?;. :m p.>l:; Wm^'-^-''''': ^^^:^' ;•'' ■ iFr0m ll|? ffiltbrarg of 5J^qu0atI|0b h^ l|tm to J^rtnrrt0n QIIfMlngtral S^^mtnar^ BR 115 .S6 A2 1896 c.2 Abbott, Lyman, 1835-1922, Christianaity and social problems Copyright 1897 by Hollinger & Rocket The Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott ^ookfi bp Ipman Slbbott, £)♦£). THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY. i6mo, gilt top, I1.25. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, Boston and New York. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS BY LYMAN ABBOTT M B^^ ^m Si BpMt0frsi&rPn^S1| BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1897 Copyright, 1896, By LYMAN ABBOTT. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by 11. O. Houghton & COo PREFACE. Christ's mission was twofold, — individual and social ; to make men worthy to be called the chil- dren of God, and also to make a state of society on the earth worthy to be called the Kingdom of God. This kingdom is a heavenly kingdom, be- cause the source of its power is from above ; it is an earthly kingdom, because the scene of its tri- umjDh is on the earth. Jesus Christ's object was not to save some — few or many — from a wrecked and lost world ; it was to recover the world itself and make it righteous. The Lamb of God whom John the Baptist saw came, not to take away some sin from some men, but the sin of the world. Christ taught his disciples to pray that God's name might be hallowed, his kingdom might come, his will might be done, on earth as in heaven. Protestant theology has put its chief emphasis on the mission of Christ to individuals. There is a reason, elucidated in the closing chapter of this book, for the modern tendency to turn attention IV PREFACE. toward Christ's mission to society. It is with that aspect of his teachings that this volume exclu- sively deals. Its object is to make some appli- cation of them to the social problems of our time. It is written in the faith that in them is to be found {he secret of a true social order. This volume is the outcome of long-continued study of Christ's social teachings for the purpose of applying them to present conditions. The re- sults have been embodied from time to time in lectures, in special contributions to " The Forum," the " North American Eeview," the " Century Mag- azine," the *' Cosmopolitan," in sermons in Plym- outh pulpit, and in editorial treatment of current questions in " The Outlook." In the fall of 1895 I delivered a course of lectures on this subject before the Meadville Theological School and the citizens of Meadville, Pennsylvania, being the course for that year on the Adin Ballou founda- tion. About the same time I gave a course of sermons on the same topics in Plymouth pulpit, and a little later three of the lectures were re- peated at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. Both lectures and sermons were given extemporaneously. In preparing this volume I have made use of these lectures and sermons, and also at various times of the previous periodical contributions. PREFACE. V My grateful acknowledgments are due to my brother-in-law, the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, 2d, D. D., for aid in collating, examining, and verifying au- thorities ; and to my son, Mr. Herbert Vaughan Abbott, for aid in carrying the book through the press. LYMAN ABBOTT. Brooklyn, N. Y., September, 1896. CONTENTS. CHAPTER 'AGE I. The Founder of Christianity .... 1 II. Christianity and Democracy .... 27 III. Christianity and Communism .... 66 IV. Christianity and Socialism .... 100 V. Christ's Law of the Family .... 138 VI. Christ's Law of Service 159 VII. Christ's Standard of Values .... 179 VIII. Christ's Law for the Settlement of Contro- versies: Personal Controversies . . 225 IX. Christ's Law for the Settlement of Contro- versies: International Controversies . 237 X. Christ's Law for the Settlement of Contro- versies: Labor Controversies . . . 268 XI. Criminals ; the Enemies of the Social, Order 297 XII. The Social Evil 329 XIII. The Brotherhood of Man 361 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PKOBLEMS. CHAPTER I. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. Nineteen hundred years ago there lived in one of the small provinces of Palestine a peculiar people. They were reserved and exclusive, and were regarded by their neighbors as proud and haughty. In their religious ideas they were un- compromising, and were popularly regarded as intolerant. Their religion was unique. One sacred temple they possessed, to which they made pilgrimages from time to time, and here dwelt a sacred priesthood, who conducted a ritual and offered the sacrifices which the religion of the people called for. But these sacrifices, as com- pared with those of their heathen neighbors, were simple and uncostly. They had a house for religious gatherings in every village, where they met weekly for worship and instruction. They worshiped one God, but allowed no picture or statue of Him either in temple or in home. Their sacred books taught that He was a right- eous God, that He demanded righteousness of 2 CHRISTIAXITY AXD SOCIAL PROBLEMS. His people, and demanded nothing else ; that He was best pleased, not by costly adoration paid to Him, but by obedience to His laws — by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking in humility with Him.^ In this respect their religion differed radically from that of the pagan nations about them, the object of whose worship was either to placate the anger of a wrathful deity, or to win by bribes and flatteries the special favor of a cor- ruptible one. Thus their religion had an ethical character, not found in the other world-religions of that age, and too little found in religion in its pro- fessional forms in any age. Their sacred books, which constituted their sole literature, required them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present life, as a necessary means of realiz- ing the hope of a life to come. Drunkenness and licentiousness, which were not uncommon in pagan services, would have been as incongruous in the worship of this peculiar people as irrever- ence and blasphemy .2 Unchastity, greed, anger, and all the evils which spring from these and kindred sins, were prohibited by the laws which every week were read in the people's hearing ; the evils which these vices inflict upon the com- munity, and the benefits which flow from the con- trasted virtues, Avere illustrated by sacred histo- ries, written unmistakably for this very purpose. Of art for art's sake they knew nothing. The great epic of their literature was written to illus- i Micah vi. 8. ^ j^g^ ^ 9 . gzek. xliv. 21. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 6 trate and recommend patience and resignation ; the one drama which their sacred literature con- tains was written to glorify the fidelity of woman's love ; its one dramatic story, to glorify her cour- age ; its one pastoral idyl, to glorify maidenly loy- alty and maidenly reserve. One of the most distinctive features of this sacred literature was an ideal political constitu- tion. The people had no doubt that this con- stitution had an historical existence ; that it had been jriven to their ancestors fifteen centuries before ; that those ancestors had really lived under it ; and that the present distress of the nation was a deserved penalty inflicted on the nation because it had abandoned this divinely inspired constitu- tion, and disregarded the laws connected with and ofrowino^ out of it. Many, if not most, modern scholars take a different view. It is now very generally thought that only the very simplest principles imbedded in this constitution date from 1400 B. c, and that the constitution and laws themselves grew up gradually in the Hebraic nation as constitution and laws have grown up in other nations. It is not important for my purpose in this volume to determine whether the ancient or the modern view is correct ; it is enough to say that the laws to be found in the first five books of this peculiar people constituted their ideal. The fundamental principle underly- ing these laws was the supreme authority of their God. " God spake all these words " was the 4 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. preamble to their fundamental code. Their king- dom thus established was designated by them as The Kingdom of God. The title by which their commonwealth is known in history is The Theocracy. Believed to be in its origin and inspiration divine, it was in its nature and spirit democratic. So radical was this democracy that God Himself did not accept the kingship of this people until by universal suffrage they had accepted Him as their King. His royal authority and their loyal obligation both rested upon a covenant voluntarily entered into on their part with Him ; and the collection of their sacred books is from this circumstance known to-day in liter- ature as the Old Covenant.^ The authority of the rulers and of the laws in this ideal common- wealth rested upon popular even if not universal suffrage. There was no recognized aristocracy; class and class distinctions were explicit^ pro- hibited. In the earlier history the rulers were chiefs providentially selected ; ^ when later a mon- archy was established, the power of the monarch was carefully defined, and the limitations of his power were actual, not imaginar}^ When in the later and corrupter period of their history the unscrupulous Ahab desired to get possession of a poor peasant's land, he could not do so without corrupting the court, and securing the poor man's conviction on false accusations.^ Though demo- ^ Exodus xix. 5-8. '^ 1 Kings xxi. 1-10. 2 Judges ii. 16, 18; iii. 9; vi. 11, etc. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 5 cratic in its nature, this ideal commonwealth was republican in its form ; that is, the power of the people was exercised through representative assem- blies, — a popular chamber known as the Great Conoreo'ation, and a smaller chamber known as the Elders.^ The latter also exercised supreme judicial functions. The laws of this ideal com- monwealth were singularly humane, and for that age progressive. Slavery and polygamy were in- deed permitted, but surrounded with such restric- tions that at the beginning of the Christian era they had disappeared. Attainder was forbidden ; capital punishment permitted for only twelve crimes ; life, liberty, property, was guarded ; and a judiciary created for the purpose of securing to every man an impartial trial. Popular education was provided for, partly by obligations laid upon the parents in the home, partly by the creation of a special class of teachers scattered through- out the country, and partly by the recognition of the rights of free speech and free discussion.^ In 1 The first body reflected the popular will. It voted not to attempt the subjugation of Canaan (Num. xiv. 1-5, 10), inducted Joshua into office (Num. xxvii. 18-23), ratified the selecting- of Saul as King-, voted to bring- up the Ark of God from Kirjath- jearim (1 Chron. xiii. 1-5). The second body constituted Moses' Privy Council (Num. xi. 16-17), made treaties (Josh. ix. 18-21), tried certain cases (Jer. xxvi. 10-16). It was Cabinet, Senate, and Supreme Court. - The punishment for blasphemy is rather an apparent than a real exception ; for under a theocracy blasphemy was in the nature of treason : it was an attempt to weaken the loyalty of the people to their king. b CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. time of war the commonwealth depended wholly on militia ; there was no standing army, and the employment of cavalry for offensive warfare was prohibited.^ On the other hand, agriculture, which political economy shows us to be the basis of permanent national prosperity, was encouraged and promoted.^ There was a priesthood, but on the one hand it was deprived of all share in the land, and was made dependent upon the voluntary contributions of the people ; ^ and on the other the people were not made dependent upon the priest- hood for their acceptable access to God.* That danger of land monopoly, which history has proved to be so great and so common a peril, was guarded against by the declaration that all the land be- longed to God, and a provision that at the end of every fifty years it should revert to God again. ^ In other words, the owner was only a tenant. It is very doubtful whether this provision was ever actually put in operation, but it was a part of the ideal commonwealth.^ Whether or not this theocracy ever existed except upon paper, it was the ideal which was ever kept before the hope of this peculiar peo- 1 Num. i. ; xxvi. 2-4 ; Judges v. 23. 2 Wines, Law of The Ancient Hebrews, 414-417, and Scripture authorities there cited. 3 Num. xviii. 20-24 ; xxvi. 02 ; Deut. x. 8, 9 ; xviii. 2. 4 Ps. li. 16, 17 ; 1 Kings viii. 27, 28 ; Is. Ix^d. 1, 2. 5 Lev. XXV. 23-28. ° For a fuller statement of the features of the Hebrew com- monwealth, see my Jesus of Nazareth, chap. ii. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 7 pie, in their earlier history by the voices of the prophets, in their later history by the reading of the sacred books at the weekly services in the synagogues. These prophets foretold the reestab- lishment of the theocracy on a grander scale and in greater splendor. They told of One who would come to bring again this Kingdom of God upon the earth ; then men would beat their spears into plowshares and their swords into pruning-hooks. Then law would need no army to enforce it, for it would issue from Zion ; that is, it would be enforced by the sanctions of religion.^ Then re- lioious education would be so universal that no man would need to say to his neighbor. Know the Lord, for every one in childhood would have been taught concerning him. Palestine would become the mistress of the world, Jerusalem the Holy City of all nations ; for then the message of jus- tice, liberty, and religion, with which the Jewish nation was intrusted, would be proclaimed to all mankind, and all the nations of the earth would come to enjoy the brightness of Israel's illumina- tion. Even the very animals would feel the effect of the change : ^ the poison of the asp would be gone ; the lion and the lamb would lie down to- gether, and a little child would lead them. These messages, based on this ancient ideal, had sunk deep into the heart of the people, and made them a forelooking, a progressive people. To this day 1 Zech. ix. 9, 10; Jer. xxxi. 31, 32 ; Is. liv. 11-15 ; ii. 1-4. 2 Is. xi. 6-9. 5 CHRISTJAXJTY AND SOCIAL FJiOBLEMS. they constantly look forward. This restoration and the Coming One who was to bring it about were the theme of their public and private dis- course. Great omens in nature, great events among the nations, would precede and prepare for it.^ Elijah, the great prophet of one of their national reformations, would rise from the dead to initiate this greater reformation.^ The hostile powers would gather ; the powers of Israel, led by the Messiah, would meet and conquer and crush them.^ Jerusalem would be renovated ; the Israel- ites, dispersed throughout the world, would be brought back again to their home ; strife, quarrels, and war would cease ; ^ and the world itself would become a new world wherein should dwell ritjht- eousness.^ Of a peasant woman living in this province, belonging to this people and sharing its faith and life, there was born a son. His peculiar birth was accompanied with promises which later history interpreted to mean that in him should be ful- filled the promises of prophecy and the hopes of Israel. In accordance with the Jewish law, which required every father to teach his son a trade, this boy, brought up in his peasant home, learned the trade of a carpenter.^ His boyhood was spent in 1 Joel ii. 31-33 ; iii. 2, 15-21. 2 Mai. iv. 5. 3 Zech. xiv. 1-3. * Mieah ii. 12, 13 ; Jer. xxxi. 7-14 ; Is. xi. 10-12 ; xlix. 14-23. 6 Is. Ix. 1(3-22; Ixv. 17-25. ^ Stapfer's Palestine in the Time of Christ, p. 145 ; Edersheim, Jesus of Nazareth, i. 252. THE FOUNDER OF CHRJ k^TIANITY. 9 poverty. His home probably contained but a single room : the walls were of sun-dried brick ; the roof was of straw. This single room was kitchen, parlor, bedroom, sitting-room, and work- shop. It had neither window of glass nor chim- ney ; a narrow slit in the wall, too narrow to admit the rain, admitted the light. The mother generally cooked without, on a sort of camjj-fire. But the climate was mild ; the resources con- tracted ; the cooking slight. The mother ground a little wheat between two stones in a hand-mill, and baked a thin cake upon a hot stone : this was their bread. Fruits were plenty and cheap, and an occasional fish served as an article of luxury. Often at night the father would wrap a shawl about him and sleep in the open air. As the son grew up toward manhood, he would do the same. It is probable that there were in this peasant home some fragments of the Old Testament, and it is certain that the son heard it read every Sab- bath-day in the synagogue, and was taught from it every day in the parish school. For the village synagogue had attached to it a school in which were taught reading, possibly a little arithmetic, and, together with the Old Testament, more or less of current theological interpretations ; but nothing more. The children of the peasants were not taught to write. A scribe could always be found in the street, with pen, ink, and parchment, to write a letter. Science was not yet born. 10 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. The only geography taught was that of the pro- vince of Palestine ; the world without was left an unknown world. Only once did the boy from whose birth all history dates get even a glimpse of any higher education. When he w^as twelve years old he went up with his father and mother to eTerusalem ; strayed away from the party ; was quite indifferent to the pageantry of the great processions, and the sj^lendor of architecture and music which made the temple not only the glory of Palestine, but a scenic wonder of the world ; and was found, two or three days after, in the school of the rabbis, whose courts surrounded the temple, and constituted the university of the Jewish people. His naive wonder that his mother did not know where to look for him ^ is a striking: illustration of that love for the higher thoughts which even at this early age was characteristic of him. There are certain atmospheric influences which are sometimes more potent in affecting character than those which are organized and directed for that purpose. Of the home influence of this boy we know very little. If he had any near relatives, they were not of a kind to inspire him. Of the father we know scarcely anything ; apparently he died before the boy came to maturity. He early disappears entirely from the scene, and Jesus, at his death, would hardly have committed his mother to the keeping of a friend, as he did, if 1 Luke ii. 41-51. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 the father were still living. Of the mother the biographers of the son give us only glimpses, but they are such as to justify the church and the world in regarding her as an almost ideal type of womanhood and motherhood. She was a woman of rare force of character, — shown in that journey which she took, unattended, from Galilee to Judea to visit Elizabeth, — a dangerous expedition for a woman in those days of rough roads, lawless ban- ditti, and scant respect for woman. She was a heart-student of the Scriptures, — shown in the one psalm of which she is the author,^ and which has remained in the ritual of the church as an expression of devotion. And she had that patience of love which is the highest attribute of woman, — shown in her standing at the cross, the helpless companion of her suffering son, until he breathed his last. And yet it seems clear that the son did not get his conception of his mission from his mother ; for it was she who, on the one hand, was impatient for him to inaugurate his ministry by a miracle,^ and who, on the other hand, when that min- istry brought him into conflict with the Pharisees, feared lest his enthusiasm was running into fa- naticism, and would have called him away from danger to safety and repose.^ In the wider in- fluence of Palestine there is little or nothing to account for the character of this " Son of the Carpenter." The preaching in the synagogue was 1 Luke i. 46-55. 2 jotn ii. 3. 3 Mark iii. 21, 31. 12 CHRTSTTANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. much like preaching in our clay, — some of it good, some of it indifferent, some of it very bad. He might have heard in his boyhood a scribe of the school of Hillel, who told him that to love God and his fellow-men was better than whole burnt- offerings ; or he might have heard a scribe of the school of Shammai discussing the question whether it were right to eat an Qgg laid on the first day of the week, which presumptively had been prepared by the hen on the Sabbath day. Probably he heard some j^reaching of both descriptions; but, on the whole, in neither of the three great schools of thought was there much to instruct or inspire, neither in the cynical and superstitious Sadducees, who denied both a personal God and a personal immortality; nor in the Essenes, the ascetics of the first century, who believed the world was hopelessly going wrong, and withdrew from it to the wilderness in despair of bettering it; nor in the Pharisees, who knew no road to righteousness but that of compulsion, and so no law of righteous- ness but that of external statutes. Educated under such influences as I have here briefly described, the ^' Son of the Carpenter" came forth at the age of thirty to be a teacher of his people. He was without the influence that comes from either family, official position, or learn- ing. " Only the lower natures," says Henry Ward Beecher, "are formed by external circumstances. Great natures are fully developed by forces from within." This force from within we sometimes THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 call genius, sometimes inspiration, but in either case a " gift ; " thus we unconsciously recognize that it is a direct bestowal from God which trans- cends our analysis and eludes our explanation. By what secret hours of prayer and meditation the spirit of Jesus had been fed we do not know. We only know that he was accustomed to say to his disciples that it was fed by unseen sources, and that on at least three occasions he gave them a glimpse of that celestial but secret inspiration which accounted for the strength and the serenity that characterized him.^ A hirsute, courageous, but ascetic reformer had raised his voice in protest against the corruption and formalism of the times. Jesus, at the outset of his public ministry, identi- fied himself with this reformer, though afterwards criticising his methods, — a striking illustration of the principle that in moral reform the end sought always transcends the means employed, and that moral earnestness will not stop to quarrel with the methods, — if they are not immoral, — provided the true end is sincerely and steadily kept in view. And the ends which Jesus and his cousin, John the Baptizer, had in view were the same, — the de- liverance of the nation by the reformation of its individual members. The nation was in need of a deliverance. She was bound hand and foot, and lay at the mercy of her Roman conqueror. The system of taxation was the worst which the iniquity of man has ever 1 Matt. iv. 11 ; xvii. 1-5 ; Luke xxii. 4:i ; John iv. 82 ; xiv. 10. 14 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. devised, and it lias devised some very bad ones. Rome farmed each province out, and the tax- gatherers, paying a fixed sum to the central gov- ernment, took from the wretched inhabitants all that could be extorted from them.^ The priests were largely Sadducees, who practiced the ritual of the religion while openly disavowing belief in its doctrines. The religious teachers — with some notable exceptions — preached formalism and prac- ticed covetousness. The houses of the peasantry were little better than hovels. If a man were for- tunate enough to earn a little more than he spent, there was no undertaking in which he could invest 1 The revenues which Rome derived from conquered countries were let out, or, as the Romans expressed it, were sold by the censors in Rome itself to the highest bidder. The successful bidder paid the stipulated sum into the treasury, and then col- lected as much from the province he had bid for as he could, and the process was repeated in succession by his subordinates in their separate offices. Not unfrequently the contract was taken by a joint-stock company, with a managing- director at Rome and a sub-magister in the province, who was the chief for the district ; under him were the '" actual custom-house officers, who examined each bale of g-oods exported or imported, assessed its value more or less arbitrarily, wrote out the ticket, and enforced payment. The latter were commonly natives of the province in which they were stationed, as being brought daily into contact with all classes of the population." These are the persons usually meant by the word " publicans " in the New Testament. They " were encour- aged in the most vexatious and fraudulent exactions, and a remedy was all but impossible." In addition to their other faults, the publicans of the New Testament were regarded as traitors and apostates. In Galilee they consisted probably of the least reputable members of the fisherman and i>easant class. See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, art. " Publicans." THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 his surplus. He had either to buy fine clothes, which the moths destroyed ; ^ or lock his money up in a strong box, which a thief might carry off if the tax-gatherer failed to discover it ; or dig a hole in the ground and bury it, where perhaps another would find it after his death.^ The people lived in that stolid despair which is so often mistaken for content, and which in their case was saved from becoming an acute and intolerable despair only by the dormant hope of a deliverance and Deliverer whom their children or children's children might see. Jesus from the first spoke to this dormant hope. He told the people that the deliverance and the Deliverer had come ; that the day had dawned, and they might see the ruddy sign of the dawn if they would but look up. He bade them not look for- ward any longer, for the kingdom had arrived and was among them. His message was, " The king- dom of heaven is at hand." One of his earlier sermons was reported and has been preserved. It was preached in the synagogue of his native vil- lao-e. He read from the roll of Isaiah an ancient prophecy of a good time coming, when glad tidings should be preached to the poor, the broken-hearted should be healed, the captives delivered, the blind made to see, the bruised set at liberty. He said that the time for the fulfillment of this prophecy had come. We are now so familiar with this mes- saofe that we cannot realize what it meant in the 1 Matt. vi. 19, 20. - Matt. xiii. 44. 16 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. beginning of the Christian era, when equal rights were unknown ; when half the population of Rome were slaves, holding life itself at the sufferance of their masters ; when in Rome education was con- fined to the higher circles, and in the higher circles to a knowledge of elocution and gymnastics ; when a wife might at any time be dismissed by her hus- band, as a servant with us ; when law was habitu- ally an instrument for oppression, taxation was a form of robbery, and liberty was another name for lawlessness. Such an age listened with wonder- ing, it may almost be said childish delight, to the declaration that One had come under whose influ- ence slavery would be abolished, the peasant popu- lations of the world would be enfranchised, wealth would be diffused, education would be universal, war would cease, woman would become the true companion of her former master, and every house w^ould become a home, its furnishing, comfort, its atmosphere, love. The public preaching with which Christ followed this sermon is largely an amplification of it. Its burden is. The kingdom of God is at hand. The message of Christianity as delivered by the Church has often misinterpreted that of the Master. But if we will forget the intervening ecclesiastical mes- sages and go back to the first century, — if we will consider the history of the people to whom Jesus Christ spoke, their literature, their train- ing, their expectations, and then will read Christ's instructions in the light of his own time, — we THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 can hardly fail to see that the burden of his ministry was far more sociological than either ecclesiastical or theological. He intimated that there was to be a church, but he gave almost no instructions respecting its constitution or its laws. Once, in Galilee, he sent his twelve disciples forth two by two 1 to act. as heralds of the coming king- dom, while he heralded it in the larger towns. Once, in the larger province of Perea, he sent forth seventy upon a similar mission.^ Once, in answer to a request of his disciples for instructions how to pray, he combined in a marvelously brief and sim- ple prayer the commoner desires of devout souls, and left it rather as a type of all devotion than as a form for any. But, excepting for these inci- dents, for two or three enigmatical declarations applied by some to the twelve, and by some to all disciples in all times, and for two directions, — one given just before his death, the other after his resurrection, out of which have grown the obser- vance of baptism, of the Lord's Supper, and in some churches of a foot-washing ceremonial, — he said little or nothing concerning either ritual or ecclesiastical order. He never propounded a creed, confession of faith, or body of divinity. He treated men always as spiritual beings ; death as an inci- dent in life, not as the end of it ; and God as the Father of mankind, in whose love is the hope of life. But he did not argue even these simple theological propositions, except when he was con- ^ Mark vi. 7 ; Luke ix. 1, " Luke x. 1. 18 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. fronted by sj^eelal questioning. If we read with a fresli and open mind liis instructions, we shall per- haps be surprised to discover how little there is in them about what we ordinarily call religion, — church-going, Bible-reading, forms of public wor- ship, doctrines of theology. His first recorded sermon — the one at Nazareth- — was his affirma- tion that deliverance was at hand, and would prove to be a deliverance of all humanity, Gentile as well as Jew. His second sermon — the Sermon on the Mount — was an exposition of the laws of the kingdom of God upon the earth, the true theocracy. In it he told his discijjles how they should settle their quarrels, control their tongues, deal with their enemies, carry themselves in their industries. The group of parables by the seashore — consti- tuting what we may call his third great sermon — illustrates the growth of this kingdom : it comes gradually, like a plant from a seed ; it depends on the soil, that is, on the community. It grows up with an antagonistic kingdom of unrighteousness, as the wheat grows up in the same field with the tares ; it grows by a process of agitation, as the leaven or yeast makes the whole lump of dough to ferment. His fourth great sermon — in the sjoia- gogue at Capernaum, on the Bread of Life — is an exposition of the secret of the power of this king- dom, — God in the hearts of men. But in them all, as in the more fragmentary reports of his lesser discourses and his conversations, the burden of his instruction is present life, — how to make it THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 19 pure, noble, beneficent. What does life mean? what does patience mean ? what do the rich owe to the poor, the strong to the weak, the wise to the ignorant? on what principles ought men to admin- ister the property they possess? what are their relations and their obligations to one another ? — these, and such as these, are the questions to which his teaching is chiefly devoted. In his life-work he was more than a social reformer, — he was a social revolutionist. His methods were spiritual, not temporal; peaceful, not warlike : but his object was revolution. The complaint subsequently brought against his disci- ples, that they were turning the world upside down, was a just complaint. It was because Christ set himself against the established order that the established order determined upon and accom- plished his death. That order was one of hier- archy in the church and aristocracy in the state. There were few rich and many poor, few learned and many ignorant. Christ did not merely teach that the rich should contribute of their affluence to the poor, and the wise should offer occasional instruction to the ignorant : he set himself to re- verse the prevalent social condition, — to make the many rich and the many wise. He taught that the whole human race — not a few at the top ; not the learned, the rich, the aristocratic ; not the mem- bers of a small and favored nation, the Jews, but the whole human race — is to be educated, trans- formed, enfranchised, enriched.^ He reversed the 1 Matt. ix. lO-lo ; Luke xv. 20 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. world's standard of values. He taught that wealth consists in character, not in possession.^ He reversed the world's measure of greatness. " He that is greatest among you," he said, " shall be your servant." ^ He affirmed the brotherhood of the human race, and challenged alike the pre- judices of the aristocracy by his companionship with the poor, the ignorant and the outcast, and the prejudices of the common people by his com- mendation of virtue in the pagan.^ The world has always bowed at the shrine of wealth. To wealth Christ paid no deference. His congregations were composed chiefly of the common people ; his special friends and companions were chosen from them. Among them he found his social fellowship. The rich man who fared sumptuously every day, oblivious of the poverty about him, he portrayed as in another life suf- fering torments in hell ; the outcast beggar, as in Paradise.^ The shrewd and crafty capitalist, whose only notion of prosperity was accumulation and still accumulation, he called a " fool." ^ A corrupt ring had installed themselves in the outer court of the temple, turned it into a market-place, and driven the common people out. With flash- ing eye he turned upon the traffickers and single- handed drove them away.^ Personally he shared the poverty of the poor with them, and required 1 Luke xii. 16-21. - Matt, xx, 26 ; xxiii. 11. 3 Matt. viii. 10, 11 ; Luke iv. 24-27. * Luke xvi. 19-31. 5 John ii. 13-22. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 21 those who wished to unite themselves to him in the innermost circle of his friends to do the same ; much in the spirit in which to-day a Salvationist workins: in the slums submits to the conditions of the life which she endeavors to transform. He paid as little attention to the ecclesiastical aristocracy in the church as to the aristocracy of wealth in society. The established order was both social and ecclesiastical, but more the latter than the former, for it was intrenched behind and allied with a superstitious conception of religion and a reverence for material things. Carlyle and Froude have both admirably traced the rise and develop- ment of idolatry ; they have shown how men begin by making an image or a picture to represent God, a ritual or temple to represent worship, a creed or a theology to represent truth, and have ended by worshiping the picture, the temple, the creed. This is idolatry, — the substitution of the eidolon, or symbol, for the reality. It is equally idolatry whether the symbol is a crucifix, a meeting-house, or a printed creed. In the first century the Jewish nation professed to hate idolatry with a perfect hatred, but the established order was founded on idolatry. The temple, with its attendant system of sacrifices, was the centre of all worship ; and the devout Jew could hardly conceive that religion could survive if the temple were destroyed, the sac- rifices were to cease, the priesthood were to be discontinued, or the traditional theology inherited from the fathers were to be changed. Christ fore- 22 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. told the destruction of the temple, and subverted the very foundations of this idolatrous faith by de- claring that God can be worshiped at any time and in any place, if the heart in sincerity and simplicity seeks for Him.^ He ignored the sacrificial system which had grown up in the temple, which was re- garded as a necessary condition of receiving for- giveness for sin, and on the maintenance of which the perpetuity of the priesthood depended. Tra- ditional theology taught that sin is a cause sufficient for hating the sinful. Christ treated sin as a dis- ease which ought to evoke our tenderest pity and compassion. Traditional theology taught that God's hatred of the sinner must be appeased by sacrifice before the sinner can be forgiven, and out of the freewill expressions of penitence and gratitude era- bodied in the ancient sacrifices ^ the Jews had de- veloped a comjjulsory sacrificial system, enforced by threats of eternal vengeance if it was not recog- nized and observed. Christ represented God as a Father going forth to meet the repentant and re- turning son while he yet timidly waited afar off.'^ In no single instance did Christ send the repentant sinner to the priest or the temple to offer a sacrifice for his sin ; he simply bade him go in peace and sin no more.* 1 John iv. 23, 24. ^ " He shall offer it of his own voluntary will." Lev. i. 3. ^ Luke XV. 20. Greek : " held himself afar ojBP." ^ Matthew viii. 4 ; Luke xvii. 14, are not exceptions : the leper was not directed to offer a sacrifice to secure f org-iveness ; he was to show himself to the priest, as the lawful health officer, THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 23 With the compulsory sacrificial system, and rooted in the same false conception of God and life, had grown up an elaborate system of fasts, or- ganized for the purpose of securing the divine favor. The orthodox Jew fasted on the fourth day of the month, because on that day Nebuchadnezzar had captured the temple ; on the fifth day of the month, because on that day the temple had been burned ; on the seventh day of the month, because on that day the Jewish governor had been murdered ; on the tenth day of the month, because on that day the Chaldeans had besieged Jerusalem ; on the fifth day of each week, because on that day Moses went up into the mountain for the law ; and on the second day of each week, because on that day Moses had brought the law down. Thus religion was clothed in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus disregarded, and encouraged his disciples to disregard, this sys- tem of fasting. He brought back the old spirit of the Jewish law, which made every Sabbath a feast day, and every great religious occasion a festival.^ The religious life he was accustomed to compare to a great feast to which every one was invited who chose to come.^ Those who were not prepared to come had garments provided for them by their host. Traditional theology he treated with as little in order that the cure might be officially recognized, and the ban which had been pronounced against him might be taken off. It was faith in Christ, not sacrifice, which made whole. Luke xvii. 19. 1 Exod. xxiii. 14-17 ; Lev. xxiii. ; Deut. xvi. 2 Matt. xxii. 9 ; Luke xiv. 16-24. 24 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. respect as ecclesiastical ceremonialism. The priest and tlie Levite, wlio passed the wounded traveler by, he condemned ; the heretical Samaritan, who went out of his way to relieve the unfortunate way- farer, he commended. The publican, who came to the temple seeking help to escape from his sin, Christ portrayed as more acceptable to God than the orthodox Pharisee, moral in his life and scru- pulous in his religious observances, who boasted in pious prayer of his excellencies. ^ His illustrations of religious life were not taken from the temple courts or the synagogue services. His pictures of the religious man were, a farmer sowing his seed in all soils, a fisherman casting his net into the sea,^ an honest steward doing his best with his employ- er's estate,^ a merchantman who finding a great pearl did not covet it, but sold all that he had to become its honest owner.^ This religion of the common life, and therefore of the common people, Jesus taught explicitly was for all peoples. The Jews believed that they were the chosen of God, and that all other nations were reprobate. The result of a narrow conception of God is always a narrow conception of humanity and a narrow conception of righteousness. Christ assailed this threefold narrowness with equal cour- age, whether it showed itself in a false theology, an artificial morality, or in a race prejudice. In that very first sermon of which we have any record, 1 Luke X. 29-37 ; xviii. 9-14. "^ Matt. xiii. 3, 47, 45. ^ Luke xii. 42. THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 25 and in that very synagogue at Nazareth ^ where as a boy he had been accustomed to worship, he re- minded the congregation that God had passed the Jews by and selected a woman from Tyre and Sidon for mercy, and again passed the Jews by to select a man from Syria for mercy ; and with one consent the congregation rose in their rage, cast him out of the synagogue, and would fain have killed him. The spirit of this discourse appears again and again in his teaching, and reaches its natural climax in his last commission to his disci- ples to go into all the world and proclaim the glad tidings to every creature.^ However Christ may have been misunderstood since, he was not, in this one fundamental respect, misunderstood in his own time. The common peo- ple of Palestine perceived in him their friend and leader. They responded to his call, flocked about him, were eager listeners to his inspiring teaching, and would have crowned him their king ^ and made him help them in a violent revolution against their oppressors, if he would have consented. On the other hand, the rich, the aristocratic, the learned, the social, political, and ecclesiastical leaders of the time, understood equally well that the success of his mission involved a social revolution.* They saw that he was a leveler, that if he succeeded their power and prestige were gone, and they joined all their forces against him ; not because they were 1 Luke iv. 16 ; vii. 9. 2 ^att. xxviii. 19, 20. 3 John vi. 15, ^ John xi. 49, 50» 26 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. unwilling that men should be taught patiently to bear oppression, poverty, and ignorance in this present life, sustained by the hope of some better condition in a life to come, but because they rightly perceived that the life which Christ was imparting would make the men who received it no longer sub- missive to oppression. It is not necessary for my purpose in this volume to trace any further in detail the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It must suffice thus briefly to show that a consideration of his teachings, his life, the elements of his popularity, and the causes of the bitter hostility to him, all combine to demon- strate that he came as the organizer of a new social order, that in Christ's birth was born a new social kingdom. CHAPTER n. CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. Instructed in the principles of a new social order, inspired by a new and divine life of faith, hope, and love, the disciples went forth to preach the kingdom of God on the earth. Of course they could not believe that they were to establish this future kingdom. It transcended the possibilities of their faith to believe that they, only twelve in number, could face the whole pagan world and re- construct it. When they did preach and men heard their calling, it was only the slaves and the freedmen, the poor and the outcast, that consti- tuted their congregations. How could they expect to revolutionize the Roman Empire, break its yoke asunder, set aside imperial despotism, and bring in a reign of justice, liberty, and peace on the earth ? It was impossible that they should believe this, and they did not. They believed the Messiah would come again in great glory. They waited and watched for that coming, and grew heartsick be- cause he did not come. Little by little the church abandoned its hope of a world-wide kingdom, drew a line between itself and the world, and applied 28 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the teachings of their Lord only to the church. It divided men into two classes, the religions and the secular, and considered Christ's laws applicable only to the religious. But even the church was apparently not ready for principles so radical. Hence men separated themselves from the church, organized religious brotherhoods, and in these brotherhoods endeavored to carry out the spirit and the principles of Christ's instructions. We look back upon those brotherhoods with disdain, but we do them wrong. It is difficult to see how any man could have done more to promote the kingdom of Christ on the earth than St. Francis of Assisi did with his Brotherhood of the Poor.^ His methods were not always wise, his teachings were not altogether Christ's ; but still the spirit of Christ was in them. Monasteries were organ- ized into which the kingdom of God mioht retreat. If we compare those monasteries with the life of to-day, they seem to be evil ; if we comjjare them with the life which surged around them, they were admirable. Everywhere else lust reigned ; in these monasteries, during their early history, comparative purity. Everywhere else ignorance reigned ; these monasteries were the custodians of the libraries and the treasure-houses of learning. Everywhere else rapine reigned ; these monasteries were the almoners of charity, — charity towards one another, charity to the world without.^ ^ See Life of St. Francis of Assisi, by Paul Sabatier. 2 Monasteries and Monasticism : their Service and Benefit. See CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 29 While thus some men in the church endeavored to oro:anize brotherhoods in accordance with the CD spirit of Christ's teachings, other men undertook, in sporadic efforts, to carry out those principles in local communities. The Waldenses, in their Italian valleys, endeavored to found such a brother- hood. Savonarola died in the endeavor to make Florence a Christian city. Calvin undertook to make Geneva at once a Christian state and a Christian church, and required that every citi- zen should subscribe to simple articles of faith. The Puritans, borrowing this idea from Calvin, came across the sea to found, not a community in which every man should worship as he i^leased, but, what was almost its exact antipodes, a revived and renewed theocracy borrowed from the Old Testament.^ These sporadic efforts failed ; for the most part, because in them men attempted, not Charles Kingsley, Eoman and Teuton, clis. viii. and ix. ; Sir James Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. i. p. 371 ; Schaff, History of the Christian Church, book iii. eh. iv. § 34 ; Milman, Xaii'n Christianity, \ol. ii. pp. 20G, 207; Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, vol. i. pp. 222, 224. 1 Milman, Latin Christianity, vol. v. p. 150 fF.; R. C. French, Lectures on Mediceval Church History ; Villari, Savonarola, i. 260, 339; ii. 132-140; Mrs. Oliphant, Makers of Florence, eh. xi. ; Savonarola as a Politician ; H. H. Milman, Savonarola, Eras- mus, and other Essays ; Leaders of the Beformation, p. 107 ; Paul Henry, Life of Calvin, i. 351, 407. A confession was prepared by Farel, in conjunction with Calvin, at Geneva. It consisted of twenty-one articles, and in 1530 the citizens were oblig'ed to swear to this, but it possessed no proper symbolic authority. Ellis, The Puritan Age in Massachusetts, eh. v. ; The Biblical Commonwealth. 30 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. to inspire government with the spirit of Christ, but by governmental action to coerce men into loyalty to Christ. And that has always failed. It is not necessary here to trace the historic process by which the pagan world was gradually transformed into Christendom, the forces of im- perial Rome into the imperfectly Christianized forces of the Republic of the United States. It must suffice to put in contrast these two empires, and to indicate, by the contrast, both the progress which the Kingdom of God has made in the world, and the direction in which we are to advance towards its consummation. For both the parallel and the contrast between the Roman Empire and the American Republic are striking. Like imperial Rome, the Republic extends from a northern to an almost tropical zone ; includes a great variety of soils, climates, and productions ; embraces a vast and hetero- geneous population ; is composed of separate states, each with its own peculiar political institutions and social customs ; permits a great variety of religious creeds and forms of worship to grow up peacefully side by side ; it possesses a territory considerably larger than that of ancient Rome, and probably will possess, by the middle of the next century, a population not inferior in numbers. But here the parallel ends. In the three most fundamental elements of national life, these two empires are in strong contrast : in their religious and educational institutions, in their political CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 31 organization, and in their industrial and social life. I. The object of the religion of Rome was not to make men better or happier. Moralists there were whose teachings embody noble ethical stand- ards. But we look in vain for such a teacher among either the priests or the prophets of the pagan empire. Its religious institutions had no relation to the moral life.^ Religion did not even claim to be ethical in its spirit or its purpose. That purpose was either to appease the wrath of angry gods or to win the favor of corruptible gods. Religion was, therefore, a special function fulfilled by a special class. The religious services were performed for the community by a priesthood. Remnants of this pagan conception of religion remain in religious doctrines and religious forms to the ]3resent day. A few years ago I was spend- ing a week in a quiet village in Northern England, A daily service was held in the village church. My companion went out one afternoon to attend this service. She was a little late, and entered very quietly, so as not to disturb the worshipers, only to find the priest reading the service, " Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sun- dry places to acknowledge and confess our mani- fold sins and wickedness, . . . yet ought we chiefly so to do when we assemble and meet together," . . . and there was not a man, woman, or child in 1 Lecky's History of European Morals^ i. 176 ; Uhlhorn, Conflict \>f Christianity and Heathenism, book i. ch. i. p. 55. 32 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the house. Yet it may be assumed that, to the honest priest, there was no incongruity in this circumstance : to him the priestly service was rendered, not by but for the people ; not to them, but on their behalf. Religious service was an official function. Similar in sj^yirit is the attempt of certain modern ecclesiastics to do the thinking for the people, frame the creeds for them, tell them what they should believe, and encourage their investigation of religious problems, only upon the condition first exacted that they will arrive at no other conclusions than those which have been already formulated for them by their religious teachers. Religious thinking in the one case, and religious worship in the other, is an official func- tion, to be jjerformed by a religious class. Yet clearly this conception of religion is a sur- vival of the past. Indeed, it is claimed so to be. The priest desires to go back to tTerusalem for the pattern of his service ; the theologian, to the six- teenth century for the model of his creed. The modern tendency is quite different, and is so re- garded, alike by those who lament the difference as an indication of degeneracy and those who re- joice in it as an evidence of advance. The blood- less sacrifice of the mass still remains the shadow of an ancient sacrificial system ; and the imitation of that mass in some Protestant churches, the mere shadow of a shadow : but in the main the effort of modern religion is not to appease an an- gry God, nor to win the favor of a purchasable CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 33 one. Religion has become in its object philan- thropic. Ruskin ^ rightly interprets the spirit of the age, whether he rightly interprets the spirit of the New Testament or not : " Do justice and judg- ment ! that 's your Bible order ; that 's the ' Service of God,' — not praying nor psalm-singing." Pray- ing is seeking strength for service ; psalm-singing is giving thanks for the privilege of serving : but the service is in hospitals, mission schools, church schools, college settlements, boys' clubs, girls' clubs, political and social reforms, — a thousand philan- thropies, some material, some intellectual, some spiritual ; but all seeking one great end — the pro- motion of human welfare and human happiness. The modern conception of Christianity appears to me more Christian than the one which it is suj)planting. Turn again to that first sermon of Christ's in the synagogue at Nazareth : " And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken - hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. . . . And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." In all this there is no suggestion of appeasing the 1 Riiskin, Works (Crowell & Co.), The Crown of Wild Olive, p. 48, 34 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. wrath or winning the favor of God. It is not for this he came into the world : it is to bring into the world the life of God, — the life that really is, the eternal life. The spirit of this sermon has entered the church, and has gradually changed the avowed function of religion from the selfish one of seeking the personal salvation of the worshiper to the unsel- fish one of inspiring him to become a savior of others. With this change in the conception of religion has come a change in the organization of the church. Autocracy dies hard, but it is surely though slowly dying. The Roman Catholic Church succeeds in maintaining an autocratic or- ganization in a democratic age, because its hier- archy is wise enough to allow great flexibility of local administration. The laity do not vote, but there are other methods of influence than a ballot. The recent history of land-owning in Ireland and of the public school question in the United States indicates the extent to which the Roman Catholic hierarchy are influenced by the people whose eccle- siastical rulers they are. The statesmanship of Leo XIII. has been shown in nothing more strik- ingly than in his wise and eflicient endeavor to adapt the church to a democratic age and demo- cratic needs. Outside of Romanism, even the forms of autocracy are not successfully maintained. The Salvation Army is, indeed, constructed on the principles of an imperial despotism. But, since this volume was begun, that army has broken i John X. 10 ; xvii. 1-3 ; 1 Tim. vi. 1!) : '' life indeed," Rev. Ver. CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 35 asunder in the United States, and the indications are unmistakable that its autocratic methods will not, even in England, long- survive the general who has adopted them. In all other ecclesiastical organizations government varies from that of a rep- resentative republic to that of a pure democracy. Closely connected with this change in the spirit of religion, and in the nature of its ecclesiastical institutions, is the growth of religious organizations dissociated from all hierarchical control, and the employment of means of moral cultivation wholly outside the church. As illustrations of such or- ganizations, may be mentioned such religious but unecclesiastical societies as the Young Men's Chris- tian Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Societies of Christian Endeavor and the Sons and Daughters of the King. It is not strange that these and other purely democratic organizations are looked upon with some suspicion by professional ecclesiastics ; and it must be con- fessed by their warmest friends that they exhibit some of the defects which appear to be inherent in democracies of every type : but it can hardly be questioned by their severest critics, that they are likely to prove permanent additions to the religious force of the country. As illustrations of uneccle- siastical instruments of moral culture, may be men- tioned the religious newspapers, some of which are under church control, but others of which are wholly untrammeled ; and contributions to the discussion of religious problems by writers as ab- S6 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. solutely independent of all church influence as Matthew Arnold and Professor Huxley. Systems of examination and ordination still put certain per- haps quite legitimate restrictions upon the pulpit, but there is no similar censorship of the press ; and Renan and Strauss are quite as free to write their interpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as are Hanna or Farrar. Whittier's " Eternal Goodness " has probably preached to a greater audience than any modern sermon, and each reader is left to judge for himself of its orthodoxy. Balfour discusses the " Foimdations of Belief " and Drummond the '' Ascent of Man," and there is no recognized authority to decide whether either volume should be put in an Index Expur- gatorius. When a feeble attempt is made by ecclesiastical critics, or a stronger attempt by an ecclesiastical association, to place a dangerous book under ban, the only result is to increase the num- ber of its readers. It was the denunciation of " Robert Elsmere " which gave to it its phenomenal circulation. It is easy to see whither all this leads, — to a freedom of thought, of teaching, of service both within and without the church, tran- scending anything known in the past. The eyes of the blind are opened and tlie limbs of the paralyzed unloosed ; and the one can never be blinded, nor the other put into chains again. This transformation in the concei3tion of reli- gion from a special function to a universal life, of religious institutions from an autocratic to a CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 37 deiiiociatic form, and of religious ministry from a priestly administration to a universal philanthropy, has been accompanied by a similar transformation in education. The schools of imperial Rome prac- tically confined their curriculum to rhetoric and athletics ; in ancient Greece, music and art were added. Later, philosophy was taught, but only to insignificant numbers. There was no provision for public education ; pupils were relatively few ; education was for special classes.^ The theatre and the forum rendered to these ancient peoples a service somewhat analogous to that rendered in our time by the press, but inefficiently and not extensively. Christianity borrowed the synagogue school from Judaism and extended it. The mon- asteries preserved the literature of the ancients from destruction ; the monks were the printing- presses of Europe before the printing-press was invented; parish schools were established in con- nection with the churches, and higher seminaries and universities in connection with the convents and monasteries.^ Gradually, as the state became 1 See Oscar Browning-, Hist, of Ed. Theories., eh. ii. ; on " Roman Education." " The whole education of a Greek youth was divided into three parts, — g-ramraar, music, and gymnastics, to which Aristotle adds a fourth, the art of drawing- or painting-. Gymnas- tics, however, was thought by the ancients a matter of such im- portance that this part of education alone occupied as much time and attention as all the others put tog-ether." Smith's Diet, of Greek and Roman Antiq.., art. " Gymnasium." Comp. ibid.., art. " Psedagogus ; " The Life of the Greeks and Eomans, by Guhl and Koner, 212 ff. 2 See Milman, Latin Christianity, bk. iii. ch. xi. ; bk. iv= eh. iii. ; Mrs. Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders., pp. 3-5. 38 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. inspired by the humane spirit of Christianity, it preferred to assume the education of the young ; gradually, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes will- ingly, the church relinquished that function to the state, or shared it with the state. Thus out of the synagogue schools in Palestine have grown the magnificent school systems of France, Germany, England, and the United States. With all their defects, they equip the children of the poor for life, and, by teaching them to think, prepare them for a sturdy and intelligent independence. In these respects this movement for universal educa- tion has made great strides during the present century. In England, by the board school sys- tem, the people have undertaken to provide ade- quate education for all the children of school age who are not provided for by parochial schools. In the United States the public school system has been extended throughout the Southern States, where previous to the Civil War there was no free school system for the whites, and where the education of the blacks was a penal offense. Froe- bel's introduction of the kindergarten has done more than merely provide education for little chil- dren, who before his day had been allowed to grow up untrained, and whose earlier school discipline was always unnatural and irksome and often cruel ; it is bringing with it into higher grades the natural method, transforming education from a mechanical and manufacturing process into one of normal and healthful development. Within the century, both CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 39 in this country and in England, higher schools and seminaries have been opened to women, whose education was before confined to the art of house- keeping and certain social accomplishments. The effect in the future of having the children in the home grow up in the companionship and under the inspiration of mothers who have not only learned the art of study, but have acquired the outlook and equipment of scholarship, cannot as yet be foreseen by the most optimistic prophet. Mechanical training of hand and eye are gradu- ally — too gradually for impatient reformers — being introduced into the public school curriculum. The agitation for some better ethical influences is beginning to find a response in public thought, and the reaction against the excessive dread of ecclesiastical influences has unmistakably begun. We may reasonably hope by the middle of the next century to see the kindergarten in every vil- lage ; the higher education as freely provided for women as for men ; the highest education made available, either by state universities or by scholar- ships, for the poorest who have proved their appe- tite and their capacity for it ; and education so broadened in public conception as to include the training of the body on the one hand and that of the conscience and the moral nature on the other. II. If, from this rapid survey of the contrast between the Roman Empire and the American Republic in religious and educational aspects, we turn to a comparison of the political spirit and 40 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. institutions of the two, the contrast, if not greater, is certainly more apparent. The Koman empire under the Caesars was an absolute despotism. Its organization was essentially military, its emperof the commander-in-chief of an armed and encamped nation. The fate not only of the Roman world, but of every individual in it, depended on the will of a single autocrat. " The system of the imperial government," says Gibbon, " as it was instituted by Augustus and maintained by those princes w^ho understood their own interest and that of the people, may be defined an absolute monarchy dis- guised by the forms of a commonwealth." ^ The authority of the emperor, nominally derived from the Senate, which was composed of his creatures, was really dependent upon the army, which was obedient to his will. It is not necessary here to recite the practical results of this autocratic system ; they may all be summed up in four preg- nant sentences of Gibbon : " It is almost super- fluous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus. Their unparalleled vices, and the splen- did theatre on which they have acted, have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tibe- rius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the inhuman Domitian are condemned to everlasting infamy. During fourscore years (ex- cepting only the short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign), Rome groaned beneath an 1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. iii. p. 302. CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 41 unrelenting tyranny which exterminated the an- cient forms of the republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue and every talent that arose in that unhappy period." ^ It was in a province of this empire, and under this imperial form of government, that Jesus Christ presented a very different ideal. " But be not ye called Rabbi : for one is your Master, even Christ ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters ; for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant." ^ No wonder that the Roman Empire endeavored by fire and sword to destroy the nascent Christianity, as Herod had attempted to destroy the infant Christ. The birth at Bethlehem sounded the knell of imperial prerogatives and privileged classes throughout the world. The privileged classes rightly interpreted the meaning of the new move- ment, and set themselves in vain to destroy it. The words of Jesus Christ proved to be the proto- plasm of democracy, and nothing has been able to suppress this divine life and its resultant growth. The most enthusiastic believer in triumphant de- mocracy cannot claim for the United States that it has realized the purpose and prophecy of the prophet of Nazareth, but the dullest and most pessimistic disbeliever can hardly fail to see in the spirit and 1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. iii. p. 317. 2 Matt, xxiii. 8-11. 42 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. constitution of the American republic, as con- trasted with that of the ancient empire, the serious though but half-conscious attempt to realize that prophecy. In so doing it is furnishing, not a new definition, scarcely even a new object-lesson, in liberty, but an object-lesson of vaster proportions and with promise of grander results than the world has ever seen. What is liberty ? " The true liberty of a man," says Carlyle, ^ "you would say consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out, the right path and to walk therein ; to learn or be taught what work he was actually able to do, and then, by permission, persuasion, or even compulsion, to be set about doing of the same. Oh, if thou really art my senior, seigneur, my elder, presbyter, or priest — if thou art in any way my wiser — may a bene- ficent instinct lead and impel thee to conquer and command me ! If thou do know better than I what is good and right, I conjure you, in the name of God, force me to do it ; were it by never such brass collars, whips, and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices ! " No, this is not liberty : it is servitude. Servitude may be better than walking- over precipices ; it may be in every way justifiable if the man be a lunatic, and is bent upon pushing men weaker tlian himself over precipices. But it is not liberty. " Liberty is ability to do as one pleases." "Freedom is the exemption from the power and control of another." ^ Whether liberty 1 Carlyle, Past and Present, ch. xiii. p. 182, Chapman & Hall's ed. 2 Webster's Dictionary. CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 43 is wise, safe, or even possible, may be open to discus- sion, but it is not " brass collars, whips, and hand- cuffs." Aristotle classifies governments as govern- ment by the one, government by the few, government by the many. We have added in America a fourth class, — self-government. This is liberty. It as- sumes, not that every man can safely govern him- self, but first that it is safer to leave every man to govern himself than to put any man under the government of another man, or any class of men under the government of another class ; and, sec- ondly, that there is such potentiality of self- governing power in every man, such capacity in him to learn by his own blunders, that he will acquire a wisdom and a self-restraint through the very perils of self-government which he never will acquire under the protecting government of others wiser or better than himself. Thus liberty is the diffusion of political power, as despotism is its con- centration. Paternalism calls one man — Roman Imperator or Russian Czar — Father ; Democracy, like Christianity, repudiates paternalism and calls no man Father. Imperialism makes one man — Roman Emperor or Russian Czar — Master; De- mocracy, like Christianity, calls no man Master, and regards the greatest in the state as the servants of the people, appointed not only to minister to their welfare, but also to be obedient to their bidding. Democracy begins self-government with the in- dividual, leaves him free to do what he will, to 44 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. perpetrate what blunders and inflict what self- injuries he chooses, so long as he does not directly or indirectly wrong his neighbor by his blunder or his self -in jury. It extends this privilege so as to allow to the local community — village, town, or county — the administration of its own affairs, the levying and expending of its local taxes, the con- struction of its roads, the administration of its schools. It permits the State to exercise authority only in the domain in which the interests of all the citizens of the State are directly concerned, and it delegates authority to the nation only in those mat- ters in which no State can act without inflicting injury on its sister State. Thus under imperialism or paternalism the government is derived from the top, and is distributed downward through agents and sub-agents, who in a great empire necessarily constitute a great bureaucracy. Under democracy the government is derived from the bottom, and is delegated by successive commissions to a hierarchy, not of masters, but of servants. Under the one system, the higher the official the wider the range of his authority; under the other system, the higher the official the less numerous are the powers delegated to him. Augustus appointed lieutenants who executed his will in the various provinces of the Empire, and who held their office only during his pleasure. Whenever he was present, the juris- diction of the governor was superseded by that of his master. Judicial as well as imperial powers were centred in him and devolved upon his sub- CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 45 ordinates. With them were combined those of pontiff and of censor ; '' by the former he acquired the management of the religion, and by the latter a legal inspection over the manners and fortunes, of the Roman people." ^ The President and Congress of the United States, on the contrary, while possess- ing very great powers, possess them only in a very limited domain. They cannot directly enter the family or regulate the industry of the poorest citi- zen of the United States. They cannot make or mar the country roads, and can interfere with the great highways only for the purpose of protecting or promoting commerce between the States. They are powerless to interfere with either religious beliefs or religious rituals, and can exercise no authority whatever over the systems of popular education. They cannot even interfere to enforce law or quell riots and insurrections, except in cases in which the local authorities are incapable of ful- filling this duty. Though the greatest concerns are not exempt from their authority, the greatest number of concerns are so exempt. The dangers threatened on the one hand, and the prosperities promised on the other, as the result of a Presidential election, are never fulfilled, for the public peril and the public prosperity depend in the main on na- tional forces wholly beyond the Presidential control and largely beyond that of Congress. Nor can it be doubted by the student of current 1 See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, eh. iii. p. 295 and ff. ; Smith's Diet, of Biog., art. "Augustus." 46 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. history that since the adoption of our Constitution the progress of our time has been, whether for good or ill, progress toward a greater diffusion of political power. It has not been toward the " brass collars, whips, and handcuffs " of Carlyle. The limitations of the suffrage, universal at the adop- tion of our Constitution,^ have been swept away ; property and educational qualifications are abol- ished ; with few and diminishing exceptions " one man, one vote," is the established principle of the American commonwealth. Influence still de- pends on wealth, position, and education, but polit- ical power does not. The ballot of the million- aire and of his butler, of the college professor and the college janitor, of the scion of a noble American family and of the recently landed immi- grant, carry the same weight and are estimated at the same value. The most that aristocracy, that is, government by the best, has been able to do in American history thus far is so to delay this transference of power from Aristos to Demos as to prevent a too sudden revolution. Perhaps in nothing has this change from gov- 1 In 1700 " very little of what would now be called democracy existed. Everywhere the political rig-hts of men were fenced about with restrictions which would now be thought unbearable. The right to vote, the right to hold office, were dependent, not on manhood qualifications, but on religious opinions, on acres of land, on pounds, shillings, and pence." McMaster, History of the U. S., vol. iii. p. 146. McMaster substantiates this general state- ment with elaborate details. Compare, for views of Hamilton and Adams in favor of restricted suffrage, Hildreth's Hist, of the U. S., vol. iv. p. 297. CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 4.7 ernment by the few to self-government been more strikingly indicated than in the changed character and functions of our American representative as- semblies, whether municipal, state, or national, except in the still more changed functions of the Electoral College. The founders of the American Constitution declared that political power was de- rived from the people, but did not expect the people to exercise it. It was their plan that the people should elect the wisest and the best of the nation to represent them, and that the repre- sentatives thus elected should direct the policy of the nation. They thus provided an Electoral Col- lesce which should itself elect a President. The Electoral College has long since ceased to elect Presidents. The people choose the Presidents, and the Electoral College simply registers the popular decision. A similar change is taking place in the national and state legislative bodies. Congress has ceased to determine national policies, — has ceased even, to any considerable extent, to discuss them. Speeches in Congress rarely if ever change a vote. The people assemble in conventions wholly un- known to the Constitution to deliberate on public questions. The deliberation is carried on in clubs, country stores, family circles, and by the press and pulpit. The results of these discussions are pressed upon Congress by editorials, visiting delegations, private letters. The work of the House of Repre- sentatives almost wholly, of the Senate very largely, is done in committees. The committees frame in 48 CHRISTfANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. law what the people have clemanded. Congressional action rej^resents popular urgency, their inaction popular indifference. The course of Indian legislation may serve as a concrete illustration of this process, but scores of other illustrations would serve as well. In 1882 the friends of justice to the Indian were summoned by Mr. A. K. Smiley to the Lake Mohonk House, a well-known summer hotel in Ulster County, to con- sider Indian rights and wrongs. At that time the Indians throughout the country were placed on reservations, from which all civilizing influences, except those of special missionary and educational institutions, were excluded. They were denied all rights of citizenship, including the right to buy and sell in open market, the right of free transit throughout the United States, and the right to pro- tection of person and property by the courts. The schools which existed were utterly inadequate to provide for the education of the Indian children, and were maintained under a complicated no- system of partnership between the government and the churches, which had grown up without fore- thought or direction. The control of the Indians was placed under the administration of a bureau, the personnel of which changed with every Presi- dential election, so that continuity of purpose and policy were impossible. To a discussion and recti- fication of these evils this Lake Mohonk Confer- ence addressed itself, though it apparently pos- sessed neither political power nor influence. As CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 49 the result of its discussions, a policy was shaped and pressed upon Congress and upon successive Presi- dents. Public sentiment was created to reinforce the positions laid down in the Lake Mohonk plat- forms. Congressional and departmental coopera- tion was secured in carrying out a continuous and measurably consistent policy. The reservation sys- tem has been abandoned ; the reservations are being broken up ; the land is in process of allotment to the Indians in severalty ; a public school system under national control and at national expense has been established ; appropriations for educational purposes have been increased from a few hundred thousand to more than a million annually ; appropriations for rations have been diminished ; the partnership between the nation and the churches has been dis- solved, and all sectarian appropriations are, during the next few years, to be discontinued ; and at this writing a bill has been introduced into Congress for the appointment of a non-partisan commission to superintend Indian affairs, take the Indian Bureau out of politics, and secure in the adminis- tration of it a permanent, non-partisan service. All this has been accomplished, not by deliberation in Congress, moving thereto of its own volition, but by the deliberations and determinations of men especially interested in and familiar with Indian affairs, creating a public opinion in favor of reform throughout the nation, and guiding both Congress and the department in a steadily advancing move- ment toward an ultimate solution of the Indian 50 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. problem. The work of Congress has been really, not to decide what should be done, but to do what the people interested have demanded. The contrast between the American republic and the Roman empire, and the changes in spirit and method wrought in the American republic in the one short century of its existence, indicate the direction in which the United States is moving. It is not toward less but toward more democracy, — not toward a greater concentration, but toward a greater diffusion, of political power. In Rome, as to-day in Russia, " the machine " was law, liberty was revolution. In America, lib- erty is law, " the machine " is revolution. " The machine " still exists, but its bureaucratic powers are really un-American, and every new battle between " the machine " and the people is a new defeat for the former. The latest and perhaps most striking is the adoption of a constitutional amendment in New York State which requires that all offices, the qualification for which can be determined by competitive examination, shall be so determined, and the decision of the highest court in the State that this provision is self-executory, and that to fill such an office otherwise is uncon- stitutional and illegal.! The primaries are still controlled by oligarchies, but how to make their 1 Since this chapter was written, the Massachusetts Supreme Court has rendered an equally significant decision, affirming- the right of the more competent to the office in question, and deny- ing the right of the legislature to deprive him of it in favor of a veteran who has not proved his competency. CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. ol action the expression of the real will of the people is already a subject of vigorous current discus- sion. The attempt to cure municipal corruption by transferring the power from the people to the §tate legislature, and governing the city by com- missions, has been tried and has failed; munici- pal reformers are beginning to demand in unmis- takable tones the extension to the cities of those rights and responsibilities of local self-govern- ment, which are now had by the village, the town, the county, and even the school district. The Senate of the United States, which was removed from the people in order that it might be a safe- guard, is found to be for that very reason danger- ous, and the demand for the election of Senators, not by the state legislators but by the people of the several States, is growing yearly more urgent. The Referendum, according to which important pieces of legislation are referred to the people themselves for direct vote, and the Initiative, according to which on the petition of a reasonable number of citizens any question must be sub- mitted by the legislature to the people for direct vote, have worked so well in the little republic of Switzerland, that American reformers are be- ginning to urge the adoption of these methods here, and in a modified form and in a tentative way, after the fashion of reforms in Anglo-Saxon communities, the experiment is being tried.^ In 1 Referendum and Initiative are two political institutions pecu- liar to Switzerland. Referendum means the reference to all vote- 52 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. short, every decade in American political history marks a nearer approach to at least so much of possessing- citizens, either of the Confederation or of a Canton, for acceptance or rejection of laws and resolutions framed by their representatives. The Referendum is of two kinds, compulsory and optional. It is compulsory in certain Cantons, where all laws adopted by the Grand Council, or other representative body of a Canton, must be submitted to the people, and optional where limited to those cases in which a certain number of voters demand it. The Federal Constitution of 1874 contains an article extend- ing- the exercise of the popular vote, when demanded by thirty thousand citizens, or eight Cantons, to all Federal laws, and all resolutions of a g-eneral nature which have been passed by the Chambers. The principle of the Cantonal and the Federal Ref- erendum is the same. By the Cantonal Referendum, whether compulsory or optional, many important local matters are sub- mitted to the collective vote of the citizens of the particular Canton interested. " The Referendum has struck root and expanded wherever it has been introduced, and no serious politician of any party would now think of attempting- its abolition." " It has g-iven back to the people of Switzerland rights originally possessed by them in most of the old Cantons, but partly or wholly lost in the course of time." "The con- sciousness of individual influence, as well as the national feeling, is declared to have been strengthened, and the fact of a large, and on several occasions increased, participation of the people in the vote is quoted as tending to prove that their interest in polit- ical questions is growing keener." " Extreme measures, whether radical or reactionary, have no chance whatever of being accepted by the people, who, while in a manner fulfilling the functions of a second chamber, have infinitely more weight than any such body usually possesses, even if it be thoroughly representative and chosen by universal suffrage." " Initiative is the exercise of the right granted to any single voter, or body of voters, to initiate proposals for the enactment of new laws, or for the alteration or abolition of existing laws." " It is essentially a powerful engine in a democratic direction. By means of it legislative bodies, mostly composed of persons belonging to the well-to-do class, can be compelled by the people to take up and put to a vote matters CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 53 Christ's principle as is embodied in the statement that no man is to be called Master ; that all men are brethren ; and that the few great men are to be the servants, and subject to the will, of the many. Two reflections must be permitted on this branch of the subject before we pass from it. The first, that in so far as a government is democratic it manifests the national character, since it is the expression of the national will. The people of Rome might have been either much better or much worse than the government imposed upon them ; but the people of America are neither much better nor much worse than the govern- ment which they themselves create and control. The people of the cities of New York and Phila- delphia, Chicago and St. Louis, have as good gov- ernments as they deserve, except indeed as those governments are imposed upon them by state legislatures in spite of their protests. It is in vain for the American to revile Congress ; Con- gress is a mirror which reflects the national features. On the one hand, its refusal to re- which, without it, would in all probability never be brought to the front. But it is still an institution in its infancy, and requir- ing development." — The Swiss Confederation, Sir F, O. Adams and C. D. Cunningham, eh. ^vi. See, also, Prof. Dieey's art, in The Contemporary Review for April, 1890; and Leeky's Liberty and Democracy, vol. i. pp. 277-293. The Referendum has already extended beyond Switzerland ; it is significant that it is advocated on conservative grounds, and within defined limits, by a writer who believes as little as does Mr. Lecky in the virtue and intelligence of the people. 54 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. pudiate national indebtedness or to pay it in depreciated currency ; its legislation for the pro- tection of the emancipated negro, and for the deliverance of the Indian from the barbarism to which previous legislation had consigned him ; its attempt to exercise, in the interest of the public, some control over the interstate railways ; its legis- lation against the Louisiana Lottery ; its submis- sion of the Alabama Claims and the Northwest Boundary question to arbitration ; its tardy and imperfect provision for international copyright, — are all reflections of the better thought and life of the American people. On the other hand, its bargaining and log-rolling in tariff legislation ; its cheap and noisy war-talk ; its reluctant surrender of the s23oils system ; its often absurd appro- priations for public imj^rovements designed and pressed through for personal ends ; its passionate haste when deliberation is demanded, and its some- times long delays when prompt action is indis- pensable to public warfare, — are all symptoms of dangerous elements in national life. For the government, whether of city, state or nation, is a government of the people, and is therefore a man- ifestation of their character. The other reflection is, that Christ's principle, •' Call no man your father upon the earth," can be defended only as it is based upon his other princi- ple, " One is your Father which is in heaven." There is not space here, and fortunately there is CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 55 not need, to trace the rise and progress of de- mocracy in order to show that religious liberty has always preceded and prepared for civil liberty, and that only as men have recognized God's sovereignty have they ceased to admit the sovereignty of their fellows. History and philosophy combine to make it clear that the only permanent foundation of self- government in the state is capacity for self-govern- ment in the individual ; and that the only basis for self-government in the individual is his frank recog- nition of a superior authority in a divine law, and therefore a divine Lawgiver, whose authority he does not question. The first condition of self- government is the ability to recognize an invisible law, and to subject one's self to its restraint. This is what Christ means when he says, " If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." ^ The law of liberty is the supremacy of the individual conscience in the individual life. " Despotism," says De Tocqueville, " may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they (the atheistic republicans) set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack ; it is more needed in democratic republics than in any other. How is it possible that societies should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strength- ened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed ? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters, if they be not submissive to the 1 John viii. 36. 56 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Deity? "1 Jesus Christ not only prophesied de- mocracy, but laid the foundations and furnished the inspiration essential for it. III. Christianity, which brings with it the dif- fusion of education and the diffusion of political power, brings with it also the diffusion of wealth. But this, as it is the least important, so it is the last to be furnished. Christ, in his work of refor- mation, as we shall have occasion to see later, begins with the man himself, and thence proceeds to the improvement of his condition and his cir- cumstances. This has been as true in his dealing with the race as in his dealing with the individual. First came the religious emancipation, next the intellectual, after that the political, last of all the pecuniary and material. It is not necessary to repaint pictures of Roman life and remind the reader of a state of society in which half the population were slaves, and in which of the other half a large proportion lived so upon the verge of starvation that they were only saved from death by great gifts of food coerced from the rich or bestowed by the government.^ Though the concentration of wealth in America is still great, and probably constitutes the greatest peril to the republic, still there has never been a time in the history of the world when wealth, with its ac- ^ De Tocqiieville, Democracy in America, ch. xvii. § 6. - Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 278 ; Uhlhorn, Con- fiict of Christianity with Heathenism, bk. i. ch. ii. p. 109. Cf. Gibbon, ch. xvii. vol. ii. p. 205, and notes, Harpers' edition, and ch. xxxi. vol. iii. p. o82 ; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Boman Antiquities, 2d ed. p. 550, art. '' Frumentariae Leges." CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 57 companying comforts, has been so widely diffused as to-day. Even those in whose hands it is con- centrated hold it in such forms and put to such uses that its benefits are diffused throughout the community. The main benefit enjoyed by the railroad king: who owns two hundred million dol- lars is the right to administer a great property for the benefit of the common people. They travel on the same railroad with him, generally at about the same rate of speed, often in the same train, and commonly with the same degree of comfort, though not of luxury. If he charges them more than he ought for tlieir carriage, all that he can do with his profits is to build another railroad to accom- modate another community. Whether the nation pays railroad kings too much for the service they render, whether railroads should be under the ad- ministration of railroad kings or under that of the people, are questions not here considered. What- ever the answer may be, it remains true that under the present system railroad wealth, manufacturing wealth, mining wealth, are diffused wealth. The capitalist no longer does in America what the Armenian capitalist still has to do in Turkey, — invest his gains in clothes which he cannot wear, or in gold or jewels which he is compelled to hide from the government. Society has been revolu- tionized so that there is no honest way by which a man can acquire wealth for himself without con- ferring some of it on his neighbors ; and so little recognition is there by the public of the service 58 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. which he renders to the public that truth gives keenness to the satire of George Bernard Shaw's definition : "To be a millionaire, then, is to have more money than you can possibly spend on your- self, and to appreciate at the same time the in- considerateness of those persons to whom such a condition appears to realize perfect contented- ness." ^ Yet despite the fact that wealth has never been so diffused, and the comforts wealth brings never so broadcast, as in America to-day, the thoughtful student of our national life must certainly recog- nize that the concentration of wealth is America's greatest peril, and a more equable distribution of wealth its greatest need. That cannot be counted either a Christian or a democratic state of soci- ety in which one per cent, of the people own one half of all the wealth, and the other half is very unequally distributed among the other ninety per cent, of owners,^ — in which there are a few million- aires at one pole of society who cannot possibly 1 " Socialism for Millionaires," Contemporary i?€i'ie?i', February, 1896. 2 G. K. Holmes in Pol Sci. Quarterly, vol. viii. No. 4, Dec, 1893, gives a fuller statement of the distribution of wealth. " Ninety- one per cent, of the 12,690,152 families of the country own no more than about twenty-nine per cent, of the wealth, and nine per cent, of the families own about seventy-one per cent, of the wealth." p. 592. " We are now prepared to characterize the concentration of wealth in the United States, by stating- that twenty per cent, of it is owned by three hundredths of one per cent, of the families ; fifty-one per cent, by nine per cent, of the families (not including CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 59 Spend their income, and many men and women at the other pole of society who have little or no in- come to spend. If Adam were created six thou- sand years ago, had lived until this time, and had succeeded in laying up one hundred dollars a day for every working day of the six thousand years of his life, he would not, without interest, have made as much money in six thousand years as the elder Cor- nelius Vanderbilt is said to have made in a lifetime. Jay Gould started in life with a mousetrap ; at the end of twenty-five years he unrolled certificates to the amount of a hundred million dollars. He made four million dollars on the average each year, that is to say, if we count three hundred days to the year, over thirteen thousand dollars a day ; and the statisticians tell us that the average wages of unskilled labor in this country is less than one millionaires) . . . and twenty-nine per cent, by ninety-one per cent, of the families. " About twenty per cent, of the wealth is owned by the power families that own farms or homes without incumbrance, and these are twenty-eight per cent, of all the families. Only nine per cent, of the wealth is owned by tenant families and the poorer class of those that own their farms or homes under incumbrance, and these together constitute sixty-four per cent, of all the families. As little as five per cent, of the nation's wealth is owned by fifty-two per cent, of the families, that is, by the tenants alone. Finally, 4,047 [millionaires] families possess about seven tenths as much as do 11,593,887 families." p. .593. " If a recomputation should give one third of the wealth to the 11,593,887 families, — and it can hardly do more than that, — still sixty-seven per cent, of the wealth is owned by nine per cent, of the families." p. 593. See, also, T. G. Shearman, " Owners of the United States," Forum, vol. viii., p. 263, November, 1889. 60 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. dollar a day, and of skilled workingmen not over four dollars a day as a maximum.^ In view of such inequalities as this, one need not be a radical to believe with James Russell Lowell in " giving to the hands, not so large a share as to the brain, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce." For the evils of such concentration of wealth are many and great. It tends to degradation at one pole of society by producing luxury, enervation, effeminacy, and a class of idle rich. It tends to degradation at the other pole of society by deaden- ing men's hopes, destroying their ambition, concen- trating their whole life's thought on the mere problem of living, condemning them to a life of drudgery, if not also to a spirit of servitude. It imperils liberty. In America our most serious and immediate danger is not that of reverting to mon- archy or aristocracy, or going on to an unregulated democracy: it is the danger of becoming a pluto- cracy ; a government nominally controlled by the people, but really administered by purchased agents of a wealthy oligarchy. The peril from public corruption is our greatest peril. '^ Give a man power over my subsistence," said Alexander Hamil- ton, " and he has power over the whole of my moral 1 For farm hands it averages about 75 cents a day (Dept. of Agriculture Rejjort, 1890) ; for day laborers in the towns, a little more, perhaps SI a day; for factory laborers .$1.50 {Mass. Labor Report, 1889, Miss. Labor Report, 1890) ; for skilled workmen in the building- trades, from $2 to $4 a day ( U. S. Senate Report, 1394, Finance Com., 1893). CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 61 being." ^ At the present time, one small body of men control the anthracite coal output, a second small body the oil, a third small body the meat, a fourth small body the transportation, and there are not wanting indications that a fifth small body will soon exercise a practical control over our currency, or medium of exchange. This is a condition of things perilously near a control over a people's subsistence, against which Alexander Hamilton warned his countrymen. Such concentration of wealth itself destroys the value of wealth ; for the products of industry are useful only as there are men and women able not only to use them, but to procure them by exchanging therefor the products of their own industry. Whenever the wealth of the community is concentrated in a few hands, the products of industry no longer have a market. We hear much of over-production as the cause of hard times. Over-production ! Too many shoes, — there- fore men go barefoot. Too much coal, — therefore men freeze. Too many houses, — therefore men are unsheltered. What a non sequitur 1 It is not over- production, it is under-demand, which produces hard times. In an Irish village, with one wealthy family possessing a million dollars and a peasant popula- tion with no money at all, there is but one family that wants shoes ; all the rest are shoeless, and the shoemaker has nothing to do. In a New England viUage, in which every family has adequate means of livelihood, the shoemaker is busy all the day 1 Quoted ill Wealth or Commonwealth, p. 529. 62 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. long. When every woman in America can pur- chase as many silk dresses as she wants, silk-mills will not stand idle. Concentration of wealth para- lyzes industry, diffusion of wealth stimulates in- dustry ; the greater the diffusion the more prosper- ous the nation. The economic problem of our age is how to secure the benefits of organization in pro- ducing wealth without incurring the evils of con- centration in the possession and enjoyment of it. It is not necessary here to consider by what pro- cess a wider diffusion of wealth can be promoted. It is enough to say, with Professor Sid g wick, that the problem of political economy is not any longer the acquisition, but is henceforth the equable distri- bution, of wealth. This is certainly not to be pro- moted by a blind distribution of the acquisitions of one class among the insatiable of another ; nor by laws limiting the products of industry, or denying to the industrious the rewards of their toil. But there are other methods open to the consideration of the American student. He will remember that unjust systems of taxation have favored the few at the expense of the many, and he will question whether we have yet found a system of taxation absolutely just and equal. He will remember that in America, by our abolition of the right of primo- geniture, we have limited the power of the " dead hand ; " and he will question whether we may not still further limit the right of men whose wealth has been largely dependent uj^on the community, to control absolutely the disposition of that wealth CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. 63 in the community after they are dead. He will see that legislation has operated to discourage gambling and encourage productive industry, and he will ask whether further legislation in the same direction may not be both wise and desirable.^ He will remember that war has always cast its heavi- est burdens on the poor, and he will question whether some more economical method of solving international difficulties cannot be discovered than the expensive and inefficient method of brute force. He will remember that, partly due to legislative influences, partly to influences purely social and industrial, the interest on capital has diminished and the vvasres of labor have increased, and he will ask himself the question whether this method of equalization of profits has reached its consum- mation. In short, he will believe that, as the effect 1 " The people of the country were startled — I certainly was — when the statement was made in an article in one of the maga- zines, a few weeks since, that one half the property and wealth of this covmtry were owned hy 36,000 persons. This statement, while not authentic, I imagine is not far from correct. But I give it as my deliberate judg'ment here and now that this condition of things could have never come about had it not been for the methods and devices that have grown up on the different ex- changes of the country in the last twenty-five years. The million- aires, the ten-millionaires, the forty-millionaires, or the one hun- dred-millionaires, almost without exception, have neither created nor earned their wealth. The ' royal road to wealth ' has been through the illegitimate speculation, stock and grain gambling, market- wrecking, railroad-wrecking, trusts, and the whole family of iniquities that have developed under the nefarious methods of the exchanges of this country." Speech by Hon. W. D. Washburn, of Minnesota, in U. S. Senate, Jidy 11, 1895. 64 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. of Christianity lias been the diffusion of religious and intellectual life and of political power, so it has been, and is yet to be, the diffusion of wealth and its attendant comforts ; and he will not be afraid to ask himself what can be done to promote still further that progress toward popular pros- perity w^iich Christ both promised and prophesied in his sermon at Nazareth. For that this democratizing process is a distinc- tive characteristic of modern life can hardly be doubted. Art has never surpassed that of Phidias, but modern inventions put beauty into the homes of the humblest workingman. AVe still go back to Homer and to Aeschylus for literature, but the printing-press and the common school put the best literature within the reach of the poorer people. Modern education is universal. Temples do not outshine those of Jerusalem, Ephesus, Rome, but there is a church in every village. There are no saints who in spiritual vision and consecrated life transcend the Apostle Paul, but into the slums of every modern city, apostles with the Pauline spirit are carrying the message of God's love for man and of man's love for his fellow-men. The process begun in Galilee, however, is not yet completed, and will not be until political economy learns and teaches the doctrine of distribution as well as of accumulation; until fools cease to hoard and wise men learn to scatter ; until every " boss " is dis- missed, and every ring broken ; until our systems of public education recognize the truth that to think CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY. ^^ is more than to know, and to be is more than to think ; until, in the words of the ancient prophet, " every valley is filled, and every mountain is brought low." CHAPTER III CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. Count Tolstoi, in " My Religion," thus de- scribes the condition of modern society : — *' People come to a farm. They find there all that is necessary to sustain life, — a house well furnished, barns filled with grain, cellars and store-rooms well stocked with provisions, implements of husbandry, horses and cattle, — in a word, all that is needed for a life of comfort and ease. Each wishes to profit by this abundance, but each for himself, without tliinking of others, or of those who may come after him. Each wants the whole for him- self, and begins to seize upon all that he can possibly grasp. Then begins a veritable pillage : they fight for the possession of the spoils ; oxen and sheep are slaugh- tered ; wagons and other implements are broken up into firewood ; they fight for the milk and grain ; they grasp more than they can consume. No one is able to sit down to the tranquil enjoyment of what he has, lest another take aAvay the spoils already secured, to surrender them in turn to some one stronger. All these people leave the farm bruised and famished. Thereupon the Master puts everything to rights, and arranges matters so that every one may live there in peace. The farm is again a treasury of abundance. Then comes another group of seekers, and the same struggle and tunmlt is repeated, till these in their turn go away bruised and angry, curs- CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 67 ing the Master for providing so little and so ill. The good Master is not discouraged ; he again provides for all that is needed to sustain life, and the same incidents are repeated over and over again." ^ This is not an inapt description of the results of " free competition." It is true that the worst forms of this competition have been in a measure overcome. In the beginning of the eleventh cen- tury, William the Conqueror formed an expedi- tion, sailed across the Channel, conquered the king whom the English people desired should reign over them, and took his crown and his land from him. Such a war of conquest could hardly be endured in our time. International law, certainly, would not recognize it as legitimate. It is true that, at the close of the Franco-German War, Germany took Alsace and Lorraine and demanded a money indem- nity ; but the war was not declared for the sake of acquiring Alsace and Lorraine, nor for the sake of the money indemnity. Taking property from another by open violence is no longer considered permissible. The robber barons no longer sit upon the Rhine and plunder the passer-by. Taking money by stealth from other men's pockets is not permissible. It is said that the Spartans did not condemn thievery. We have grown in so far better than the Spartans that we condemn thievery, even if we sometimes practice it. Flagrant fraud is no longer permissible. Gambling is no longer avowed and defended as honorable, and in its more repu- ^ Tolstoi's My Religion, ch. vii., Crowell's edition, p. 129. 68 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. table forms wears a disguise and bears an alias. The public sentiment of America has within the last ten years broken up the Louisiana Lottery and driven it out of the land. We have made some progress toward a better understanding and use of life. But we cannot say that the competition on Tolstoi's farm, in which the implements are split up into kindling-wood, is ended. How are we to meet the evils that grow out of misdirected and excessive acquisitiveness? Chris- tianity and Communism give different answers to this question. Each recognizes the evils, but they recommend different remedies. The difference is that between Christianity and asceticism, between the spirit which seeks to overcome evil with good and that which seeks to overcome it by prohibition and extirpation. Christianity recognizes neither absolute good nor absolute evil in man. The highest faculties have their perils, the lowest their useful purpose. Rev- erence, if sensuous, becomes the mother of supersti- tion ; love, if irrational, begets sentimentalism ; conscience inflamed by self-will is cruder than hate. On the other hand, appetite is necessary to the maintenance of bodily vigor ; combativeness and destructiveness are at once the progenitors and the servants of courage, — there is no heroism with- out them ; self-esteem is the backbone of the soul, • — without it man is a worm and no man ; and ac- quisitiveness, if a root of every manner of evil, is also a root of every form of productive industry. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 69 Christianity, therefore, proposes not to destroy, but to counterbalance ; not to extirpate, but to inspire, quicken, control. It does not destroy appetite, but inspires conscience and self-esteem to control it; nor eradicate combativeness and destructiveness, but directs them to noble ends ; nor extirpate acquisi- tiveness, but bids it serve benevolence. It is true that Christ says it is better to enter life maimed than, having two hands or two feet, to enter into hell lire ; that is, asceticism is better than death. But he who came eating and drinking did not set to his followers an example of asceticism. On the con- trary he declared of himself that he came that men might have life, and might have it more abundantly. To leave the world, or any part of the world, is to follow John the Baptist ; to follow Christ is to enter the world and every phase of the world. Thus Christianity and asceticism start from dif- ferent premises and proceed by different methods. Asceticism assumes that there are inherently evil faculties in man to be destoyed ; Christianity as- sumes that man is made in the image of God, and that every faculty, from the lowest to the highest, is to find its proper place and render its divine service. Asceticism seeks to conquer the evil that is in the world by removing the temptation ; Chris- tianity seeks to conquer it by making the individual strong to meet and master temptation. Asceticism endeavors to preserve innocence ; Christianity, to promote virtue. Asceticism sees peril in life, and seeks to escape the peril by lessening life ; Chris- 70 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. tianity sees the peril quite as clearly, but endea- vors to deliver from it by a more abundant life. Asceticism says, Abolish alcohol, then there will be no drunkenness ; Christianity says. Make the man strong to rule himself, teach him what alcohol is for and how to use it. How shall we meet the evils of an illicit imagination ? It is appealed to by licentious pictures, by debasing novels, by a corrupt drama. Puritanism says. Take down all pictures from the walls ; destroy all statues ; burn up all novels ; shut the door of all theatres, and drive the actors to more useful labor. Christianity says. Hang pictures on the walls, keep the library doors open ; teach men how to make art and fiction pure, and how with the imagination to minister to the higher life of man ; leave open the door of the theatre, and learn how to discriminate between the play which makes for life and the play which impairs it. How shall we deal with the evils of acquisitive- ness ? Communism says. The existence of private property sets on fire acquisitiveness ; because men can get and keep, they are acquisitive ; therefore abolish private property. In its extreme form communism is expressed in the often-quoted but misinterpreted aphorism of Proudhon, " Property is robbery." He does not mean that every man who owns property is a robber. But, as he ex- plains, slavery is assassination, — that is, the right of one man to own another man destroys all that is valuable and sacred in the other man's life. So, CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 71 he says, the right of one man to own property sets on fire within him a passion to get more property from his neighbor, and is the parent of robbery.^ Abolish private property ; let all property be owned in common ; let all industry produce a common wealth : then, and not till then, will the evils of acquisitiveness come to an end. That is communism. In the family the brother does not own more than the sister, nor the father more than the child, nor the husband more than the wife. There is a common property which is ad- ministered in a common interest. According to the communist, the family is the ideal of all social organism, and we shall not reach the ideal until we come to be one household and own all property in common. Nor can we set this notion of common property aside as unworthy of serious consideration. We cannot forget that this was the dream of Plato, — and Plato was a wise man. From his time to the days of " Looking Backward " it has been an ideal of noble men. They have conceived it, pondered it, prayed for it, expected it. He who accepts the fundamental principle that innocence, not virtue, the absence of evil, not victory over it, is the end of life ; that the extirpation of dangerous elements, not the retention and subordination of them to the reason and conscience, is the aim of moral develop- ment, — will if logical be a communist. If he be- lieves that the way to remedy the evils of life is to ^ Proudhon, Works^ vol. i. p. 11 and ff. 72 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. lessen life, his creed will conduct him straight to communism. If he thinks the way to promote temperance is to abolish alcohol ; the way to pre- vent licentiousness is to prohibit paintings, statu- ary, fiction, and the drama ; the way to abolish war is to extirpate from man combativeness and de- structiveness, — I do not see how he can escape tlje conclusion that the way to abolish the evils of acquisitiveness is to abolish private property. But virtue, not innocence, was Christ's aim, enlargement, not diminution, of life his principle, victory over temptation, not escape from it, his method. To make clear the contrast between the teach- ings of Christianity and communism, it is necessary to define the latter with a little more exactitude, and this is the more important because there is a great deal of misapprehension respecting the mean- ing of the word. The doctrine that the community ought to own some property in common is not communism. The best of our modern cities own hundreds of acres in parks and are continually adding to their hold- ings. It is not communism for the community to administer certain forms of industry, and to own the property necessary for that purj^ose. In the time of Thomas Jefferson it was questioned whether the carriage of letters ought not to be left to private enterprise, as now the express busi- ness and the telegraph, that is, the carriage of parcels and intercommunication by electricity, are left to private enterprise ; but the people of the CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 73 United States thought differently as to the post- office, and to-day they carry on the post-office themselves. It is not communistic for the nation to own its post-office property, and to administer the post-office. In Europe the post-office is also the express office, and the complex duties of the post-office are enlarging. Glasgow owns and oper- ates its city railroads ; Australia, all its railroads. Such ownership is not communism, and is not com- munistic. The question whether this country ought to own and operate its railroads, and its telegraph system, and its express business, are questions in political economy which I do not propose here to discuss. In my judgment it is indispensable to national welfare that the nation should exer- cise a control over the great interstate lines of railroads, while the peril to a Federal system in- volved in governmental ownership appears to me a serious if not an insuperable obstacle. On the other hand, the sooner our cities own the city lines of railroad the better both for the convenience of the people ^.nd the purity of our municipal gov- ernments. But, whatever opinions we may enter- tain on these and kindred questions, it is, or ought to be, quite clear that such ownership of railroads, whether by city, state, or nation, is not commu- nism and is not communistic, because it does not involve a denial of the rights of private property, and does not aj^proximate such a denial. It is not communistic for a community to be formed for the purpose of owning and enjoying property in com- 74 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. mon. A club forms in the Adirondacks. Its mem- bers buy a thousand acres, and go there every summer to enjoy the acres in common. It is a common property held for a common purpose and enjoyed in common. That is not communism, because it recognizes the right of private property, and is a combination for a particular purpose. Each of our great railroad systems is owned jointly by several thousand stockholders. Such a joint- ownership is not communistic. The church at Jerusalem is sometimes referred to as having adopted a species of communism because the dis- cijDles held property in common. But it was not communism, and it was not, strictly speaking, com- munistic. For the church did not deny — on the contrary it affirmed — the rights of private property. The members of the church might turn their prop- erty into the common stock or not, as they pleased, and might turn in as much or as little as they pleased. The contribution to a common treasury was a wholly voluntary contribution. When Ana- nias and Sapphira sold a possession and pretended to offer the proceeds of the sale to the church, while they really gave only a part, Peter, in his condemnation of them, affirmed the right of pri- vate property, and the recognition of that right by the infant church. " Whiles it remained," said he, " was it not thine own ? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? " ^ A brotherhood which has a common treasury, and to which any 1 Acts V. 4. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 75 member may contribute all or part of his property as he pleases, is not, properly speaking, a commu- nistic brotherhood. Such holding of property in common for special purposes is not communism nor communistic, for it does not tend to the doc- trine that there is no true right of private prop- erty. The doctrine that some things held as prop- erty are not proper subjects for property is not itself communism. In 1824 the State of New York gave a license by which it bestowed upon Living- ston and Fulton an exclusive right to use the navi- gable waters about New York city. It treated navigable waters as proper subjects for private property. Daniel Webster maintained before the Supreme Court of the United States that the navi- gable rivers of this nation are not private property, and that no exclusive right to use them can ever be given, and the Supreme Court sustained his position.! That is not communism. When Henry George, borrowing his affirmation from the Mosaic legislation, says that land is not a proper subject of private ownership, whether he is right or wrong, his doctrine is not communism. It is not commu- nism to affirm that certain things — air, water, navigable rivers, the soil and its contents — are not proper subjects for private property. For communism is the doctrine that all property should be held in common, — not that some things should be held in common, — and therefore is not, strictly speaking, property at all. A state of society in 1 Webster's Great Speeches, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824, p. 111. 76 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. which the property is vested in one set of men who administer it, or are supposed to administer it, with regard to the interests of another set of men, is not communism. The Roman Catholic Church owned, we are told, in the seventh century one third of the territory in France, in the ninth century one half the territory in Italy, and in the eleventh one half the territory in Germany and in England, and we are told — at least by the advocates of a communistic system — that it administered the trust better than it is administered to-day, — that wages were better, that the church was a better landlord, and that the houses were kept in better condition.^ Perhaps ! But the doctrine that the religious people ought to own all the property, and administer it for the irreligious people, is not communism. And there does not appear to be any immediate danger of its present introduction into American life. Communism is, j)rimarily, the doctrine that there is no right of personal j^roperty, — that all prop- erty should be held in common. One form of socialism is so far communistic that it maintains that a large section of property should be held in common. It maintains that all that property which is used in productive labor should be held in common. This is the doctrine of " Looking Backward." A man may own the cane with which he walks, but not the spade with which he digs. He may own a bicycle if he rides it for pleasure, 1 Nitti, Catholic Socialism, p. 78. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 77 but not if he rides it to business. He may own his house, but not his factory. He may own that which is used for enjoyment, but not that which is used for productive service. That is a phase of communism. The essence of communism is always, however, this : that private property is a mistake ; that the family is the ideal ; that all property should be owned in common, and all industry directed by a common head. The Bible teaches no such doctrine, and con- tains nothino^ which favors such doctrine. It con- demns in scathing terms the oppression of the poor by the rich. It condemns using money as the standard and measurement of life. It pronounces making acquisition the end of life as a supreme folly. It demands justice from the rich toward the poor, and urges charity from the rich toward the poor. But nowhere does it condemn the acquisi- tion of private property ; nowhere does it intimate an opinion in favor of the owning of property in common. Laveleye gives quotations from the early Fathers in which, quite in the spirit of mod- ern communism, they condemn the acquisition of wealth as a sin and its possession as a disgrace : — "The rich man is a thief" (St. Basil). "The rich are robbers ; a kind of equality must be effected by making gifts out of their abundance. Better all things were in common " (St. Chrysostom). " Opulence is always the product of a theft, committed, if not by the actual possessor, by his ancestors " (St. Jerome). " Nature created community ; private property is the 78 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. offspring of usurpation " (St. Ambrose). " In strict justice, everything should belong to all. Iniquity alone has created private property " (St. Clement).^ These utterances are not in the spirit of the Bible. On the contrary, the Old Testament de- clares that it is God who bestows wealth, as a reward for virtue, so that it becomes, though by no means an infallible sign, yet a sign of holiness and of divine favor .2 The Biblical condemnations of the vice of acquisitiveness imply by their very phraseology that there is a legitimate acquisition and a noble use of wealth. " Woe unto him that buildetb his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong, that useth his neighbors' service without wages and giveth him not for his work," ^ implies that there is a building which is right, and a hiring of service which is honorable. " Riches kept by the owner thereof to their hurt " ^ indicates that they may be employed to advan- tage. The condemnation of an evil use is not the same as the condemnation of all use ; and the mere fact that it is always the abuse, not the use, of property which is condemned, implies that there is a use which is commendable. There is as little authority in the New Testament as in the Old for the indiscriminate condemnation of private prop- erty. Christ repeats the beatitude of the Hebrew Psalter : " Blessed are the meek, for they shall ^ Laveleye, Socialism of To-day, Introd. p. xix. 2 Deut. viii. 18. » jgr. jxii. 13. ^ Eccles. v. 13. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNIS.}f. 79 inherit the earth." He adds to the promises of the ancient law the sanction of his own promise : " There is no man that hath left house, or bre- thren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mo- thers, and children, and lands, with persecutions ; and in the world to come eternal life." ^ These are not the promises of a communist, or the founder of a communistic system. If some pas- sages in the New Testament, when superficially read, appear to condemn the acquisition of prop- erty, a more careful reading corrects the misappre- hension. Christ does indeed say, " Woe unto you that are rich ; " ^ but, in adding the reason, " for you have received your consolation," he both inter- prets and limits the woe to those who have made riches the object of life. Paul does indeed declare that they who toill ^ be rich fall into temptation, but both the original and the context make it clear that he condemns only those who make the acqui- sition of riches the purpose of their life. It is indeed true that James denounces rich men, but it is rich men who have " lived in pleasure on the 1 Mark x. 30. I can see no reason for thinking this means merely greater enjoyment of what the disciple has ; on its face it means absolute increase of possession, and history confirms the promise as thus understood. 2 Luke vi. 24. ^ Tim. vi. 9. hi Se fiov\6fxivoi irXovrelv, i. e. those who will to be rich. 80 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. earth and been wanton." ^ It is true that Christ pictures Lazarus as in Abraham's bosom and the rich man as tormented in hell, but it is because the rich man passed by in indifference the poor man who lay uncared for at his door.^ It is true that the rich young ruler is told to sell that which he has and give to the poor if he would have treasure in heaven, but it is also true that He who discerned the secret hearts of men saw in this seeker after the kingdom one who " trusted in uncertain riches," and applied to him the same touchstone of loyalty which he had applied to the twelve who had left all to follow the Master.^ In his teaching, Christ never condemns private property ; he impliedly approves it. He compares the kingdom of heaven to a merchantman who sold all that he had in order to purchase one pearl.^ He compares it to a capitalist who apportions his property among his stewards in unequal portions ; unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to every man according to his sev- eral ability. And in the day of reckoning the only one who is condemned is he who has done nothing: to increase the store intrusted to him.^ The command in the analogous parable, " Occupy till I come," is rightly rendered by the Revised Version, "Trade herewith till I come." ^ And the issue of the parable indicates the object of the trading, — increase of wealth. It is indeed a 1 Jas. V. 5. 2 Luke xvi. 19-21, 25. ^ Mark x. 17-27. 4 Matt. xiii. 45, 46. ^ Matt. xxv. 14-30. ^ Luke xix. 12-27. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 81 truism that there can be no distribution without accumulation, no beneficence without acquisition, no giving without something first obtained which may be given. Christianity, then, puts no discouragement on industry. It recognizes the ambition to acquire property as a worthy ambition, provided it is under right direction and guided to right ends. The first duty a man owes is the duty of earning his own livelihood, and the livelihood of those who are intrusted to him. This is one of the foundation virtues. It underlies all civilization, all commer- cial well-being, all individual manhood. When acquisitiveness rules and love serves, the man is wrong; but when acquisitiveness serves and love rules, the man is right. The ambition to acquire, if acquisition is made subordinate to high and noble ends, is a noble ambition. Christ's cure for the evils of acquisitiveness is not communistic. It is that intimated in the para- ble of the talents before referred to. Property is a trust. Whatever a man possesses is given to him, but the gift is not absolute ; it is a gift in trust. He is to use it for the benefit of the whole community. He is to consider himself only as a single member of that community. The doctrine that property is a trust is implied in the law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." If love means emotional ecstacies, this is not a com- mand to love at all. No man is entranced by his own picture, thrilled by his own love-letters, or de- 82 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. sirous to caress himself. To love one's neighbor as one's self is to count one's self one of the com- munity, and treat all as worthy of equal consid- eration. If it is right to respect a neighbor's property, it is right to respect one's own ; but it is not right to have one law for one's self and an- other for the neighbor.^ He who loves his neigh- bor as himself will count his own interests part of the common interests ; his rights will be measured in his judgment by the rights of his neighbor. Personal welfare and public welfare will become identified. Egoism and altruism will be coopera- tive, not conflicting. The doctrine that property is a trust is explicit in the teachings of Christ con- cerning property. Man is a steward ; to different men are given different possessions ; each one is to trade with the talents intrusted to him, but all are to give account to the Master in a future day of reckoning.^ Christ reinforces this truth by show- ing the wisdom as well as the beauty of beneficence. Even the unjust steward, who does not care for his Master's interests, or for those of the tenants, is shrewd enough to seek the tenants' favor by his administration of his Master's estate for the ten- ants' benefit.^ The right use of property is one of the tests of the judgment day. The faithful and wise servant is one who sees that his Lord has made him ruler in order that he may give to the servants of the household meat in due season.'^ 1 See Ps. xii. 2 ; Deut. xxv. 13-15. ^ Matt. xxv. 14-30. 8 Luke xvi. 1-12. ^ Luke xii. 42. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 83 Not skill to acquire, but skill to bestow, is evi- dence of wisdom. The man who, when his barns are full to bursting, purposes to build greater barns for more grain, and whom the world calls shrewd and prosperous, Christ calls Fool ! ^ For such a man knows only how to accumulate, not how to distribute. Once Christ affords a picture of the contrast between Paradise and Gehenna.^ He who is sentenced to torment is the rich man who did not recognize this law of trust, but left the poor at his gate uncared for. Once Christ furnishes a dramatic picture of the day of judgment.'^ Men are separated before the Son of Man in that day, one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And the blessed are those who have used their opportunities to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the stranger, comfort the imprisoned ; and the outcast are those who did not so use them. This is Christ's law of ownership. Property is a trust. Every man who has property is a trustee. Whether it is one dollar or a hun- dred and fifty million dollars, in no way affects the nature of the responsibility. Any man who uses his property, or any part of his property, for himself alone, is guilty of a breach of trust. He is a defaulter before God. For his defalcation he must at the last give account. It will not be enough that he has earned the money honestly; nor that he has not used it oppressively ; nor that he has given certain portions of it — a tenth, for 1 Luke xii. lH-21. -' Luke xvi. 19-31. ^ Matt. xxv. 31-46. 84 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. example — in what he calls benevolence. It is not his to use. No part of it is his to use. To the affirmation, " What 's mine 's mine," the answer of Christ is, " It is not." No man owns anything. At the last every man must meet the question, " How have you administered the trust ? " If he is wise he will be asking himself this question day by day. This teaching of Jesus Christ is not poetic, allegorical, fanciful. The proj)het by intuition perceives what slow-thoughted science by patient investigation subsequently demonstrates. The doc- trine that property is a trust rests on a scientific basis. It is the teaching of political science as well as of the Christian religion. In forty years, from 1850 to 1890, the wealth of this country is estimated to have grown from a little over seven thousand million to a little over sixty-five thousand million, or from $307 per capita to $1,036.01 per capita.^ What is the secret of this marvelous growth in wealth ? It is, first of all, discovery.^ We have found in this land unmeasured wealth, which God has in 1 The exact figures as given by the census reports are as fol- lows : — 1850 1860 1870' 1880 1890 23,191.876 31,443.321 38,558,371 50,1.55,783 02,622,250 $7,135,780,228 16,159,616,068 30,068,518,507 43,642,000,000 65,037,091,197 $307.68 513.93 779.82 870.13 1,036.01 1 Currency = about $24,000,000 in gold. 2 See ch. vi. for specific figures. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 85 ages long past stored here, — forests in Northern and Northwestern States, waiting to do obeisance to the woodman's axe ; water-jjower in North- eastern streams, waiting to be lassoed and har- nessed by Yankee enterprise ; harbors and great river-ways, built long before river and harbor bills were dreamed of ; coal in Pennsylvania mines and oil in subterranean reservoirs, waiting for pick and blast to call them forth ; wheat and corn, sleeping in Western prairies until Prince Labor should awaken them with his wand to fruitful life ; gold and silver in Colorado and California mines, im- prisoned until civilization should unbolt their prison doors and summon them forth. To whom belong of right these treasures which are not of our making ? To the people first in possession of the soil ? Then they belong to the despoiled Indian races. To the first discoverers? Then to the Spanish and French races; certainly not to the present owners, who are neither the discoverers nor their heirs or assigns. To the men who bring them from their hiding-places and make them of value to mankind ? Then the forest belongs to the woodman, the coal mine to the operator, the prairie to the cultivator of the soil. Something might perhaps be said for each of those hypo- theses ; the one hypothesis that cannot easily be defended in the court of reason, upon any theory, is the hypothesis on which we have in fact acted, — that they belong of right to the strongest (or to the most grasping and unscrupulous) in a struggle, not 86 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. for existence, but for luxury and power. This wealth has been like a shower of silver pieces flung out into a populous Italian street by a passer-by. We have all scrambled for it ; a few of the strong- est have won the prize, and the rest look on with covetous eyes. This wealth of the continent was here when our ancestors arrived here. It is not the product of our capacity and our industry. It belongs to Him who put it here. And unless we suppose that He put it here for the benefit of a few men, unless we deny that He is the Father '' from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named," then it was put here for the benefit of all his children. Whether it is administered by the nation as a nation, or by individuals to whom the course of events has given control of it, it is a sacred trust for all, not the special privilege and possession of the few. It does not come within the scope of this volume to discuss the Single Tax ; nor the doctrine on which it rests, that land is not a proper subject of jDersonal ownership. It is certain that the land and its contents were recognized by the Old Testa- ment law as belonging to God as the King of the Hebrew people.^ It is equally certain that the law of eminent domain recognizes no less the doctrine that in the last analysis they belong to the sovereign power of the nation, whei-ever that power may be lodged. If land is made a subject of private ownership, it is only because the sovereign power J Lev. XXV. 23 ; Deut. xxii. 43 : 2 Chron. vii. 20 ; Joel iii. 2. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 87 deems such an arrangement better for the common welfare than is common ownership. Whether that opinion is correct or not, is not primarily a ques- tion of morals but of economics, and questions of economics it is not my purpose in this volume to discuss. It is enough here to point out the unquestionable fact that, if land and its contents are proper subjects of personal ownership, they are so only on the hypothesis that the owner is a trustee, and that by such trusteeship the com- mon welfare is better promoted than by joint con- trol. There is neither moral nor scientific basis — nor, for that matter, historical or legal basis — for the notion that the land and its contents be- long, or can by any possibility belong, to the acci- dental owner to use for himself, in disregard of public welfare. The scientific alternative is be- tween personal ownership in trust for the commu- nity, and public or communal ownership. Next to discovery of wealth hidden in the earth is what we call invention, which is, in truth, simply the discovery and application of a like wealth hid- den in the forces of nature. We are rich beyond all previous ages because we have found a way to make Nature do our work and accumulate our wealth for us. God puts his power at our disposal. He is the Genius of the lamp who has come to do our bidding, — to be, as it were, our servant. His watercourses grind our grist for us ; his fire sum- mons from the water its secret energy, and puts at our service unestimated horse-power to drive our 88 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. machinery for us ; his lightning comes from the clouds to carry our messages, and light our streets and public halls and private houses. The ancient Hebrew literature contains the story of blind Sam- son grinding in the prison of his enemies. In America it is God who is grinding for his children ; we are blind, not He. There is not a spark of electricity that runs across the wires, not a sound that trembles on the telephone, not a throb of the steam-engine, not a drop of falling water in cascades, which is not the work of God. For whom ? For the few fortunate men who have had the skill to discover these latent forces, or the sagacity to take advantage of some one else's discovery ? No, for his entire family. There is a reason in justice, and a reason in expediency, why the nation should give a large measure of the first profits to the men whose insight first discovers, whose wisdom first applies to useful service, these divine forces. But the forces themselves are not private proj)erty ; they belong to humanity. The very existence of our patent laws is public testimony to the truth that every such force is public property ; private prop- erty only so far as the public chooses for its own benefit to relinquish its larger right. A third source of national wealth has been in franchises created by the people for the public welfare, and transformed into private wealth through public neglect and j^rivate sagacity. The railroads of the United States are estimated as worth above ten thousand million dollars, about CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNIS Jf. 89 one half of which is represented by stock.^ What gives them their value? It is not the roadbed, the iron or steel rails, the stations and surrounding grounds: it is that the railroads are the public highways. Formerly our public highways afforded poor facilities for locomotion, but they were free ; now they afford admirable facilities for locomo- tion, but they are private property. The telegraph wires are the nerves of the nation ; the railroads are its arterial system. The body politic has sold or given away its nerves and its arteries. The nation could well afford to pay liberally the men who invented the telegraph and created the railroad system. It could afford to pay well for poles and wires, for roadbed and stations. If it choose to leave pole and wire, roadbed and station, under private control, it may certainly do so. Whether that is wise or not is matter for further considera- tion. Here it must suffice to say that the wealth of both telegraph and railroad, of long interstate lines and of short electric or horse-car lines, is due to the fact that they are indispensable means of inter-communication ; this wealth is derived from the public and belongs to the public. Like the wealth of the forests, the mines, and the prairies, like the wealth of gravitation, fire, electricity, it is a wealth of the people, and belongs of right to the people. ' Twenty-five years ago this was radical, not to say 1 Beport of Interstate Commerce Commission, 1894, on Statistics of Railways in the U. S., 267. 90 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. revolutionary, doctrine. It is so no longer. It is established and recognized law. The courts have affirmed that the railroads are the highways of the nation, and that the railroad companies are the servants of the nation and are subject to its con- trol.^ Both state and national legislation are based upon this fundamental principle. The ap- pointment of Railroad Commissioners by the State, the creation of an Interstate Commission by the nation, both assume the correctness of this prin- ciple. So far as these great franchises are con- cerned, the law of the land and the principles of Jesus Christ agree. Railroad property is a trust ; the owners are trustees ; and the trust is one which the courts will compel the trustees to administer in the interest and for the benefit of the people. But if these elements of wealth — the land and its contents, natural forces and their uses, and the great highways — are somewhat more apparently common wealth than are the products of individual industry of hand and brain, they are not really more so. Not only these values, but all values of any considerable consequence, are themselves the products of that civilization which is the common contribution of the nation. The wealth of America has attracted hither millions of immigrants, and has given to our country a growth unprecedented, which fills the student of national life sometimes with a sense of exaltation, sometimes with a sense 1 See cases cited by A. B. Stickney : The Railway Problem, Ap- pendix, p. 239. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 91 of awe akin to alarm. But it is this immigration which has created the wealth. These hungry mouths have given a value to our breadstuffs ; these multiplied homes have made a market for our coal ; these rushing hordes of immigrants and traders have enriched our railway companies. No man ever by himself created or ever can create wealth. Into the locomotive have entered the hopes and fears, the successes and failures, the labors and achievements, of many lives now ended. The rail- road owner cannot and does not recompense the grave. Our best vases to-day cost Palissy the pot- ter many a pang, though he never saw them ; and for the sake of them his wife and children often went supperless to bed. Can we pay them? The wharfage of New York city, which, with reckless lack of prevision, has been allowed to become private property, is valued solely because of the three million people who live on and about Man- hattan Island. Every farmer in Illinois helps to enhance the value of the Illinois Central Rail- road ; every shopkeeper in New York adds to the value of every w^arehouse. Thus it is clear that our wealth is, in its source and origin, a com- mon wealth. Our system of exchange is a rude method of balancing values with one another. Possibly there may be no better one discoverable ; possibly no amendment of it may be conceivable. But no thouo'htful man will contend that it affords absolute adjustment or represents a divine equity. The wealth of everv millionaire comes from the 92 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. resources of the land of which he has got con- trol ; or from natural forces, the chief grist of which falls into his bag ; or from public fran- chises, given by the State and created by the State ; or from that general profit which grows spontaneously out of the presence and power of a generally diffused civilization and an increasing population. The least part of it is that which his own effort has created. It does not follow that all this property is to be held in common and administered in common, but it does follow that every man who controls any part of this property, whether it has come from the soil, or from natural forces, or from public high- ways, or from what he calls private enterj^rise, has taken it from the hands of God, and is to adminis- ter it in trust for humanity. That is the doctrine of Christianity. It leaves to the people individual enterprise ; it contemplates and intends variations of wealth and of condition ; but it maintains this fundamental principle : That every man is a trus- tee, and every man must account for the adminis- tration of his trust. He is a trustee, first of all, for his own family. Whatever money comes to us we are to hold in trust, first, for our own household, not for luxury, which enervates and destroys, but for education, culture, development. We have not only a right, but a duty, to make provision for the manhood of our boys and the womanhood of our girls. Next, we are trustees for those who are en- CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 93 gaged with us in industrial life. A writer in the " Forum " a few years ago expressed the following judgment : — " I admit — no, I assert — the demands of charity on every human being, but charity and business are and forever ought to be divorced. An employer is under no more financial obligation to his workmen after he has paid their current wages than they are to him, or to a passer-by on the street whom they never saw." ^ I believe that is an unchristian heresy. Every man who has workingmen in his employ is a trus- tee for them. He and they are in a true sense partners engaged in a common entei'prise. He owes them an obligation which wages do not meet. The first duty of an employer to his employed is the duty of loyalty. When a ship founders in storm, the captain is not the first to abandon her, leaving the crew to go down. When a regiment is in peril in battle, the colonel does not flee and leave the reoiment to 2:0 under the sod. When the Christians in Armenia are trembling in fear of martyrdom, the missionaries do not follow the advice given to them and flee to the coast for pro- tection. They stay with their native Christian brethren so long as staying can be of any possible service. And the time will come when every mer- chant and every manufacturer will follow the example which is now set by many a merchant and 1 W. A. Croffut : " What Rights have Laborers ? " Forum, May, 1886. 94 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. many a manufacturer, and will stand by his crew in stormy times. ^ Lastly, there is the trust held by men of wealth for the benefit of the entire community. What is the meaning of this term, " men of wealth " ? It cannot be accurately defined. For what is wealth in one community, one class, or one epoch, is not in another. But, for my purposes here, I will define the man of wealth as one who, after fulfilling his trust to his own family by pro- viding adequately for tiieir best equipment, and fulfilling his trust to his copartners, without whose cooperative industry his accumulations would have been impossible, still has a surplus. That surplus belongs to the community; it has been derived from the community ; and it is to be administered for the benefit of the community. Every man ought to aim at securing something of such a surplus, not merely as a provision against the accidents of life or the infirmities of old age, not merely as a provision against accidents or infirmities which may involve his household or his business copartners in misfortune, but also as ^ "I said: 'You prefer then, to live surrounded by your em- ployees, and do not mind the white flutter of washing-days, or the shouts of children at play below, because you think you can bet- ter their lot by your presence ? ' ' It is not, with me, a question of preference at all,' was the reply. ' This mill and these people are my life, my career, the next greatest responsibility I have in the world after that of my own family. I dare as soon desert my flag in action as leave my hands without their natural and ap- pointed head. Good-by.' " — Pidgeon. Old- World Questions and New-World Answers, p. 128. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 95 a means of giving back to the community, in some form, the wealth which the community has enabled him to accumulate. But every man ought to recog- nize the truth that benevolence does not consist merely in distributing his surplus. Benevolence is the law of life, not of this small fragment of life. All property, not merely the surplus, is subject to the law of love. Is there any use in rich men ? Is it of advan- tage to the community that there should be men in it who, having discharged their duty to their fami- lies and to their copartners, have still a surplus which they can employ either in business enter- prises or in so-called benevolences for the public welfare? This is one of the critical questions of our times. However impatient men of wealth may be that this question should be asked, how- ever indignant they may be with the questioners, it is well for them to know that democracy is ask- ing this question, and is seriously determined to get an answer to it. While on the one hand concen- tration of wealth has certainly increased during the past century, if it is not now increasing, on the other hand it is equally certain that wages are ris- ing, that interest is dimhiishing, and that the power of men of wealth to transmit their surplus to suc- ceeding generations has been materially lessened, and is likely to be lessened still more. The most casual student of political and industrial history in Great Britain and the United States cannot fail to see, in the progressive Income Tax, in the pro- gressive Inheritance Tax, in the Single Tax move- 96 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. ment, and in the socialistic or semi-socialistic de- mands for the extension of governmental control over certain forms of industry, protests against the concentration of wealth, and demands for the ad- ministration of the surplus by democratic methods, — protests far too powerful to be treated with con- tempt. Personally I concur with Frederic Harri- son in both the opinions which he expresses in the following significant paragraph : — " My own creed, on which this is not the time or place to enlarge, teaches me that in our industrial age all wealth is really the product of thousands working together in ways of which they are not conscious, and with complex and subtle relations that no analysis can apportion. The rich man is simply the man who has managed to put himself at the end of the long chain, or into the centre of an intricate convolution, and wliom society and law suffer to retain the joint product conditionally ; partly because it is impossible to apportion the just shares of the co- operators, and partly because it is the common interest that the products should be kept in a mass and freely used for the public good. But this personal appropri- ation of wealth is a social convention, and jiurely condi- tional on its proving to be convenient. The great prob- lem which the next century will have seriously to take in hand and finally solve is this : Are rich men likely to prove of any real social use, or will it be better for society to abolish the institution ? For my own part, I see many ways in which they can be of use, and I ear- nestly invite them to convince the public of this before it is too late." ^ ^ " Uses of Rich Men in a Republic," Forum, Dec, 1893, vol. xvi. pp. 487, 488. CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 97 They certainly cannot convince the public of their usefulness by personal extravagance, by ex- pending their wealth on palatial residences, sump- tuous repasts, competitive displays in dress, and then seeking to defend their course by the affirma- tion, which deceives no one, not even themselves, that they are thus furnishing employment to labor. Nor will they succeed any better in convincing the public of their utility by retaining their property in their own possession until death relaxes their grip upon it, and then bestowing it in miscalled public benefactions by their will. " What is wrested from me," says Mr. Gladstone, " by the gripe of death, I can in no true sense be said to give ; and yet we hear of the bounty and munifi- cence of A or B, and that such and such a hospital was founded at the sole costs and charges of C, when there was neither bounty nor munificence, since nothing can be given whicli is not also taken away from the giver ; but nothing is here taken from any giver by the bequest he makes, for it is already gone ; nor are there any costs or charges in the case, for no man can spend his money, any more than he can walk in Bond Street or Hyde Park, after he is dead." ^ There is only one way in which rich men can justify their existence to the community. It is by using, in the administration of their trust for the public, the capacities with which they have been 1 Nineteenth Century, Nov., 1890 (vol. xxviii. p. 685) Mr. Car- negie's " Gospel of Wealth." 98 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. endowed, and by which they have acquired the wealth which it is their duty to distribute. Those of us whose surplus is not large, or who have none at all, must frankly recognize the difficulty of the task which his exceptional position lays upon the man of wealth. It is almost impossible to give money to the individual without danger of pauper- izing the individual ; it is not easy to give money to the comnmnity without danger of pauperizing the community. But if the men whose abilities have enabled them to accumulate wealth have not also the ability to distribute it wisely, a democratic age will find a way to distribute that surplus by democratic methods, which is only another way of saying that the providence of God will deprive them of a trust which they lack either the fidelity or the capacity to administer. This is not com- munism : it is simply the affirmation of the self- evident principle, that a trustee who is unfaithful in the administration of his trust cannot be and will not be left in charge of it. The railroad millionaire may well question w^hat proportion of his wealth should go into colleges, hospitals, or other public charities, and what into new railroads, opening up new countries and making possible new homes for the hoQieless, and larger life for the iui- prisoned and the impoverished. The mill-owner may well believe that he will feed more hungry ones by enlarging his business than by establishing a soup-house. Neither Christianity nor science insists upon a common ownership and a common CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM. 99 administration of property, nor upon the deflection of any specified proportion from what are called " business enterprises " to what are called " be- nevolences." But Christianity and science com- bine to insist that every property-owner is a trustee, and that the questions, how much shall be spent on the family, how much distributed through the em- ployees in wages or dividends, how much employed in enlarging a business which is itself beneficence, and how much given to what are technically re- garded as charities, are questions, not between the selfish and the benevolent use of property, but be- tween different forms of fulfilling the same essen- tial trust. In the light both of Christian teaching and of scientific teaching, all wealth is to be held and administered as a common wealth. CHAPTER lY. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. If we are to understand the relation of Chris- tianity to Socialism, we must understand what Christianity is and what Socialism is. But there are many and very divergent definitions both of Christianity and Socialism. Some men regard Christianity as a system of doctrine ; some as a kind of worship ; some as an ecclesiastical orga- nization ; some as a purely individual life. The differences in definition of Socialism are quite as numerous and quite as great. Compare these two definitions, both by men eminent for culture, and for ripeness and sobriety of judgment. The first is James Russell Lowell's : — " Socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of interests, sympathy ; the giving to the hands, not so large a share as to the brain, but a larger share than hitherto, in the wealth they must combine to produce ; means, in short, the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction." ^ If that is a correct definition of Socialism, I shoidd hope we are all Socialists. The other ^ James Russell Lowell, Democracy and other Addresses, p. 40. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 101 definition is Professor Robert Flint's, of Edin- burgh, a man scarcely less eminent in his own country than James Russell Lowell is in ours : — " Socialism, then, as I understand it, is any theory of social organization which sacrifices the legitimate liberty of individuals to the will or interests of the community." ^ It would be very difficult to find any man any- where who would profess to be a Socialist under that definition. One might say, " I approve of sacrificing the interests of the individual to the interests of the community," but it would be very difficult to find any man anywhere who would say, " I believe in sacrificing the legitiynate liberty of individuals to the will or interests of the commu- nity." If Professor Flint's definition is correct, there are no Socialists ; if James Russell Lowell's is correct, we are all Socialists. I do not propose to add another definition of Socialism; but I propose to try to trace briefly its history, and point out some of its character- istics, in order to show in what respects it agrees with, in what it differs from, Christianity. Men have attempted to trace Socialism back to early ages. They have found it in the mediaeval church ; in Plato's " Republic ; " in Christ's teach- ing ; in the teaching of the Hebrew prophets ; and in the organization of the Hebrew theocracy. And it is unquestionably true that in all ages prophetic souls have anticipated a better social ^ Robert Flint. Socialism, p. 17. 102 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. order, one which shall realize the hopes of human brotherhood. Such a vision of a future was the Theocracy of the Old Testament and the King- dom of God in the New. Such was the Republic of Plato, the City of the Sun of Campanella, the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, the New Atlantis of Bacon, the Oceana of Harrington, the Voyage to Icaria of Cabet, the Basiliade of Morelly, the Society of Equals of Babeuf, and the Phalanstere of Fourier. 1 But, however true it may be that every age has felt a dissatisfaction with the exist- ing social order and aspirations for a social re- generation, the word " Socialism " is of wholly modern origin. It came into existence in the early part of this century to designate a widely-spread reaction against the individualism which immedi- ately preceded it, as that in turn was a reaction against the prior paternalism.^ In the sixteenth century Luther woke slum- bering Europe with a trumpet-call to liberty. ^ I do not mean to indicate that these are analogous, except in this, that they indicate a social unrest in all ag-es, a strong- sense in prophets and poets that not merely individual improvement, but social reconstruction, is necessary to the highest welfare of the human race. ^ The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the date as 1835, and says the word was coined to designate the system of John Owen. This statement agrees with Mr. Holyoak's History of Cooperation, vol. i. p. 210, ed. 1875. Professor Flint throws some doubt on this statement of the origin of the word, but none on the fact that it first appeared in the language about the year 1835, and as the designation of a system, or group of systems, formed in oppo- sition to individualism. See Flint's Socialism, pp. 12, 13. CHRISTIAX/ry AXD i^OCIALISM. 103 His fundamental doctrine was not justification by faitli ; it was the individual responsibility of every soul to God. Against the notion that that respon- sibility could be assumed by a corporate institu- tion, by a vicar of Christ, he insisted that every man must give account of himself to God ; and that every man, therefore, had not only a right but a duty of judging of his religious obligations, of framing his religious opinions, and of answering to the Almighty for those opinions and for the fulfillment of that duty. This doctrine he kept within due bounds, but the men who followed him did not. Out of the Lutheran movement there sprang up an excessive individualism. In theology it led to what is known as the Anti- nomian movement, that is, to the doctrine that there is no law, — that every man is free to do what he will ; in church order, to sectarianism, — not only to a denial of the authority of the Pope and of the church, but also to a denial of the unity of the church. The process of segrega- tion went on until, in this country, there are seven great denominations, and, if you count the smaller ones, one hundred and forty-three different denominations ; for each one of the great denomi- nations is divided into smaller ones, according to the taste, the fancy, or the opinions of those who constitute it. Thus you may belong, if you like, to any one of six kinds of Adventists, twelve kinds of Mennonites, twelve kinds of Presbyteri- ans, thirteen kinds of Baptists, sixteen kinds of 104 VHRISrJANJTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Lutherans, seventeen kinds of Methodists, besides a variety of Episcoj^alians and Congregationalists. And, if this freedom of choice does not satisfy you, you can join any one of the one hundred and fifty-three independent congregations which have no fellowship with any one. Yet there are those who think there is not liberty in the Church of Christ ! 1 This excessive individualism which has brought about these sectarian differences in the church appeared in a similar manner in government. Rousseau produced his doctrine of the Social Con- tract.^ He maintained that the state of nature is the ideal state. Men, then, were in liberty, he said ; every man could do as he pleased. But men found certain advantages would accrue from com- bination. They therefore surrendered a part of their liberty, contracting one with another to give up something of their freedom for a common gain to be obtained by a combination. Little by little thus they parted with their liberty. And Rous- seau tauo^ht that what the world wanted was to return to a state of nature, to annul the contract, to reestablish the individualism of the early ages. Human nature he held to be naturally good ; the evils in society were due to government : abolish government and men would return to their natural goodness. 1 H. K. Carroll, The lieligious Forces of the United States, p. xv. - Not original with him, except in the form in which he stated it and the popularity which he imparted to it. CHRISTJAXITY AXD SOCIALISM. 105 The French are theorists, the Anglo-Saxons are practical. In a pscudo history, whose sole au- thority was a poet's imagination, the Anglo-Saxon people took little interest ; in a philosophy of gov- ernment, which promised to deliver the people from the remains of feudalism and lead them on to lib- erty, they took a great deal of interest. Kous- seauism, borrowed by him from England and transported back again to England, where it modi- fied without revolutionizing government, and to America, where it was accepted as the foundation of their political theories by a considerable and influential class of American political reformers, became this : The sole function of government is to govern ; to protect the community from the aggres- sions of other communities, and the individual from the aggressions of other individuals : there its duty stops.i Its existence is due to evil ; it is itself a necessary evil, and consequently the less govern- ment there is the better.^ 1 " The Constitution of Alabama expresses admirably the best spirit of American statesmanship when it states that ' the sole and only leg-itimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppres- sion.' " W. E. H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty., vol. i. p. 118. - The kinship between the French, English, and American schools of individualism is indicated by the following extracts, — the first, a characterization of the French doctrine by an English interpreter, the best brief statement I have been able to find ; the second, the definition of the English school by perhaps its most eminent philosopher ; and the third, a statement of the radical American school by its most popular exponent : — "That complete freedom or lawlessness — for the two things 106 rilRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. But individualism did not stop here. If govern- ment is a necessary evil, it is not strange that men were supposed to be identical — is the natural condition of man ; that all men are born and continue equal in rights ; that civil society is an artificial state resting- upon a contract, between these sovereign units, whereby the native independence of each is sur- rendered, and a power over each is vested in the body politic as absolute as that which nature gives every man over his limbs ; ' that human nature is good, and that the evil in the Avorld is the result of bad education and bad institutions ; ' that man, uncor- rupted by civilization, is essentially reasonable ; and that the will of the sovereign units, dwelling in any territory under the social contract, that is. of the majority of them, expressed by their dele- gates, is the rightful and only source of justice and of law, — such is the substance of the dogma which the Revolution has been endeavoring for a century to unite to the reality of life." W. S. Lilly, A Century of Revolution, p. 15, " One simple principle is entitled to govern absolutely the deal- ing of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, namely, the principle that the sole end for which man- kind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protec- tion, — that the sole purpose for which poAver can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others." J. S. Mill on Liberty, ch. i. p. 21. " Some writers have so confounded societj' with government as to leave little or no distinction between them ; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness ; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages in- tercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but gov- ernment, even in its be.st state, is but a necessary evil ; in its worst state an intolerable one ; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a Government which we might expect in a country without Government, our calamity is heightened by reflect- ing that we furnish the means by wliich we suffer.'' Thomas Paine, Common Sense, vol. i. p. G*J. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 107 said, Let us have no government : abolish it alto- gether. And so there grew up in modern times — a natural product of Rousseau's democracy — Nihil- ism, or Anarchism, — the doctrine that there ought to be no government. It is rather curious to see the daily papers putting Anarchism and Socialism together, as though they were alike. They stand at the extreme antipodes of social thought. They harmonize only as extremes meet. Socialism in its extreme form is the abolition of individualism, — the doctrine that government should do every- thing, that all industries should be controlled and directed by government for the common good. Nihilism is the abolition of all government, the apotheosis of the individual, the doctrine that everything should be left to the individual. " The liberty of man," says Bakunin, the Russian Anar- chist, in his " God and the State," " consists solely in this, that he obey the laws of nature, because he has himself recognized them as such, and not be- cause they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual." ^ Such is Anarchism, — no government, human or divine, democratic or aris- tocratic. It can be treated as a phase of Socialism only as any scheme which involves radical social revolution is classified under the general title of Socialism.^ ^ Encyc. Brit., art. " Socialism." ^ Philosophical Anarchists do attempt to mediate between these two antagonistic schemes of society — the Socialistic and the An- 108 CHRIST I AX IT Y AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. The same indiviclnalism which entered the church and split it into sects, and entered gov- ernment and led on to anarchy, entered industry and founded what is known in political economy as the Manchester School, because it had its centre in Manchester. This doctrine treats man in an industry, as governed only by self-interest. It expects and encourages a perpetual conflict of interests, and trusts that an equable balance and a true justice will be secured by the interaction of purely selfish forces. In framing a science of industry, it does not think of man in any other aspect than as a being who desires to make wealth archistic — by insisting that g-overnment must be social, not politi- cal ; that it must administer industry, not exercise authority : thus Prince Krapotkin ('" The Coming Anarchy,'' Nineteenth Century, vol. xxii. p. 149) says : " One after the other those functions which were considered as the functions of government during the last two centuries are disputed ; society moves better the less it is governed. And the more we study the advance made in this direction, as well as the inadequacy of governments to fulfill the expectations laid on them, the more we are bound to conclude that humanity, by steadily limiting the functions of government, is marching toward reducing them finally to nil; and we already foresee a state of society where the liberty of the individual Avill be limited by no laws, no bonds, by nothing else but his own social habits and the necessity, which every one feels, of finding cooperation, support, and sympathy among his neighbours." See, also, '' The Scientific Basis of Anarchy," Nineteenth Century, vol. xvi. p. 238. For an account of Bakunin, with quotations from his utterances, see Laveleye, " The Socialism of To-day." chap. x. ; also, "The Rise and Development of Anarchism," by Karl Blind, Contemporary Review, \o\. Ixv. p. 140, January, 1804; and "An Anarchist on Anarchy," by Elisde Reclus, Contemporary Review, vol. xlv. p. 632, May, 1884. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 109 and knows how to do it; it makes no account either of his prejudices and his passions or of his nobler nature. The world is regarded as made up of men who are struggling for wealth, and the problem of political economy as how to organize society out of the units engaged in this struggle. To do this the Manchester School proposes to take off all shackles, remove all restraints, let the laborer sell his labor where he will, and the cap- italist hire his labor where he will : thus, as it ex- pects, true values will be ascertained ; workingmen will get the wages they deserve, and capitalists the services they deserve. This mass of men who desire to get wealth, and whom Political Economy is to consider as though they desired nothing- else, are to be left to struggle together, and the man who best deserves the reward will get it. The function of government is reduced to a mini- mum, — the function of protection. Says Adam Smith : — "All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left jjerfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely dis- charged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no 110 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient, — the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interests of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to, — three duties of great impor- tance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common un- derstandings, — first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies ; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice ; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect or maintain, because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may fre- quently do much more than repay it to a great society." ^ Such, very briefly described, is individualism in church, state, and society. It has not fulfilled its promises. It has not perfected the spiritual life of the individual, and it has separated the church into antagonistic sects, and diverted into intestine quarrels the forces which should have been wholly consecrated to a united campaign against wickedness. In the state it has not given the individual the freedom from despotism which it promised to secure. The despotism of demo- ^ Wealth of Nations, book iv, ch. ix. p. 545, Putnam's ed. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. Ill cracy lias proved quite as perilous to liberty as the despotism of the individual. " For myself," says De Tocqueville,^ " when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me ; and I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke because it is held out to me by the arms of a million of men." If the reader is curious to know how heavy a yoke may be framed by democracy, and by it imposed on the individual, let him read in " The French Revolu- tion " 2 Taine's account of French socialistic legis- lation. In society, individualism has not secured even that wealth which it was avowedly the sole object of the old school of political economy to secure for the individual, " judged solely as a beinof who desires to secure wealth." Free com- petition has produced a concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, and has done but little to remedy the impoverishment of the many ; it has limited the world's market, reduced the world's demand, and produced what is absurdly called "over-supply." It has steadily lessened, and in many cases finally destroyed, the profits of even the prosperous and wealthy, and so created a necessity for combinations to decrease production and thus raise prices. Under this system the " submerged tenth " in London has remained sub- merged ; in New York the condition is little if ' De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. ii. p. 13. 2 Taine, French Eevolution, book vi. ch. i. ; book viii. ch. ii. vol. il. ; pp. 52 f . and .3.56 f. 112 CflRISTlANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. any better.^ Pauperism is not cured, and charity- struggles in vain to alleviate social conditions which the industrial system is continually produ- cing. " This general well and cesspool, once baled and clear, to-day will begin again to fill itself anew. The universal Stygian quagmire is still there, opulent in women ready to be ruined, and in men ready. Toward the same sad cesspool will these waste currents of human sin ooze and gravi- tate as heretofore. Except in draining the uni- versal quagmire itself, there is no remedy." ^ 1 Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, in a paper published in The Christian Union (now The Outlook) for March 20, 1885, says that, during the three years preceding, 220,000 separate indi- viduals received helj) through public charity in New York city, nearly or quite one fifth of the entire population, and she adds: "There is no room for duplication of cases in these figures." 2 Carlyle, Latter Bay Pamphlets, ed. Chapman and Hall, No. 1, p. 24. The student will find the social evils of the present system stated by Kirkup in An Inquiry into Socialism, ch. iii. ; by Gronlund in Cooperative Commonivealth, ch. ii. ; and by Laveleye in Social- ism of To-day, Introduction. More judicial statements of the effects on the individual will be found in Francis A. Walker's The Wages Question, pp. 201, 359, from which the following may be cited as a single illustration : " We know that mill-owners are harassed with applications from their hands to take children into employment on almost any ternis, and that the consciences of employers have required to be reinforced by the sternest prohi- bitions and penalties of the law to save children ten, seven, or four years old from the horrors of ' sweating dens ' and crowded factories, since the more miserable the parents' condition the greater becomes the pressure on them to crowd their children somehow, somewhere, into service ; the scantier the remuneration of their present employment, the less becomes their ability to secure promising openings, or to obtain favor from outside for the better disposition of their offspring. . . . What is the single CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 113 Such is the testimony not of Herr Most, nor of Justus Schwab, not of Elisce Rechis nor of Prince Krapotkin, but of Thomas Carlyle, and since his time the quagmire has been drained only by trans- porting- part of it from London and distributing it in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago. Man cannot be regarded by the Christian, by the philanthropist, nor even by the truly scientific observer, " solely as a being who desires to pos- sess wealth." If he is looked upon as a man with moral sentiments, noble ideals, personal affections, the social evils of the system of a free competition between men selfishly struggling in a remorseless competition with one another are even greater than the industrial and economic evils. John Stuart Mill thus portrays them ; and, though in this passage he is acting simply as a reporter of the Socialistic indictment of modern society, it is laborer in a cotton-mill ? "What does his will or his wish stand for ? The mill itself becomes one vast machine, which rolls on in its appointed work, tearing-, crushing-, or grinding- its human just as relentlessly as it does its other material. The force of disci- pline completely subjects the interests and the objects of the individual to the necessities of a great establishment. Whoever fails to keep up, or faints by the way, is relentlessly thrown out. If the wheel runs for twelve hours in the day, every operative must be in his place from the first to the last revolution. If it runs for thirteen hours or fourteen, he must still be at his post. Personality disappears ; even the instinct of self-assertion is lost ; apathy soon succeeds to ambition and hopefulness. The laborer can quarrel no more with the foul air of his unventilated factory, burdened with poisons, than he can quarrel with the great wheel that turns below." 114 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. not possible to doubt that in the main he is a sympathetic reporter : — " Morally considered, its evils are obvious. It is the parent of envy, hatred, and uncharitableness ; it makes every one the natural enemy of all others who cross his path, and every one's path is liable to be crossed. Under the present system, hardly any one can gain except by the loss or disappointment of one or many others. In a well-constituted community, every one would be a gainer by every other person's successful exertions, while now we gain by each other's loss, and lose by each other's gain ; and our greatest gains come from the worst source of all, from death, — the death of those who are nearest and should be dearest to us." ^ In religion, there is an evident reaction against the individualism of the past. We believe in religious liberty, as Luther did ; but we no longer think that *' liberty " is the only word, and we are 1 J. S. Mill, " Chapters on Socialism," Fortnightly Review, vol. xxxi. p. 227 ; also in Literary Magazine, March and April, 1879, p. 267. His own view he has expressed clearly in his Prin- ciples of Political Economy^ bk. iv. ch. vi. § 2 : "I cannot, there- fore, regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by politi- cal economists of the old school. I am inclined to think it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on ; that the trampling, crushing, elbow- ing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress." CHRISTIANITY AXIJ SOCIALISM. 115 striving in religion to bring about fraternity as well. The Pope sends a message to the English people to return to their loyalty to him. The Eng- lish Church is studying the question how it may bring about the union of the Greek, the Roman, the Anglican, and the Protestant churches in one great organization. The Congregationalists are proposing a simpler creed, and a greater liberty of interpretation, that the churches may work together in one confederation, if they cannot unite in one great organization. We are forming orga- nizations like the Young Men's Christian Associa- tions, the Young Women's Christian Associations, the Kino^'s Dauo^hters, the Societies of Christian Endeavor. The movement of this nineteenth cen- tury is a movement to add fraternity to liberty in the realm of religion. And the movement may be just as clearly traced in government. Democracy no longer be- lieves in what has been well called the night- watchman theory. It rejects the aphorism that the sole function of government is to govern ; that its sole duty is to protect one community against another community, or one individual against another individual. B}^ government we ])rotect and promote manufactures. By govern- ment we aid with subsidies railroads and canals and various public enterprises. By government we carry all the mails. By government we edu- cate the children of the commonwealth in all the elements that are necessary to citizenship, and 116 CHE 1ST 1 AX IT Y AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. in many of the States maintain universities of the higher grades. By government we establish parks for public playgrounds, and maintain music in the parks for public recreation. By govern- ment we supply our houses with water and with light, and are beginning to provide our cities with transportation. By government we deter- mine what are reasonable prices for transporta- tion on our great railroads. Government has run far beyond any bounds that Thomas Jefferson would have recognized as legitimate. Across the sea the same tendency is still more apparent. In Great Britain government takes care of the sav- ings of the poor, regulates the rate of rent between landlord and tenant, erects buildings and rents them to the poor, regulates by law the conditions and hours of labor. In Germany government provides for the workingman ^ insurance against sickness, death, and old age. In Switzerland government manages express business ;2 in Aus- tralia it owns and operates the railroads.^ And ^ "Compulsory Insurance in Germany," J. G. Brooks, Fourth Special Report of United States Com. of Labor. ^ "State and Federal Government in Switzerland," J. M. Vincent, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1891, p. 85. See, also, The Model Republic, F. G. Baker, p. 519; "Switzerland the Model Democracy," S. N. M. Byers, in Magazine of American History, vol. xxviii. p. 47. " The telegraph is in universal use in the country, owing to i\\e low rates. Ten cents will pay for eight words to any point in the country, yet the government secures a profit of $40,000 a year." 3 Sir Charles W. Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain, 1890, p. 508. CHRIST /AX/TV AXJJ SOCIALISM. 117 these are only a part of the functions on which government is entering. ^ While practical experience has refuted the night-watchman theory of government, historical study has refuted the notion of a social contract, on which that theory was based. There never was an ideal state of nature. "This political specu- lation," says Sir Henry Maine, "of which the remote and indirect consequences press us on all sides, is, of all speculations, the most baseless. The natural condition from which it starts is a simple figment of the imagination. So far as any research into the nature of primitive human society has any bearing on so mere a dream, all inquiry has dissipated it. The process by which Rousseau supposes communities of men to have been formed, or by which at all events he wishes us to assume that they were formed, is, again, a chimera. No general assertion as to the way in which human societies grew up is safe, but perhaps the safest of all is that none of them were formed in the way imagined by Rousseau." ^ The patriarchal history in the Book of Genesis will give the reader the most accessible and proba- bly the best historical account of the growth of government. It began in the family. This family, 1 See W. E. H. Leeky, Democracy and Liberty, ch. iii. ; and Rt. Hon. G. J. Gosclien, Laissez-faire or Governmental Interference. 2 Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government, p. 159. Compare R. E. Thomijson, Be Civitate Dei, p. 87 : " Aristotle contradicts the theory of the Social Contract before its origination by Epicurus." 118 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. as in the case of Abraham, became a commercial, a worshiping, and a military organization. It was state, church, and army all in one. The abso- lute power was lodged in the father. The priestly functions were exercised by him. Sometimes for defensive purposes, sometimes for aggressive pur- poses, sometimes for no definite purpose, but by the simple power of kinship, a number of families coalesced in a tribe. The tribe retained, however, the family character. The chief was the com- mander of the army, the priest of the church. His authority was indeed derived from the mem- bers of the tribe, not, however, by a social contract, but by a tacit consent.^ Thus government is seen to be, not a mere hu- man organization, dependent on a contract or a constitution framed for it, but a divine order. God, who has set men in families, has ordered that out of the family shall grow the larger com- munity into which men are born as they are born into the household. Thus, too, liberty is seen to be not merely independence. In truth, indej^end- ence does not exist. The child is dependent on the parent, the youth on his schoolmates, the man on his contemporaries, each age on the preceding ^ " Doubtless, from the beginning', the power of the chief is in part personal ; his greater strength, courage, or cunning enables him in some degree to enforce his individual will. But, as the evidence shows, his individual will is but a small factor, and the authority he wields is proportionate to the degree in which he expresses the will of the rest." Herbert Spencer, Political Insti- tutions, § 466, p. 321. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 119 age, every family on other families, every commu- nity on other communities. Liberty is possible only through society, and society is a condition of interdependence. And the develoj)ment of free- dom is at once a progress of dependence and of liberty of action in such dependence. " When," says Professor Green, ^ " we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise, on the whole, of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed, — in short, by the greater power, on the part of the citizens as a body, to make the most and best of themselves. Freedom, in all the forms of doing what one will with one's own, is valuable only as a means to an end. That end is what I call freedom in the positive sense ; in other words, the liberation of the powers of all men, equally, for contributions to the common good." Three stasres in the evolution of g'overnment are ^ . . . . easily traceable in history, — paternalism, inde- pendence, fraternalism. In the first, one man, or a class of men, is intrusted with the duty of caring for the commonwealth, much as a father cares for his household. In the second, government is re- duced to a minimum ; no more authority is con- ceded to the governing body than is necessary for the protection of the individual. In the third, the ^ T. H. Green, Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract, Works, vol. iii. pp. 371, 372. 120 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. individuals combine and cooperate to do for their common welfare all those things which can better be done by cooperative and combined action than by individual enterprise. On this third stage democracy is now unmistakably entering.^ The same reaction which has produced a move- ment toward fraternity in religion and toward fra- ternity in politics is producing, and has produced, a movement toward fraternity in industry. We have definitely abandoned Jaissez-faire and the Manchester School.^ It has no longer any place in our industrial conceptions. It is sometiaies at- tacked by men as though it were an existing thing. It is not an existing thing. In 1802 the first fac- tory legislation was introduced in England, — "the greatest invention in the science of government in modern times," says the Duke of Argyle. This factory legislation undertook to regulate the rela- tions between employer and employed, and from that year it has gone steadily on in England and in this country. The employment of children un- der a certain age is proliibited ; the employment of children in certain vocations is prohibited ; the employment of women in certain vocations and cer- tain hours is prohibited ; sanitary conditions are required by law for the house and the factory. Government has definitely, distinctly, and finally 1 See Harwooci, The Coming Democracy, p. 306 f. 2 See, for moral grounds of this abandonment, Martensen's Ethics, vol. ii. p. i:58 ff. ; Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, p. 81 ff. ; Kidd's Social Evolution throughout ; and John Stuart Mill as quoted above. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 121 declared that the relations between men in indus- try cannot be left to the conflict of self-interest. There must be, in some measure, government con- trol exercised over them.^ From that declaration we shall never, in any Anglo-Saxon community, go back to the old pagan individualism. While we have thus been exercising govern- mental supervision over industrial relations, we have been creating industrial organizations for the better production of wealth. It is popular in cer- tain quarters to denounce corporations. Some corporations have acted in such a way that they deserve denunciation ; so have some individuals. But the corporation is a modern contrivance in the interest of fellowship. It is a contrivance by which many men can combine their brains and their purses in a common enterprise. On the other hand, labor also has framed its organizations. It is customary in certain quarters to denounce trade unions. And I must frankly confess that it sometimes requires all my faith in the principle of the right of men to associate themselves together for common ends, to defend trade unions, when I see some of the things which they have done and are doing in the name of labor every day. But I remember his- tory ; I know how in England the trade unions have passed through the barbaric stage of organi- zations for labor war into the present stage of 1 The best summary I have found of this movement, and the ablest argument and protest against it, is in -4 Plea for Liberty, with Introduction by Herbert Spencer. D. Appletou & Co. 122 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. organizations which, on the whole, are peaceful and make for peace. ^ It is reasonable to believe that our own country, following the example of our most advanced neighbor, may also learn to lay aside the war spirit, and that the trade unions of to-day will become in the future not only peace- able but peace-makers. Where labor is organized, there it is best paid, there it is best educated, there, for the most part, it does its work best. The progress of the nineteenth century is in the direc- tion of a larger education and better organization both of caj)ital and labor. The days of pure indi- vidualism are over. Moreover, we have incipient organizations of capital and labor combining together for a com- mon end. We have them in j^rofit-sharing, in cooperation, in schemes of arbitration, sometimes successful, sometimes failures, but always with a better spirit of brotherhood beneath them and in them than in that old spirit of antagonistic selfish- ness which gives the reward only to the strong and death to the weak.^ Socialism, then, — though I do not define it, — 1 See, throughout, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's History of Trades- Unionism. ^ To these considerations should be added, in any comprehen- sive survey of the age, a consideration of the growth of organi- zations for philanthropic or guasi-philanthropic purposes, but wholly voluntary. The following note is condensed from an arti- cle by Prince Krapotkin in the Nineteenth Century for August, 1887 ; it is far from complete ; indeed, it is little more than a suggestion of a class whose number is legion : — " The Dutch Bunden, extending now their organizations over CHRISTIANITY AXD SOCIALISM. 123 I take to be a reaction against the excessive indi- vidualism of the past.i It exists in widely different forms. It includes the Christian Socialist, who the rivers of Germany, and even to the shipping trade of the Baltic. " The sindicats of France. " The Lifeboat Association, which has saved no less than 32,000 lives. •' The Hospitals Association, and hundreds of like organiz^a- tions. " Societies for all possible kinds of studies ; for gymnastics, for shorthand-writing, for the study of a separate author, for games and all kinds of sports. " Societies which encroach on what was formerly the domain of the state or the municipality. " Free federation of independent communes, for temporary or permanent purposes, lies at the very bottom of Swiss life, and to these federations many a part of Switzerland is indebted for its roads and fountains, its rich vineyards, well-kept forests, and meadows, which the foreigner admires. And besides these small societies, substituting themselves for the state within some lim- ited sphere, do we not see other societies doing the same on a much larger scale ? " An army of volunteers, which surely might stand against any army of slaves obeying a military despot. " The Red Cross Society." 1 " We have been afflicted by an exaggeration of individualism, and the next century will show that human society is greater and nobler than all that which is merely individual. This doctrine, which has its foundation in the laws of nature and of Christianity, is accused of Socialism by the frivolous and impetuous, as well as by the capitalists and the rich. But the future will call forth into the light of reason the social state of the world of labor. We shall then see on what laws the Christian society of humanity rests." Cardinal Manning, quoted in Nitti's " Catholic Socialism," pp. 315, 316. "Socialism differs from individualism both in method and in aim. The method of socialism is cooperative ; the method of 124 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. believes that Christianity is a social religion, and that the principles and j^recepts of Jesus Christ, carried out in social organizations, will revolu- tionize the present social order, as it has revo- lutionized social order in the past ; the " Socialist of the Chair," so called, — that is, the scientific Socialist, — who believes that the political eco- nomy of the past has been unscientific, because not inductive, and who desires by a careful investi- gation of social phenomena to form a basis for a new social science ; and the state Socialist, ^vho believes that the state should own all the imple- ments of industry, and control and direct all indus- trial functions ; in other words, that the community should be the sole capitalist, and all men should be laborers in its employ. The first form of social- ism may be described as a religious sentiment, the second as a philosophical method, the third as a politico-social doctrine. Socialism and Christianity, then, agree in two fundamental respects. They both aim to secure individualism is competitive. The one reg-ards man as working- with man for a common end ; the other reg-ards man as working- against man for private g-ain. The aim of socialism is the fulfill- ment of service ; the aim of individualism is the attainment of some personal advantage, riches, place, or fame. Socialism seeks such an organization of life as shall secure for every one the most complete development of his powers ; individualism seeks primarily the satisfaction of the particular wants of each one, in the hope that the pursuit of private interest will in the end secure public welfare." Bishop Brooke Foss Westcott, Address on Socialism at Church Congress at Hull, 1890, Incarna- tion and Common Life, p. 226. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 125 the reorganization of society, and such a reorga- nization of society as shall give a greater diffusion of virtue, intelligence, and power. In these two respects they are allied ; both ai:e^ social and both are democratic in their purpose. But they differ in very important respects vitally affecting both their method and their spirit. Broadly speaking, Social- ism puts environment first and character second ; Christianity puts character first and environment second. (It is not true that intelligent Socialism disregards private character; nor is it true that intelligent Christianity — the Christianity wdiich follows the teaching of the Master — disregards social conditions. But it is true that the social reformer puts the emphasis on the condition ; the Christian disciple puts the emphasis on the individual character. 1. Socialism is founded on the principle that happiness depends primarily upon circumstances. Like Christianity, it endeavors to make men hap- pier ; but it endeavors to do tl^is chiefly by improv- ing their environment, — by giving them cleaner streets, better homes, greater wealth, larger mea- sure of the comforts which wealth brings. It offers itself chiefly as a cure for poverty, — that is, to improve a condition, not to change the nature, of man. Christianity is founded upon the belief that happiness depends primarily upon character, that a good man in evil conditions will be happy, aud that a bad man in good conditions will be miserable. Jesus Christ has expressed this faith 126 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. very clearly in the opening paragraph of the Ser- mon on the Mount. Blessedness, he says in effect, is dependent, not upon what the individual pos- sesses, but upon what the individual is, and each quality in character has its own blessedness. They that mourn are blessed, because by their sorrow they are made strong. The meek are blessed, for they, not the grasping, enjoy the earth. They who hunger and thirst after righteousness are blessed, for this is a craving which is certain to be satisfied. The pure in heart are blessed, for they shall enjoy the visibn of the higher things, especially of God, denied to those who indulge their imagination in sensual images. Teaching this by his words, Christ taught it even more clearly by his life. He absolutely disregarded the conditions which men are accustomed to think essential to happi- ness ; was untroubled by his poverty ; cared not that he had no place in which to lay his head ; depended on the hospitality of the community for his earthly subsistence ; sought, day by day, his bread from his heavenly Father, and impliedly taught his followers that they might do the same. And yet, going through such a life of poverty, accompanied with public contumely, a social out- cast from the higher intellectual circles of his time, and under the shadow of oncoming death, he left, as his highest legacy to his followers, this bequest : " These things have I spoken to you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." CHRiST/Ay/rr and socialism. 127 There has recently been circulated In certain English and American papers the pathetic story of the " Happiest Man in London." This man and his wife were found living in a single room with nothing but the most necessary furniture. " For twenty-five years the wife had been para- lyzed, and her husband had been her nurse, her protector, her support, and, most of all, her lover all the time. She could scarcely speak, and her only strength of expression lay in her eyes, looking ' straight out, clear and shining.' In response to a new doctor's question, this hero of a man told in the simplest and most sincere way how he lived. ' I get up early of a morning, you see, sir,' said Temple, ' and make our breakfast and attend to her. Tlien, before I start for work, — I 'm in an engineer's employ, — I just boards her up in bed so as she can't fall out. I 'm back at dinner hour, and we have it together. Then, when I leave work, my evenin' soon passes. There 's usually a bit of cooking to be done, and washing up, and the room to be seen to. An invalid must have things clean about her ; it is n't agreeable to just lie and look at anything dirty. I like Lucy to keep bright, — but, there ! she always is ; and if occa- sionally she gets down, I soon cheer her up : don't I, Lucy ? I said I 'd love her, comfort her, honor and kee^^ her, in sickness and in health. I 've tried, and we 've been happy. Sir, love does it all. You '11 want to comfort her, you '11 have to honor her, and if sickness come you '11 love her all 128 CHRISTJAXJTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the more.' From the bed there came a strange sound. It was something between a laugh and a sob. And the doctor, turning, looked away asrain. Her husband's words had moved the wife o to tears, but her face was radiant with the joy in her upturned eyes. Temple laid his hand on hers, — hers which could give no answering pres- sure. ' Sir,' he said, ' I can't wish you better happiness than I've had. I wish you as much. And I take it I'm about the hapi3iest man in London.' " 1 I quote this simple story here as the best pos- sible way of illustrating the Christian's faith that happiness depends on character, not on condition. 2. Socialism is founded on the faith that man's moral character depends primarily on his condi- tion ; Christianity, on the faith that man's condi- tion depends primarily on his moral character. Unquestionably, character and condition act and react on each other. Unquestionably, both So- cialism and Christianity recognize this law. But not less certain is it that, in so far as Socialism endeavors to mould the character at all, it does so by change in the environment ; and that Chris- tianity, in so far as it endeavors to change en- vironment, does so chiefly through direct action upon the character. All the higher forms of Socialism seek not merely to change man's con- dition, not merely to make him happier, but also to make him a better man. But it pro- ^ Condensed frona the Ladies^ Home Journal, February, 1895. CHRISTIANJTY AND SOCIALISM. 129 ceeds in all its forms on the general assump- tion that, if the social organism is made right, the moral condition of man will be made right in consequence. In its extreme forms, as we have already seen, it affirms the natural good- ness of man, and traces all the evils in him, as well as those which environ him, to a vicious social order. Said Adolph Wagner to an enthu- siastic Socialist, " Your scheme would work well if men were to become angels." " Why should they not become angels ? " rej^lied the Socialist. " It is enough to do away with the present eco- nomic injustice, and all men will become angels." ^ It is not, however, the Socialist alone who enter- tains this opinion. There are as many different sects in what we call socialistic philanthropy as there are in the Christian church ; or, if not as many, at least as antagonistic to each other. They do not agree in the social reforms which they pro- pose, but they all agree in the opinion that, if the necessary social reform were carried into effect, the moral reform of humanity would follow. One social reformer tells us that we must abolish the tariff, and then prices will be lowered and wealth will be distributed ; another tells us that we must raise the tariff, and then wages will be increased and wealth will be distributed. One social re- former tells us we must levy all taxes on the land, and take them off everything else ; another tells us we must take them off the land and levy them 1 Quoted by F. S. Nitti in Catholic Socialism, p. 22. 130 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. on incomes. One social reformer tells us we must increase the power, and extend the functions, of government; another, that government is a failure, or, at best, a necessary evil, and that we must reduce its powers, or abolish it altogether. But the high-tariff man and the free-trader, the land- tax and the income-tax advocate, the state So- cialist and the Anarchist, widely as they differ, all agree in this one fundamental doctrine, that, if we can only make the social organism right, humanity will be well taken care of. They strike at the vice in the organism ; demand reform in the organism; seek changes that can be wrought by leg-islation in the oroanism. Christ proceeded on the directly opposite as- sumption. He made almost no attempt to change the social order or the social organism. The system of taxation which prevailed in the Ro- man Empire was abominably unjust. Christ said never a word about taxation. Labor was not only underpaid and ill-paid, but, for the most part, worked with its hands in manacles ; but Christ said never a word about slavery. If drink- inof and drunkenness were not as bad in their forms then as they are now, by reason of the modern use of distilled liquors, then compara- tively unknown, drinking habits and animalism, in all its forms, were worse in Greece than they have ever been in America; but Christ never leveled his shafts against the liquor trade, or the making of wine. Pharisaism had the prestige CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 131 of a great hierarchical system. Christ did not strike at the hierarchy and the system ; he struck at the Pharisee, not at the ism. He struck at the injustice, not at the form which the injustice took at a particular era, in a particular coun- try, under particular circumstances. He sought to change, not methods, but men. He struck, not at the outward clothing of the wrong, but at the wrong itself. Accordingly, he said al- most nothing about social evils, and a great deal about individual sins. In strictness of speech, a nation does not sin. The individuals who make up the nation are the sinners. Sins are indi- vidual, and Christ proceeded on the assumption that, if we can get rid of sin in the individual, we shall get rid of evil in the state ; but if we leave the sin in the individual, all social reform will result only in a change in the form of social evil. Christ's method of dealing with social injustice is strikingly illustrated by the history of the aboli- tion of slavery. Leaving the slave in bondage and the master in power, Christianity delivered to them both its twofold message. To the master it said. Give unto your servants that which is just and equal, forbearing threatening, knowing that your Master, also, is in heaven, neither is there respect of persons with Him.^ To the slave it said, Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it; with goodwill do your service, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of 1 Eph. vi. 9 ; Col. iv. 1. 132 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. heart, as unto Christ.^ It thus dignified the slave and honored his toil. Under this teaching, slaves did not count themselves disgraced because they were slaves, nor degraded either by the toil put upon them, or by the unjust punishments often inflicted upon them. Under this teaching, the masters came to look upon their slaves as their brethren, to whom they owed far more than the law required of them, far more than self-interest could suggest to them. By this conception of it, the whole relationship of master and slave was lifted uj) and transfigured, as an earthly parable of the relation between man and his God. Schmidt's " History of the Social Results of Early Christian- ity " and Lecky's "History of European Morals" trace the effect of this teaching in the gradual and un revolutionary abolition of slavery. Says the former : — "Long before Chrysostom had raised his voice in favor of slaves, there had been glorious examples of Christian masters freeing their slaves. Tlie earliest known of these is Hermes, Prefect of Rome under Trajan, who embraced Christianity with his wife, children, and 1,250 slaves. On Easter Day, the day of their baptism, Hermes gave them all freedom, and ample assistance to enable them to gain a liv^elihood. Shortly afterwards he suffered martyrdom with Bishop Alexander, who was the means of his conversion. An- other Prefect of Rome, under Diocletian, Chromatius, was celebrated in the church for his zeal and charity. 1 1 Cor. vii. 21, 22 ; Eph. vi. 5-8 ; Col. iii. 22-25. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 133 He set free 1,400 slaves, and gave them abundant means of supjiort ; he said that those who had God for their Father ought not to be tlie servants of man. Melania, with the consent of her husband Pinius, gave freedom to 8,000 slaves ; Ovinius, a French martyr, to 5,000. These great examples were followed by Chris- tians who were not so rich. In the early part of the fourth century three brothers set free their seventy- three slaves. Augustine told the people in one of his homilies that several clerks of the church of Hippo were going to emancipate some slaves they possessed. We cannot doubt that many others did the same, though the historians, struck only with what shows in large propor- tions, have preserved no account of the less startling facts. Whilst rich pagans directed in their will that the blood of their slaves should be shed in combats in the areria. Christian masters, taught by the church, gave freedom and legacies to their slaves, by their will." ^ The Socialist believes in manufacture rather than in growth. The radical Socialist would rub off from the slate all that past history has written thereon, and write in its place a new scheme for the industry of the future. Christianity is founded on the belief that social organisms are not to be man- ufactured, that they are a growth, and that the fundamental condition of virtuous growth in so- ciety is virtue in the individuals of whom it is composed. Christianity, therefore, begins with the individual and works toward social re^enera- tion by the regeneration of the individual. ^ C. Schmidt, The Social Results of Early Christianity, p. 226. 134 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. It is sometimes said that the church is a capital- istic institution. There is some truth in the asser- tion, which is really less an accusation than a eulogy. The church goes into a region where the people are living in poverty and in rags. By Christian teachings it puts into them such a spirit of honesty, of industry, of temperance, of thrift, that they begin to leave the saloon and seek the savings bank, and must either move from the neighborhood to one of greater competence and comfort, or remain in the neighborhood, making it one of comj^etence and comfort. One object of Christianity as of Socialism is to make all men capitalists. This object Christianity accomplishes wherever it succeeds in its mission, and the fact that churches are capitalistic institutions is a wit- ness that the hope of social reform lies in the church of Christ. 3. Socialism appeals primarily to the man in his lower nature. It proj^oses first to give the ragged and dirty man a bath and clean clothes, then to provide for his body ; then to give him in- dustrial education and put his children in school, to provide for the intellect ; then to win for him a larger income, a greater share in the world's wealth ; as to God and immortality, it is for the present silent. It postpones all consideration of the higher needs of the spirit until these prelim- inary reforms are accomplished. Socialism is thus often atheistic and irreligious ; not indeed necessarily so, but certainly not necessarily theistic CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 135 and religious. The majority of Socialists show greater faith in a Palace of Delight than in a church, in ministry to the body and the mind than in aj^peals to the higher spiritual nature. This was not Christ's method. He did not be- gin with the bottom of man and work up to the top ; he began at the top and worked down toward the bottom. He did not attempt to lift men up by a leverage applied from below ; he attempted to lift them up by a hand reached down from above. Did he not feed five thousand in the wilderness ? Yes ! after he had preached all day ; but he preached first and fed afterwards. This also was the method of Socrates : " All good and evil here in the body or in human nature originate in the soul, and overflow from thence, as from the head into the eyes, and therefore, if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul • that is the first thinof." i The message of Christianity is that of the poets and prophets of all ages, who pierce the disguise and behold and address themselves to the living man behind the mask. Its message to every man groveling in the dust, degraded by his own ani- malism or tram23led under foot of men, degraded by the oppression of others, is the message of God to Ezekiel, " Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee." It begins with the dec- laration. You are sons of God, you are immortal, life has infinite possibilities for you, arise and ^ Jo-wett'a Plato, The Charmides, vol. i., p. 11. 136 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. walk. The bird is in prison in the egg ; conser- vatism would leave the egg unbroken, leave every- thing as it is and has been : it will get an addled egg. Radicalism wonld impatiently break the shell to let the imprisoned captive free ; it will get a dead bird. Christianity broods the egg and the bird breaks its own shell. There is an old Norse legend that the god of summer was killed and carried off in captivity to the prison-house of the dead, and the whole world went into mourning. The flowers folded their petals, the trees dropped their leaves, the brooks ceased their murmuring song and pulled an icy coverlet over themselves, and the whole earth cov- ered its dead self with a white shroud. Then one of the gods said : " I will go to the abode of the dead, cost what it may, and see if I cannot ransom and bring back the god of summer." He went, riding through the dark and dangerous valley, un- til he came to the prison-house, and pleaded there for liberation, and at last ransomed the god of summer so far as this, that the keeper of the prison-house said : " Your god may return to you in the spring, but in the fall must come back again." So, every spring, according to this old legend, the god of the summer returns to the earth, and then the whole earth rejoices ; and every fall he goes away, and then the whole earth mourns. The disciples of Jesus Christ are trying to bring the God of the summer into the hearts of the children of men ; certain that so long as CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 137 human hearts banish Him from their presence, and the kingdom is the kingdom of selfishness, so long it will be the kingdom of poverty and wretched- ness ; but that when He comes, and the world re- ceives Him, all the flowers will be fragrant, and all the trees full of green leaf, and all the birds full of song, for He brings life. CHAPTER V. Christ's law of the family. The family is the first and most fundamental social organization. Upon it all other social or- ganizations are founded. Upon its purity and permanence the purity and permanence of the social order in all its forms depend. If it is corrupt, life is corrupted at the spring; no pro- cesses of subsequent purification can counteract so fatal a pollution. The problem of the family is, therefore, the most important of all social problems. What is marriage ? What is the con- stitution of the family as founded in and by marriage ? For what causes may it be dissolved ? These are questions more important than any respecting the constitution of the state or the divine order of the church ; for both church and state depend upon the answer which social practice gives to these questions.^ What answer eTesus 1 " I incline to think that the future of America is of greater importance to Christendom at large than that of any other coun- try ; that that future, in its highest features, vitally depends upon the incidents of marriage, and that no country has ever been so directly challenged as America now is, to choose its course defi- nitively with reference to one, if not more than one, of the very greatest of ^hose incidents. The solidity and health of the social CHRJSTS LAW OF THE FAMILY. 139 Christ gave to these questions it is the purpose of this chapter to consider. For that purpose I wish, first, to put clearly in contrast the two concep- tions, — the pagan and the Christian, — and to trace the processes by which the former has en- tered into our modern life. In the Middle Ages the Roman Catholic Church, with unconscious sagacity, put itself at the door- way of life. It maintained that marriage is a sacrament, and can be entered into only with the approbation and benediction of the church.^ It maintained that the church alone can determine who may marry, and under what circumstances. It did not, indeed, deny the legality of pagan marriages ; on the contrary, it affirmed their legal- ity : but it declared " matrimony to be a sacrament of the new law, instituted by Christ, whereby a new dignity is added to the lawful compact of marriage, and grace given to those who worthily receive it." This grace can be bestowed only upon those who enter into the marriage sacra- body depend upon the soundness of its unit. That unit is the family ; and the hinge of the family is to be found in the great and profound institution of marriage." W. E. Gladstone, North American Revieiv, December, 1889, vol. cxlix. p. 641. ^ From Paul's words, " This is a great mystery," translated by the Vulgate " Saeraraentum haec magnum est," the dogma that marriage is a sacrament was gradually developed. Though this dogma was fully recognized in the twelfth century, marriage was nevertheless considered valid without ecclesiastical benediction till the year 156.3, when the Council of Trent made it essentially a religious ceremony. Westerraarck, History of Human Mar- riage, p. 427. 140 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. mentally; that is, with the approval and bene- diction of the church.^ Protestantism, revolting from the Koman Catho- lic Church, and inclined instinctively to deny every assumption of that church, denied that marriage is a sacrament; denied that the benediction of the church is necessary to marriage ; denied that the church has anything to do in determining who may marry and who may not. Luther held that mar- riage was an affair of the state, not of the church. The French Revolution carried out this doctrine to its logical conclusion. " The law," said the French Constitution, ^'considers marriage simply as a civil contract." ^ In France to-day marriage cannot be performed by the church. It can be performed only before the civil authorities, though the parties may, if they please, confirm it by a religious ceremony of their own choosing. Thus, after denying that marriage is a sacrament, and affirming that it is simply a civil contract, the next step was a natural if not a necessary one. It was that the parties to this marriage are co- equal partners in a common enterprise, who have contracted to live together. Gradually laws have been changed to conform to this conception, and the legal rights of married women have been en- larged in accordance with this theory. It is not necessary here to trace the process, nor describe 1 Faith of Catholics, vol. iii. p. 239; Catholic Diet., art. "Mar- riage," and authorities quoted in both volumes. 2 Westerraarek, History of Marriage, p. 428. CHMIsm LAW OF THE FAMILY. 141 the extent to which these changes have been car- ried, nor even to consider how far they are required by justice and tend to promote the common wel- fare. It is enough to note the fact that they often, indirectly if not explicitly, assume that the law recognizes in marriage only a partnership. What- ever else it may be in the thought of the parties, legally it is, according to this conception, nothing more nor less than a partnership. And since hus- band and wife are simply partners, — since mar- riage is a civil contract, by which they entered into this partnership, — it was natural to draw the conclusion that this partnership may be dissolved by the mutual agreement of the parties. As mar- riage is formed by a civil contract, so marriage may be annulled by the parties who formed it. Thus we get the three steps in the development : First, marriage a civil contract ; second, the hus- band and wife coequal partners in a common enterprise ; third, the partnership thus formed dissolvable practically at the pleasure of the parties. History sometimes repeats itself, and, in this change whicli passed over the conception of the marriage relation in the sixteenth to the eigh- teenth centuries, history did repeat itself. In ancient Rome, marriage was regarded as a sacred institution. It was accompanied by religious cere- monies, and was practically indissoluble.^ But, with the social corruption which characterized 1 Da Coulang-er, The Ancient City, chap. ii. 142 CHRISTIAXITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the later history of Rome, came a change analo- gous to the one I have already described. Mar- riage was regarded as a civil contract ; the husband and the wife were looked upon as equal partners in a common enterprise ; and the partnership was dissolvable at the pleasure of the partners. The result is thus described by Mr. Lecky in his " His- tory of European Morals :" — " With the exception of her dowry, which passed into the hands of her husband, she (the wife) held her prop- erty in her own right ; she inherited her share of the wealth of her father, and she retained it altogether independent of her husband. A very considerable por- tion of Roman wealth passed into the uncontrolled possession of women. The private man of business of the wife was a favorite character with the comedians, and the tyranny exercised by rich wives over their hus- bands — to whom it is said they sometimes lent money at high interest — a continual theme of satirists. A complete revolution had thus passed over the family. Instead of being constructed on the principle of auto- cracy, it was constructed on the principle of coequal partnership. The legal position of the wife had become one of com})lete independence, while her social position was one of great dignity." This, at first sight, looks like a great reform, but what was the result of this reform ? " Being looked upon simply as a civil contract entered into for the happiness of the contracting parties, the continuance of marriage depended upon mutual consent. Either party might dissolve it at will, and the dissolu- CHRIST'S LAW OF THE FAMILV. 143 tion gave both parties the right to remarry. There can be no doubt that under this system the obligations of marriage were treated with extreme levity. We find Cicero repudiating his wife, Terentia, because he wanted a new dowry ; Maecenas continually changing his wife ; Semphronius Sophus repudiating his wife because she had once been to the public games without his know- ledge ; Paulus Emilius taking the same step witliout assigning the reason, and defending himself by saying : " My shoes are new and well made, but no one knows where they pinch me." Nor did women show less alacrity in repudiating their husbands. Seneca de- nounced this evil with especial vehemence, declaring that divorce in Rome no longer brought with it any shame, and that there were women who reckoned their years rather by their husbands than by the consuls. Martial s})eaks of a woman who had already arrived at her tenth husband ; Juvenal, of a woman having eight husbands in five years. But the most extraor- dinary recorded instance of this kind is related by St. Jerome, who assures us that there existed in Rome a wife who was married to her twenty-third husband, she herself being his twenty-first wife." Thus the experiment of regarding marriage as a civil contract, and the parties to it as coequal part- ners in a common enterprise, and the partnership dissolvable at the will of the jDarties, that is, the pagan conception, has had a fair trial on a great scale. Christ's instructions respecting marriage and divorce are based on a very different theory and involve a very different conception. " The Phari- 144 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. sees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" Under the Roman law, any man could put away his wife, and any woman could put away her husband. In Palestine there was one qualification : If a man put his wife away, he was required to give a statement in writing of the reason why he did so. There was that, and only that, protection to the wife. In other words, he had to do what most mistresses feel bound to do when they dismiss a cook, — give her a letter. " And he answered and said unto them. Have ye not read that he which made them at the begin- ing made them male and female, and said. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife ; and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore the}^ are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder." If we analyze this passage carefully, we shall see that it contradicts the statement of paganism at each one of the three crucial points. It denies that marriage is a civil contract, and declares it to be a divine ordinance; it denies that the parties are partners in a common enterprise, and declares that they are " one flesh ; " and it denies that the contract entered into — the marriage contract — is dissolvable at the pleasure of the parties. Let us look at these three propositions separately. In the first place, according to Christ's instruc- tions, marriao^e is not a civil contract and is not CHBJSrS LAW OF THE FAMILY. 145 founded on a civil contract. The revived pagan- ism which bases marriage on a civil contract, and makes it a form of partnership, is as false as that other analogous notion that government is founded on a " social contract." ^ History, philosophy, and religion combine to refute it. In Anglo-Saxon communities the free agreement of the bride and groom is the door through which they enter into marriage. But this fact no more makes such con- tract the foundation of marriage than does the fact that the foreigner enters into citizenship in the United States, by voluntarily applying for naturali- zation, make contract the foundation of the State. In truth, in many — probably in most — commu- nities, free contract between bride and groom is not even the door through which the}' enter into the mar- ried relation. In most Latin races, the contract is generally made by the parents of the married pair. In India the contract is often made before the girl has reached an age in which she herself is competent to make a contract. Among some sav- age peoples, marriage is entered into by the pur- chase of the bride ; among others, by her forcible capture : in neither case has the girl anything whatever to say upon the question to whom she shall be married.^ But in the Latin races, in India, and in these savage tribes, the parties are married though they have made no contract. Contract is essential to marriage only among a ^ See ante, eh. iv. ^ Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, eh. xvii.-xix. 146 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. portion — probably only a minority — of the human race. While marriage never ought to take place without the free consent of both parties, it often does take place when one or both the j^arties are under compulsion. Marriage is not a human contrivance ; it is a divine order. It was founded in the creation of the human race. It dates from the beginning of humanity. It is as old as man and woman on the earth.^ When God made man he made them male and female, for he intended marriage from the very inception of the race. " Male and female created he them," that out of the very creation marriage mioht oTow. It is the one permanent, enduring social order. All other forms of social life have changed. Lan- guages once the common vehicle of speech are dead. Books once palpitating with human life are found only in the great libraries, — the cata^ combs of literature. Governments have passed through successive stages — absolute monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, universal democracy — to our present representative republicanism. Re- ligion has undergone revolutions as great. If a 1 " It is, indeed, older than the human race. It runs back into the very beginning of creation. It is the law of life, — not only of the animal but also of the vegetable orders. And, in general, the higher life rises in the scale of being, the nearer its approach to both monogamy and perpetuity. Promiscuous marriages, tempo- rary relationships, easy separations, characterize the barbarous tribes. The modern movement in this direction is a distinct reversion to barbaric and even brutal conditions." JSee Wester- marck, History of Marriage, especially chs. iv., v., xx., xxii., xxiii. CIJRISrS LAW OF THE FAMILY. 147 Jew of the time of Solomon were to come into a modern church he would not think he was in a worshiping assembly. He would ask, Where is the altar ? where are the priests ? where is the ritual ? where are the resplendent robes ? where is the blood that flows in torrents ? where are the sacrifices? He would understand our creed as little as our ritual. He knew nothing of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, atonement, the in- spiration of the Bible. The one thing that has remained from the day of Eden down to the pres- ent day, and will remain as long as the human race lives on the earth, is the marriage of one man to one woman. God made marriage when he made man, — when " male and female created he them." In the second place, Christ denies that the par- ties to marriage are coequal partners in a com- mon enterprise. In a partnership, two persons, maintaining their separate interests and their sepa- rate individuality, combine for certain definite purposes. If those purposes cannot be well ac- complished by the combination, they may separate again. If their combination has involved any other interests, those interests must be provided for ; that is all which the law requires. But when a man and woman join in wedlock, they are no more twain. A new person is created. They are henceforth one flesh, that is, one earthly individu- ality. They are henceforth a unit, and on the maintenance of this unit the unity of society, the unity of government, the unity of the church. 148 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. depend. The famfly is not a partnership ; it is an autocracy. This view is not in accordance with the current popular conception, though there are indications of a reaction against the sentiment which has been popular for the last twenty or twenty-five years. The autocratic conception of the family is clearly expressed by Paul, though, in his instructions on this subject, he is not looked upon altogether with favor, even in orthodox circles. It is said that he was a bachelor and did not know. " Wives, submit yourselves unto your own hus- bands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church ; and he is the saviour of the body. There- fore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.^ Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." The household is a unit, and the husband is the head of the household. Every organization must have a head. Is this organization a church ? The head may be a poj^e in Rome ruling over all ; it may be a general assembly to which all presbyteries and all local churches are subordinate ; it may be the majority in the local congregation, to which the minister and church officers are alike subject. But some- where there is a final authority, or there is no organization. The final authority in the normal ^ Ephes. V. 22-25. " In everything- '' is limited by the family ; i. e. in '' everything in the body " of which they are members. CHRIST'S LAW OF THE FAMILY. 149 family is the husband ; he is thfe head of the house- hold. What is the alternative ? Either there is a rift in the family, in one department the wife supreme, in the other department the husband supreme, neither entering into the other's depart- ment, — then there is not a unit, not these twain one flesh, not a single person with one life, one will, one heart ; but a divided household, divided at the very foundation : or there is a perpetual struggle going on between the husband and the wife ; she endeavoring to get control by cunning, he endeavoring to get control by force ; she gen- erally getting the better of it, for cunning habitu- rWj gets the better of force, — then the family is a perpetual battle-field. Or else the divine order is reversed, and the wife is the head of the household, — a condition which does not need any comment. The husband and wife may wisely divide between them, by a common consent, the responsibilities of the household ; that does not affect the autocracy. In some families, through invalidism, intellectual or physical or moral, or all three combined, the husband cannot be the head and the wife must be, usually to the discomfort of both. But that is not a normal household. The normal, the divine order, is the order in which the husband is the head of the household, and the household is an autocracy. This is not to affirm that man is superior to woman. That has often been affirmed ; I repu- diate it with indignation. It is not to affirm that 150 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the husband is superior to the wife. That has been affirmed ; I repudiate it no less indignantly. There is no question of superiority or inferiority. The question is of headship, not of superiority. An inferior individual may be a superior officer. During the Vicksburg camj)aign Grant was the greater general, but Halleck was the superior officer. The President of the United States is the head of the nation, but he is not necessarily the greatest man in the nation. I understand, then, that Christ's law of the household, as inter- preted and applied by Paul, involves these two laws : First, Wives, submit to your husbands ; second, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved you and gave himself for you. In the poems and stories and sermons, the women are eulogized as cross-bearers. It is small credit to husbands that literature always puts the crosses on the wives. It is the men who ought to be the cross-bearers. This does no dishonor to woman. It is honor- ing her. It does not deprive her of her rights. It confers upon her the rights which paganism takes away. For, in the order of nature, man is the soldier. It is man who is to shoulder the musket and go forth to battle to protect the wife. If bread is to be got by hard toil, it is the man who is to subdue nature, and get the bread for his wife. It is not a woman's right to harness herself with the ox and plow in the fields, as women do in some countries. It is man who is to do the work and take the responsibilities, that woman CHRIST'S LAW OF THE FAMILY. 151 may minister to love and life. Responsibility and authority are always commensurate. An un- defined autliority means an undefined responsiblity, of all responsibilities the hardest to bear. The conception that marriage is a partnership puts an undefined responsibility on the wife. A divided authority involves a divided responsibility, of all divisions the most prolific of controversy. It is a conception of marriage that divides the respon- sibility between the husband and the wife, and creates controversy. The wife has a right to have the responsibility of the family borne by her husband, that she may be free for the cares and ministries of maternity. Man should be the de- fender, and man should be the burden-bearer. I cannot look with enthusiasm upon the new era in which women are rushing into every kind of employment, and lowering the wages of men by doing men's work. I would not close the door against them, nor shut them out from any vo- cation ; 1 would give them the largest libert}^ But men, with their strong arms, ought to fight life's battles and win life's bread, and leave the women free from the burden of bread- winning and battling, that they may minister to the higher life of faith and hope and love. Nor will our indus- trial situation be what it ought to be, until every faithful husband and father can earn enough for his wife and children, without calling them to labor by his side in the mine, the mill, the shop, or the office. 152 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. In the third place, since marriage is not a civil contract, and the husband and wife are not co- equal partners in a common enterprise, marriage is not dissolvable at the pleasure of the parties to it. The common argument for such dissolution is very simple and easily stated. That it is specious may be conceded. " Why should those remain bound together by law whose hearts are not bound together by love ? Why should a woman remain in marital bondage to a man when she does not love and perhaps cannot even respect him? Marriage is the union of souls ; if the souls are not united, the marriage is dissolved." Such is the argument for freedom of divorce. Such is not Christ's view of either marriage or divorce. Marriage is not a union of souls : it is the mating of two persons in one flesh. Two souls may be joined, and yet there be no marriage ; marriage there may be, and yet no union of souls. Mar- riage is the creation of a new earthly relation. For the highest happiness, where the life is one the souls should be one ; but it is the unity of the lives, not of the souls, which constitutes marriage. Hence marriage ceases at death, though spiritual union does not. Hence, too, marriage is not dis- soluble because love is dead. The mere cessation of sympathy no more annuls marriage than it annuls any other family relation. It is very de- sirable that the son should reverence the father, and that the father should sympathize with the son. But the son does not cease to be a son CHEISrS LAW OF THE FAMILY. 153 because the father is unworthy of reverence, nor does the father cease to be father because he is unable to sympathize with his son. So it is of the utmost moment that husband and wife love and honor each other, but they do not cease to be husband and wife because they cannot love and honor. Love and honor make the result of the marriage blessed, but they do not constitute the relation. And as Christ does not accept the definition of marriage as a " union of souls," so neither does he accept incompatibility of temper as a ground of divorce. His words on this subject are as explicit as any in his teachings : " Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away committeth adultery." ^ It is always to be remembered that we are not to interpret Christ's commands as statutes. They are the enunciations of great general j^rinciples, not the issuance of special edicts. We must re- member that, when Christ lived, a man could put away his wife of his own volition, that, even in ^ Matthew xix. 9. The original, rendered " fornication," signi- fies, not merely adultery, but, in strictness of speech, harlotry ; and, though I would not press this distinction, it indicates, so far as it indicates anything, that Christ would recognize no divorce except for persistent, continuous, and habitual crime against the marriage relation. Milton's labored attempt to prove that an ineradicable incompatibility is fornication is a marvel of theolo- gical special pleading. 154 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Palestine, all that he had to do in dismissing her was to give a writing stating why he did so. Speaking to men who are under this state of law, Christ says, " No man has a right to put away his wafe except for the one crime that does of itself destroy the family." But it does not follow that Christ would say that an independent and impartial judge may never decree a separation between husband and wife for any other cause. That is quite a different matter. Christ says the husband must not dismiss the wife save for the one crime, but he does not say that an indepen- dent and impartial tribunal may not decree a separation save for the one crime. It might well be that, under a system in which the husband is judge and jury, deciding on his sole responsibility whether the marriage should be dissolved, he ought not to dissolve it except for the one cause ; while under a system in which no dissolution is possible, except by the decision of an impartial tribunal, such dissolution might be decreed for cruel and inhuman treatment, chronic intemper- ance, or deliberate desertion. But certainly it is not in accordance with the spirit of these instructions that divorces should be granted in the way in which, and for the causes for which, they are granted in the United States.^ 1 The following statistics were published some years ago by Dr. S. W. Dike. There has been no substantial improvement since then : — CHRIST S LAW OF THE FAMILY. 155 To-day it is a very simple thing for any couple to procure a divorce. One or the other goes across the continent to some Western State, and in a period of four or six weeks the separation is com- pleted. Sometimes some pseudo act of violence is performed for the very j^urpose of securing the di- vorce. The husband gives his wife a gentle slap, or the wife gives her husband a gentle slap, in the presence of some one summoned by the parties for the purpose, and a divorce is then granted on the ground of cruelty. Sometimes, the husband hav- ing left his wife by previous agreement, or the wife the husband, a decree is obtained on the ground of desertion. Sometimes not even this is required by the courts. The fault is less in the law than in the administration of the law. In California, for example, the law allows divorce for, among other In Connecticut there is annually 1 divorce to every 10 marriag-es. In Vermont " '' u 1 " " 14 In Massachusetts " " " 1 '* u 21 In N. Hampshire " " u " 11 In Rhode Island " " u " 11 In Maine *' " (( " 10 In Chicago " " " u 9.5 In San Francisco " " u u 6 The proportion has been rapidly increasing' in the last twenty years. Statistics carefully gathered from every European state show the same tendency and the same results. Dr. Dike says : " Apparently the divorce rate has doubled in those parts of the United States where we have the facts, and in most European coimtries, within forty years at the farthest, and mostly within half that period. The increase is found in Protestant and Cath- olic populations, and even in Russia under the Greek Church, though more among Protestants than others." 156 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. causes, " extreme cruelty." Mr. Lee Merriwether, in the Westminster Review for June, 1869,^ gives several pages of extracts from the court records, which contain a dismal showing of iniidelity, cruelty, intemperance, and desertion, but also a dis- mal showing of the utter disregard by California courts of the sj^irit of the law, and an utter pros- titution of legal proceedings to facilitate the sep- aration of couples who have simply grown tired of each other. A few quotations will suffice as illus- trations : — " The witness testified that he had seen the plaintiff with but one button on his vest, and that he heard the defendant say that she would not al- low the plaintiff, her husband, to go to fires at night. The court decided that the wife was guilty of cruel and inhuman treatment, and granted a de- cree of divorce." " Defendant treats plaintiff with great and un- merited contempt, having said that he did not care whether she left him or not. The foregoing remark was adjudged to be cruel and inhuman treatment, as it caused mental anguish ; a decree was accord- ingly granted." " My wife would not get up in the morning, nor would she call me in the morning ; she would not do anything I requested her to do. All this has caused me mental suffering and anguish." Divorce granted. " The defendant does not come home until ten 1 Vol. cxxxi., p. G7G ff. CHRIST S LAW OF THE FAMILY. 157 o'clock at night, and when he does return he keeps the x)hiintiff (wife) awake, talking sometimes until midnight." Divorce granted. But perhaps the most extraordinary of all the cases was this : " During our whole married life my husband has never offered to take me out ridino-. This has been a source of great mental suffering and injury." Divorce granted. This is worse than the old paganism, because it is paganism i^lus hypocrisy. We pretend to allow a divorce only for cruel and inhuman treatment, but we allow divorce for failing to sew buttons on, and for talking until midnight. It is not my pur- pose here to propose specific legal reforms. The evil is far deeper than the law. It lies in a semi- pagan sentiment which has crept unrecognized into the American community. So long as complaisant judges decree such actions as these to be cruel and inhuman treatment, no statute which the legis- lature can pass will prevent the evil. We must recognize these fundamental truths : that marriage is a divine ordinance wrought into human society in the very creation of man ; that the family is an autocracy, — that the husband and wife are not two separate individualities, joining hands for cer- tain special purposes, but are one flesh, a new per- son ; and we must recognize this, at least, that nothing but the most serious cause can justify sep- aration after marriage once made. We must re- member that the vow is not only '' for sickness and health," not only " for richer and poorer," but also " for better, for worse." 158 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. The remedy for connubial infelicities is not fly- ing from them. The remedy for any ill is not flying from it. The remedy for infelicities in the pastorate is not short pastorates. It is more j)a- tience by the pastor toward the church, and more patience by the church to Avar d the pastor. The remedy for the friction which enters into our households is not separation ; it is closer union. I have sometimes heard the wife say after a funeral, " He never spoke a cross word," and have blessed the widow's short memory. A life without a cross word would be a miracle of self-restraint. There are very few married couples in which each does not have to exercise patience with the other. The spirit which ^iroduces separation is the spirit that suffers and is cross, that seeketh its own, — the spirit of suspicion, not trust ; of discouragement, not hope, — the spirit that seeks to escape from life's burdens, not that beareth all things. The remedy for connubial infelicity is not sej^aration, it is closer union ; it is the love which beareth all things, trusteth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things ; ^ the love which counts an- other's fault as his burden, and bears it for him ; the love which is never suspicious, but trusting and confiding, and, when confidence is wronged and trust is no longer possible, still hopes : and, when hope long deferred makes the heart sick, still en- dures ; a love like the love of Christ, who, having loved his own, loved them unto the end. ^ 1 Cor. xiii. 7. CHAPTER VL Christ's law of service. In the preceding chapters we have considered the relation of Christianity to democracy, that is, to the development and reign of the common people ; to communism, or, more accurately, to property rights and relations ; to socialism, or, more prop- erly, to the general social order ; and to the family. In this and the succeeding clmpter, I purpose to consider more specifically the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the relation of Christianity, histori- cally considered, to certain aspects of the labor question. What is the labor question ? Originally, the capitalist owned the laborer. That was slavery. This ownership, in its earlier and cruder forms, was absolute. The slave was simply a chattel, and had no rights which the owner was bound to respect. He was not as well protected from cruelty as the domestic animal is by modern legislation. He was barely tenant at will of his own body, of which his master was free to dispossess him at any time by inflicting death.^ When slavery, by gradual influences proceeding 1 See Lecky's History of European Morals, i. p. 318 ff., where also the favorable side of ancient slavery is given. 160 CIIRJSriANJTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. from Christianity, was abolished in Europe, feu- dalism took its . place. The capitalist owned the land ; the laborer was attached to the land. The capitalist owed the laborer protection from his enemies ; the laborer owed the lord of the land his service. "From the king down to the lowest landowner," says Professor Stubbs, " all were bound together by obligation of service and de- fense, — the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord ; the defense and service being based on and regulated by the nature and extent of the land held by one of the other." This was an improvement in the condition of the laborer, but it certainly left much to be desired. He had no political rights ; held his cottage and garden at the will of his master, or subject to his oppression, and without means of defense against it. He possessed no title-deeds to his property, nor were there any adequate courts to which he could appeal if he were wronged.^ Remnants of feudalism are still to be found in England, but it has gradually given way to the capitalistic or wages system. Under this system, one class of men own the tools and implements of industry ; another class work with these tools. The former are called capitalists, the latter laborers. A great deal of current political discussion is based on the assumption that this is a permanent and necessary condition. In point of fact, it has 1 Wm. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England^ vol. i. ch. ix. § 1>3, pp. 252, 436. CHEISrS LAW OF SERVICE. 161 grown up almost wholly within a century. I can myself remember when, in the remoter parts of New England, there were still the spinning-wheel and the hand-loom in the farmer's house ; when the sheep were sheared and the wool was sent to the carding-mill, and then brought back and woven and spun into garments. Now the spinning-wheel is banished from the family, the hand-loom is gone, and the spinning-wheel and the loom are under the roof of the great factories, operated by a thousand men, who own no share whatever in the machin- ery which they are using. In my boyhood, going home from school, I sat on the box of the stage with the driver, who owned, at least in part, the stage and four-horse team ; and it was my ambition as a boy to be some time a stage-driver myself and own four splendid horses. Now the locomotive engineer stands in the cab, and carries many more passengers, a great deal more comfortably and at a far greater rate of speed ; but he does not own the locomotive. The locomotive and the railroad track are owned by one set of men, and operated by quite another. Practically, all the tools and implements of industry, except in agriculture, are owned by one class, while they are employed in productive labor by another class. It is under this capitalistic system that we have seen one half of the wealth of the United States pass into the possession and under the control of one per cent, of the poimlation. A compara- tively small number of persons control the imple- 162 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. meiits of industry and possess the great bulk of its products. The many carry on the industries, sub- ject to the will and under the control and direction of the few. The labor question is, What is the relation between these two classes, — the working- man who uses the tools, and the capitalist who owns them? It is customary, and for purposes of philosophi- cal discussion it is necessary, to draw sharply the line between these two classes, capitalists and laborers. But, in fact, no such sharp division exists. It is true that, under the wages system, a comparatively small number of men control the tools ; but, at least in democratic America, a very considerable and probably increasing number par- ticipate in the ownership. The total deposits in banks and institutions for savings in 1890-91 ag- gregated 12,661,752,961. The total number of depositors in the savings banks alone, for the year 1890, was 4,297,723, with an average deposit of §354.80 for each depositor. As many of these de- positors represent families, the proportion of wealth- owners to the population is seen to be large. Classes. No. of Banks. Capital. Surplus. Undivided Profits. Deposits. 2,572 171 647 304 1,235 ^208,564,841 79,292,889 32,106,127 30,785,458 $81,110,533 55,503,845 142,450,741 13,400,752 12,140,622 $556,037,012 Loan Trust Companies . . Savings Banks — Mutual. Savings Banks — Stock . . 355,331 t.OSO i,402,3;;'j.(;(;5 252,493,477 94,959,727 Total 4,989 $356,749,315 $304,624,493 $2,G61,752,9ul i 1 Harper's Book of Facts for 1890-91. CHRISrS LAW OF SERVICE. 163 Year. Number of Depositors. Amount of Deposits. Average for each Depositor. 1880 2,528,749 4,297,723 $891,90.1,142 1,524,844,506 $352.73 1890 354.80 1 The money thus deposited is not lying idle ; it is all invested, in one form or another, in tools and implements of industry. It becomes itself a tool, but the owner of the tool rarely uses it. We hire one another's tools with which to do our work. In considering the labor question, we must classify men into laborers and capitalists, though the same man may be capitalist in one aspect and laborer in another. The general effect of Christ's teaching, and of human development under its inspiration, is to abolish the class distinction between capitalist and laborer, as other class distinctions have been abol- ished. The tendency of civilization is to add to the wealth and the power of the common people.^ And as their wealth and power are increased they become capitalists, either by direct ownership in private industry, or by corporate industry through state action. The democracy of virtue and re- ligion, of education and intelligence, and of politi- cal power, is certain to be followed eventually by a democracy of wealth, in which the present con- ditions will, by successive modifications, be revo- lutionized. The laborers will become themselves 1 Carne^e, Triumphant Democracy, rev. ed. 1898, p. 504. 2 See ch. \\. passim. 164 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the capitalists, that is, the owners of the tools and implements of industry : they will control the tools with which they work, and the industries which they carry on ; no longer will capital hire labor in the cheapest market ; labor will hire capital ; the man will control, not the money. Meanwhile, however, the specific labor question of our time is. What is the relation between these two classes, the tool-owners and the tool-users, the capitalists and the laborers ? So far as this is a moral ques- tion, I believe that it is answered by two funda- mental principles, — Christ's law of service and Christ's standard of values. His law of service is the subject of our consideration in this chapter. Paganism has always discredited labor. Slavery of itself discredited labor and honored idleness. Thus paganism, born of savage selfishness and love of ease, has corrupted public opinion almost to the present time ; indeed, the relics of it are still to be found even in industrious America. In England, until a very recent period, a man might walk the deck of a man-of-war as a midshipman and be an honored gentleman ; but if he drove a bolt into its place to make the man-of-war, he was a dishonored mechanic. He might ride his horse over a farmer's field and destroy the harvest, hunt- ing a fox, and belong to the aristocracy ; but if he rode his horse from field to field, to superintend the sowing of the seed or the gathering of the harvest, he was nothing but a farmer. There were three vocations open to a gentleman's son : CHRIST'S LAW OF SERVICE. 165 he could be a soldier, a preacher, or a politician. But if he added to his nation's material wealth by productive industry, he could not be a gentleman. This spirit crossed the ocean to America with the Cavaliers. The immigrants to New England and New York, sons of the English yeoman and sons of the industrious Hollander, brought with them to the Northern States respect for productive toil ; but the immigrants to Virginia and the South, sons of the Cavalier, looked down upon industry as their fathers had done before them. Thus the South inherited its scorn for free labor ; slavery fitted well with that spirit and intensified it. But there is one people in the world which, throughout all its history, has honored industry, — the Jewish nation.^ Its ancient laws discourag-ed slavery and war, encouraged and honored honest toil. Men have imagined that the Hebrew Scrip- tures affirm that God imposed labor on man as penalty for sin. This is a mistake. On the con- trary, it is said that when God made Adam he put him into a garden to dress it and to keep it. It was not toil — it was thorns and thistles, that is, needless obstacles, and the care and worry which they beget — which sin brought into the world. Throughout Israel's history labor is honored. Abraham is a farmer, Moses a herdsman, David a shepherd boy. In the glowing picture of the future golden age which awaits the world, the spears are not laid aside, but beaten into pruning- 1 See ch. i. p. 6. 166 CHRISTTANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. hooks; nor the swords hung ujd ingloriously to rust away, but converted into plowshares. The benediction of God is bestowed on the laborer. The Hebrew painter takes his brush to paint a picture of ideal womanhood. This is what he puts upon his canvas : ^ — '' She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh wilHngly with her hands. She is Hke the merchant's shijDS : she bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens. She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that her mer- chandise is good : her candle goetli not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Into this nation, educated in and centred around the honorableness of toil, Christ was born. And he was born into a peasant family. He is known in history as the " Son of the Carpenter ; " he worked at his father's bench ; he called men of toil and labor about him to be his disciples. The church was, in the inception of it, a church of hard-working men. Its first apostles were fish- ermen ; its greatest apostle was a tent-maker. Through all the early primitive Christianity, it was built up out of hard-working men. It was a peasant church. It might also be called, without exaggeration, a workingtnan's organization. In his ^ Proverbs xxxi. 10-31. CHRISrS LAW OF SERVICE. 107 teaching, Christ emphasized the honorableness of labor. He declared that men were to serve one another, and he was greatest who served best. Not by destruction is honor won, nor by idleness while some one else works for us, but by produc- tive labor. Even the Messiah, he said, the Son of Man, who has come to set the world free, — even he has come to be the world's servant ; not to be ministered unto, but to minister.^ This is very alphabetic, very simple, yet very radical. It is not a mere moral apothegm, it is a scientific principle, that labor alone is honorable, and idleness unenforced always dishonorable. We brought nothing into this world,^ say the Scrip- tures, — how can we get anything ? We cannot live unless we have clothes, shelter, food. Only in one of four ways can we get these things : first, we may receive them as a willing gift from the producer ; second, we may appropriate them for ourselves directly from nature ; third, we may take them from the possession of the producer, without giving an equivalent ; fourth, we may produce them by our own industry. These are the four ways of getting anything, and there is no other. The community is full — the communities of Europe fuller than America — of men who are living on other men's industry. They are living by gifts. Some of them are poor and some of 1 Matthew xx. 28. 2 Job i. 21 ; Eccles. v. 15 ; 1 Tim. vi. 7. 168 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. them are rich, but they are doing nothing. The man of full age, good body, and fair capacity, who is not producing as much as he is spending, — the best thing we can say of him is that he is living on charity. The man or woman able to add to the world's wealth and . adding nothing to it, mate- rially, intellectually, or morally, must be counted among the beggars, however housed and clothed by the labors of others. " There are worse things," says Mr. Gladstone, " than heavy labor, and I will tell you what is worse than heavy labor, and that is idle wealth. In vain a man escapes from the destiny of hard work, even hard work with some degree of poverty, to attain to wealth, if that wealth is to bring vith it the curse, the unmitigated curse, of idleness and self-indulgence. The laborer has his legitimate, his necessary, his honorable and honored place in God's creation ; but in all God's creation there is no place appointed for the idle wealthy man. Wealth can only be redeemed from danger by one law and one course, and that Is by associating it with active duty to the honor of God and benefit of mankind." ^ Give heed, you who think you have no need to work because your rich fathers worked before you ; who imagine that a life is honorable which is spent in using what other men have produced ; who go through school, academy, and college, com- ing out with the ripened fruits of culture and all 1 W. E. Gladstone, Speech on Labor at Cheshire, England, Nov. 28, 1891, reported in London Times, Nov. 30, 1891. CHIi/SrS LAW OF SERVICE. 169 the advantages which wealth and society give, but never imagine that you are called upon to give back to the world, in some form or other, what God has given to you. Every man is bound, by the gifts of health, intelligence, capacity, and op- portunity which God has given him, to put into the world at least as much as he takes out of it. Every man should be inspired by a noble ambi- tion to leave the world richer, better, and nobler for his having lived in it ; we are not to forget that even the invalid should by his suffering so teach the world patience, as to be a produce^ of wealth of spirit. The second man takes out of the common stock, that is, out of the coal ot oil or lumber or produc- tive juices with which God has stored the earth.^ Whether the earth and its contents ought to be owned and managed by the entire community, whether it is a proper subject for personal prop- erty, or should be treated as common property, is a question not necessary here to consider. Nor that other question, whether the community should by law put some limitations upon the powers of men into whose possession and under whose con- trol this common stock has fallen. It is certain on the one hand that men who discover, unearth, and render available this reservoired wealth of the land, do so by some form of industry, intel- lectual or muscular, or both combined; and it is ^ For some estimate of the value of this species of property, see ch. iii. p. 82 ff. 170 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. equally certain that no one of them is living in accordance with Christ's law of service unless what he is giving to the community in illuminar tion, in warmth, in houses, in some advantage of diffused wealth, is worth at least as much as the world is giving to him in what he terms profits. If he is using his skill to make profitable to the world the world's otherwise useless stock of coal or oil or lumber, he is an honest man. If he is using his skill to get as much of it as he can for himself, and to give as little as he can to the com- munity, he is a dishonest man. The third man takes from another man's pocket without giving any equivalent. This he may do in either one of three ways, — by violence, then he is a robber ; by stealth, then he is a thief ; or by gambling. That is, he may make this bargain with another man : We will play a game of chance ; if you win you shall have my dollar, and give me nothing for it ; if I win I shall have your dollar, and give you nothing for it. The gambler is not a robber, for he does not take his neighbor's wealth by force. He is not always a thief, for he does not always take it by stealth. But he takes from his neighbor without giving him an equivalent, and that is dishonest. He may do this with cards, with roulette, with stocks, with grain, or with pork. The method of his gambling makes no difference in the morality of the transaction. The desire to get something for nothing is a dishonest desire ; the endeavor to get from another what he CHRIST'S LAW OF SERVICE. 171 possesses, without giving him an equivalent there- for, is an endeavor to do a dishonest thing. No transaction is honest, according to the standard of Christ's law of service, which is not, in the object and intent of it, beneficial to both parties. Public sentiment in America forbids gambling with cards ; public law forbids roulette, and has suppressed the lottery. But gambling in stocks and grain the law permits, and public sentiment practically sanctions. I do not condemn all the transactions of the stock and produce exchanges. On the contrary, these exchanges appear to me indispensable to the nation's prosperity. I do not condemn all dealings in futures. Every man who subscribes to a paper, sending in his subscription price at the beginning of the year, deals in a future, for he buys what does not exist when he makes the purchase. I do not condemn all op- tions. An option, as the preparation for a hona fide business transaction, is as legitimate as it is common. When a man pays a steamship com- pany ten per cent, of the passage-money to retain a state-room for him until the summer, and agrees to forfeit the ten per cent, if he does not take the room, he is buying an option. But options which are, as many of them are, gambling operations, — a mere bet on the future value of imaginary prop- erty, — are essentially vicious, because they are en- deavors to get something for nothing; and this endeavor is not made less dishonest because both parties to the transaction are possessed by the 172 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. same dishonest desire. A dealing in futures, such as Senator Washburn ^ describes in the following- terms, can be justified by no ethical principle, in no court of conscience. In such a transaction there is no desire on the part of either person involved to render a service, either to the other party or to the community : — '' A sells a million bushels of wheat, if you please, to B, to be delivered next October. A does not own a bushel of wheat, never has had a bushel, and does not expect to have ; and B, who has made the jDurchase, never expects that A will deliver the wlieat to him at the time specified in the contract : but on the expiration of the contract the two gentlemen make a settlement on the basis of the price that wheat may bear at the time specified. There is no ownership of property ; there is no change of property ; there is no legitimate transac- tion. It is simply a bet on the part of the two opera- tors as to what the price of wheat shall be at the time designated. So that this, as in the case of 'options,' simply becomes a wager as to tlie price of property at a given time in the future, and finally resolves itself into a bet, and nothing more." Such gambling as this is more pernicious than gambling with cards or at the roulette table, be- 1 For the facts respecting- stock gambling- here stated, I am indebted to the speech of Hon. W. D. Washburn, of Minnesota, in the United States Senate, July 11 and 23, 1802, on Options and Futures. His definition of options is as follows : ' ' They (options) do not contemplate the delivery or receiving- of property, and I do not suppose that there is an instance on record Avhere aijy property passed ; but it is simply a bet on what the value of that property may be at a given time in the future.'' VHRJtiTS LAW OF SERVICE. 173 cause it affects great classes in the community who have no part in the transaction. Senator Wash- burn has shown that, while the average acreage in wheat from 1885 to 1891 was almost exactly the same as from 1880 to 1884, and while population was steadily increasing, so that the demand for food products was growing and the supply of food products was stationary, nevertheless the price of wheat fell between 1880 and 1895 from one dollar and forty-five cents to ninety-five cents a bushel. And he gives abundant authority for the belief that this was due to fictitious sales of imaginary wheat in New York and Chicago. In 1892 the " Chicago Tribune" said editorially: "The situation has shaped itself to this extent, that, if Western Europe wants wheat for the next four months, there is no place except the Atlantic coast of the United States where it can be obtained." But the influences of the Chicago " bear ring " broke down the price of wheat in the United States and carried the market price throughout the world down with it. The real sales in these great produce ex- changes are apparently insignificant as compared with the fictitious ones. In New York on a single day six thousand bushels of wheat were sold for actual delivery, and forty-four million bushels of imaginary wheat for future delivery in gambling transactions. Senator Washburn gives it as his opinion that at least ninety-five per cent, of the sales in the Chicago Board of Trade are sales of a fictitious character, " where no property is actually 174 CHliJ^TIANJTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. owned ; no projierty sold or delivered, or expected to be delivered, but simply wagers or bets as to what that property may be worth at a designated time in the future." It does not come within the province of this chapter to consider the question whether the law proposed in Congress for putting an end to these gambling transactions was consti- tutional, or, if constitutional, was judicious. It is enough to point out their essentially immoral char- acter, their violation of Christ's law of service, the corrupt desire that is the inspiration of them, — to get something for nothing, — the commercial in- jury they inflict upon the country in affecting the values of honest owners and j)roducers, and the moral injuries they inflict upon the country by exciting in young men an eager and passionate haste to get rich. There is only one honest way to get rich, — the production of wealth by honest industry. ^ All gambling transactions, however cloaked and disguised, are revealed when brought to the touch- stone of Christ's law of service, namely, we come into the world naked ; we have nothing ; we must not take from life without adding something to it ; we must contribute to the world at least as much as we receive from it ; we ought to be ambitious to contribute more, to leave the world wiser, richer, ^ See also, on this general subject, J. P. Quinn, " Fools of For- tune," part iii. eh. ii. ; G. H. Stutfield, "Modern Gambling- and Gambling Laws." Nineteenth Century., vol. xxvi. p. 840, November, 1889; and W. E. Bear, "Market Gambling," Contemporary Re- view, vol. Ixv. p. 781, June, 1894. CHEISrS LAW OF SERVICE. 175 nobler, because we have lived in it. Labor is honorable, service is honorable ; to live without labor, without serving, is dishonorable. There are a variety of ways in which men add to the world's wealth, — that is, to its life, physical, intellectual, moral. In the natural order, the first thing is to get out of the earth what the earth con- tains for the service of man. This is the work of the agriculturist, the miner, the lumberman. These men are making available to the community the reservoired resources of the globe. But one cannot advantageously eat raw wheat, nor live in trees, nor use iron in the ore for tools, nor com- fortably wear the skins of animals. The wheat must be turned into bread, the trees builded into houses, the iron fashioned into tools, the wool spun and woven into garments. Thus the second thing is to turn what the earth gives us into forms use- ful for our service. This is mechanic art. In one region there is plenty of food, in another none ; in one forests, in another timberless plains and val- leys ; in one the iron mine, in another the mill- stream or the coal which furnishes power for the factory. The food must be transported from the Western prairie to the Eastern city, the timber from the Michigan forest to the Illinois farm, the iron or the copper from the shores of Lake Su- perior to the furnaces of Pennsylvania. Thus comes into play the third great service to the com- munity, transportation. China and India suffer great famines unknown in America, chiefly be- 176 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. cause they are not equipped with great railroad corporations to carry suj)plies from the regions where food is abundant to the regions which are famine-stricken. When these supplies are brought to the communities who need them, there must be individuals to carry this work of distribution further. These are called middlemen. It is pop- ular in certain quarters to condemn the middle- men, but they are essential to public well-being. As modern water-works gather the water into reservoirs, send it by means of great mains throughout the city, from which again it is dis- tributed in smaller and still smaller pipes until it reaches the rooms in the private houses, where it can be drawn by opening a faucet, so commerce takes nature's supplies, carries them to great centres of population, where retail trade takes them up, distributing them to individual house- holds. The middleman is the faucet without which the water would never be available in the home. We have, however, other needs than ma- terial ones. Men will sicken, there must be skilled physicians ; men wdll not understand their right relations to one another, there must be law- yers to counsel them ; there are criminals, and there must be governors, soldiers, policemen, to protect. There must be teachers to instruct, preachers and poets to inspire, artists and authors and musicians to minister to the gestlietic and literary taste. There will be homes, and there must be wives and mothers who are not turning CHRISTS LAW OF SERVICE. 177 the spiniiing-vvheel, nor driving the loom, nor plowing the field, nor adding to the material wealth by their industry, but who are adding to spiritual wealth by their patience, their fidelity, their love. All these are adding to the world's wealth. None of these are honestly fulfilling their place in life unless they are adding to the world's wealth. The true wife lives that she may make home happier and better. The preacher ministers in the pulpit that he may elevate and enrich the moral culture of the community ; the artist and the musician, that he may serve man through the subtle ministries of art and music ; the soldier and the statesman, that he may protect the community while all this work is going on ; the lawyer, that he may direct the will of the community in right channels, and make it strong for righteousness ; and the tradesman, the merchant, the manufac- turer, the farmer, that he may both create and distribute equably that material wealth on the production and equable distribution of which the moral well-being of the community depends. In all this work hand and brain must cooperate. Labor is not all hand-labor. An American humor- ist has said with great truth, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, but some men sweat outside and some men inside." The brain has need of the hand, and the hand of the brain. Both are entitled to their share of the world's products, but this one fundamental truth remains : the world has just so much as we put into it ; no 178 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. more. If we do not by our consecrated use of hand or head or heart, by our personal activity or our wise direction of the activity of others, by our serving or our suffering, endeavor to add to the world's wealth — material, intellectual, or spir- itual — at least as much as we have taken out of it, we belong in the category of the beggars, the thieves, and the gamblers. The first principle, then, is respect for labor, and respect for each other's labor ; respect by the man who works with his brain for the man who works with his hand, and respect by the man who works with his hand for the man who works with his brain, — mutual respect. When we have thoroughly learned this one fundamental prin- ciple, that to destroy is not honorable and to pro- duce is, that the glory of the nation lies in its production, that the glory of life lies in adding to the wealth of life, — its material, its intellectual, its spiritual wealth, — we shall have learned one great underlying lesson. Until we have learned this, all other learning is in vain, for this is the foundation. The greatest of all is the servant of all. We believe this in the church : the minister is the servant of the congregation. We believe it in politics : the President is the servant of the people. We shall not get to the Christian basis of industry until we come to recognize in industry also that there is no such thing as independence, and that the greatest and the richest and the strongest is great only as he is the servant of the weak and the poor. CHAPTER VII. Christ's standard of values. Christ furnishes his standard of values in the question, " Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" To that question there can be but one answer. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Things are made for men, not men for things ; success is to be measured by the development of character, not by the accumulations of wealth. Though this is a self-evident proposition, it is practically denied, and has been from the begin- ning of history. The old political economy, if it did not openly deny, certainly entirely ignored it ; declared itself concerned simply with wealth, and with men simply as wealth-producers. " Political economy," says John Stuart Mill,^ " considers man- kind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth." It is true that he denies that man is ever solely so occupied ; but political economy, accord- ing to him, regards man only in the aspect of a pro- ducer of wealth ; and yet it is supposed that it is po- litical economy which teaches the relations between 2 J. S. Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy. Essay v. p. 137, ff. 180 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. labor and capital. Its standard of values is wholly material : it formerly regarded that the best system which accumulated wealth the most rapidly ; it can hardly even now be said to have proceeded any farther to a more spiritual conception than to add that the best system will also distribute wealth the most equably. The effect of industrial methods on the individual man it does not consider ; whether it is making him wiser and better, nobler and happier, it does not inquire, — certainly did not in- quire. It is only within recent years that economic reformers have affirmed that political economy, in considering the science of wealth, must consider it as related to the development and maintenance of society, must deal with man as an intellectual and moral being, — must, in a word, be ethical.^ The practical standard of American life is more in harmony with the old than witli the new 23oliti- cal economy. He who has made a fortune we regard successful ; he who has lost a fortune we say has failed. The common answer to the ques- tion, what is a man worth, is given in dollars and cents. Not only commercial but intellectual under- takings are measured by the money standard. The newspaper which can affirm that it has the largest circulation, and the greatest amount of advertising, publishes these facts as the evidence of its success. 1 F. A. Walker, The Wages System ; J. B. Clark, Philosophy of Wealth ; R. T. Ely, Elements of Pol. Econ. ; Professor Ingrahani, Encyc. Brit.^ art. " Pol. Econ." See, also, writings of Laveleye, Wagner, and Gide. CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 181 Whether it is promoting the moral and intellectual life of its subscribers, whether its advertisements are of things which aid or hinder that life, are questions scarcely considered. Colleges and uni- versities are often popularly measured in the same way. Wiiat is the college endowment ? How large are its buildings ? How much money has it in its treasury ? Balliol College, in England, limits the number of its students, and takes only " honor men." Is there any analogous college in America ? If so, I have never heard of it. Even churches are measured by this material standard. Are its pews all rented ? Does it pay a good price to its minis- ter ? What does its music cost ? What is the wealth represented in the pews upon its centre aisle ? Even ministers talk with one another of a " aood place," meaning thereby, not a place where the great- est good can be done, but where the greatest social and material advantages can be enjoyed. States- men and journalists measure the nation by the same method. Mr. Blaine told the Americans a few years ago that the wealth of America had increased from fourteen thousand millions to forty-four thou- sand millions, and this statement was given as the evidence of the nation's prosperity. Andrew Car- negie, in "Triumphant Democracy," ^ gives in suc- 1 Triumphant Democracy: Sixty Years' March of the Republic, revised edition, based on the census of 1890, by Andrew Carnegie. In oO years, from 1860 to 1890, the increase has been : — In population, 99.2 per cent., 31,44;j,o21 to 62,622,250. In value of land, fences, and buildings, 97.29 per cent., from $6,645,045,007 (est.) to $1:], 11 0,08 1,884. 182 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. cessive chapters, as chief among the evidences of democracy's triumph, its growth in wealth, — its increase in thirty years, 1860-1890, of nearly 100 per cent, in land, fences, and buildings ; of 123 per cent, in farm implements and machinery ; of 122 per cent, in live stock : its increase in the products of manufactures from a little less than two thou- sand millions to a little less than nine thousand millions ; of the assets of its railroads from a little less than two thousand millions to a little over ten thousand millions. He teU us that the United States has produced one third of the gold output of the whole world, and that in ten years the United States has built on an average sixteen thousand miles of railroad each year (enough to go two thirds around the globe). We are told that private capital, without any proclamation, has built in a single year more miles of railroad than Russia is proposing to build in its famous railroad from the Siberian frontier to the Pacific coast. These facts Value of farm implements and machinery, 12:j.47 percent., from $246,118,141 (est.) to $555,000,000. Value of live stock on farm, 122.04 per cent., from $1,089,329,- 915 (est.) to $2,418,766,028. Manufactures : capital invested, from $1,009,855,715 (est.) to $4,600,000,000. Value of products, $1,855,861,676 (est.) to $8,700,000,000. Steam railroads : miles, 28,920 (est.) to $163,597. Steam railroads: assets $1,867,248,720 (est.) to $10,278,835,- 746. Assessed valuation of real estate and personal property, $12,- 084,560,005 to $24,651,585,465. It is, however, due to Mr. Carneg-ie to say that he does not pre- sent these facts as the onlv evidence of the triumph of democracy. CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 183 — the amount of our corn crop and our cotton crop and our manufactured products, and our railroad- building, and the increase of our general wealth from fourteen thousand millions to forty-four thousand millions — are popularly regarded as the evidence of the greatness of our nation. The tests are material tests. Christ repudiates all such tests. The true test is character. The railroads, the shipping, the banks, the gold, the corn crop, the cotton crop, are for men. The question is, What sort of men are we making? But he says more than that. Political economy defends itself in putting the material standard first, for, it is said, we must make money before we can spend it. The first thing to do is to attain material prosperity. When we have once got our money, then we may build schools and churclies, print newspapers and books, serve the spiritual and intellectual ends of mankind; but first get we money. Christ says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Character comes first. When character has been produced, when men of integrity, of uprightness, of a truly divine na- ture, have been developed, wealth will naturally follow. Wealth first, man afterwards, says politi- cal economy. Man first, wealth afterwards, says Christ. Wealth the standard of value, says poli- tical economy. Man the standard of value, says Christ.i 1 See ch, iv., p. 124 S. 184 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. All things in life are to be measured by this standard, — Life more than meat, the body more than raiment. By this we are to measure religion and religious institutions. Not that community is the most religious which has the most splendid cathedrals, the most gorgeous ritual, the most beautiful music, but that which has the best men. It is not in Italy, with its splendid St. Peter's ; nor in Spain and France, with their magnificent cathe- drals, centuries in building, nations in which the greatest proportion of illiteracy is found, — but in Puritan New England, with its plain school-houses and its plain meeting-houses, in which in the olden time every man and woman and child could read, that the greatest and the best religious life is found. By this we are to measure government. Not that is the best government which best governs to- day, but that which, by the very process of gov- ernment, is developing the best manhood for to- morrow. It may be that Dublin is better governed than New York, but that is not the vital question. Compare two Irish brothers, one in Ireland, one in the United States, and then after fifty years com- pare the grandchildren. The government that puts the vote into hands that do not know how to use it, and teaches them how to use it in the using, is the better government of the two. For govern- ment is to be measured by the men it CA^entually makes, not primarily by the advantages it immedi- ately confers. So all educational systems are to be measured CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 185 by no other standard than this, — the men and women they produce. We are told that China has a public school system older than the United States ; that its most ancient university was estab- lished one thousand years before the Christian Era ; that its Imperial Academy at Pekin dates from the days of Mahomet ; that it has been a lit- erary nation from a period long anterior to the birth of Christ.^ We are told that Germany has a better public school system than the United States ; that the system is better graded ; that the relation of the preparatory schools to the universities is better adjusted; that the discipline is more equably administered ; that the standard of scholarship is more rigorous. We are told that the American public school system is marked by serious and even fatal defects ; that it is lacking in moral and re- ligious instruction ; that the schools are atheistic ; that we must return to the old belief that educa- tion is a function of the church, not of the state, — must substitute the parochial for the public school, and as I am writing this chapter, this attempt is being made by the Conservative party in England. It is certainly true that China's school system is older ; it is probably true that Germany's school system is better organized. I believe it to be true that the American school system imperatively needs an infusion of moral and religious education, which we have either carelessly allowed to drop ^ See W. A. P. Martin, The Chinese, their Education, Philoso- phy, and Letters, pp. 85-90 ; Gray's China, vol. i. p. 178. 186 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. out, or carefully excluded. Nevertheless, if the school systems of China, Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain, and the United States are com- pared, or if in the United States the denomina- tional schools, whether Protestant or Roman Cath- olic, are compared with the public schools, by comparing, not their courses of instruction, but the pupils who graduate from them, the public school system will not suffer by the comparison. With all his defects, the American boy, product of the American public school system, is a more in- telligent workman, a more patriotic citizen, more catholic in his sympathies, more versatile in his abilities, more fitted for all the exigencies of life, than the graduate of the more ancient Chinese system, the more scholarly German system, or the more religious parochial system.^ As the church, the state, and the school are to be measured by the character which they produce, so is the industrial system. One standard of value cannot be applied in one case and another standard of value in another. The social and industrial system is to be measured, not by the wealth it pro- duces, but by the men it produces ; not by the abundance of the material things, but by the kind of men developed in the process. Man is the standard of value, not things. An industrial sys- tem, then, must produce good men and good 1 See Hist, of the Civil War in America, by the Comte de Paris, vol. i. pp. 277. 278, for illustration of the versatility of the American soldier. CHRIST'S STANDARD OF VALUKS. 187 women, or tend to produce them. If it does not, it fails, measured by Christ's standard. The evil of slavery was not that sometimes slaves were ill- treated ; that they were poorly housed and fed ; that they were not paid wages. It was this : their manhood was suppressed ; there was no true home, no permanent and protected family, no permission of education, no hope for development, no real stimulant and inspiration to life in its higher and nobler forms. The justification of emancipation is found in such characters as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington. Slavery might feed, clothe, and house the slave, but it could never make a noble specimen of manhood. The modern industrial system, measured by this standard, is far better than that which it sup- planted. The wages system is far better than slavery. If there were no other advantage to the laborer, there would be this, that he is a free man. No master can maim or imprison or kill him, or sell his wife or his children away from him, or drive him to unrewarded labor with a lash. If he were worse housed, worse clothed, worse fed, than the feudal villein or the Southern slave, he would still be in better condition. What American would exchange the freedom of ill-paid but free labor for the comforts, assuming for the moment that they existed, of slave labor ? The wages system is far better than feudalism ; better in the independence which it has created, the spirit of liberty which it nourishes, the comforts which it affords. Even in 188 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. a purely material point of view, the free laborer of to-day is in far better condition than the villein of olden time. The man who inveighs against the white slave of to-day, declaring his condition worse than that of the negro slave of the South or the serf of the Middle Ages, displays either his igno- rance of history or his indifference to truth. " If," says Mr. Daniel Pidgeon,^ " there was something idyllic about the picture of the old English weaver working at his loom with his family around him, carding and spinning wool or cotton for his use, that home of industry was very different in fact and fiction. Huddled together in a hut whose liv- ing and sleeping accommodations w^ere curtailed, by the tools of his trade, to limits which left little room for decency, the weaver's family lived and worked without comfort, convenience, good food, or good air. The children became toilers from their earliest youth, and grew up quite ignorant, no one having yet conceived of education, except as a lux- ury of the rich. Theft of materials and drunken- ness made almost every cottage a scene of crime, want, and disorder. The grossest superstitions took the place of intelligence, health was impossi- ble in the absence of cleanliness and pure air, and such was the moral atmosphere of labor that, if some family with more virtue than common tried to conduct themselves so as to save their self-re- spect, they were abused or ostracized by their 1 Daniel Pidgeon, Old World Questions and New World An- swers^ ch. XV. p. 254 (133 f. Harper's Handy Series ed.). CHRIST S STAXDAUIt OF VALUES. 189 neighbors. It was under this system that there arose in England that pauper class, the reproach of civilization, which, once created, continued to grow until a fourth of the national income scarcely sufficed to support the nation's poor. Against the spread of pauperism, indeed, legislation and phi- lanthropy seemed alike powerless, and the evil was only at last checked by the rise of those manufac- turing industries which followed upon the inven- tions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, Crompton, and the enterprise of men like Wedgwood. The in- fluence of the newly-born factory system alone 23re~ vented England from being overrun during the latter half of the eighteenth century by the most ignorant and depraved of men, and it was only in the factory districts that the demoralizing agency of pauperism could be effectually resisted. . . . The two systems were simultaneously in force in France down to a very late period ; domestic in- dustry being even now the rule in the country around Amiens, while the factory reigns in the city itself. There, however, the rural workers have a very bad reputation as compared with that of the town operatives. Their homes are worse and worse kept ; beginning work at no regular hour, they idle more, and earn more precarious wages, than do factory hands, and they are inveterate drunkards." The introduction of machinery and of orga- nized labor, the two great industrial changes of the present century, have operated in three ways to improve the condition of the laboring man. 190 CHRISTIAXJTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. They have lowered tlie price of manufactured goods, and brought within the reach of great classes of men comforts which before were the special privilege of the few. They have increased both the demand for labor and the waaes of the laborer, and so their power to purchase comforts. And they have compelled a higher degree of intel- ligence in industry by transferring to machinery the work which formerly was done by human muscles, and calling on human brain to superin- tend the machinery, which can act, but cannot think, and therefore cannot superintend itself. It is true that in individual instances the in- vention of machinery has thrown workingmen out of employment, but the general effect of this machinery has been greatly to increase the de- mand for labor, as well as to make a demand for greater intelligence in labor. New occupations have been brought into existence by invention. Thousands of emjiloyees are to-day engaged in telegraphy, who before would have been without employment, or would have been entering into competition with, and reducing the wages of, other employees. The displacement of the stage-coach and the substitution of the railroad, by increasing the convenience of travel and transportation, has multii^lied the number of travelers and of articles to be transported, and multiplied many fold the number of men employed in transportation. The invention of the steam printing-press, creating the cheap newspaper, and in turn a great reading con- CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 191 stituency, has multiplied the demand for editors, reporters, printers, and pressmen. Stenography and the typewriter have called into existence a new class of clerical assistants. The invention and application of electricity have necessitated and so produced electrical workers of every grade, from Nicolas Tesla to the lineman. The chapter might be indefinitely extended : there is no notable addition to the machinery of the world which has not increased the demand for laborers ; and there are few such additions which have not made a demand for educated, experienced, and skilled laborers.^ With this increase in demand for labor has come an increase in its remuneration. Robert Giffin, in his " Progress of the Working Classes," and Carroll D. Wright, in his " Industrial Evolu- tion in the United States," have given in great detail the evidence which justifies this general assertion. The increase in the wages of factory operatives and mechanics in England ranges from 20 per cent, to 150 per cent. The food products of the English laborer remain in price, on the average, about what they were forty or fifty years ago, but clothing is materially cheaper. Rent has increased, but this is because the houses are better. Making allowance for the increase in rent, Dr. Giffin estimates the wages available for other purposes, in England, as nearly double what they were fifty years ago, — a gain from about fifteen 1 See Carroll D. Wright, Industrial Evolution in the United States, ehs. xxvii. and xxviii. 192 CIIRISTIAMTY AXJ) SOCIAL I'JIOBLKMS. shillings in 1835 to twenty-seven shillings sixpence in 1885. Carroll D. Wright, on the basis of reports from twenty industries and nearly one hundred distinct establishments, reports, on the basis of the wage rate in 1860, a rise in wages in the United States from 87.7 per cent, in 1840 to 160.7 in 1891.1 Never before in human his- tory — nowhere else in the world, except perhaps in Australia — shall we find the laborer as well housed, fed, and clothed as in this close of the nineteenth century in the United States. Never before has he had as much opportunity for lei- sure, education, and moral advancement. " The 1 See, for detailed and elaborate statistics on tliis point, The Progress of the Working Classes in the last Half Century, by Robert Giffin, Esq., I.L. D., and Industrial Evolution in the United States, by C. D. Wright, eh. xvii. See, also, on this subject, L. J. Brentano, Hours and Wages in Relation to Pro- duction. Two extracts must suffice to give concrete illustration of his conclusions, and the data on which they are based : " The poor hand-loom weaver makes a martyr of himself in vain with his thirteen to sixteen hours a day, and a weekly wage of three to seven shillings, in order to compete with the factory operative working short hours for high pay,'' p. 67. " What, then, has the development of the English cotton industry to show us ? Before all things, it shows a concentration of factories in the places possessing the most favorable conditions for production. And what are these places ? Those where wages are the cheapest ? Among such was, for instance, Ireland, with a few spinning- factories employing about o,000 hands at wages half as high as in England. But for that very reason labor in that country was far too dear for English capital to seek investment there. The place it chose was where the highest paid labor gave assurance of the most energetic utilization of the other favorable condi- tions of production. Lancashire became the centre of the cotton industry." Soe. So. Ser. ed. p. 59. CHRISrS STANDARD OF VALUES. 193 higher wage rate per diem," writes Schoenhof,i " ruling in the United States, enables the opera- tives to enjoy a better mode of living, and better nutrition of body and mind. They eat more and better food than any of the operatives of Europe, and their general mode of living is upon a higher standard." Nor has the introduction of machinery and organized labor promoted intellectual develop- ment only by indirection. Machine labor requires gTeater intelligence in most industries than hand labor. The attrition of mind with mind in factory employments has in it a power to quicken life, of which the solitary worker under the old system had no experience. In both ways the modern system has conduced to human development. Mr. W. H. Mallock,2 in '' Labor and the Popular Wel- fare," gives some striking illustrations of the direct educational effect of the introduction of machinery, from which we select one instance ; " When Watt had perfected his steam-engine in structure, design, and princi])le, and was able to make a model which was triumphantly successful in its working, he en- countered an obstacle of which few people are aware, and which, had it not been overcome, would have made the development of steam-power, as we know it now, an utter impossibility. It was, 1 J. Sehoenhof , Economy of High Wages, p. 84 ; quoted by L. J. Brentano, Hours and Wages in Belation to Production, Soc. Se. Ser. p. 5o. 2 W. H. Mallock, Labor and the Popular Welfare, L. 1894, p. 185 f. 194 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCJAL PROBLEMS. indeed, in the opinion of the engineer Smeaton, fatal to the success of Watt's steam-engine alto- gether. This obstacle was the difficulty of making cylinders, of any useful size, sufficiently true to keep the pistons steam-tight. AYatt, with indomi- table perseverance, endeavored to train men to the degree of accuracy required, by setting them to woYh at cylinders and nothing else, and by in- ducing fathers to bring up their sons with them to the workshop, and thus from their earliest youth habituate them to this single task. By this means, in time, a band of laborers was secured in whom skill was raised to the highest point of which it is capable." In vain Carlyle and Ruskin call on us to turn about and march with our faces to the past and our backs to the future. The question whether the wages system is better than feudalism or slav- ery has been settled ; it remains to decide whether it is the final system, whether it is producing the best men that a true industrial system could pro- duce. I believe it is not. I. Our present industrial system is not giving steady and permanent employment to all willing laborers. Mr. Charles Booth, the London sta- tistician, and one the value of whose reports on the condition of London is recognized by all scien- tific men, shows us that from ten to twenty per cent, of the population of London are living on the verge of starvation, the large majority of them willing to work, but finding only casual work, or CHRIST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 195 finding none at all, and living on charity. This is the famons submerged tenth. No industrial sys- tem is producing the right kind of men and women which leaves from ten to fifteen per cent, of the population of its greatest city without the oppor- tunity to earn an honest livelihood. In Paris the conditions are not so bad, but they are prevented from going in the same direction with great rapid- ity only by governmental action providing work for the unemployed. The best-informed students of the conditions of life in New York and Brook- lyn testify that there are hundreds, and oftentimes thousands, of men vainly seeking employment in these great cities. Beside the tramps, who do not want to work and think they do, and the invalids, who would but cannot work, in our great cities there are tens of thousands of men and women who would gladly earn their bread by the sweat of their brow and cannot do it. The opportunity is not afforded to them. In the year 1885 a care- ful statistician estimated that there were nearly a million willing workers out of employment in the United States ; and the United States has been called the Eldorado of the workingmen.^ Com- 1 See the statement of Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, quoted ch. iv. p. 112. While engaged on this volume, I find in the Brook- lyn Eagle a letter by Darwin J. Meserole (March 9, 1896), the superintendent of the Brooklyn Home of Industry, conducted under the auspices of the City Mission and Tract Society, who says " an average of 150 men a month are turned from the doors of the industrial department of the City Mission alone. These men will work if given the opportunity, and for the lowest wages, 196 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. mercial crises recur with frightful rapidity, taking money out of the pockets of capitalists, and bread out of the mouths of children of workinainen. That is not a healthful state of society which makes such recurrences possible. Whether they are due to unjust taxation, to ill-advised labor organization, to spendthrift habits, to a poorly managed currency, to misdirection of energies, or to all combined, is not the question ; the simple question now is this : Is that labor system perfect which makes it possible that thousands of men should be thrust out of the possibility of earning a livelihood ? " In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," said God. Then every man has a right to earn his daily bread in the sweat of his face, and society will not be organized on a truly Christian basis until it is so organized that every willing worker wdll have an opportunity to earn enough to support, maintain, and educate himself and his household. 11. The present industrial system not only fails to give employment to all, but fails also to give to all those who are employed under it wages ade- quate for true livelihood. If by life is meant life of the mind and spirit as well as of the body, wages are often not living wages. The system out of which we are gradually emerging, the sys- namely, food and shelter. During- the four years of the existence of the Home of Industry, thousands of homeless men have applied for assistance, and we have yet to hear the first refusal to work from the hundreds to whom we have been able to offer employ- ment." CffRfST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 197 tern of individualism, the system of the Manchester school, affirms that the capitalist should hire labor in the cheapest market, and the laborer should sell his labor in the highest market ; in other words, that every man who hires labor is to pay the least possible price, and every laborer is to extort the largest possible price. Under this system the ten- dency is to a depression of wages and a deteriora- tion of manhood. To ascertain this tendency we only need to consider the condition of workingmen in those connnunities where labor has not oroan- ized, where legislation has not interfered, where all labor conditions and labor remuneration have been left to be settled solely by free competition. At one time, when emigration was taking place from Italy, an appeal was made to the Italians not to emigrate, but to remain in their fatherland and help to build up their nation. This was their reply ^ : — " What do you mean by ' the nation ' ? Do you refer to the most miserable of the inhabitants of the land? If so, we are indeed the nation. Look at our pale and emaciated faces, our bodies worn out with over-fatigue and insufficient food. We sow and reap corn, but never taste white bread ; we cultivate the vine, but a drop of wine never touches our lips. We raise cattle, but never eat meat ; we are covered with rags, we live in wretched hovels ; in winter we suffer from the cold, and both winter and summer from the pangs of hunger. Can a land which does not provide its inhabitants, who are 1 Quoted by Emile de Laveleye, Contemporary Review, vol. xlvii. p. 498, April, 1885. 19S cfriii>T/AXiTy asd social rnoBLEMS. Trilling to work, with sufficient to live upon, be con- sidered bv tliem as a fatherland ? '* Philip Gilbert Hamerton has described the intellectual and moral starvation of the French peasantry.^ The condition of the German peas- antry is but little better. ^lore than half the population of Prussia had in 1ST5 an income less than one hundred and five dollars a year each, and only 140.000 persons incomes above seven hundred and fifty dollars.- Perhaps the most significant and appalling indication of the effect of this system is seen in the death rate. Says Elisee Eeclus'^ : — •• The mean mortality among the well-to-do is. at the utmost, one to sixty. !Now. the population of Europe being a third of a thousand millions, the average deaths, according to the rate of mortalitv. among the fortunate, should not exceed five millions. They are three times five millions. What liave we done with these ten mil- lion human beings killed before their time ? If it be true that we have duties one towards the other, are we not responsible for the servitude, the cold, the hunger, the miseries of every sort, which doom the unfortunate to untimely deaths ? Race of Cains, what have we done with our brothers ? " The conditions produced by freedom of contract have been but little better in England. Francis A. AValker. in *• The AVages Question." ^ portrays ^ P. G. Hamerton. Bound wv Ho7ne. chs. xi. and sii. - John Rae. Cont. Socialism, p. :>4. ■^ Contanporary Eevinr. vol. xlv. p. (>j-. May. 1SS4, " The Anarchy of an Anarchist." ^ Pages oO and 61. The authorities cited for his statements are modern English observers. CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 199 these conditions in graphic detail, and confirms his report by unquestionable authorities. A few sen- tences must suffice here to illustrate pages of de- scription in his volume : — " To-day, in the West of England, it is impossible for an agricultural laborer to eat meat more than once a week. ... In Devon, the laborer breakfasts on tea-kettle broth, — hot water poured on bread and flavored with onions ; dines on bread and hard cheese at 2d. a pound, with cider very washy and sour ; and sups on potatoes or cabbage greased with a tiny bit of fat bacon. He seldom more than sees or smells butcher's meat. . . . The cottages, as a rule, are not fit to house pigs in. Of 309 cottages at Ramsbottom, one of the best districts in Lancashire, 137 had but one bedroom each, the aggre- gate occupants being 777 ! " ^ In the United States this theory of industrial life as a perpetual struggle between conflicting classes, this economic doctrine that labor is a commodity to be purchased in the cheapest market, this wages system with its tools all belonging to one class and used by another class, has not had time to bring forth its full fruition. But even in the United States we have the spectacle of a tool-owner getting control, by ways not above suspicion, of some of the great highways of the nation, and receiving, for twenty-five years, an income of thirteen thou- 1 It does not come within the province of this volume to pre- sent in detail and with any fullness the indictment against the modern industrial system. This has heen amply done by others : Laveleye. Groveland, John Rae. F. A. Walker, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carhle, and others. See notes to eh. iv. ante. 200 CHRISTJAyiTY AXD SOCIAL PROBLEMS. sand dollars a day, and paying" the brakenian from a dollar to a dollar and a half a day. It is not strange that the brakenian thinks the disparity too gi'eat. Most impartial Americans agree with him. I believe that the system which divides society into two classes, capitalists and laborers, is but a temporary one, and that the industrial unrest of our time is the result of a blind struggle toward a democracy of wealth, in which the tool-users will also be the tool-owneis : in whicli labor will hire capital, not capital labor; in which men, not money, will control in industry, as they now control in government. But the doctrine that labor is a com- modity, and that capital is to buy it in the cheapest market.^ is not even temporarily sound ; it is eco- nomically false as it is ethically unjust. There is no such commodity as labor ; it does not exist. When a workingman comes to the factory on a Monday morning he lias nothing to sell, he is empty-handed : he has come in order to jiroduce something by his exertion, and that something, when it is ]n'oduced, is to be sold, and part of the proceeds of that sale will of right belong to him, because he has helped to produce it. And as there is no labor commodity to be sold, so there is no labor market in which to sell it. A free market assumes a variety of sellers with different commodi- ^ " What is fair ■wajjes ? " The reply is. that " any wages are fair which are as \\v^\\ as that sort of work t-oniniaiuls in the open nuirket." " Labor, like flour or cotton cloth, should always be boui^ht in the cheapest nuirket aiul sold in the dearest." W. A. Croffut. Thf Forum. Mnv. ISSti. CHBIST'S STAXDARD OF VALUES. 201 ties and a variety of buyers with different needs, the seller at perfect liberty to sell or not to sell, the buyer at perfect liberty to buy or not to buy. There is no such market for labor. The laborers are in a great majority of cases as firmly attached to their town by prejudice, by ignorance of the out- side world and its needs, by home considerations, by their little possessions, — their house and lot, — and by religious ties, as if they were rooted in the soil. They have no variety of skill to offer : as a rule, the laborer knows how to do well only one thing, uses well only one tool, and must find an o\\Tier of that tool who wishes a laborer to use it, or must be idle.^ '' A merchant,'' says Frederic Harrison, '' sits in his counting-house, and, by a few letters or forms, transports and distributes the subsistence of a whole city from continent to continent. In other cases, as the shopkeeper, the ebb and flow of pass- ing multitudes supplies the want of locomotion in his wares. His customers supply the locomotion for him. This is a true market. Here competi- tion acts rapidly, fully, simply, fairly. It is totally otherwise with a day-laborer, who has no commodity to sell. He must himself be present at every mar- ket, which means costly, personal locomotion. He cannot correspond with his employer: he cannot send a sample of his strength ; nor do employers knock at his cottage door." There is neither a labor commodity to sell nor a labor market in which ^ See F. A. Walker, The Wages Question, ch. ii. The quotation from F. Harrison is also from this chapter. 202 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. to sell it. Both are fictions of political economy. The actual facts are as follows : — Most commodities in our time — even agricul- tural commodities are gradually coming under these conditions — are produced by an organized body of workingmen, carrying on their work under the super- intendence of a " captain of industry," and by the use of costly tools. This requires the cooperation of three classes, — the tool-owner or capitalist, the superintendent or manager, and the tool-user or laborer. The result is the joint product of their industry, — for the tool itself is only a reservoired product of industry, — and therefore belongs to them jointly. It is the business of political economy to ascertain how values can be equitably divided between these partners in a common enterprise. This is the labor question in a sentence. It is not true that the laborer is entitled to the whole, nor does he demand it, whatever some of the wild advo- cates of his cause may have claimed for him. The superintendent is entitled to a share, and a large share. To direct such an industry, to know what products are needed in the world, to find a pur- chaser for them at a price which will give a fair return for the labor of producing them, requires itself labor of a high quality, and one which de- serves a generous compensation. The tool-owner is entitled to remuneration. Presumptively he, or some one from whom he has received the tool, has saved the money which his companions spent either in present comfort or in doubtful pleasures, and he CHRISrS STANDARD OF VALUES. 203 is entitled to a reward for his economy and thrift, though it may be a question whether our modern industrial system does not sometimes give a re- ward too great for the virtue of acquisition, and so transform the virtue into a vice. The laborer is entitled to compensation. Since the abolition of slavery, no one in theory denies this right. The determination how the division of the product of this joint industry shall be made is a difficult one. But it is certain that it is not to be made by a system which bids the capitalist pay as little wages as possible for the service rendered, and the laborer render as little service as possible for the wages received. Whatever may be the right way, this is the wrong way. Ethically, it is the duty of the employer to pay, not the lowest, but the highest possible wages ; as it is the duty of the employed to render, not the least, but the largest possible service. Selfishness will not solve the labor problem. Selfishness and shrewdness in employer and employed, perpetually struggling against one another, will not promote peace nor produce welfare. Economically, it is wise for the employer to pay the largest possible wages ; for the larger wages produce better men, and better men produce better work. The Ameri- can worker, because he is paid better wages and lives a better life, operates more spindles and more looms in textile working, turns out more tons of coal and iron, works more steadily and more intelligently in every hour of the working day, 204 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. utilizes more effectively every moment, and pro- duces not only more but better product than his European competitor. So, also, in spite of short- ened hours and higher wages, the labor cost of the English cotton industry is lower than that of the Continental factories. The country where labor is the cheapest is the country where wages are the highest and the hours are the shortest. The country where the employer gets the best returns for his investments is also the country where the workingmen receive the best recompense. The labor paid ten dollars and seventy-one cents in the Massachusetts clock factories proves more profitable to the employer than the labor paid ten to twelve shillings in the Black Forest. ^ The laborer and the capitalist are partners in a common enterprise. An injury to one is an injury to both. A benefit to one is a benefit to both. Their interests are common interests, and the experience of the world justifies the declara- tion that the industry which promotes the noblest manhood in the worker produces the best result in the goods. No industrial system is in its essence a Christian system which does not practically re- cognize the truth that it is ruinous to grind up men, women, and children, in order to make cheap goods. No industrial system is righteous which does not make such a division of the profits as to 1 L. J. Brentano, Hours and Wages in Relation to Production, Soc. !Sc. Ser., pp. 16, 45, 53, 74 ; John Rae, Eight Hours for Work, pp. 153, 154. CHRISrS STANDARD OF VALUES. 205 give to all who are engaged in it a living wage. What is a living wage I will not here undertake to discuss. It must at least provide for food, shelter, and clothing. It ought to provide books, pictures, education. And it ought to enable the man to earn the livelihood for his wife and his younger children. A living wage is not, however, in itself the consummation of justice: it is only one means toward that consummation. Justice demands that all those engaged in a common enterprise should share its profits and its losses. Commercially speaking, it should be so conducted that every one engaged in it will have as the result, if he is temperate and industrious, enough to maintain life, — physical, intellectual, and spiritual ; but he may be entitled to more. The famous aphorism of Louis Blanc, "From every man according to his ability, to every man according to his needs," is the law of benevolence, not of justice. Benevolence calls on every man to render such service as he is able to the com- munity, and to draw out of it for himself no more than he needs. The highest self-love concurs with public spirit in this law. If he contribute less than he is able, his ability shrinks and shrivels till it adjusts itself to his actual contribution. For no man retains an ability which he does not em- ploy. If he takes for himself more than he needs, he either hoards it — in which ease it is of no use to him — or he spends it in vitiating luxuries 206 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. which minister to his sensual and lower nature, in which case it is an injury to him. But though this famous aphorism is the law of benevolence, and even of spiritual prudence, it is not the law of justice. That law is expressed in the Golden Rule : Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. We would have others give us what belongs to us. What we have produced by our own skill and industry does belong to us. We may, and in many cases ought to, give to another who needs it more than belongs to him ; in many cases the highest spirit- ual prudence directs us so to do. But it does not follow that he has a right to take it from us. To do this is an act of pali3able injustice. An anonymous writer in the " Outlook " has recently stated this in a concrete illustration with such clearness that I transfer his statement to these pages : — " Two carpenters are laying shingles upon a village hall. One lays a thousand shingles in a day. The other is quicker of eye and hand, and lays fifteen hun- dred. The one gives as much to the community in two days as the other gives in three. If the community renders to him again as much in two days as in three days to the other, each man receives his own. If the more efficient says to the community, ' It is true that I have produced more than my brother. But he also has worked faithfully, according to his ability. He also has a wife and children. He and I will share alike,' that is love and it is beautiful. But if the community, with- CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 207 out his will, returns to the more efficient only half the fair equivalent of the whole product of the two, it does not render his own to him, but robs him." When three men, a tool-owner, a superinten- dent, and a tool-user, unite to create a certain pro- duct of their combined endeavor, this product clearly belongs to the three jointly. It does not belong to the tool-user, leaving him to pay for the tool the lowest possible rental ; nor to the tool- owner, leaving him to pay to the tool-user the lowest possible wage. It belongs to the three jointly, and justice requires that it be shared be- tween them in proportion to their respective con- tributions. If the industry has been successful, it will be of sufficient value to pay the cost of the tool which has been worn out in the operation, — in other words, the cost of wear and tear, — and the cost of subsistence of the tool-user and the super- intendent. All over and above tliat is profit, and should be shared between them in some just and equable proportion. Let a simple illustra- tion make this clear : — To make a pair of shoes three things are neces- sary, — materials, tools, and a workman. The workman must live, or he cannot make the shoes. His subsistence, while he is making them, is therefore a necessary part of the cost of the shoes. He must have materials and tools ; but one pair of shoes need not pay the cost of making the tools, any more than it need pay the cost of making the workman. The cost of the tools is 208 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. properly divided among all the shoes which one set of tools will make. The cost of making a pair of shoes, then, is sufficient money to enable the shoe- maker to live, to purchase the materials for the shoes, and to pay the proportionate cost of the tools and their repair. If the pair of shoes is worth more than these sums, thei^e is a profit. If it is worth less, there is a loss. Under the present system, the capitalist, or tool-owner, buys the ma- terials, pays the cost of the tools and the re23air of the tools, and whatever he is compelled to pay in order to induce the workman to work with the tools ; he pockets all the profit and bears all the loss. Is there not reason why the profit and the loss should be shared between the two? If so, what is the reason ? Why should the man who furnishes the tools take all the profits, or bear all the losses, any more than the man who furnishes all the labor ? The author is a laborer ; the publisher is a capi- talist. It is very rarely the case that the publisher furnishes the literary labor, or the author the necessary capital. In the last century the author was a wage-worker. He wrote his book, and carried it to the capitalist to be printed. The price was determined by the literar}^ labor market. The publisher bought his labor wherever he could get it most cheaply. As a result, the author lived in an attic on oatmeal or bread-and-water, and wlien he could not find a capitalist to take his labor he went to the debtor's prison. Thackeray CHRIST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 209 gives a dismal picture of the condition of the lit- erary laborer in that epoch. By what process of peaceful revolution I know not, the relation be- tween author and publisher, literary laborer and literary capitalist, has been converted into one of profit-sharing. The novelist writes his story ; the publisher prints and puts it on the market, and pays the author a certain percentage of the profits. If the book has a large sale, the author gets a large return; if a small sale, he gets a small return. This remuneration automatically increases and diminishes with the market value of the pro- duct of his industry. This is profit-sharing. It is worthy of note that the relations between author and publisher afford a curious illustration of the effect of profit-sharing in producing a spirit of honor and of absolute confidence. The author is wholly dependent on the publisher's statement of the number of copies sold for his knowledge of his rights. He has no access to the publisher's books, and probably could not understand them if he had. But in all my experience of publishing and ac- quaintance with authors, extending now through many years, I have known of but one case of an attempt to deprive an author of his just share of the profits of the common venture. Is there any reason why a shoe factory should not apply the same principle, and give the factory laborer a per- centage of the profits derived from the sale of the products of the factory, except that the capital- ist naturally prefers to keep all the profits, and, it 210 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. must be added, the laborer is often unwilling to run the risk of the losses ? The profit and loss sharing — for if one is shared, the other must be also — may be accom- plished in any one of several ways : by a mutual agreement to raise or lower wages, as the industry is profitable or otherwise ; by a " sliding scale," in which wages are adjusted according to the market price of the product of the industry ; by setting aside a certain proportion of the stock, if the capitalist is a corporation, and paying the divi- dends upon it to the workingmen ; or by making it easy for them to buy the stock, and so become sharers in the enterprise. The method is a matter of expediency and convenience. What is matter of justice is the recognition of the fact that labor is not a commodity ; that laborer, superintendent, and capitalist are partners in a common enter- prise ; and that the wages of the first, the salaries of the second, and the dividends of the third are to be adjusted in such a ratio that, as nearly as possible, they may represent the resj^ective con- tributions of these three classes in producing the result of their combined endeavor. III. An industrial system adjusted to Christ's standard, so as to produce by its operation the best men and women, will either be in itself educative or will allow adequate leisure for educative pro- cesses. The eight-hour day is a somewhat crude and mechanical method of securing for the hand- laborer such leisure, but he who criticises this CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 211 method because it is crude and mechanical should point out some better way to secure the same de- sirable end. It is true that many brain-workers work more than eight hours a day. The minister, the lawyer, the doctor, the merchant, the superin- tendent, does not desire for himself any such cast- iron limitation of labor hours. But the work which these men are doing is itself educative. They are developing their minds by the very pro- cess of their service. This is not equally true of the day-laborer, the farm hand, or the factory worker. The latter soon acquires the requisite skill for the one specific piece of work intrusted to him ; the education furnished, as we have seen, by the machinery soon comes to an end, and " the hand " thereafter finds in his monotonous toil nothing to enlarge or enrich his mental and moral nature. If that nature is to be enlarged or en- riched, if he is to be more than a bit of animated machinery, his hours of mechanical toil must be so limited as to furnish him leisure and opportunity for development of manly qualities outside his workshop. I have already recognized the benefi- cent effects on manhood produced by the intro- duction of machinery, but the candid student of life must recognize also some other effects. One of these is a certain narrowing: influence on the workingman. It is iui plied in the common phrase used to designate him, — "a hand." He is a skilled but not necessarily an intelligent laborer. He can do one thing excellently well, other things 212 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. not at all. The old-time carpenter could build a house from foundation to roof ; the mechanic in the planing-mill possesses no such varied ability. Specialization in making him " skilled" limits his skill. Says Ruskin ^ : — " We have much studied and much perfected of late the great civilized invention of the division of labor, only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided, but the men, — divided into the mere segments of men, — broken into small frag- ments and crumbs of life ; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day ; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be mag- nified before it can be discerned for what it is,. — we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace-blast, is all in very deed for this : that we manufacture everything there except men ; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery ; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages." It cannot be denied that there is truth in this caustic indictment. The remedy is not by going back to hand-work. That would be, as we have- already seen, going back morally as well as eco- 1 John Ivuskin, Stones of Venice, vol. ii. cli. vi. § 10, p. 105. CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 213 nomically. It is by practically recognizing the fact that the introduction of machinery has made it possible for the workingman to produce in an hour what before it required him days to pro- duce, and by giving him a j^art of the benefit of this fact in shortened hours of labor and length- ened hours for rest, recreation, home, and educa- tion. What chance for either has the iron-worker in the furnaces of Pennsylvania, whose exhausting toil employs him for twelve hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year ? Or the bakers of New York, who " work fourteen, sixteen, and even eighteen hours a day, in many cases sleeping in the bake-shop on the bread-troughs " ? ^ Or the horse-car conductors, who until very re- cently worked twelve and thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, sometimes rarely seeing their own chil- dren, except in bed asleep ? Or that shopgirl, who goes to work at eight o'clock in the morning and leaves no earlier than nine o'clock at night; who on Saturday remains until eleven or twelve o'clock ; who even on Sunda^y works from eight to twelve ? ^ The first effect of the introduction of machinery was to lengthen, not to shorten, the hours of labor. The capitalist thought that he could not afford to let his expensive machinery stand idle. Competi- tion with other capitalists coerced him to keep it 1 Annual Bejjort of the New York State Factories and Inspec- tors, 1895. - See Report of the Rheinliard Committee, quoted in the Out- look, Nov. 2;], 181)'), officially giving- these as the liours of the girls in all mercantile establishments in New York city. 214 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. busy. Competition among workingmen coerced them to accept longer and still longer hours in the vain hope of earning larger wages. Factory hours were lengthened from ten to twelve, then to fourteen and even sixteen hours a day. When at length Parliament interfered, the mills in Man- chester were running from five in the morning till nine at night, and the hands took their breakfast, as best they could, while attending the machin- ery. Analogous lengthening of hours took place in other vocations. Workingmen had little or no enjqyment of even such simple and universal gifts of God as sunshine and fresh air. "The miners spent their days in a strained lying posi- tion in the hot and foul air of a mine, or in a strained standing position in the equally hot and equally foul air of a mill; they lost their old energy of habit, and contracted various disfigure- ments, even of form ; and, as Mr. R. Guest re- marks in his 'History of the Cotton Manufac- ture,' in less than a single lifetime the very tastes of the English workmen changed. Instead of their old manly sports of wrestling, quoits, foot- ball, and the longbow, they betook themselves to pigeon-fancying, canary-breeding, or tulip-grow- ing. They had neither time nor spirit left for any- thing better, though under an eight-hours system the old English tastes would probably revive again, as they are now reviving in such a remarkable way among the workpeople of Victoria." ^ The over- ^ John Rae, Eight Hours for ]Vork\ p. 11. CHRIST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 215 worked laborer lost his power of concentration and his spirit of enterprise. Working under evil con- ditions, with an exhausted body and a discontented mind, his ambition was to do, not as much, but as little as possible. There was no real material gain ; there was great moral loss. The very foun- dations of England's free institutions were in much danger of being undermined by this process, which was undermining English character. ^ The first movement for reform did not come from the mas- ters, nor from the writers on political economy. The writers insisted that the higher the wages and the longer the hours, the better and the larger would be the product of labor.^ The employers ^ " Sir John Forteseue, Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Henry the Sixth, attributes even the existence of some of our free institutions to the fact that the common people of Eng-land enjoyed a greater measure of leisure than the common people of other countries. He was living- in exile in France at the time he wrote the book in which he makes this remarkable observa- tion, and he says it would be impossible to establish such a thing as trial by jury in that country, because the French people were so fatigued with hard labor that 'twelve honest men of the neighborhood' could not be found who had sufficient energy left in them to discuss the rights and wrongs of an intricate case. The English owed their leisure very largely, he said, to their pastoral or mixed farming, which enabled them to lead a life more spiritual and refined, as did the patriarchs of old ; but, however it came, it brought men better possession of their f acid- ties and capacity for the arts of freedom." — John Rae, Eight Hours for Work, p. S. - " Houghton, Betty, Temple, Child, and. in their earlier writ- ings, Josiah Tucker and Arthur Young, emphatically uphold the view that high wages are equivalent to low production. In order to increase exertion, either actual diminution of wages is advo- 216 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. argued that their profit was all made in the last hour, and that to shorten the working day would involve letting the machines stand idle. They contended that it would not only reduce the pro- fits, but destroy them, and would make it impos- sible to compete with foreign manufactures. It was said, too, that shorter hours of labor would demoralize the workingmen, who would spend the leisure thus granted to them in idleness and in drinking. John Bright, the famous philanthro- pist, but also famous representative of the Man- chester school, an advocate of free competition as the cure of all industrial evils, used all his in- fluence and his eloquence, happily in vain, against the Ten Hours Bill. In his speech against it he declared his belief that the proposition was most injurious, even destructive, to the best interests of the country ; that it was contrary to all princi- ples of sound legislation ; that it was a delusion practiced upon the working classes; that it was cated, or, -what comes to the same thing, a raising of the taxes and of the cost of living. It is accepted as an axiom that the better off people are, the less they work. About the middle of the eighteenth century a reaction begins to set in. In the first place, the opposite doctrine first shows itself in the polemics of Vanderlint, Postlethwait, Forster, and Tucker, and then we find it fully developed and supported in the work of Adam Smith. He maintains just the contrary, that high wages are equivalent to great production, and he bases this view not only on psycholo- gical and physiological grounds, but also on experience." — L. J. Brentano, Hours and Wages in Relation to Production, p. 2 ; see, also, the eighth chapter of the first book of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. CHRIST S STANDARD OF VALUES. 217 advocated by those who had no knowledge of the economy of manufactures ; that it was one of the worst measures ever passed in the shape of an act of the legislature ; and that, if it were now made law, the necessities of trade, and the demands alike of the workmen and of the masters, would compel them to retrace the steps they had taken.i The first man to introduce the experiment of shorter hours appears to have been Robert Owen, who in 1816-1828 reduced the hours in his cotton mills at New Lanark, first from twelve and a half to eleven and a half, and finally to ten and a half hours a day. The theories of the political econo- mists were contradicted by the result of this ex- periment. The production did not sensibly fall off as a result of the shortened hours, because they were accompanied with greater personal exertions, a livelier energy, and a more cheerful spirit in the operatives. Despite the pro^Dhecies of practical men, during those twelve years Owen successfully competed with his rivals, whose factories were working two, three, or even four hours more a day. At length, in 1847, the famous Ten Hours Bill was passed, reducing by law the hours of labor in the English textile trades to this number. The gloomy prophecies of John Bright were not ful- 1 L. J. Brentano, Hours and Wages in Relation to Production, p. 23. See, also, the statement of William Allan, M. P., that no employers would introduce the eight-hour day of their own ac- cord, and that nothing- but legislation would make it general. — John Rae, Eight Hours for Work, p. 316. 218 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. filled. The step has never been retraced, and England has not lost her supremacy in the manu- facturing world. On the contrary, subsequent re- ductions have confirmed the doctrine that those hours of labor which conduce to the best character in the operatives are those hours which conduce to the best product in the works. The conclusive answer to the current sneer, " So you expect ten hours' wages for nine hours' work," is that nine hours' work produces more and better results than ten hours, and the indications at this writing are that eight hours will produce more and better re- sults than nine. With the shortened hours the men, coming after breakfast instead of before it, have more energy for work, lose less time in errors and breaks due to over-fatigue, work with more physical energy and less physical exhaustion, put a higher degree of brain efiiciency into the work, and, most important of all, a spontaneity of energy and an enthusiasm of exertion due to contentment and alacrity of spirit, impossible under the old system. John Rae, in his monograph, '' Eight Hours for Work," gives abundant illustrations of the general principle that shortened hours do not necessarily involve lessened product. To that vol- ume the reader must be referred for details, only a few of which can be given here : — " Messrs. S. H. Johnson & Co., of Stratford, London, reduced the hours at their works some five years ago from fifty-four to forty-eight a week, paying their hands the same day wages as before, CHRIST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 219 and they get more work out now than they got then, without any increase whatever in the cost of production." Mr. J. Toyn says the Cleveland iron-miners work much harder since they have had their hours reduced to eight, but they feel the effects of their work much less. Speaking for himself, he used to be often in former times so exhausted that he had to give u]3 work for days together in order to recover ; but that never happens now, although he is an older man. " The Salford Iron Works are a large establish- ment, employing 1,200 hands, and employers who said Mr. Allan's experiment proved nothing, be- cause it was made in a small establishment, cannot raise the same objection against the experiment of Mr. Mather's firm." "After a year's trial Mr. Mather has had the results carefully . . . com- pared with the average of the six preceding years, and has found, exactly as Messrs. Allan, Messrs. Johnson, and Messrs. Short found, . . . that the men have produced more in the shorter hours than they used to do in the longer. The work done was of the same kind. ' The production during the two periods,' he says, ' has been similar in char- acter ; ' and, ' as regards quantity of production, there was actually a larger output in the trial year.' 'The actual quantity produced was considerably larger than in the six preceding years.' ' Then he has found a marked economy in gas and electric lighting, wear and tear of machinery, engines, gear- 220 CHRl;STJANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. ing, etc., fire and lubricants, and miscellaneous stores ; ' and, what is not a little curious, even in the matter of ' the increased fixed charges due to interest of plant and machinery, rent and taxes, permanent staff on fixed salaries, being employed five hours less a week, the balance of debtor and creditor accounts on these expenses is unmistak- ably in favor of the trial year.' " ^ The results in England are confirmed by the experiences in other countries. Says the Massa- chusetts Board of Labor Statistics in its Eej^ort for 1881 : " It is clearly proved that Massachusetts, with ten hours, produces as much per man, or per loom, or i3er spindle, equal grades being consid- ered, as other States with eleven hours or more; and also that wages here rule as higli if not higher than in other States where the mills run long-er time." This last fact is significant ; its testimony is confirmed elsewhere. Increase of wages, in- crease in quantity of output, improvement in qual- ity of output, decrease in hours of labor, have gone along together, simply because the industrial sys- tem which makes the best man makes also the greatest wealth. The testimony of England and the United States is confirmed on a large scale by that of Australia, where the eight-hour day has been by law established. The habits of working- men have improved, not deteriorated : annexed to the cottages are little gardens, owned and culti- ^ John Rae, Eight Hours for Work, pp. 55, 50, and Preface, p. viii. CHRIST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 221 vatecl in leisure hours by the workingmen ; cost of superintendence is reduced, because the men work as energetically without supervision as before they did with it ; there is less drunkenness, less crime, more intelligence, a higher grade of virtue. IV. An essential condition of human well-being is a pure, good home. It is half a century since Charles Dickens made, in *' The Old Curiosity Shop," his eloquent appeal to legislators to remem- ber this fundamental fact : — " Oh, if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember this ; if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or rather never found; if they would but turn aside from the wide thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to improve the wretched dwellings in byways where only poverty may walk, — many low roofs would point more truly to the sky than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the midst of guilt and crime and horrible dis- ease, to mock them by its contrast. In hollow voices, from workhouse, hospital, and jail, this truth is preached from day to day and has been proclaimed for years. It is no light matter, — no outcry from the working vul- gar, — no mere question of the people's health and com- fort, that may be whistled down on Wednesday nights. In love of home the love of country has its rise ; and who are the truer patriots or the better in time of need, — those who venerate the land, owning its wood and stream and earth and all that they produce? or 222 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain ? " -^ To maintain a home under the conditions in which many people are housed, not only in the slums of our great cities but in the tenements of many of our factory towns, is quite impossible. ^ Experience has demonstrated, both in England and in America, that the housing of the poor cannot be left to be determined by free competi- tion. Parliament has been compelled to interfere in England, and the legislatures in this country, to coerce reluctant landlords to furnish their ten- ants with air, light, water, and adequate sewerage. Philanthropic capitalists have proved that it is possible to build and maintain model tenements for self-respecting tenants, under conditions which will pay a fair interest on the money invested, and will make some measure of home life possible even in the heart of a great city. The Improved Dwell- ings Company of Brooklyn, organized by Mr. A. T. White, lias paid eight per cent, net on the investment ; and the Improved Dwellings Asso- ciation of New York, in spite of a blunder which added to the cost of the building, have paid five per cent, on the investment. I believe that both the Peabody and the Waterlow improved buildings ^ The Old Curiosity Shop, cli. xxxviii. 2 For description of tenement houses see Report of the Tene- ment House Committee, transmitted to the Legislature of New York, January 17, 1895; Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives ; Robert A. Woods and others ; The Poor in Great Cities, eh. ii. CUEIST'S STANDARD OF VALUES. 223 of London make a reasonable return for the cap- ital invested. Cheap and rapid transit is making it possible for workingmen to live in the suburbs of the great cities, in homes of their own, each with its plot of ground about it. The loan and building associa- tions, when honorably conducted, as has been nota- bly the case in Philadelphia, have enabled the thrifty workingman to construct his own home out of his wages, and so become his own landlord. Thus, gradually, though far too gradually, legis- lation, curbing criminal greed ; philanthropy, con- tent with moderate return for capital invested ; municipal ownership of railroads, reducing railroad fares to actual cost of transportation ; a spirit of thrift, encouraged by fair wages ; moderate hours and a hope of "getting on," — are combining to destroy the slum and make possible homes for the poor, such as Charles Dickens sighed for fifty years ago. It is in this direction, not in tem- l^erance saloons, coffee-houses and clubs, which call the husband and father away from the sorry substitute for a home and leave the wife and children to endure it, that the civilizing influences are to be found without which greater wages will bring but little advantage. The residt of the experiments of the j^ast half century is to demonstrate that the processes which destroy men do not produce wealth ; that methods which are ethically unjust are not economically wise ; that the transference of drudgery to ma- 224 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. chinery increases the demand for human labor ; and that adequate wages, reasonable hours, and pure and educative influences in the life, promoting the welfare of the laborer and of the community, promote also the prosperity of the capitalist and employer. The precepts of Jesus Christ and the principles of a sound political economy coincide. CHAPTER VIII. Christ's law for the settlement of con- troversies : PERSONAL CONTROVERSIES. Those who have walked on one of the great giaciers of the Alps will remember that the glacier is pierced by great crevasses. Some of them are thousands of feet in depth, some of them shallow ; some of them are so narrow that one can easily step across, some so wide that one must go around to continue one's journey, or must cross the chasm by an artificial bridge. So human society is divided by crevasses, — some broad, some narrow, some deep, some shallow. Sometimes these separations are caused by personal enmity ; sometimes by a real or apparent conflict of interests ; sometimes by deliberate, purposeful wrong-doing ; sometimes by mere uncongeniality ; sometimes by religious antipathies. These chasms in society Christ bids his followers do what they can to close, that humanity may be truly one. There are certain great vital truths which underlie the teachings of every great instructor. They are the postu- lates on which he builds. The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man are the postulates of Christ's instruction, and the realization in human 226 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. life of these ideals is the end of his ministry. Therefore all these separations which divide men into cliques and classes, and set them into antag- onism to one another, are against the spirit of Christ; they are hindrances to the coming and the perfecting of his kingdom. To repair these fractures, to bring together those who were before separated, is to promote Christ's kingdom. The time is coming when all mankind will recognize that such peace-makers are God's children, and are doing God's work. They shall be called the children of God. Christ not only tells his followers that they are to be peace-makers, but he gives very ex- plicit directions how they can make peace. In this and the two following chapters I shall at- tempt to interpret these directions, applying them, first, to personal controversies, then more fully to industrial and international controversies. One is conscious that one has wronged a neigh- bor, or is thought by a neighbor to have wronged him. Christ lays it down as a principle that it is the first and more imperative duty of the per- son thus suspected by others or himself to seek reconciliation. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be recon- ciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." 1 '* If thy brother hath aught against thee;" 1 Matt. V. 23, 24. LAW FOR PERSONAL CONTROVERSIES. 227 if, from his point of view, you have done him a wrong ; if he entertains any complaint, reasonable or unreasonable, — " leave there thy gift before the altar." To seek reconciliation with an of- fended brother is the first duty ; it takes prece- dence even of the sacred obligations of divine worship. It is the first duty of the person suspected, it is equally the first duty of the person suspecting, the first duty of the person who has wronged, equally the first duty of the person who has suf- fered the wrong, to seek reconciliation. Each is to be the peace-maker ; each is to take the first step toward peace. Neither may wait for the other. " Moreover, if thy brother shall tresj^ass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone ; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church ; but if he neg- lect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." ^ I shall, in a subsequent chapter, interpret and apply this teach- ing a little more fully. Here it must suffice to notice the three successive steps which Christ pre- scribes before one of his followers may regard the breach between himself and his neighbor irre- parable. First, he is to go alone to his neighbor 1 Matt, xviii. 15-17. 228 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. and tell him his fault in private speech with hira. There is to be no false pretense, no hypocrisy, no dissimulation of love, no crying Peace ! peace ! when there is no peace, no playing at words wdth double meanings ; no saying, It is of no conse- quence, if it is of consequence ; no saying, I do not care, if we do care. There is to be absolute can- dor, a speaking of the truth in love, and this as part of a sincere effort at reconciliation. But if this fails, the Christian follower is not to despair. He is to take with him one or two whom both trust, love, believe in, that their more impartial spirit may repair the breach which he has failed to repair. If this fail, then he is to report his dif- ficulty to his brethren in the fellowship of the gos- pel, not to appease his wrath, not to satisfy pride by putting himself in the right and his neighbor in the wrong, but to gain by pacific measures his brother again, to reestablish fraternal relations between the two. If that fails, then what ? " Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a pub- lican." The Jew would have nothing to do with the heathen and the publican. Many Christians seem to think that they forgive their enemy when they treat him as an heathen man and a publican. " I do not wish him any evil ; I would not injure him ; I even wish him well : but I want nothing more to do with him." This is a common utter- ance of what men imagine to be a forgiving spirit. What Christ inflicts as the penalty for wrong-doing, his followers proffer as their for- LAW FOE PERSONAL CONTROVERSIES. 229 giveness. But even yet we have not reached the full meaning of this pregnant passage. Social excommunication was the Jewish method of treat- ing the heathen and the publicans, but it was not Christ's method. He pitied them, loved them, sought them, received them, by patient love en- deavored to heal the breach between himself and them. If we are to treat the irreconcilable enemy as Christ treated the heathen man and the pub- lican, we shall ever pity and love, and always be ready for reconciliation, if ever reconciliation be possible. Irreconcilable enmity is unknown to Christ. Perhaps we have tried this plan, and it did not succeed. We tried it once, and the wrong was repeated ; a second time, and it was again repeated. Finally we say. It does no good ; I have tried it half a dozen times, and I am tired. But Christ does not permit his disciples to become tired of forgiving. " Then came Peter unto him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee. Until seven times ; but. Until seventy times seven." i Even this is not to be taken mathematically ; even four hundred and ninety times is not to exhaust for- giving kindness. The love, the patience, the for- giveness, the readiness for reconciliation, — these are to be inexhaustible. 1 Matt, xviii. 21, 22; Luke xvii. 3, 4. Seven is a symbolic number : 70 X 7 = continuous and unending forgiveness. 230 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. But perhaps the case is not one of personal enmity, but of incompatibility. The one neighbor has done no wrong to the other, but the two do not like each other. They do not quarrel, but they live apart, because they do not get on well together. Such a separation is also a breach in human brotherhood. In the parable of the good Samari- tan, Christ suggests his remedy for such a breach. For such a breach existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. They were not at war, but they were uncongenial, prejudiced the one against the other. The Jews had no dealings with the Samari- tans.-^ To men thus prejudiced against and es- tranged from their neighbors Christ told the story of a certain man ^ who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves and was robbed ; and a priest came that way and saw him, and passed by on the other side ; and a Levite came that way and saw him, and passed by on the other side ; and then a Samaritan came and bound up his wounds and provided for him. The point of this parable is in the application. Christ says : " Go thou and do likewise." What does that mean ? It means that to render a service to any one is the best remedy for prejudice against him. To cure hostility to the Chinese, teach in a Chinese Sunday-school. Perhaps the difficulty which separates neighbor from neighbor is more than a personal quarrel, more than personal prejudice ; it is a case of con- science. The minister believes in a new theology, 1 John iv. 9. 2 Luke x. 25-37. LAW FOE PERSONAL CONTROVERSIES. 231 his ecclesiastical superiors in an old theology, and they forbid his teaching according to his convic- tions. The minister believes in the new criticism and his ecclesiastical superiors in an infallible Book, and they will not consent that he should teach according to his understanding of the Bible. They begin to declare war against him. What shall one do who thus finds himself intellectually separated from his church? Shall he withdraw from his church? No! Shall he fight for the right to remain in his church ? No ! Christ's teaching and his example both show with clear- ness the path. The divisions which separate the church of Christ into sects, and the wars which set it in hostile camps, each arrayed against the other, have been of incalculable injury to the cause of Christ. He who separates himself from the church of his youth because he does not believe some part of its creed, and he who remains in it to fight against his brethren, even in a defensive warfare, contributes to this evil. He helps to divide the body of Christ. The believer in new theology is not intellectually and spiritually more at variance from the believer in old theology, nor the believer in the new criticism more at variance with the believer in the infallible Book, than Christ was with the teachers of Judaism in the syna- gogues. But Christ remained a Jew, teaching in the synagogues and in the Temple, until the Jews excommunicated him. He did not say, I will not fellowship you ; I withdraw from you. He did not 232 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. say, I do not believe you wish to fellowship me ; therefore I withdraw from you. He did not say, I cannot teach what you teach nor as you teach, therefore I cannot loyally remain in your church. He taught revolutionary doctrine in the synagogues imtil the ecclesiastical authorities determined to disfellowship him. But then he did not resist. He quietly transferred his platform from the desk in the synagogue to the prow of a fishing-boat on the lake, a hillock in the fields, or a rock on the mountain side. What he did himself he told his disciples to do. " When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." ^ Go on with your work where you are — this is the meaning of his direction — as long as you can. Antagonize no one. Do not look for antagonism in any one. But if ever the antagonism becomes so great that you can no longer do Christ's work where you are, go quietly elsewhere and continue your work. The New Testament condemns schism quite as severely as it condemns heresy. He who separates himself from the church of his fathers, because he con- ceives that he no longer sympathizes with its creed, is as truly guilty of schism as he who intro- duces the war spirit into the church of his fathers by fighting to remain in that church after it has ex- pressed an unmistakable wish to have him depart. Perhaps the conditions are reversed. The neigh- bor is a heretic. He does not believe in the creed of the church ; not even in what its doctors regard 1 Matt. X, 23. LAW FOE PERSONAL CONTROVERSIES. 233 as the essentials of that creed. He does not be- lieve in the apostolic succession, or in the final authority of the Bible, or in the permanent value of the sacraments, or in the Nicene definition of the Person of Christ. Shall he then be turned out of the church and of Christian fellowship ? " And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not ; for he that is not against us is for us." ^ The lesson is clear : whoever is trying in the name of Christ to cast out the evil there is in the world is a worthy comrade for every one else who is trying to do the same work in the same way. There is one bond of Christian union, and only one, — loyalty to Christ ; not to a definition of Christ, that is to a creed ; not to a form of Chris- tian worship, that is to a ritual ; not to a special organization founded to do Christ's work, that is to a church order: but to Christ. Whoever is trying to do Christ's work in Christ's spirit is a fellow-worker with Christ, and every Christian should be willing to work in fellowship with every other fellow-worker with Christ. It would take me too far from the specific object of this book to discuss here the question of Christian union ; it must suffice to say that Christ recognizes no other basis for such union than personal loyalty to him. 1 Luke ix. 49, 50 ; Mark ix. 38-40. 234 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. The substitution of any other basis is the parent of schism. But there is a breach harder to cure than any or all of these. One can seek forgiveness for a real or fancied wrong, proffer it for a wrong which he has suffered, conquer a personal prejudice, see in the bigot on the one side or the heretic on the other a brother Christian, more easily than he can forgive a wrong perpetrated upon another whom one loves. Then loyalty seems to require at our hands vindication of the wronged one. When it is the wife, the child, the friend, who has been unjustly treated, loyalty seems to say. Submit not to that. But even to one thus righteously angry Christ's teaching and example have a word of explicit instruction : — " And [he] sent messengers before his face ; and they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jeru- salem. And when his disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did ? But he turned and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village." ^ To refuse hospitality in that age was an open insult. And it was because the Samaritan village had thus insulted Christ that the disciples wished 1 Luke ix. 52-56. LAW FOR PERSONAL CONTROVERSIES. 235 to call fire down upon it. It was their loyalty which was angered ; it was their love which wished to avenge their Master. But their Master told them that they did not understand ; that not even love was to be vengeful ; that even love was to be patient, gentle, forbearing. Two years later these very disciples went into this inhospitable Samaria and planted churches, and there some of the ear- liest victories for the Gospel were won, vindicating the name of Christ, not by death-dealing fire from heaven, but by life-giving fire from human hearts, which God had inspired with his own love. If there ever was a man who might justly have been stricken down by a bolt from heaven it was Judas Iscariot. His betrayal had cost the death of his Lord; had brought an end to the hopes of the disciples; had shut them up to darkness and despair in the house of death ; had pierced the mother's heart with anguish ; and yet the last word of Christ to Judas Iscariot was " friend." But the wrongdoer has not repented, and we think that we cannot forgive him, because God does not forgive men until they have repented. Thus false ethics grow out of false theology. For- giveness is not dependent on repentance. The effect of forgiveness is ; the act of forgiveness is not. " While we were yet dead in trespasses and sins, God for his great love wherewith he loved us quickened us together with Christ." Does he love us and forgive us, and offer to cleanse us from our sins and lift us back into a higher and 236 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. diviner life, because we have repented? Not at all. We repent because he forgives us and lifts us up into a higher life. The soul cannot get the benefit of God's forgiveness if it shuts God out ; and a man cannot get the benefit of his friend if he shuts his friend out. One clenched fist does not make a battle, and one open palm does not make a greeting. But the Christian is to reach out the open palm, and whenever it is clasped on the other side, then the friendship is reestablished. " If it be possible, as much as lieth in you^ live peaceably with all men." CHAPTER IX. Christ's law for the settlement of contro- versies: INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. In the preceding chapter I have endeavored to deduce from Christ's j^ersonal directions to his disciples certain general principles to be recog- nized by his followers in the settlement of personal controversies. It is my object in this and a suc- ceeding chapter to show that these principles are equally applicable to the settlement of con- troversies between nations and between classes. Indeed, the history of civilization is to no incon- siderable extent the history of the very gradual adoption of these principles by Christendom, and their incorporation, first into custom and then into law. In order to trace the history of this adop- tion, it is first necessary to state a little more in detail the principles especially applicable to controversies between bodies of men, — whether between different nations or between different or- ganizations in the same nation. These principles are two, a negative and a positive one, — first, the abandonment of force as a method of settling- controversies ; second, the substitution therefor of arbitrament by an impartial tribunal. 238 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. The first principle finds its clearest statement in the following passage : " But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil ; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." ^ A careful scrutiny of this direction makes it clear that it covers the three forms of wrong under which men suffer, — personal violence, legal injustice, governmental oppression. To smite on the right cheek is an act of personal violence ; to attempt by law to take away one's coat is an act of legal injustice ; to impress one to go a mile in public service without compensation is an act of governmental oppression.^ Such impressment, permitted by modern society only in times of war, was formerly allowed to the government in time of peace. Christ, referring to these forms of wrong, — personal violence, legal injustice, gov- ernmental oppression, — bids his followers oppose to them only a passive non-resistance. He sets in operation a new force in the world, what Milton has well called " the irresistible might of meek- ness." This might was before Christ's time almost absolutely unknown. If these instructions were not in themselves perfectly clear, they are made so by the inter- pretation which he has put upon them by his life. 1 Matt. V. 39-41. 2 See Alford's Greek Testament on the passag^e. INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 239 The despotic government under which he lives sends out its officers to arrest him. He surrenders himself and is led away. And when one of his own disciples would resist the band, though he says, "I could have twelve legions of angels to rescue me," he will not. He condemns resistance. " They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." He is brought into the court. It was a well-settled principle in the Hebrew law, as it is with us, that a man accused could not be called upon to criminate himself. Those who accused Christ were unable to find any two witnesses who would agree in their testimony against him, and finally the High Priest calls Jesus to the stand and administers the oath to him : " I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be the Son of God or no." He protests : " If I tell you, you will not believe me." Yet he sub- mits, testifies under oath that he is the Son of God, and is led away to his death. In this trial, and following it, he is beaten, spit upon, scourged. He protests, but does not resist. To each of these three forms of wrong he submits, — the wrong of a despotic government, the wrong of a court of law, the wrong of personal violence. Is there, then, to be no resistance to wrong- doing? Many have adduced this principle from these words. And yet Christ sometimes did resist wrong-doing. When he went up to the Temple, a corrupt and wicked government had put cattle 1 Matt. xxvi. 52, 53. 240 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. in the one court where the Gentiles might go. He did not merely utter a verbal protest against it ; he wove a whip of small cords of the straw that was at his feet and drove the frightened traders from the Temple, and with them the cattle, and overturned the money-changers' tables, and left the money to roll about the floor. When the Temple band came to arrest him, and his disciples were asleep before the gate, he went forward and put himself between the band and the disciples. They fell backward to the ground, it is said. For the moment he confronted the guard and held it at bay, that his disciples might escape, and then, and not till then, surrendered himself. Christ used force to defend others, but never to defend him- self. The fundamental principle in Christ's teach- ing is this : Love may use force ; selfishness may not. There is, says the Book of Revelation, a wrath of the Lamb. There is a combativeness of love which is legitimate. If a highwayman de- mands my purse, I may give it to him rather than take his life. But if he assaults my wife, or my children, whom God hath put in my keeping, that is another matter ; then, if I do not defend those whom God has intrusted to my defense, I shall be recreant and a coward. Our lives are so inter- twined that it is often impossible to tell whether one is defending himself or another. It is spirit, not rule or regulation, which Christ prescribes, and this is the spirit : Love may fight ; selfishness may not. INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 241 To a considerable extent, modern civilization accepts this principle. In a barbaric community every man carries a j)istol in his hip pocket. In civilized communities he does not. We trust other men to be our defenders and protectors. Disinter- estedness defends the unarmed from wrong-doers. Even pride, passion, and selfishness go unarmed. This is the negative principle. But this is only a preparation for the affirmative principle. Christ does not leave any to go without a remedy, nor controversies to remain without a settlement. He tells his disciples to substitute for force peaceful arbitrament by an impartial tribunal. " If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone," ^ — that is conciliation ; " if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be estab- lished," — that is arbitration ; "if he shall neglect to hear thee, tell it unto the church," — that is law; "but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publi- can," — that is non-intercourse. This is Christ's method of settling controversies. The principle of non-resistance does not stand alone. It is coupled with the principle of impartial arbitra- tion. The surrender of personal force as a means of self -protection is accompanied by the principle of appeal to the sense of justice, — first in the wrong-doer, then in an amicably chosen tribunal, 1 Matt, xviii. 15-17. 242 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. last of all, in the community. In the settlement of personal controversies this means, first, personal negotiation ; second, friendly mediation ; third, a leoal tribunal. In the settlement of industrial controversies it means, first, conciliation ; then arbitration ; third, appeal to the community. In the settlement of international controversies it means, first, diplomacy ; second, international me- diation ; third, an international tribunal. And in all these it means the abolition of the pagan system which makes the individual judge and jury in his own case ; the abolition of the pistol and the bowie knife, and the substitution of the court ; the abolition of the strike and the boycott, and the substitution of arbitration ; the abolition of war, and the substitution of international law, and a tribunal to interpret and apply it. v/^^ Christianity, then, and war are absolutely in- consistent. Christianity proposes, as the method of settling all contests, an appeal to reason : first, in the contestants ; then, if that fails, in an imj^ar- tial tribunal. War prefers appeal to force. For war is not mere chance quarreling. It is the publicly recognized method of settling quarrels between nations. It is provided for and brought under the regulation of international law. " War," says Charles Sumner, " is a public armed contest between nations, under the sanction of interna- tional law, to establish justice between them." ^ 1 The True Grandeur of Nations, by Charles Sumner. See au- thorities there cited which abundantly support this definition. INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 243 That it is a public armed contest between nations will be at once recognized by the reader. Every such contest is not, however, war. Legitimate war is carried on under the sanction of interna- tional law. This law determines measurably what is a proper occasion for war ; what notice of war should be given before the first offensive act ; how that notice should be given ; who are combatants and who are non-combatants ; what are the rights of non-combatants, and under what rules and reg- ulations the war may be prosecuted. It is, for example, no longer legitimate to make war on a neighbor for the . ostensible purpose of robbing him of his territory. It is no longer legitimate to pillage and destroy the property of inoffen- sive inhabitants who are not contributing to the enemy's strength. It is not legitimate to sell prisoners taken in war into slavery, nor to kill them in cold blood. International law determines, in other words, the conditions under which war may be declared and carried on ; and the avowed object of this war between nations is to establish justice between them. " Though war," says Mr. Whewell, cited by Mr. Sumner in support of his definition, " is appealed to because there is no other ultimate tribunal to which states can have , recourse, it is appealed to for justice. The object of international law is not to prevent but to regu- late warfare ; not to contrive some other method of securing justice between nations, certainly not to leave nations to suffer injustice without a 244 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. remedy, but to make such regulations respecting war as a means of securing justice as will alleviate soQiewhat its terrors, and redeem it somewhat from its essential barbarism." ^ War thus resembles in its essential character- istics the now obsolete wager of battle. The dif- ference between the two consists in this : war is a public armed contest between nations ; wager of battle was a public armed contest between indi- viduals. But the latter was, as the former still is, conducted under the sanction of law, and for the avowed purpose of establishing justice between the combatants. The rules for the regulation of personal battle were definite, explicit, and care- fully enforced. If an individual were accused of crime, he could demand battle with his accuser as a means of determining his guilt or innocence. Each party was required to swear to the justice of his cause; his defeat involved him under the stigma of perjury. He might, under certain cir- cumstances, employ a champion to fight for him, much as the king employs an army. The accused could challenge not only his accuser but the wit- nesses against him, and, in some cases, even the court itself. He must prove his innocence by his victory ; in England he was acquitted if he fought successfully until the stars appeared. The whole, system rested on the belief that God was present 1 " The part played by International Law has been not to pre- vent but to reg'ulate wnviara:' — Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. " International Law." INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 245 with men in battle, and would defend the inno- cent and give victory to virtue. Condemned by St. Louis in France in the thirteenth century, it gradually disappeared, but was not finally and authoritatively declared illegal in Great Britain until the year 1819. Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, demanded the right to vindicate his innocence by wager of battle. The court sus- tained his right to do so. The accuser aban- doned the proceedings, and at the next session of Parliament trial by battle was, by legislative act, abolished forever.^ It is the object of Christianity to abolish trial by battle between nations, as it has already abol- ished trial by battle between individuals, — not merely to mitigate the horrors of war, not merely to reduce the occasions of war, not merely to lessen the preparations for war, but to put an end to public war absolutely, as it has put an end to private war absolutely. Fights there still are between individuals, but the right to fight is not recognized by law. Fights there may still con- tinue to be between nations, but the right to fight will not be recognized by international law when Christianity has wrought among the nations what it has wrought within the nations. Christianity has taken the bowie knife from the belt and the pistol from the hip pocket. The individual citizen 1 See The True Grandeur of Nations, cited above, and authori- ties there cited. See, also, Henry C. Lea, Superstition and Force, Essoy I. 246 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. goes unarmed. He submits his controversies to an impartial tribunal. He trusts for his protection to a disinterested police. When Christianity has achieved its mission, nations also will go unarmed. They will also submit their controversies to an impartial tribunal, and trust for their protection to the cooperation of the nations of Christendom. We shall have no navy, except such as is necessary to patrol the sea and protect commerce from the brigands of the ocean. We shall as little think it necessary to put fortifications and torpedo boats at our harbors as now to put a moat and the draw- bridge at the front door of our houses. In brief, Christianity has already substituted the appeal to law for the appeal to force in individual contro- versies. Its work will not be consummated until it has substituted law for war in controversies between nations. Law gives might to right ; war gives might for right ; law establishes justice, war simply demonstrates power ; law evokes the judg- ment, war organizes the passions ; law is civiliza- tion, war is barbarism. It does not need much space to demonstrate the evils of war as a method of settling controversies between nations. Its pecuniary cost is enormous.^ 1 The Napoleonic wars added £600,000,000 to the debt of Great Britain, and exhausted France of all her soldiers. T. E. C. Leslie, Essays in Folit. and Moral Phil., p. V>. " The United States presents a contrast with Europe that is most striking and pregnant with meaning. The extent of territory is about the same ; the self-governing states in the United States are thirty-eight, against only seventeen in Europe ; the population INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 247 It is estimated that, of the taxes paid by the bur- dened people of Europe, one third is devoted to the payment of interest on war debts, and one third to the maintenance of military equipments. Let the reader imagine what would be the con- dition of private industry if every man had to devote one third of his income to pay for arming his retainers to protect his house and his property, and another third to pay interest on debts incurred in previous protection. Add to this cost that which is involved in withdrawing from the pro- ductive power of the nation the whole force of its standing army, even in time of peace, and devot- is fifty millions, rapidly increasing-, against 300,000,000 in Europe, very slowly increasing-. Compare these figures with 27,000 under arms in the United States, against 3,500,000 in Europe, and a war expenditure of £10,000,000 in the former against £156,000,000 in the latter." Mongredieu, Wealth Creation, p. 100. Mongredieu, Wealth Creation, p. 106, estimates the costs of European armaments in time of peace as follows, above the amounts supposed to be necessary for police purposes in a " United States " of Europe on the basis of what is now supposed to be necessary in the United States of America : — £132,000,000 now spent on war preparations in time of peace. £150,000,000 which 3,000,000 of men would earn who now earn nothing. £10,000,000 which 500,000 horses would earn which now earn nothing. £292,000,000 total annual cost of war preparations useless if Europe were on a peace basis. A. J. Palm, in The Death Penalty, p. 207, estimates the cost of the Civil War in the United States, exclusive of interest and pen- sions, at $3,418,000,000, and the market value of the slaves eman- cipated at $1,200,000, — a costly method of emancipation. 248 CHRfSTlAXITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. iiig that force to destruction in time of war, and the pecuniary cost of this method of securing jus- tice between nations transcends all estimate. But this is the least cost. To this must be added the loss of human life. The development of the science of destruction has multiplied this loss until to-day, so awful are the possibilities of battle, so wholesale is the murder perpetrated, that the most military nations are beginning to react against the gigantic crime. " When we recall," says Mr. James M. Beck,^ '' that, in one of the battles around Metz, the use of the mitrail- leuse struck down six thousand Germans in ten minutes, and that at Plevna, in 1877, Skobeleff lost in a short rush of a few hundred yards three thousand men, and remember that the mitrailleuse and needle-gun have been since quintupled in their capacity for destruction, the prospect is one at which the mind stands aghast and the heart sick- ens." This loss of human life carries with it the desolated homes, the fears, the sorrows, the hope deferred making the heart sick, the accumulated anguish in innumerable hearts, which the greatest novelists have endeavored in vain adequately to depict.^ Greater even than this is the loss to moral character. War is the tiger in man let loose. It 1 J. M. Beck, The Distress of Nations : an address delivered on Thanksg-iving- Day, 1894. 2 See, for example. The Downfall, by Zola ; War and Peace, by Tolstoi ; Ground Arms, by tlie Baroness von Suttner ; and Fire and Sward, and The Dehuje, by Sienkiewicsz. INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 249 is the reversion to the brute nature, the employ- ment of brutal methods. "War," says Douglas Jerrold, " is murder in uniform." " War," saj^s Napoleon the Great, " is the trade of barbarians." " You think that war is all glory," said Sherman ; *' I tell you it is all hell." " There is nothing more horrible than victory," said the Duke of Welling- ton, " except defeat." Nor are its evils to charac- ter buried with its corpses on the battle-field. As they leave ofttimes pestilence in the air, so war itself leaves moral pestilence in the nation. Even the most just and righteous wars are followed by periods of demoralization and corruption, against which the conscience of the nation struggles seem- ingly in vain. In America such political corrup- tion followed the Revolutionary War ; in France, the Napoleonic wars ; in Germany, the Franco- Prussian war ; and, in our own time and our own country, the Civil War. The pernicious principle that justice between nations can be settled by armed conflicts, under regulations prescribed by international law, necessitates the pernicious prac- tice of preparing for war in time of peace. This means a standing array and a considerable navy ; and these involve three perils to the nation which possesses them. Their mere possession incites in the nation an ambition to use them. The army wearies of its inactivity ; enforced idleness be- comes monotonous ; the private soldier desires war because his pay is increased, the officer because he has a better chance of promotion, the contractor 250 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. because to him war means increased business, even the farmer because he hopes for an immediate sale of his wheat and corn, and does not make account of the counterbalancing losses of the future. The nation, thus inciting itself to war by its very prepa- ration therefor, incites its neighbor also. In the West, the unarmed cowboy is the safest, because, if a controversy arises between cowboys who are armed, each one endeavors to shoot first and so anticipate the shot of his neighbor. The arma- ment of one nation incites its neighbor to arm also ; and each increase of military equipment incites the suspicions and stirs the latent combat- iveness across the border. Thus the armed nation by its very armament provokes to war, and the unarmed nation by its pacific disposition secures its own peace. France, Russia, Germany, Austria, and Italy, living in perpetual encampment, live also in perpetual apprehension of war : but Swit- zerland, Holland, Belgium, Norway, and Sweden, practically unarmed, are free alike from the bur- dens of war and its apprehension s.^ Greater than these perils is that to liberty by the very existence of a standing army. History records not a single instance of a nation armed which has remained a nation free. The army is necessarily autocratic, and autocracy and democracy cannot live side by side in the same country and under the same flag. The army, organized to be the servant of the nation, speedily becomes the servant of its com- 1 J. M. Beck, The Distress of Nations, p. 10. INTERNATIONAL CONTIiOVERS/ES. 251 mander-in-chief. Even if the form of liberty re- mains, its reality disappears ; but even the form does not long remain. The president becomes first consul, the first consul emperor. Even Puri- tan England ceased to be a free commonwealth as Ions: as Cromwell remained commander-in-chief of the Puritan army. The dangers to America from a great navy and a considerable army would be far greater than the dangers from all foreign nations. It would be safer for us to be without a fortifica- tion from the Penobscot to the Mississippi, and without any other armed force than such militia as might be called into requisition when occasion should arise, than to follow the example of Euro- pean nations, and, under guise of protecting our- selves from imaginary enemies, create an army and navy which would be liable to become, in the hands of an unprincipled leader, far more danger- ous than any foreign foe. These perils might well make us hesitate to ac- cept war as a method of establishing justice be- tween nations even were it ever so efficacious. But it is not efficacious. It does not establish justice. We no longer believe that God is preeminently the God of battles, and that in every controversy He gives protection to feeble innocence against armed oppression, and victory to right against might. This superstitious faith which underlay wager of battle is equally superstitious as the basis of public war. In fact the superstition is no longer enter- tained, and the appeal in war is not to the God of '252 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL FROBLEMS. battles but to the force of arms. Might does not make right ; and the history of Europe is writ with many a page on which is recounted injustice triumphing in wager of public battle. Nor does war really determine the question submitted to its arbitrament. There is one question, and only one, which war settles, — the question of authority. Force must necessarily be employed in the last analysis when legitimate authority is defied by force. When the States of a great Union have agreed to submit all their questions to the decision of the people, and a portion of those States refuse to submit to this final tribunal, then either that tribunal must abnegate its authority and the na- tion be dissolved, or that authority must be en- forced at the cannon's mouth. An army thus enforcing the authority of law is simply performing police duty upon a great scale. The use of force is legitimate in two cases, and only two, — when there is no law to which appeal can be made, and when the law, though it exists, is defied. But no other question than the authority of law is ever settled by appeal to arms. Waterloo was thought to determine for all time that France should be a monarchy, but France is a republic. Sebastopol was thouo-ht to determine for all time that Russia should have no port upon the Mediterranean Sea, but Russia was never so near an open port on that sea as she is to-day. There are in our time two arguments suggested in favor of the perpetuation of war. It is said INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 253 that war is glorious, and that a nation without war is without heroism. It is true that war affords op- portunities for heroism, and thus opportunity for deeds truly glorious. It is true that something resplendent would be lacking in American history if there were no Bunker Hill, no Valley Forge, no Paul Jones or General Jackson, no Antietam or Gettysburg. Shall we, then, maintain a restless, burdensome, demoralizing, and inefficient method of securing justice, because under such a method men exhibit heroic qualities ? Shall we retain bur- dens of which we might be relieved, because men proved themselves patient in bearing them ? Shall we retain sin because if there were no sin there could be no redeeming love ? Pestilence in a city brings glory with it, the glory of nurse and physi- cian sacrificing themselves in self-denying service to save the lives of others. Shall we introduce pestilence into our cities ? A great conflagration gives opportunity for glory in the firemen who fight the flames and rescue the imperiled. Shall we touch the torch to our homes, and wrap the city in a great conflagration, for the sake of giving oppor- tunity for such glorious heroism ? But neither pes- tilence nor conflagration brings with it a tithe of the perils, the suffering, the moral distress, which war inevitably entails. The other argument for war is that it is neces- sary to promote patriotism. It is true that pa- triotism is often deepened by war, but it is not true that patriotism depends upon war. A strange 254 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. inversion of the natural order is this doctrine which teaches us, not that we fight for our country because we love it, but that we love it only because we fight for it. A strange reversal of the Sermon on the Mount is this doctrine which says to us, It hath been said to them of olden time, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy, but I say unto you that you cannot love your neighbor unless you hate your enemy. A strange contradiction of the very axiom of Christianity is this doctrine that love can be nourished only at the breast of hate. Christianity has done much to mitigate the hor- rors of war, and something to lessen the incentives to it. It has itself created some of those regula- tions of international law to which I have briefly adverted. It has forbidden the torturing and the killing of captives ; it has discouraged and finally abolished the practice of reducing them to slavery. It has made war, when undertaken for the avowed purjiose of plunder, illegal, and in Christendom well-nigh impossible. It has created a spirit of humanity and justice which has provided on the one hand some jirotection for non-combatants, on the other some alleviation for the wounded and the captive ; and it has inspired a spirit of chivalry which, surviving the Crusades, has given to civil- ized warfare a character in important respects dif- ferent from that of ancient paganism.^ And it has 1 "The chang-es Christianity effected in the rights of war were very important, and they may, I think, he comprised under three heads. In the fiist place, it suppressed tlie gladiatorial INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 255 taught continuously, tlirougli its great prophets, though certainly not always consistently by the voice of all its representatives, that war is righteous only when it is inevitable, that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, and that Christ's disciples should constantly seek to hasten the time prophesied in Isaiah when "men shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks ; when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." ^ The movement gathering force in England and in the United States for the settlement of inter- national controversies by Christ's method of rea- son, in lieu of the pagan method of brute force, has eighteen centuries of progress behind it. Though the world moves slowly, still it moves. shows, and thereby saved thousands of captives from a bloody death. In the next place, it steadily discouraged the practice of enslaving' prisoners, ransomed immense multitudes with chari- table contributions, and by slow and insensible g'radations pro- ceeded on its path of mercy till it became a recog-nized principle of international law that no Christian prisoners should be re- duced to slavery. In the third place, it had a more indirect but very powerful influence by the creation of a new warlike ideal. The ideal knig-ht of the Crusades and of chivalry, uniting- all the force and fire of the ancient warrior with all the tenderness and humility of the Christian saint, sprang- from the conjunction of the two streams of religious and of military feeling- ; and, al- though this ideal, like all others, was a creation of the imagina- tion, although it was rarely or never perfectly realized in life, yet it remained the type and model of warlike excellence, to which many generations aspired ; and its softening influence may even now be largely traced in the character of the modern gentleman." W. E, H. Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 274. 1 Isaiah ii. 4. 256 CHRltiTJAXlTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. The impatient reader must remember that once revenge was both a sacred right and a sacred duty. He who had been wronged was regarded under an obligation to revenge the wrong. Such vengeance was wreaked not only on the offender personally, but on the family to which he belonged. The first restraint in history upon this perpetnal warfare was that imposed in the Mosaic law, which, in case of murder, limited the right of vengeance to the nearest relatives of the murdered man. ^ Out of the right of personal vengeance grew what is known in history as "private war." From the ninth to the fifteenth century Europe was deso- lated with this species of w^ar, waged between nobles and private citizens, rival cities and hostile communities, often arising from the most insignifi- cant causes. A merchant imprisoned for debt demanded indemnity, and made war upon the city in which he had been imprisoned ; a nobleman, counting himself insulted because a lady had broken her promise to dance with his cousin, made war upon the city in which she resided. In France the relatives of the one making war could be called on to render him assistance up to the seventh degree. The suffering and desolation re- sulting from this private war surpass the powers of description. One wari-ioi', the Margrave of Brandenburg, boasted that he had burned one hundred and seventy villages. At length the Church set itself against such war. 1 Numbers xxxv. 9-34 ; Deut. xix. 1-13 ; Joshua xx. 1-6. INTERNATIONAL CONTKOV ERISI ES. 257 Pilgrims preached through Europe the duty of peace. Missionaries from country to country acted as peacemakers. Associations formed to collect a fund to compensate sufferers from violence. Peace was imposed as a sacred duty during Lent, and then at other specified times ; finally, four days in the week were declared days of holy truce. Finally, courts of arbitration were organized by the barons and the bishops, founded on the teachings of Christ and of the Apostle Paul. ^ This right of personal vengeance, this obliga- tion of enforcing it, continued to be recognized far down into the Middle Ages. The wager of battle which I have already described grew out of an endeavor by a humane and partially Chris- tian spirit to surround this right and duty with certain legal restrictions and safeguards. The time came when open attack was not permitted within the immediate demesne of the king, and the peace which there prevailed was known as the " king's peace." Little by little this king's peace extended over the highways, and finally over the whole country, and every act of personal violence was deemed a wrong, because it was a violation of the king's peace and an insult to him. Thus Christianity, first ameliorating and re- straining and finally abolishing private contro- versy, and substituting therefor courts of law, then ameliorating and abolishing private war, and substituting therefor laws of war recognized by all 1 Matt, xviii. 15-17 ; 1 Cor. vi. 4-7. 258 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. civilized nations, prepared the way for what is known as the " Great Design " of Henry of Na- varre. This was nothing less than the establish- ment of a United States of Europe, composed of all its great powers excepting Russia, who were to combine in maintaining one standing army to keep peace between the states and to repel in- vasions of barbarians. The tragic death of Henry the Fourth by the assassin's knife, in 1610, pre- vented the consummation of the Great Design, though we may well doubt whether Christian in- fluences had at that time sufficiently dominated the mind and heart of Europe to make this design practicable, nor was it wholly free from a ruthless character intermingled with its Christian purpose.^ A little less than a century later, William Penn reproduced in a different form a similar scheme for the settlement of international difficulties by a great court of arbitration. But not until a century after that was Christ's method of settling contro- versies introduced practically and on a large scale as a means of securing justice between nations. At the close of the last century, by treaty between the United States and Great Britain, negotiated by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, it was declared that certain disputes between the United States and Great Britain should be 1 For account of the Great Design, see Memoirs of the Duke de Sully ^ book iii. ; The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, hj Professor Baird, vol. ii. p. 41)1 ; and " The United States of Europe," by Edward Everett Hale, in The Old and New for March, 1871. INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 259 ndjusted by arbitration. Inspired by this prece- dent, and " under the beneficent working of this jn'inciple/ nearly one international case a year has been settled during the past eighty years." ^ Only four or five are known to most people, for one war makes more noise than a hundred arbi- trations, and costs more than a thousand times as much.^ In accordance with its own spirit, in peace and quietness, international arbitration has been displacing war. Yet, in this movement for the substitution of reason in the place of force for the determining of justice between nations, the progress has always been pathetically slow. There is something at once painful and humorous in the dread which mankind has shown of a change so rational and so beneficent. An illustration of this spirit al- most worthy of a comic opera is afforded by our treaty with Mexico of 1848. Art. XXI., provid- ing: for arbitration between the United States and 1 Chauncey M. Depew, address before the New York State Bar Association, January 21, 1896. 2 We have arbitrated about forty cases, she (Great Britain) not less than thirty : the United States has settled difficulties in this way with sixteen nations, thirteen of which are weak powers ; Great Britain with eleven, six of which are weak powers. The two countries have settled thirteen disputes between themselves, — thirteen of the most difficult, delicate, and far-reaching in conse- quences of all the cases ever adjusted by arbitration. — "The United States, Great Britain, and International Arbitration," by Benjamin F. Trueblood, LL. D., New England Magazine, March, 1896. ^ Benjamin F. Trueblood, LL. D., Report of the Lake Mohonk Conference, 1895, p. 6. 260 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Mexico, is such a curious j^iece of literature that it deserves insertion in full : — "If, unhappily, any disagreement shall hereafter arise between the governments of the two republics, whether with respect to the interi3retation of any stipu- lation in this treaty, or with respect to any other par- ticular concerning the political or commercial relations of the two nations, the said governments, in the names of those two nations, do promise to each other that they will endeavor, in the most sincere and earnest manner, to settle the differences so arising, and to preserve the state of jjeace and friendship in which the two nations are now placing themselves, using for this end mutual representations and pacific negotiations. And if by these means they should not be enabled to come to an agreement, a resort shall not on this account be had to reprisals, aggression, or hostility of any kind by the one republic against the other, until the government of that which deems itself aggrieved shall have maturely con- sidered, in the spirit of peace and good neighborship, whether it would not be better that such difference should be settled by the arbitration of commissioners appointed on each side, or by that of a friendly nation. And, should such course be j^roposed by either party, it shall be acceded to by the other, unless deemed by the other incompatible with the nature of the difference or the circumstances of the case." ^ The court has taken the place of the pistol and the bowie knife for the settlement of individual controversies ; international law, regulating- war, has taken the place of private and unregulated 1 Treaties of the United States, p. 690. \ INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 2G1 war in Europe ; arbitration has taken the place of even regulated war in the adjustment of con- troversies between Great Britain and the United St ates ; and law, interpreted and applied by a permanent tribunal, has been established on this continent, — the fitting though long-delayed con- summation of this slow progress out of barbarism. The organization of the Supreme Court of the United States is recognized by all political writers as the greatest contribution which the founders of the American Constitution have made to national life. This nation is composed of forty-four States, each independent, and in its own legitimate domain sovereign. Questions have again and again arisen between these sovereign States which in olden times would have precipitated war ; under the Constitu- tion of the United States, they are submitted to the arbitrament of a permanent tribunal, and the decision of that tribunal no State thinks of ques- tioning. A splendid illustration of the value of such a method of the settlement of a great contro- versy has been afforded by recent history. An income tax was passed. Half the nation thought it unjust and unconstitutional ; the other half thought it entirely constitutional, and most just and essential. Pecuniary interests amounting to millions of dollars were at stake. Party, class, and sectional passions were inflamed. Great nations have often gone to war with one another, civil war has often broken out within a single nation, for causes far less than that furnished by the 262 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. income-tax law. The question was submitted to the Supreme Court. It was settled in the first place, not by the decision, but by the indecision, of the Supreme Court. Because a majority of the court could not be found to declare this act unconstitutional, the great body of the citizens, with a few insignificant and dishonorable excep- tions, prepared to pay the tax. The question was then re-submitted to the court ; one of the judges changed his mind, and concluded that the act was unconstitutional, and all the citizens submitted to his judgment, and the country went on in peace without the tax, despite an inadequate revenue, and a treasury which would be bankrupt but for repeated loans. The United States of America is itself a great Peace Society, and its prosperity is a magnificent witness to the wisdom of Christ's counsel. We are a prosperous people, partly be- cause we have untold and before-undiscovered wealth, but for the most part because the energy which Europe puts into military armaments we put into the plow, the spade, and the harrow. The forces which on the one continent are directed to destruction, on the other are directed to con- struction. It is not difficult to understand the reason for the difference in public welfare which the two policies have produced. The American who attempts to beat the plowshare into a sword, and the pruning-hook into a spear, is the enemy of his country. He sets himself against its splendid history in the past, against its magnificent pros- perity in the future. INTERKATJOXAL CONTROVERSIES. 263 This history of civilization indicates with suffi- cient clearness the next step to be taken : it is the establishment of a permanent tribunal for the settlement of all international controversies between Christian nations.^ This is not interna- tional arbitration ; it differs therefrom in impor- tant respects. A court of arbitration is not organ- ized until the dispute arises and passions are inflamed. Ordinarily each party selects one arbi- trator, and those thus selected choose a third ; thus the court itself is not non-partisan, but bi-partisan, with an arbitrator to judge between the factions. Submission after the controversy has arisen is always more difficult than the anticipation of con- troversy, and the prevention of it by an agree- ment to submit before the controversy arises. The court of arbitration decides nothing but the specific questions submitted to it, and is neither governed by precedents in the past, nor makes precedents to prevent contentions in the future. In these respects the permanent tribunal differs from the court of arbitration. It is an impartial tribunal. It is relatively unaffected by the pas- sions of the hour. It not only settles the special questions submitted to it, but it declares authori- tatively principles which prevent future questions from arising. And controversies, when they do 1 See address of Edward Everett Hale, D. D., in the Report of the First Annual Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbi- tration for 1895, p. 21 ; and the entire report of the Second Annual Conference, and especially its platform ; this report is g-oing- to press at the same time with this volume. 264 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. arise, do not become passionate if both the con- testants know beforehand that an honorable and just method of arbitrament has been provided. There are no insuperable legal difficulties in the way of the establishment of such a permanent Supreme Court of Christendom. Such constitu- tional lawyers as Judge David J. Brewer, of the Supreme Court, Professor T. M. Cooley, of Ann Arbor, Professor J. B. Thayer, of the Harvard Law School, and the late Professor Austin Abbott, Dean of the New York University Law School, concur in the affirmation that there is no consti- tutional difficulty in America. Lawyers equally eminent in Great Britain are equally explicit in the statement that no insuperable obstacle is pre- sented by the traditions of that country. The foundations are already laid in past history for such a tribunal for the settlement of questions between Anglo-Saxon communities. Their legal 1 1 aditions and their political sjjirit are, if not iden- tical, at all events of kin. Says Sir Frederick Pollock : " The law of our English-speaking com- monwealth, on which the sun never sets, is one law in many varieties, not many laws which happen to resemble one another in several particulars." The movement in favor of such a tribunal has already acquired a force greater than, at this writing, is generally recognized by the public press. In the United States, popular committees organized al- most simultaneously, and without previous counsel, in the winter of 1896, in the cities of New York, INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSIES. 265 Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago, led to one of the most notable conventions ever held in the United States. Convened that year in April, at Washington, it was attended by eminent mer- chants, lawyers, jurists, statesmen, and ministers, who 'united in urging upon the government the desirability and the practicability of such a tribu- nal. In England, a similar movement has received the endorsement of ^ler most eminent clergy and publicists, and the semi-official approval of her Prime Minister. In France, by a nearly unani- mous vote of the Legislative Assembly, proposals have been submitted to this country for a perma- nent treaty of arbitration between the two coun- tries. The Inter-parliamentary Union of Europe, in which fourteen states were represented by mem- bers of their respective j^arliaments, have formu- lated a definite plan for the formation of such a tribunal by the judicial representatives from each nation for the purpose. These events, all occur- ring during the twelve months ending July 4, 1896, warrant the belief that the day is not far distant when a Supreme Court of Christendom will be established, and nations will "learn war no more." Is the question asked. How shall the decisions of such a court be enforced ? It is easily answered by another, — How have the decisions of courts of international arbitration been enforced? Not by authority from above, but by authority from be- low. As Daniel Webster eloquently pointed out lialf a century ago, there is a power in pul^lie opin- 266 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 1010.} Neither the United States nor Great Britain would be sustained by its own people in refusal to abide by the decision of an impartial tribunal in which an issue between the two countries had once been submitted by mutual agreement. As Profes- sor John B. Clark clearly pointed out in a very able address at the Second Annual Labor Mohonk Conference, already referred to, and as Mr. Austin Abbott had pointed out at the previous Confer- ence, industrial interests are binding the nations together. The suppressed hostility of labor to capital tends in itself to unite both the capital- ists and the laborers of different nationalities in two great international brotherhoods. Hostile to each other, they are agreed in their common hostil- ity to war, — the one, because it destroys capital ; the other, because it paralyzes industry. If any other method of protecting national honor and national rights should be provided, industrial in- terests would unite with the moral sense of the people to compel its acceptance by submitting to the judicial tribunal which was organized such con- troversies as might arise, and acquiescing in the de- cree of the tribunal when rendered. Two causes provoke war, — one, human passion, too hot and hasty to pause for consideration ; law restrains such passion, and calls on the reason to act ; the other, the absence of any other remedy for ^ Speech on the Revolution in Greece, in the House of Repre- sentatives, January 19, 1824, Great Speeches of Daniel Webster, ed. E. P. Whipple, p. ('>7. INTERNATWXAL CONTROVERSIES. 267 real or fancied injustice ; law provides such other remedy, and the passion dies for want of fuel to feed it. It is, indeed, sometimes said that there are some questions which could not be submitted to such an international tribunal. Would you submit, it is asked, a question of national territory? Why not ? Every individual citizen holds his land sub- ject to the decision of a legal tribunal. Any other citizen may bring ejectment suit against him ; but his tenure is not weakened, it is strengthened, by that fact. Land-ownership is safer in England or America, where it is defended by an impar- tial tribunal, than in Ashan tee-land, where it is defended by the bow or the gun. Would you submit a question of national honor ? Why not ? Formerly questions of personal honor were left to be settled by the duel. In Anglo-Saxon com- munities the duel is abolished, and the honor of the individual citizen, and the honor of his wife and his children, is safer under the guardianship of the law than it was formerly under the guar- dianship of private battle. The issue between war and law has been decided by civilization in favor of law for the settlement of all personal controversies. War has been brought under law in international controversies, but the consummation of Christian progress will not be attained until law is substituted for war, reason for force, the spiritual for the animal, Christianity for barbarism. CHAPTER X. Christ's law for the settlement of contro- versies: LABOR CONTROVERSIES. In two preceding chapters I have endeavored first to elucidate Christ's general instructions re- specting the settlement of controversies, and, next, to show the special application of these instruc- tions to controversies between different nations. In this chaj^ter I propose to show their application to the controversies in the modern industrial com- munity between the laborer and the capitalist. In order to do this it is first necessary to trace the history of these controversies, and show how they have arisen and come to their present threatening proportions. Individualism, or the doctrine of laissez-faire,^ as it is sometimes called, proposes, as the remedy for our industrial ills, freedom of competition. 1 ^''Laissez-faire^ — a letting alone ; a general non-interference with individual freedom of action ; the let-alone principle or policy in government and political economy. The term was first used in France to designate that principle of political economy which would leave industry and trade absolutely free from taxa- tion or restriction by government, except so far as required by public peace and order. It has since been extended to include non-interference by controlling authority with any guiltless exer- cise of individual will." — Century Dictionary. SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 269 This was a great advance on feudalism. Under the feudal S3^stein a few men owned the land. Every landowner had attached to his land a certain number of villeins, or peasants, and these villeins were bound to do their lord's will ; and he, on his part, was bound to protect them from aggression. As this feudal system disappeared, there emerged a philosophy, respecting the rela- tions of laborers and capitalists, variously entitled free competition, hfissez-faire, freedom of contract, or, from the city where it was especially prominent, the doctrine of the Manchester School. That doc- trine, briefly stated, was this : Let the men who want labor pay what they are willing to pay ; let the laborers who want work take what they are willing to take ; as a result, wages will adjust themselves. Let every man who desires work to be done offer what he is willing to pay for the service to be rendered. Let every man who wants to work, work for the wages that are offered to him ; if he does not like the price, let him find work somewhere else. If labor is left free, and the employer buys his labor in the cheapest market and the laborer sells his labor in the highest mar- ket by free competition between laborer and em- ployer, wages will adjust themselves.^ So long as individuals are dealing with indi- viduals, this method works fairly well. There is no great prospect at the present time, for instance, that the housekeepers will combine together to fix ^ See ch. iv., especially quotation from Adam Smith. -70 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL FROBLEMS. the rate of wages which they will pay their cooks, or that the cooks will combine together and de- mand a certain rate of wages adjusted for them- selves as a class ; and so long as there are a thousand housekeepers wanting cooks, and a thou- sand cooks wanting employment, there is probably no better way to adjust the rate of wages than to let the housekeeper offer the cook what wages a month she thinks she can afford, and let the cook take them or refuse them, as she pleases. But individualism as the method of industry did not long survive. Machinery was invented ; wherever it was introduced, it put an end to individual em- ployment and to individual industry. Work was carried on under great roofs by great bodies of men, and this necessitated an aggregation of capital and a combination of employers.^ The employers did not, at first, combine to gain an advantage over the workingmen ; they combined because it was not possible to do the work by modern methods in any other way than by com- bination. Instead of one man running his own loom, or one woman working at home a spinning- wheel, there were a thousand men in one cotton ^ " We get an increasing concentration of the industry into comparatively few works along' with the elimination of all em- ployers not well sujiplied with capital. The number of spindles and looms in England doubled itself between 1850 and 1890, while that of factories only rose from 1,932 to 2,674 between 1850 and 1878, and then sank back again to 2,5o8 in 1890, though the number of spindles simultaneously increased." L. J. Brentano, Hours and Wages, in Relation to Production, p. 59. SETTLEMEXT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 1^71 factory, all working under one great captain of industry, with his lieutenants and his sub-lieu- tenants. There was no longer free competition ; no longer an opportunity for a workingman to take a job or refuse it, as he liked. If he was not satisfied with the wages that were offered to him, he was absolutely powerless to resist the combination of capital. An employer of labor has a thousand men in his factory. He says to himself : " I can take ten cents off the wages of this thousand men ; that will give me one hundred dollars a day more profit, 130,000 a year in divi- dends. It is worth trying." This has been fre- quently done. John says, " I cannot afford to work for ten cents less a day." But what can John do ? He has a home, a mortgage on it ; a wife and children dependent on his industry. If he abandons work, he must go tramping through the towns until he can find some other great cor- porate industry that is carrying on the work in the same way, and has a vacancy for him. On the other hand, the employer runs no risk. If he discharges John he can find some one else, if not to work at lower wages, at least to work at the rate of wages he is paying now. He will have to pay no more when John departs, and he may jmy less. Workingmen discovered this. They found out that capital was necessarily a combination, and they said : " We also must combine." Thus the trade union arose. Some men have endeavored to 272 CHRISTJAXITY AXl) SOCIAL PROBLEMS. trace the trade union back to the old guilds of the Middle Ao-es, but there is no vital connection between the two.^ The phrase " trade union " came into existence about the year 1830, and the organ- ization itself came into existence about the same time. AVhat, then, is a trade union ? Primarily, it is an organization of workingmen to promote their own interests. It may have, and it often has had, for its object, education, insurance, social culture, social enjoyment, — matters wholly apart from labor controversy. But it also very often becomes a military organization, formed for pro- tection, if not aggression, in controversies with employers, — military in spirit, though not in structure.^ 1 " The supposed descent of the Trade Unions from the Medi- aeval Craft Guild rests, as far as we have been able to discover, upon no evidence whatever. The historical proof is all the other way. In London, for instance, more than one Trade Union has preserved an unbroken existence from the eig-hteenth century. The Craft Guilds still exist in the City companies, and at no point in their history do we find the slig-htest evidence of the branching- off from them of independent journeymen's societies." — S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unions, p. 13. ^ There is a popular impression that the trade union is formed on the plan of all military org-anizations, and that the power is intrusted to one or two leaders, who have authority to order a strike, and that strikes are g-enerally so ordered, in spite of the reluctance of the body of the strikers. There seems to be very little real ground for this impression. Probably no writer on economics in the United States has made as close and careful a study of these org-anizations, or is as familiar with their constitu- tions, as Professor Ely, and he says : " The surrender of personal liberty is often regarded as a condition of membership in a trade union, but this is little more than a fiction in the case of any SETTLEMEXr OF LABOR COXTROVKRSIES. 273 When trade unions were first organized in Eng- land, a vigorous attempt was made to destroy them. First, Parliament passed laws prohibiting them as conspiracy ; but the laws broke down and were repealed. Then the capitalists banded to- gether and resolved that they would employ no man who belonged to a trade union. They suc- ceeded in breaking up trade unions for a few years, but the only result was new organizations stronger than the old ones. The attempt to de- stroy the organization of labor has been made in England, under circumstances much more favor- able to the attempt than ever existed, or are likely to exist, in the United States, and the attempt has proved an utter failure.^ The organization of well-managed labor org-anization. Those who furnish capital place its management in the hands of a few ; those who furnish labor do so, though to far less extent. What Mr. Traut says of a strike (in his excellent little work, Trade Union, London, 1884, Kegan Paul, French & Co.) is true of most affairs of trade unions: 'The idea that a strike depends upon the ipse dixit of a paid agitator, or that if the men were to vote by ballot on the question they would never consent to a strike, is conceived by those only who do not know what a trade union is. In most cases a strike is the result of action taken by the men them- selves in each district, the executive having more power to pre- vent a strike than to initiate one.' " — R. T. Ely, The Labor Move- ment in America, p. 100. In fact, in the history of strikes in America, the strike has been probably quite as often due to the passion of a democratic meeting, and ordered in spite of the protests of the leaders, as induced by the passionate appeals of the leaders, ovei-ruling the cooler judgment of the men. See, below, note on the organization and history of the Knights of Labor. 1 "The right of the workingmen to combine and to form 274 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. capital and the organization of labor are perma- nent factors in the civilization of the future. The trade union, then, exists, — sometimes a combination of trades unions ; and the aggregation of capital exists, often a combination of aggrega- tions of capital. For when this process of organi- zation once began, it went on increasing, so that we had recently, for instance, all the great rail- roads centring in Chicago united in one great capitalistic organization, and the attempt made, not altogether successfully, to unite all the rail- road employees in one great labor union, and the two engaging in a great trial of strength, dis- astrous not only to them, but also to the entire community.^ trades unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into association and conferences with his fellows, and it must be sooner or later conceded. Indeed, it gives one but a poor opinion of the American workman if he permits himself to be deprived of a right which his fellow in England has conquered for himself long since. My experience has been that trades unions, upon the whole, are beneficial both to labor and capital." Andrew Carnegie, Forum, April, 188G, p. 119. See, also, S. and B. . Webb, History of Trade Unions, passim, for history of the unsuc- cessful attempt to destroy them in England. ^ The history of these organizations is worth reporting a little more fully, since it illustrates in a concrete case the nature of the labor war. '' The General Managers ' Association included the twenty-four railroads centring or terminating in Chicago. It was formed in 1886. In its constitution the object of the Association is stated to be ' the consideration of problems of management arising from the oj^eration of railroads terminating or centring at Chicago.' It further provides that all funds needed shall be raised by assessments divided equally among the members. There are no limitations as to ' consideration of problems ' or SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 275 " The solidarity of labor " has come to be one of the common phrases of our newspaper litera- ture, and the conception that exists in the minds of not a few men, especially of labor leaders, is an ' funds,' except the will of the managers and the resources of the railroad corporations. Prior to the great strike in June, 1894, the Association dealt incidentally and infrequently with wages. But it fixed a ' Chicago scale ' for switchmen, covering all lines at Chicago, and also prepared elaborate schedules of the wages paid upon the entire lines of its twenty-four members. It was deemed wise not to act upon this report, which, however, was dis- tributed to the railroads in November, 1893, and ^cted as an ' equalizer ' of wages. Reductions were here and there made on the different roads. It is admitted that the action of the Asso- ciation has great weight with outside lines, and this tends to establish one uniform scale throughout the country. The further single step of admitting lines not running into Chicago into mem- bership would certainly have the effect of combining all railroads in wage contentions against all employees thereon." — Eeport on the Chicago Strike, pp. 28-30. " The American Railway Union was an association of about 150,000 railroad employees, as alleged, organized at Chicago on the 20th of June, 1893, for the purpose of including railway em- ployees born of white parents, in one great brotherhood. . . . The theory underlying the movements was, that the organization of different classes of railroad employees (to the number of about 140,000), upon the trade-union idea, has ceased to be useful or adequate ; that pride of organization, petty jealousies, and the conflict of views, etc., tend to defeat the common object of all. and enable railroads to use such organizations against each other in contentions over wages, etc. ; that the rapid concentration of railroad capital and management demands a like union of their employees for the purpose of mutual protection ; that the inter- ests of each of the 850,000, and over, railroad employees of the United States as to wages, treatment, hours of labor, legislation, insurance, mutual aid, etc., are common to all, and hence all ought to belong to one organization that shall assert its united strength in the protection of the rights of every member." — Idem, p. 23. 276 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. organization of all labor in one great army for its own protection. Thus we have two camps, — capi- tal gathered in corporations and in aggregations of corporations, or trusts ; labor organizations in trades unions, or in great conglomerate organiza- tions, like the Railway Union, and the Knights of Labor,^ and the International ; and every now and then a bitter war breaking out between them in what are called strikes. ^ " The Knights of Labor were org-anized in 1809 in Phila- delphia, by Uriah S. Stevens, a elothing--cutter of that city. Its first declaration of principles was made in 1878. The order has undergone some radical changes since its principles were first formulated. It grew rapidly, and its membership was at one time nearly half a million. It has recently suffered a decrease in membership through various causes, and in 1895 its membership was estimated to be 150,000. It is represented in nearly every State by its Local and District Assemblies. It was at first a secret order, with many Masonic features, its obligations being in the nature of oaths taken on the Bible. This secrecy and the oath-bound obligations were abandoned in 1881, from which time the real growth of the order dates. Tlie order has a systematic and methodical constitution of tliirteen articles. Up to 1883 funds for the support of strikes were raised by a tax on the members, but in that year the strike laws of the order were made so rigid that tliey practically amount to a prohibition of strikes, so far as the support of the order is concerned. The laws now in force do not permit the support of a strike by the whole order. Women are admitted upon an equal footing with men. All occu- pations are embraced in the organization, except lawyers, bank- ers, speculators, liquor-dealers : no man who derives any benefit or income from the sale of intoxicating' drinks is allowed in the order. The order consists of Local and District Assemblies and a general convention of Delegates." See " Hist. Sketch of the Knights of Labor," by Carroll D. Wright, Quarterly Journal of Economics., January, 1887 ; Industrial Evolution in the United States, by same author, pp. 245-263. SETTLEMENT OF LABOR COXTJiOVERSJES. 277 What is a strike ? "A strike," says Carroll D. Wright, 1 '' occurs when the employees of an estab- lishment refuse to work unless the management complies with some demand made upon it." It is, therefore, simply an attempt on the part of the workingmen to carry out by organized action what, under the principle of the Manchester School, or individualism, it was recommended they should carry out in individual action.^ John says, I will not work for ten cents a day less ; and John finds that it is useless for him to say this alone, so he proposes to the other nine hundred and ninety-nine employees in this factory to make common cause. An injury to one is an injury to all : let us all agree that we will not work for ten cents less a day. And when all have made a common cause. 1 C. D. Wrig-ht, Industrial Evolution in the U. S.. p. 293. ■^ " A strike is a concerted susj)ension of work by wage-workers of either sex in the employ of wage-payers, for an alleged non- fulfillment of a contract, or as a protest at the alleged imposition of new demands ; or for the sake of obtaining some benefit, de- clared to be deserved on account of new conditions in the line of industry pursued, or in the cost of living ; or for the correction of personal offenses against wage-workers, especially females, com- mitted by the managers or their subordinates. . . . That any number of men in this country have a right to combine, organize and act together for the lawful promotion of their convictions, or tlieir common interests, ought by this time to be beyond dispute. There is something absurd in setting about proving what nothing but impudence could deny. If a number of men may combine to raise or keep uj) the price of oil, wheat, or sugar, then there may be a union to raise or keep up the price of labor.'' — Strikes : the Right and the Wrong, by F. 1). Huntington. S. T. D., LL. D., Bishop of Central New York. E. P. Dutton cV: Co. 278 CHRIST J AX/Tr AXB SOCIAL PROBLEMS. and have combined to say, We will not work for ten cents less a day, then the superintendent of the factory has to stop and think whether he will cut down the wages ten cents a day — what it may cost him. The strike is, in its initiative, simply a thousand men saying. We do not like the job, or we will not work for the wages proffered, as before the one man said, I do not like the job, or I will not work for the wages proffered. So long as one man so acted, it brought no great inconvenience to the community or to his employer ; but wdien a thousand men combine, — and not only a thousand men, but many thousands of men all over the country, in a great variety of localities, are con- tinually combining, — to leave the mill idle and cause the work to stop, it does produce great incon- venience and great disadvantage. It must be frankly said that workingmen have gained much by their labor organizations, and sometimes by strikes. It is sometimes said that strikes are always failures. This is not true. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, who can be trusted in the mat- ter of statistics as well as any man either in Amer- ica or Europe, has reported the results of strikes during a period of a little over twelve years (1881- 1893), and in about fifty per cent, of those strikes the workingmen won, either in whole or in part.^ 1 From 1881 to 1894, including' six months only of the latter year, he reports successful strikes 44,49 per cent., partly success- ful 11.25 per cent., failures 44.23 per cent. Bulletin of the De- partment of Labor, No. 1, November, 1895, p. 20. From 1881 to 1886 he reports of 3,902 strikes 40.52 per cent, successful, 13,47 SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 279 It must always be recognized, too, that labor organ- izations have had the effect to raise wages, which are nearly always better in organized than in un- organized trades. They are nowhere so poor, and nowhere are working people so badly treated, as where there is no labor organization.^ These two facts the candid student of history, I think, must recognize. But, having recognized these, if he is candid he must also recognize that strikes are war ; and war inflicts incalculable in- jury upon all who are engaged in it. During seven per cent, partially successful, 39.95 per cent, failures. In a paper on strikes in Great Britain, by G. P. Bevan, he reports, concerning 851 strikes in that country from 1870 to 1879, 189 failures, 71 successful, 91 partially successful, — a little under fifty per cent, successful in whole or in part. The lowest proportion of success- ful strikes I have found is reported from Massaciiusetts, where of 149 strikes only 18 were successful and 22 partially successful, while 109 failed. See, further, Jos. D. Weeks, Labor Differences and their Settlement, p. 34, and facts cited from the State Senate Committee on Labor and Capital in Prof. R. T. Ely's Labor Movement in America, which shows in one case 204 successful strikes out of 362 among- the cigar-makers. When it is remem- bered that in all industrial controversies it is customary for the negotiators to demand more than they expect, in order to form a basis for a compromise, it is clear that the proportion of success- ful strikes has been large. 1 The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, as every one knows, a wealthy employer of labor, has well said that it is only after labor is or- ganized that the contending parties are in a condition to treat. " The great result is, that capital is ready to discuss. It is not to be disguised that, until labor presented itself in such an attitude as to compel a hearing, capital was not willing to listen, but now it does listen. The results already obtained are full of encourage- ment." Paper read before the Church Congress in Cincinnati, quoted in Labor Movement, by Richard T. Ely, p. 146. 280 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. and one half years, in the principal cities of the United States, there were six thousand controver- sies between employers and employed, of such considerable size that they were worth reporting in the official reports of the Uiiited States, — almost a thousand a year ; and by means of those strikes the employed have lost nearly thirty-five millions of dollars, and the employers have lost over twenty- eight millions of dollars. Sixty-three millions of dollars have been spent in industrial war in seven and one half years in the principal cities of the United States.^ But that is the least of the evil. The loss in wages and the loss in profits is the smallest ele- ment. Man has been set against his brother man ; classes have been formed ; a rift has been made in 1 In 26 of the principal cities of the United States, from Jan- uary 1, 1887, to June 30, 1894, there were : — Strikes 5,909 Establishments 28,662 Employees thrown out ..... 955,250 Wag-e loss to employees $34,988,100 Assistance to employees by labor org-anizations . $4,590,177 Loss to employers ...... $28,786,446 Carroll D. Wright, Bulletin of Labor, No. 1, November, 1895, p. 16. During 188 J -1886, in the United States, the losses to em- ployees for strikes and lockouts amounted to nearly $60,000,000 ; the loss to employers was nearly $34,000,000, making- a total loss of $94,000,000 in six years. Carroll D. Wright, Industrial Evo- lution in the United States, p. 299. The expenditures for the cigar-makers' strikes referred to in a previous note aggregated $286,444.67. Testimony of Adolph Strasser before Blair Senate Committee. SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 281 the community ; the laborer has been taught by every new war to regard the employer as his en- emy ; and the employer has been taught to look with suspicion, if not with aversion, upon the em- ployed. No one, I think, can look upon the pres- ent unsettled condition of industry in the United States and not feel that there is real and serious menace to the country in the antagonism between class and class which strikes, lockouts, and labor wars have begfot. For my part, I reiterate my disbelief in the Man- chester School, whether its doctrine is applied to the individual or to great organized bodies. If history demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that it is not true that we can find any method what- ever by which men can live in this world on the princij^le simply of self-interest. So long as the employer is taught, by pulpit, by press, or by school of political economy, that it is for him to get his labor in the cheapest market, and the laboring man is taught that it is for him to try to get the highest possible wages, — so long as each one is trying to get all he can and to give as little as possible, — so long there will be industrial war. This is not brotherhood. This is not the spirit in which the family is carried on. The husband does not say. How much can I get out of my wife, and how little can I give her ? The wife does not say, How much can I get out of my husband, and how little can I give him ? The father does not say, How much can I grind out of my children, and 282 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. how little can I give them ? How long would an)' family cohere on that principle ? The wife says, How can I take that burden off my husband ? the husband, How can I give my wife more comfort? The father and mother counsel. How can we make our children happier, and enlarge and enrich their life ? And the children consider. What can we do to ease the burdens of over-worked father and over- tired mother? The remedy for industrial ills is less a new organization than a new spirit. We want a " Looking Backward " containing the story of a lockout and a strike, — the employer anxious to see how few hours of labor he can put on his employed and make it profitable, and locking out the workingmen because they work too many hours ; and the labor union studying how it can do the most work for the employer, and striking because he pays more wages than he can afford on a falling market. The fundamental principle — if it can be called a principle — that underlies the industrial war is all wrong. The solidarity of labor in the one camp, and the solidarity of capital in the other camp, is against the solidarity of society. W. Stanley Jevons, one of the ablest political think- ers in Great Britain, has laid down the law which is Christian as well as scientific : — " The present doctrine is, that the workmen's interests are linked to those of other workmen, and the employer's interest to those of other employers. Eventually it will be seen that industrial divisions should be perpendicu- SETTLE ME XT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 283 lar, not horizontal. The workmen's interests should be bound up with those of his employer, and should be pitted in fair competition against those of other work- men and emi^loyers. There would then be no arbitrary rates of wages, no organized strikes, no long disputes rendering business uncertain and hazardous. The best workmen should seek out the best master, and the best master the best workmen. Zeal to produce the best and the cheapest and most abundant goods would take the place of zeal in obstructive organization. The faithful workman would not only receive a share of any addi- tional profits which such zeal creates, but he would become a shareholder on a small scale in the firm, and a participator in the insurance and superannuation bene- fits which the firm would hold out to him with approxi- mate certainty of solvency." ^ That is both the politico-economic and the Chris- tian doctrine. But, meanwhile, what shall we do when labor controversies arise ? Capital is organized ; labor is organized. How can we settle controversies between them and put an end to strife ? What al- ternative is there for strikes and lockouts ? Christ replies : Conciliation, arbitration, law.^ First, conciliation. Joseph D. Weeks is known by name to most men who know anything about the industrial situation as having for many years represented the ironmasters of Penns3dvania in the questions which have arisen between the iron- masters and their men; and in a little pamphlet 1 The State in Relation to Labor, by W. Stanley Jevons, p. 145. 2 See Matt, xviii. 15-17, and ante, ch. ix., pp. 242, 243. 284 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. of his, to which I desire to acknowledge great indebtedness for my own views on the labor ques- tion, he expresses the spirit which should actuate masters in their negotiations with their men, — the true spirit of conciliation. After speaking of the error involved in a failure to recognize the changed relations and new conditions which mod- ern industrial life has brought about, he proceeds as follows : — " The source of this error is chiefly in the idea, inherited from feudal days and justified by much of the legislation and political economy of modern times, that the employer is the superior, the employee an inferior ; that it is the right of the former to determine, the duty of the latter to acquiesce. This view does not often express itself bluntly in words, but it does more or less unconsciously in acts. The employer assumes the sole right to determine, and refuses to discuss ques- tions that arise in connection with wages or the details of employment, in the decision of which the employee has an interest equally with the employer ; or, if such discussions take place, they are ' j^ermitted,' an inter- view is 'granted.' In case of a meeting, the employer assumes the right to dictate its method. ' No commit- tee will be recognized.' The employer also claims the right, in many cases, to determine the relation an em ployee shall hold to his fellows, and prohibits his mem- bership in a union. In all of these, and in many similar cases, there is an assumed superiority of con- dition which does not exist in reality, however much it may be asserted by word or act. The true relation of emjjloyer and employed is that of independent SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 285 e(iuals, uniting their efforts to a given end, each with the 2>oiver, ivithin certain limits, to determine his own rights, but not to prescribe the duties of the other. The employer has no more right to dictates or even decide how labor shall seek its interests than labor has to dictate to the employer. Whatever may be the views of the latter as to trade unionism, it will be well, in most cases, especially in great centres of industry, or in those employments uniting great bodies of men under one management, if, with the best grace possible, he accept the fact of combination and deal with its repre- sentatives. Such combinations, with all their faults and follies, are not entirely bad." ^ In this quotation I have put in italics what might well be framed and hung in every factory and counting-room, and in every trade-union lodge, and taught as the first and the fundamental prin- ciple of industrial business in every institution of learning which deals directly or indirectly with the labor problem. Where this spirit prevails, labor difficulties are reduced to a minimum. If it pre- vailed everywhere, labor war would cease alto- gether. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, in an address delivered March 15, 1895, before the Young Men's Demo- cratic Club, and published in the " Boston Herald," gives the following illustration of the practical ap- plication of this principle and its beneficial effect. It is not only interesting as an illustration of the 1 Labor Differences and their Settlement, by Joseph D. Weeks, p. 10. L'86 CHRISTJAXITY AX I) SOCIAL PROBLEMS. principle stated by Mr. Weeks ; it is also valuable as an evidence that practical business men familiar with the industrial problems of our time uncon- sciously bear concurrent testimony to the efficacy of Christ's principle of conciliation, and Christ's spirit in carrying it into effect : — " But, Mr. President, better than all, involving liigher elements than all, going far beyond arbitration and deeper than the power and the authority and the func- tion of government, is the settlement of questions by men themselves. One grand illustration comes to my mind in this respect. A few months ago the employees of the Southern Railway Comj^any — a new combina- tion controlling 6,000 employees and 4,500 miles of track — demanded of the management a restoration of the wages paid them two years ago. . They sent their committee to Washington, the headquarters of the system, and laid their demands before the managers. Their demands were met in a dignified, manly, and gentlemanly manner. The men were told that they should be carefully considered, every interest canvassed, and a decision given them at such a time. When the time arrived for the decision, the management laid before the men, through their committee, an itemized statement of the expenses of the road for the past few years, — the losses which it had sustained, the loss in freight, the loss in jmssenger traJBfic, — in fact, all the financial and industrial conditions of the whole system. This statement was drawn up in a fair, just, and candid manner, and submitted to the committee of the em- ployees. After many conferences, to which the officers of the different brotherhoods of railway employees were SETTLE M EXT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 287 admitted, tlie whole matter was peaceably and amicably settled, to the satisfaction of all parties, and the men went home and retm'ned to their work with a new dignity added to their characters, — the dignity of men who had been treated honorably, justly, and fairly ; and the manager, our own Boston boy, William H. Baldwin, Jr., who conducted the whole affair, went to his home that night with a new dignity added to his charac- ter, — the dignity which results from honorable, manly action." -^ Conciliation will not always succeed. What next ? Arbitration. That is to say, the selection of a body of men to represent the interests of botli l^arties, and the submission of the question at issue to that body for its solution. The Board of Arbi- tration may be temporary ; it may be permanent ; what is essential is, that it should have the confi- dence of both classes. England in this respect is in advance of the United States. Daniel J. Ryan, in his monograph on Arbitration,^ thus describes its results in the iron district in the North of Ens:- land, where formerly the condition was one of chronic war between laborer and capitalist : — '' For sixteen years the disputes of labor and capital in the rolling-mills of England have been settled by arbitration, and it has been an era remarkably free from strikes. The Board of Arbitration for the North of England iron business was, as all efforts of this kind ^ See further, on conciliation, Henry Crorapton's monograph on Industrial Conciliation, H. S, King- & Co., London. '^ Arbitration between Capital and Labor : a History and an Argument, by Daniel J. Ryan, pp. 68, 69. 288 CHRISTIANITY AXD SOCIAL PROBLEMS. usually are, the outgrowth of a strike. It was formed on March 22, 1869. It is a permanent institution, and has the usual equal rei^resentation of employers and employed, as well as the conciliation committee taken from the members of the Board ; in truth, arbitration in its just and full ai)plication must necessarily be about alike in all systems and trades. Speaking of this board, Mr. Weeks, in his report, says : ' At the close of 1875 it represented thirty-five works and 13,000 subscribed operatives. These works had 1,913 puddling fur- naces, — more than all Pennsylvania, and half as many as the entire United States. During the year 1875 the standing committee investigated forty disputes. Since its organization there have been eight or nine arbitra- tions on the general questions of wages, and scores of references in regard to special adjustment of wages at particular works.' The awards of the Board from 1869 to 1874 in fixing wages have been freel}^ and honorably accepted without a single repudiation ; and this has been uniform, both in the decrease and the increase of wages." Thus far, at least in the United States, the efforts to secure arbitration have emanated from labor organizations rather than from organiza- tions of capitalists. The Brotherhood of Carpen- ters and Joiners, the International Typographical Union, the Iron-Moulders' Union, and the Knights of Labor have all officially declared themselves as opposed to strikes and in favor of arbitration. Perhaps the greater success of this method of settling labor disputes in England may be due to the fact that it has had more cordial and spon- SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 289 taneous support from the employers. The initia- tive came from the manufacturers. " Three of us," says Mr. Mundella, giving an account of the oriiiin of this movement in Eno^land, " met a dozen leaders of the trade unions. We consulted with these men, and told them that the present plan was a bad one ; that they took every advantage of us when we had a demand, and we took every advantao'e of them when trade was bad ; and it was a system mutually predatory. Well, the men were very suspicious at first ; indeed, it is impossible to describe to you how suspiciously we looked at each other. Some of the manu- facturers also deprecated our proceedings, and said that we were degrading them. However, we had some ideas of our own, and we went on with them, and we sketched out what w^e called a ' Board of Arbitration and Conciliation.' " But, the suspicions of the workingmen once overcome, they entered cordially into this endeavor to substitute a trial of reason for a trial of strength \i\ the settlement of labor controversies. " My experience," says Mr. Rupert Kettle, an English lawyer and judge, and an authority on this subject, " is that, when the masters and the men meet as men of business and discuss their business matters together with per- fect freedom, it is the greatest possible relief, both to the men and to the masters, that they appre- ciate the opportunity of coming and discussing the matter candidly and fairly with one another, and I have never found the men unreasonable, nor 290 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. have I found the masters unreasonable. Some- times I have heard untenable ]3ropositions enun- ciated on either side, but the general result is that they meet in a proper spirit and come to a satis- factory arrangement." Mr. Mundella confirms this testimony : " The very men that the manu- facturers dreaded were the men that were sent to represent the workmen at the Board. We found them the most straightforward men we could desire to have to deal with ; we have often found that the power behind them has been too strong for them ; they are generally the most in- telligent men ; and often they are put under great pressure by workmen outside to do things which they know to be contrary to common sense, and they will not do them. They have been the great- est barriers we have had between the ignorant workmen and ourselves." ^ It is sometimes said by employers there is no- thing to arbitrate, and it must be confessed that there are some questions which cannot be sub- mitted to arbitration. Such are questions directly involving a moral principle. The employer has no right to demand that the workingman shall leave his labor organization. To submit to that demand is to surrender personal liberty. The trade union has no right to demand that the enq^loyer shall ^ Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Industrial Arbitration and Con- ciliation., pp. 25, 26. Compare Andrew Carnegie in the Forum for April, 1880, p. 118 : "I would lay it down as a maxim that there is no excuse for a strike or a lockout until arbitration of differ- ences has been offered by one party and refused by the other.*' SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 291 discharge a man because he does not belong to the trade union. This is to demand that he interfere with the personal liberty of the workingman ; and there are few if any conditions in which it can be right to submit to such a demand as that, and to do wrong to another innocent man in order to protect one's self from injustice. Liberty is worth bat- tling for. But all questions of mere self-interest are properly subjects of arbitration, and the ques- tion whether any particular controversy is a subject of arbitration is itself a proper subject to be left to arbitrators. Christ's first principle for the settlement of con- troversies is conciliation ; his second, arbitration ; the third is law. Are there any industrial disputes which should be settled by the law, and the settle- ment of which should be enforced by the law ? I have no hesitation in affirming that there are such questions. The public have rights as well as the contestants ; and when a labor war inflicts a great disaster upon the community, the community has a right to interfere, put a stop to the war, and com- pel the contestants to abide by its decision. A recent railroad strike in Buffalo cost the State of New York, it is said, thirty thousand dollars a day, to say nothing of the cost to the militiamen, who were taken from business, to keep the peace while the railroad and its employees settled their quar- rels. During the strike on the Burlington & Quincy Railroad, scores of towns were left without their usual means of transportation, and the incon- 292 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. venience and loss inflicted npon the people of Iowa and Illinois were beyond all calculation. The great railroad strike on the Lehigh Valley left for some weeks the seaboard cities, which were depen- dent upon that railroad for their coal supply, to suffer, all of them from extortionate prices, and some of them from actual cold. For nearly a week during a recent car strike in Brooklyn many of its citizens were compelled to walk from their homes to business and back again, being deprived of their usual method of transportation, until the trial of strength between the motormen and the corporations was ended. The losses to the country due to the great railroad strike at Chicago are esti- mated by Bradstreet to be in the vicinity of eighty millions of dollars. If two roughs get into a quarrel on the public street they are not allowed to fight it out ; the policemen arrest them both, and they are compelled to submit their controversy to a court of justice. But the inconvenience to the public from a quarrel between two roughs upon the street is insignificant as compared to the inconvenience inflicted by a great struggle between labor and capital affecting our great lines of transportation, national or mu- nicipal. What is infelicitously called " compulsory arbitration," what should be more tersely called law, is simply the application to controversies be- tween classes of citizens of the same principle which has long since been applied to the settlement of controversies between individual citizens. It SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 293 is the simple affirmation that the community has rights which both contestants may be compelled to respect. Compulsory arbitration is simply the application to the settlement of industrial con- troversies of the same essential principle which is throughout the civilized world, and by all civilized states, employed for the settlement of other con- troversies. It devolves upon those who do not be- lieve that this principle can be so applied to show why it is inapplicable. They have attempted to do this. It is said in the first place, in general terms, that there are se- rious objections to any plan proposed for securing peace in a community, the individual members of which are covetous, selfish, passionate, ambitious. That is true. All such plans are in the nature of makeshifts. They are lesser evils endured to escape greater evils. We pay annually enormous sums in support of judicial and police systems, which would be rendered quite unnecessary if all men lived according to the Golden Rule. But they do not ; and we endure the taxation rather than suifer the injustice which anarchism would permit. No one, probably, supposes that law is a specific for labor troubles. There is no radical cure for labor troubles but character transformed and conduct controlled by Christian principles. Meanwhile the application of law is a device to protect the innocent from the injuries inflicted upon them by those whose character and conduct are not controlled by Christian principles, nor even 294 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. by those of Moses or Confucius, but by the deviFs maxim, " Every man for himself." It is asked, How can the decisions of a court of justice be enforced upon the contestants in a labor controversy ? Labor controversies which assume ]proportions sufficient to justify public interference are generally controversies between a corporation and a labor organization. Enforcement of the law against the corporation is a ver}^ simple mat- ter. If a railroad corporation does not pay inter- est on its bonds the government takes the railroad, manages the road itself, and so pays the interest on the bonds. It puts the railroad into the hands of a receiver, and so cares for the interests of the creditors. The right of the nation in the highway is greater than the right of either stockholder or bondholder. It would be a perfectly simple thing for the law to provide that when the corjjoration cannot run its trains, through a labor war, a re- ceiver shall take the road and manage it. " This is all very well," replies the objector, " as a means of enforcing the decree of the court on the corporation ; but how will you enforce it on the laborer ? Will you require him to work for less wages or during more hours than he approves ? To do this is to establish slavery." No, no one pro- poses to establish slavery, or to compel any man to work under any other compulsion than such as is involved in the law, " If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." And no other compulsion would be required. Whenever the law provides SETTLEMENT OF LABOR CONTROVERSIES. 295 no remedy for a wrong, the wronged take the law into their own hands. The Law makes no adequate provision for punishing the seducer. The husband or friend, therefore, shoots the seducer at sight ; and juries habitually acquit in such cases, not be-, cause the avenger is insane, but because the law is inefficient. Now the American workingman is without a remedy for wrongs which he thinks ex- ist, and which an increasing number of disinter- ested spectators also think exist. He strikes be- cause the law furnishes him no other remedy for real or fancied injustice. When, as in England, by the consent of the employers, a remedy is pro- vided, he ceases to strike. If, without the consent of the employers, a remedy was provided by law, he would cease to strike. And if he did not, the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Debs case has made it clear that a combination of employees for the purpose of block- ing the highways of the nation is a criminal con- spiracy ; and it would not be a difficult matter to frame a law which should forbid men employed on the great transportation lines to leave in a body without adequate notice, provided the law also fur- nished them some other remedy for wrong than such combination. Conciliation, the recognition by employer and em23loyed that they are partners in a common en- terprise ; arbitration, the adjustment of all ques- tions of self-interest, that cannot be adjusted through conciliation, by reference to a mutually 296 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. chosen tribunal ; and the intervention of law where public rights are infringed upon by controversy between laborer and capitalist, — this seems to me to be the application of Christ's method for the solution of the labor war, until we come to the full recognition of the fact that workingman and capi- talist are partners in a common enterprise, and the very motive of war ceases to exist. CHAPTER XL CRIMINALS : THE ENEMIES OF THE SOCIAL ORDER. In establishing a new social order upon the earth, — an order of righteousness, peace, and hap- piness, — Jesus Christ and his disciples have to meet and overcome, not only ignorance, prejudice, and indifference, but open, deliberate, and purpose- ful hostility. That measure of righteousness which man has already recognized and organized in human society we call law ; the violation of such law is crime ; those enemies of the social order who not merely obstruct the development of society toward its ideal, but set themselves against righteousness as already organized in institutions, we call crimi- nals. There is in every community a considerable class of such enemies of the social order. Some are so simply through ignorance or bad education ; some through inherited vices ; some through ad- verse social influences. For the wrong'-doiup; of some, society is responsible, even more than the in- dividual wrong-doer. Some have drifted into habits of crime gradually and unconsciously ; some have, of set purpose, engaged in criminal life, — have devoted themselves to crime as men devote them- selves to law, medicine, or the ministry. The sta- 298 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. tistics of our criminal population must be taken with a great deal of allowance. It is a migratory population ; banished from one State or from one city, the criminal flees to another. Thus the same man is counted in the statistical reports of differ- ent institutions and even of different States. But it has been estimated that the criminal population of the United States, including in that term not only the criminals themselves, but those who are dependent upon them, numbers about 700,000 ; in other words, that about one in every seventy of the population is more or less aggressively and deliberately an enemy of the social order. This criminal class is increasing more rapidly than population. Says Havelock Ellis : ^ — " The level of criminality, it is well known, is rising, and has been rising during the whole of the present century, throughout the civilized world. In France, in Germany, in Italy, in Belgium, in Spain, in the United States, the tide of criminality is becoming higher steadily and rapidly. In France it has risen several hundred per cent. ; so, also, for several kinds of serious crime, in many parts of Germany ; in Spain the num- ber of persons sent to perpetual imprisonment nearly doubled between 1870 and 1883 ; in the United States, the criminal population has increased since the war, relatively to the population, by one third. . . . Insular Great Britain alone appears to be relatively unsub- merged by the rising tide of criminality ; but even here 1 H. Ellis, The Criminal, p. 295. criminals: enemies of social order. 299 there is a real increase, in proportion to the population, in the more serious kinds of crime." ^ How ought we to treat these enemies of the social order? How do we treat them ? Chiefly in two ways : we endeavor to get rid of them, or we endeavor to inflict vindictive justice upon them. Our punitive system alternates between these two methods, and combines both in differing proportions. Sometimes we try to get rid of them, — banish them from our sight and from our memory. The easiest and simplest way of getting rid of them is to kill them. In England, in A. D. 1600, two hun- dred and sixty-three crimes were punished with death. At the close of the last century over two 1 " That crime is on the increase, ont of proportion to popula- tion, is indicated in many ways, but for the country as a whole the United States census is the most reliable guide. Let ns look at it by decades : — Prisoners. Rates of Population. 1850 G,737 1 out of 3,442 1860 19,086 1 " " 1,647 1870 32,901 1 " " 1,171 1880 58,609 1 " " 855 1890 82,329 1 " " 757 The rate of increase in a few States, we are glad to note, has not been maintained, and, in one or two, for the higher crimes, it has even decreased a trifle ; but, upon the whole, the swell has been continuous, like a tide that has no ebb." General Brinker- hoff, Address before National Prison Association, 1894, p. 13. Compare " The Increase of Crime and Positivist Criminology," The Forum, vol. x^ai. 1894, p. 666. 300 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. hundred were so punished. It is said that in Henry the Eighth's reign seventy-two thousand criminals were hanged ; ^ and, although the figures are doubtless inexact, it is certain that they truly represent the method of dealing with criminals in that ao'e. Women and children were executed as readily as men. It is not more than half a cen- tury since a child of nine was condemned to death in England for stealing paint of the value of two pence half-penny,^ although he was not executed. Human sensibility has been cultivated, and the estimate of the value of human life increased, within the last century, and we are no longer able to adopt the short and easy method of extirpating- crime by extirpating the criminal. But the spirit remains. In France the criminal is sentenced to the chain gang, in Russia he is exiled to Siberia. The inhumanity of the one, Victor Hugo has graphically illustrated in " Les Miserables ; " the inhumanity of the other, recent revelations of George Kennan have brought to the consciousness of all Christendom. Within a very few years it has been seriously proposed to establish a penal colony in Alaska to which criminals might be sentenced. It may perhaps be here assumed that neither chain gang nor penal colony will ever find 1 Carroll D. Wright, in Annual Am. Acad. Pol. Sci., vol. iii. p. 767 (May, 1893). See J. Birchall, England under the Tudor s, p. 348 ; Pictorial History of England, vol. ii. p. 907. Froude, His- tory of England, iii. 373, 374, note 2, discredits the statement. 2 See Henry Lea, History of the Inquisition, i. p. 235. CHIMIN ALi^: ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 301 a place in American criminal jurisprudence, but to banish and forget the criminal is still our practical method, if not our deliberate aim. For a petty offense, we send the offender to a county jail ; for a graver offense, to a State's prison. In either case our real object is to get rid of the offender as an inconvenient and disagreeable member of so- ciety, and go on with our business of money-mak- ing. In the State's prison little or nothing is done for his reformation. We congratulate ourselves if, out of his industry, we can make money enough to provide for his self-support. In the county jail much is done for his deterioration. The convict comes out of the prison no better than he went in ; he comes out of the jail a great deal worse. The former is not a school of virtue, the latter is a school of crime. " To establish a school of crime," says General Brink- erhoff,^ " requires (1) teachers skilled in the theory and practice of crime ; (2) pupils with inclination, op- portunity, and leisure to learn ; (3) a place of meet- ing together. All these requirements are provided and paid for by the public in the erection, organization, and equipment of county jails and city prisons. With less than half a dozen exceptions, all the jails and city prisons in the United States are schools of this kind, and it is difficult to conceive how a more efficient sys- tem for the education of criminals could be devised. . . . Every observant jailor knows with what devilish ^ In an article in The Congregationalist, winter of 1884. My notes do not give me the exact date, 302 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. skill the professors of this school ply their vocation. Hour after hour they beguile the weariness of enforced confinement with marvelous tales of successful crime, and the methods by whicli escape has been accom- plished. If attention fails, games of chance, inter- spersed with obscene jokes and ribald songs, serve to amuse and while away the time. In this way the usual atmosphere of a jail is made so foul that the stamina of a saint are scarce strong enough to resist. Let a prisoner attempt to be decent, and to resist the contami- nating influences brought to bear upon him, especially in a large jail, and he will fhid that, so far as personal comfort is concerned, he might as well be in a den of wild beasts." This description, written some twelve years ago, is substantially as true to-day as then. Gen- eral Brinkerlioff himself has demonstrated that cleanly and well-ordered jails are not only practi- cable, but may be economical ; and, thanks to his efforts, the exceptions are perhaps more numerous than when he wrote : but it is still true that the county jail " is everywhere known as the training- school for crime, the principal recruiting station for the penitentiary ; " jails are still " schools of crime, disseminators of evil." The comparatively innocent boy, carried into some violation of law by the recklessness, the ignorance, or the incon- siderateness of youth, or by the influence of evil companions, comes out of jail educated in the ways of crime, and instigated to walk therein by the associates which the county has furnished CRIMINALS : ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. o03 him ; all that sense of shame with which he en- tered is obliterated ; an ineffaceable stigma fas- tened upon him shuts him off from all reform- atory influences ; and not improbably he has formed a deliberate purpose to pursue in the future the criminal career which, before his imprison- ment, was far from his thought, if not abhorrent to his sensibilities.^ Such is the effect of the policy of banishing the criminal from sight and mind. It converts criminal impulse into criminal purpose, and increases the class which it should be an object to diminish. The second method of dealing with criminals is that of vindictive justice. The man who has done wrong — such is the argument — ought to suffer for his wrong-doing. This suffering it is the duty of society to inflict. By inflicting this suffering we satisfy the retributive sense of jus- tice in the community ; we deter both the crimi- nal and others of his class from like crimes in the future ; and thus we protect society from the aggression of its enemies. This theory of the treatment of criminals proposes, as the motive- power for action, the wrath of society against crime ; as the end of its action, the protection of society ; as the means to be employed, the deter- 1 See the paper on " County Jails as Reformatory Institutions," by Edward B. Merrill, in the Forty-Ninth Annual Report of the Prisoners' Association of New York for the year 1893, and the address by ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes in the Proceed- ings of the Annual Congress of the National Prison Association of the United States, held at Boston, July, 1888. 304 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. rent power of fear. '' I think it highly desir- able," says Sir James Stephen, " that criminals shonld be hated ; that the punishment inflicted upon them should be so contrived as to give expression to that hatred, and to justify it, so far as the public provision of means for expressing and gratifying a natural healthy sentiment can justify and encourage it." ^ This was the spirit and this the method of society during the Middle Ages. It is often, but erroneously, supposed that religious persecution was peculiarly cruel. The cruelty belonged, not to the Church, but to the age ; it belonged to this theory of retributive jus- tice, seeking the protection of society by the deter- rent power of fear. Heresy was considered as the greatest of crimes, because a crime against God ; but it was punished in no different spirit, for no different end, and by no different method, than characterized the punishment of civil offenses. Says Mr. Henry Lea : ^ " The wheel, the caldron of boiling oil, burning alive, burying alive, flaying alive, tearing aj^art with wild horses, were the ordinary expedients by which the criminal jurist sought to deter crime by frightful examples which would make a profound imj^ression on a not over-sensitive population. An Anglo-Saxon law punishes a female slave convicted of theft by mak- ing eighty other female slaves each bring three ^ Sir James Stephen, History of Criminal Law, vol. ii. eh. xvii. p. 82. 2 Henry Lea, History of the ly^quisition, i. p. 284 f. CRIMINALS : ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 305 pieces of wood and burn her to death, while each contributes a fine besides. The Carolina, or criminal code of Charles V., issued in 1530, is a hideous catalogue of blinding, mutilation, tearing with hot pincers, burning alive, and break- ing on the wheel. In England, prisoners were boiled to death even as lately as 1542, as in the cases of Rouse and Margaret Davie." I believe this vindictive system is entirely, radi- cally, and irretrievably wrong, — wrong in its spirit, wrong in its purpose, wrong in its methods. It cannot be reformed ; it must be destroyed, root and branch, and a new and redemptive system substituted in its place, different in its spirit, dif- erent in its purpose, different in its methods. The very phrase " administration of justice " is a mis-phrase. It is not the function of society to administer justice ; it has neither the authority nor the capacity so to do. Jesus Christ is per- fectly explicit in condemning the system of retri- butive justice, its spirit, its method, its means. The criminal is the enemy of society. He is the enemy of the homes which constitute the foun- dation of society ; the enemy of the rights of pro- perty and of person, without which the social organism cannot be maintained ; the enemy of the individuals who compose the social organism, and whose prosperity and life constitute the pros- perity and life of the organism. How we are to feel toward our enemies, and how we are to treat them, Christ has told us in explicit language. 306 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. " Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." ^ If I may not hate the man who robs me, neither may society hate the men who rob society. If one man may not do evil to one man who has done evil to him, a hundred thousand men, constituting a community, may not do evil to a hundred men who have done evil to that community. The spirit which is wrong in a single soul is not made right by being diffused through a hundred thousand souls. Hate thine enemy, says Sir James Stephen ; love thine en- emy, says Christ. Administer justice, says society. " Do not administer justice," says Paul.^ Over- come evil by the deterrent power of fear, says the law ; overcome evil by good, by the inspiration of love and hope, says the New Testament. It is im- possible to harmonize the two systems ; if one is right, the other is radically wrong. The redemp- tive system may mitigate the evils of the vindic- tive system, but cannot be combined with it. We must choose between vindictive justice and redemp- tive love. It is true that there is an instinct of 1 Matt. V. 43, 44. 2 Compare Romans xii. 17-21 : " Do not give back evil for evil. . . . Beloved, do not yourselves administer justice ; it is written, I will administer justice, saith Jehovah." See the original Greek, which I literally follow in this translation. CRIMINALS: ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 307 retributive justice. We rightly feel that wrong action deserves penalty. If there were no such feeling, there could be no reformatory discipline. The father could not punish his child; society could not punish the criminal. But punishment is not to be the mere expression of that feeling, nor to be administered for the purpose of satisfy- ing it. Instincts are never ends. The appetite is essential to life, but we are not to eat merely to gratify our appetite. We are rational beings, and are to understand the object of the apj^etite, and are to guide and control it to the fulfillment of its divine end. The difference between a beast and a man is that one eats simply to gratify his appe- tite, the other controls his appetite to minister to his life ; that the one inflicts injury simply to gratify his instinct for revenge, the other guides and controls that instinct to the accomplishment of a nobler purpose. That purpose is the reforma- tion of the wrong-doer, not the infliction of retri- butive justice upon him. The authority to inflict such justice is not con- ferred upon us, — is, indeed, emphatically denied to us by Christ himself. "Judge not," he says. Judgment belongs only to Him who sees the mo- tives, and therefore knows how to make adjust- ment of reward and penalty to virtue and to sin. To assume the seat of judgment is to assume a function which belongs only to the All-seeing One. Christ's prohibition is enforced by our own limita- tions. We have not the capacity to exercise this 308 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. function. " Prisoner at the bar, stand up and re- ceive the sentence which the law pronounces against you." What judge will claim the knowledge ade- quate to enable him to make this sentence just? Do you know, Mr. Justice, what character this man inherited from his ancestors ? — what were the elements of his education ? what was the moral atmosphere of his early life ? what were the temptations which environed him ? what mixed motives of good and evil led him to the deed ? Do you really know which of you two is in inmost character the better man ? No ! every judge confesses his inability. The greater his ex- perience, the profounder his consciousness of that inability. " When Pantagruel arrived at Myre- lingues, he found that Judge Brydoyo, after care- fully considering all the facts of the case, was accustomed to decide it by means of dice, and Pan- tagruel fully admitted the impartiality of this method. If our judges, before pronouncing sen- tence, were first to determine the years to be awarded by the solemn casting of dice, the result might be as good as those reached by the not very dissimilar system now adopted." ^ Who was the greater criminal, — the child of nine years old sen- tenced to death for stealing twopence half-penny worth of paint, or the judge who sentenced him ? Probably greater criminal than either was the so- ciety which made such a sentence of such a child for such an offense possible. I have heard the ^ H. Ellis. The Criminal p. 256. criminals: enemies of social order. 309 story told in one of the Prison Reform Congresses of two men cauglit in a burglary. One, a young man, beguiled into the crime by liis older asso- ciates, thoroughly ashamed of himself, eager to receive his sentence and pay his penalty and be- gin his life anew, came before a severe judge, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to twenty years. The old offender, too wise to be so cauglit, secured postponement of his case, got before a milder jus- tice, and received a sentence of three or four years. A few years ago I read in the same paper of two sentences in England, one of a youth sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for stealing a butter- knife, one of a drunken brute sentenced to three months' imprisonment for gouging out his wife's eye ! These discrepancies are continually taking place in what we euphemistically call the " admin- istration of justice." Indeed, the defenders of this system frankly concede that it is impossible to measure the real guilt of the act punished ; only the overt act, only its effect on society, can be mea- sured.^ But to punish a man, not for the wrong of which he is guilty, but for the harm which he has done, is not to exercise retributive justice. Jus- tice adjusts the penalty to the sin ; such a system adjusts the penalty to the injury ; and the differ- ence between these two systems is the difference between justice and revenge. What we call the 1 The Philosophy of Crime and Punishment : Address before the National Prison Association of the United States, September, 1890, by Dr. W. T. Harris, p. 5. 310 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. administration of justice is the administration of social revenge, mitigated by varying degrees of hu- manity and mercy. As this system is radically wrong in the spirit which animates it, so it is radically wrong in the purpose which it endeavors to accomplish. The object of punishment is not the protection of so- ciety from the criminal classes. This is a purely selfish purpose, and a purely selfish purpose is never beneficent and rarely accomplishes its end. We do not protect society by endeavoring to pro- tect society. Killing criminals, punishing crimi- nals, shutting criminals up in prison, frightening criminals, have all been tried and have all proved failures. The notion that the end of punishment is the protection of society from the criminal classes assumes that there always are to be crimi- nal classes from which we are to protect ourselves. Not far from my home in the West, thirty odd years ago, there had been what was known as Lost Creek. This creek emptied itself over the prairie, making a great marsh, and so long as the marsh remained the whole neighborhood was infested with malaria and typhoid fevers. It finally oc- curred to some wise men to drain the swamp. The creek was drained into the Wabash River, and the disease ceased. The object of our punitive system should be, not to protect society from the criminal classes, but to drain the swamp ; to stop the mul- tiplication of criminals ; to reform the criminals created by our bad social system, and to protect criminals: enemies of social order. 311 ourselves only from tlie small remnant which is then left. And the deterrent power of fear is not the proper means for accomplishing the ends of pun- ishment. We have broken criminals on the wheel, boiled and buried them alive, flayetl thein, hanged them, imprisoned them, and still the criminal classes grow more rapidly than population grows. We have invited the public to witness these hor- rible sights ; the boys have jeered at the offenders in the stocks ; the roughs have gathered from the purlieus of the city to glorify the criminal expi- ating his crime upon the scaffold ; and both have gone from the scene with their sensibilities hard- ened, their vicious tendencies intensified, incited to crime, not deterred from it. We have at last be- come practically satisfied that this is true, and no longer administer penalties in public. The pillory is abolished, the Delaware whipping-post is set up in the prison yard, the public are excluded from the executions. Even in our school-rooms the boy is no lonofer floo^o'ed before all the scholars. Pub- lie penalty does not deter ; it does not decrease crime : it instigates, duplicates, multiplies crime. Our penal systems should be animated by a different spirit ; they should seek a different end : they should employ a different means. The spirit should be that of love ; the object should be the re- formation of the offender ; and while fear must some- times be employed, it will be subsidiary to the higher and more potent motives of hope and love. 312 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. In brief, we are to bring to the problem, How shall we deal with our criminal population? the spirit of Jesus Christ : we are to seek his ends and we are to employ his methods. His spirit was that of love ; his end was the cure of the wrong-doer ; bis method was the inspiration of worthy aspira- tions and righteous purposes in the wrong-doer's breast. It hardly needs to be said that Christ treats sin as a moral disease which he has come to cure. " They that be whole," he says, " need not a phy- sician, but they that are sick." ^ It ought never to be forgotten, as it sometimes has been, that he immediately adds, thus interpreting the figure, " I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." He recognizes the reality and terri- bleness of sin ; he treats it as something which separates the soul from God and calls for repent- ance, and, if unrepented of, issues in death. But the sinner is the object of his pity, not of his wrath. He warns, but never threatens. Even his invective against the Pharisees, perhaps tlie most terrible invective in literature, ends in a la- ment : " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! " He never punishes ; he never exults in prospective punishment. His ministry is not punitive ; it is therapeutic. It is true that there is a difference between sin 1 Matt. ix. 12, 13. CRrMINALS: ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 313 and crime ; but this difference enforces upon us the truth that we should deal with crime as the Master dealt with sin. Sin is the violation of God's law ; crime is the violation of man's law. The crime may not be a sin ; it may even be a virtue. Daniel's refusal to worshijD the image set up on Babylon's plain was a crime, but it was not a sin. To give aid to a fugitive slave in 1850 was a crime ; to refuse him aid was a sin. But crimes are not worse than sins ; all that is evil in the crime is the sin. Philosophically, there is no rea- son why crime and sin should be treated in a different spirit, on a different princij^le, or by different methods. Christ's philosophy of sin as a disease is now recognized and adopted by the scien- tific students of criminology as the true philosophy of crime. The cranial and cerebral characteristics of the criminal classes set them apart by them- selves. They are physiologically and phrenologi- cally different from their fellows. " Forty per cent, of all the convicts are invalids more or less, and that percentage is largely increased in the professional thief class," ^ says Dr. G. Wilson. Semi-imbecility is a prevalent characteristic among juvenile criminals. Expert students in this branch of the subject discover characteristic criminal fea- tures in receding foreheads, the size of the lower jaw, the large development of the external ear, the shape of the nose, the number and nature of the wrinkles, anomalies of the hair, characteristics of 1 Quoted by H. Eliis in The Criminal, p. 34. 314 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. the eyes. " A handsome face," says Havelock Ellis, "is a thing rarely seen in a prison, and never in a prisoner who has been a law-breaker from childhood." ^ If it is difficult to draw the line between the physical and the moral, it is impossible to draw such a line between the intel- lectual and the moral. The law endeavors in vain to define accurately the distinction between moral and intellectual insanity. Few criminals are really intelligent ; a large j^roportion of them are stupid. Where there is intelligence it is generally confined within a very narrow scope. " It is a mistake," says Dr. Wey, of Elmira, " to suppose that the criminal is naturally bright. If bright, it is usu- ally in a narrow line, and self-repeating. Like the cunning of the fox, his smartness generally displays itself in furthering his schemes of per- sonal gratification and comfort." ^ Often the career of crime is due to excessive vanity, emotional in- stability, or a passion absolutely inexplicable and inscrutable ; sometimes the criminal presents the appearance of being under the control of some superior power. One of the great French alienists is of opinion that demoniacal possession is the best explanation to-day of certain forms of otherwise inexplicable crime.^ But the commonest cause of ^ H. Ellis, The Criminal, p. 80. Chapters iii. and iv. of this volume may be studied to advantage by the general reader. Tliey establish beyond all question the fact that habitual criminality is closely connected with malformation. 2 Idem., -p. 134. * See my chapter on demoniacal possession in Life of Christy CRIMINALS : ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 315 all is a weak will ; an apparent inability to persist in continuous work against obstacles or discour- agements, or to resist the evil influences exerted by a stronger nature. In any scientific study of this subject, the student must further remember the early influences to which the criminal has been subjected. Fifty per cent, of the inmates of the Elmira Reformatory have either grown up with- out any home, or in homes that were as bad as none. There are no adequate statistics to indi- cate how large a proportion of criminals have grown up in vitiated physical surroundings, with bad food and bad air accentuating and intensify- ing evil qualities inherited from criminal ances- tors. In 1888, 4,800,472 lodgings were furnished to homeless men and women in cheap lodging- houses and in the station-houses of New York city. With few exceptions, these lodging-houses breed vice and crime. " It is undeniable," says Superintendent Byrnes, " that the lodging-houses ch. xiii. p. 168. Esquirol is the French alienist referred to. " In the course of an interesting conversation which the writer had with the late Dr. Forbes Winslow, the latter expressed his conviction that a large proportion of the patients in our lunatic asylums are cases of possession, and not of madness. He distinguished the demoniac hy a strange duality, and by the fact that, when tem- porarily released from the oppression of the demon, he is often able to describe the force which seizes upon his limbs, and com- pels him to acts or words of shame against his will." G. H. Peraber, Earth's Earliest Ages, Am. ed., Armstrong, 1885, p. 261. See, also, an interesting and suggestive treatment of the subject in Demon Possession and Allied Themes, by John L. Nevins, D. D., for forty years a missionary in China. Fleming & Revell Co. 1894. 316 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. of the city have a powerful tendency to produce, foster, and increase crime. ... In nine cases out of ten — I am quite confident this proportion is not too large — he (the stranger who drifts into such a lodging-house) turns out a thief or a burglar, if, indeed, he does not sooner or later become a murderer. Thousands of instances of this kind occur every year," ^ Let it be granted that a certain proportion of criminals deliberately choose a criminal career, because they erroneously suppose that it is easier to steal money than to earn it ; and that the only way to protect society against them is to prove to them by practical experience that stealing does not pay. Is it not evidently unphilosophical and unscientific to base our whole punitive system upon the false assumption that the majority of criminals are of this description ? There is a prac- tically uniform testimony by students of this sub- ject that the majority of criminals fall into crime through either inheritance, evil education, evil companionship, or an abnormal physical and in- tellectual as well as moral organization. Disease of body, of intellect, of emotions of will, disease inherited through successive generations and ag- gravated by vicious social conditions, all combine to make the criminal class what it is. Humanity as well as wisdom indicates the duty of society, — first, to remove as far as possible the causes which ^ Address by the Rev. Henry L. Myrick on " The Study of Crime," 1893, American Institute of Civics. CRIMINALS: ENEMIEU OF SOCIAL ORDER. 317 tend to generate criminals, and, secondly, to set in operation as vigorously as possible causes which will tend to cure them,^ — to give them saner emotions, a better intelligence, a stronger will; to counteract the influences of bad heredity and bad environment ; to develop habits of virtue and industry, at first under coercion, but as rapidly as possible under the inspiration of self-respect, am- bition, and hope. Since he who advocates substituting a remedial for a punitive system is constantly charged with sentimentalism, with proposing to cure crime by "cakes and ale," it is perhaps necessary to stop for a moment to disavow this charge. Sentiment- alism is not curative. There is nothing remedial in sending the criminal baskets of flowers. '' It is well known," says Havelock Ellis, " that when a woman has murdered her husband, it is by no means unusual for a number of letters to be sent to her, before the issue of the trial is known, con- taining offers of marriage." ^ Such morbid ro- mancing as this is the farthest possible remove from the spirit of Christ, who never put a halo of romance around the wrong-doer ; he pardoned guilt, but never palliated it. The compassion which is to deal with criminals must be strong before it is tender. He who is oblivious of moral ^ See an address by Carroll D. Wrig-ht on " The Relation of Economic Conditions to the Causes of Crime," Report of National Prison Association, 1892, especially p. 140. 2 H. Ellis, The Criminal, pp. 286, 287. 318 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. distinctions can never create in the criminal the conscience which perceives them. Punishment there must be, and sometimes severe punishment ; but the spirit which administers it must be, not the spirit of revenge, euphemistically called retri- butive justice, but the spirit of love seeking re- demption. It must be exactly the opposite of the spirit which Carlyle represents in his '' Essay on Model Prisons." ^ Against the creed of Carlyle I put the affirmation that fear never cured stuj^idity. On the contrary, its tendency always is to stupefy ; its only value is to restrain temporarily the wrong- doer until other and higher motives can be brought to bear upon him. The spirit which is to animate the punitive system has been well expressed in a sentence by the question once asked at a prison reform con- gress, " Would not Jesus Christ have made a superb prison warden?" It will seek for its object, not to protect society from criminals, not 1 " To drill twelve hundred scoundrels by the ' method of kindness,' and of abolishing- your very tread-wheel, — how eould any commander rejoice to have such a work cut out for him '? You had but to look in the faces of these twelve hundred and despair, for the most part, of ever ' commanding' ' them at all. Miserable, distorted blockheads, the g-enerality ; ape-faces, imp- faces, angry dog--faces, heavy, sullen ox-faces ; degraded under- foot, perverse creatures ; sons of indocility ; g-reedy, mutinous darkness, and, in one word, of stupidity, which is the g^eneral mother of such. . . . These abject, ape, wolf, ox, imp, and other diabolic-animal specimens of humanity, — who of the very g-ods eould ever have commanded them by love ? A collar roiind the neck and a eartwhip flourished over the back." — T. Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 47. CRIMINALS : ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 319 to inflict on criminals the vengeance o£ society, but simply, solely, only, to reform tliem. Keformation is to be the exclusive object of the punitive sys- tem, reformation, not of the individual only, though primarily that, but that also of the class to which he belongs. Incidentally this reformation will sat- isfy retributive justice in the only way in which it can be satisfied ; for that instinct, though it may be glutted by revenge, is never satisfied by revenge. It is implanted in the human soul, to enable us to inflict pain for a reformatory purpose, and is satisfied — truly, nobly, divinely satisfied — only by the reformation of the wrong-doer. Inci- dentally, reformation furnishes the only adequate protection to society. But this protection cannot be furnished if society administers its penal system with this selfish end in view. Society can serve itself well only as it is unselfishly seeking to serve others. It would carry me too far from my subject, which is simply the interpretation of Christ's teach- ings and their application to current questions, were I to attempt to show in detail what methods of penal administration this Christian principle would involve ; and indeed to do this would re- quire an expert knowledge which no one who has not a life familiarity with punitive sj^stems can possess. It must suffice to say in general terms that society has neither the right nor the capacity to administer justice ; that is, to determine what amount of suffering properly belongs to a given 320 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. offense, and then to inflict it. It has the right and the capacity to administer redemption ; that is, to put clearly before itself, as its sole object, the cure of crime, and to pursue this object in the spirit of a strong love, and by processes of discipline, education, and inspiration. I may, how- ever, illustrate what this principle would involve by some instances gathered from modern punitive methods. Neither fine nor imprisonment should ordinarily be the first penalty for juvenile offenders. The State of Massachusetts has adopted what is called the Probation System.^ State agents are ap- pointed, and every complaint against a boy or girl under the age of seventeen must be laid in writing before one of these agents, who then be- comes a kind of guardian of the accused. He investigates the case. If in his judgment the boy may safely be returned to his home, in the faith that a simple admonition from the bench will pre- vent the recurrence of the offense, this course is pursued. If there is no home, or if in his judg- ment the home influences will be evil or inade- quate, the offender is put under the immediate supervision of the agent, who finds some home for him. If this is impi'acticable, or if the nature of 1 Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Prisons of Massachusetts for the year ending Sept. 30, 1895, January, 1896, pp. 252-258 ; Tallack, Penological and Preventive Principles, pp. 299-303 ; Beport of New York Prison Association for 1894, pp. 136-144 ; a paper on the '' Massachusetts System of Proba^ tion," by Hannah M. Todd, Probation Officer. CRIMINALS : EXEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. o21 the offenses or the offender is such that more offi- cial discipline is required, then he may be sent to a reformatory school. In point of fact, only about one fifth of these wards of the State are sent into other homes than their own, and only one ninth to the State School and the Reformatories. This method has been in operation since 1870, with successful results, and in 1880 the system was so extended as to include, in certain cases, adult as well as juvenile offenders. In cases of imprisonment the whole purpose of the prison authorities, from the entrance of the criminal into the prison, should be his refor- mation. The intermingling of criminals in a common room or a common yard, in the jail, is condemned by all authorities, and is perpetuated only because of public indifference. The classifi- cation of prisoners, according to the nature of the men or their offenses, is sometimes attempted, but not with great success. There is certainly much to be said in favor of the separate cellular confine- ment, at least for a time. Under this system, the prisoner is put into a cell by himself, shut off from all intercourse with, and sight of, prison compan- ions ; he carries on his industry in the cell, receives there the visits of the chaplain, and is allowed, under careful restriction, visits either from offi- cials or friends. Thus the deadly influence of absolutely solitary confinement is j)revented, but with this mitigation the prisoner is in compara- tive solitude, compelled, as it were, to reflect on 322 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. his jjast life and his present condition. The effect of such separate confinement is much like that of a bath, and from it he emerges, at least, less sub- ject to the contaminating influence of other crimi- nals, and less likely to exert a contaminating influence upon them. The industries of the prison should all be ad- justed with reference, not to making money, but to making men.^ The contract system, by which the labor of the prison is rented out to contractors who hire the work of the prisoners for what they can make out of it, is utterly and irredeemably bad. 2 It interferes with the discipline of the prison ; it puts the prisoner under two masters ; it makes his labor purely servile ; and when he ^ *' We are indebted to Pope Clement XI. for having- first suc- cessfully introduced labor into prison discipline. In 1704 he established St. Michael's prison for boys and young men, in Rome, in which he caused to be erected both workshops and school- rooms, and which he termed a ' House of Correction.' Over the entrance, and upon the walls of the prison, he placed those oft-quoted inscriptions containing sentiments upon which we have been unable to improve as expressions of the true aim of prison discipline : ' For the reformation and education of criminal youths, to the effect that those who when idle had been injurious to the state might, when better instructed and trained, become useful to it ; ' also, ' It is of little nse to restrain criminals by punishment unless you reform them by education.' But, for over a century after Pope Clement began his good work in St. Michael's prison, little was accomplished in other parts of the world towards the betterment of prisoners." — J. F. Scott, of Mas- sachusetts State Reformatory, in Proceedings Annual Prison As- sociation National Congress, St Paul, June, 1894, p. 60. ■^ See Report of National Prison Association, 1884, pp. 138, 144; 1888, pp. 58, 63, 242. criminals: enemies of social order. 323 comes out from prison he hates industry even more than he hated it when he entered. It is a matter of small consequence whether the prison pays its expenses or not ; what is of consequence is, that the prisoners should go out at the end of their confinement, not to prey upon the community again, but to add to its wealth by their honest in- dustry. It can hardly be necessary to add that the religious exercises and the night schools, which should be connected with every prison, should have the same object in view, — the reformation of the offender. But all these measures are subordinate to the fundamental principle involved in the indetermi- nate sentence. Under the ordinary punitive sys- tem, the judge before whom the prisoner is tried determines the amount of penalty to be inflicted upon him according to the nature of the offense which he has committed, though under most of our modern systems the prisoner may reduce the term of his sentence by good behavior. Under the system of the indeterminate sentence, the judge does not determine the amount of penalty ; that amount has no direct relation to the offense. The judge and jury simply determine whether tbe man has committed an offense against society. That being determined, the offender is sent to prison, and another tribunal in connection wdth the prison determines bow long the confinement shall con- tinue. It determines this question, not by con- sidering the offense which has been committed, 324 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. but by considering the question whether he is likely ever to commit another. In other words, the criminal is sent to a prison, as a lunatic is sent to an asylum or a sick man to a hospital, to remain until cured. Under this system, when the prison tribunal is satisfied that the man can earn an honest livelihood, and is fully resolved to earn an honest livelihood, and has probably strength of will to adhere to his resolution, employment is se- cured for him in the outside world and he is dis- charged ; not because retributive justice is satisfied, not because he has paid the penalty of his mis- deeds, bat because he is a cured man. It will be asked. Would you give a prison tribunal absolute authority to determine this question ? Would you allow them to discharge a murderer at the end of a month's confinement, and keep in prison for life a boy who had stolen an apple ? No ; this would be vesting too much power in a prison tribunal : neither do we now allow such power in our sen- tencing tribunal. There is a mininnim and a maximum sentence, and within those limits the judge must exercise his discretion. It would be quite legitimate for the legislature, in initiating this plan, or in extending it where it has already been initiated, to put some limits on the discretion- ary power of the prison tribunal. It might well assume that certain classes of criminals of dansfer- ous tendencies could not be permanently cured during a brief confinement, and might well require their continuance in the reformatory for a certain CRIMINALS: ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 325 minimum length of time. Would not the prison tribunal make mistakes ? Would it not discharge men who were not really reformed, and who would go back to criminal courses again ? Yes, it cer- tainly would. So do our present tribunals make mistakes. Infallibility can no more be expected in the administration of redemption than in the administration of retributive justice ; but exj^eri- ence had demonstrated that the mistakes are less disastrous to the community in the former than in the latter case. While from thirty to fifty per cent, of the prisoners discharged from our States' prisons are rearrested for crime, less than twenty per cent, of those discharged from the Elniira Reformatory,^ where the indeterminate sentence is in a modified form carried out, return to criminal courses again. Will not the abolition of the re- tributive element, and the substitution of the redemptive element, be disastrous in its influence on criminal classes outside the jails and prisons? On the contrary, experience indicates that no cruelty of vengeful punishment exercises so de- terrent an influence on the criminal class as the strict and rigorous execution of such a redemptive system as is here indicated. Criminals brought up for sentence continually entreat not to be sent to Elmira, where the length of their imprisonment 1 See address of R. Brinckerhoff, in Report of National Prison Association, 1889, p. 186 ; H. C. Lea, in Forum, August, 1894 ; Eighteenth Year-Book New York State Reformatory, 1893, pp. 38 and 40. 326 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. will depend upon their reformation. They prefer to pay the penalty of their crime by a definite im- prisonment elsewhere, and then return to crime again.^ There is nothing which the criminal dreads so much as to be put under aggressive moral influences, and kept there until his refor- mation is complete. Can all criminals be cured? No ; there are incurable criminals, as there are incurable lunatics and incurable invalids, and for these incurable criminals permanent institutions should be provided, where they should serve out the remainder of life, earning, under a compulsory industrial system, so much toward their subsist- ence as can fairly be secured from them. This redemptive system assumes that, when the crimi- nal is cured and has become an honest and efficient man, he can find employment ; but who will give employment to a discharged convict ? Very few, under the present system ; for the discharged con- vict comes out of prison with the stigma of his crime upon him, and with the probabilities, as in- dicated by prison statistics, that he will return to crime again. But under the redemptive system he comes out of prison with the affirmation of a competent tribunal that he has been cured ; in other words, with a doctor's certificate. His dis- charge is a quasi letter of recommendation ; and, in point of fact, a large proportion of those who are thus discharged from the Elmira Reforma- 1 I make this statement on the authority of at least two crimi- nal judg-es in New York city. CRIMINALS: ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER. 327 tory have employment found for them when they ''graduate." A single illustration may serve to put in a clear light the difference between the punitive and re- demptive systems. Under the punitive system, a man who is found drunk and disorderly in the streets of New York city is arrested and sent to Blackwell's Island, usually for ten days. This gives him just time enough to get sober; discharged, he goes straight to his customary saloon and his customary companions, and begins to drink again. There are well-known "rounders" who divide the year nearly equally between New York city and Black- well's Island under this system of ten days' im- prisonment. Under the redemptive system, society would put this man, who will not or cannot con- trol his appetite, in an inebriate asylum, under the best medical treatment, shut off from all access to liquor, and keep him there until such a habit of sobriety is formed that he can be safely dis- charged. And if such a habit of sobriety cannot be formed, then it would keep him there, or in the institution for incurables, for the rest of his life. There is no reason why society should bear the burden of a drunken man who neither supports himself nor his family, and should add to that the burden of supporting a policeman to arrest him, a police justice to try and sentence him, and a prison to keep him in idleness during half the year. 328 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Society teaches us to hate the criminal ; Christ teaches us to love anel to pit}" him. Society gives expression to its hatred in a system of vindictive justice ; that is, in a system of penalties adjusted to express the degree of hatred which the wrong- doing perpetrated ought to excite. Jesus Christ bids us express love and pity in redemptive disci- pline, adjusted solely for the purpose of curing wrong-doers and making them sane aud healthy members of the community. Society bids us or- ganize a punitive system for our own protection ; Jesus Christ tells us we shall best save ourselves by seeking to save our neighbors. Society has great faith, in spite of years of experience, in the deterrent power of fear. Jesus Christ uses the deterrent power of fear very sparingly ; relies him- self, and bids his followers rely, on the ins23iring power of hope and love, enkindling in the despair- ing and the outcast a new aspiration, and inspiring them to a new life. CHAPTER XII. THE SOCIAL EVIL. An unknown j^oet writes in the Book of Prov- erbs the description of a scene which he has wit- nessed in some city of the oklen time : — For at the window of my house I looked forth through my lattice ; And I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among- the youths, A young man, Void of understanding, Passing through the street near her corner. And he went the way to her house ; In the twilight, in the evening of the day, In the blackness of night and the darkness ; And behold, there met him a Woman With the attire of an harlot, and wily of heart. She is clamorous and willful ; Her feet abide not in her house ; Now she is in the streets, now in the broad places, And lieth in wait at every corner. So she caught him, and kissed him, With an impudent face she said unto him : " Sacrifices of peace offerings are with me ; This day have I paid my vows ; Therefore came I forth to meet thee. Diligently to seek thy face, And I have found thee. 330 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. I have spread ray couch with carpets of tapestry, With striped cloths of the yarn of Egypt ; I have perfumed my bed With myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love Until the morning ; Let us solace ourselves with loves ; For the goodman is not at home, He is gone a long journey : He hath taken a bag of money with him ; He will come home at the full moon." With her much fair speech she causeth him to yield. With the flattering of her lips she f orceth him away. He goeth after her straightway, As an ox goeth to the slaughter. Or as one in fetters to the correction of the fool ; Till an arrow strike through his liver ; As a bird hasteth to the snare, And knoweth not that it is for his life. Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me, And attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline to her ways, Go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded : Yea, all her slain are a mighty host. Her house is the way to Sheol, Going down to the chambers of death. ^ There is not a city, ancient or modern, pagan or Christian, in which this scene has not been repeated. It may be witnessed every night in our own time wherever great populations are gathered in one community. What shall we do with this woman? What would Christ have us do with her ? 1 Proverbs, Prof. Pt. G. Moulton's arrangement. THE SOCIAL EVIL. 331 What society does with her is, on the whole, well expressed by the phrase often used to de- scribe her. She is said to be an abandoned woman. We think of her, if we think of her at all, as abandoned of God, and abandoned by herself, to a life of immorality, vice, and shame. A man may be habitually and flagrantly licentious, and not even be cast out from reputable society while still unrepentant ; but if a woman, falling or enticed into the sin of unchastity, enters upon a life of im- morality, we call her an abandoned woman ; we put a cordon around her ; we bring her no message of salvation ; we think her abandoned by herself, and so treat her that, if she thinks of God at all, she thinks God has abandoned her. We shut her out in the outer darkness — out from all homes ; from honorable avocations and employments ; from social relationships ; from that which woman longs for most of all, the strong love of a strong lover, and let her find only the false pretence of it in the continuance of vice. We shut her out from schools, and practically from churches. She may walk in, unknown, to the sanctuary, but if she be known she will receive but cold welcome there. If taken sick, she was, until recently, shut out from most hospitals.! We shut her out from our hopes and our expectations. Even the moralists write that for this class there is no hope, and that as long as the world stands it must be expected to ^ Westminster Revieiv, vol. xeiii. pp. 121. 123 (January, 1870), and pp. 508 f. (April, 1870). 332 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. infest our cities, that man may be gratified in liis iniquity.^ In thus abandoning her to herself, shutting her out from our hopes and our hel23fulness, society has pursued three courses of dealing with the moral and physical ills which her sin inflicts upon the community. It has tried by legal pains and penalties to re- press her altogether. This was the method of an- cient Judaism, which punished offenses against the Seventh Commandment by death.^ This was the method of ancient Rome, which visited severe penalties upon the offenders ; confiscated the house, the clothing, and the furniture ; sentenced them to be flogged, to be banished, to work in the mines, or to be executed. This was the method under 1 Westminster Beview, vol. xcii. p. 182, July, 1869. I am speak- ing here of professional prostitutes, not of women who have been betrayed, fallen by a single lapse, and endeavor thereafter to re- turn to a pure life. Says an expert worker among the unfor- tunate and vicious concerning such (Report of Aid given to Des- titute Mothers and Infants, ^. Q) : "It is sometimes said that a woman who has once done wrong is shut out from all hope of retrieving her character, that no respectable employment is open to her, that no home will receive her, that she can never marry. Such has not been our experience. We are able to say, and do say With perfect truth, to the young women who come to us : " Do not think, because you have done wrong once, that you can- not be a good, respectable woman. It depends on yourself. If people see that you wish to do right, if you lead a steady, upright life, especially if you are a good mother, you will live down the past, you will be respected. We will do what we can for you, but it is little that any one else can do ; everything depends on your own behavior." 2 Deut. xxii. 13-27. THE SOCIAL EVIL. 333 Charlemagne, which extended the penalties to those who harbored the abandoned woman. It was the method, in the thirteenth century, of St. Louis of France, repeated, in spite of failure, again in the sixteenth century.^ It is the method to-day in most Anglo-Saxon and in all Puritan communities, though the penalties are no longer so severe. Pub- lic infamy, scourging, confiscation of goods, per- petual banishment, the galleys, death itself, have all been tried in the endeavor to repress the social evil by prohibitory measures, and all have failed.^ The prophetic books of the Old Testament contain many allusions which convince the student that Mo- saic legislation failed to rid Palestine of the harlot. The licentiousness of Rome was not lessened by the penalties of Constantine. The ordinances of Charlemagne were soon abandoned as impracti- cable or useless. St. Louis of France found legal penalties unavailing, and substituted an equally un- 1 Westminster Review, vol. xciii. p. 126. 2 " The first ages of the Christian Church were followed by centuries during which the history of this class, in all the pro- fessedly Christian cities of Europe, is one prolonged tale of sav- age persecution. These poor women were fined, imprisoned, loaded with chains, flogged in public, pilloried, branded, racked, expelled from cities and from provinces, sold into slavery. Of the many modes of torture invented to terrify the people from profli- gacy, we will cite one as a specimen. A custom prevailed at Toulouse of shutting these poor women up in cages, which were then plunged three times into the nearest river, the whole popu- lation being assembled to witness the scene, and encouraged to assail with mud and filth the half-drowned creatures as they re- turned home." — Contemporary Beview, vol. xiii. p. 24, " Lovers of the Lost." by Mrs. Josephine E. Butler. 334 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. availing system of regulation. The earlier policy of repression in France lias been supplanted by one of license ; nor can one who knows anything of the condition of New York and London where prohibition is attempted, as compared with that of Paris and Vienna where regulation is attempted, declare that one scheme has succeeded much better than the other. The apparently trustworthy sta- tistics respecting the number of abandoned women quite conclusively demonstrates the failure of re- pression by legal pains and penalties. Failing to prohibit, society has attempted par- tially to protect itself by a policy of segregation. She has been put in a quarter by herself, required to wear a peculiar dress, and permitted to practice her unholy calling, provided she will do it within defined limits. This was the method which St. Louis attempted after the failure of his prohibi- tory policy.^ This was the method attempted in the fifteenth century by Spain, with the sanction and cooperation of an army of ecclesiastics. In our own century it has been essayed again in Rome ; and in recent discussions it has been j^ro- posed by moral reformers as a remedy for the more notorious evils resultant from this vice in the city of New York. But segregation has succeeded no better than repression. The abandoned woman would not wear her uniform ; she would not re- main in the Ghetto which had been reserved for her. She defied or evaded the penalties attached ^ Westminster Review, vol. xeiii. p. 126. THE SOCIAL EVIL. 335 to her issuing from it, and the black district dedi- cated to vice became a fountain of poison, send- ing its virus throughout the city. One might as well attempt to keep the body healthy by leav- ing poisoned globules in the blood, and trying to shut them up in one spot, as attempt to keep a city pure by permitting immorality, but endeavoring to confine it within the limits of a single pestilen- tial district. The report made by Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry of the result of this experiment in the city of Rome, as attested by Cardinal Simeoni, ought to be quite conclusive upon this subject. To err is pardonable, but to repeat the errors of others, demonstrated by their experience to be errors, is unpardonable. The testimony of Mr. Gerry on this subject is so important that I trans- fer it in full from his address published in the " Philanthropist "' of March, 1895 : — " In the winter of 1886-87, while at the city of Rome, Italy, I had a personal interview with Cardinal Simeoni, which lasted over two hours, chiefly in reference to the course pursued by the Italian government, while in the hands of the Vatican, in the matter of regulating prosti- tution. The Cardinal stated to me that the experiment of attempting to confine sexual vice within a specified district had been most thoroughly tried. A portion of the city, remote itself and not particularly attractive for purposes of residence, had been selected. The govern- ment had defined by metes and bounds its limits ; had practically taken possession of the various houses, per- mitting the owners to rent them to the licensed prosti- 336 CHlilSTIAXITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. tutes ; and, in order to prevent contact with the outer world and the prostitutes, when once within the district, leaving the same and again spreading over the city, various shojjkeej^ers in the necessaries of life, such as butchers, grocers, hardware, dry goods, and the like, were induced to open stores in the locality, so that the wants of the residents might be fully supplied. At the same time, a very strict cordon of j)olice was placed around the geographical boundary, and any attempt on the part of the females who had once entered the dis- trict to escape therefrom was followed by j^rompt and immediate arrest. The idea was so novel that at first quite a number of registered prostitutes entered the dis- trict, hired and occupied the houses, and attempted to ply their vocation there. But the district soon became very notorious. The thieving, the lawless, and the sedi- tious found their way there, and became permanent resi- dents. They brought with them very little money, and, as the sole means which the inmates of the district had of supporting themselves was by the sale of their per- sons, it was obvious that their custom must come from without, and not from within, as men generally did not care to be known as inhabitants of the district. And as soon as the fact of its establishment was made public, men were very wary about entering the district, for fear of identification. This was not only true of married men, but also of single ones, as the only jDurpose for which they could be found therein was not a moral one, and the class of men that did enter the district was not those who would spend money lavishly on vice. And it was not long before the storekeepers com})lained that they coukl not make a living. Even the women found that the money did not flow in upon them as it did when THE SOCIAL EVIL. 337 they practiced their calling unrestricted by geographical limits, and it was not long before escapes from the dis- trict became impossible of prevention by the police, and some of the most notorious women in Rome, after hav- ing been put there and sent there, made their escape, and were found in other quarters plying their trade. Every effort was made by the police, acting under the directions of the government, to restrict the inmates to the geographical lines, but it was like attempting to retain eels in a basket, and they slipped out impercepti- bly ; and it was not long before the shopkeepers could not make their living, and the unfortunate women who occupied the quarter were themselves in a state of ex- treme destitution. The government then abandoned absolutely the attempt to restrain them in any locality, and the present government of Italy simply provides for their registration and surveillance by the police. The system there is not even as stringent as it is in France in regard to medical examinations and inspec- tions. " The Cardinal stated to me that the attempt to dis- trict vice was, in his judgment, a stupendous failure; that the Church had used every effort to reclaim the fallen when so environed by the police, and placed in a locality where it could put its hand upon them, but to no purpose." The third method which society has adopted in dealing with the social evil is regulation. Society has said : " This woman is abandoned ; she is be- yond all hope and help ; and yet the city cannot do without her. It would not be safe if she did not exist. There must be some outlet for the fiery 338 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. passions of men : therefore we will license her, guard against the physical evils which her trade produces, and so reduce the dangers of her pres- ence to a minimum." This was the method of ancient Greece. The state not only tolerated but protected abandoned women, and taxed and took profit from them. This is the method of modern Paris, Berlin, and Vienna; and this method has been tried in successive cities of America, specifi- cally St. Louis, Cleveland, Davenport (Iowa) and perhaps elsewhere. Even England has adopted this method in India, for the benefit or the demor- alization, as the reader may determine, of the Brit- ish army. But this method has not succeeded any better than the others. It has increased vice by the endeavor to make it safe and reasonable. Im- morality was worse in Corinth under license than in Jerusalem under prohibition. It is worse in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna under license than in London and New York under prohibition. The license system has not even proved effective for the one purpose for the sake of which it is ap- proved by its apologists and defenders. It has not even lessened the ravages of disease. Says a care- ful writer in the " Westminster Review " : ^ " It appears, then, that notwithstanding the elaborate, costly, and, in respect to the women concerned, tyrannical machinery of police and sanitary sur- veillance in question, — machinery which is worked by ample power, and under circumstances, as well 1 Vol. cvi. p. 148, July, 1876. THE SOCIAL EVIL. 339 as in the presence of a public opinion, facilitating its action, — the attempt to enforce the registration of the public women of Paris results, in so far as seven eighths of them are concerned, in signal failure ; that year by year even the small number of those who are on the register steadily lessens ; that the number of maisons tolerees is steadily les- sening ; that the number of those women who are subject to the most complete inspection, namely, inmates of those houses, is steadily lessening : that the proportion of registered prostitutes found infected with disease is steadily increasing." M. Lecour, the former administrator of this system of licensure, estimates the number of abandoned women in Paris at 30,000, of whom only about 4,000, less than one seventh, were brought under the license system, and the proportion continually lessened, while at the same time the disease which this traffic brings into the city continually in- creased under this system of license. The results of the Paris experiment are all summed up in one sentence from M. Lecour's official report : " They demonstrate that prostitution augments, and that it becomes more dangerous to the public health." This was in 1876 ; since then the enforcement of the license system has been transferred from a special bureau to the regular police, but without either a diminution of the number of unlicensed women or a lessening of the disease. The similar experiment in India has been accompanied by 340 CHRIST! AXTTY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. similar results. The disease, against which the license system was expected to protect the troops, rose steadily under that system year by year, until, from 196.8 per thousand in 1871, the year the act was passed, it became 371 per thousand in 1888, the latest year of which I have been able to obtain statistics. It is not strange that experi- ments in America have produced similar resnlts. After four years of trial in St. Louis, the license system was abandoned as an ignominious failure, in both a sanitary and a moral point of view. The results during the experiment showed an increase of thirty-four per cent, in the number of houses of vice, and of thirty-five per cent, in the number of recog- nized women, besides those unknown ; while the proportion of diseases increased from three and three-fourths per cent, to six per cent. So irre- sistible was the demonstration of failure that the license law was repealed by a vote of three fourths in the Missouri Senate, and by a vote of ninety to one in the House. Such facts as can be gathered from unofficial reports indicate similar results in Cleveland and Daven])ort. Christ's method of dealing with the abandoned woman is fundamentally different. It rests upon a radically different assumption, and is inspired by a radically different spirit. To Christ, " the woman that was a sinner " is not an abandoned woman. She is not shut out from the mercies and the helpfulness of God ; she is not shnt out THE SOCIAL EVIL. 341 from Christ s congregations ; she is not shut out from his private personal conversation ; she is not shut out from his society. When he preaches, the publicans and the harlots troop into his con- pi-eaation to hear him, and he welcomes them. When he sits at the well, he does not hesitate to ask a favor at the hand of an impure woman, and enter into social and friendly conversation with her. When such a woman proffers him the offer- ings of a reverent and repentant love, he accepts them. Such were his relations with this class that the name of one of his intimate disciples has been given by his church to all such peni- tents, although later scholarship holds that there is little reason to think that Mary Magdalene ever bore the evil character attributed to her. To Christ, not the woman that was a sinner was abandoned, — not for her had he lost hope. The men of honorable position, who used their religion to cloak their iniquity, — these were the men who sometimes seemed to him abandoned of themselves, of God, and of all beneficent influences, never the drunkard, never the harlot. There is one story in Christ's life as j^athetic as any story in that narrative so full of pathos.^ The Oriental house was built around an open court. The rooms on the ground floor were porches open- in sf on this court. A Pharisee invited Christ to dine with him. He accepted the invitation. The 1 Luke x\\. 36-50. 342 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. villagers trooped in and filled the open square. He reclined at the table, his naked feet stretched out behind him. A woman of the town crept in among the villagers and listened. Something in his words or in his numner stirred the dormant life in her, fanned the dead hope into a flame, awakened remorse for the past and sorrow for the present, and the great tears gathered in her eyes, and then fell down, drop by drop, upon the naked feet of the Master. Startled that tears from such eyes as hers should fall on feet such as his, she kneeled, and, taking the long tresses of her hair, wiped the polluting drops away, and then, finding herself unresisted, took from her bosom a box of ointment, broke it open, and anointed his feet with it. The Pharisee, to whom she was an abandoned woman, looked on amazed, and said: " This man is no prophet, or he would have known what manner of woman she is; for she is a sinner." But Christ said : " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." The heart of womanhood is not easily extinguished, and what the Master said in the chamber of death he said again in this other death chamber : " She is not dead, she sleepeth." Love can call her back to life again. She is not abandoned of God ; she is not abandoned of her- self. Why should we abandon her ? Why should we reach out a hand to help every other sinner, and none to this one? Why oi)en the doors to every other sinner and close them to this one ? THE SOCIAL EVIL. 343 Christ's first principle was that vice in woman is curable. His second was equally radical and far-reaching. He treated the same vice as not less culpable in man. He did not condone in the one what he condemned in the other. A woman was once brought to him.^ She had been taken in adultery. The Pharisees who stood around asked for his judgment upon her. Moses said she should be put to death ; what said he ? " Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone," he said. Then he stooped and wrote upon the ground that he might not look upon her shame. And they departed one by one, convicted by their own consciences, and left her alone with the Master. Then he turned to her with the question, " Hath no man condemned thee ? " "No man. Lord." " Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more." Whatever other significance this incident has, certainly it has this, that what is sin in woman is not less sin in man. True, unchastity in woman is more destructive of the family, more destructive of society, apparently more destructive of the individual character, than in man ; but this does not make it the greater sin. " Would you learn," says Dr. Napheys,^ " the only possible method of reforming sinful women ? Three words contain the secret, — Reform the men. In them, 1 John viii. 2-11. Although there is some doubt as to this passage on external grounds, and it is bracketed in the Revised Version, the internal evidence leaves small doubt as to its sub- stantial genuineness. ^ Transmission of Life, pp. 128, 129o 344 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. in their illicit lusts, in their misgoverned passions, in their selfish desires, in their godless disregard of duty, in their ignorance of the wages of sin, in their want of nobleness to resist temptation, in their false notions of health, is the source of all this sin." Truly in the great majority of cases this is the source of the sin, and this is the direc- tion in which, first, reform is to be wrought. Tridy no chapter in human history is more shame- ful than that which records the ignominy with which men have overwhelmed sinful women, and the pride which they have taken in the sins of men. Says Mr. Lecky, in his " History of Euro- pean Morals " ^ : — "The contrast between the levity with which the frailty of men has in most ages been regarded, and the extreme severity with which women who have been guilty of the same offense have generally been treated, forms one of the most singular anomalies in moral his- tory, and appears the more remarkable when we re- member that the temj^tation usually springs from the sex which is so readily pardoned ; tliat the sex which is visited with such crushing penalties is proverbially the most weak ; and that in the case of women, but not in the case of men, the vice is very commonly the result of the most abject misery and poverty. ... At the present day, — although the standard of morals is far higher than in pagan Rome, — it may be questioned whether the inequality of the censure which is bestowed upon the two sexes is not as great as in the days of 1 Vol. ii. pp. 365-367. THE SOCIAL EVIL. 345 paganism, and that inequality is continually the cause of the most shameful and the most pitiable injustice. In one respect, indeed, a great retrogression resulted from chivalry, and long survived its decay. The char- acter of the seducer, and especially of the passionless seducer, who pursues his career simply as a kind of sport, and under the influence of no stronger motive than vanity or a spirit of adventure, and who designates his successes in destroying the honor of women his con- quests, has been glorified and idealized in the popular literature of Christendom in a manner to which we can find no parallel in antiquity. When we reflect that the object of such men is, by the coldest and most deliberate treachery, to blast the lives of innocent women ; when we compare the levity of his motive with the irrepara- ble injury he inflicts ; and when we remember that he can only deceive his victim by persuading her to love him, and can only ruin her by persuading her to trust him, — it must be owned that it would be difficult to con- ceive of cruelty more wanton and more heartless, or a character combining more numerous elements of infamy and of dishonor. That such a character should for many centuries have been the popular ideal of a vast section of literature ; that it should have been the con- tinual boast of those who most plumed themselves upon their honor, — is assuredly one of the most mournful facts in history, and it represents a moral deflection certainly not less than was revealed in ancient Greece by the position that was assigned to the courtesan." In the story of the " Scarlet Letter," Hester Prynne wears the symbol of her sin upon her breast, while Mr. Dimmesdale wears a like scar- 346 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. let letter hidden in his garments from all other eyes, but burnt into his bosom. After a long struggle the story comes to its tragical yet re- splendent conclusion, when the guilty clergyman conquers himself and his fears, goes up into the pillory where she once stood alone in her disgrace, and, standing by her side, holds the child of their sinful love by his hand, and there confesses his sin before those who had done him reverence. Not until our civilization shall have wrought out in life what Hawthorne wrought out in " The Scarlet Letter " — not until the man takes his stand in the pillory by the woman, and the scarlet letter is seen on the breast of the one as of the other, and both bear the ineffable shame, and each help the other back to the ineffable glory — shall we find Christ's remedy. In brief, then, Christ's method of dealing with the social evil is precisely the same as his method of dealing with other crimes, — the method, not of permission and regulation, not of segregation and protection, not of mere prohibition and penalty, but the method of compassion and cure. Chris- tianity is therapeutic. In so far as licentiousness is a violation of the social order, Christ's method would prohibit it by law. The law-breaker would be arrested, not to be punished for her sin, but to be cured of it ; to be separated from the evil influ- ences which have brought her into sin ; to be brought under the influences which would lead her into paths of virtue, and, wherever the cure could THE SOCIAL EVIL. 347 not be effected, to be kept in confinement for the rest of her life, not to punish her for past sin, but to protect her and to protect the community from sin in the future. It is not true that the fallen woman is an irrecoverable woman. History dis- proves this cynical assumption. The homes that have been established and the institutions that have been opened for the reform of fallen women have not failed in their mission. In spite of the coldness of the community, in spite of the poor support given to them, in spite of the few help- ing hands, the record of their results compares favorably with that of other institutions seeking the reformation of other offenders.^ I can hardly hope that these pages will ever fall under the eye of what society — with an infidel's 1 At the Clerical Union, of New York, March 9, 1896, Mr. H. A. Gould, of the New York Rescue Work, stated that, of the g-irls whom that organization succeeded in reaching at all, from seventy- eight to eighty-two per cent, were reformed ; and the statistics of the Florence Mission for 1886-87 report, out of 241 admitted to the Home, 68 converted to Christ, 85 provided with situa- tions, 21 returned to their own homes or to friends, and only 19 presumably returned to their old life. The remainder are accounted for as sent to other homes or to hospitals. While these figures are not conclusive, they certainly indicate the final refor- mation of a very considerable proportion, — probably over half. " In the Florence Crittenton Mission, in Bleecker Street, New York, 250 of these girls have been rescued every year for the twelve years it has been opened. In addition to this work, Mr. Critten- ton has opened twenty-one homes in as many different States, where annually about three thousand girls find a Christian home and such training as makes them self-respecting, self-supporting women." — Thanksgiving Day Announcement, 1895. The fol- 348 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. denial of the Christian's hope — calls an " aban- doned woman." If they should, I should wish to say to her, what I have tried to say to her sisters for her : " You are not an abandoned woman. lowing is ^ven as the result of three years' work in the Florence Crittenton Mission in San Francisco, Cal. : — Whole number admitted 190 Number known to have gone astray 24 " lost track of 13 " dead 5 — 42 Number at service doing well 47 " returned to parents doing well . . . .53 " married doing well 23 " in active Christian work 3 — 126 Remaining in the Home 22 190 From The Traffic in Girls, by Mrs. Charlton Edholm, p. 239. In the Mission in San Jos^, Cal.. there were in one year 184 professed conversions. " Much care has been taken to account for only those who were considered converted. Most of the 184 are members of good standing in San Josd churches." Idetn, p. 218. For an interesting account of efforts to reach and save this class in past centuries, and the results, see the valuable article by Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, quoted above, — " Lovers of the Lost," Contemporary Review, vol. xiii. p. 16 (January, 1870). Mrs. Butler says, p. 29: "There are many indications in the history of this class of people, of occasional sympathetic move- ments among themselves, of yearning desires for restoration, and of a spirit of weeping and supplication poured forth on them when no human preacher had summoned them to repent. In 1489 all the outcasts of Amiens, a great army of weeping, re- morseful women, applied to the civil authorities for a place of retreat, where they might hide their shame and sorrow and devote tliemselves to lionest labor and to prayer. Their request was granted. In other places they formed associations among themselves for the correction of tlieir morals, and to aid each other in return to virtue." THE SOCIAL EVIL. 349 You have sinned : so have I ; so have we all. But you are still God's child. He has not aban- doned you ; do not abandon yourself." The trav- eler in South America, startled by a plaintive cry in the darkened forest, is told by his guide that it is not a bird ; it is the cry of a lost soul, and this is the Christian poet's response : — " Dim burns the boat lamp : shadows deepen round From giant trees with snake-like creepers wound, And the black water glides without a sound. " But in the traveler's heart a secret sense Of nature plastic to benign intents, And an eternal good in Providence, " Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his eyes ; And, lo ! rebuking all earth's ominous cries, The Cross of pardon lights the tropic skies ! " ' Father of all ! ' he urges his strong plea, " ' Thou lovest all ; th)^ erring child may be Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee ! " ' All souls are Thine ; the wings of morning bear None from that Presence which is everywhere, Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there. " ' Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, Thy pitying eye is on thy creature still.' " A lost soul is a soul not yet found.^ Whenever this lost child of God comes to herself, she may arise and come to her Father. Though society stand about her, each with a stone ready to fling 1 This is Christ's interpretation of his own phrase. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son were all finally found. Luke XV. 6, 9, 24. 350 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. at her, still the Master condemns her judges with the sentence, " He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone." Still he gives heart of hope to the woman whom his compassion has found, saying to her, '' Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." CHAPTER XIII. THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. In order to comprehend the religious problems of any age, we must recognize a growth of hu- manity akin to the growth of the individual, and see how the problems of life change from age to age. In the first century, polytheism was almost universal. The worship of the one God was prac- tically confined within the narrow limits of Pal- estine. All Europe was divided into warring provinces, kept at peace only by the strong hand of the Roman government. Not only each of these provinces had its god, but in each province every city, and in each city every hamlet ; and the ofods themselves were either immoral or im- moral. The first lesson which the Christian Church had to teach the world was the nature of God, — that He is one, and that He is love. It went forth into Europe carrying this message, — that all men are children of one Father, made in his image and redeemed by his love. Gradually, under the influence of this message, Europe was unified ; the Church itself became one. One language was spoken in all the churches, whatever language might be spoken in the various provinces. One 352 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. ritual prevailed in all the cliurclies, whatever laws might prevail in the various communities. One God was worshiped in all the churches, and gradu- ally came to be worshiped in all the homes. Still, for a time, the nature of God was hotly debated even within the Church of Christ. We look back upon these debates that issued in the Nicene Creed with almost amused contempt. But the debate over Homoousian and Homoiousian was not so insignificant as it seems to us to be. The ques- tion fundamental in it was this : Does Jesus Christ really manifest the nature of God? It was not until well along in the Middle Ages that the truth that Jesus Christ was the manifestation of God came to be universally accepted as the catholic faith of the Church of Christ. For the divisions in Christendom are no longer divisions respecting the nature of God. The orthodox and the hetero- dox, the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, nay, the Christian and the theist, agree substantially in this — that there is one God, and that he is merci- ful and loving, like Jesus Christ. The difference between the rationalist and the orthodox to-day in their interpretation of Christ seems to be chiefly this : Both look at the image in the mirror ; the orthodox says, " This is the image of God ; " the rationalist says, '' This is not the image of God, but God looks exactly like him." Next came the question. What is the nature of man? There was no recognition of man as man in the first century. There were Greeks, Romans, THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 353 Jews, Teutons, Gauls, but there was no man. There were j^^^tricians and plebeians and slaves, but there was no man. When Paul said, " In Jesus Christ all are one, — Greek and Jew, cir- cumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scyth- ian, bond and free," i — he uttered a very radical truth. It was a long while before the world came to recognize that of one blood God hath made all the nations of the earth, for to dwell on all the face of the earth,^ — before men came to recognize that there is a bond that unites humanity deeper and stronger than the bond that unites men in families, tribes, nations, or ecclesiastical organiza- tions. That man is man; that he is a son of God ; that slave and plebeian, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, are sons of God, and that they have wandered from their God and separated them- selves from Him, — this also was the message of Christ's Church. It was a long time before hu- manity learned this message ; centuries was it in studying this simple lesson : but finally it was wrou"-ht into the faith of the Christian Church, and in some measure into the faith of Christen- dom, — God is good ; man is his child, but has sinned against Him. Then came the next great question, the ques- tion of the Reformation: How is this man who is separated from God and has sinned to be brought back to Him again ? How can this man, who has despised this goodness of God, violated 1 Gal. iii. 28 ; Col. iii. 11. ^ Acts xvii. 26. 354 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. his law, turned his back on Him, — how can he be brought back to his Father's home? The Roman Catholic Church said : There is only one door ; he must come through the Church ; he must pay his price, in penance here or purgatory here- after ; or he may compound for it and get an ab- solution, which is not permission to sin, but relief from the pains of penances and the pains of pur- gatory. Then it was that Luther came with his message : Every man is a son of God, and stands directly and immediately in the presence of God : he need pay no price ; need ask no permission ; need enter through no church door. God is love, and man is need : wherever love is and need is, they are drawn together ; all that man has to do is to go back in faith and hojie and love, for God never has ceased to love him. That lesson also is pretty well learned. It is to be proclaimed again and again from the Christian pulpit ; it is to be taught against the legalism of Puritanism on the one hand, and the legalism of Romanism on the other ; and yet, in the main, it is believed in the Roman Catholic Church as truly as in the Protestant Church. It would be hard to find anywhere in English literature a better statement of the essential Lutheran doctrine than in Faber's hymn : — " There 's a wideness in God's mercy Like the wideness of the sea, And a kindness in his justice Which is more than liberty." THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 355 Thus these three great questions have been asked and answered : Who is God ? God is love. What is man ? His chikl, a sinner. How shall this sin- ner come back to find God ? Let him come, and love will be ready to receive him. Then, and not till then, was the world ready for the next great question : How are these men, sons of God, to live together in one human brother- hood ? That is the question of the nineteenth century and of the American community.^ Still the pulpit must proclaim that God is one ; still it must insist that God is love ; still it must declare that man is God's son ; still it must affirm that man has wandered from God and needs to return ; still it must declare that there is no obstacle be- tween the soul and God except his own unwilling- ness to return. These truths it must declare over and over again to new generations. But these are no longer problems to be debated and discussed. The problem of our time is. How are men who are sons of God to live together in one human brother- hood ? This is the question of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and this is preeminently the question which is to be answered by practical ex- periment in the United States of America. Into the United States God has poured a vast heterogeneous population. The picture which John painted in the Apocalypse may be seen here, with 1 For this general outline of the history of doctrine I am in- debted to an address of Dr. Julius H. Seelye, so far as I know not published. 356 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. a difference : men gathered out of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues, but not before the throne of God, nor praising him. Every phase of individual character is here represented ; every race, every nationality, every language, every form of religion. Here are the Irishman, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Swede, the Norwegian, the German, the Hungarian, the Pole, the Italian, the Spaniard, the Portuguese. Here are the Celt, the Anglo-Saxon, the African, the Malay. Here is the negro, with his emotional religion ; the Roman Catholic, with his ceremonial religion ; the Puritan, with his intellectual religion ; and the unbelieving German, with his no religion at all. Hither they have come trooping, sometimes beckoned by us, sometimes thrust upon us, sometimes invading us ; but, welcome or unwelcome, still they come. To America the language of the ancient Hebrew pro- phet may be almost literally applied : — " The sons of strangers also shall build thy walls, And their kings shall serve thee ; " Thy gates also shall be open continually ; They shall not be shut by day nor by night ; That men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, And that their kings may be brought." ^ This heterogeneous people occupy a land which embraces every variety of climate, from that of Northern Europe to that of Middle Asia ; and every variety of wealth, from that of the wheat-fields of ^ Isa. Ix. 10, 11. The whole chapter applies in a remarkable manner to the present condition of the United States. THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAX. o57 Russia to that of the silver mines o£ Golconcla. Its fertile soil gives every variety of production, from the pine-trees of Maine to the orange groves of Florida. It has for agricidture vast prairies of exhaustless wealth ; for mines, mountains rich in coal, iron, copper, silver, gold ; for mills, swift- running rivers ; for carriage, slow and deep ones ; and for commerce, a harbor-indented coast-line lying open to two oceans, and inviting the com- merce of two hemispheres. I do not dwell upon the magnificence of this endowment, — that is a familiar aspect, — but upon its diversity. The na- tion which occupies such a land must be diverse in industry as it is heterogeneous in population. The simplicity of social and industrial organization has long since passed away. There are few richer men in the world than in America, and none who have amassed such wealth in so short a time ; there are no poorer men in the world, and nowhere men whose poverty is so embittered by disappointed hopes and shattered ambitions. In the Old World men are born to poverty, and accept their pre- destined lot with contentment, if not with cheer- fulness. In America the ambitious youth sees a possible preferment in the future, counts every advance only a step towards further advancement, and attributes every failure to injustice or ill-luck. Society, thus made up of heterogeneous popula- tions, subjected to the educational influence of widely differing religions, engaged in industries whose interests often seem to conflict if they actu- 35S CHRIST TAX IT Y AND S OCTAL PROBLEMS. ally do not, and separated into classes by continu- ally shifting partition-walls, is kept in perpetual ferment by the nature of its educational, political, and social institutions. The boys of the rich and the poor sit by each other's side in the same school- room ; their fathers brush against each other in the same conveyance. The hod-carrier and the million- aire hang by the same strap and sway against each other in the same street-car. Every election brings rich and poor, cultivated and ignorant, into line to deposit ballots of equal weight in the same ballot- box, and makes it the interest of each to win the suffrage of the other for his candidate and his party. The caldron, political and economical, is always seething and boiling ; the bottom thrown to the top, the top sinking in turn to the bottom. The canal-boat driver becomes President, the deck- hand a railroad magnate. The son of the Presi- dent mingles with the masses of the peoi)le in the battle for position and i^referment, and the son of yesterday's millionaire is to-morrow earning his daily bread by the sweat of his brow. In the Old World men live like monks in a monastery ; each class, if not each individual, has its own cell. Here all walls are down and all classes live in commons. All this is familiar ; it is enough here to sketch it in the barest outlines : for my only purpose in recalling it is to ask the reader to consider what is its. moral meaning. It can have but one. Into this continent God has thrown this heterogeneous people, in this effervescent and seething mass, that THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 359 in the struggle they may learn the laws of social life. African, Malay, Anglo-Saxon, and Celt, ignorant and cultivated, rich and poor, God flings VIS together under institutions which inextricably intermix us, that he may teach us by experience the meaning of the brotherhood of man. All our national problems are problems of hu- man brotherhood. The question that lay before this nation in 1784 was a question of human brotherhood : How shall these colonies, with their diverse interests, their petty jealousies, their ani- mosities, live together in one free nation ? And our fathers were wise enough to deal with it, and, on the whole, wisely solved it. There came the slavery question : What shall we do with these four millions of slave population ? What does brotherhood require of us ? And God gave us the strength and wisdom to give the right answer to that through terrible war. There came the ques- tion : What does human brotherhood owe to the ignorant ? The public school is our reply to that. The community owes education to the children of its poor. There came the question : What shall be the religious institutions of such a community ? The answer was, K free Church in a free State ; re- ligion must be spontaneous, and the religious insti- tutions must spring spontaneously from the needs and the constitutions of the individuals who con- stitute the community. The industrial question and the temperance question are but other forms of this one question : How shall a great, hetero- 360 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. geneous population, diverse in race, in religion, in tradition, in history, in social condition, live peace- fully and prosperously together in human brother- hood ? This is certainly a question which the Church must help to answer. It is emphatically a reli- gious question. 1 If the Church does not interest itself in what concerns humanity, it cannot hope that humanity will interest itself in what concerns the Church. Why, indeed, should it? If the Church shelters itself under the plea that religion is a matter between the individual soul and God, it adopts a very much narrower definition of religion than that of the Bible. The Hebrew prophet who asked, " What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " had a conception of religion two parts of which have to do with our relations to our fellov/-men, and one part with our relations to God. Christ's summary of the law and the prophets puts as much emphasis on the brotherhood of man as on the fatherhood of God. Indeed, it could not be otherwise. A religion which did not teach us how to live on earth would have small claims upon our respect when it claimed to teach us how to prepare for heaven. A teacher who cannot tell his boys how to get along with each other in their school is not the man to prepare them to get along with each other ^ " Every political question is rapidly becoming' a social ques- tion, and every social question a religious question." — Mazzini. THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 361 as men. Christianity is not merely individual ; it is organic. The teacher of Christianity who does not discover laws of social life in the Bible has studied it to very little purpose. The teacher who does not teach those laws does not follow the ex- ample of either the Old Testament prophets, the New Testament apostles, or the divine Master of both. To whom else shall the people look for instruc- tion in the moral principles of a true social order if not to the ministry ? Shall they look to the politicians? Their function in a democracy is not to inculcate, still less to discover, great principles. They are executive officers, not teachers. They are appointed to formulate in law and so set in motion the principles which, under the instruction of others, the people have adopted. This is what more or less effectively they are doing ; and this is what they ought to do. The politician is not a motive-power ; he is a belting, and connects the motive-power with the machinery. He gets things done when the people have determined what they want done. Shall we, then, look to the editors for moral instruction in sociology ? The editors ought to be public teachers, but with few exceptions they have abdicated. The secular press is devoted to secular news-gathering and to party service ; the religious press to ecclesiastical news-gathering and denominational service. There are some notable exceptions, but they do but prove the rule. Not long since, I heard the editor of one of the wealth- 362 CHRISTIANITY AXD SOCIAL PROBLEMS. iest and most successful, though not most influen- tial, of American journals say in a public debate that the daily paper was organized to make money, and that was what it ought to be organized for. So long as this is deemed true by the editors, the newspaper cannot be a teacher. The world has never paid for leadership — until the leader was dead. Such a press can only crystallize the public sentiment which others have created, and so make efficacious a feeling which otherwise would effer- vesce in emotion. This it does, and for this ser- vice we are duly grateful. But it cannot — at least it generally does not — do the work of an investigator. It does not discover laws of life. It does not create ; it only represents. It is a reservoir, without which the mill could not be driven ; but the reservoir must itself be fed by the springs among the hills. The real formers of public opinion are the teachers and the preachers, the schools and the churches. The former are necessarily empirical ; they deduce the laws of life from a study of past experience. The latter ought to be prophets. Their sympathy with all classes of men, their common contact with rich and poor, their opportunities for reflection and meditation, their supposed consecration to a work wholly un- selfish and disinterested, ought to combine with their piety to give them that insight into life which has always been characteristic of a prophetic order. I do not mean to demand of the ministry the impossible ; but if this is not their function, it THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 363 would be difficult to say what function tliey have. They cannot formulate public opinion in laws as well as the politicians ; they cannot represent that public opinion which is already formed as well as the journalists ; they cannot extract the truth from a scientific study of life as well as the teacher and the scholar. But so far as natural selection, aided by special studies and a generally quiet life, can equip any class of men for a prophetic function, and so fit them to discern the great moral laws of the social order, the ministry are so equipped. If they will leave the professional teachers to expound the secular, that is, the empirical side of social science, the newspapers to reflect such conclusions respecting this science as are formed, and the poli- ticians to embody those opinions and principles in law, and will devote themselves to the spiritual study of the Bible and of life, — that book which is always being written and is never finished, — they can be leaders of the leaders. They can lay the foundations on which other men shall rear the superstructure. They speak, or can speak, to all classes in the community, for they belong to none. They address audiences of personal friends, whom they have counseled and aided in the hours when friendship is the most full of sweet significance. They speak to these friends at a time when baser passions are allayed and moral sentiments are awakened. The very smallness of their auditory, as compared with that of the journalist, adds force to their counsels and affords protection from mis- 364 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. apprehension. The Church and ministry, then, must be competent to give instruction in the moral laws which govern social and industrial life, — the organized life of humanity. The age requires this instruction ; the people desire it ; the religious teachers should give it. It is in this conviction that this volume has been written ; in this conviction I endeavor to summa- rize very briefly here in a few paragraphs the prin- ciples elucidated in the preceding chapters. Man is God's child, and therefore has suprem- acy over himself. This is the divine foundation of liberty, in State, in Church, in Society, — the doctrine that in man himself is dormant a power to control himself. If he uses his liberty to do me a wrong, I may protect myself ; if he uses it to do society a wrong, society may protect itself. There its right to control ceases. It may persuade, argue, entreat ; but man is God's son, and sonship gives him liberty. He is to be controlled by the dictates of his own judgment. He may blunder even unto death, but it is better to die a free man than to live a slave. Our goddess of liberty ought not to be a pagan goddess. It should be the figure of Christ; he holds the torch which illumines the world. As a part of this supremacy over himself is the right of every man, as against his fellow-men, to own and control his own labor, and therefore the product of his own labors. With the Communism which denies the right of private property Chris- THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 365 tianity has nothing in common, unless this can be thought to be in common, that it teaches, as does economic science also, that all wealth is in a moral sense common wealth, the product of a common endeavor, very imperfectly divided by our current methods of division, or by any other conceivable. Science and Christianity combine to teach that every man receives his wealth — be it little or much — from One higher than himself, and holds it therefore in trust for him from whom he has received it, who bids him administer that trust in and for the public welfare. Nevertheless, Christianity is not individualism, in State, Church, or social organization. Liberty is not independence. The Socialism which means "giving to the hands, not so large a share as to the brain, but a larger share than hitherto, in the wealth they must combine to produce," means also, as James Russell Lowell has well said, '' the prac- tical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and beneficent recon- struction." ^ Christianity agrees with Socialism in recognizing the mutual dependence of men, and classes of men, on each other, and in seeking a larger diffusion of virtue, intelligence, political power, and wealth ; but it differs from Socialism in putting first, both as an end in itself and as a means to social reconstruction, the reconstruction of the individual. In the social order, Christianity insists on the ^ James Russell Lowell, Democracy., and Other Addresses, p. 40. 366 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. maintenance of the home unbroken ; for the home is the foundation of the social order: the State, the Church, industrial civilization, are all built upon the home. When we begin to suppose that love requires no patience, no forbearance, no long- suffering ; that love may simply seek its own, and not another's welfare ; that when any friction comes into the household, the remedy is to take the machine to pieces and make a new machine in the place of it, — we are going back to the old paganism in Rome, which declared that marriage is simply a partnership made at pleasure, and to be dissolved at pleasure. The fundamental teach- ing of Christ on this subject is that marriage is not a partnershij), and cannot be dissolved as are other partnerships ; that it is a divine order, and on its permanence the permanence of society de- pends. Whatever threatens the family, threatens society at the foundation. For the maintenance of industrial order Christ enunciates two fundamental principles, — the law of service and the standard of values. Industrial peace is to be brought about, not by a well-bal- anced conflict of self-interest, by capital buying labor in the cheapest market, and labor selling itself in the highest market, and each trying to outwit the other, but by a frank recognition of partnership between the power of the brain and the power of the muscle, which should be united in the community as they are united in the indi- vidual, and should work together for the largest THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 367 service to humanity ; not the greatest acquisition of wealth, but the greatest development of man- kind. Brotherhood certainly does not mean that all men are equal : Christ says, " He that is great- est among you shall be your servant." It does not mean that all men shall render the same service or receive the same rewards. Christ, in the Par- able of the Talents, says : " He gave to one man five talents, to another two, and to another one ; to every man according to his several ability." ^ Christ does not accept the pseudo principle that all men are to be paid alike, irrespective of their service. Christ has sometimes been called a great leveler. That is a mistake ; he was not a great leveler, but a great elevator. His purpose was to develop the highest, noblest, divinest quality in each individual, and therefore the highest and noblest quality in the aggregate of individuals. For character is the end of life, and all that we live for is manhood and womanhood. We are to live, not that we may have things, but that he may make us better men and women ; not that we may have liberty, but that out of our liberty there may come a better growth ; not that we may have edu- cation, if by education we mean schools and books, but that out of schools and books there may emerge a nobler manhood ; not even that we may have re- ligion, if by religion we mean creeds and rituals and churches and preachers ; these are of use only as they make men more worthy to be called sons ^ Matthew xxv. 15. 368 CHRISTIAXITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. of God. Service is the universal duty ; character is the sole standard of values. There are enemies of the social order : in deal- ing with them we are to be inspired by love, not by wrath ; and are to adjust penalties solely for the purpose of reform, never for the purpose of retribution. When men raise their hands against society and trample law under foot, we are not to revenge ourselves on them ; we are not to shut them up and forget them: our attitude of mind toward them is to be precisely the attitude of mind of Jesus Christ toward sinners. The Christian problem is. How shall we cure these men of their disease? how shall we redeem these men from their sin? how shall we reform these enemies of the social order? There are controversies which threaten to dis- rupt the brotherhood. There are two ways of set- tling such controversies. The pagan way is wager of battle. This gives victory to strength, not to justice. Christ's method is. Submit the question to reason, first in the parties ; if that fail, then in some impartial tribunal. We have measurably accepted this as the method for settling controver- sies between man and man ; we are to accept it as the method for settling controversies between class and class, and between nation and nation. The problem of our American commonwealth is to teach men the meaning of the words which run so glibly from our tongues, — justice and liberty ; to teach what are the laws under which men and THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 369 women should live ; to sweep away the cant that obscures the word "brotherhood," and give it a clear and definite meaning, not by words chiefly, but by our lives and our national character. I do not imagine that this volume offers a solu- tion of this problem or these problems, but I hope that it may serve to indicate the lines of investiga- tion to which the needs of the nineteenth century invite the religious teacher. If he will go to his Bible for this purpose, he will find it quite as rich in sociological as in theological instruction ; quite as fertile in its suggestions respecting the duty of man to man as in its suggestions respecting the nature and government of God. He will find his New Testament telling him that the brotherhood of man is an integral part of Christianity no less than the fatherhood of God, and that to deny the one is no less infidel than to deny the other; he will find in it no light upon scientific details of political or industrial organization, but he will find the great moral laws of the social order, if not clearly revealed, at least definitely indicated. Sir Henry Maine has shown very clearly that demo- cracy is not yet " triumphant democracy ; " it is still an experiment. The American Revolution deter- mined our right to try it on this continent without fear of foreign intervention. The Civil War deter- mined our right to try it without fear of domestic disruption. We have still to work out the prob- lem. Whether a people diverse in race, religion, and industry can live happily and prosperously 370 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. together, with no other law over them than the invisible law of right and wrong, and no other authority over them than the unarmed authority of conscience, is the question which America has to solve for the world. TBooftjS Of JSeligton. Lyman Abbott. The Evolution of Christianity. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. He is always thoughtful, devout, and logical. — London Spectator. A. V. G. Allen. The Continuity of Christian Thought. A Study of Modern Theology in the Light of its History. New Edition, with a new Preface and a full Index. i2mo, gilt top, $2.00. A work from the very depths of Christian thought. ... A singularly noble book. — Christian Union (New York). Religious Progress. i6mo, ^i.oo. A delightful Uttle volume, highly suggestive, very readable. — The Independent (New York). American Religious Leaders. 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