THE CHURCH AND LABOR

New Zealand Tablet, 17 March 1910, Page 410

THE CHURCH AND LABOR

ACTION OF CATHOLICS IN MANY LANDS , Li the course of an address delivered at a meeting of the Young Men’s Society in St. John’s Hall, Wigan, on January 9, Mr. Augustine Watts, M.A., dealing with the question of what the Catholic Church' had, done for labor in modern times, said:The Catholic press in Germany: is ol excelling ability. It has in the last fifty years advanced by leaps and bounds. The Catholic clergy have been among its most brilliant, well-informed, and judicial contributors, in Germany there are no end of Catholic Workmen’s Associations, Catholic savings and credit banks, Catholic associations or factory girls, and Catholic associations of capital ists and working men mixed. They- have a vast agricultural league with a newspaper, co-operative stores, banks or their own, and every weapon which sagacity and devotion can devise for the protection of common interests. In Austria the doctrines of Ketteler were soon taken up and spread by the Catholic newspaper Has Vaterland and other agencies. The reorganisation on a Christian basis of the industrial system is the aim laid down in a Catholic Congress at Vienna. Of this first Austrian Congress Prince von Lechtenstein and Count Egbert Belcredi were moving spirits. But Austrian Catholic endeavors owe most to Baron von V olgesang, a thorough convert to . our Faith. Volgesang by an investigation into labor conditions revealed cruel truths and drove the Austrian Diet forward on the path, of social reform. Industrial laws passed in 1883 were too- r , great victory of Austria’s Catholic reformers. In 1880 they secured a limitation of the work of women and children, and reduced the general working day to eleven hours. Count Kuefstein, another Austrian, pleaded in 1890 at Liege for an international regulation of wages, and the length of the working day. The Jesuits and Dominicans in Austria have labored hard in the same sense. In Switzerland the part taken by the Catholics in the labor movement has been unsurpassed. From 1868 Cardinal Mermillod, then Bishop of Hebron, strove, and strove for twenty years after, to bring home to statesmen and capitalists the urgency of healing the wounds and ailments of the toiling poor. But Switzerland’s Great Catholic Champion of the working man is Gaspard Decurtins, in whom the most unfaltering purpose is joined to rare economic culture and elevation of mind. ‘Hunger,’ he said,V is neither Catholic nor Protestant.’ Decurtins’s influence on legislation has been enormous. He has the support of his countrymen. Catholic and non-Catholic alike. He has been praised by 1 ope and Cardinals,, and social workers everywhere. In 1887 the Swiss Bishops unanimously called upon the clergy to help in founding labor associations. Aided by Decurtins, the Swiss Catholics founded the University of Fribourg, Father Weiss, a Dominican, being appointed to the chair of political economy. Weiss is one of the most earnest of the pioneers who are working towards a solution of the labor question. The mere numerous and venturesome of the French Catholic Labor Party follow Comte' de Mun, one of the finest speakers in the French Chamber or the world. He and his comrade-in-arms, de la Tour du Pin Chambly, founded, after the war in 1870, the famous Catholic Workmen’s Clubs, and the Catholic Association, out of which has sprung a group of Catholic economists, as sound on facts and figures as on the principles of the Catholic Faith. Old soldier as he is, de Mun has kindled soldierly fire, and courage, in the hearts of the Catholic workmen of France. In 1878 he said: ‘Speculation invades everything; conflict without truce has replaced healthy emulation; pauperism spreads like a leprosy. And this is in-the interests of Liberalism ! the liberty of the Revolution, in other words, the liberty of force, the liberty which eats away the life of the social organism.’ ‘ The guild system,’ in his opinion, 1 can alone restore industrial peace.’ _ The law of March 21, 1884, by which Trade Councils were instituted in France, was-the work of Count de Mun and his partisans. He brought up Bills to protect working men and children, but chiefly to safeguard the adult workman. The French Father G. de Pascal advocates a fixed minimum family wage, a wage, namely, sufficient not only for the individual himself but for his home as well. Catholic opinion in France is divided between free guilds, composed of workmen Catholic or neutral in religious matters, and statutory guilds comprising all wage earners of a trade, Catholic and red revolutionary atheist alike. Comte de Mun and his followers favor statutory, and compulsory all embracing guilds. Yet Leon Harmel, a great Catholic capitalist, devoted to his workpeople as they are to him, writes: We will not on any account accept compulsory guilds.’ - . . In Belgium Catholic reformers are practical and take less account of theories than is taken elsewhere. The Belgian Catholic Party has been in power for 26 or 27 years. Opposed to Socialism, it has. flung aside the. Liberal principle of laissez faire, and the iniquity of sacrificing the laborer on the unblessed altar of supply and demand. The Belgian Catholics have in their Democratic League a most powerful labor

federation of all the trades in the country. Co-operative societies, societies ; of Catholic employers, societies of Cath- ■ olic workmen. Catholic associations, are to be found in every ‘ town, and in every village. - : : What the Church has done in England need not detain us. Cardinal Manning’s defence of the right to work and the sympathy of the Catholic Bishops with the working man are well known/ Was ' it not the people’s Cardinal who said: ‘lf the great end of life were to multiply yards of cloth and cotton twist, and if the glory of England ‘ consists, \ or consisted, in multiplying without stint or limit these articles, and the like, at the lowest possible price so as to undersell all the nations of the world, well then, let us go on. But if the domestic life of the people be vital above all; if the peace, the purity of homes, the education of children, the duties of wives and mothers, the duties of husbands and fathers be written in the natural law of mankind, and if these things be sacred, far beyond anything that can be sold in the market, then I say if the hours of labor re--suiting from the unregulated sale of man’s strength and skill lead to the destruction of domestic life, to the neglect of children, to the turning of wives and mothers into living machine, and of fathers and husbands into—what shall Isay —creatures of burden —I will not use any other word —! .creatures of burdenwho rise up before the sun and come back when it is set, wearied and able only to take food and lie down to rest; the domestic life of men exists no longer, and we dare not go on in this path.’ Cardinal Vaughan followed In Manning’s Footsteps. Vaughan, when Bishop of Salford, threw himself into every movement to secure for working men and their families wholesome dwellings, comfort, and recreation. Catholic Protection and Rescue Societies hail him as their founder. Bishop Bagshawe of Nottingham is not to be passed over. His treatise ‘ Mercy and Justice to the Poor, the True Political Economy,’ is quoted again and again by writers on the Continent and in America. In Ireland Archbishop Walsh, Cardinal Logue, and the Catholic priesthood have striven manfully and with success to better the condition of the poor. In the United States of America Catholicism, among religions crumbling to pieces all round it, stands unshaken and compact. Led by Cardinal Gibbons, the Catholic labor movement there has been "welded together, and holds its head high, and affirms the dignity, nay, the nobility, of all earning bread by sweat of brow. In the United States the Archbishops and Bishops are fervently in favor of the common people, and uphold not only Government for the people, but through the people. ‘ Do not/ said Archbishop Ireland; 1 do not enslave the masses. Allow them independence to win their right to life, to freedom, to happiness, within the hands of justice and morality it is the mission of the Church to define these bounds, as traced by the Divine Master of all Christians.’ In Spain Catholic social effort has been somewhat distracted, but not chilled by the excesses of Socialists warring there to the knife against the family, against all religion, against all property. Anarchy and destruction, brutal, abominable, is the programme of the Spanish Socialists, and mere rambling diatribes against God and property their contribution to literature. The Archbishop of Madrid is an illustrious student of the social question. In Tolosa and Valentia Catholic \ Clubs of Agricultural Laborers are numerous and strong, with savings banks, loan offices of their own, and apparatus of various kinds for mutual aid. In Italy Father Liberatore and Signor Burri, Cardinal Capecelatro, Archbishop of Capua,; Monsignor Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, have eloquently served the cause of labor, and so also has Monsignor Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza, a prelate of wide , and democratic views. Senator Rossi, a great wool manufacturer employing 8000 workpeople, has on Catholic lines rendered the lives of those under him easy and . comfortable, and has built for .them excellent dwellings of which in time they become owners. The Italian Socialists are, like the Spanish, avowed atheists, and render therefore many Catholics in Italy cautious in the labor movement. From 1891 to the present time the activities of the Catholic Church, priests, and laymen are too many and various to unfold. The last nine years are remarkable for developments of their own. Among these developments are Organised Bodies of Catholic Economists, who once a year, in their various countries, devote a social week to the promulgation of the conclusions derived from their combined studies and experience in the previous twelve months. Another development is the organisation of what in time will, it is hoped, be an international federation of Christian Trade Unions. In 1907 at Zurich this new federation, confined as yet to textile unions, comprised delegates from Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The last development to , be mentioned shall be Catho’ic Women’s Leagues now organised in England, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Russ®, Switzerland, Italy, and far away Brazil, not for amateur work, but for dealing scientifically with woman’s side of the labor problem. Enough has been said to show that the Catholic Church is not asleep on .questions , vital to the working man, his happiness, and his home. The Church loves her

working man, and cares for him, and all her children. She does not, as Mr. Chesterton well ; says, .'assert that she has got better people than " are to be- found elsewhere, but that such as they are she has got them.' , 'I do not say,' he proceeds, ' that freethinkers are bound to be scoundrels I say they are not bound to "be anything. Ido not say that the Catholic lamb of mercy is "more white, or woolly, or energetic, than many evolutionist lambs. I say it is in the ark. And I say that the evolutionist lambs are being drowned visibly before my eyes. I am looking ahead, I am thinking how all this chaotic morality will turn out." I know what is safe. If the Church exists ten million years hence, amid alien costumes, and incredible architecture, I know : that it will still put the oppression of the poor among the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance.'