SOCIAL IDEALS

New Zealand Tablet, 25 January 1917, Page 53

SOCIAL IDEALS

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.

- A paper read by Rev. Father M. Edge at. a recent meeting of the Auckland Newman Society: The time is recent in which English _ workmen emerged from the darkest' period in their country’s history: a period in which the working classes, always a majority of the nation’s population, began in childhood a cheerless life of grinding toil and if they survived i a hopeless maturity, passed into an unpitied and neglected old age a period in which pauperism was inevitable and misery universal ’ ; a period in which (so low had standards fallen) public men discussed the prohibition, or at least the restriction, of marriage among the laboring classes, and pointed to the presence of children in a laborer’s home as evidence of ‘ incontinence.’ We are living in the morning of a better day. Children of ten or twelve years no longer startle the dawn, with their clattering feet hurrying towards the mill and the factory ; the duration of the working day is frequently eight or nine hours; and wages, though not always satisfactory, are higher relatively and absolutely than fifty years ago. Provision is now made for temporary incapacity due to accident or sickness; compensation is paid for life or limb lost through the neglect of an employer ; old age finds provision in national pension; some Governments attempt to supply to orphaned childhood the material support of a deceased father. Certain holidays must be given and taken every year; workmen can organise themselves into unions for the protection of their rights and the promotion of their interests and the blessing of education is, in theory and very largely in practice, forced upon every child the ballot box enables the people of a country to determine largely who shall rule them; and to a great extent we are coming to reckon a man by what he is and not by what he is labelled. Conservative minds, looking apprehensively at the onward march of social reform, anxiously ask: Whither is it taking us?’ ‘ Where-will it end?’ If you will tolerate my daring attempt to answer these questions, I would suggest that our advance in social betterment, our progress in social reform is taking us back, perhaps unconsciously, to a state of things that existed four hundred years ago; taking us back to a distant day when England was Merry England and Catholic England at the same time. If I put before you, even in an imperfect way, a brief outline of the social position of the people of England on the eve of the Reformation, about four hundred years ago, you yourselves will be able to compare it with the social position of to-day, and possibly, from your reading, with the social conditions of fifty years ago. Working Hours. Professor Rogers tells us that in the reign of Henry VII. (1485-1509) the working day was twelve hours from March to September, from daybreak to night for the rest of the year. In England at mid-winter the sun does not rise till about 8 a.m. and sets before 4 p.m. During a considerable portion of the winter, owing to atmospheric conditions, it is quite dark by 3 p.m. The working day in winter could therefore have not exceeded six hours. But I think the above regulation must have referred only to agricultural labor, for elsewhere the same author tells us that the fifteenth century tradesmen worked forty-eight hours a week (eight hours a day), whereas his. nineteenth century descendant worked fifty-six hours. Wages. The same author points out that the wages of our Catholic forefathers were relatively better than ours. At no time in English history,’ he says, have the earnings of laborers, interpreted by their purchasing power, been so considerable as at the close of the fifteenth century.’ Again he writes: ‘The laborers

were generally prosperous. The > high wages - they i had struggled i for and> at < last •• obtained were sufficient, not only for them to live in such plenty, as: would leave them . enough to : subscribe to their common funds,; but even to save from.' j~ •- " -• '%***..'

The rate of wages was fixed by law (a .forerunner of ; our ? Arbitration Court). Comparing pre-Reforma-tion or Catholic rates with pOst-Reformation or Protestant rates, Professor Rogers calculates that while the Act, of 1495 (Catholic period), enabled, an artisan to procure a , certain amount of food and drink for a fort- ■ night’s . labor, and an agricultural laborer to obtain the same with three, weeks’ labor, the justices’ -assessment (in Protestant period) rarely enabled -the peasant to obtain the same quantities with a whole year’s . labor, and would sometimes have required, two years’ incessant labor. Well might Catholic England be merry. It was the custom of the age,’ says the- same author, to regulate prices by authority.’ Consequently wages had a definite value. Our enlightenment so far imitates our Catholic forefathers as to appoint an Arbitration Court to fix wages ; but we leave merchants and monopolists to i regulate prices. Every rise in wages seems to be accompanied by a rise in prices, for; which reason high wages with us frequently have only a fictitious value. A brief comparison of the relative value of wages may not be uninteresting. A carter in old Catholic i England received about two shillings per week. “ With this sum he could buy one fat sheep (shorn), two pairs of shoes, and two gallons of ale. An English carter of the present Protestant age ‘ receives, I - think, not much more than half the wages of his Auckland brother (45/- per week); but even the fortunate Aucklander would need a 50 per cent, increase before his wages would equal in purchasing power that of the carter in * priest-ridden England.’ The old Catholic Englishman did not work as many hours as the Aucklander; consequently, he had considerable time to devote to his cabbage plot, fowl run, etc., and as the old Englander of whom I speak was a farm hand, he probably had no rent to pay out of his two shillings per week—a vast improvement on his Auckland brother. " ‘ Child Labor and Overtime. In 1466 we see a man fined two shillings for setting a child to work before he had been fully apprenticed. But four hundred years later (1866), under the full blaze of Reformation glory, we find workmen’s children ordinarily compelled to begin work at ten or eleven years of age; Another man was fined two shillings about the same date for working overtime. ° Apprentices. In the fifteenth century the numerical relation of apprentices to journeymen was (as at present in New Zealand) regulated by law. Three apprentices were allowed to one journey man, and if more than three apprentices were indentured an employer had to engage one additional journeyman to every apprentice over the number of three. ■ - - Holidays. Compulsory holidays are not quite a modern institution. Our Catholic forefathers knew and enjoyed them. . In their age of faith Sunday, of course, was a day of rest for all. As Catholics our forefathers were compelled to observe certain days as holidays of obligation —days in every respect like Sunday. After generations of Reformation slavery the modern English workman has secured some six or eight compulsory holidays each year. So far as I can gather our Catholic ancestors had somewhere about thirty holidays of obligation imposed by the Church in the year. The register of the craft guild of Pynners (or Pin-makers’ Union), quoted by Gasquet, forbids ‘ work at the craft on Saturdays and the eves of feasts.’ It is only in the present generation that we progressive moderns have secured the Saturday half-holiday or its - equivalent. It is probable our Catholic ancestor enjoyed his compulsory holidays rather better than we; for he was paid for them. An Act was introduced into Parliament in 1408 (five hundred years ago) trying to stop pay on holidays; but it was a- failure. The

worker continued to draw' pay for holidays and overtime. ' Dismissal. : _ V' : V . It was not in the power of a master to arbitrarily dismiss a servant- in old Catholic England. Professor Rogers tells us ‘ The servant hired by the' year could' not be dismissed except upon cause allowed by two justices, nor at the end of a year without a quarter’s notice. Masters unduly dismissing servants' were to be fined forty shillings (about six . months’ wages),- and servants unlawfully quitting employment were to be imprisoned Education. In the matter of education our Catholic forefathers showed an intense interestan interest divided equally between their boys and their girls. Where necessary the Church generally enabled education to be had without cost throughout its whole course from the primary school to the university. The public opinion of preReformation England is reflected in an Act of Parliament limiting the powers of parents to apprentice their sons in order to force them as far as possible to put these sons to agricultural work. But the Act' allows parents to put their sons and daughters to school at their discretion. Over five hundred years ago, in Catholic England, another statute decreed that ‘ Every man or woman, of whatever state or condition, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that plcaseth them within the realm.’ (How many English labourers under the glorious and enlightened Reformation are free to set their son or daughter to take learning at Rugby, Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge The expression, ‘Any school that pleaseth them,’ gave parents a large selection for primary and grammar schools were, in proportion to population, much more numerous than they were fifty years ago and possibly even than they are to-day. Leach, in his K/if/hsJi School* at the lit f urinal ion (1896), says: ‘ Never was a great reputation more easily gained and less deserved than that of 'King Edward VI. as a founder of schools.’ Grammar schools,’ he tells us, ‘ instead of being comparatively modern postReformation inventions are among our most ancient institutions, some of them far older than the Lord Mayoralty of London or the House of Commons.’ He estimates the number of grammar schools before the reign of Edward VI. to have been close on two hundred, and these he considers to be merely the survivors of a much larger host which have been lost in the storms of the past and drowned in the sea of destruction,’ poured out by the Reformation. Again he says: ‘ The proportion of the population which has access to grammar schools and use them was much larger than now.’ Further he states; ‘At least in the later middle ages the smallest town and even the larger villages possessed schools where a boy might learn to read and acquire the first rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin : while in very remote and thinly populated regions he would never have had to go very far from home to find a regular grammar school.’ We are assured that education as a whole was on a more democratic basis and good secondary instruction more widely diffused in England in Catholic times than in the first half of the nineteenth century. The happy results of this abundant education and its sound quality are fully evidenced in the history of Catholic England. One might almost say that most of the great men of old England were workmen sons whose splendid talents were fostered and developed by the free education, primary, secondary, and university, given by the Catholic Church to our forefathers. Let me only mention Matthew Paris, Roger Bacon, Grestete, Sale, Nicholas Brekespeare (better known as Pope Adrian IV.), and even the pervert Latimer. Lasalle, the reputed founder of Socialism, says: ‘We are accustomed to regard from a lofty height and with a strong sense of superiority the middle ages as an epoch of the darkest barbarism. We are entirely wrong, for there are many shining examples of the right and practice of free teaching.’ In form that free education was both clerical and technical and in both departments it was very sound. Rogers

points out' that the bailiffs 5 accountsywere almost always Z; : in Latin ; and he adds: 1 The English bailiff, generally small farmer often a serf, - must have ■>been at least . bi-lingual. 5 How many small farmers with modem grammar school education are at least bi-lingual The technical side of Catholic England’s, education Was rib less, sound. The beautiful cathedrals that even to-day are the admiration of'beholders and the despair of ambitious artists were designed and built by the workers, the technical school product of that day.. ‘ln most cases,’ we are told, ‘ the architects f of these marvellous works are unknown, for the very sufficient reason that they were designed by workmen.’ How many stonemasons to-day, how many modern technical college pupils, how many qualified architects could design a Gothic cathedral in the perpendicular or Early English style ? The man who can do these things now is so rare that when found we make a knight of him. Architecture was not the sole art in which our Catholic ancestors excelled. They have left us wonderful specimens of metal work, stained glass, painting, tapestry, and other arts. Guilds or Trades Unions. From early Reformation days till 1825, English' artisans and laborers were forbidden- to form themselves into trade or labor unions. They were not encouraged to do it in England even now. Our Catholic forefathers knew no such proscription. The members of crafts or guilds,’ says the historian, ‘ organised themselves, enacted their own by-laws, regulated their own business or merchandise, and sometimes were appointed the machinery for enforcing legislative acts.’ In number these organisations must have been very great. ‘The whole country,’ says Rogers, ‘and not only the towns, possessed these organisations. The combinations of the artisans were imitated by the peasant laborers, and . . . all laborers during the last quarter of the fourteenth century were united in very effective trades unions.’ The organisations guarded their members against injustice, even from their fellowtradesmen. For instance, in the fifteenth century the Grocers’ Company levied a fine of £lO (about £2OO of our money) on two members of the union for the offence of taking a fellow member’s premises, by offering to pay a higher rent than the occupant, against such occupant’s will. They also guarded members against the competition of foreigners (especially of foreign sweaters). For instance, the Pin Makers’ Guild decreed that ‘ no foreigner be allowed to keep a shop for the sale of pins and no foreigner is to take to the making of pins, without undergoing previous examinations and receiving the approval of the Guild Officers.’ They also assured the public and employers of faithful workmanship ; for they admitted apprentices to the guild " as journeymen only when, besides serving their apprenticeship, they satisfactorily passed an examination before the officers of the guild. There was in these old Catholic trades guilds what we may call a ‘ union label 5 —a seal placed on standard goods, guaranteeing good workmanship and fair conditions -of labor, without which certain articles could not be sold. Rogers shows that the workers of these old Catholic days, ‘ effected their own insurance through their guilds, purchasing lands and houses all over England for charitable service for their own order.’ They helped impoverished and aged members and provided Masses* for their dead. Each trade union was presided over by an executive composed of masters and journeymen, who heard disputes, punished bad workmanship, and carried out examinations. The priest was their chairman and referee, and they always had a chaplain. . l lt is. quite certain,’ Rogers writes, ‘ that the town and country guilds obviated pauperism in the middle ages j_ assisted in steadying the price of labor, and formed a permanent» centre for those associations which fulfilled the functions that in more recent times trades unions have striven to satisfy.’ ‘ These guilds,’ he tells us elsewhere, ‘ were managed by the clergy, and they were used to secure from kings the charters which freed the municipalities from the exactions of the feudal system.’ It was through its guilds, as Acton points out, ‘that Florence

remained for ; centuries - the i one ; great ; example .of free j democratic ; government lin ; Europe! If we cannot claim for old Catholic England the honor of appointing the - first Minister for Labor, we 1 can, however, recall with pleasure that the first Minister for Labor in . the world was appointed by the Catholic Government of Catholic Belgium in 1895. - Hospitals. In Catholic England the sick were thought of and provided for even more generously than to-day. Gasquet tells us of splendid hospitals for the sick and poor sometimes magnificently provided with nurses and chaplains. Some guilds maintained hospitals for their own* members, but over and above these there were, we are told, four hundred and sixty hospitals for the sick poor, supported .by the charity of the ~ Church’s children. London to-day probably has a larger population than all England had in the fifteenth century, but London to-day , has not half the number of charitable hospitals that existed in pre-Reformation England. Taxation. From our Catholic ancestors we get the principal and practice of no taxation without representation; and they also acted on the conviction that taxation ought to be graduated. Thus, in 1377 the Duke of Lancaster was rated five hundred and twenty times the payment of the peasant. In 1435, and again in 1450, taxation was levied graduating from two and ahalf per cent, on small incomes to ten per cent, on large. Tax was imposed, not on earnings but on fixed sources of revenue; and as property was then almost the only source of fixed revenue, the tax was really a property tax. The taxation of earnings is one of the many calamities we owe to the Reformation : but the Reformation Government had to give it up for the sufficient reason that under their rule the workman’s earnings fell to starvation scale and had to be supplemented from poor rates —another invention of the Reformation. (Taxation on earnings was revised under the younger Pitt.) Social Distinction. Social distinctions were not as pronounced in old Catholic England as they became under the Reformation regime. Gasquet writes: ‘Nobles, priests, religious, clerks, sons of the soil who labored at various manual works, lived then, so to say, in common : and they were found continually together in all their daily occupations.’ This would seem an inevitable outcome of Catholicism, in which master and man, prince and peasant, are compelled to recognise the Fatherhood of a common God by worshipping at the same altar, receiving the same Sacraments, and accepting the ministrations of the same priestly hands and the instruction of the same priestly lips—the hands and lips not seldom of a workingman’s son. The mystery plays or the religious plays that formed a considerable part of our Catholic' ancestors’ recreations, and were attended by almost everybody, were often used to drive home the lesson that God is no respecter of persons and that there is no privileged class in the sight of heaven. For instance, in Doomsday, amongst the saved we find a pope, an emperor, a king, and a queen, and amongst the damned a wicked pope, emperor, king, queen, judicier, and merchant. (To be concluded.)