if the 
 young plants are to be torn violently from their roots 
 and native soil, and cast about pell-mell in these filthy, 
 slums, to wither or take root where and how they may ? 
 What kind of training will children 
 Mother often get if their mother is absent from home, 
 absent from from morning till late evening, working 
 home. in some factory or workshop, or charing, 
 
 or selHng in the streets, or begging ? 
 Happy perhaps, are the 30 per cent, of such children 
 who die in infancy. Nay, happy perhaps, are those 
 many others, scrofulous, tuberculous, deformed, half- 
 developed, who are doomed to die in their early years. 
 For, what must be the fate of those who live ? They 
 suffer cruelly from cold and hunger ; they are cuffed 
 and bulhed by their rough companions, they become 
 brutalised in nature, they live in the streets picking up 
 foul language and hideous forms of vice. Though they 
 remain ignorant — for there is no one to send them to 
 school — they develop a low cunning and sharpness of 
 wit, which enables them to steal and cheat and he and 
 prey on society ; they grow up dangerous and depraved 
 men and women. 
 
 . Even if the mother stays at home 
 
 Even a she toiling at ill-paid piece-work, or unable 
 
 things oUm ^^ ^^t any work, the case is often not 
 
 not better much better. Her home (if one may 
 
 use the word) may be some ill-smelling 
 
 room with filth-sodden floor and mouldy walls and 
 
 broken windows, or perhaps only part of such a 
 
 room shared with others. One cannot, in fairness, 
 
 expect her to make such a place cheery and comfortable. 
 
 She could and would remove dirt, but she cannot change
 
 66 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 dirt into cleanliness. Oh ! how many of the dwellings 
 of the poor in Ireland are such as would rob a 
 woman who would, if she had a chance, be a cleanly 
 and industrious housekeeper, of all heart and energy. 
 Still less can she give a home-training to her children 
 in such a place. They cannot be kept fettered and 
 depressed in such dungeons. They are young, and need 
 exercise, life, movement. Perforce they go out on the 
 streets and lanes, and live there, learning, boys and 
 girls alike, the secrets of evil in the wild hfe of street 
 arabs. Their mother may send them to school, but the 
 school day is not the whole day, and the school year 
 is not the whole year; or she may be ashamed to send 
 them to school in their rags, and who can blame 
 her ? or, she may have to keep them at home to mind 
 the younger children, or to bring their father's dinner 
 to him in some distant part of the city ; or she may have 
 to send them out to sell newspapers or matches or 
 flowers in the street, so that they may add some little 
 mite to their father's wretched wages. 
 
 What wonder that a mother's influence counts for 
 little in the upbringing of such children ? They grow 
 up in wild independence. They often do not trouble 
 to come home even at night. Some hundreds of boys 
 sleep out of doors in passages and dark corners — I 
 know not where — in the summer time in Dubhn ; in 
 the same city of Dubhn there are between 5,000 and 
 7,000 children — just think of it — who do not go to any 
 school ; and what is true of Dublin is, I take it, true 
 in its measure of other towns. 
 
 Then, again, even if the house is 
 The women of capable of being made comfortable 
 the poor classes ^j^^^ attractive, the poor woman often 
 nowadays en ^q^j^j-^q^ make it so, for she is generally 
 housekeepers. ^ wretched housekeeper. Woman has 
 a natural instinct for housekeeping ; 
 but this, like every other instinct, is frail and vague at 
 the beginning, easily dulled and destroyed if not exer- 
 cised. The old-time housekeeping, with its recipes and 
 proverbs and absorbing work — a science handed down 
 for centuries from mother to daughter, among rich and
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 67 
 
 poor alike — is dead, killed by the development of fac- 
 tories and shops, which rendered most of it useless ; and 
 the very different kind of housekeeping suited to the 
 times is perfectly unknown to the poor. It is a fact 
 beyond all dispute that the homes of most of our poor 
 are much more unhealthy, cheerless, and demoralising 
 to family life than they would be if this, one of the most 
 necessary of all sciences, were better taught and prac- 
 tised. 
 
 Horrible -^^^ industrialism has blacker crimes 
 
 condition of *« answer for. Not content with driving 
 
 working forth comfort and pleasure and joy 
 
 children in the from the nursery of the young, and 
 
 early nineteenth filling it instead with sighs and tears 
 
 century. and frantic rush and filthy disorder, 
 modern industrialism drives forth the httle children 
 themselves, and then pursues and hunts them down, 
 wasting their young lives ere those hves have well begun. 
 The blackest indictment against our civilisation is 
 the history of child labour in the nineteenth century. It 
 is more damning even than the history of women's labour. 
 In England once some great manufacturers were 
 complaining to a Minister of the Crown of the scarcity 
 of labour. The Minister answered : " Why not use 
 httle children ? " These words are attributed to Pitt. 
 They were words worthy of Herod. From that time, 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, till the year 
 1833, when the age of nine years was fixed as a 
 minimum for children working in factories, whole 
 holocausts of these helpless little beings were ruthlessly 
 sacrificed — a new massacre of the innocents — by men 
 professing to be civihsed and Christian. After the inven- 
 tion of steam power there was no longer such need for 
 the muscular strength of man's arm. The steel arm of 
 the machine now did the work, and this steel arm could 
 be directed by the light touch of a child's hand. The 
 delicate fingers of almost an infant could attach the 
 strings and tie the threads of the looms, and, if the 
 children were not tall enough, boxes were tied to their 
 feet to raise them to the machine. Multitudes of children 
 all over England were carried off from the poor-houses
 
 68 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 or bought from drunken parents or kidnapped from 
 others, and sent into the factories of the North. There 
 they were shut up for fifteen or sixteen hours a day, 
 beaten with fist or whip, wasted by fever, poorly 
 fed, sleeping in relays huddled together on foul 
 straw, often with chains on their feet to prevent their 
 escape. 
 
 Such was the state for long years of much of the 
 industry of England, and it was not very different on 
 the Continent. Through nearly all the nineteenth cen- 
 tury the barriers of legal protection were kept lowered 
 in deference to the sacred doctrine of industrial freedom. 
 The terrific energies of machinery and the fury of com- 
 petition were allowed to play havoc with human hves, 
 and especially with poor children's lives, until, httle 
 by little, the plain humanity of public opinion revolted, 
 and forced law after law on unwilhng legislatures all 
 over Europe to check this civilised slavery. 
 
 This monstrous system has been in 
 Even yet their great part abolished. Yet not alto- 
 state is often gether. It is perfectly well known — and 
 pitiable. has been made officially public many 
 times — that children are, even to-day, 
 often shamefully overworked in factories and work- 
 rooms and in shops, and this not merely in England or 
 in the North of Ireland, but elsewhere too. 
 
 Then, there are many employers — nay, hundreds of 
 thousands of them if we reckon (as we should) the share- 
 holders in big companies— who get much of their goods 
 made by children working at home. Oh ! how God must 
 hardly hold His hand to strike our society, when He 
 beholds the cold, filthy hovels where thousands of His 
 little ones work wearily, monotonously, from morn till 
 eve, day in and day out, year in and year out, chnging 
 desperately to hfe, poor little plants forced to bear 
 fruit in what should be their season of flowers. 
 
 The employers of these children may 
 ^T ""'^th"r ^^^ ?°°^ ^"^^ fathers and mothers of 
 ^ oTthem families, men and women of refined 
 tastes and gentle hearts and open- 
 handed charity. They would not be guilty of any
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 69 
 
 cruel, or even of any inconsiderate conduct to those 
 with whom they come in contact, and yet the wealth 
 with which they indulge their kind feelings to their 
 famihes and friends is (though they do not advert to it) 
 weighted with the curse of children's misery. Oh ! if 
 the social sense of the world were more developed ; if 
 the rich could only realise the ghastly tragedies enacted 
 round about them, tragedies in which often they un- 
 consciously play the part of cruel tyrants ; if the weary 
 sigh and the consumptive cough and the ceaseless 
 monotonous plying of the sweated work-girl's needle 
 or machine were audible in the office where merchants 
 count their gains, and in the drawingrooms where kind 
 ladies boast of their exploits of bargain-hunting ; if the 
 inventions, electrical and the rest, which join the upper 
 strata of society to each other were developed, and 
 joined the lower strata with the upper so that the rich 
 could always see and feel the result of their actions on 
 the poor, then there would be some hope that the kind- 
 ness, which is dormant in so many hearts, would awake 
 and check the murderous results of ignorance and 
 thoughtlessness. 
 
 Again, there is the despairing fact 
 
 " Blind alley " that the vast majority of young chil- 
 
 oocapations. dren in Ireland, if they work at all, work 
 
 at occupations that lead to nothing, 
 
 and leave them no better prepared to face life. 
 
 Their parents are too poor to afford the expenses 
 and time of a good technical training, still less of a 
 proper apprenticeship, and drive them forth to eke 
 out the wretched family budget with their httle earn- 
 ings. Little boys are driven out to sell newspapers or 
 matches, or to run on messages, or to do odd jobs about 
 the streets, or they get employed as caddies or boot- 
 blacks, or helps in workshops or what not ; girls sell 
 fruit or flowers or fish or get some wretched job in a 
 small shop ; or, if there are any factories in the locahty, 
 they may be taken on as helps or hands, employed for 
 their immediate commercial utihty to do quite unskilled 
 and easily learned work, learning nothing of any value 
 for their after hfe.
 
 70 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 I know of no more consoling proof of the solid good- 
 ness, which not all their wretched conditions have yet 
 been able to destroy in the hearts of our poor people, 
 than the fact, testified to in the Royal Commission of 
 1902, that the large majority of the street-trading 
 children in DubUn and other cities give up their httle 
 earnings to their parents. But does not this make it 
 all the sadder to reflect that children of such good 
 hearts and golden promise should be forced to pass their 
 young hves in a way which simply prepares them to 
 join the crowds of unskilled and starving labourers 
 that fill our cities ? 
 
 The preservation of Christian family 
 
 Importance to ijfg among the poor, the proper education 
 
 society of ^^^ training, moral, mental, and tech- 
 
 rthecSea '^^c^^' ^^ ^^^ y°^^"g «^ ^^^ poor classes 
 
 of the poor ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^°^* °^ ^^® social question. It 
 
 is a matter which involves the peace, the 
 
 security, the continuity, the very existence of society, 
 
 not to speak of the salvation of millions of immortal 
 
 souls. 
 
 The upward pressure of democracy 
 Dangers of jg irresistible. The people already 
 neglecting this ^ ^ . , , •' 
 
 training possess supreme power in theory 
 and will soon possess it in reahty too. 
 One cannot but shudder at the future if society is 
 to be preyed on by the large class which we are 
 allowing to be brought up in our midst without the 
 restraints of family feeling or religious sense, without 
 the seriousness and sense of responsibility^ which a 
 good and sohd education gives, without regard for 
 man's law or God's law, each one only acknow- 
 ledging one law — his own passions and desires. The 
 rise of this dangerous class is the natural result of 
 the disorganisation of Christian hfe among the poor. 
 We can see the danger approach. In everj^ country 
 of Europe to-day (Ireland, only for Belfast, would 
 be the single exception) there are, in all the big towns, 
 whole quarters where a well-dressed man or woman 
 would incur imminent risk at night-time of being mur- 
 derously assaulted.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 7I 
 
 In Paris, and in some other towns, organised mobs 
 of murderous savages infest the streets. They are 
 merely the vanguard of the new barbarian hordes 
 that threaten to destroy once more — and more com- 
 pletely than fifteen hundred years ago — the ancient 
 civihsation of Europe. 
 
 Is it not inevitable ? Where and when are those of 
 the rising generation to learn reverence for God's law, 
 respect for the Uves and property and rights of others ; 
 where and when can they be trained to practise the 
 social virtues of charity, of justice, of patience, and of 
 self-restraint, of industry, except at their mother's 
 knee ? 
 
 Where and when are the women of the future 
 to learn and practise kindness, gentleness, love of peace, 
 attachment to duty ; where and when can they acquire 
 the qualities which will make them modest women, 
 faithful wives, good mothers and thrifty housewives, 
 except as little girls in their mother's homes ? Where 
 can they, boys or girls, acquire the dehcacy of touch, 
 the sureness of eye, the understanding of theoretic prin- 
 ciple, the sense of artistic fitness which will give value 
 to their handiwork and bring honest profit to them- 
 selves, except when their memories are fresh, their in- 
 telhgences alert, and their members supple ? When 
 except in their young years, can they acquire the 
 habits of industry and perseverance and the devotion 
 to their trade which will enable them to live in virtue 
 and comfort and independence, and to bring up in their 
 turn good Christian famiUes ? 
 
 Yes ! even our own material interests, the safety of 
 ourselves and of our children after us, demands that we 
 should not allow a godless generation to grow up 
 smarting imder a sense of wrong. 
 
 The Church, moved with pity for 
 1110^1 anx'ous *^®^^ little ones of Christ, and anxious 
 
 about this ^°^ ^^^ salvation of the millions yet 
 question. ^^ come, cannot view with indifference 
 the sufferings, the neglect, the evil 
 training of children.
 
 72 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 She, therefore, speaks out plainly and straightly in 
 the first place to individual employers. 
 
 She recalls to them that they assume 
 
 She recalls to heavy responsibilities when modern in- 
 a sense of their dustry places little children at their 
 duty employers mercy ; that they must not regard 
 
 of the young such children as so much fuel for their 
 factories or so much cheap labour ; that 
 the children unable to assert their rights — and even un- 
 conscious of having any rights — have very sacred rights, 
 and have God behind them to avenge them. Employers 
 are bound in strictest justice not to put young people 
 who work for them in their factories or workshops or 
 yards, at any work which might be dangerous to their 
 health and development. They — if they pay for it — 
 have a right to draw benefit from the children's energy ; 
 they have no right to lessen by too heavy work, or too 
 constant or too prolonged work, the span of the chil- 
 dren's lives. They must consider the labour inspector 
 as the guardian of God's justice, and not as a mere 
 official to be hoodwinked or cajoled. 
 
 Similarly, shopkeepers or the managers of workrooms 
 are reminded that when they take in a young person, 
 boy or girl, they are assuming a very serious responsi- 
 bility ; that they are bound to regulate their business, 
 its conditions and hours, so that no injury may be done 
 to the health or the morality of that young worker. If 
 the child lives with them, their responsibiUty is still 
 heavier. They take on more of a parent's duty, and 
 should show more of a parent's loving care. They 
 must give the child proper food, proper time for rest, 
 a proper degree of comfort, a reasonable time for recrea- 
 tion, and mast see that the child performs his or her 
 religious duties. If they take in a young person as an 
 apprentice, they must realise that they are not getting 
 a worker who is to work for nothing for them ; that 
 the apprentice is paying in work the price of a proper 
 training ; that if the apprentice works for them they in 
 turn are bound in justice to work for their apprentice 
 by careful instruction and conscientious care.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 73 
 
 The mistress, too, who takes a young 
 and masters girl into her service, is warned by the 
 and mistresses Church that she is assuming the respon- 
 of households. sibiHty for a soul that has cost Christ 
 His blood ; that she is bound, as a 
 matter of conscience, to see that the girl be not harshly 
 treated or over-worked, that she have every facility 
 and receive every encouragement to perform her reli- 
 gious duties, and that her good morals be not exposed 
 to temptation. If, therefore, through economy, to save 
 gas or coal, the mistress encourages, or even forces — 
 and this is not unknown — the girl to go out constantly 
 in the evenings, and run the danger of idle wandering 
 in the streets of a town where she has no relations, the 
 mistress will have to answer to Christ if anything un- 
 toward happen the girl whom He has placed under her 
 charge. 
 
 Many complaints are made nowadays of the impu- 
 dence, the pretentiousness, the independent spirit, the 
 unreasonable demands of servant girls. These com- 
 plaints, I have not any doubt, are often well founded. 
 A girl receiving fair wages is bound to show a proper re- 
 spect to her mistress, and to perform fully and well the 
 work she has contracted to do. However, the existence 
 of such complaints proves principally this, that servant 
 girls, like every other part of the labouring class, are 
 becoming conscious that they have not been treated 
 with the consideration or the justice to which they had 
 a right. There have always been good and kind mis- 
 tresses. There are many such to-day, and they must 
 remember that the good of every class have always to 
 suffer for the faults of the bad. In Ireland relations be- 
 tween employers and dependents are generally kindly 
 and humane ; but we have, I fear, been infected by the 
 spirit of Protestant civilisation which regards the de- 
 pendent as a being of an inferior order, as one unworthy 
 of personal sympathy and interest. A little more con- 
 siderateness, a little more instruction, and a little less 
 nagging might avail — and have in other countries 
 availed — to render domestic service less repulsive to a 
 girl of spirit and sensitiveness. After all, the grievances
 
 74 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 of a servant girl must be fairly real when she will prefer 
 a life of slavish work at starvation wages in a factory 
 to hving surrounded by — and to some extent sharing in 
 — the comforts of a luxuriously appointed house. 
 
 The mistress is reminded, too, that she is bound to 
 pay her maid the full value of her work, and that the 
 lowest price at which she can get that work done may 
 be less than its value. If she does pay an unjust wage, 
 she is bound to raise it, or at least to make it up in 
 serious and careful training of the girl. Indeed, in any 
 case, she would perform a very beautiful act of charity — 
 an act of charity rare in this country, though common 
 enough in other Catholic lands — if, by personal instruc- 
 tion, she were to make up the deficiencies in the girl's 
 education ; or, if by sending the girl to a night school 
 or to a technical school, she were to enable the girl to 
 provide a more comfortable hvelihood for herself. 
 
 The payment of a just wage to the young 
 She insists jg ^j^g ^lost important duty which the 
 
 Tt*h^ "^^*^ employer has tov/ards them ; for, gener- 
 
 ,„r.,\r^Z +« f ally speaking, its observance will ensure 
 
 workers to a ,, -^ V ^ r i,- 4.1 t ^■ 
 
 fair wage. *"® observance of his other duties. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, it is in the 
 
 performance of this duty that employers are least 
 
 subject to the effective control of the law or of public 
 
 opinion. The defrauding of the young worker is the sin 
 
 which employers, and even Catholic employers, are 
 
 most liable to commit, tempted by avarice or pressed 
 
 by competition. 
 
 Therefore, most imperatively and solemnly does 
 the Church remind all emploj^ers, owners of factories, 
 workshops or workrooms, contractors, shopkeepers, 
 masters and mistresses, that they are strictly bound 
 to pay their young workers the full value of their work. 
 She reminds shareholders in companies that they — and 
 not the directors — are the real employers of the com- 
 panies' workers. How often is this forgotten ? At 
 their general meetings shareholders seem anxious about 
 everything except about their duties to the workers 
 (often children workers), from whose labour they get 
 their dividends.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 75 
 
 The value of a young labourer's work 
 How this fair may be estimated by comparing it with 
 wage is to be the work of the average grown labourer. 
 computed. If a child does a half or a third of the 
 work of a grown worker, that child has 
 a right to the half or the third of at least the individual 
 living wage of that grown worker. Is this not fair and 
 reasonable ? Sometimes the child's work and the 
 grown person's work differ from each other only in 
 quantity, and then the injustice with which the young 
 labourer is sometimes treated is clear enough. More 
 often, however, the work of the adult and that of 
 the young are quite different in character, and cannot 
 be easily compared with each other. Still, even in such 
 cases, common sense can often do what mathematical 
 calculations cannot. When a strong boy, doing almost 
 a man's work, gets a shilling a day, and then, entering 
 a Union, immediately gets for work of a very shghtly 
 skilled character three times as much, it is not hard to 
 conclude that his previous wage was an unjust one. 
 And when one hears of cases where employers work their 
 concerns almost exclusively by means of children, dis- 
 missing them as they arrive at a certain age, and 
 filling their places with a fresh supply of " cheap and 
 docile " labour, it is not rash or uncharitable to conclude 
 that the value of the children's work is not being given 
 them in wages. 
 
 The plea that the labour of the young is 
 E cu es ^°^ equal to that of the adult is only a half- 
 advanced by truth used as a dishonest excuse. The 
 some employers labour of the young is, no doubt, less 
 of the young, valuable than that of the adult, but is it 
 
 (A) "Their only one- fourth or one-sixth as valuable ? 
 labour is of And if it is more valuable than this — as it 
 little value." undoubtedly often is — if its value is two- 
 thirds or three-fourths, why is its wage 
 
 only one-fourth or one-sixth ? 
 
 And so of the other pleas invented 
 
 (B) Their j-q defend the exploitation of young 
 needs are labour. " Young people need less than 
 
 ^ * adults, therefore," it is argued, " there 
 
 is neither injustice nor hardship in paying them less,"
 
 76 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD, 
 
 True, but are the needs of the young only one-fourth 
 or one-sixth of the needs of the adult ? For instance, 
 are the housing, clothes, food and other necessities of 
 a boy or a girl of 18 years old only one-fourth or one- 
 sixth of the individual necessities of a grown person ? 
 Of course they cost far more than one-fourth or one- 
 sixth. Who, then, pays the difference ? Evidently 
 the father of the boy or the girl. 
 
 (C) " Their " Exactly," some employers will say, 
 
 wages are " My young hand is, for the most part, 
 
 supplementary supported by his father, who works for 
 of their parent's my fellow-manufacturer. Therefore, 
 wages." I need only give him a small wage." 
 il he s .ys this, he is admitting that his business is a 
 parasite on the business of his fellow-manufacturer. 
 But, be 'that as it may, his fellow-manufacturer will 
 most often deny any obligation to do more than supply 
 the individual needs of his workman, the father of the 
 child. In other words, he will deny any obligation 
 of paying a family wage. Nay, the employer of the 
 child also, if he employs men as well, will often deny 
 any obligation of paying a family wage. Who, then, 
 is to support the child ? The employer of the child 
 admits only the duty of paying for part of the child's 
 support. The employer of the child's father will often 
 deny his obligation of paying any part of it. Who, then, 
 is to pay for the rest of the child's support ? You see 
 how some employers are inconsistent as well as unjust. 
 In paying their men-labourers, they say they are not 
 bound to support, even partly, the children of those men, 
 and then, when they are paying the children, they say they 
 have already given their father something for their support. 
 
 If the family wage, prescribed by the teaching of the 
 Church, were always given to the man-labourer, children 
 would not be forced to work at the early age at which 
 they work now. They would spend their early years 
 more usefully in acquiring a better education and train- 
 ing or a more thorough apprenticeship. The grievances 
 and the discontent of the labouring class would almost 
 cease to exist, and the wealth-producing energies of the 
 community would be vastly increased.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILO. 'J'] 
 
 (D) " Better ^ need hardly mention the excuse, as 
 
 give them a transparent as it is hypocritical, given 
 
 small wage by the man, who, while underpaying 
 
 than have them young workers, actually poses as a 
 
 idle." social benefactor. 
 
 Such a man has been known to say : " If I did not 
 keep my business going, my poor httle work-children 
 would be exposed to the vagabond life of the streets ; 
 they would not be, as now, adding to their fathers' 
 resources." This may be true, but it is equally true 
 that it is not necessary for this philanthropist to rob 
 his children in order to save them from the streets. The 
 first duty his philanthropy ought to suggest to him 
 would be to refrain from robbing these children, for 
 robbing them he is, if he does not give them the value of 
 their work. Until he gives them that full value, the 
 public will say with justice that he is no philanthropist, 
 but a robber and a coward. Men would resist him, 
 women might do something to defend themselves, but, 
 as children can do nothing, as their parents cannot 
 help them, and as the State is slow in helping them, 
 this rich and heartless man swoops down on them and 
 robs them of their little earnings. 
 
 I know perfectly well that the working 
 When is an classes are not the only classes which 
 employer have to struggle desperately for a 
 Riving tiiem <^<^cent existence. In our country, bled 
 less than a white as it is by the long-continued 
 fair wage ? draining away of its wealth — its life- 
 blood, there are many employers, 
 especially small ones, who do not pay a proper wage 
 to children, and yet who can honestly say that they do 
 not make much profit out of these children, but can 
 hardly keep their business afloat. I have already ex- 
 plained * what are the conditions in which an employer 
 may justly say that he cannot pay a proper wage to his 
 adult labourers. These same conditions, and these alone, 
 would justify him in paying his young workers less than 
 the proportion of wage which their work bears to that 
 of adults. 
 
 • Lecture II., pp. 33-36.
 
 yS THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 The Church, therefore, solemnly warns 
 The Church individual employers of their obhga- 
 ' calls on the tions to the children who work for them. 
 State to protect This, however, is not enough. The 
 child-workers, awakening of individual consciences 
 cannot, of itself, restrain the struggle 
 and scramble of the modern world for wealth and 
 power. The richer men grow, the more easily they 
 grow richer still ; the richer they grow, the fiercer grows 
 their thirst of gain and their desire to crush their rivals. 
 It is becoming harder and harder for the less wealthy 
 man to keep his feet in the rush. It is growing harder 
 and harder for the just man to reconcile his conscience 
 with his interests. Nay, though God often blesses the 
 just man with prosperity, he often tries him with mis- 
 fortune. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that the 
 State should intervene. She alone has at her disposal the 
 poUceman and the process-server. She alone can strip 
 from the man who has grown wealthy on underpaid 
 children's work the glamour of social respectabihty. 
 The State alone can curb the strong and protect 
 the weak by wise and just laws, firmly admin- 
 istered. 
 
 " When there is question," says Pope Leo XIII., " of 
 defending the rights of individuals, the poor and the 
 helpless have a right to special consideration. Those 
 who are badly off must rely chiefly on the help of the 
 State. It is for this reason," he continues, " that wage 
 earners, who are undoubtedly among the weak and 
 necessitous (and which of them more than the child 
 workers ?) should be specially cared for and protected 
 by the Government." 
 
 Pope Leo XIII. and our present Holy Father have 
 been incessantly pressing on Cathohc statesmen and 
 Catholic social workers their duty of striving, so that 
 the State pass laws, first, for the protection of the 
 family — in which alone the young can be reared and 
 trained — and then for the estabhshment of proper 
 systems of apprenticeship and technical training for the 
 young. It will be our duty too to urge the necessity of 
 these measures upon all our administrative bodies, and
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 79 
 
 especially upon those in whose hands the general interests 
 of the country will lie. 
 She appeals to ^ut there is much of this work of 
 all Christians social reform which no State can do. 
 to help the Much of it requires human sympathy, 
 working personal care, individual attention, kind 
 children by speech — things which no State institu- 
 social tion can ever command. Much of it 
 
 organisations, ^.g^^^ i^^ done only by works of Chris- 
 tian charity, enhghtened, organised, suiting the needs 
 of the present hour. 
 
 The authoritative words of the 
 
 .\. Popes, the impassioned appeals of 
 
 organisations gj j^ pg the initiative of devoted Priests, 
 
 flourishing m , ,i^ i i x x. ^ u i 
 
 other countries. ^^^ ^"-^ ^^^ ^^^ genms oi a whole host 
 
 of Catholic laymen, writers, orators, 
 
 and organisers, have at length roused the energies of 
 
 Cathohcs all over Europe to undertake such works. 
 
 Orphanages and hospitals for the young are blessed 
 works and necessary, but I do not speak of them. I 
 speak of works which — I make bold to say — are of still 
 greater value, works which will check the evils that 
 prey on the young so that it may not be necessary after- 
 wards to cure or alleviate them. The care and cure of 
 the little ones who have been knocked down and 
 trampled on in the struggle of life is a good work ; 
 but a better one is to strengthen them so that they 
 may not fall. 
 
 To this work thousands of Catholic men and women 
 of all classes of society, of all grades of wealth, are 
 devoting themselves nobly to-day in other coimtries. To 
 this work they sacrifice much of their social pleasures 
 or idle trifling or well-earned rest. They give to it their 
 time, their thought, their labour, themselves. They 
 plan and form and keep in existence scores of social 
 works of various kinds to preserve family unity, to save 
 infant hfe, to keep the young off the streets, to fill in 
 the gaps of their schooling, to teach them the virtues of 
 thrift and self-restraint and diligence and mutual help, 
 to have them taught useful trades, so that they may 
 grow up in comfort, and lead useful, peaceful. Christian
 
 8o THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CHILD. 
 
 lives. I shall speak more of these social works in my 
 next lecture. They are the charity which Christ asks 
 of us to-day for His little ones, and I have confidence 
 that the kindly and rehgious heart of Ireland will not 
 refuse it to Him. 
 
 We read in St Matthew's Gospel ; 
 ■ Christ appeals " Jesus calling unto Him a httle child, 
 [' to us all to set him in the midst of the disciples," 
 save the young, and then He bade them admire the 
 innocence of the child and extolled his 
 simplicity ; and then He says : " He that receiveth one 
 such little child in My name, receiveth Me." Then, 
 as He reflected on the sin and misery that cruel men 
 would bring upon the child. His words take on a certain 
 fierceness very rare in Him : " He that scandaUses one 
 of these little ones, it were better for him that a mill- 
 stone should be tied around his neck and that he be 
 thrown into the depths of the sea." 
 
 Christ spoke those words over the heads of His dis- 
 ciples to all generations, to all of us. 
 
 Can we resist Christ's appeal to preserve innocent 
 from the corruption of the streets and safe from the 
 dangers of slum life, that soul on which His sacred 
 eyes gazed with love ; His appeal to prevent sorrow and 
 suffering from quenching too soon the gladness that 
 should dance in the child's eyes in the morning of life ; 
 His appeal to us to save their tender httle Umbs from 
 being crushed by heavy work, or wasted by starvation, 
 or perished by cold or frost ? 
 
 If our hearts are so stony as to resist Christ's appeal, 
 well then, we must take care that we neglect not His 
 warning ! for in His words we can discern the fury of the 
 vengeance with which He will visit those who injure 
 His little children.
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS, 
 STRIKES, ETC. 
 
 ONE of the most remarkable pheno- 
 mena of modern times is the 
 solidarity development among men of the 
 
 spirit of soHdarity. It is the spirit which 
 urges those whose economic interests are similar to 
 unite for the protection of their interests. We see those 
 who are engaged as labourers in the same trade, or in 
 similar trades, uniting to defend themselves; and we see 
 those employers who are engaged in the same or in 
 similar businesses uniting on their side. 
 
 Such a spirit was strong and wide 
 which was spread in the Middle Ages, but, as soli- 
 mUdX^ATes ^^"^y (^o ^^ anything more than a name) 
 implies a considerable limitation of in- 
 dividual hberty, it was opposed to the whole spirit of the 
 great revolution of thought which swept over Europe in 
 the l8th and early 19th centuries, and which tended to 
 disintegrate society, and make its individual units 
 independent of each other. 
 
 The spirit of union is again growing 
 
 stowSg ^^^^- ^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ probably see the 
 nation grouped in professional associa- 
 tions and vast federations of such associations, in presence 
 of which the traditional forms of government — Monarchy, 
 Republic, Czardom — will play an insignificant part. 
 Social classes and corporate interests, rather than local 
 and individual interests, will probably be represented in 
 the Parliaments of the future. 
 
 Organisation ^^^ ^^^Y case this growth of solidarity, 
 
 whether of on the side of labour or of capital — 
 
 labourers or of whether we like it or not — is certainly 
 
 employers not not essentially wrong. The true enemies 
 
 wrong. of Christian philosophy to-day are not 
 
 those who unite for their common interests. Those 
 
 S
 
 82 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 who SO unite are, in so far, the true heirs of the old 
 Cathohc traditions, the true upholders of natural law and 
 natural right. Those who persist — if any yet persist — in 
 seeing in the massing and organisation of labour some- 
 thing wrong or even something abnormal are completely 
 out of harmony with the spirit of the Catholic Church. 
 
 The words of Pope Leo XIII. in his 
 It is sanctioned Encyclical are perfectly clear. "It is 
 by the Church, with pleasure," he says, " We witness 
 that everywhere are being formed socie- 
 ties consisting of workmen alone, or consisting of workmen 
 and employers. It is to be desired that their number 
 may increase and their efhcacy grow stronger." And 
 the present Pope Pius X. repeats the same teaching. 
 " What institutions are to be founded ? Your thoughtful 
 charity will decide," he says. " Those which are called 
 Unions appear to Us to be of most timely use. We re- 
 commend you to take a special care of their foundation 
 and their development." Again, one of the greatest 
 Cardinals of the day, speaking to a meeting of workmen 
 only two years ago, says — " Workmen have the duty of 
 uniting to discuss their trade interests and of defending 
 them. Your reUgion, ray good friends," he says, " does 
 not force you to submit to the hardships of your condition 
 without trying to render them more bearable. Workmen 
 do not understand their duty in the matter of social action . 
 You wish to improve your condition. It is not ideas 
 or wishes that will help you. To these you must join 
 action through your Unions. You must aid yourselves." 
 The words I am about to quote are not those of an irre- 
 sponsible demagogue, but those of a great Cathohc 
 Archbishop instructing his flock. " Workmen," he said, 
 " unite. It is your right. It is your duty. No one can 
 prevent you from uniting. He who opposes your uniting 
 violates a natural right, and commits an action which is 
 contrary to the principles of morality." 
 
 Not merely do Catholics all over the world consider 
 Unions of workmen as perfectly normal and lawful 
 developments within the State, but they regard with 
 satisfaction the vast Federations in which Unions of
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 83 
 
 the same or of connected trades band together, and 
 they consider these Federations as another step in 
 advance towards social peace. 
 
 Snch TTnions The tendency of those whose interests 
 dictated by a a-^e similar to unite is a natural, universal, 
 right and spontaneous tendency. Man, experi- 
 natoral iastlnot encing his own weakness, is urged by a 
 dictate ot nature to join himself to his fellow. From this 
 dictate arises Civil Society, and within the pale of Civil 
 Society various other associations of more limited scope. 
 Unity of profession is a natural bond. The parish, 
 the district, the county create certain bonds between 
 thosv^ who dwell within their borders. The fact of people 
 thus dwelling near each other estabhshes a certain com- 
 munity of interest ; and the representation in Parliament 
 of such territorial divisions is an acknowledgment and a 
 ratification of such community of interest. Now, is not 
 unity of occupation a similar bond, nay, a strongei 
 and more natural bond than any founded on mere 
 locahty ? Is not our trade, our business a more intimate 
 part of our social existence than the place where we 
 live ? We may change our dwelling place — we often do 
 — -but we rarely change our trade or business. When, 
 therefore, there exists a number of individuals absorbed 
 by the same daily occupations, exposed to the same 
 dangers, opposed by the same forces, having the 
 same interests, having a character and mentahty and 
 habits formed by the same early training and influences, 
 made like to each other not in something merely ex- 
 terior but in something which is as a second nature, 
 the association of such people is a natural and spon- 
 taneous union in harmony with all their instincts. 
 
 The right of those who have common interests to 
 defend them by common action is not a right which 
 any human law can give or take away. It is inherent 
 in society. It is independent of any positive law. 
 Law has no power over it, no power except the power 
 to recognise it. " The Civil Society," says Pope Leo 
 XIIL, " which would forbid the formation of private 
 societies would be attacking itself, for all societies.
 
 54 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 public and private, arise from the same principle, 
 the natural sociability of men." 
 
 Our industrial system is in anarchy ; 
 
 Unions alone the relations of employers to each other, 
 
 seem capable ^^^^ ^f workmen to each other, and the 
 
 neac/toSftv relations of employers to workmen are 
 
 not ordered to the general good, and 
 
 Unionism alone seems capable of so ordering it. 
 
 At present Capital and Labour are acting as if they 
 had different interests, and, without Unions, there would 
 exist no machinery to secure the common interests of both. 
 If, however. Capital on the one hand, and Labour on the 
 other, be organised, they will be two powerful institu- 
 tions, respecting each other, giving and taking, settling 
 their differences in harmony, throwing light on each other's 
 interests, each working for the advantage of both. 
 
 Between all contending parties negotiations are neces- 
 sary, and for negotiation some order must exist on both 
 sides. Surely if the two great powers of Capital and 
 Labour were organised and stood face to face, each 
 knowing the other's strength, each measuring the other's 
 resources, each fearing the other's determination, above 
 all, each recognising clearly its opponent's prosperity to 
 be necessary for its own welfare — that in fact a victory 
 could be bought only at the cost of almost utter de- 
 struction — surel}^ then there would be more chance of 
 abiding peace than there is to-day, when society is 
 engaged in a vast disordered struggle, each one fighting 
 desperately for his own hand, each one looking for 
 some one weaker than himself on whom to prey. 
 
 Strong organizations of Labour and of Capital are the 
 only institutions that give the remotest hope of bringing 
 back peace to the world. 
 
 They afford ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ place, they, and they 
 
 a means of alone, seem likely to provide adequate 
 
 settling the machinery for the establishment of 
 
 conflicts between collective labour contracts. Without 
 
 Capital and such associations the labour contract 
 
 Labour, ig for the most part merely the exterior 
 
 consent of the workman to the emploj^er's conditions,
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 85 
 
 a forced consent causing irritation and often not felt 
 to be binding. For any fair and lasting contract there 
 must be a certain balance of power between the con- 
 tracting parties, and that can be secured only by the 
 forces of Labour and Capital being organised. These 
 can then meet, discuss and negotiate. Such collective 
 agreements are like treaties between nations, not pro- 
 vocations to war, but securities for peace. They leave 
 Capital its proper freedom in all that regards the carrying 
 on of the business, in the choice of machinery, of 
 materials, methods of manufacture, markets, and they 
 restrain that liberty only in so far as freedom means 
 injustice. Such collective agreements will free the 
 conscientious employer from the choice forced on him 
 by his unscrupulous competitors — the choice between 
 his conscience and his interests ; they will free him from 
 much of the tyranny of supply and demand, they will 
 arrange common customs of sale, a common attitude 
 with regard to workmen and buyers, they will help him 
 to regain the art of the master-workman of old — that 
 of becoming rich without ruining others. 
 
 Give labourers strong Unions which will enable them 
 to make fair terms, and they will enjoy true liberty of 
 contract, they will be too strong to be driven to accept 
 famine wages or iniquitous conditions of work, they 
 will not have the perpetual goad of wretched homes and 
 starving wives to drive them to revolution. 
 
 Such collective contracts, which have become very 
 common in the more highly skilled trades, have been, 
 I know, often violated. 
 
 Yet it must be remembered that man's mental 
 attitude is not changed in a day. In the transition from 
 an epoch when individual force stood for right it would 
 be indeed strange if some men were not still inclined 
 to have recourse to their old methods of redress. Though 
 some men will always be faithless, and collective con- 
 tracts (just as individual contracts) will be occasionally 
 violated, it is fair to remember that those that have 
 been broken (in England for instance) form an in- 
 significant minority of the lo,doo such contracts, which 
 5*
 
 86 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 now regulate the wages and conditions of work of nearly 
 two and a half milHons of labouring men. 
 
 Beyond the formation of such collec- 
 and offer ^j^^ contracts, Unions, if managed with 
 
 XStaeef intelligence and inspired by just 
 prmciples, should have a wide sphere of 
 beneficial influence. They should play a great part in 
 the moral and social life of the community. They 
 should have an excellent educative effect on their 
 members, developing in them a spirit of self-sacrifice, 
 self-respect, foresight, responsibility. They should force 
 their members to study the general state of their trades, 
 and bring clearly home to them that there are bounds 
 beyond which their thoughtless claims would lead to 
 their own ruin. 
 
 Unions have in many countries founded a whole host 
 of institutions of incalculable benefit, not merely to the 
 trade which founded them, but to society in general ; 
 technical schools, laboratories for research, libraries, 
 statistical and scientific journals, labour exchanges, 
 insurance funds, loan funds, clubs of various kinds, and 
 co-operative institutions. In France alone there are 
 10,000 such subsidiary institutions founded and kept in 
 existence by the Unions. 
 
 It will, no doubt, be said that this 
 
 Though many conception of a Union as an institution 
 Unions are making for peace is not the conception 
 
 Socialistic in ^f ^^ which is most commonly present 
 
 arrnot "" ^o-day in the pubhc mind. 
 inherently bad. -"-^ ^^ perfectly true that many Unions 
 to-day, however unexceptionable may be 
 their right to exist, are as a fact leading to Revolution. 
 Under the influence of Socialistic principles they are 
 more intent on fomenting class hatred and violent 
 disturbance than on securing a peaceful conciliation of 
 the various interests in the State. 
 
 This cannot be denied. Yet it is fair to remember 
 that Unionism has as yet incorporated only a small 
 minority (nowhere more than a fourth part) of the 
 labouring class, and that like all minorities conscious
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 87 
 
 of vigour and of a future and not yet fully recognised 
 as a legitimate power, they are naturally given to 
 noise and violence. They feel their strength, but are 
 often not matured enough to feel their responsibilities. 
 They are as organisms growing and pushing their way 
 in the body politic which has not yet got accom- 
 modated to them. Besides, it must be said that their 
 excessive love of violent methods is not all their fault.. 
 It must be admitted that many of the improvements 
 wrought in the state of the labouring class — improve- 
 ments which everyone now recognises to have been 
 necessary and demanded by justice — had to be extorted 
 by strikes or the threat of strikes. 
 
 In any case, the violence of Labour Unions, their 
 misuse of power, and their exti^avagant pretensions do 
 not justify us in condemning them as unjust in principle. 
 Even on the Continent, in Italy, France and Germany, 
 where they are more deeply imbued with SociaUst prin- 
 ciples, and where they have acted with greater license 
 and violence than in these countries, CathoHc prelates 
 and Catholic writers feel no more inchned to condemn 
 them as essentially unjust, or to lament their existence 
 as abnormal, than they feel inchned to deny the right of 
 a wicked man to exist. Let me quote for you the words 
 of Archbishop Ketteler, whom Pope Leo XIII. once 
 spoke of as his " master " in social science. " The 
 spirit of association," he says, " rests on a principle 
 of Divine order, and is essentially just, even though 
 the men who form such associations often do not 
 recognise God's authority and wrest these associations 
 to evil ends." 
 
 It is true that just as no individual 
 
 Attitude of the ^^g^j^ fulfils his proper functions in life, 
 
 Cnurcn towards ^^ ^^^ attain to real happiness, unless 
 
 he conforms to the laws of righteousness, 
 
 so, neither can associations, whether of employers or of 
 
 labourers, perform any real service to society unless 
 
 they too conform to the eternal laws of justice and moral 
 
 conduct. 
 
 The Church, therefore, is within her sphere when she
 
 88 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 dictates the moral principles which such associations 
 must observe in their conduct, and when she lays down 
 the moral conditions on which she will allow her 
 children to join such associations. 
 
 The Church has her own proper sphere, the teaching 
 of the Gospel and the conduct of souls to their eternal 
 home. Institutions of the economic order, such as 
 Trade Unions, mutual aid societies, and the rest, which 
 have for their object the organisation of labour or the 
 appropriate distribution of wealth, do not fall within the 
 sphere of the Church. They are of the civil, not of the 
 religious, order. They have an independent position 
 with regard to the Church. 
 
 Still, all such societies must necessarily formulate 
 principles of action which may or may not conform to 
 the moral law ; and the Church in approving or condemn- 
 ing such principles is only doing her duty of teaching 
 God's law to mankind. In particular the varying phases 
 of the modern industrial struggle are perpetually con- 
 fronting associations, both those of employers and those 
 of labourers, with problems that are inextricably bound 
 up with the moral law. For instance, questions concern- 
 ing wages, contracts, strikes, prices are often not questions 
 of tactics to be settled as expediency suggests, but are 
 questions which affect the consciences of millions of men. 
 Unions are forced to form with regard to their own 
 members, or to other Unions, or to the general public, 
 codes of law and principles of conduct, which may or 
 may not be subversive of the eternal principles of right 
 and wrong. 
 
 and in Hence arose a very serious question 
 
 particular for the Church. Could Cathohcs join 
 
 towards ron- non-Cathohc Unions ? To this question 
 Catholic Unions, the Church could only give one answer. 
 She could not view with indifference her children entering 
 associations in which their faith or their moral outlook 
 might be perverted. The Holy See therefore encouraged 
 and urged Cathohcs, and Bishops and priests repeated 
 the Pope's encouragement and exhortations on a thousand 
 platforms, yes, and in a thousand pulpits, to form
 
 THE CHURCH AND tRADE UNIONS. 89 
 
 Catholic Unions; and such CathoHc Unions now exist 
 strong and vigorous in nearly every country on the 
 Continent. In Germany there are 300,000 men in the 
 professedly Christian unions, one-third of all the Catholic 
 workmen in the German Empire. In Austria there are 
 100,000 in the Cathohc Unions, in Belgium 71,000, in 
 Switzerland 12,000. It is not surprising to find that 
 these Catholic Unions have been crowned with signal 
 success in winning their rights, for they take their stand 
 on more sohd principles; they act with a deeper sense of 
 responsibihty than other associations ; they inspire 
 employers with a greater confidence that they will keep 
 their agreements ; and the idealism inherent in all 
 religious truth, the order and discipHne, the unselfishness 
 and perseverance which characterise all religious move- 
 ments, give to Catholic Unions a solidarity and en- 
 thusiasm and efficiency which those pursuing mere 
 expediency can never rival. 
 
 Of course if a CathoHc Union finds itself in agreement 
 with a Socialist or a non-religious Union co-operation with 
 such is not unlawful. Moreover there are places where 
 Cathohcs are not numerous enough to form effective 
 Unions. If in such places there exist other Unions, whose 
 doctrines and acts are not contrary to Christian prin- 
 ciples, the Holy See tolerates her children entering them 
 under certain safeguards and conditions. 
 
 This subject has a very real importance 
 H, "f^^" for us in Ireland to-day. Ireland is not 
 threatening ^^ industrial country, the majority of 
 Irish unions , , , , • -^ ■ ■,, 1 txt 
 
 her labourers bemg agricultural. More- 
 over siie IS a very poor country and therefore has a com- 
 paratively small demand for the products of skilled 
 labour. Lastly, partly as a result of the dehberate 
 crushing of our industries, and partly owing to our 
 lack of the well-ordered charity which should urge us 
 to help our fellow-countrymen before others, we bring 
 from other countiies an extravagant amount of the in- 
 dustrial products which we should normally manufacture 
 at home. The consequence is that our skilled labourers 
 are abnormally few in proportion to the unskilled and
 
 90 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS'. 
 
 feel themselves too weak in number to form independent 
 associations. They therefore join English Unions. 
 
 This necessity — if it is a necessity — is to be deplored 
 from the point of view of nationality, and not less from 
 the point of view of religion. It is to be feared that 
 many of the great British Unions are deeply imbued with 
 Socialism, and that they hold principles and advocate 
 courses of conduct of which Irish workmen cannot, as 
 good Cathohcs, approve. Irish tradesmen and employees 
 have, I hope, learned the lesson of their recent rough 
 experience when in the Railway strike they were made 
 the catspaw of the British Unions. They should reahse 
 the unnaturalness, the foolishness, and the unpatriotic 
 character of such alhances. It is to be hoped sincerely 
 that whatever political changes are impending may 
 result in independent Irish associations which, knit 
 together by the triple cord of material interests, national 
 feehng and rehgious beUef, may introduce an era of 
 prosperity and peace into Irish industrial life. 
 
 A few words on the terrible and 
 Strikes. deUcate subject of strikes may not be 
 here amiss, as showing how irreconcilable are the prin- 
 ciples which guide some modern Unions with those which 
 should inspire Siny Christian association; as showing, 
 too, how difficult and dehcate are the moral questions 
 which may have at any time to be decided in labour 
 conflicts. 
 
 For many Unions to-day a strike is 
 
 False notions j-^^gj-ely an episode in the war between 
 the classes, a declaration of open hos- 
 tihties, to be made whenever a good opportunity occurs ; 
 a kind of prehminary manoeuvre preparing the battahons 
 of the people for the universal strike which is some day 
 to destroy the present system of society. 
 
 For the Christian Union a strike is 
 
 f ^ "ixikT something very different. It is a declara- 
 
 ^ ^ " tion of war, if you will, but of an economic 
 
 war to be; aeclared only as a last resort, for a just cause 
 
 and to be carried on without violence. 
 
 Every man is by nature free to give or to withhold
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. Ql 
 
 his labour, just as every man is by nature free to offer 
 or not to offer employment. However, just as an 
 employer may in a given case (e.g., Where the Worker 
 Would be exposed to suffer grave inconvenience, etc.) be 
 bound, in justice as Well as in charity, not to dismiss 
 his Workman without a sufficient reason, so the Workman 
 in a given case (e.g., when his action Would entail grave 
 inconvenience to his employer) may be bound, in both 
 justice and charity, not to withhold, without a sufficient 
 reason, his continued services from his employer. 
 The right, however, of the Workman to withhold his 
 work, whether alone or in concert with others, can 
 be justly exercised if a sufficiently grave reason exists, 
 just as, on the other hand, an employer can, if he have 
 a sufficiently grave reason, dismiss a man from his 
 employment. The labourer will have this sufficiently 
 grave reason for discontinuing his services if the 
 employer persists in withstanding the claims which 
 the worker, or the body of workers to which he belongs, 
 has a right to insist on. Man, and bodies of men, must 
 have some natural defence against injury and some 
 means of enforcing their just demands. For this 
 reason the right to strike is a natural one. A strike 
 may be just and even a duty. 
 
 Now, if an individual workman acting singly urge 
 his claims upon his employer he will most generally 
 fail. But if many such workmen combine in a strong 
 Union, and thus can threaten a simultaneous ceasing 
 of work, they can oppose to the power of Capital the 
 power of concerted numbers. 
 
 The right to strike under certain conditions can no more 
 be denied the workman than his right to unite. At 
 the same time it is a matter of concern that many work- 
 men, even those professing to be CathoUcs, do not seem 
 to realise the heavy responsibilities which such a right 
 involves. 
 
 It is not an absolute right, to be exer- 
 i ^ * jyj ciscd at any time. It is a relative right 
 conditioned by duties of prudence, 
 charity, humanity, justice.
 
 92 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 Its cause Iri the first place it cannot be exercised 
 
 must be a without a just cause. It cannot, for in- 
 just one stance, be exercised in order to extort 
 a wage which would be unjust. 
 
 Not merely must the object of the 
 
 Mriou*s?ne. ?^^^^® ^^ ^^^^ ' ^^ "^^^^^ ^^ ^ weighty ob- 
 ject, a very weighty object, proportioned 
 
 to the sufferings and risks which are incurred by the 
 
 terrible decision of declaring a strike. Strikes are a true 
 
 "plague to society," to use Pope Leo's words about them. 
 
 They mostly fail — it is said that 60 per cent, fail — and, 
 
 when they fail, they inflict severe and permanent losses 
 
 upon the workers. 
 
 In any case, whether they fail or not, they foster 
 a chronic spirit of ill-will between the classes ; they 
 are often the occasion of violent and lawless out- 
 breaks, hard to restrain among unemployed and excited 
 men ; they cause appalling suffering and anxiety to 
 multitudes of innocent women and children ; they 
 seriously inconvenience the public, they interfere with 
 trade and sometimes drive it to other countries. It 
 is only right reason that such misery and disturbance 
 and harm should not be brought on society without the 
 very gravest cause. 
 
 In this connection, however, it is only fair to remember 
 that just as an incident, trifling in itself, may involve some 
 principle important enough to justify a State in un- 
 chaining the horrors of war, so some trifling incident, 
 some unjust dismissal for instance, might possibly — 
 though rarely- justify recourse to the supreme arbitra- 
 ment of a strike. 
 _, , , Just as a declaration of war, owing 
 
 ™! o^wt* to the fearful calamities and sufferings 
 reasonaole 1 • i ^u ^ ^ x -i • 
 
 chance of which the war is certain to entail, is 
 
 success unlawful whenever there is not a 
 
 reasonable prospect of success, so a 
 
 body of workmen who, without a well-founded hope 
 
 of success expose themselves their families and the 
 
 general public to the certain suffering and inconvenience 
 
 of a strike, are acting unlawfully.
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 93 
 
 Another condition, evidently necessary 
 
 and must [j^ order that a strike be lawful, yet a 
 
 be a last condition often not compHed with, is 
 
 resource. ^^^^ every other means of ending the 
 
 conflict should be seriously tried before recourse be had 
 
 to such a terrible weapon of defence. 
 
 This need not necessarily mean that warning must 
 be always given before the formal declaration of a 
 strike. Such a warning is generally equitable in order 
 to avoid needless loss to the employer, but if the 
 employer be acting unjustly, and cannot be brought 
 to observe his just obligations by the peaceful methods 
 of negotiation, etc., his employees may be justified in 
 striking without further v/arning. 
 
 Then, again, a workman is bound in 
 It must not be justice not to strike work until the time 
 in violation of agreed to in his contract have elapsed. 
 a just contract. He would not, however, be acting sin- 
 fully in so quitting his work if the contract 
 were radically invalid ; for instance, if the wages to 
 which he had been forced to consent were so low as 
 to be unjust. Neither would his ceasing to work be 
 wrong if the employer by unjust treatment of him 
 were to forfeit the right to the fulfilment of the contract ; 
 nor if, by continuing to work he would be exposing 
 himself at the hands of his companions to serious 
 personal danger or inconvenience. 
 
 The question, however, on which 
 It must be Catholic principles are most directly 
 carried on by opposed to the principles of too many 
 ]ust mean.s. t-T • • i-i. i- r ^.i. 
 
 Unions IS the question of the means 
 
 which may be employed in carrying on the strike. 
 
 .A. man may never violate the strict 
 not be used "^^^ °^ another. Therefore the destruc- 
 tion of the employer's materials or 
 machinery is never lawful. It is unlawful also to use 
 violence in repelling those who wish to take the strikers' 
 places. The State uses violence and armed force in 
 punishing malefactors or in suppressing disorder, but 
 in so doing she strikes those who by their crimes have
 
 94 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 forfeited their right to impunity. A private individual 
 may in self-defence strike down the ruffian who attempts 
 his life, but in so doing he kills one who by his crime has 
 forfeited his right to safety. But the workman on strike 
 who uses bodily violence against those who wish to 
 replace him is using violence against those who in most 
 cases are doing — as far as justice is concerned — what 
 they have a perfect right to do. Such men who offer 
 to take the places of the strikers may be acting most 
 gi'ievously against charity in acting as they do, they 
 may be breaking the solemn promises they had given 
 their comrades, or — as is perhaps most often the case 
 — they may be merely poor men more in need of wages 
 than the strikers, but, in most cases, they are not 
 acting against justice, and therefore cannot be repelled 
 with violence. 
 
 The reasonableness of this will appear more clearly 
 in the light of an example. A very wealthy man comes 
 into a small country town. He wishes for some reason 
 or another to get the complete monopoly of trade in the 
 town, and he proceeds to undersell all the other shop- 
 keepers of the place. He may be doing this through some 
 spite against the shopkeepers of that particular place, he 
 may be sinning most grievously against charity and 
 laying up Hell's torments for himself by so acting, but, 
 after all, he owns his goods, he has the right to sell them 
 cheaply, and precisely because he is not acting against 
 justice the shopkeepers, though they are justified in 
 defending themselves in other ways, have not the right 
 to use violence in defending themselves against him ; 
 they are not justified in attacking his person or in wreck- 
 ing his shop with sticks and stones. 
 
 It might occasionally happen that such men, pro- 
 fessional strike-breakers, etc., would be acting against 
 justice. This would be the case, for instance, if, not 
 being themselves in grave need, they professed their 
 willingness to take the place of the strikers for less 
 than a living wage, or to submit to other unjust con- 
 ditions of work. Yet even in such a case violence is 
 not permissible to the strikers. The use of violence.
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 95 
 
 except in the case of self-defence, is not permissible 
 to private individuals or to private associations (such 
 as are Unions, Federations, etc.), but only to the 
 supreme authority of the State. 
 
 It may be urged that the strikers are in such cases 
 acting in self-defence, that their rights to continue in 
 their jobs are being unjustly attacked by the strike- 
 breakers, and that therefore they are justified in 
 having recourse to violent methods of defence. This 
 plea, however, is not valid. The right of a man to 
 his job is not a strict right in the sense in which a man 
 has a strict right to defend his person or his property 
 from physical attack. For this reason, and also because 
 the evils of public disturbance, riots, etc., far outweigh 
 any advantages that could possibly accrue from the 
 use of violence in such cases, it is not lawful for the 
 strikers to defend themselves by violence. 
 
 The men who offer to take the place of strikers are 
 acting in a way calculated to render vain and fruitless 
 the sacrifices and sufferings and risks faced by the strikers. 
 All the same to repel them by violence is to do wrong, 
 and one can never do wrong in order that good may come 
 of it. The end does not justify the means. 
 
 You may ask what is the use of acknowledging a right 
 to strike if the right to prevent others from taking the 
 strikers' places is not recognised too ? I answer that the 
 strikers have the right of defending their jobs but 
 not the right to use violence for that purpose. They 
 have other means, peaceful means, at their disposal, 
 moral suasion, agitation, appeals to public opinion, 
 and also the method of " peaceful picketing." 
 
 Indeed, all experience proves that 
 Peaceful ^^^ peaceful methods, the just methods, 
 
 methods are are also the most efficacious methods 
 
 the most of carrying on a strike. They win 
 
 efllcacious. for the strikers — provided the strike be 
 
 a justifiable one — the sympathy, the 
 
 respect and the admiration of the general public, and 
 
 public opinion in a very powerful (but curiously 
 
 intangible) way goes far to make or mar the success
 
 g6 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 of strikes. Peaceful means, too, prove far better than 
 violence — which is the weapon of the weak — the 
 strength and discipHne of the strike organisation. They 
 do not exasperate the employers or render them 
 more obstinate. They thus do more at once to induce 
 and to force the employers to come to terms. 
 
 Violence, on the other hand, is rarely of any effect. 
 It invariably ahenates the good will of the public even 
 when the pubhc at the outset considers the claims of the 
 strikers to be reasonable. It almost always brings 
 in the use of the armed forces of the State which is in 
 duty bound to repress all disturbances of the public peace. 
 
 If, however, the suggestion (which most Catholic 
 Writers approve) were adopted, namely, that the 
 members of each craft should be legally bound to 
 belong to some Union, which would have the form 
 and legal status of an incorporated Society, the in- 
 terests of the individual workers in each craft, and 
 the interests of each craft and of industry at large 
 would be fully secured, and the very harassing difficulty 
 of the " blackleg " or " scab " would be almost 
 altogether obviated. 
 
 A "sympathetic strike" is one which 
 «' th H " ^^ declared by some body of labourers 
 
 ^^™tcike^ ^ ^^*^ ^ ^'^^^ *^ supporting the claims 
 of other labourers. It is plain that the 
 question of its lawfulness is an extremely serious one. If 
 the doctrine which holds it to be lawful be understood 
 in a universal sense, viz., that any body of men has 
 the unconditional right and even duty of declaring a 
 strike in order to support the just quarrel of any other 
 body, the doctrine is subversive of society, and spells 
 ruin and suffering for all classes in the State, for workers 
 employers and the outside public. At any given 
 moment there may be in some place or another 
 some body of workers out on a just strike. If all 
 other workers were justified in going out on strike 
 to support it, then in the case of some small labour 
 dispute in a small country town, for instance, there 
 would be a general paralysis of industry and a general
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 97 
 
 disturbance of the public peace throughout the whole 
 country— indeed, throughout the whole World if (as 
 is often said to be desirable) the solidarity of labour 
 becomes international. In order that a few score of 
 men should win their cause (which they could easily 
 do by means of their Union) millions of men and women 
 in no way concerned with the quarrel would be exposed 
 to unspeakable misery and suffering. If such a principle 
 Were adopted by the whole labouring class all social 
 intercourse Would be paralysed, all the advantages of 
 our civilisation (which the poor enjoy as Well as the 
 rich) Would be destroyed, all mercantile concerns 
 (factories, shops, offices, banks, etc.) would have to 
 close, the cultivation of the soil, the production of the 
 wealth on which rich and poor alike depend would 
 come to an end. There would be universal starvation 
 and red-handed anarchy. 
 
 A universal sympathetic strike could never be 
 necessary for the protection of the rights of individual 
 workers.* It is impossible to conceive a cause that 
 could justify it. It would be a remedy out of all pro- 
 portion to the evil it would be intended to cure. It 
 would be as if a doctor, called in to cure some trivial 
 scratch on a man's leg were to amputate the limb to 
 the imminent danger of the man's life. 
 
 The policy of " tainted goods " is 
 "Tainted Goods." really the same (in its effects at least) 
 as that of the sympathetic strike. A 
 moment's thought will show that if adopted in its 
 universal sense by employers or by employees it would 
 rapidly extend the sphere of any strike or of any lock- 
 out to every form of industry in a country, and indeed 
 to every kind of industry throughout the world. To 
 preach such a policy as a universal principle could 
 never be justified, and would be gravely sinful. Though 
 
 * On the other hand, everyone now recognises that the rights 
 of the individual labourer can only be efficiently guarded by 
 the solidarity of his fellow-labourers, that is of those engaged 
 in the same trade and united in an organisatiou sufficiently 
 numerous to protect the individual members.
 
 gS THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS, 
 
 in the wild and whirling rhetoric of industrial conflicts 
 it is sometimes recommended it is never applied in 
 its entirety. Employers do not apply it for they 
 see it would be madness to do so. Neither do the 
 responsible leaders of the labouring classes adopt it 
 in its entirety, because they see that it would mean 
 the destruction of their own organisations, and that 
 it would ruin the general interests of the labouring 
 classes. Much as labour leaders speak of the inter- 
 national solidarity of labour, it would, I think, be 
 extremely unlikely that the Unions of England, for 
 example, would, in carrying out the " tainted goods " 
 policy, go out on strike themselves in order to support a 
 strike in France or in Ireland. 
 
 The doctrine of the universal sym- 
 Is the Sympa- pathetic strike is utterly indefensible. 
 thetic Strike Does it therefore follow that a sym- 
 ever just? pathetic strike is never justifiable ? No. 
 A sympathetic strike, like any other 
 strike, is to be judged justifiable or not according to 
 the principles already laid down. It must be insisted 
 on, of com"se, that the reasons which would justify 
 such an extended strike would require to be of pro- 
 portionately greater importance and gravity than those 
 which would suffice to justify an ordinary strike, and 
 that proportionately greater efforts should be exerted 
 to avert it. 
 
 ^-It might be said that as a general rule such a strike 
 would be legitimate only in the case where a body of 
 workers is united by some real and strong bond of 
 trade-interest with those whose cause it espouses ; and 
 this could generally be the case only where the organisa- 
 tions helping each other are employed by the same 
 employers or by employers in similar businesses, for 
 instance, in the case where a Union of masons' labourers 
 supports the quarrel of a masons' Union or of a 
 carpenters' Union ; or in the case where the workers 
 on one railway system support those who work on 
 another system. In such cases men in helping their 
 fellows might have a reasonable cause for refusing
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 99 
 
 their services to employers who are treating those 
 fellow-labourers with injustice (as in the case referred 
 to of masons, masons' labourers, carpenters), or they 
 might be in reality defending their own interests (as 
 in the case of railway-men referred to). The disturb- 
 ance to the public peace Would follow not as the direct 
 result of their action, but merely as an accidental con- 
 sequence. If, however, a Union of barbers strikes to 
 support the quarrel of, let us say, a Union of carpenters, 
 it is clear that the barbers are merely disturbing the 
 public peace in order that the carpenters may reap 
 some advantage from the disturbance. It is never 
 lawful thus to directly injure the public good in order 
 thereby to gain some advantage for a particular class. 
 It may be argued that employers who have no real 
 bond of trade interest with each other (e.g., brewers, 
 bakers, cloth manufacturers, builders, etc.) sometimes 
 combine in Federations, and that therefore each of the 
 various bodies of men engaged by such employers, in 
 coming to the help of its fellows is in reality defending 
 itself. 
 
 Such a combination of employers would, of course, 
 be acting unjustly if it were to support, by a general 
 lock-out or by financial assistance, any of its members 
 who might be engaged in an unjust quarrel with his 
 employees. In such a case it would be lawful for the 
 Unions, whose just rights would be thus challenged, to 
 combine in support of the injured workers, and — of 
 course only as a last resort — declare a concerted strike. 
 As has been said before, a solid organisation in Unions 
 of the workers of each trade, and a sohd banding 
 together of such Unions in Federations, and, on the 
 other hand, a similarly firm organisation of employers 
 is the only system which can provide adequate machinery 
 for the intelligent discussion of the interests of Capital 
 and Labour, and can lead to mutual understanding 
 mutual confidence and peaceful negotiation. Such a 
 system alone can force those on each side to have 
 regard to the claims of justice and God's law, claims 
 which have been so often neglected by both sides.
 
 loo THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 Such a sj^stem alone can put an end to the destructive 
 conflicts which are growing more numerous every day, 
 and are inflicting such terrible calamities especially on 
 the poor. 
 
 Over the furious battlefield where Capital and Labour 
 are struggling there are two signs of peace appearing 
 in the Heavens. On the one side, Capital is coming 
 to see that its old Liber alistic principles (condemned 
 long ago by the Church) are fatal to it. On the other, 
 the more intelligent of the leaders of Labour (even 
 those whose principles are far removed from those of 
 the Church, socialists, syndicalists, etc.) are getting 
 afraid of the awful spirits of destruction which they 
 have summoned up upon the earth ; they are growing 
 more conscious of their responsibilities, and in England 
 as elsewhere (except sometimes in the heat of conflict), 
 they repudiate in the interests of Labour itself these 
 senseless and violent appeals to combat. 
 
 There are certain absolute necessities 
 Strikes in of modern life such as gas, water, 
 public services, electricity, railways, letter carriage, &c., 
 which are entrusted to great public or 
 quasi-public services. Now those who are engaged 
 in such services evidently do not on that account 
 cease to enjoy their rights as free men. They, like 
 other employees, possess their natural right of defence, 
 the right that every man has to withhold his labour 
 given good cause. Yet owing to the fact that their 
 uninterrupted services are immediately and absolutely 
 necessary for the peace and well-being of the whole 
 State, such men are bound by a heavier responsibility 
 in the exercise of their rights. They cannot ignore the 
 absolute necessities of the general public, and therefore 
 a more than ordinary care and deliberation is incumbent 
 on them before they can be justified in striking. If 
 strikes occur in such services the State is bound to 
 employ her forces, even her armed forces, to prevent 
 the suffering and calamities which would result to the 
 general public. On the other hand the employees of 
 such public utility services have a right to be com-
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. lOl 
 
 pensated for the extra difficulties which the nature of 
 their work places in the Way of the prosecution of their 
 rights. The State is bound therefore to provide the 
 very fullest machinery — equitably formed arbitration 
 boards and the like — for permanently and effectively 
 giving satisfaction in a generous spirit to the em- 
 ployees of such services. A conscientious govern- 
 ment cannot allow those who thus work for the 
 general advantage of the citizens to be oppressed or 
 harshly treated. 
 
 Unions are Unionism has undoubtedly improved 
 
 unfortunately the condition, not merely of the trades 
 
 confined almost that have adopted it, but, to some extent 
 
 entirely to too, the general condition of the whole 
 
 skilled trades. labouring class. It is, unfortunately, 
 
 however, the classes of more highly skilled labour — 
 
 precisely the classes which least urgently stood in need 
 
 of protection — ^that have profited most largely by the 
 
 advantages of combination. 
 
 The class above that of the artisan, the 
 Unions would vast middle-class of society, with its 
 tto much to various grades and strata — farmers, shop- 
 improve the , ° 1 i. r ■ 
 classes above keepers, commercial agents of various 
 the tradesmen kinds, teachers, civil servants, clerks — 
 this vast class has not yet (with the ex- 
 ception of the legal and medical professions) awakened 
 to the opportunities which united action holds out to 
 them. 
 
 Yet this middle class suffers very keenly under our 
 industrial system. It is crushed from above by the 
 superior power of the very rich, and from below by the 
 claims of the poor. It is often dependent on those 
 above it and easily hurt by those below. It can compete 
 with difficulty against Capital above, and below it are 
 the banded forces of skilled Labour. The frenzied 
 competition of modern life often means for the middle 
 classes a desperate struggle to maintain their social 
 status, the conditions of life that are indispensable 
 to their content. For them poverty is well-dressed 
 poverty, often a more painful poverty than poverty in
 
 102 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 rags, for it adds the mortification of wounded 
 pride, the chafing of sensitive culture, the anxious 
 effort to keep up appearance, to the physical pinch of 
 want. 
 
 Now the principle of Association 
 and nave done pj-QmJses the middle classes to alleviate 
 countries their stressful state while sparing their 
 honour and self-respect. To give one 
 instance, shopkeepers of moderate means on the Con- 
 tinent have made many and highly successful attempts, 
 by means of various mutual agreements and co-operative 
 schemes to make headway against the competition of 
 the monster shops, bazaars, arcades, that are often 
 huge capitalistic enterprises. The farmers of many 
 continental countries have anticipated by many years 
 the farmers of Ireland in perceiving the advantages 
 which co-operation has in store for them. 
 
 It is merely a want of social education which prevents 
 the middle classes in Ireland from forming the many 
 various co-operative schemes which would enable them, 
 as their brethren on the Continent, to resist the absorbing 
 power of large capital, and by which they could secure 
 from society at large in which they perform such 
 useful functions, a more adequate return of peace 
 and comfort. 
 
 Then, again, below the class of skilled 
 Unskilled artisans there are the teeming masses 
 workers of the very poor ; day-labourers, un- 
 skilled workmen, with nothing to depend 
 on except their physical strength. Numerous as they 
 are, forming the majority — in Ireland the vast majority 
 — of the labouring class, they are isolated one from the 
 other, and cannot easily unite, or at least cannot easily 
 form Unions such as the carefully planned organisa- 
 tions by means of which the skilled tradesmen can so 
 efficiently protect their interests. 
 
 They are lacking in the qualities requisite for the 
 formation of stong associations. They have not the 
 education and breadth of mental outlook which the 
 possession of a skilled trade impUes ; they have not the
 
 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. I03 
 
 sense of fraternity which the possession of common know- 
 ledge and a common skill confers ; they are not brought 
 into constant touch with each other by their work, and 
 do not learn to know each other and to form bonds of 
 friendship and trust ; they do not look forward to 
 acquiring excellence in any particular work, and therefore 
 cannot hope for better wages ; they have no ambition 
 and little self-respect ; their wages are so poor and 
 precarious that they cannot lay by part of them for the 
 apparently remote advantage to be got in a Union ; 
 worst of all, each of them feels that the thousands of those 
 about him are all his enemies, envying him his job when 
 he has got one, and ready to supplant him at any 
 moment. Their character deteriorates, they become 
 apathetic, improvident, subservient, slavish. They can 
 be treated (as the heartless and significant phrase ot 
 industrial language has it) as " cheap and docile 
 labour." 
 
 And this description which I have 
 aad all women criyQ^ of unskilled labouring men is true 
 workers are ?• c i. n . v r n 
 
 hard to unite ^^^ ^^^^' "^°^^ universally true) of all 
 women wage-earners whether skilled or 
 not. In their minds a Union is the institution where 
 their husband or their father spends an immoderate 
 amount of money and consumes an immoderate amount 
 of time in talk, with no other result than the bringing on 
 of a strike which reduces them and him to misery. 
 Women generally do not settle down to the study and 
 practice of a skilled trade because they most often hope 
 that marriage will free them from the necessity of work. 
 Besides, whether skilled or not, they are very much 
 divided by class distinctions, distrustful of each other 
 and easily frightened and bullied. I doubt if out of the 
 half-million and more of women wage-earners in Ireland 
 there are 4,000 in any Union. The wealthy women who 
 talk much of Women's rights have not yet — 'in Ireland 
 at least — begun to help, as Catholic women do on the 
 Continent, their poorer sisters to unite and win for 
 themselves a decent livelihood, one of their proper 
 and essential rights.
 
 104 THE CHURCH AND TRADE UNIONS. 
 
 but Catholic Catholic Social writers have not found 
 
 social activity i^ so difficult to induce the middle classes 
 
 can do much to adopt the methods of Christian 
 
 to uplift and fraternity for their protection ; the 
 
 organise them. Church has not found it so difficult to 
 
 unite the more skilled kinds of labourers in strong and 
 
 effective Unions ; nor has she found it hard to create in 
 
 many of the Parliaments of Europe a Catholic Party 
 
 to be the foremost champion of every law which 
 
 aims at the regeneration of the poor. 
 
 But though laws can do much there is much more they 
 cannot do ; there is much which has to be done before 
 they can do anything. To improve the most defenceless 
 classes of society, unskilled labourers and women 
 workers, this vast mass of pauperised and semi-pauperised 
 men and women, living in black squalor and suffering, 
 many of them sunk in degrading habits of drunkenness, 
 absorbed by their sense of oppression, yet unable to rise 
 from it, sometimes apathetic, at other times senselessly 
 violent, ignorant of the true remedies for their evil 
 phght and helpless to apply them even if they knew 
 them, strangers to each other, distrusting each other, 
 furiously competing with each other — to uplift, I say, 
 these poor creatures, to put into each of them a heart 
 of courage and hope, to enhghten them as to their true 
 nethods of redress, to train them in the social virtues 
 of sobriety, thrift, self-respect and mutual trust, and then 
 to form of them strong disciplined battalions of good 
 Catholic labourers, battalions which will, in fighting for 
 their rights, respect the rights of others, and will resist 
 not merely those who oppress them from above, but 
 those who wish to destroy all society from below, is a 
 gigantic work and not the work of a day or a year. 
 
 It is this work which the Church with her inexhaustible 
 resources of charitable energy, with her God-given wisdom 
 and her genius for organisation is at present engaged on. 
 It is this work which is the object of those thousands of 
 social institutions of whose marvellous success on the 
 Continent we in Ireland, alas! know so httle.
 
 " THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK." 
 
 LET us imagine a very small nation 
 of a homogeneous character, and 
 necessary ^et us imagine that, by some 
 
 for social order, extraordinary chance, the most suitable 
 form of government, the most suitable 
 laws, the most appropriate economic measures were 
 devised for it, and applied by men of the greatest 
 wisdom and ability. There would still be — who can 
 doubt it ? — in that small nation much discontent, 
 much affliction, much injustice, many crimes. Why ? 
 Simply because it is human passions that cause most 
 of the misery and crime in society, and because no 
 laws can still the passions in the hearts of men. 
 Man's passions will always urge him to commit 
 crimes and take the risk of being punished, and they 
 will urge him to find some means of eluding the most 
 cunningly contrived law. 
 
 How much more rife, therefore, will misery and 
 crime be in a large nation, with its infinite complexities, 
 especially if (as is always the case) the past has planted 
 widely in that nation evil customs, jealousies, hatreds, 
 and especially if the Ten Commandments of God are 
 not held in much reverence among its people ? 
 
 Remember, I do not say that laws are useless. They 
 are absolutely necessary. The better and more suitable 
 they are, and the more justly they are administered, 
 the less scope will be given to the evil passions of men 
 the less suffering there will be, the more prosperity and 
 happiness ; and therefore it is our duty as good Catholics 
 to work according to our opportunities for the enact- 
 ment of good laws. A society, however, ruled by the 
 wisest of human laws, but neglectful of God's law, would 
 6
 
 I06 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 be an inferno, a pandemonium. Laws can punish the 
 detected outcome of some passions and diminish the 
 opportunities of others, but they cannot penetrate the 
 soul or control the inmost springs of human action. 
 Rehgion alone can do this. 
 
 Hence we see that even for the peace 
 
 a • , . . and welfare of human society the 
 Social mission ru ^^-i, v. ■ u^. • • / 
 
 of the Church. Church has a mighty mission to per- 
 form, and that it is futile to try to cure 
 the social evils of the day if liberty is 
 not given to the Church to fulfil the mission that God, 
 the Maker of society, has given her. 
 
 The Church not merely speaks to the consciences of 
 individuals, telhng each one of his duties in all the cir- 
 cumstances of life, but she speaks to men grouped in 
 the societies that men form, the nation, the city, 
 the family, the association. Each of these societies 
 has liberty to work out its own welfare ; but that hberty, 
 hke every true liberty, must be exercised within the 
 bounds set for it by God's Church, the exponent of 
 God's Law. 
 
 The Church is not merely a teacher of 
 Her true principle. She is an inspirer of good 
 
 organisations- action. She not merely sows ideas. 
 
 She brings them to fruitfulness. She 
 
 not merely instructs ; she organises. She first forms 
 
 individuals to virtue, and she then associates, directs, 
 
 energises them. 
 
 From her earliest days she has shown a genius for 
 banding men together in associations of all kinds, con- 
 fraternities, sodalities, guilds, communities of monks 
 and nuns, brotherhoods of nobles, associations for 
 teaching, for nursing, for working, even for fighting. 
 In her two thousand years of life she has brought 
 forth innumerable such associations, and her fertihty 
 is not less to-day than in the past. What an ad- 
 vantage this genius gives her in our age, when all 
 hopes of peace and order are placed in sohdarity and 
 union !
 
 THE CHORCH and SOCIAL WORK. ioj 
 
 And what associations can be compared with hers ? 
 
 She not merely forms them, she informs them with her 
 
 spirit, enabUng them to thrive and work 
 
 Their strength with energy and effect. She alone can 
 
 infuse into their members the virtues 
 
 which make associations firm — self-sacrifice, patience, 
 
 hope, true charity. She alone can counteract the 
 
 disintegrating forces that are always at work in 
 
 societies — jealousy, distrust, and fickleness. 
 
 This power to bind together and 
 
 is Christian weld and harden the crumbling clay 
 charity. of society is above all the sacred fire 
 of charity which Christ has placed 
 in the shrine of His Church. 
 
 Charity, unseliish love, was not quite unknown in 
 the Pagan world of old, even as it is not unknown in the 
 Pagan world around us to-day ; but it was as some 
 rare and beautiful flower causing men to stop and 
 wonder. It stirred up the praises of the rhetorician and 
 roused poets to sing. 
 
 This flower now grows in profusion in the garden 
 of the Church, so that we of the household almost 
 cease to wonder or to notice. It was almost a new 
 virtue when Christ said : "A new commandment I 
 give you that you love one another." It was indeed 
 quite new, inasmuch as Christ, in ordering us to love 
 our neighbour for the love of God, has made of 
 natural charity a supernatural virtue. Human pity and 
 sympathy and love retain all their old beauty and 
 fragrance, but Christ has given them a new glory and 
 strength, a new radiance caught from the brightness of 
 Heaven. 
 
 What makes the world of to-day so bright compared 
 to the Pagan world we read of is not an exacter notion of 
 justice, or an exacter carrying out of justice, but it is the 
 charity which Christ has brought into the world. The 
 world, even the unchristian world of to-day, is far 
 more Christian than it admits. Much of the charity, 
 which it has inherited from the Christianity it combats, 
 hngers in the recesses of its heart. 
 6*
 
 Io8 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 Justice is necessary that peace and 
 
 order may reign in the world, but justice 
 
 Justice must be completed by charit5^ A world 
 
 insufficient ^^^j^^ ^ • ^g^-^^ ^^^^^ ^^^j^ ^^ ^^ ^^_ 
 
 for social peace. . ^ i ^^ it u -4. j i, 
 
 Dearable world, it charity ceased her 
 
 beneficent work for a single day, such 
 a fearful explosion of suffering would result, such an 
 agonising cry would rise up from earth to heaven that 
 those who now cry out that rights alone should be the 
 basis of society, and that the gifts of charity are dis- 
 honouring to those who receive them, would stand 
 aghast at the work of Wind justice and would call out 
 for tender-eyed charity to come back in mercy to the 
 world. 
 
 Justice can lessen poverty in the world. She cannot 
 quite banish it. Foohsh are the dreams of those who 
 doubt Christ's word : " The poor ye shall always have 
 with you." Justice can lessen the suffering of the 
 world, but she can never change the world from being 
 a valley of tears. When the relations of justice have 
 been harmonised — if ever they be — with the greatest 
 nicety, the restless, selfish passions of men, the myriad 
 sicknesses that prey on poor humanity, the hand of 
 death snatching away the bread-winner or guardian, 
 the blind violence of storm and flood and fire and 
 earthquake, will still continue to strew the earth with 
 suffering. 
 
 Charity is the great regenerating 
 
 Charity urges force, the great consohng force which 
 
 the Church Qi^rist has placed in the world. Charity 
 
 wor consumed the Sacred Heart of Christ. 
 
 secure social -.. ^.-u t *. t xs- n-u i, 
 
 peace. ^^ consumes the heart of His Church. 
 
 The object of the Church's existence is 
 to save man from the evils that affhct man's soul, and 
 therefore, indirectly at least, from his bodily evils too, 
 which drag down and destroy his soul. 
 
 Therefore the Church has been perpetually called on 
 to settle the social question, the question of man's neces- 
 sary comfort in the world. In the past it was the slave 
 question or the serf question or the burgher question.
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. lOQ 
 
 To-day it is the Labour question ; and she will settle it, 
 not merely by the authority she has to define human 
 rights, but by the marvellous power given her by God 
 of devising and inspiring works of charity. 
 
 Charity urges the Christian to work 
 Distinction ^^^ ^'^ neighbour, but this work may 
 between be one of two kinds. It may be what 
 - charitabla is usually known as charitable work, 
 work and or it may be what is called social work. 
 social work. By charitable work I mean, for in- 
 stance, providing for the blind, the 
 maimed, the orphan, the sick, the giving of alms to the 
 deserving poor. By social work I mean work which aims 
 at preventing poverty, sickness, suffering. Charitable 
 work cures the wound ; social work prevents the blow 
 from falling. Charitable work prevents the effects of 
 evil ; social work cuts at the root of the evil. 
 
 As I have said, we shall always have 
 
 The latter y^jth us the impoverished, the orphaned, 
 
 ™°^® the sick, the disabled, and in succouring 
 
 tha^^thef them we shall be continuing Christ's 
 
 former. work ; but nowadays the world is so 
 
 disorganised, whole classes of men are 
 
 so afflicted and helpless, there is so much destitution and 
 
 suffering, untimely death and avoidable disease, that 
 
 charity — old as the Church yet ever new — has undergone 
 
 a great evolution. It urges us now not merely to staunch 
 
 the wounds received in the struggle for life, but to calm 
 
 that struggle ; it urges us to repair and reconstitute the 
 
 diseased and weakened organisms of society, the family, 
 
 the city, the state ; it urges us to uplift and weld 
 
 together whole classes of individuals now helpless 
 
 because isolated, so that they may be able to serve God 
 
 in comfort and peace, and save their souls. 
 
 To exemplify what I mean. To give a 
 Examples. sum of money or food or clothes to a 
 poor family, is a good work and will be 
 richly rewarded, but to give the head of that family 
 paid work, so that he may support it in decent inde- 
 pendence is better. The giving of work is better than
 
 IIO THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 the giving of alms. Alms merely carries the poor man 
 forward on the road of hfe, leaving him as weak as 
 before. But wages for work strengthens his steps and 
 enables him to bear life's burden with patience and 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 To contribute to a hospital is a good and blessed 
 work, and there will be always many who will need 
 the hospital ; but to use one's influence and efforts to 
 have good and healthy dwelhngs built for the poor, so 
 that there may be less need of hospitals, is a better 
 work. 
 
 To provide proper care for a young girl, a victim of 
 tuberculosis contracted in some sweating workshop, 
 is a noble work, but to organise the hundreds of her 
 sisters so that they be not doomed to the same fate, 
 is yet a nobler one. 
 
 To put an orphaned boy into an orphanage may be 
 a great work of charity, but it might be a more blessed 
 charity to provide otherwise for him, putting him in 
 the house of his kinsfolk and giving him a useful trade. 
 
 After all, hospitals, orphanages, old people's homes, 
 and the like, necessary works as they are to-day, and 
 beautiful works of charity, are rather a sign of social 
 decay and disruption than marks of social progress. 
 Normally the family should keep its aged and infirm 
 beneath its own roof-tree. In the good old CathoUc 
 days orphanages were for foundhngs only. The hospital 
 was the refuge only of the passing stranger, or else of 
 those whose diseases were contagious or could not 
 well be treated in the home. 
 
 Society, if properly constituted, ought to support 
 and widen and render more fruitful the activities of 
 its natural organisms the family, the city, the associa- 
 tion, and thus render superfluous a great part of our 
 charitable institutions. 
 
 For want of charitable thought and care the hand of 
 almsgiving is often misdirected. To give alms on the 
 street to the beggar may be a blessed deed, but to give 
 it, as one easily may, to the drunkard who will hasten 
 his steps to spend it in drink, or to the idle impostor.
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. Ill 
 
 may bring a blessing on the giver for his good will, but 
 may bring a curse on him who receives it. 
 
 After all, everything worth doing at all ought to be 
 well done. Therefore, above all, our charity should be 
 done well, not merely with a good intention, but so as 
 to procure its fullest measure of good. Charity imphes 
 very sacred interests, interests of God, of our neigh- 
 bour, of ourselves ; it is infinitely rich in spiritual and 
 material blessings, and should therefore, in proportion, 
 be done with all the care and perfection possible. 
 
 Nay, if God blesses the man of charitable heart who 
 makes a sacrifice of money, He will bless that man 
 doubly and trebly if he has previously made the still 
 greater sacrifice of time and care in finding out how 
 the money may be best apphed. 
 
 The charity of CathoHc Ireland is 
 
 Charity in magnificent. Our orphanages, asylums, 
 
 Ireland is retreats, refuges, hospitals and other 
 
 very abundant, such institutions are nobly supported. 
 
 No country in the world, according to 
 
 a modern English writer, a Protestant, gives as much in 
 
 proportion to its wealth as Ireland. This is all the 
 
 greater glory to our people, as the budget of Irish charity 
 
 is not swollen by large donations of the very wealthy — 
 
 for we have few such — but by the generous sacrifices of 
 
 our middle classes, whose struggle in hfe is generally 
 
 very hard, and by the mites of the poor. 
 
 But while this is very true and very 
 Lack of social consoling, and is the pledge of a 
 work in glorious reward for our nation in the 
 Ireland. world to come, there is another fact 
 not less true, namely, that nowhere in 
 Europe, I make bold to say, is social charity, as distin- 
 guished from alms-giving charity, less known or practised. 
 In every parish in the land, in town and country, 
 there are many pious, earnest CathoHcs who perform 
 their religious duties with regularity, whose hves are 
 models of all the domestic and religious virtues, who 
 give open-handedly of their hard-earned, and not too- 
 abundant means to the charitable institutions of their
 
 112 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 neighbourhood, and who give generously alms to the 
 poor whom they meet in the street or on the roadway. 
 
 Having done this they rest content. It never occurs 
 to them that their charity should mean anything else 
 than alms-giving or their annual subscription to a 
 hospital or an orphanage. 
 
 Yet the enlightened Christian charity recommended 
 by the Pope, and which we must practise if we are, as 
 St. Paul says, " to re-establish all things in Christ " 
 (Eph. i.), means much more. It means that we should 
 interest ourselves in the conditions of hfe, in the pro- 
 spects and difficulties of our poor brethren ; that we 
 should examine into the causes of their suffering ; it 
 means that it is more blessed to prevent disease than to 
 cure it ; more blessed to give good dweUings to the 
 poor than to give them hospitals for diseases con- 
 tracted in bad ones ; more blessed to enable the 
 widow to rear her children than to place them in indus- 
 trial schools ; more blessed to give work than a dinner 
 or two to the starving man ; more blessed to have the 
 young taught a useful trade than to secure them 
 a job that will teach them nothing ; more blessed to 
 educate in Christian principles and unite in Christian 
 associations the helpless day-labourers and the work- 
 women than to give them odd doles or odd jobs. 
 In short, God asks of each of us to give to His suffering 
 brethren the charity of our personal effort as well as 
 that of money, the gift of self — a greater and more 
 costly gift than that of alms. 
 
 The great lack of social sense among 
 
 Causes of this. Irish Catholics is due in some measure 
 to our strange system of higher educa- 
 tion which cramps or misdirects the energies of the 
 unrivalled teaching agencies which we possess. It is 
 in part due also to the absence of those open, savage 
 attacks on morality, family life, religious hberty, and 
 religious education which have roused Catholics in other 
 countries from the torpor in which they too, fifty years 
 ago, were sunk. Our Cathohc social activity would 
 not be so lamentably deficient were it not for the fact
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORPC. 113 
 
 that a very powerful, wealthy, and splendid Protestant 
 nation has forced its literature and much of its mentality 
 and its moral habits upon us, and now, in spite of tele- 
 graph and newspaper, curtains us off, more effectually 
 than perhaps ever before in our history, from the rest 
 of the CathoHc world. 
 
 To describe at any length the profuse 
 Social activities flowering of social charity in that 
 in other Cathohc world is, of course, impossible 
 coontries. on this occasion. All we can do is to 
 take up a flower here and there, cast a 
 hasty glance on it and pass on. There are books, de- 
 scriptive of these social works to be had, books which, 
 though they are humiHating reading for the Irish 
 Cathohc, will certainly make him admire, and let us hope 
 rouse him to imitate. 
 
 It was in Germany, and chiefly owing 
 In Oermany to the inspiration of a great Archbishop, 
 that the Church first set herself to the 
 task of rebuilding society on Cathohc principles. Her 
 success has been amazing. Gathohcs are increasing 
 rapidly — far more rapidly — than the rest of the German 
 people in numbers and wealth and influence. Socialism, 
 the offspring of irrehgion and discontent, though 
 stronger in Germany than anywhere else in the world, 
 has not been able to get any hold on German Cathohcs. 
 In every little village in the Catholic parts of this 
 Empire, there is a Cathohc Agricultural Society with 
 its savings bank, its loan fund, its study club, its con- 
 ferences. In such societies there are some 400,000 
 Cathohcs. In every town where Cathohcs are numerous 
 there are Catholic Workmen's Clubs, 800 in all, con- 
 taining altogether between 200,000 and 300,000 members. 
 These clubs are — as often as not — presided over by 
 priests, and have attached to them many subsidiary 
 institutions, various kinds of mutual help societies, 
 building societies, co-operative stores, libraries, evening 
 classes, and the rest. 
 
 Then there is the gigantic network of Christian Trade 
 unions, boldly professing Christian principles, formidable
 
 tt^ THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 armies of Catholic labourers, but with peace and not 
 plunder inscribed on their banners, and causing no 
 stir of anxiety or suspicion in those who use and 
 enjoy their wealth as Christians should. Founded in 
 1894, they soon formed a Federation (of which the first 
 president was a priest), and now they count almost 
 500,000 members. Then there is the more compre- 
 hensive People's Union in which CathoHcs of all classes, 
 rich and poor, learned and unlearned, nobles and humble 
 folk, labourers and employers, men of the city and the 
 country, some 800,000 in all, are banded together in an 
 organisation almost as miniitely elaborated as an army. 
 To serve as the directing staff of this organisation there 
 is a huge array of writers, lecturers, organisers, agents, 
 professional experts, and a connected system of inquiry 
 and advice offices. It supports a press which sends forth 
 many daily papers in different towns, and a review 
 with a circulation of 650,000, and scatters broadcast 
 over the country annually many hundreds of pamphlets 
 and flying sheets. To give pohtical expression to the 
 Cathohc population of the Empire, there is the Cathohc 
 Centre Party, the strongest, the most united, the most 
 highly equipped party in the German Parhament, 
 always standing for Cathohc principles, always defend- 
 ing all true Cathohc liberties, hberty of reUgion, of 
 education, of work, of association, always championing 
 the rights of the poor and the oppressed. 
 
 In France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, 
 ftad elsewhere. Spain, Switzerland, the Catholics are 
 similarly organised, though, except in 
 Belgium, not yet so thoroughly nor with such centralisa- 
 tion and effectiveness as in the German Empire. 
 
 I shall not, however, dwell further on 
 somT social ^^^ ^^^^ pohtical organisations of Con- 
 works tinental Catholics — though these too 
 commonly have their fruitful lessons for us also — 
 foimd. ^or yet shall I describe the Catholic Trade 
 unions. It will be more to my purpose 
 at present, and more instructive, to mention at random 
 a few of the social works of more restricted aim which
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. I15 
 
 are the fruits of this modern renaissance of Cathohc 
 charity. 
 
 For instance, in towns, especially the 
 
 Social study • manufacturing centres and the Univer- 
 
 clubs of men sity towns, scores of Catholic men of 
 all ranks and occupations — University 
 professors, doctors, lawyers, officers, merchants, civil 
 officials, students, clerks, artisans— come together in 
 small groups on certain evenings in the week to devote 
 themselves seriously to the study of social questions. 
 The woi-k entails a different sacrifice for each, some 
 social amusement, a few hours taken from the study 
 for a profession, a restful evening after a day's work 
 in office or factory or schoolroom. They get some 
 competent person, one of themselves or another, to 
 give them lectures on some question of social economy, 
 or on the Cathohc view of some social problem. They 
 get up discussions to make sure of their ideas. They 
 ask questions, propose difficulties. Each of them 
 gets a particular subject to make up, say, the prices 
 of labourers' dwelhngs in the locality, the real owners 
 of some slum district, the movements of the population 
 of some poor quarter of the town, the conditions of 
 work and the rate of wages obtaining in some specified 
 industry. The results of these enquiries are then read, 
 discussed, and tested. These men thus come to have 
 an accurate and living knowledge of the conditions 
 of the hfe of the poor, can penetrate more surely into 
 the causes of their misery, and are in a 
 and of women, position to consider what remedies can 
 
 be applied to relieve it. 
 Women too form similar clubs. Young and old, 
 married or unmarried, high-born ladies whose ancestors 
 fought in the Crusades, wealthy ladies of the bourgeoisie, 
 their poorer sisters too, shop assistants, work girls, women 
 in fact of all classes and ranks, unequal in wealth of 
 gold, but equal in the more precious wealth of charity, 
 meet together on a level of perfect equahty, just as they 
 meet every Sunday before the altar at Mass, to study 
 how best they may serve Christ's poor. They seek dis-
 
 116 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 tinction and consolation in something besides dress and 
 frivolous amusement. They have not recourse to the 
 excuse that their family duties leave them no time. 
 They do not think it inconsistent with their family 
 duties to sacrifice occasionally an hour or two of their 
 novel-reading. They .thus gather together at regular 
 intervals and get themselves instructed in Catholic 
 social principles and ideals. They institute personal 
 inquiries into the hves of the poor in their neighbour- 
 hood. Sometimes, for instance, they map out a quarter 
 of the town, each taking a certain street or a portion of 
 it, the people of which she visits personally. 
 
 Such work is delicate. If those who 
 Difficulty and undertake it, especially those of higher 
 importance of rank, betray any vulgar inquisitive- 
 such societies, ness, if they let it be thought that 
 they are attracted by the novel sensa- 
 tion of a descent into the underground of society, if 
 they show the least air of priggish condescension, the 
 sensitive pride of the poor instantly takes alarm. Those, 
 however, who are inspired by Christian charity and act 
 with tact and sympathy, will easily have revealed to 
 them the secrets of slumland, an unknown land to those 
 outside it ; they will discover the feelings and the views 
 of the poor, their difficulties, their times of stress, their 
 expedients and resources. Such workers have already 
 procured us more useful information and more fi-uitful 
 suggestions than could be got from the books of learned 
 professors, or the dry impersonal statistics of officials. 
 
 Again, there are in most towns information offices, 
 (or" Secretariates") where the poor and ignorant may 
 get advice free of charge in any difficulty 
 Information that may befall them. Here there attend 
 offices. at regular intervals those whose advice 
 
 may be of most use, doctors, lawyers, 
 magistrates, civil oflicials, experienced business men, men 
 and women of special knowledge or of special influence. , 
 These give to the poor, not money, but time, trouble, know- '■ 
 ledge, thought. They tell the widow where best her son, , 
 given his particular aptitudes, can be put to ieam a trade ;
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 117 
 
 they instruct the poor man who has been defrauded how 
 he can most easily 'get justice ; they show the man who 
 has got into the usurer's hands how he can free himself ; 
 they advise the ailing, or get them into the hospital 
 where they will be best attended ; they put the 
 needy in touch with the various agencies (State agencies 
 or private institutions) that best suit them. There are 
 hundreds of such offices in working, and they save 
 annually immense sums of money to the poor. Some of 
 them are the creations of Trade Unions, others are the 
 fruit of the charitable initiative of pious rich people. 
 
 Then, again, there are countless social 
 
 Organisations works aiming at the preservation of 
 
 for saving of family life among the poor. 
 children. Naturally these works are interested 
 
 first in the mother. Whole holocausts 
 of children die because their mothers have to work too 
 hard or too long, or cannot give them proper care. In 
 some places the significant fact has been noted that 
 when strikes occur among women workers, infant 
 mortaUty decreases. Thousands of children, too, are 
 killed by their mothers' ignorance. To cure this awful 
 evil. Catholic ladies form leagues. They get them- 
 selves informed of every birth occurring in a district. 
 They place their own superior instruction at the disposal 
 of these poor mothers. They organise funds to provide 
 all the attention and attendance proper for the 
 mothers and for the children for as long as may 
 be necessary. Better still, and as is oftener the case, 
 they get the married women of the poor to form mutual 
 help societies for these purposes. There are thousands of 
 little infants saved every year to their mothers and their 
 country by the charitable devotion of CathoHc women. 
 
 There are many other societies of 
 
 Many similar similar kinds, schools for mothers, 
 
 works. creches, where working- women may 
 
 leave their children while at work ; 
 
 societies for supplying at nominal charges to mothers 
 
 of infants children's clothes, new milk, and things of 
 
 the kind ; societies for bringing the anaemic pale-faced
 
 Il8 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 children of the slums to live for a fortnight or a month 
 in the fresh mountain air or by the seaside. In France 
 rich ladies who can find the leisure, do not rest content 
 with supplying the money for such vacation colonies, 
 but go themselves with the children, live with them, teach 
 them, care them, and organise amusements for them. 
 
 Another work of incalculable social 
 Housekeeping benefit is that of housekeeping schools 
 schools. for girls. The proper spending of 
 money is as important for prosperity 
 as the earning of it. Man's sphere is to provide, woman's 
 rather to spend. The housekeeper's business is to make 
 the best possible use of her resources, to preserve the 
 health of the home, to brighten and adorn it, and make 
 it a charm against the wasteful pubhc-house and the 
 demoralising street corner. But, alas ! too often the 
 home of the poor man is given over to the bizarre 
 instincts of a young wife, ignorant, slatternly and im- 
 provident. 
 
 These housekeeping schools receive girls after the 
 ordinary school period. They are not technical schools ; 
 for, after all, housekeeping is not a trade, but the duty of 
 all women. Belgium alone, a country little bigger than 
 Munster, has nearly two hundred such schools, some of 
 them with fom" hundred girls. They are often founded 
 by the State, but often, too — and outside Belgium in 
 every instance — they are due to the private initiative 
 of Catholics. These schools are said to have done more 
 for the material prosperity of Belgium than the rise 
 which has taken place of late years in labourers' wages. 
 
 In these schools the young girl is taught the necessity 
 of order, foresight, thrift, and cleanliness ; the proper 
 care of furniture and clothes ; sewing, knitting, the 
 making and mending of clothes; washing, cooking, the 
 preservation of food from spoiling; the keeping of 
 household accounts ; the proper things to buy, and 
 how to procure them ; the principles of hygiene, house- 
 hold remedies, the care of infants, and the mental, moral 
 and rehgious training of children. Of course, the pro- 
 grammes in such schools vary according as they are
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. IIQ 
 
 in the city or country, and according to the industries 
 and conditions of the locaUty. 
 
 Then there are vast numbers, especi- 
 
 " Patronages " ally in France, of boys' clubs and girls' 
 
 for boys clubs, " patronages," as they are 
 
 called, from being placed under the care 
 of some patron saint. In the boys' clubs young men, 
 and older men, too, devote some of their time one or 
 two evenings in the week to the task of preserving the 
 young from idle vagabondage and of instructing them 
 in useful knowledge. They attract the boys to them by 
 organising all kinds of games and amusements. They 
 get them taught singing, music, fencing, gymnastics ; 
 they read to them, they supply them with good books ; 
 they teach them the Catechism and their religious duties, 
 and thus arm them against the false principles and the evil 
 influences to which the poor in Continental countries 
 are so much exposed. They teach them whatever sub- 
 jects these boys have not learned at school, and espe- 
 cially they get them thoroughly instructed in some 
 skilled trade. 
 
 Catholic women do the same work 
 and girls. for girls. In the great industrial centres 
 
 these " patronages " have done a 
 gigantic work for the uphfting of factory girls, seam- 
 stresses, and the other victims of sweated labour. In 
 these clubs Cathohc ladies provide these poor girls 
 with places where they will get a taste for amusement 
 without grossness, and where they can be instructed 
 without the stiff disciphne and formahties of a State 
 schoolroom. The girls are taught the ordinary school 
 subjects ; they are, above all, taught housekeeping, 
 and encouraged to rival each other in putting their 
 lessons to good use in their own homes. They are 
 taught how to form various kinds of mutual societies, 
 and, in spite of enormous difficulties, have been enabled 
 to form very efficient Trade Unions for their pro- 
 tection. 
 
 In Paris alone there are 356 such Patronages, and 
 in all France (now as ever the motherland of heroic
 
 120 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 devotion to noble causes) there are 4,000, some founded 
 by priests, others, perhaps most, by Catholic ladies 
 or gentlemen. 
 
 If these social works be undertaken 
 
 All these works ^^om unworthy motives, from a desire 
 primarily of novel sensations, or from a morbid 
 religious. curiosity, or from a love of ruling and 
 ordering others, or from a snobbish 
 desire of associating with the people of high rank who 
 may engage in such work, they are doomed to barren- 
 ness. Neither can they last if they are inspired by 
 merely natural motives, by the generous enthusiasm 
 of youth, or by natural kindness of heart. Nay, even 
 when they are done in the spirit of true charity, 
 there is the danger that the immensity and urgency of 
 the work may result in a merely external energy, 
 which may be misdirected and cannot be counted on to 
 endure. 
 
 Consequently, it is the first characteristic of such 
 CathoHc works, the secret of their success, that they 
 are above all religious works, done for supernatural 
 motives. To ensure this, those who organise them 
 insist that an eminent spirit of piety and a regular prac- 
 tice of Catholic duty should characterise their members. 
 Their meetings begin and end with prayer ; Benedic- 
 tion, Rosary, and other devotions are an essential part 
 of their working. 
 
 For instance, there is a large sodaUty 
 Example. at Barcelona. It consists chiefly of 
 University students, not generally the 
 most pious class of the community, in Spain or anywhere 
 else. This sodahty is the centre, the mainspring of a 
 large number of other social works which it keeps going ; 
 Catechism classes for poor children, night classes for 
 working boys, the visiting of hospitals and prisons, a 
 workman's sodaUty, a choral society, a boy's technical 
 school, a gratuitous medical service, a gratuitous legal 
 service, a savings bank, a large co-operative society, 
 and many mutual societies of various kinds. 
 
 The working of all these institutions evidently calls
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 121 
 
 for an enormous output of energy on the part of the 
 sodahsts, yet the directors of the sodahty consider 
 that the only means of keeping its members braced up 
 to their work is to insist on their leading a very intense 
 religious life. Hence the sodahsts have weekly meetings 
 for rehgious exercises, they have to attend weekly 
 lectures of an advanced kind on CathoUc doctrines, 
 they have to go to Holy Communion once a month. 
 So strict are the regulations that if any member is negli- 
 gent in performing the charitable work assigned him, 
 or if he misses monthly Communions four times running, 
 or if he misses six successive weekly meetings, he is 
 expelled from the sodality. However excellent a young 
 man he may be, if he does not live up to this high 
 standard of Cathohc apostolic spirit he has to go. 
 Yet, though there are many expulsions every year, 
 this great sodality is ever growing, and now counts 
 nine hundred members. 
 
 What have we in Ireland comparable 
 
 Lack of such to these works ? It has been said that 
 works in Protestants in Ireland do more social 
 Ireland. work than Catholics. They certainly 
 do more in England. We have recourse 
 to the poor excuse that those who do such work among 
 us become priests or nuns. Certainly Irish Cathohc 
 layfolk leave charitable work for the most part to reli- 
 gious, and think that they have done enough when they 
 have supplied the necessary funds. 
 
 We have the Vincent de Paul Society, though even 
 it is not as flourishing in Ireland as on the Continent. 
 We have some ladies who visit the sick. All honour be 
 to them — the greater honour as they have not the en- 
 couragement of finding themselves imitated. We have 
 raffles or bazaars in which charity is copiously watered 
 with frivohty and amusement. We have, I say, a cer- 
 tain amount of charitable personal work done by lay- 
 folk (though even it is not comparable to what layfolk 
 do on the Continent), but of the more constructive 
 forms of charitable endeavour, of Catholic social work 
 properly so called, there is little, very httle indeed, in
 
 122 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 Catholic Ireland. In this respect as in so many others, 
 we are thirty or forty years behind the times. 
 
 This is a sad pity. Our lack of care 
 Pity of this, for our neighbours' welfare is all the 
 sadder as it is quite strange to our 
 national tradition. It is quite un-Irish. Those of you 
 who know the history of our land know that the clans, 
 into which Ireland was divided were organised as large 
 families knit together by the spirit that binds a family, 
 the spirit of mutual sympathy, of mutual help and re- 
 sponsibihty. Differences in wealth did not dig chasms 
 between classes. The poor were not strangers to the 
 rich, or enemies, or beings of a different clay, but were 
 brothers. Work was not thought a disgrace to the 
 trader, nor was trade a derogation in the eyes of the 
 noble and the rich and the learned. Society was not 
 organised on business lines — as the detestable phrase 
 has it — but on a principle of brotherhood, a principle 
 racy of the soil, ancient as the race and afterwards 
 affirmed and consecrated by Christianity. 
 
 The problems of Irish poverty have 
 
 Ireland a ^^^ ^^^ magnitude which tempts the 
 
 soil for such ^°^^^^ worker to despair in the huge 
 
 works. industrial towns of other countries. Is 
 
 not our neghgence all the less excusable ? 
 
 Much of our people's poverty is the result of their 
 
 chnging to Christ in the past. Would not this have 
 
 won a special blessing from Christ on our work ? But, 
 
 above all, our apathy is the sadder, as nowhere else 
 
 in the world has a richer harvest been lost, nowhere 
 
 else has as fruitful a soil been lying fallow waiting for 
 
 workers. 
 
 Our nation is poor. All its classes have a hard struggle 
 in life. Most of our people are well acquainted with 
 suffering, and therefore each one is the fitter to sympa- 
 thise with those harder stricken than himself. Irish 
 hearts are kindly hearts. They have not been hardened 
 by generations of infidel and immoral propaganda. 
 The breath of God's grace has kept them fresh and 
 warm. The social worker in Ireland would not have
 
 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. I23 
 
 had to contend with the darkness of religious ignorance, 
 nor would he have had to remove the dead weight of 
 anti-Christian prejudice, or to face the taunts and the 
 blows of infidel fanaticism. 
 
 Nowhere in truth would and ought Catholic social 
 action have flourished more than in Ireland. Yet the 
 very reasons which make this reflection on the past so sad, 
 suggest a consoling hope for the future. 
 
 Trusting in God's continued goodness, we may, 
 I think, look forward to a day when our people, estab- 
 lished in peace, and guided as in the past by the spirit of 
 Christ's Church and by the words of Christ's Vicar on 
 earth, may restore order and comfort and prosperity to 
 this land, and may adorn it with a profuse, a beautiful 
 and a varied flowering of Catholic social works, making 
 it again, as ten centuries ago, the fairest spot in all the 
 Christian world. 
 
 The love of God, the service of God, is 
 
 Our religion the meaning of our lives. We are on 
 should be \ earth for nothing else. All else, in so 
 
 more fruitful ; fg^j. g^g j^ jg j^q^ God's service, is mere 
 
 m practical vanity and wasted energy. God's service 
 is to absorb all our energy ; it will be 
 our only happiness on earth, our eternal, all-satisfying 
 reward. But God's service is the doing of God's will. 
 One cannot love God or serve Him and not do what He 
 wishes. Now, God has not shut each of us up, as it were, 
 in a little cell, and ordered us to serve Him thus. He 
 has placed us all together. He calls on us for certain 
 acts directed to Himself, acts of faith, of hope, of charity, 
 acts of worship and prayer and thanksgiving; but He 
 calls on us for many more acts besides, acts directed 
 also to Himself but affecting our neighbours too. Most 
 of the virtues that bind us to God, that make us holy 
 — truthfulness, fidelity, charity, patience, meekness, 
 justice — have reference to our neighbour. Our indivi- 
 dual perfection, and ultimately our perfect happiness, is 
 at the same time the perfection of our social relations. 
 
 Therefore, Christ explains and urges on us our social 
 duties, by the mouth of the man whom He has placed
 
 124 THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 in the world to speak in His name, the head of His 
 Church ; He speaks of them when we come to speak 
 to Him before the Altar, and when He comes to rechne 
 on our hearts at the Communion rail ; He speaks of 
 them to us in the silence of our own room when we 
 pray ; He speaks of them to us from His pulpit, in the 
 confessional, and by means of good books and good 
 advisers. And there is none of those social duties of which 
 He speaks more often or more urgently than charity. 
 
 Charit}^ is the very essence of Christ's rehgion. He 
 came to save us by winning our love. He has spent his 
 heart's blood for us to win our love. He is present with 
 us night and day to win our love. He has won it. We 
 are only anxious to show Him our love. He tells us 
 Himself how to show it. "A new Commandment I give 
 you that you love one another, as I have loved you 
 that you love one another." "By this shall all men 
 know that you are My disciples if you love one another." 
 " n any man receiveth one of these little ones in My 
 name he receiveth Me." And the second commandment, 
 like unto the first, is, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." Nay, He tells us, that when we come to the 
 end of life, He will meet each of us at the gates of death, 
 and will take account chiefly of our charity, and by that 
 settle our eternal fate. He will say to you, " Come 
 ye blessed of My Father, possess you the Kingdom 
 ... for I was hungry and you gave Me to eat, I was 
 thirsty and you gave Me to drink ..." And when 
 you will say that you did none of these things to Him, 
 He will say, " Amen I say to you, as long as you did 
 it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me." 
 
 And it is not as though He will be pleased if we have 
 done these things, but does not insist that we do them. 
 No ! For He will say to some : " Depart, you cursed, into 
 everlasting fire, for I was hungry and you gave Me not 
 to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me not to drink, 
 . . . Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it not to 
 one of these least, you did it not to Me. And these 
 shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into 
 hfe everlasting."
 
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