AN AFTER-WAR PROBLEM

New Zealand Tablet, 3 October 1918, Page 9

AN AFTER-WAR PROBLEM

(By Francis 'Cardinal Bourne, in merica.)

I am honored by the invitation of the editor of America to say a few words to his readers on the subject of the social problems which will have to be faced by the Catholics of the English-speaking world when the prolonged years of the war come at last to an end. These problems will have to be faced by all; Catholics can confront them in the light of- clearly ascertained and well-defined principles. I am taking it for granted that in the main outlines the conditions of social life are the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Naturally I can speak with personal knowledge only of the conditions as I see them here in England. There are two main principles which must guide us to a true solution. First, the right of every human being to a true human, and not a mere animal, existence ; and, next, the account which every man must render to his Creator of the use of the talents that he has received, including material wealth. The observance of these two principles is practically impossible in very many cases at the present day. There is quite a large section of the community condemned by undeserved poverty to a non-human mode of existence. There is a considerable number of men whose wealth is so colossal as to be beyond their own real knowledge and control. It is in the readjustment of these two abnormal, conditions that part at least of the solution of the main problem is to be found.. Leo XIII. has established once for all the right of every man who is willing to labor by brain or hand or both to a living wage and to all that a living wage connotes. He will need more as his existence develops and he passes from the single to the married life. The one room that sheltered him in decent comfort as a bachelor will be no fit dwelling when he has taken to himself a helpmeet to share his life and fortunes. And the modest tenement, fit and suitable in the days of early married life, will no longer be sufficient when God, by his means, has brought other persons into being who need space and air and house-room in conformity with the decencies of life. In like manner his wages must also grow. The lad of sixteen or eighteen living in his parents' home needs evidently far less than the man who has to fend for himself; and the same man will be debarred from marriage, or rmable to fulfil the duties of a married man, unless, progressively, the rewards of his labor are made commensurate with the natural claims upon them. Lastly, a man must have some guarantee that the human life, which he has rightfully built up for himself, shall not be ultimately and utterly shattered by ill-health or unemployment. There are millions of persons in our countries for whom these necessary conditions are never realised. All their lives they are forced to be content with dwellings that are badly built and equipped, unfit for a growing family, and wanting in ordinary conveniences. They are tied by the exigencies of their daily toil to a particular locality, and must perforce put up with the accommodation that they can find. Their weekly income will never rise beyond a miserable pittance, to be eked out, perhaps, by the labor of the wife and mother, whose time and thoughts and leisure are, and ought to be, abundantly absorbed within the walls of the home itself. Before their eyes there is ever the spectre of the possibility of unemployment if health fails, or a business collapses. In many cases there is only the bare margin of a weekly wage between them and the abyss of destitution, to be guarded against only by the gradual sale —in other words, by the destructionof the slowly and painfully acquired goods, chattels, and adornments of the laboriously constructed home. When this destruction has taken place a man may well think that all the hope and joy of his life are destroyed for ever, and that for him, his wife, and children a human existence is no longer possible.

When we turn to the other side of the picture Ave realise that there is nothing in the nature of things to render such- condition in any way necessary. It cannot be urged that the goods of this world are insufficient for the maintenance of all those who dwell therein, and that, therefore, some must inevitably go short. We see everywhere, and on every side, and nowhere more than in the English-speaking countries, evidences of wealth and plenty. Money is being acquired and heaped up in the ownership of individuals to such an extent that it must be quite impossible for the possessor to control adequately either its acquisition or its outlay. He does not knowin many cases he simply cannot know—at what cost in human life and energy and happiness it is being obtained. The production of enormous personal fortunes is nowadays of so complex a character that all contact has been lost between the producer and the receiver. The great landowner, rich in the rents and products of his farms and lands, might indeed be hard and selfish and self-seeking, but he had the means of knowing and the opportunity of discovering, if he chose to do so, how his dependents lived, and the power to ensure them housing, comfort, and permanency of occupation. He could know their lives and enter into them. Men like the late Duke of Norfolk regarded their possessions as a. sacred trust, to bo preserved indeed and handed on from generation to generation, but charged with many a duty of justice and charity and religion. So, too. are we*told of the Duke of Northumberland, who passed away the other day, that he regarded his position as on© fraught with vast responsibilities, imposing upon him a personal duty of which he must render an account to God. In the case of the industrial magnate, whether he be an individual in sole control, or one of a numerous corporation, the account of his stewardship and the giving back of his five talents enhanced by vet another five, is a vastly more difficult business. What can he know, in many cases, of the conditions of life of those who are toiling with these talents. How can he answer for them to God? If the acquisition of his wealth brings with it an enormous burden of responsibility, the disbursement of it is hardly less responsible. The use and enjoyment to be gained from wealth is, after all. of a limited nature. Even when the multi-millionaire has exhausted every satisfaction to be derived from a palatial town residence and a country property of many acres, from a steam yacht and a racing stable, from the entertainment of his friends and the distractions of foreign travel, there will still be a vast residue to be held and employed as a trust from God. If a rich man’s salvation is essentially a difficult matter, what shall one say of those who are so over-weighted by their wealth as to be unable to trace effectively either its origin or its destination, or to bear adequately the obligations attaching to it ? ° Clearly such conditions arc unnatural and abnormal. The poor man is forced to struggle for his living wage, obtained too often after wcaiw struggles and at the cost of strikes which disorganise and paralyse industry. The rich are led to think that the. accumulation of wealth is the main object, of life, and the strike, is fought by the lock-out. In both cases the sanctification and the salvation of souls created for an eternal destiny are exposed to needless jeopardy. Meanwhile, there is wealth in plenty to satisfy both worker and capitalist, to give the toiler due comfort, security, and rest, and to ensure to the employer every legitimate satisfaction that he may rightfully claim. The problem to be solved is to find a way of distributing the surplus wealth so that the poor man—manual laborer or inferior clerk—may have the additional .remuneration that he so urgently needs ; and the rich man no longer receive the heaped up increment which he in no sense requires and cannot efficient! control. The Avar, which is gradually leading men to seek solutions of difficulties too little regarded in less strenuous times, has recently brought into existence in England a “National Alliance of Employers and Employed,” which, after several conferences, has arrived at a mutually accepted concordat covering such ppints

as the living wage, hours of labor, women’s pay, workshop conditions, housing, knowledge and efficiency, joint committees, maximum output and wages, security of employment, organisation and agreements, education and technical training. Such an effort is surely entitled to the warmest sympathy and support on the part of Catholics. While the true principles which must underlie co-operation of this kind, if it is to be effective, are furnished to us by the full revelation of the teaching of Jesus Christ enshrined in the Catholic Church, we cannot hope to make those principles an active force in our countries, where non-Catholics are so numerous, unless we bring them into operation among those who are willing to accent them, even though they are unwilling or unable to recognise the real source from which those principles spring. It is in this quiet, persistent infiltration of Christian and Catholic teaching that the hope of the future is to be found. The old materialism is dead : the political economy of 40 years ago has been declared bankrupt; men are looking forward to a new era of happier human relationships after the war. If Catholics are to be, as God most certainly means them to be, powerful instruments for the regeneration of mankind, they must not be satisfied with a knowledge of their religion which will suffice for their own personal piety and devotion ; but they must see how modern problems are to be solved in the light of the teaching of the Catholic Church ; how, in other words, the eternal unchanging truths of the Gospel answer the questionings of the restless modern world. Ihis is the new insistent mission of those who have received the inestimable gift of the Catholic Faith. Some, from their advantages of education, position, natural talent, can accomplish more than others. But all, from the humblest laborer to the most powerful captain of industry, have the duty of proclaiming the social value of the doctrine of Jesus Christ. In his own sphere and measure every Catholic mav be, nowadays more than ever, the light of the world, and the salt of the earth. In every land, under every flag, new opportunities are given to Catholics to carry out this mission which they alone can discharge. Nowhere will the opportunity be greater or more full of hope than in the two great peoples who use the English tongue, and who an- now so closely and providentially united in a common seeking after justice under the Stars and Stripes and under the Union Jack.