Christ in the 
 
 Industries
 
 /^x
 
 Christ in the 
 Industries 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM RILEY HALSTEAD 
 
 Author of " Civil and Religious Forces," " Life 
 on a Backwoods Farm," Etc. 
 
 CINCINNATI : CURTS & JENNINGS 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
 CURTS i JENNINGS
 
 Introduction 
 
 THE reader must understand the scope of this 
 little book. It is not written for the specialist. 
 It is a brief survey of the industrial field from 
 the standpoint of the Christian believer. It is 
 suggestive, and not exhaustive. It is written for 
 busy people, who have no time for an extended 
 treatise, and perhaps no tastes for the details of 
 sociological study, and yet would like to keep 
 abreast of modern movements, and of the new 
 applications of Christian thought. 
 
 If Christ is the Savior of the personal life as 
 related to eternity, he is also the Savior of that 
 life as related to society; and for the simple 
 reason that the whole of a thing!' includes all 
 
 o 
 
 of its parts. If Christ is a necessity in restor- 
 ing order and obedience on the part of the race 
 toward God, he is a necessity for the world and 
 3 
 
 2084902
 
 Introduction 
 
 for man. He could not be vital to the individ- 
 ual, and of no use to society. 
 
 The world to-day is attracted by its outside 
 life. It is enamored of the objective. Great 
 interest is taken in the outward forms which art 
 and science and law and government are taking 
 on themselves. It is popular to be confident 
 about the things we have builded. It is a sign 
 of wisdom to magnify the wood, the hay, the 
 stubble; and a sign of ignorance to doubt the 
 self-restoration of any of these, if they should 
 take fire. The rage is to tabulate a large num- 
 ber of outside facts. We draw geographical 
 lines. We study the influence of climate. We 
 analyze the mixture of race blood. We make 
 a scientific study of tendencies. 
 
 We have statistics of the depressed classes, 
 and of criminals, and of other collective facts, 
 until our array of figures stares at us and we 
 stare at them. We have sociological clubs, 
 where we talk learnedly. In business, we are 
 interested in railroads, and tariff reform, and ed- 
 ucation, and sanitation, and invention, and ma-
 
 Introduction 
 
 terial developments. We deify forces and phe- 
 nomena and laws. We work with might and 
 main on the surroundings. 
 
 The achievements of this opulent age have 
 induced us to over-magnify them, and to cast 
 ourselves down upon them, and there has been 
 a break between it all and the inmost spirit of 
 the gospel of Christ. The gospel in its first 
 sources of power works on the man. It magni- 
 fies the personal soul. It does not forget the hu- 
 man heart, with its undying spiritual impulses, 
 and with its capacities for sorrow and death and 
 hell. The great ailment of the world is that it 
 is sick at heart of sin ; and sin is never abstract 
 or corporate. We talk of this wicked age, 
 and of these evil times. Satan is not in this 
 age, he is in the men and women hereabout. 
 Society is purified and made better as its men 
 and women are made better. Institutions are 
 of great value ; but when they are strong and 
 unshaken, we may depend upon it, the charac- 
 ter behind them has strength also. Character- 
 building and character-keeping, to the end that
 
 Introduction 
 
 society may be salted, is slow work, but it is 
 of the highest quality and of finest temper. 
 The orators may have visions, and they may 
 not have the virtue to engage in a thankless 
 task. A mother in an out-township who trains 
 her children, has no visions of a transformed 
 human society ; but her work is of the stuff to 
 make it possible for the orators to have the 
 visions. They talk about it; she brings it to 
 pass. She trains lives to know what govern- 
 ment is, and to give obedience to righteous 
 law. She is God's unknown builder-worm. 
 
 With a perfectly safe imagination we may 
 look forward to the time when all punitive re- 
 straints will be superfluous; when poverty will 
 be practically unknown ; when the evils which 
 now afflict will be done away ; and millennial 
 peace will spread over the earth. But an abso- 
 lutely essential element of this splendid picture 
 is a renewed and regenerated human nature, 
 and that to a point beyond all criminal dispo- 
 sitions. 
 
 W. R. H. 
 
 LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, June, i8gS.
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PACK 
 
 1. THE DIGNITY OF LABOR _____ 9 
 
 Labor Essential to Character 
 Common Toil Its Social Products 
 The New Age of Equality 
 The Day of Achievement is a Work-day 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 2. SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS 33 
 
 Religion and Bread 
 
 The Supremacy of Force 
 
 Commercial Tyranny 
 
 The New Day of Competitive Morals 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 3. SOME FRIENDS OF LABOR _____ 59 
 
 The School of Thrift 
 
 The Home 
 
 Labor Organizations 
 
 The Honorable Employer 
 
 The Spirit of Democracy 
 
 Jesus Christ and the Social Order 
 
 Social Specialization 
 
 7
 
 8 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4. INDUSTRIAL PROBLEMS _____ 95 
 
 Radical Socialism 
 
 Early American Socialism 
 
 Christian Socialism 
 
 Agriculture and the Other Industries 
 
 Nationalism 
 
 Work in the Slums 
 
 Applied Christianity 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 5. THE FUTURE OF LABOR IN AMERICA - - - 141 
 
 The American Spirit 
 
 Do We Desire Industrial Peace ? 
 
 Private Property a Permanence 
 
 The Decay of Competition 
 
 Co-operation 
 
 Profit-sharing 
 
 The Leaders of the New Age
 
 The Dignity of Labor
 
 THE labor of the righteous tendeth to life. PROV. x, 16. 
 
 The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat 
 little or much. ECCL. v, 12. 
 
 Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand 
 before kings. PROV. xxn, 29. 
 
 Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit ; serving the 
 Lord. ROM. xn, II. 
 
 Provide things honest in the sight of all men. ROM. 
 xn, 17. 
 
 For even when we were with you, this we commanded 
 you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. 
 For we hear that there are some which walk among you 
 disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now 
 them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their 
 own bread. 2 THESS. in, 10-12.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Dignity Jof Labor 
 
 PREACHERS and pious people are not yet free 
 from the fatuity of bad logic. "In the sweat of thy 
 face shalt thou eat bread," is not a curse from the 
 fall. If that were so, to live without work would 
 be deliverance from the curse. Labor is the 
 natural condition of life. Labor is honorable. 
 All nature is diligent. Every beast and bird and 
 insect is busy. 
 
 What amazing edifices are being raised by the 
 weakest creatures in existence! The tiny coral 
 buttresses its work at the bases of the moun- 
 tains, where the bars of the earth are laid; and 
 it builds its domes to the top of the sea, and gives 
 to man islands and continents for his habitation. 
 Each animate thing among the tribes of nature 
 unconsciously bends to the law of its being, and 
 keeps busy all its days.
 
 12 Christ in the Industries 
 
 The clouds hurry past. The sunshine is al- 
 ways at work. God himself is at work every- 
 where. To cease to work, is to cease to live. 
 The records of the past are records of industry. 
 Crypts and domes and ruined walls and rows of 
 marble columns miles in length, with buried pal- 
 aces and submerged cities, all excite our admira- 
 tion, because they represent an immensity of toil. 
 The crown of Babylon is fallen. Egypt as it 
 once was, is swept and desolate, and the sand- 
 dunes now cover its most fertile fields. The 
 Greek philosophers are all dead; the orators of 
 the Roman Senate are no more and all that is 
 left of these great names and these civilizations 
 is an apotheosis to labor. These toiling millions 
 of the past these unknown builder-worms 
 have left imperishable records in catacombs and 
 hieroglyphic piles that have survived their lan- 
 guages, and remain to proclaim the immortal 
 greatness of the spirit of industry. The sphinxes 
 and pyramids of the Nile Valley, the temple of 
 Zeus, the amphitheater at Rome, the remnants 
 of Baalbec, the excavations of Nineveh, the stone 
 records of Lejah and Kunawat, the speaking
 
 The Dignity of Labor 13 
 
 tombs of Bozrah, and the palaces of Sardanapa- 
 lus, these are the unwasting monuments of the 
 millions who placed them there. Thousands of 
 black and swarthy toilers fell dead as these stones 
 went up the skids to their places. Their bodies 
 were scuttled away, and the work went on; but 
 each of these dead ones left a deposit of human 
 energy on which the whole world has been build- 
 ing ever since. 
 
 If the workmen of to-day will take a moment 
 to cast about them, they will not be jealous of 
 their own fame. It will abide in these bridges, 
 and highways, and aqueducts, and private pal- 
 aces, and public buildings ; in these granite blocks 
 thrown in clusters of great cities, these railways 
 and factories and mines, and these ships that con- 
 quer the sea. 
 
 From the diamond God has set in the sewing- 
 girl's thimble, to the glint of heraldry in the 
 farmer's plowshare ; from the poorest shoveler of 
 the mud on our streets, to the finest skill of the 
 painter's brush and sculptor's chisel, a song of 
 industry goes into the sky, and the celestial hosts 
 carry its strains into the ears of the Infinite, and
 
 14 Christ in the Industries 
 
 he applauds. Labor is not a curse. Labor is a 
 blessing. 
 
 I. Rafter Essential to Character 
 
 There is a severity of toil not good for the 
 body or soul. There is an application to work 
 so forced and intense as to make it a burden and 
 a crime. But the necessity of labor for food and 
 shelter is not a calamity or a misfortune. A 
 man's lot is neither better nor worse than an- 
 other's because he has to work for a living. To 
 be situated above the necessity of labor is not 
 good fortune. Men and women are foolish and 
 sinful when they court or covet a life of indo- 
 lence. Outside the peace of God, there is more 
 happiness in industrious habits than in any 
 earthly thing. Industry is a quality of the peace 
 of God. An unemployed life is always restless, 
 and discontented, and miserable. A life spent 
 in seeking entertainment to banish dull hours 
 is fullest of monotony, and care, and dissatisfac- 
 tion. The things that entertain, finally become 
 a surfeit. These butterflies of fashion do not 
 know what happiness means.
 
 The Dignity of Labor 1 5 
 
 "Blessed that child of humanity, happiest child among 
 men, 
 
 With hammer or chisel or pencil, with rudder or plow- 
 share or pen, 
 
 Laboring ever and ever with hope, through the morn- 
 ing of life, 
 
 Winning home and its darling divinities, love-worshiped 
 children and wife. 
 
 Round swings the hammer of industry, quickly the 
 sharp chisel rings, 
 
 And the heart of the toiler has throbbings that stir not 
 the bosoms of kings. 
 
 He the true ruler and conqueror, he the true king of 
 his race, 
 
 Who nerveth his arm for the combat, and looks the 
 strong world in the face." 
 
 Labor has a blessing in itself, and beyond the 
 things gained by it. The world never lacks in- 
 terest to those who are industriously useful. 
 Physical health and development are promoted 
 by it, and therefore a longer life in the flesh. It 
 means also mental equipoise, with sobriety of 
 temper and spirit. As a rule, hard-working peo- 
 ple are sober and steady-minded. Indolence goes 
 -with giddiness and foolishness. There is a show 
 of complaint for a man when he is not able to
 
 1 6 Christ in the Industries 
 
 work, or when he can not get work. (Of this we 
 shall speak further on.) A brave man knows he 
 can not get his destiny fulfilled if he has no work 
 to do, for that is the great law of his life. The 
 night of death presses when that comes, it will 
 not be of the slightest consequence whether we 
 are rich or poor. Life may have made us as fat 
 as the plumpest pig of Epicurus, or it may have 
 made us as gaunt as Pharaoh's lean kine the 
 one state or the other matters not then. Our 
 work, that is the question. Have we done it or 
 dodged it? Our work will remain, or the want 
 of it. For all eternity this is the question of 
 supremest moment. Bags of gold, paper crowns, 
 baubles of praise, the peacock feathers, and the 
 stately trappings of the funeral, what are all 
 these, when we come to step down into the di- 
 vine everlasting night of death, and face the eter- 
 nal verities? Our work, our work! Is it fin- 
 ished, or left undone? Who can do my work 
 for me? Am I to be forever involved in the 
 thing I am now doing, or neglecting? 
 
 A man is not himself until he has something 
 to do. Lord Stanley once said in an address
 
 The Dignity of Labor 17 
 
 before the students of the University of Glasgow : 
 "As work is our life, show me what you can do, 
 and I will show you what you are." Work is a 
 preventive against petty anxieties and annoy- 
 ances. If we expect to take refuge from trouble 
 and vexation by self-reflection, we shall be dis- 
 appointed. It was evidently the Divine intent 
 that we should be lost to sorrow when lost in our 
 work. 
 
 Anxiety may attach to any kind of labor; but 
 it is not the rule that less labor brings less anx- 
 iety or more happiness. The indolent may con- 
 trive to have less than their share of the world's 
 work, but they find directly that the little they 
 have to do is as hard to bear as if they had taken 
 full work. While no state in life is free from 
 petty cares, there is less wear of mind in being 
 usefully employed in business than in the fretful 
 foibles which breed and multiply in an unoccu- 
 pied brain. 
 
 Walter Scott says that the sense of toil is 
 necessary to the enjoyment of rest. A few die 
 of overwork, many more die of ennui which idle- 
 ness breeds. Labor disciplines the character. A
 
 1 8 Christ in the Industries 
 
 workman digs in the earth, or shapes the stone 
 or welds the iron, and earns a living. But he is 
 doing more. Every sweat-drop from his brow 
 spells out honesty. He exalts his manhood. He 
 builds a life. His energies of muscle and brain 
 are transformed finally into that which is spirit- 
 ual and imperishable. The attrition of the work 
 itself has this great value to the spirit. The 
 habit of constant work the fact of having head 
 and hands full of business is a ripener of the 
 best energies, and a feeder of the highest im- 
 pulses of the personal man. The subjective value 
 of honorable toil is a part of God's plan for build- 
 ing the personal life into the highest things. We 
 shall not lift ourselves into the kingdom by our 
 boot-straps, but we shall see that due account 
 is made of honorable industry, and that the sub- 
 stance of what we are to have hereafter, has been 
 put in us as life has gone on. 
 
 There is no advantage in a life of ease bent 
 on pleasure. To be without occupation, and to 
 seek happiness only in recreation, is to enter the 
 paradise of fools. The washerwoman is a queen. 
 With weary limbs she relishes the bread she has
 
 The Dignity of Labor 19 
 
 earned, and her sleep is with a conscience at rest. 
 Her work does not satiate or cloy on her hands. 
 Constant effort to find amusement and to drive 
 dull care away, tires the spirit and destroys all 
 taste for useful and profitable employment. That 
 is the bane of the body and mind. It brings on 
 physical weakness, enervates the mental faculties, 
 and leads to all wretchedness. The devil tempts 
 nearly every man in this world, but a lazy man 
 tempts the devil. Here is a young- man who has 
 an income of thousands, and does not work. He 
 drives a coach and four. He is outwardly suave 
 and courteous. He is a splendid-looking fellow, 
 as the world goes. He dresses well. He is polite 
 to a fault, with those rules of politeness that a 
 monkey could learn as well as he. He has no 
 energy or character or brains. He is a profes- 
 sional idler, a sort of devil's tinkershop in a 
 small way. He is a kind of dead man, whom it 
 is not proper just yet to bury. 
 
 His counterpart is Miss Butterfly. She is form- 
 less and insipid and dawdling. She is thought 
 by her silly parents to be of too fine a quality to 
 engage in any practical concern; her body a
 
 2O Christ in the Industries 
 
 dummy for the milliner and dressmaker. She 
 can take two mortal hours for a morning toilet. 
 She is lavish with money money made by going 
 "short" and going "long," and by other sorts of 
 uneven going. The money is spent, not to build 
 a character, but to make a figure; to produce a 
 sort of Barnum's "greatest show on earth." 
 Money makes her society and her aristocracy. 
 No mental furnishing, no common sense; not in 
 need of either, because it is vulgar to be practical. 
 She never swept a room; she never washed a 
 window-pane or anything else but a lace hand- 
 kerchief. Her jeweled fingers were never in the 
 bread-tray. Is she beautiful? She is a piece of 
 waxen perfection. 
 
 These two get married, and start down the 
 stream of life in a golden canoe. Young Mr. 
 Tenthousand, overtaxed with the cares of busi- 
 ness, which are distasteful to him, turns it over 
 to a manager who is heroic and strong to take 
 all the care; but reverses come, wholly on ac- 
 count of political changes, and he suspends pay- 
 ment of all debts, great and small. 
 
 A few years go by, and you may see a faded
 
 The Dignity of Labor 2 1 
 
 couple in a rickety chaise drawn by a super- 
 annuated roadster. Two little tots are down in 
 front, dressed in different bits of old but splen- 
 did material. There is about that family an air 
 of refined gentility; but that is about all there 
 is about them. They have come to a pathetic 
 state of bedraggled impecuniosity. So endeth 
 the tale. 
 
 2. Common Goil Uts Social iprooucts 
 
 The individual to-day is so related to the 
 social welfare that he must be a producer. He 
 must produce value of some kind, spiritual, 
 moral, intellectual, or material. The social body 
 is damaged unless he undertakes to keep even. 
 There are social values accruing to the personal 
 life now of great significance, and there is a social 
 demand for value received. To eat bread, and 
 to make no bread or its equivalent, is to waste 
 the social substance. A citizen worth a million 
 may legally take a rest; but, socially, he has no 
 right to be idle. The world's stored capital is its 
 accumulation, and that is its reserved energy. 
 If the present generation would stop work, and
 
 22 Christ in the Industries 
 
 begin to use up the world's accumulation, uni- 
 versal poverty would be the swift visitation. But 
 all men have as much right to stop work as any 
 one man. 
 
 The world's material accumulations, as well as 
 the world's institutions, are preserved by the same 
 means that produced them. If we should con- 
 clude to lie down on this product which we have 
 saved up, and ask it to keep us, it would soon 
 drop us to destruction. The individual, there- 
 fore, has no right to use value, and produce none. 
 But carved stones and polished boards and beaten 
 sails are not the only kinds of value in the world. 
 There is value of deft muscle, and cultured brain, 
 and expanded soul. A sick daughter, bedridden 
 and helpless, may produce greater value in the 
 family and in the community than the father who 
 earns the bread. We are to disabuse our minds 
 of the idea that the only values of the world are 
 of the tangible or the material kind. The richest 
 and most real products of modern society are 
 intellectual and spiritual. Priceless stored bene- 
 fits are these, and each human being is under 
 duress to conserve and perpetuate them. Jacob
 
 The Dignity of Labor 23 
 
 left the pasture-lands of Samaria as good as he 
 found them, and he dug a well. He left an abid- 
 ing world-work. He did something for the gen- 
 erations. He could have gone through life with- 
 out that well. Crafty and self-seeking as he was, 
 the fountains of his benevolence were opened in 
 this broad reach of philanthropy. Jacob is gone; 
 his work abides; and forty generations have risen 
 to call him blessed. 
 
 Have you dug a well? Perhaps you have for 
 another, and received pay for the work; but the 
 greatest thing is not your pay you have finished 
 a blessing which will be such after you are dead. 
 Have you built a house, and received your 
 wages? Very well, you have also made your 
 mark on the city, which is independent of owner- 
 ship. Of what sort is your product as a house- 
 builder? Are the doors hung so they will not 
 worry housewives for the next twenty years? Is 
 the roof put on so that it will not leak? Are the 
 flues plastered on the inside? If not, go do that 
 work over again in the morning. Your pay is 
 one thing, but your work lacks dignity unless it 
 is reliable and workmanlike. Do you break rocks
 
 24 Christ in the Industries 
 
 on the streets, or clean the gutters, or flush the 
 sewers? The community is even with you if you 
 get your pay; but thousands of people will re- 
 ceive the benefit of your work. There is this 
 community side to the humblest toil to give it 
 dignity. You have a chance to stamp your work 
 with your citizenship. Whatever you do, there- 
 fore, has in it very strong motives for you to 
 think well of yourself. 
 
 3. Gbe View B0e of 
 
 Labor is not of high or low degree. In all 
 necessary labor there is equality. By necessary 
 labor we mean that which is essential to the 
 world's civilized life, and does not contribute to 
 the immoral forces. The man who looks after 
 the sour-mash tubs in a distillery is not a laborer, 
 but a man misdirecting his energies toward the 
 destruction of society. He ought to be counted 
 out of the industrial world. All effort of this 
 kind is industrial malformation. 
 
 But are not some forms of labor more honor- 
 able than others? If such a distinction exists, it 
 ought to be in the nature of things, and we ought 
 to be able to see in what it consists.
 
 The Dignity of Labor 25 
 
 It is said one labors with his hands, and the 
 other with his brains; and the latter is more hon- 
 orable, that it is of a higher quality. Why? In 
 what does that extra quality consist? Is God 
 keeping two accounts, one for the muscles, and 
 the other for the brains? What can the muscles 
 do without the brain? What can the brain do 
 without the muscles, to give it expression and 
 execute its behests? What pursuit represents 
 the aristocracy of industry? 
 
 It is a very natural thing that those of difier- 
 .eut trades and professions should be drawn 
 toward each other in a sort of guild. The guild 
 spirit has in it many advantages in the way of 
 strengthening human bonds, and in perfecting the 
 work of those engaged in like pursuits. Rail- 
 roaders hit each other with their hats as they go 
 by. That is, they understand each other, so far 
 as that goes. That is a healthful class feeling. 
 While it has no intent to shut the rest of man- 
 kind out, this common experience in a common 
 pursuit brings the whole body into a better un- 
 derstanding with itself. Other things equal, a 
 man feels more at home with another man en-
 
 2,6 Christ in the Industries 
 
 gaged in a like calling with himself. There is 
 a starting-point of fellowship in the things they 
 know together. The free law of personal assimi- 
 lation by pursuits is healthful in its action, and 
 is not to be deprecated, except where it is over- 
 strained. But how absurd, indeed, that any pur- 
 suit, whether mental or mechanical, should put on 
 airs, and vote itself of special consideration and 
 above all other pursuits ! 
 
 It has been supposed that the professions are 
 above the trades, because they require a higher 
 order of talent. That more ability is required in 
 the ministry, or law, or medicine, or the so-called 
 learned pursuits, than in mechanic arts or farm- 
 ing. Having had some experience, it is our judg- 
 ment that a dullard can come as near making 
 a success of his life in the ministry as elsewhere. 
 It takes as much natural talent and special skill 
 to put under right tillering a row of corn, as to 
 plead a case before a jury, or prescribe for a 
 patient, or prepare and preach a sermon. 
 
 Every skilled artisan is educated in his line. 
 That his trade is one of muscular skill, does not 
 signify that it is lacking in mental power. We
 
 The Dignity of Labor 27 
 
 mistake in our estimates about the manual trades. 
 Muscular skill is, of necessity, mental. There 
 is really no such thing as muscular skill. A dull 
 mind can not produce a skilled muscle. As to 
 natural ability, there is very little difference be- 
 tween the trades and the professions ; and if there 
 is an advantage now, it is on the side of the 
 artisan. The professions are still getting accre- 
 tions from families of "high life," and the trades 
 get practically nothing from this source. The 
 pedigree of some of these families keeps up bet- 
 ter than the blood. One is all right and regular, 
 and the other is pretty well run out, so that they 
 are not producing virile and forceful intellects 
 any longer. They are like some families of Jer- 
 sey cattle. They all run back to a noble ancestry, 
 and the registry on the books is all right; but 
 the individual is such a sorry little runt that you 
 have to carry the pedigree in your pocket, and 
 show that instead of the animal. In this great 
 family of necessary human pursuits, one is as 
 high and as good as the other. The business of 
 the washerwoman has as much merit in it as that 
 of preaching. I wish in my soul I could get
 
 28 Christ in the Industries 
 
 things as reliably clean in my business as our 
 washerwoman does in hers. 
 
 Mr. Edison says that no very large portion 
 of his successful helpers in electricity come from 
 the colleges. He says the college is likely to 
 spoil them for the necessary rough manual labor 
 required. The spirit of the college is, that manual 
 labor is in its nature an inferior kind of labor, 
 and that the end of education is to escape that. 
 That is the greatest illusion of the industrial 
 world. The muscular labor that has no mental 
 force in it to-day is hardly in competition with 
 the animal world. Edison's first test of a young 
 man is to tell him that his first work in elec- 
 tricity is to sweep the floor. If he accepts the 
 test and goes at it, he is likely to become a useful 
 electrician. Why should not a novitiate sweep 
 the floor? The majority flinch it, because they 
 think it menial and beneath them. Why is it? 
 The great time is coming, and we see the gray 
 lines of its dawning now, in which it will be as 
 large a business as any to sweep a floor. Every 
 housewife of to-day knows that skill with a broom 
 is a fine art.
 
 The Dignity of Labor 29 
 
 Is there a man here ashamed of his sunburned 
 face and calloused hands? Shame on you, for 
 you have put shame on yourself! The marks of a 
 man's work are upon him, and they ought to be. 
 The body and the mind shape themselves to the 
 work they do. It would be a great disgrace for 
 a farmer to look bleached and starched like a 
 merchant in a store. The marks of a man's work 
 are upon him; that is an honor. 
 
 4. tlbe Bag of achievement is a *WIlorh*S>aB 
 
 Bonaventura, general of the Franciscan order, 
 was made a cardinal by Pope Gregory X. The 
 cardinal's hat was sent him by the nuncios, who 
 found him washing dishes. The nuncios were 
 amazed, but had to wait till he finished the plates. 
 They hung that cardinal's hat on a dogwood-tree 
 in the yard until he was ready to receive it. 
 
 The great characters of the world have been 
 celebrated for the amount of work they could 
 perform. Demosthenes, Cicero, Bacon, Newton, 
 were hard workers. They never retired from 
 their work. Moses, and Paul, and Luther, and 
 Wesley, all died with the harness on. They put
 
 30 Christ in the Industries 
 
 forth great endeavors in the world, and the world 
 found a place for them. Karamsin, the Russian 
 traveler, once asked Lavater whence he derived 
 such strength of mind and power of endurance, 
 and he replied: "Man rarely wants the power to 
 work when he has the will; the more I labor in 
 the discharge of my duties, so much the more 
 ability and inclination to labor do I find within 
 myself." Edison says, "For the last fifteen years 
 I have averaged twenty hours a day." There is 
 nothing valuable in the world attained without 
 labor. To have everything easy for the race 
 would work its ruin. 
 
 The greatest offices and positions of the world 
 are not places of ease. No ease-loving soul can 
 fill them acceptably. Many of them exact fright- 
 ful amounts of labor. The sterling question of 
 the world now is, "Are you a good worker?" 
 Work is the divine test of greatness. The New 
 Testament law reverses all our false estimates. 
 The chiefest serve the most. Who are these use- 
 ful people? Who are making things appear as 
 they are? They are first. The Bible says: "And 
 whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be
 
 The Dignity of Labor 31 
 
 servant of all ;" "Whosoever will be great among 
 you shall be your minister;" "For even the Son 
 of man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." 
 True greatness lies not in wealth or in place, but 
 in service to others. The toilers of the world 
 are its servants, and its servants are its great 
 ones. How simple that makes every question of 
 ambition, or precedence, or fame! 
 
 Bishop Fowler has this apotheosis to work: 
 "The multiplicity of achievements, from reapers 
 for our harvests, to gas for our streets; from 
 spindles for our factories, to cables for our 
 oceans, all have a history of toil; the cook, the 
 chemist, the doctor., the shoemaker, the tailor, 
 the engineer, prepare better nutriments, better 
 securities, and more abundant vitality. Old veins 
 are rilled with new blood, old nerves with new 
 electricity ; and all this, and more, represents fifty 
 years of harvest and fifty centuries of seed-time, 
 and both are work-days."
 
 Social Transformations 
 
 33
 
 FOR as the body is one, and hath many members, and all 
 the members of that one body, being many, are one body : 
 so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized 
 into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether 
 we be bond or free ; and have been all made to drink into 
 one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. 
 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not 
 of the body ; is it therefore not of the body ? And if the 
 ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the 
 body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body 
 were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were 
 hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set 
 the members every one of them in the body, as it hath 
 pleased him. And if they were all one member, where 
 were the body? But now are they many members, yet but 
 one body. And the eye can not say unto the hand, I have 
 no need of thee : nor again the head to the feet, I have no 
 need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, 
 which seem to be more feeble, are necessary : and those 
 members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, 
 upon these we bestow more abundant honor ; and our un- 
 comely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our 
 comely parts have no need : but God hath tempered the 
 body together, having given more abundant honor to that 
 part which lacked : that there should be no schism in the 
 body ; but that the members should have the same care one 
 for another. And whether one member suffer, all the mem- 
 bers suffer with it ; or one member be honored, all the mem- 
 bers rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and 
 members in particular. i COR. xn, 12-27. 
 34
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Social Transformations 
 
 1. Religion anD 
 
 RELIGION is not a creed or any system of doc- 
 trines. It is not a refinement or an abstraction. 
 It is not a decoy. It is not a subjective feeling, 
 to be fondled before God. It is not a species of 
 sentimental finery, to be worn on public occa- 
 sions, and then laid away in plush and velvet 
 under lock and key. It is not Church member- 
 ship or baptism. There are baptized Church 
 members who violate the commandments and 
 deny their Lord. 
 
 To love God with all your heart, and your 
 neighbor as yourself that is religion. That, mul- 
 tiplied sufficiently, will transform the world. The 
 largest feature of religion is a life a week-day 
 life which does not feel itself out of place with 
 poverty and want, and can hear the world's cry 
 of pain and despair. 
 
 Religion takes in the problem of how to live, 
 35
 
 36 Christ in the Industries 
 
 and of the equities of the world. Religion means 
 fair play and an equal chance to every man on 
 earth. For the present, therefore, religion is not 
 so much a heavenly aspiration as an earthly ne- 
 cessity. Religion identifies itself with the tem- 
 poral welfare of men in a practical way. It has 
 to do with common wants labor, sorrow, aspi- 
 ration, society, faith. Christ, the Savior of men's 
 souls, is also their constant guide into better 
 earthly conditions. 
 
 Bread: we mean by that a puffed and snowy 
 biscuit just broken open by a hungry man for 
 breakfast; and we mean all the accessories the 
 butter and the other things that make that bis- 
 cuit palatable, the meats and the gravies and the 
 sauces. We mean the chair the man sits in, the 
 table-linen, his wife's clean kitchen apron, the 
 carpet, the dishes, the whole equipment of the 
 kitchen; the home, with all its provision for wo- 
 man's happiness. We mean the deed to the lot; 
 we mean all the guarantees against a rainy day. 
 
 Mortals may have all these things, and not 
 have religion; but the possession of these things 
 helps mortals to enjoy religion. Every man in the
 
 Social Transformations 37 
 
 world has a right to bread, if he is willing to meet 
 the divine conditions and give the sweat of his 
 face for it. And any man has both a civil and 
 a divine privilege to starve, if he prefers that to 
 work. In another chapter we will discuss his 
 social right to a chance to work when thrown 
 under by complex and changing industrial con- 
 ditions; but here we only desire to set forth the 
 common law of life, that man must pay the price 
 of his own existence. 
 
 We do not intend it in the sense of a rebuke, 
 to say that man's physical necessities have always 
 been with him his chiefest concern. This has 
 impressed him first and last, and has driven him 
 at all times to the greatest exertion. His chief 
 fight in the world has been for bread. Through 
 the ages it has made him a toiler. At times it 
 has made him a hungry lion. At others a re- 
 morseless tyrant, taking the bread of others, and 
 giving nothing in return. The religious life, 
 therefore, has its very center in this daily life of 
 toil among men. Any faith that is to command 
 the respect of men in the future, must meet and 
 master the issues of life on its sterner side. Has
 
 38 Christ in the Industries 
 
 the Christian religion adequate ideas and moral 
 principles? They need to be incarnated into the 
 common human activities. Vital godliness will 
 mix; it will stand the wear and tear of every-day 
 use. Men with religious convictions need not 
 take on celestial attitudes, and retire from the 
 world and keep out of sight of sin, in order to 
 prepare for the kingdom. The man who is afraid 
 of contact with matter-of-fact concerns, who has 
 about him the holy flavor of religious exclusive- 
 ness, holds his faith in such slim tenure as to be 
 of little use in this tense battle for bread, and 
 place, and power. 
 
 If religion is needed anywhere on earth, it is 
 needed in this world of traffic and barter, with its 
 competition and excitement, with its economic 
 perplexities, with its heat of passion and exas- 
 peration of defeat, its turns and reverses of busi- 
 ness, its bulls and bears of the markets. 
 
 The commercial spirit of religion is to rule 
 the world of the future. That is to say, business 
 honor, fair play, and social justice will do their 
 work just ahead, or the world's progress will be 
 retarded for centuries. Jesus Christ is to recon-
 
 Social Transformations 39 
 
 struct the world socially. How that is to come 
 about is our problem. Social defects glare at us 
 these days. The burdens of the poor are as big 
 as mountains. Monstrous wrongs are yet to be 
 righted. They are in process of being righted. 
 Transformations are coming to pass; but the old 
 order standeth over a larger part of the world 
 to-day. 
 
 2. Gbe Supremacy of fforce 
 
 We stop now to draw a picture of gloom. 
 One of the remarkable features in the history 
 of man is the supremacy of force over justice. 
 It will take a few minutes for you to see what 
 we mean. In the earliest ages the strongest and 
 most intrepid and warlike tribes took the best 
 pasture-lands, and weaker families and peoples 
 were enslaved, or driven out, or not infrequently 
 blotted out of existence. They suffered the pen- 
 alty of living under unfavorable circumstances. 
 Strong nations conquer weak ones, and make 
 them subservient. The Israelites go down into 
 Egypt, and are enslaved. In course of time they 
 find freedom in flight. They learn hardihood in
 
 40 Christ in the Industries 
 
 the desert, and go up and conquer and drive out 
 the Canaanites, and take by force the land. They 
 settle all its borders, and make it fertile as a 
 garden. These Hebrews become the prey of 
 other nations finally. Egypt, Babylon, Alex- 
 ander, Caesar, rule them one after another. 
 Rome finally rules the world, because she has 
 become the strongest. Other centuries go by. 
 Rome begins to die at the centers. Then the 
 barbarous Northmen flood all the valleys of the 
 Mediterranean countries. Goth and Vandal 
 blood leaves its deposit all over Europe, and is 
 finally lost among indigenous peoples. Other 
 centuries go by. Modern Europe is born, and 
 self-interest seems to have dictated about all the 
 quiet she has had. Standing armies, increasing 
 war budgets, growing navies; with the surface 
 as fair as a May morning, there is tremendous 
 preparation for war. Spain and America now 
 settle their issues in the abitrament of arms, and 
 the weaker will go down. 
 
 In all that we have recited, and in all we de- 
 sire you to read between the lines, there is not 
 utter absence of the elements of humanity and
 
 Social Transformations 41 
 
 justice. Often the issues of the strife are the de- 
 crees of justice. But the point we make is, that 
 force is king, whether it be justice or not. Man 
 has always lived in the midst of a constant social 
 feudalism. There is a species of whip-tiger in 
 human nature, having in it a quenchless desire 
 to prey on the blood of its fellows. Man has so 
 far fought and devoured his own kind as greedily 
 as the animal creation. He has a moral and 
 spiritual life, and his actions carry with them 
 eternal and changeless relations; but he has been 
 mostly blind to these. Man becomes civilized, 
 but his civilizations carry the incubus of as great 
 wrongs as were ever known in his states of sav- 
 agery. He has been swayed by forces which 
 have no justice in them. The slimy trail of the 
 serpent of oppression is yet seen on the face of 
 society, and it poisons and blasts the hopes of 
 millions. I show you the track of the old gorgon. 
 i. Down in Egypt the birthplace of civiliza- 
 tion as the world anciently knew it where for 
 centuries tyrants held the power of life and death 
 over their subjects, there rules now an important 
 personage we call the khedive. He is great,
 
 42 Christ in the Industries 
 
 simply because of his position. At the bottom 
 in Egypt next to the mud of the Nile are the 
 fellahin. They are the tillers of the soil. Their 
 condition is most pitiable; and yet they are the 
 annual saviors of Egypt. The khedive, it is 
 said, owns in fee simple about one-third the 
 arable Nile Valley. The fellahin have taken from 
 them each year, by the tax-gatherer, all their 
 products, except an amount of the plainest food 
 to keep them alive, and one blue cotton shirt each 
 year. If an American cartoonist should go to 
 Egypt, he would draw the khedive as a well- 
 preserved gentleman, with one eye on England, 
 and the other on the Sublime Porte, and with 
 each hand grasping the throat of an Egyptian 
 fellah. 
 
 Egypt's worker is a nobody. Social forces 
 have kept him a slave for centuries. The first 
 rights of a human being are to him an inheritance 
 of the generations yet to come. 
 
 2. Over the face of Asia to-day, society is 
 clearly and definitely stratified. There is an 
 upper layer, a middle layer, and a lower layer. 
 The man in the upper layer has light work and
 
 Social Transformations 43 
 
 good pay. His privileges make him conserv- 
 ative ; and he is the last man to break caste. The 
 man in the lower layer is not having so good 
 a time. He has hard work and poor pay. He 
 may desire to break caste, but he can not. 
 Through the dominance of the same social cus- 
 toms for centuries, his position has become a 
 desperately sacred thing. For generations yet 
 this low-caste man must stay on his knees, and 
 apologize for the unpardonable presumption of 
 being in the world. Put all of his kind together, 
 and they constitute an invertebrate mass, held 
 in the grip of despair by the caste system, and 
 in which all individuality is discounted and de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 3. The Empire of Russia to-day is cursed with 
 a shiftless and corrupt landed gentry six or 
 seven hundred thousand hereditary noblemen; 
 four hundred thousand non-hereditary; a million 
 aristocratic idlers and spendthrifts. Under these, 
 the peasantry are impoverished with rentals and 
 with the greater taxation. The czar is an auto- 
 crat. The noblemen are his supporters. The 
 peasantry know they are oppressed. And when-
 
 44 Christ in the Industries 
 
 ever the war spirit slumbers in Russia, there 
 comes from this peasant horde an inarticulate 
 cry of despair, a sort of hailing sign of distress 
 going out into the dark, as if they were shrouded 
 in a gloom where justice is dead. With the 
 Russian people, however, this cry is the prophecy 
 of the morning, and the attempts at its repres- 
 sion by the czar are as futile as if he would try 
 to stop the mouth of a crater with his cap. 
 
 4. To the south of us lies Cuba, the Kohinoor 
 of the west seas. For nearly a century her native 
 peoples have been practically slaves to the venal- 
 ity of a stronger race. There, in the land of their 
 nativity, and having a right to the products of 
 their own toil, they have been held in commercial 
 tyranny, and sold in the markets of the world. 
 Time and again they have made the struggle for 
 freedom, and only their latest cry has been heard 
 in sympathy by the queen of nations, and the 
 morning for Cuba draweth nigh. 
 
 5. One of the remarkable features of the mod- 
 ern world is the fact that indigenous races are 
 being exterminated by coming in contact with 
 the Anglo-Saxon. The original European has
 
 Social Transformations 45 
 
 been completely absorbed. The Australian abo- 
 riginal is fading before the Anglo-Saxon invader. 
 One of the leading colonists of South Africa says 
 the natives must go. In this country the Ameri- 
 can Indian is disappearing before the white man. 
 Europe to-day has practically parceled out Africa ; 
 and the work of the overthrow of the native races 
 has begun. While the Negro in America is not 
 an indigenous race, he stands related in the same 
 way to the white man. The Civil War abolished 
 slavery in the South, but the white man rules 
 there as supremely as in the days of slavery. 
 They are changing their State constitutions, so 
 that the future can be made secure. The race 
 question is still on, and to remain. As a matter 
 of fact, the Anglo-Saxon is very far from allow- 
 ing any considerable number of his blood to re- 
 main long even in political subordination to any 
 other race. The Anglo-Saxon has paid the price 
 of his national ascendency, and he is going to 
 keep it. A first place has come to him in na- 
 tional greatness, and in the achievements of civ- 
 ilization, and under the severest tests to which 
 the life of a race can be put. In the stress and
 
 46 Christ in the Industries 
 
 strain of the contests of his history, he has be- 
 come strong and great. He has become a giant 
 in his rivalries. 
 
 3. Commercial 
 
 The march of development has brought great 
 advantages to this strong race-blood. It has sur- 
 rounded him with literature, and art, and music, 
 and civil institutions unparalleled in glory. My 
 race, in an experience of thousands of years, has 
 proved that it can travel, and build strong insti- 
 tutions, and come to supremacy among the races. 
 But the Anglo-Saxon has gone westward as far 
 as new empire invites him now. He must either 
 go up or down henceforth. It is a serious busi- 
 ness with us now, whether we can stay at home 
 and stand it, as the Chinese have done. We have 
 felt the spring of a world mastery; we must yet 
 learn to live together without devouring each 
 other. We must be so vigilant for freedom and 
 personal right, that if they were buried before 
 our eyes, we ought to be found standing over 
 their graves, and able to command their resur- 
 rection. Great work for mortals; but it must 
 be done.
 
 Social Transformations 47 
 
 The Western World is in the midst of an in- 
 dustrial war. It is peaceful, in that it has not 
 made its appeal to arms ; but it is about as relent- 
 less as any of the older conflicts. It has not 
 broken the regular currents of trade, except in 
 sporadic cases. It has not broken into the ten 
 thousand relations of the social organization 
 which constitute the guarantees of public order. 
 It is held within bounds by the arts of peace; but 
 it is arraying on different sides the same mother's 
 sons. We are not sure what a day may bring 
 forth in the social ferment. The soothsayers 
 declare there is nothing to be apprehended; but 
 the unrest of the time will not be quieted until 
 justice is enthroned. 
 
 A widow having the care of a family, invests 
 her little money in a corporation. She is advised 
 to do this by one of the directors. It comes to 
 pass that two or three of the directors conclude 
 to increase their profits by getting a controlling 
 interest. The stock depreciates very much; then 
 the widow is advised to sell before she loses all; 
 then others sell; and others. After a time, the 
 stock returns to its face value, and then to a
 
 48 Christ in the Industries 
 
 premium. The directors get rich; the widow is 
 ruined. She has no bread, because the directors 
 had no religion. 
 
 Prices on nearly all products now are fixed by 
 some sort of combine. Our nails, our tacks, our 
 matches, our firebrick, our window-glass, our 
 coffee, our sugar, our lumber, our shoes, our 
 hats, our medicines, our physicians' bills, our 
 coffins, and the prices on scores of other pro- 
 ducts are fixed by the committees of the com- 
 bine. A convention of undertakers some time 
 ago resolved to abolish the clergy on the last half 
 of the funeral service. If they undertake it, it 
 will probably be done; for Church rituals, and 
 custom, and the most sacred feelings of the hu- 
 man heart are not expected to stand in the way 
 of a modern combine. The National Burial 
 Association has now run the price of caskets so 
 high, as to discourage mortality. A poor man 
 can hardly afford to die any more. No blame is 
 attached to small dealers; they simply take their 
 profits. The Chicago Lumbermen's Exchange 
 declares it "dishonorable" for private dealers to 
 make lower prices than those published by the
 
 Social Transformations 49 
 
 Exchange. The price-lists of the Exchange are 
 revised, and made "honest" monthly. 
 
 A few years ago, a capitalist went into the 
 coal-fields of Pennsylvania with fifty millions, 
 having in view the combining of the four func- 
 tions of producer, and carrier, and dealer, and 
 consumer. A small dealer asked the lieutenant, 
 "What is to become of us small dealers?" The 
 reply was, "If you go to the wall, it is your mis- 
 fortune." 
 
 Any small city could afford a match factory; 
 but if one were started in a small city, the asso- 
 ciation would ship matches to that competing 
 point cheaper than the little company could buy 
 the green wood in the tree. 
 
 A few years ago coal-oil was discovered on 
 the western coast. It was about to be marketed 
 by those who owned it, when the Standard Oil 
 Company laid crude coal-oil down in San Fran- 
 cisco cheaper than the new company could put it 
 into their tanks at the wells; and the reporter 
 says they turned their oil out and down the 
 creeks. 
 
 An association of old rag-dealers was formed 
 4
 
 50 Christ in the Industries 
 
 in Cleveland a few years ago, having for its phi- 
 lanthropic purpose the keeping of the women of 
 the country from making too much profit on the 
 contents of their rag-bags. The association has 
 been very successful. 
 
 Another association was formed not long ago 
 to cool the senseless ardor of the farmers for 
 barbed wire. The farmers got a splendid lesson, 
 for which, of course, they paid. 
 
 The tendency of all business to-day is toward 
 centralization. The small dealer, under present 
 conditions and laws, is fighting a hopeless battle. 
 He must choose between extermination or vas- 
 salage. This is the new survival under which 
 the world groans. In it are involved the most 
 serious issues of the modern age; and through 
 it cruelties are perpetrated more exquisite than 
 were ever known in savage life. We have be- 
 come acquainted with marauding and highway 
 robbery under forms of law. A great problem 
 of social ethics stands for solution. It is easy to 
 see that men are everywhere restless about these 
 things. We all desire industrial peace; but how 
 are we to get it if the old animalism holds the
 
 Social Transformations 51 
 
 day? Organized capital on one hand, and or- 
 ganized labor on the other; a warring of inter- 
 ests, in which every sane man knows the destruc- 
 tion of one is the ruin of the other. What awful 
 insanity; and the end is not yet. 
 
 I confess to have drawn a gloomy picture. 
 It is a dire and relentless conflict in this life hu- 
 man, which means death in the end. Is man to 
 be driven forever by the brute forces, to fight and 
 to die, simply for the end that a stronger race 
 of fighters may come after him, and struggle and 
 die also? This makes life itself a calamity, and 
 puts despair into history. 
 
 4. ftbe IRew Dag of Competitive /Bborals 
 
 Slowly the social mind is coming to the con- 
 clusion that in the tearfulness of this strife of the 
 ages, there has been a common misunderstand- 
 ing arising from a common ignorance of the 
 highest and most powerful forces in the social 
 life of the world; that the human race has been 
 a pathetic sufferer, because its energies have pro- 
 ceeded on the plane of a purely animal life, rather 
 than in the plane of the rivalries which involve
 
 52 Christ in the Industries 
 
 the reason and conscience and faith. Whether 
 this be true or not, is of the greatest importance. 
 What principles are to enter the social life of 
 the world, and which of them are to have social 
 ascendency, is certainly of supreme moment. 
 Facing such things as these, we are not interested 
 in the success of a theory. Where does the truth 
 lie? Is there nothing for the race but this life- 
 and-death struggle, with death having the ad- 
 vantage all the time? Is it so, that as human 
 beings devour one another, it shall have no other 
 meaning than that which it has in the animal 
 world? Are war and strife the lot of man, and 
 peace the exception? If that were so, the race 
 is doomed; and it were better not to live. The 
 human reason may stand in confusion; but the 
 human heart has never been satisfied with any 
 such explanation. 
 
 It may be that the depravities of this strife 
 have kept from view some of the greatest springs 
 of the human spirit. Is it not possible that some 
 of the highest phenomena in the history of hu- 
 man life may not have yet been seen in the crash 
 of these selfish rivalries? May there not be a
 
 Social Transformations 53 
 
 high contention, in which the affections and the 
 humanities hold sway? May there not be a ri- 
 valry of reason and conscience? May not the 
 moral and spiritual activities bring to man finally 
 the equipoise of everlasting peace? The move- 
 ments of history will make no advance for man, 
 and society can in no way be bettered by leaving 
 out the chief things in human nature. And may 
 not this be the reason for the catastrophes of his- 
 tory? Is it a hopeless task to search for the high- 
 est and final laws of human society, or to under- 
 take to interpret them in their most complex 
 aspects, and expect thereby to be led into real life 
 and happiness and peace? Contention for mas- 
 tery, like that among the brutes, as of the biggest 
 dog who takes all the bone and fills himself to 
 gluttony, and then hides the rest from his hungry 
 fellows how destructive of all the highest things 
 in human nature! 
 
 This maddening strife for the stuff of the 
 world, to a thousand-fold more than a sufficiency 
 for a few, and to the stints of poverty for the 
 many, how subversive of all noble sentiment and 
 rational desire!
 
 54 Christ in the Industries 
 
 Benjamin Kidd says: "The two new forces 
 which made their advent with man were his 
 reason and the capacity for acting in concert." 
 Fatal to that position is the fact that the animal 
 world shows both of these. Good horses have 
 horse-sense, which is more than some men have. 
 Pelicans and wild-hogs and wolves act in con- 
 cert. So do the bees and ants and birds. 
 
 For these we substitute two other terms. The 
 one is conscience, the other is spirituality. These 
 are the distinguishing features of human life from 
 all below it Out of these come squarely two 
 facts of human nature: 
 
 (1) The greatest sufferings and sorrows of life 
 arise from moral defections. Always the lesser 
 calamities are the physical. 
 
 (2) Man's spiritual constitution can not be 
 ignored in the forms of human society; because 
 in it, and not in his body, are the springs of his 
 greatest pleasures and pains. 
 
 With these facts kept in the mind, we may 
 come to a permanent understanding of the real 
 causes of the improvement and perpetuity of hu- 
 man institutions. With them in view, we may
 
 Social Transformations 55 
 
 also confidently expect that in the rivalry of races 
 and classes, which is now bringing into play 
 every reserve of power among them, and which 
 seems to be more intense as social conditions 
 become more complex, the races and classes 
 possessed of the greatest moral forces will, from 
 now on, have a decided advantage in the pro- 
 gress they are to make. 
 
 The man who is interested in bread, and not 
 in morals, is helping his country commit suicide. 
 I make not here the special plea of a religious 
 weakling. If society accepts not the terms, I will 
 read its death-warrant. I challenge human soci- 
 ety with the moral order of the universe. To 
 violate that order, is to get the ill-will of events, 
 is to vex God, and court certain dissolution. The 
 question is not first, "Who has the greatest pile 
 of the world's stuff?" but, "Where is the right?" 
 "Where is justice?" When shall men emulate 
 each other in the royal strife of honor? When 
 shall there be a rivalry of human friendship? 
 When shall there be strife for greatest integrity, 
 and for the truth, and for a neighborly spirit? 
 The race, until this time, has had fitful risings
 
 56 Christ in the Industries 
 
 into the sway of vital forces, which has given 
 pure humanity the supremacy; and then for long 
 periods it has been swayed by the brutalities. 
 Persistent and assertive has been this lower side 
 of the race. Whether man's higher nature will 
 ever rise over its fatalities remains to be seen. 
 
 Our hope lies in the one remarkable spectacle 
 we now bring before you. It is the spectacle of 
 a gigantic birth. It was of vast significance from 
 the first; but for a long time the world did not 
 see it. Its beginning forms were secretive, but 
 immeasurably great. It went down at first to 
 move and work among the unknown classes, and 
 to transform them. It was tremendously con- 
 structive. It appeared to draw vitality from the 
 very general decay about it. It brought into the 
 human heart new affinities and new attachments 
 and affections. The world never saw the like of 
 that before. Governments became alarmed at it, 
 and tried to stamp it out ; but they did naught but 
 scatter it, and reveal its altogether uncontrollable 
 virility. It replaced ethnic forms, and spread to 
 become as vast as the sea. It is now no longer 
 contemptible. There is no understanding the
 
 Social Transformations 57 
 
 world to-day, without taking it into account. It 
 has released into the practical life of man the 
 greatest of great motives a love which leads to 
 a disinterested devotion to the welfare of others. 
 This new life has entered the lists for the mastery. 
 It has not suspended the conflict. It has pitched 
 it on a higher key. The world to-day is more 
 and more being caught in the sweep of the beau- 
 tiful ideals and simple life of the founder of Chris- 
 tianity. The races and classes possessing most 
 completely these ideals are the superior races and 
 classes; and they shall inherit the future.
 
 Some Friends of Labor
 
 FOR the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a 
 householder, which went out early in the morning to hire 
 laborers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with 
 the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vine- 
 yard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw 
 others standing idle in the market-place, and said unto them, 
 Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will 
 give you. And they went their way. Again he went out 
 about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about 
 the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing 
 idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day 
 idle ? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. 
 He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard ; and 
 whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even 
 was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, 
 Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from 
 the last unto the first. And when they came that were 
 hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a 
 penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they 
 should have received more ; and they likewise received every 
 man a penny. And when they had received it, they mur- 
 mured against the goodman of the house, saying, These last 
 have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal 
 unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. 
 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee 
 no wrong : didst not thou agree with me for a penny ? 
 Take that thine is, and go thy way : I will give unto this 
 last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do wh? 
 I will with mine own ? Is thine eye evil, because I am 
 good? MATT, xx, 1-15. 
 
 60
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Some Friends of Labor 
 
 1. Cbe Scbool of Cbrift 
 
 IT is a mistake to expect that ease and com- 
 fort may be brought to men indiscriminately. 
 We need not hope to do away with toil and the 
 stints of poverty in this world. Political insti- 
 tutions are not intended to produce universal 
 plenty. There are years of scarcity in the crops, 
 that produce hunger and want. We have gained 
 the victory in the economic world when we have 
 limited poverty to individual cases ; when we have 
 secured society from extended conditions of pov- 
 erty. We shall never be able to protect all beings 
 from disaster, or from the consequences of im- 
 providence and vice. There are always those 
 who blame others for their state in life, when the 
 blame attaches to self. 
 
 Outside hindrances to well-doing are often 
 great; but millions of our people are coming 
 
 from poverty to competence through these 
 61
 
 62 Christ in the Industries 
 
 things. Much temporal grief is born of mis- 
 calculation, and of no calculation. Sufficient 
 unto the day is the evil thereof, does not forbid 
 looking ahead. A splendid picture appeared in 
 one of our monthlies lately. A vigorous lad of 
 nine years is seated on a bench beside a wall 
 counting his pennies. He is a bootblack. He 
 is barefooted, and out at the knees. He has the 
 face of a financier, and future prosperity is in 
 that picture. 
 
 There are those who have not the courage to 
 live within their means. In their pride they try 
 to make a show, and they do not know what 
 economy means. They get a dollar, and spend 
 it unwisely. The mere change a young man 
 throws away, makes all the difference between 
 independence and dependence. When expensive 
 habits are inherited with poverty, there is no way 
 to get along. 
 
 Economy is commendable in whoever has to 
 struggle with poverty. Economy is not penuri- 
 ousness. There is a saving that wastes by turn- 
 ing the saver into a miser. Many go to every 
 school in the land but the school of thrift. And
 
 Some Friends of Labor 63 
 
 the idea prevails that it takes a genius to be a 
 financier. Now the basis of all sound financier- 
 ing is the knowledge that you can not subtract 
 three from two. Give me the tobacco money of 
 any county, and I will keep all the poor in it with 
 comfort. A little foresight, a little self-denial, 
 a little counting of the pennies, a little surrender 
 of pride for the sake of honesty, a little general- 
 ship in small things, will bring many from the 
 ragged edge of penury to a comfortable living. 
 And there is yet a higher motive against im- 
 providence. Thriftless habits produce deformity 
 of character. They carry down with them, di- 
 rectly, business integrity and all high aspiration. 
 The majority of people in these times are not 
 living a hand-to-mouth existence. They have 
 comforts, with the amenities thrown in. They 
 have leisure for refinement, and time for reflec- 
 tion. The average man to-day is a king in a 
 palace compared to that man a thousand years 
 ago. The thought of the world lately has been 
 turned toward the common man and his family. 
 It is a credit to the philanthropy of the time that 
 it shows enthusiasm for the welfare of the whole
 
 64 Christ in the Industries 
 
 race. Much effort is now being made to better 
 the condition of the mass of men. No scheme 
 will ever bring full content into practice; if, in- 
 deed, any prevised scheme at all will ever have 
 application in a practical way. It is sufficient to 
 us that we live in an age of almost universal 
 questioning and experiment with the doctrine of 
 the greatest good to the greatest number. Hu- 
 man society is a vast theme. The human soul 
 is an essence, with such great capacities for 
 pleasure and pain that thought and time and 
 effort devoted to it are small things in any one 
 period of its progress; but that both are now 
 being employed without stint is a sign of prom- 
 ise. We are only impatient because the march 
 of the race is so slow. If we keep our patience, 
 and keep the peace, and keep the law, we shall, 
 in some degree, help on the work of Him who 
 came to preach the gospel to the poor. 
 
 2. abe 1bome 
 
 It ought to be considered a shame for a young 
 man in this country, unmarried and in vigor of 
 health, to call himself poor. If he has none but
 
 Some Friends of Labor 65 
 
 himself to provide for, his native energy is to 
 him all the inheritance of wealth he needs. When 
 that young man gets married, if he marries a 
 woman without property, he is called a poor 
 man poor man. Behold the paradox! 
 
 But if he has come to poverty, he has gained 
 a friend which is more than wealth. It has been 
 made so that the human affections are of univer- 
 sal application. They are sovereign over all 
 rank and station. The springs of greatest earthly 
 joy are not in possessions or positions, but in 
 the affections. The love of man and woman is 
 both pure and holy. The latest and best inter- 
 pretation of the Song of Songs is, that it cele- 
 brates the passion of pure love. The heroine of 
 the song is supposed to be a beautiful woman 
 of Northern Palestine, whom Solomon seeks to 
 win. The women of his court ply their blandish- 
 ments. His own wealth and the honors of the 
 king's spouse are offered; but she remains true 
 to her shepherd lover. The unwavering love of 
 her heart refuses every inducement a Solomon 
 could offer. The affections of her womanly 
 heart triumph over the severest tests. The manly 
 5
 
 66 Christ in the Industries 
 
 shepherd gets his affianced bride, and she makes 
 him rich richer than Solomon. This book ex- 
 alts the changeless devotion of plighted souls. 
 Out of this mystic bond grows the marriage tie. 
 Human love, if it is worthy of its name, knows 
 not the distinctions that wealth brings. When 
 the domestic life is formed from considerations 
 of thrift alone, it is an unholy thing. 
 
 Brother workman: while it is perhaps true 
 that your wife did not accept you because you 
 were poor; but, as you know, she took you in the 
 face of the fact that you were poor what man- 
 ner of man ought you to be? If she prefers you 
 to the richest man in the State, what ought you 
 to think of her? How secure you ought to feel 
 in that woman's love! Success or defeat in life 
 is with the man half the time and the other half, 
 it is with the woman. One of the most pathetic 
 pictures we ever saw was that of a workman, 
 past middle life, and beginning to stoop, having 
 come home from work, standing at the door of 
 his humble cottage, his head against the lintel, 
 his tools on his back, the door shut, wife away, 
 and underneath the words, "No welcome."
 
 Some Friends of Labor 67 
 
 I see another picture, and it is enough to 
 cheer the heart of an anchorite. It is half-past 
 five in the morning. An honest workman sits 
 down to his breakfast with his children about 
 him, and at the other end of the table sits a 
 queenly woman. God is thanked, and the meal 
 is taken. Then, with dinner-bucket in hand, he 
 starts for his work. At noon that kingly man 
 mounts his work-bench, and opens that bucket. 
 There is a snowy napkin tucked in all around 
 the edges. Underneath are the choicest bits of 
 the morning meal, left off the table for that 
 bucket. That man fishes to the bottom of that 
 bucket, and he gets a lump in his throat. The 
 touch of wifely love reaches a strong man's 
 heart, and makes him rich in his toil. He says 
 to himself: "Mary, my wife, is a darling; but she 
 will starve herself and the children for me. I '11 
 carve the middle of the steak for her and the 
 babies in the morning, or I am not the head of 
 the family." When that man goes home at night, 
 the gates of paradise swing open to give him 
 twelve mortal hours of Beulah-land. Shall that 
 man envy any other man on earth? Think you
 
 68 Christ in the Industries 
 
 that his arm will not swing strongly in the com- 
 bat for bread; that he will not look the great 
 world in the face? A good wife to a man is 
 courage and strong-heartedness. The daylight 
 of hope and purpose never went out of an honest 
 man's heart when it was held by the holy com- 
 panionship of the woman loved. A bad home- 
 life will break the heart of adamant, and send 
 the strongest man to despair. A fretful woman, 
 who is dissatisfied with her lot because her hus- 
 band does not make so much money as some 
 other woman's husband, is not the queen of a 
 home, but a pandemonium. If that man keeps 
 his temper to the end of the journey, he shall 
 have great exaltation. 
 
 A good woman, the wife of an honest and 
 industrious workman, presides at the fountain of 
 his happiness; and she wields a power, also, to 
 enhance and secure her own happiness. Her 
 breath is enterprise and thrift to him; and she 
 turns the tides of all battles. Woman's sphere 
 of action is enlarging, and it ought to enlarge, 
 until her opportunities are equal with man's, and 
 on equal terms. But when that is said, we turn
 
 Some Friends of Labor 69 
 
 about to say that the gospel ideal, and the eco- 
 nomic ideal, and nature's social law, is, man the 
 bread-winner, and woman the home-builder. 
 False tastes and false ideas about the domestic 
 life are doing much hurt now. The new woman 
 sounds into the ears of silly girls the alarum of 
 household drudgery; but the new woman dies 
 early, or goes into innocuous desuetude, and 
 these glorious grandmothers, who look with clear 
 eye from the other side of a century of life, have 
 nearly every one of them served their day as 
 household drudges. These people, who start out 
 in this world to escape all drudgery, start on a 
 fool's errand. I shout in your ears the heraldry 
 of the hearthstone. These workmen are all civil- 
 ized; if we can now get them all domesticated, 
 the industrial problem is half solved. 
 
 3, Xabor Organisations 
 
 Labor organizations arc voluntary associ- 
 ations designed to protect and advance the con- 
 dition of the laboring classes. But why should 
 labor organize, when in this country there is al- 
 ways room at the top? The reason is in the fact
 
 70 Christ in the Industries 
 
 that ninety men out of every hundred have no 
 chance to reach the top. Provision must be 
 made for the best things on the plane, where 
 these men are sure to move. Where the interests 
 of the majority are sought, the best place will not 
 be at the top. 
 
 There are thousands of business men to-day 
 who have been very successful, and who think 
 of their success, as it is called, as of doubtful 
 value on the whole. They long for the content- 
 ment they found in the log-cabin, with its oppor- 
 tunities only for a frugal subsistence. The "top" 
 in the world of finance is not a flowery kingdom. 
 A poor man said to a rich man, "I am not rich, 
 and you are." The rich man replied, "Yes; but 
 you can sleep at night, and I can't." That col- 
 loquy does not stand for a rule; but it stands 
 against the fiction that to reach the top, as the 
 world measures it, is to reach an ideal. Why 
 vex the workman by repeating the specious cry, 
 "Rise in life," when there is little hope of doing 
 what is meant, and, if done, it would be of doubt- 
 ful advantage? 
 
 The laborer to-day is interested in whatever
 
 Some Friends of Labor 71 
 
 improves his state as a laborer. His desire, his 
 taste, his ambition, is to be a laborer in the pur- 
 suit he has chosen. He wants play-room in his 
 work. He wants an opportunity to make the 
 most out of himself in the direction of his prefer- 
 ences. We have already made the contention 
 that one kind of business is as great as another. 
 There is no inferior pursuit in the industrial 
 world. One man has as much right to gratify 
 his taste and ability as a carpenter, as another 
 has as a professor. Ways and means are to be 
 provided for the carpenter to have all his rights, 
 and a chance to build his own life in his own 
 business. A man's life can be as successful at 
 the carpenter's bench as in the pulpit. Jesus of 
 Nazareth was a carpenter. The state of wage- 
 earners is not improved by lifting them out of 
 their work, but by improving their condition in 
 their work. 
 
 (1) Labor Unions are designed to remove dis- 
 advantages from the mass of workmen, and to 
 clear the field for equal opportunities. 
 
 (2) The organization of labor affords means 
 for the exchange of industrial ideas among work- 
 men.
 
 72 Christ in the Industries 
 
 (3) Unorganized labor now has no power to 
 protect itself against the encroachments of organ- 
 ized capital. 
 
 (4) Among the incidental advantages of or- 
 ganized labor are the interests and purposes of 
 the union, which seldom fail to give him diver- 
 sion of a healthful kind from the rut and routine 
 of the ordinary laborer's life. It affords him op- 
 portunity to look at his work in a reflective way, 
 and see it all through the eyes of a variety of 
 counselors. The organization, in itself consid- 
 ered, if rightly used, adds to his well-being. It 
 gives him a sight of some things he would not 
 otherwise know. It is nearly sure to make him 
 a broader man. As he stands with his fellows 
 in the union, it becomes a sort of guarantee to 
 him that he will get advantages from the strength 
 of its common understandings and principles. 
 
 (5) The true labor organization is not organ- 
 ized to fight capital as such; but to stand for jus- 
 tice when capital oppresses. 
 
 (6) Labor organizations are now undertaking 
 much educational work among themselves. 
 They establish reading-rooms and libraries, and
 
 Some Friends of Labor 73 
 
 do temperance work. The social life is no incon- 
 siderable feature. It intensifies the greatest truth 
 of their great cause, the brotherhood of the 
 people. 
 
 Community of interest is the bond of union in 
 all these societies. Identity of interest is the 
 magnet that holds capital together as a guard 
 against ruinous competition with itself, and as 
 an artificial means of raising prices. Organized 
 labor is in the same business. Labor and capital 
 also have identity of interests; but strangely the 
 combinations on each side to this time have been 
 set to the key of each being the enemy of the 
 other. With the rights of each in reserve, the 
 prosperity of labor is the welfare of capital, and 
 that capital should have its steady guarantees 
 and commensurate profits, is of the highest self- 
 interest to workmen. This dual fact has not al- 
 ways appeared. The immediate interests of both 
 food and profit have held the day, and the larger 
 interests of a prosperous collective life for both 
 have not been duly considered. The gospel of 
 the new age, the gospel of work, will have a 
 vision to grasp secondary consequences.
 
 74 Christ in the Industries 
 
 Capital, to have its way, would doubtless 
 crush labor into the earth, at least until the time 
 when it had crushed itself by over-reaching. And 
 labor gives evidence of being as remorseless a 
 tyrant as soon as it gets to the top of the hill. It 
 would not do for either to have the whole day. 
 Trusts aim to crush out all who do not come 
 into the combine, and organized labor aims to 
 put successful hindrances in the way of the non- 
 union laborer. If wheat at $1.75 is the result of 
 shortage in crops, it comes under the healthful 
 law that shortage in supply increases the price; 
 but if it is because the world's wheat has been 
 bought up for speculative purposes, it means 
 that a few invisible but omnipresent millionaires 
 are pinching pieces out of the bread in the hands 
 of every hungry child in all the civilized world. 
 How weak and silly it seems, to say that million- 
 aires ought not to do that. But, sirs, Govern- 
 ment has found no way yet to deal successfully 
 with that feature in our industrial life. But all 
 have come to see that there is a point to personal 
 liberty in the use of capital, to which it ought not 
 be permitted to go. Not many years hence this
 
 Some Friends of Labor 75 
 
 new function of government will be operative. 
 On the other hand, it is not morally tenable that 
 the union should say to the non-union worker, 
 "Join the union, or you shall not work." That 
 position will finally break down before the fair- 
 minded. I see no signs of a monopoly of morals 
 on either side; but I see signs of moderation and 
 of a common understanding. 
 
 4. Gbe Ibonorable Bniploger of Habor 
 
 Personal liberty in the industrial world has 
 run to extremes in America. The temptation of 
 those who have power, which they have secured 
 by extra talent or genius, is to use it for self- 
 interest alone. It will doubtless appear as a 
 necessity, that some limit must be put on individ- 
 ual capacity, working under law, in the industrial 
 world. Some men have such vast capacity for 
 getting the substance of this world into their 
 hands that the control of such accumulation be- 
 comes a constant menace to the public. This is 
 the new form in which tyranny is appearing; and 
 so fully alive are the people becoming to its 
 dangers that it is sure to be checkmated not far 
 ahead.
 
 7 6 Christ in the Industries 
 
 When we have said this much against com- 
 bined capital, we have measured the extent of 
 righteous revulsion against individual capitalists. 
 The most profitable man in the community usu- 
 ally is the man who has become the employer of 
 labor. 
 
 The man who builds industrial enterprises, and 
 is constantly turning his thirty or forty or one 
 hundred thousand dollars toward his own thrift 
 and the thrift of those who depend on such men 
 for their own living, is the constant and substan- 
 tial friend of labor. The majority of wage-earn- 
 ers depend on the business success of the local 
 capitalists, who, in the vast majority of cases, 
 acquire only enough capital to make business a 
 success, and not enough to make their posses- 
 sions an oppression. How foolish and short- 
 sighted in these instances for wage-earners to 
 consider themselves on one side of a great battle 
 to make their employers feel their power! How 
 jealous workmen ought to be of the establish- 
 ment of the local capitalist how truly desirous 
 that he should make money, and be able to keep 
 his business on a sound basis! When a man be-
 
 Some Friends of Labor 77 
 
 comes so related to an establishment that in it 
 is his living, all the promptings of self-interest 
 would make him desire its prosperity. It is 
 usually so in these times that workmen know 
 about the profits of the employer of labor; and to 
 urge wages to the point where the business 
 breaks, is suicidal. The enmity of laborers 
 against the capitalists who invest in legitimate 
 enterprises for the purpose of legitimate profits, 
 is both foolish and wicked. It is to the interest 
 of labor everywhere, to keep to the maximum 
 the number of smaller investors of funds. Local 
 capital employing local labor is the ideal for 
 workmen. There needs to be work everywhere 
 for those who prefer to be wage-earners. Their 
 highest interest, therefore, is to foster home cap- 
 ital; not in the sense of giving it all the profits 
 above a bare subsistence, but in the sense of mak- 
 ing it matter of common sense not to kill the 
 goose that lays the golden egg. 
 
 5. Gbe Spirit of Democracy 
 
 A government of the people, by the people, 
 for the people that is democracy. More and 
 more is the cause of labor being bound up with
 
 78 Christ in the Industries 
 
 democratic movements. It has not been long 
 since whole sections of the industrial world were 
 arrayed against each other, through prejudice 
 and a lack of knowledge; and they are now com- 
 ing together, and are seeking a unity of interest, 
 which they feel is surely growing into larger pro- 
 portions for the future. The most impressive 
 movement of the time is the positive tendency 
 of men to make common cause; not for the few, 
 but for the many. Among the nations of Europe, 
 even where all interests might be expected to be 
 still under the spell of the old monarchies, and 
 where the rights of the lowest man not long ago 
 did not disturb anybody but himself, it is evident 
 that there is a slow yet irresistible advance toward 
 a federation of human interests, with a view to 
 bettering the condition of the common people. 
 A deep unity now binds all social interests to- 
 gether. Mutual dependence is the great lesson 
 of to-day. All economic affairs are now so woven 
 and threaded together, that the workmen on one 
 side of the continent are quickly affected by any 
 sort of disaster befalling the workmen on the 
 other side. It will soon be so with the whole 
 world.
 
 Some Friends of Labor 79 
 
 A mighty current of democracy is slowly 
 moving the races. It is an influence too great 
 to be checked; but it must have guidance. The 
 skies are not clear; but the humblest toiler may 
 take hope to-day. The humanities are to 
 triumph, and men are to be chief over things 
 and possessions. 
 
 6. 5esus Cbrist anD tbe Social rfcer 
 
 The greatest friends and foes of society are 
 those which sway it fundamentally. If the foun- 
 dations of the Republic are steady, the Nation 
 is safe. If right principles pervade the industrial 
 world, there will rise to the surface laws and 
 institutions which express constantly better and 
 better conditions. We shall not be able to con- 
 struct ideal conditions instanter. The best social 
 conditions are not constructive at all. They are 
 creative and formative. Society is a life. All its 
 expansions and all its better forms are under 
 the laws of its life. Right ideas and right prin- 
 ciples put into the life of society do their work 
 finally. That is the defense for some of the 
 things I say here, which, for the present, are 
 little more than dreams.
 
 8o Christ in the Industries 
 
 Guizot says that civilization reveals itself by 
 two symptoms the progress of society, and the 
 progress of individuals. He puts the progress of 
 society first, as if it were the initiative; that is, 
 the first thing to take place. He follows this 
 directly with a discussion of the influences of 
 Christianity on the individual man. Christianity, 
 he declares, did not address itself to social con- 
 ditions first, but disclaimed all interference with 
 it; and yet it was "one of the greatest promoters 
 of civilization, because it changed the interior 
 condition of man, his opinions, his sentiments; 
 because it has regenerated his moral, his intel- 
 lectual nature." Social effects and conditions 
 finally converge in the individual man. They 
 all run back to that before they stop. 
 
 Institutions in themselves are pitiful depend- 
 ents. The strength of American character meas- 
 ures the strength of American institutions. 
 There can be no satisfactory outside life in this 
 world without a satisfactory inside life. Desir- 
 able social states and righteous laws were never 
 erected or made to stand over an unrighteous 
 people. The sunrise is not superficial; the whole
 
 Some Friends of Labor 8 1 
 
 earth has to move to get it. As the universe is 
 the expression of God's purpose and thought, so 
 human society is the expression of what man 
 really is. If you would change it, you must 
 change him. Many good purposes toward social 
 amelioration fail because the thing devised is not 
 equal to the work to be done. Charles I, of Eng- 
 land, had an ambition to do great things for his 
 kingdom. Personally, he was accomplished; and 
 he undertook to exalt the people by court enter- 
 tainments, plays, music, and art. He constituted 
 a splendid outside Church equipment; but he 
 made the mistake of addressing himself to the 
 superficial in man. The few advantages of polish 
 in the things he did were overbalanced by the 
 hollowness and lack of seriousness in his work. 
 There were a few advantages in superficial man- 
 ners and show, but at the expense of drawing 
 attention from that quality of work for society 
 which alone abides. The English mind finally 
 revolted against this nonsense court effort of try- 
 ing to regulate man into higher conditions 
 through the sham and dash of high life. 
 
 The saviors of the masses to-day are the men
 
 82 Christ in the Industries 
 
 and women who ordain religious regeneration 
 in the masses. The structure of society can not 
 be changed except from within. All industrial 
 strife will have its experiments and its testing 
 times, and it will have its turns and reverses of 
 fortune, with its evolutions of form; but if it cul- 
 minates in higher stages, or in any positive ad- 
 vance, it will be because there has been invest- 
 ment of character in the personalities behind it 
 all. The renewed personal life is the saving 
 element in every community life. There is not 
 a record in history where religious regeneration 
 has not ordained better social conditions. It is 
 doing so to-day. William Arthur says: "Both 
 the Papist and Positivist schools precognize 
 schemes for the reconstruction of society. Our 
 Lord and his apostles sought its regeneration. 
 They did not look on it as one of those structures 
 made with hands, which can be pulled down and 
 built again; but as a structure built without 
 hands, fitly joined together, not by labor from 
 without, but by life force from within." So, then, 
 the structural forces that build society lie in the 
 things that build character. What shall perpetu-
 
 Some Friends of Labor 83 
 
 ate our institutions? Christian character. What 
 shall furnish the greatest guarantees of safe pas- 
 sage through all industrial perplexity? Christian 
 character. 
 
 It appears to me that this whole interest in 
 the common man to-day is a gospel product. 
 As open-minded men, you are willing to consider 
 a single fact. All the ancient empires despised 
 the common people. The masses threw away 
 their lives at the will of a despot, and they were 
 forced to labor without remuneration. Human 
 life has but little value in China to-day. The 
 advent of Western rulers in India has brought 
 more appreciation to life; but life is not prized 
 in India where the gospel has not gone. It is 
 said that Rome never had the brooding calm of 
 a childhood. Justice was extolled indeed, and 
 it was embraced in a great civil code ; but Roman 
 justice chills the blood. The Roman civil spirit 
 was cold, and heartless, and cruel, and sangui- 
 nary. The spiritual impulses, so essential to a 
 true national life, were absent. She had a pan- 
 theon of conquered deities. Religion with her 
 was an underplay. Rome was never more than a
 
 84 Christ in the Industries 
 
 military society held together by outward force. 
 Splendid cities arose from the lootings of war. 
 Highways and aqueducts were built by captives 
 under the lash of the slave whip. The proudest 
 days of Rome were the days in which human 
 sorrow had its most fearful culmination. Splen- 
 did charnel-house! Proud mausoleum! More 
 instructive to-day than when it was better kept, 
 but not half so full of dead men's bones ! Above 
 all this ancient time why do we so value human 
 life? Why do we contend for the rights of the 
 common laborer? Why do we plead the cause 
 of the underling? Why do we guard against 
 famine and plague? Why do we build hospitals 
 and almshouses? Why do we undertake to nurse 
 the weakest into strength again? It is because 
 we have come to put a very high estimate on 
 human life. This estimate we have, runs back 
 into the gospel. Jesus Christ first held it. Jesus 
 Christ put a price on human life when he bowed 
 his head on Calvary. The worth of a soul moved 
 God to the momentous issues of redemption. 
 
 Jesus Christ has never had a fair hearing in 
 the industrial world. The kingdom of Christ has
 
 Some Friends of Labor 85 
 
 no significance to a majority of these financiers; 
 and they have set the temper of trade. The 
 broader social meanings of the kingdom of 
 Christ seem strange and hidden to these masses 
 of men as they contend and fight for bread. 
 They see injustice over them, and in the grim 
 and iron struggle the humanities seem dead. The 
 wheels of the social machine grind on, and in 
 their efforts to keep from under they get sullen 
 and maddened from all friendship, and they 
 doubt the love of the Divine Christ. 
 
 With these brothers in the strife for bread, 
 is there no chance to get them to stop long 
 enough to look each other in the face? Arrested 
 fellowship has brought all this about; and if the 
 strife goes on, the greatest question directly will 
 not be one of rights, but the fact that all brotherly 
 feeling is dead. With the brotherly feeling would 
 go the humanities, and with the humanities both 
 righteousness and truth, and with these national 
 character. The brotherly feeling born of the 
 Christ-love is not a piece of sentiment; it is a 
 primal element in all good government. It but- 
 tresses all law and all justice, and enthrones order
 
 86 Christ in the Industries 
 
 and secures prosperity. Have you faith that 
 business can ever be spiritualized? Do you not 
 see that the very desirability and need of the 
 supernaturalism of the gospel becomes a part 
 of its great reason just now? Can you think of a 
 greater and more powerfully redeeming force 
 to project into this sordid age than the active 
 principle of the Christ-life, which is love? What 
 force sooner than this will set things in order 
 and stop this confusion, produce a law-abiding 
 citizenship, cleanse politics,, send the saloon to 
 perdition, drive the sharper from business, bring 
 about plainer living with higher thinking, estab- 
 lish social righteousness for rich and poor alike, 
 and enthrone fraternity in the heart of man? 
 
 The chief players in the national game of 
 finance laugh at these questions. The Athenians 
 called Paul a babbler. Romanism first laughed 
 at Luther. The cockneys had a great laugh when 
 John Knox began to pray; but the prayers of 
 John Knox brought thunderbolts from the sky 
 to startle all England. The Church of England 
 folks, and all the people of the eminent propri- 
 eties, were amused at the irregularities and un-
 
 Some Friends of Labor 87 
 
 necessary zeal of the Wesleys and of Whitefield;. 
 but the spiritual life these men awakened changed 
 the temper of English thought, and saved Eng- 
 land from a French Revolution. 
 
 Shall men never learn that the plain gospel 
 has made the deepest law of his history? In 
 this loosening of character in the love of money, 
 there are no palliatives that will cure. There is 
 no fixing of things, no readjustment of political 
 or social forms to take the place of moral reno- 
 vation, and that is a work on character. The 
 true statesman will not be turned from these laws 
 of a nation's life, which have their springs in the 
 gospel, and which give constant streams of fresh 
 blood to the social body, and stability and 
 strength to all civil forms. Honor, justice, faith, 
 these are the voices of the Spirit of God to this 
 opulent civilization. 
 
 7. Social Specialisation tn tbe Cburcb 
 
 The kind of organized expression that the 
 gospel has in this country is an important con- 
 cern. The Church here must not contradict the 
 genius and spirit of popular government. The
 
 88 Christ in the Industries 
 
 same spirit which pervades the public mind 
 politically, will control it religiously to a large 
 extent. There can be no voice from the ecclesia 
 now, which could overthrow the community 
 feelings of the people. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that the early Churches 
 were pure democracies. Among themselves they 
 obliterated everything of rank, or caste, or race; 
 because one of the plainest things in the life and 
 teaching of the Master was that he removed 
 every obstruction between himself and the uni- 
 versal heart. He persistently refused to recog- 
 nize the arbitrary customs which divided men, 
 and that in a time when authority and wealth 
 were unscrupulous and arrogant, and when the 
 class-lines which centuries of habit had made 
 distinct, and which were never more rigid and 
 unyielding. The world at that time was a sort of 
 unbridled centaur; that is, it had a human head 
 and an animal body. There were a few intellect- 
 ual brilliants, but underneath was a black em- 
 pire of the enslaved. Scribes and Pharisees 
 would remove themselves in holy horror from 
 publicans and sinners, when their own houses
 
 Some Friends of Labor 89 
 
 were full of harlots. Christ's words burned as he 
 said: "Woe unto you scribes, Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites, for ye devour widows' houses, and for a 
 pretense make long prayers; therefore ye shall 
 receive the greater damnation." Jesus without 
 hesitation went down through Samaria into Gali- 
 lee, and when the astonished woman said, "How 
 is it that thou, a Jew, speakest to me, who am a 
 woman of Samaria?" Jesus only directs her at- 
 tention to Him who is the Father of us all. 
 When the lawyer wanted to know who his neigh- 
 bor was, he received for an answer the parable 
 of the Good Samaritan. Christ pays as much 
 attention to the poor woman who washes his 
 feet with her tears as to Nicodemus the doctor 
 of laws. Christ goes to the transfiguration, and 
 comes down to gird himself with a towel. He 
 feeds the thousands, and then goes into the 
 mountain to pray. He refuses the crown of 
 Israel; but he takes little children in his arms to 
 bless them. Christ begins his public ministry 
 by saying, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
 because he hath anointed me to preach the gos- 
 pel to the poor." After this inaugural of his
 
 90 Christ in the Industries 
 
 gospel, he says, "Go tell John what things ye 
 have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the 
 lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
 the dead are raised, and to the poor the gospel 
 is preached." 
 
 Jesus Christ had no adroit diplomacies; he 
 had no settlings of precedence; he did not rise 
 above these angry differences among men; he 
 buried them. The color-line he rubs out. There 
 is no black man in Christ; no yellow man; no 
 red man; no white man. We are all one. "For 
 by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, 
 whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be 
 bond or free, and have all been made to drink 
 into one Spirit." "There is neither Jew nor 
 Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
 neither male nor female, for ye are all one in 
 Christ Jesus." The gospel brings men together 
 on a plane where race affinities do not rasp. It 
 brings capital and labor together above the capi- 
 talist's head. 
 
 Many of the tendencies of a complex industrial 
 life are toward an extreme differentiation of 
 classes. So, according to taste, and rarity of skill,
 
 Some Friends of Labor 91 
 
 and divergent pursuits, men divide into guilds, 
 and clubs, and lodges, and protective organiza- 
 tions; but the gospel brings all the craftsmen 
 together as workmen and servants of the human 
 race. Religion is the common element which 
 makes them acquainted and also akin. 
 
 One of the most serious incidental hindrances 
 to the progress of the gospel is the palpable fact 
 that many of the local Churches in this country 
 have been like the class organizations, following 
 the line of least resistance. The Churches show 
 a very prominent social specialization. There 
 are uptown Churches and downtown Churches. 
 There are society Churches and laborers' 
 Churches. There are Churches for the rich and 
 Churches for the poor. It is only to be expected 
 that people with select social sympathies should 
 desire that they should receive the religious sanc- 
 tions, and those sanctions may be rightfully given 
 when these special feelings are only socially ex- 
 pressed; but it is a great disaster that the life of 
 the Church be touched with such a spirit, for the 
 plain reason that socially we may have some 
 rights of preference, and religiously we have not.
 
 92 Christ in the Industries 
 
 Any man, white or black, is my brother if he be 
 Christ's man, and I am obliged to fraternize. 
 
 That any of our Churches should have dis- 
 tinctly graded social features, is a distasteful idea 
 to workmen. The self-respecting workman does 
 not wish to be patronized. He does not wish 
 social elevation offered him. And he will not 
 suffer the prevailing social pulse of a Church 
 politely to neglect him. He is no better pleased 
 with a Church made up of his own class. The 
 offense against the spirit of the gospel is not miti- 
 gated by that fact. The house of God and its 
 work should be the place where no distinctions 
 whatever are made; where the passport to all 
 rights, and privileges, and welcomes, is a saintly 
 walk before God. Wherever employers and the 
 employed worship freely at the same altars, the 
 labor problem is already solved. The labor 
 problem stands solved in every healthful Church 
 life in America. Faith is always superficial until 
 it gets above working along lines of social taste. 
 The Church which dares to put its rich and poor 
 together in the same seats, and calls them to 
 drink the sacramental emblems from the same
 
 Some Friends of Labor 93 
 
 cup, is the only Church to-day qualified for its 
 work parity of sacred right, parity of privilege, 
 parity of fellowship. The Church which banishes 
 the barriers, which courts favor neither of the 
 rich nor the poor, but shows Christ the Savior of 
 sinners to all alike, will have a large mission in 
 settling the perplexities of the industries.
 
 Some Industrial Problems 
 
 9.S
 
 NEITHER was there any among them that lacked : for as 
 many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and 
 brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid 
 them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made 
 unto every man according as he had need. And Joses, who 
 by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being in- 
 terpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the 
 country of Cyprus, having land, sold it, and brought the 
 money, and laid it at the apostles' feet. ACTS iv, 34-37. 
 
 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, 
 sold a possession, and kept back part of the price, his wife 
 also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid 
 it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath 
 Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep 
 back part of the price of the land? While it remained, was 
 it not thine own ? and after it was sold, was it not in thine 
 own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine 
 heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And 
 Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the 
 ghost : and great fear came on all them that heard these 
 things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and car- 
 ried him out, and buried him. And it was about the space 
 of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was 
 done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me 
 whether ye sold the land for so much ? And she said, Yea, 
 for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye 
 have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? be- 
 hold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are 
 at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down 
 straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost : and the 
 young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her 
 forth, buried her by her husband. And great fear came 
 upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these 
 things. ACTS v, i-n. 
 
 96
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Some Industrial Problems 
 
 I. "Radical Socialism 
 
 ONE of the significant features of Western 
 civilization is the growth in it of what is known 
 as Socialism. The term itself is a broad one 
 broad enough to include the industries but for 
 definite meaning it needs classification. That 
 can not be attempted in these pages. It were 
 better to use the term here as one standing for 
 a general social movement, whose special char- 
 acteristic is opposition to the established order. 
 The term at first was a hated one. In its radical 
 forms it stood for the overthrow of society as 
 we now accept it, without being at all particular 
 as to the method. It therefore received the re- 
 sentment of civil governments. It had visions, 
 with wild and revolutionary schemes of the most 
 startling character. But it also had in it that 
 which made it attractive to many minds. The 
 cry of the oppressed was in it a cry which has 
 7 97
 
 98 Christ in the Indiistries 
 
 always awakened sympathy where the doctrines 
 of the Christ have gone. The socialist spirit has 
 had a steady growth from its beginning. Its first 
 forms were largely negative. It was believed that 
 the present order and form of human society 
 was in the way of all socialistic ideals, and that 
 it must first be gotten out of the way. It had for 
 its simple negative philosophy the proposition, 
 "Do not begin to build until the place for the 
 foundation has been cleaned." Though nega- 
 tive, it was not altogether non-resistant. There 
 was advocacy of force in defiance of government. 
 It repudiated all lessons from the logic of events. 
 It scorned sentimental politics and history. It 
 made its appeals to ignorance and passion. It 
 was as sanguinary as the authorities would allow. 
 
 This was the spirit of radical socialism in Ger- 
 many. This was the meaning of Communism in 
 France, which showed itself in such violence in 
 1871. This was the meaning of Nihilism in 
 Russia, as the term itself implies. 
 
 The later socialist spirit has largely repudiated 
 force in the overthrow of existing things, on the
 
 Some Industrial Problems 99 
 
 ground that an innovation in human society can 
 not succeed by force. 
 
 Here is the general negative policy of Social- 
 ism: 
 
 (1) The abolition of property. 
 
 (2) Social liberty rather than individual lib- 
 erty. 
 
 (3) The abolition of class distinctions. 
 
 (4) The abolition of inheritance. 
 
 (5) The abolition of children. 
 
 (6) The abolition of marriage. 
 
 (7) Legislation entirely in the interests of the 
 laborer. 
 
 (8) Abolition of wages as pay for labor. 
 
 It is but fair to say, however, that the lapse 
 of years has very greatly modified many of these 
 radical features; and with the mass of socialists 
 to-day there is more of reason, and less of wild 
 scheming for an earthly Utopia. The whole spirit 
 of socialism in Europe has become more moder- 
 ate, and its growth has been accelerated by that 
 fact. It has shown frequent surprises in recent 
 elections. There are large territories in which
 
 ioo Christ in the Industries 
 
 it has come to recognition and so-called respect- 
 ability, and evidently as a whole it is to have a 
 destiny. 
 
 The socialistic elements in American life can 
 not be regarded as altogether an undesirable fea- 
 ture. The socialistic idea here, in general, pre- 
 sents itself somewhat after the manner of Eng- 
 lish social movements. Our social theories, like 
 the purely political forms of our Government, are 
 more like the English than the French or the 
 German. We have never had as radical expres- 
 sions of socialism in America as have been wit- 
 nessed in Europe. We have, perhaps, not had 
 as aggravating conditions to bring it about. The 
 pent-up fires here are under control. Our people 
 are all citizens, with a voice in the Government; 
 and the responsibility of preserving it, as well as 
 the power to bring about changes for the possible 
 better, make our people conservative. 
 
 2. Unceptive Bmerican Socialism 
 
 The earlier socialistic experiments in this 
 country are associated with a few significant 
 names, high in literature and statesmanship.
 
 Some Industrial Problems 101 
 
 William H. Channing, George William Curtis, 
 Charles A. Dana, John S. Dwight, James Russell 
 Lowell, D. S. Oliphant, W. W. Story, John G. 
 Whittier, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Albert Brisbane, 
 Theodore Parker, Fanny Wright, Elizabeth P. 
 Peabody, Horace Greeley, and others, all of 
 these, in greater or less degree, accepted social- 
 ism as the early dream of their lives. Nearly all 
 of these, also, after a time of thought and ex- 
 periment, turned aside to follow the tested and 
 accepted methods in which the mass of mankind 
 believe. 
 
 But the genius of these names, rising up to 
 advocate socialistic theories, all the way between 
 1825 and 1840, not only affected human thought 
 in and about the mostly sporadic efforts which 
 were made toward a better life, but, in the nature 
 of the case, they influenced the thought of the 
 nation. Socialistic periodicals were established, 
 and these minds furnished them with articles. 
 The New York Tribune had at one time a depart- 
 ment of socialism, which did effective work in 
 propagating the doctrines. 
 
 The history of inceptive socialism in this coun-
 
 IO2 Christ in the Industries 
 
 try focalizes about two names, Charles Fourier 
 and Robert Owen. 
 
 Fourier was born in France just before the 
 American Revolution, and at the close of that 
 war France was pushing his theories to their 
 issues. He had a brilliant and erratic mind. He 
 was a philosophical socialist of high order. In 
 brief and crude statement his theory is as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 In the nature and constitution of things there 
 are laws of attraction working from within out- 
 ward, which are sufficiently powerful when 
 known and applied, to equalize themselves in 
 practice, and bring order and harmony every- 
 where. As particles of matter are attracted to 
 form the earth, and as the solar system moves on 
 without jarring and friction by like silent influ- 
 ences, so in society; if the operation of the har- 
 monic forces is given room, all such conditions 
 as want and poverty and strife and selfishness 
 and dishonesty will give way, and absolute peace 
 and harmony will prevail on the earth. To give 
 free course to these principles of attraction, which 
 are to do away with the evils of the world, he
 
 Some Industrial Problems 103 
 
 resorts to a critical analysis of man's nature, and 
 he discusses very fully the relation he holds to 
 human society. It is a far-drawn and obscure 
 system, with features in it in which the author 
 has evidently not thought himself through. But 
 he is animated with the highest motives, and 
 shows a large love for the race. He has in mind 
 not only the practical and possible by tested 
 methods, but the highest conceivable by his own 
 methods. He stumbled and fell over the stub- 
 born fact that the thoughts of the brain are not 
 all to be realized in practical life. He undertook 
 to bring man up to what he ought to be, by 
 methods which leave out of account what he is. 
 That was the weakness of his great nature, and 
 the failure of his system. Fourier's doctrines 
 were brought to this country by Albert Bris- 
 bane, and Victor Considerant, and others; and 
 there were repeated attempts to put them into 
 practice in the experiments which were tried 
 through the Eastern and Northern States during 
 the period to which we have alluded. 
 
 Robert Owen a man of great force of char- 
 acter first tried a scheme for the betterment of
 
 104 Christ in the Industries 
 
 workmen, in the shape of a co-operative society 
 in New Lanark, England. 'There is no doubt 
 about its marvelous success for a time. His 
 achievement among sturdy and steady-going 
 English workmen threw a glamour over his mind, 
 and he came to America a talented dreamer. 
 Some slight friction with the ecclesiastics in his 
 New Lanark enterprise was doubtless the occa- 
 sion of his revulsion against religion, which was 
 followed by a practical repudiation of all faith, 
 and the attempted construction of a social organ- 
 ization leaving God out of the estimate. 
 
 He began with eighty souls on the banks of 
 the Wabash, in New Harmony, Indiana. The 
 movement was laid out on a large scale, and 
 attracted more attention than any other experi- 
 ment in America, except perhaps that of Brook 
 Farm. In and about New Harmony to this day 
 may be seen many harmless traces of a splendid 
 and iridescent social dream. Many smaller so- 
 cieties of the Owen type were organized such 
 as those of Blue Springs, and Forrestville, and 
 Macluria, in Indiana; and such as Franklyn, and 
 Haverstraw, in New York ; and Kendall and Yel-
 
 Some Industrial Problems 105 
 
 low Springs, in Ohio. The Fourier type of soci- 
 ties largely outnumbered the Owen type. Of 
 these, there were three in Massachusetts, six in 
 Pennsylvania, two in New Jersey, six in New 
 York, eight in Ohio, three in Illinois, two in 
 Michigan, and three in Wisconsin, with two other 
 States represented by one or more societies. 
 These contained at one time as many as ten thou- 
 sand members. They owned many thousand 
 acres of land. In the flush of their beginning, 
 they had great prosperity. It looked as if the key 
 to human happiness had been found, and the 
 door to the palace about to be opened. But the 
 consequences of all of it are without dignity. 
 The American mind has almost forgotten the 
 movement; but, without question, this teaching 
 and experiment has left its influence as a deposit 
 on the social thinking of Americans. These first 
 social experiments had the merit of being ami- 
 able. There was no negative movement to over- 
 throw society, but an attempted recreation in its 
 midst. All change was to be accomplished 
 through peaceable methods. An appeal was 
 made to reason and test, and that appeal failed.
 
 io6 Christ in the Industries 
 
 All movements of that kind in a free country are 
 legitimate, and among an intelligent self-govern- 
 ing people can not be regarded as dangerous. 
 They are furthermore very instructive. They 
 show how not to do it. They demonstrate the 
 fact that constructed social schemes will no more 
 work than machines of perpetual motion. The 
 fundamental forces in human society are bio- 
 logical. We shall move into whatever is good 
 in the social spirit by steps of conservative pro- 
 gression. 
 
 This interest which the world is now taking 
 in its associative life is not a sign of backward 
 movement. An age which has in it no possibili- 
 ties of making the masses of the people comfort- 
 able, will not likely produce socialistic theories. 
 India and China and Africa have no social ques- 
 tions. These phenomena with which we are deal- 
 ing are only found among the most advanced 
 and progressive peoples. A non-progressive 
 people is never moved and kindled to the milder 
 feelings of philanthropy, which lead the common 
 mind patiently to inquire for the best social and 
 industrial things for all. Any theory of associ-
 
 Some Industrial Problems 107 
 
 ative living has right of way in these times to 
 propagate itself under the rules of government 
 which now exist, and by peaceable propagand- 
 ism to make headway if it is able to do so. Under 
 this common right the socialistic spirit to-day 
 has so advanced as to claim the serious atten- 
 tion and study of all thinkers; and whoever will 
 interpret the times must not leave it out. In the 
 manifest drift of the modern world toward the 
 expansion of the powers of government on one 
 hand, and the alleviation of the distress of the 
 submerged classes on the other, socialism has 
 had its place, and with it we must reckon. It 
 has sent many vagaries into the world's thought. 
 Some of its industrial schemes are never to be 
 realized. As the order of society receives its 
 vast improvements, as its evolutions bring about 
 changes for the betterment of universal man, 
 these changes may not be in the direction of 
 socialism in itself considered; but they will be 
 under the control of that particular temper of 
 the modern world which has occasioned all this 
 socialistic awakening. 
 
 Radical socialism as a particular scheme, how-
 
 io8 Christ in the Industries 
 
 ever, will not likely have large success in the 
 future, for the following reasons: 
 
 (1) The human heart is too selfish yet for 
 close organization. 
 
 (2) Socialism shows special weakness in the 
 face of intemperance, idleness, and dishonesty. 
 
 (3) Socialism is given to advancing theories 
 under an enormous miscalculation of human ca- 
 pabilities. 
 
 (4) Any prevised social theory is impractical, 
 to the degree that it repudiates experience as a 
 guide. 
 
 (5) A fine condition of things may be planned, 
 if man will only lay down his selfishness. As a 
 matter of fact, disinterestedness is only an occa- 
 sional virtue. Socialism does not provide for this 
 contingency. 
 
 (6) Socialism implies contradictory traits in 
 human nature. The spirit of each one must be 
 so unselfish as to make continuous sacrifice for 
 others, and also so unworthy as to let others 
 sacrifice for it.
 
 Some Industrial Problems 109 
 
 3. Christian Socialism 
 
 In the early history of the Church we have an 
 example of socialism, given without unfavorable 
 comment. They had all things in common, and 
 "to each was distributed as he had need." Joses 
 sold his land, and brought the money and laid it 
 at the apostles' feet. Ananias and Sapphira sold 
 their possessions, and brought a part, with the 
 result known. This record has often been given 
 as authority for bringing the world to this stand- 
 ard of living. It has been the occasion, at least, 
 of many experiments among believers. The 
 monasteries and nunneries are types of these 
 efforts. The Rappites and Zoarites and Shakers 
 shape their affairs by this pattern. 
 
 If the following distinctions are kept in mind, 
 we shall have no difficulty with this Biblical case 
 in the face of general experience. 
 
 (i) This community of goods among the early 
 Christians was a voluntary arrangement, and was 
 not set forth by them as a part of the Christian 
 doctrine. Their manner of living has no positive 
 indorsement from the Word.
 
 no Christ in the Industries 
 
 (2) The punishment of Ananias and Sapphira 
 was not for failure to submit to the terms of the 
 community covenant, for they were free not to 
 do so; but for lying. 
 
 (3) This community was constituted for a re- 
 ligious purpose and end, and not a social. The 
 early Christians were persecuted, and they 
 banded together for mutual protection. 
 
 (4) It was a temporary expedient, and was 
 never offered as the pattern of human society. 
 
 (5) It is not referred to elsewhere, and the 
 other Churches did not take it up. 
 
 (6) It was short-lived, and probably was not 
 satisfactory to those who had embraced it. As 
 a type of social living, it was too close for even 
 those who were bound by the divine fellowship 
 in Christ. 
 
 (7) The Bible recognizes and indorses private 
 property. 
 
 Christian socialism, as it is understood to-day, 
 does not, in many of its forms, proclaim the abo- 
 lition of private property. It claims that the in- 
 dustrial ills of society exist because there is a 
 lack of Christianity in the social order. The
 
 Some Industrial Problems in 
 
 solution of all questions, they say, lies in the 
 Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. 
 Christ was the great socialist. Christ healed 
 men's souls; but he healed their bodies as well, 
 and fed them. Business must be founded on the 
 social law of the gospel, which involves the prin- 
 ciple of combination rather than competition. 
 Christianity demands a system of business car- 
 ried on for the public good, rather than private 
 profit. This is the position of Christian social- 
 ism. In its main features it advocates no im- 
 moderate or radical measures. It proposes to 
 have experience and science test the unfolding 
 methods by which man shall be brought to the 
 true Biblical brotherhood. 
 
 The manifesto issued by the Christian Social- 
 ist Society of London is as follows: 
 
 (1) Christian socialism aims at embodying 
 the principles contained in the life and teachings 
 of Christ in the industrial organization of society. 
 
 (2) The Christian Socialist Society believes 
 that, by the changes it advocates in the industrial 
 system, men will be enabled, under the altered 
 conditions of modern life, to put into practice
 
 ii2 Christ in the Industries 
 
 the principles taught by Christians in all their 
 dealings with one another as fellow-men and as 
 fellow-citizens. 
 
 (3) The Society is independent of special theo- 
 logical views, and welcomes as members those 
 who desire to subordinate their private advan- 
 tage to the good of the Commonwealth, and of 
 mankind, and to strive for the knowledge and 
 power of doing it in the best and highest manner 
 possible. 
 
 To organize under such a manifesto is great 
 and broad, but vague. It takes in all the general 
 principles of Christian teaching, for which the 
 mass of believers are laboring. It is a compre- 
 hensive program, but exceedingly indefinite. It 
 is a committee on resolutions, which ought to 
 be consolidated with the committee on ways and 
 means. 
 
 As an illustration of social impracticability, 
 here are the propositions of another society : 
 
 (1) Keep capitalists and saloon-keepers from 
 ruining politics. 
 
 (2) Look out for the caucus. 
 
 (3) More socialistic legislation.
 
 Some Industrial Problems 113 
 
 (4) The Australian ballot system. 
 
 (5) A free ballot. 
 
 (6) Relief works for the unemployed. 
 
 (7) Dwellings erected and sold to workmen 
 for the cost of production. 
 
 (8) If a man has no trade, teach him one. 
 
 (9) Concentrate taxation more and more on 
 land. 
 
 (10) Declare all mines public property, 
 (n) An eight-hour day. 
 
 (12) A half-holiday on Saturday. 
 
 (13) A Sunday of rest for all. 
 
 (14) Enfranchisement of women. 
 
 (15) Removal of the poll-tax. 
 
 (16) Free technical education. 
 
 (17) A public midday meal for each scholar. 
 
 (18) Government control of telegraphs, rail- 
 roads, light and coal and gas companies. 
 
 (19) The gradual nationalization of all great 
 enterprises in which the public are interested. 
 
 (20) Radically reform the civil service. 
 There are some splendid things here. It is 
 
 a bill of fare, out of which each appetite can get 
 something it likes. But who would want to
 
 ii4 Christ in the Industries 
 
 swallow the whole bill of fare? The very cata- 
 logue itself constitutes it a list of childish wishes. 
 Some of these things are already realized; some 
 others ought to be, or are in process of being 
 realized; and others, under human nature, are 
 chimerical. An organization having that list for 
 its base may have many good purposes; but it has 
 no practical sagacity. A good purpose may be 
 animated by an exalted spirit, and yet be defeated 
 by mental confusion. 
 
 4. Bationaltem 
 
 Nationalism, as one of the newer industrial 
 schemes, claims a communistic base with a phil- 
 anthropic purpose. It aims at an entire control 
 of production by the nation. It is a complete 
 paternity in government, in which the nation 
 undertakes to clothe the backs and fill the stom- 
 achs of all the people, and to welcome all comers. 
 As an intellectual ferment, it is a success. For 
 the impracticability of its methods, it is not ex- 
 celled by any scheme in print. It has secured 
 converts largely among people of literary tastes, 
 having a philanthropic turn of mind with defect
 
 Some Industrial P rob Ions 115 
 
 of logical faculty. We must have respect for 
 some of its purposes, as we have regard for the 
 principles on which ideals are built; and they 
 have the full force of an ideal for the mind. Vir- 
 tue, peace, plenty for all, contentment, happiness, 
 absence from carking care, these are the con- 
 ditions for which matter-of-fact people have been 
 toiling for centuries; and they have been toiling 
 with every motive about them for the use of the 
 best possible methods. Many of these toilers 
 have had experience enough with the obstinacy 
 of the human heart to know that it will not yield 
 to these superficial schemes. People who are not 
 equal to the constancy of daily effort in small 
 ways for the betterment of the world ; people who 
 are slack in daily works of grace and charity; 
 people who think that child-training is a little 
 business, and preaching and Sunday-school work 
 too slow, are seldom equal to the projection of 
 schemes of any practical moment to the world. 
 The defects of government which nationalism 
 has overcome are yet on paper. It has not yet 
 shown what it can do. Its theories and plans 
 are pictures of a despotism which every Ameri-
 
 n6 Christ in the Industries 
 
 can has dreaded since the conflict for independ- 
 ence. To accept these would be a leap in the 
 dark with all the economic principles which have 
 proved reliable for a thousand years. It will be 
 safe to predict that the old order standeth. There 
 will be no sudden transformations or upheavals. 
 The things man has learned of liberty and prog- 
 ress are to remain. They will not be exchanged 
 for the newest thing out. These things we see 
 of law and order, these things we understand 
 about what civil society is for, its limits and its 
 possibilities, with the individual and his rights, 
 are not to be overthrown. They have come to 
 us one by one, and have had application little by 
 little, and they will stand all the attacks of swift 
 visionaries, as Gibraltar stands the lashing of the 
 waves. These social forms which now prevail are 
 the expressions in a collective way of what man 
 is in his inmost nature. For these forms to 
 change suddenly, is for human nature to change 
 suddenly. 
 
 Human nature might take a tumble, and come 
 out a new thing in a night, and fit itself to the
 
 Some Industrial Problems 117 
 
 creations of the social dreamer; but what has 
 not been, is not likely to be. 
 
 The people of this country have but little need 
 of these social doctors who have never tested 
 their nostrums anywhere. These offerers and 
 advocates of strange and revolutionary schemes 
 never see them adopted. They make a show; 
 they promise the millennium; they disturb the 
 minds of a few; they make fanatical advocates 
 out of a few more; they flash in and flash out like 
 comets in the solar system, and we do not see 
 their uses unless it be incidentally to show the 
 greatness and superiority of the regular system. 
 
 Out of the evils of this time there may not be 
 any swift upcome; but we are nearly sure to have 
 a conservative progression. 
 
 Among a free people who are self-governing, 
 there must be constant vigilance; there must be 
 the careful molding of thought and opinion ; there 
 must be increasing reform of abuses; there must 
 be the sternest contention for civil righteousness, 
 but no overturn of these tried and great primal 
 elements of government, on which the world now
 
 n8 Christ in the Industries 
 
 so securely rests. We shall certainly be able to 
 cure some ailments, without taking off the pa- 
 tient's head. We need only such changes as will 
 gradually come about to meet new conditions, 
 and only such changes as are able to stand the 
 test of time and experiment, and such as are 
 modest enough to consent to some smaller appli- 
 cations first, and then by degrees make their ap- 
 peals to the common sense of mankind, and, if 
 they are equal to it, to reach out and accomplish 
 the fullest needs of the world. 
 
 Now, let us clearly apprehend another matter 
 here. Social laws are laws of life, and laws of life 
 are not to be put under duress. When we talk 
 of the community, we talk of an organism with 
 the most delicate and complicated functions. 
 This must be understood by all who would help 
 it in any way. The invention of a social system 
 on paper is the purest nonsense. As well try to 
 invent a tree, by taking a stick and nailing on 
 limbs. A tree may be changed and reshaped for 
 the better, but only according to the law of its 
 own life. Society may be controlled and quick- 
 ened by working in harmony with its own laws,
 
 Some Industrial Problems 
 
 119 
 
 and in no other way. It is a matter of common 
 observation that social betterments do not come 
 about in ways ordinarily expected. So deep and 
 occult are the causes of all real social change, 
 that the common mind nearly always grasps and 
 gives credit to some passing or final phase of the 
 uplift. It sees only the outwardly phenomenal, 
 and makes its estimates from surface appear- 
 ances. 
 
 Human society is the institutional expression 
 of man's associative activities. It is dynamic. 
 It is never fixed and stable. It had its begin- 
 nings in ignorance and barbarism. It started 
 with the dawn of intelligence, and it has no end- 
 ing. It is on its way, not to its own destiny and 
 finish, but to man's destiny. It voices at any 
 specified time substantially the state of self-con- 
 trol to which man has arrived. 
 
 5. agriculture 
 
 It is an accepted economic principle that the 
 products of the soil lie at the foundation of the 
 world's prosperity. This is so, because of the 
 clear but profound fact that man can not live on
 
 I2O Christ in the Industries 
 
 the inorganic elements. His food must be trans- 
 muted into life before he can digest it. Chemistry 
 is at work, at odd times, on the effort to change 
 the bulk material of the earth directly into a 
 digestible product, but without success. Man's 
 food is organic. The soil is man's base of supply 
 for food. Everything of wearing apparel also, 
 with all manufactured products reaches the soil 
 with only a step or two backward. We must not 
 forget that the soil is the mother of us all, and 
 also the bosom of our final rest. Agricultural 
 prosperity means general prosperity, and its de- 
 pression means a break in the industries finally. 
 It is the soil against the world. The self-reliant 
 nation is the one with a food product. The man 
 also who has resources for feeding himself is 
 most self-reliant. 
 
 Only a few years ago it was supposed that our 
 country had an exhaustless landed area. Atten- 
 tion to the growth of our cities and manufactur- 
 ing interests appeared to be the wise policy. We 
 have suddenly awakened to the fact that the 
 available land for agriculture has all been taken 
 and nearly all put into use, and that at the present
 
 Some Industrial Problems 121 
 
 rate of increase of urban and rural population, 
 it will not be long till half the population of the 
 country will be in the cities and towns. Just 
 ahead, evidently, there will be an excess of artisan 
 labor, unless foreign trade should give relief. 
 With the increased power which machinery has 
 given to production, there will go into the mar- 
 kets an overproportion of manufactured pro- 
 ducts, to bring congestions and shut-downs to the 
 despair of large numbers. Yet the movement 
 from country life to city life has not abated. Our 
 people think city life a higher life. They think 
 it easier. They believe its severities to be less. 
 New England has thousands of vacated farms. 
 Excess of laborers in the city, and the country 
 regions needing that labor to develop and im- 
 prove and make the lands productive that is 
 the situation. There could not be such a con- 
 dition as excess of labor on the farm. There 
 could be an amount of labor which is not profit- 
 able under present conditions, which is partly the 
 fault of agricultural methods, and the ideas we 
 have of living. If enough labor can be gotten 
 on the soil, it will produce food for all, abundant
 
 122 Christ in the Industries 
 
 and cheap. One acre of fertile land, with a few 
 days of work, will produce food for a family for 
 months. A wage-earner will give for the same 
 amount of food several times as much work. 
 Would it not be better, therefore, for larger num- 
 bers of workmen to invest their labor in the soil 
 rather than in wages? We have in view here the 
 question of bread. The country offers a chance 
 to stop all hunger. The city is not self-contained 
 in that sense. It is better for a well-fed man to 
 have plain surroundings and common clothes 
 than for a hungry man to have spotless garments 
 and live in style. It is so, as a fact, that the coun- 
 try affords room for few laborers at profitable 
 rates for those who employ, but room could be 
 made for an indefinite number. 
 
 But whether this be true or not, if the energy 
 and force of the country for another generation 
 comes to town to compete with an already full 
 quota of labor, what is to be the result? It will 
 not be necessary to make a plea for the isolation 
 of country life. There are always those whose 
 tastes hold them to what others would think the 
 solitude of the farm, and these will be insufficient
 
 Some Industrial Problems 123 
 
 numbers to hold outlying regions. We speak 
 of agricultural pursuits only. The custom of 
 Europe for generations with the agricultural 
 class is urban residence. They find home, and 
 society, and the Church in town, and bread in the 
 country. The first economic question is bread. 
 The soil supplies that. Soil cultivation within 
 itself will not supply man with the full necessities 
 of a civilized life, but it answers the question, 
 Where shall the people get bread? 
 
 The rush of our people into mechanical and 
 commercial and professional pursuits has hin- 
 dered the division of soil ownership into smaller 
 tracts, which would have been better for both the 
 tiller and the care of the soil, much of which is 
 being neglected. Its fertility is slipping down 
 the valleys to be carried away. These skinned 
 hills represent venality. It is a wanton waste of 
 the best God has given us. 
 
 6. Cbe l?tn& of "GOorft to be Bone at tbe JSottom 
 
 Industrial schemes break down when they 
 come to the edge of the slums. These are not fit 
 for the industries. They are so sodden and dead
 
 124 Christ in the Industries 
 
 to the advantages of economic concerns that 
 they can not be induced to take their place in 
 them. They are like insensible victims in a poi- 
 soned miasm; you shout to them, but they can 
 not hear you. Put them all in palaces, and they 
 would turn these palaces into dens, or run away 
 and leave them. In increasing numbers they are 
 going lower. They live in the shadows of spires 
 and granite blocks. From the people across the 
 streets they are separated by a thousand years 
 of progress. Individual units of this dark Tarta- 
 rus go out to the establishments in the morning, 
 and return at night. They are in a treadmill 
 without any stipulations for getting off. They 
 are in the gradgrind, and they are without power 
 of self-deliverance. Human nature unaided has 
 never been equal to such a state. These people 
 must have help that is certain. But of what 
 kind? There must be law. There must be mu- 
 nicipal and State provision for the most com- 
 pletely depressed. There must be strict police 
 surveillance. There may be needed the enlarge- 
 ment of the powers of government over certain 
 agencies which the law does not now recognize;
 
 Some Industrial Problems 125 
 
 such as some new features in education and sani- 
 tation; such as the isolation of moral lunatics, 
 and the prevention of marriage where heredity 
 has fastened a taint that would be perpetuated 
 by marriage; but the only hope of this class is 
 moral elevation. The alternative of this is despair. 
 And despair is un-American. 
 
 The common principles and plans for the 
 moral regeneration of men are now generally 
 well understood. Time and again they have been 
 tested. They have lifted the lowest peoples into 
 better states. Christian ethics is of universal ap- 
 plication. Its methods are not experiments. It 
 only needs executors and representatives of its 
 power. It has never failed where fairly pro- 
 claimed. The only efficient moral life to-day is 
 that which is intensified with the Christ-spirit. 
 It takes the Christ passion to make morals strong 
 enough for the slums. Morals must be raised to 
 a power to reach the lowest strata of society. 
 There must not be a spot on earth too black for 
 gospel morals. If it ever comes to pass that the 
 gospel only saves moderate sinners, it will then 
 come to pass that it saves none. It will then ap-
 
 126 Christ in the Industries 
 
 pear that the world is a plague spot. Superficial 
 religious sentiment is not strong enough for this 
 business. It has come to pass the greatest work 
 of God on earth is the most unwholesome. 
 Moral evil lies at the root of all this misery. 
 
 It is becoming more and more apparent that 
 the center of all successful plans for the better- 
 ment of human conditions is at the human heart. 
 This slum life has a heart. The awakening of the 
 divine passion in it that is great, that is possible. 
 To get the gospel set into the slums what a long, 
 slow work! What myriads of devoted toilers 
 must come and go before it is accomplished! 
 The reconstruction of society does not come 
 about by spurts and starts. Sudden social over- 
 turnings are very few. Industrial peace as to its 
 present forms of conflict will not come by cata- 
 clysms, or revolutions, or sudden upheavals of 
 this or that established order, but by the slow 
 dying away of the effete, and the infusion of new 
 life by the normal process of blood digestion and 
 blood assimilation. It is the unseen which takes 
 hold most naturally and healthfully. Healthy 
 organisms grow unconsciously. Gospel forces
 
 Some Industrial Problems 127 
 
 build society in the same way. Whoever has a 
 craving for the spectacular, will miss the meaning 
 of these slower movements. We shall not be 
 startled with the surprise of a new day, but we 
 may see the dawning of an industrial morning. 
 Its first signs will be the fainter gleam of the 
 stars of the social night ; then the streaks of gray | 
 and emerald and gold; then the dew laden with 
 the breath of flowers ; then the full orb of the sun 
 of day. 
 
 Many have lost heart because of the slowness 
 of its coming. So are they impatient of daily 
 plodding and patience and duty. If the mass of 
 men get weary of living as Christ lived get 
 weary of standing for the truth, and begin to 
 make experiment for an easier way their insti- 
 tutions will begin to decay; for all things are in 
 peril when religion loses its hold. 
 
 Three measures of meal is all there is to be 
 leavened. If we muster faith to insert the leaven, 
 and energy to properly knead and tend it, it will 
 work its own way. We do not bring the millen- 
 nium at a stroke ; we decree the conditions. 
 
 Men still refuse to believe that the earth may
 
 128 Christ in the Industries 
 
 be moved with a sense of the Divine. They have 
 no faith in the Golden Rule as a stay of society, 
 and they suspect that it will be abolished for a 
 new way as soon as men begin to disobey it. As 
 well undertake to abolish the mountains or the 
 sunshine. Now the gospel does not coerce or 
 suborn the spirit of man. It does not harness or 
 break his will. It has no lash of scorpion whip. 
 It offers motives. It has invitations. It promises 
 forgiveness of sin. It bestows peace in the Di- 
 vine Spirit, and by all the persuasiveness of its 
 marvelous interworking in history and life, it 
 gives strength to the civil law, order to society, 
 and prosperity to the affairs of men. 
 
 7. CbrlgtfanttB SpplteD 
 
 Christianity applied is Christianity set into 
 the institutions of men. It is the gospel taking 
 hold. We have come to an age when we see the 
 collective results of the system. The prophecy 
 is being fulfilled, that a nation shall be born to 
 God in a day. Direct gospel forces have been 
 transformed into currents in history. The gospel 
 first touches individuals to convert them, and
 
 Some Industrial Problems 129 
 
 then sends its secondary and collective influences 
 down beneath the surface, to work away out of 
 sight, in some instances for generations, and 
 finally to appear again, having gained momen- 
 tum and breadth through the omnipotence of a 
 long social incubation, when it begins to move 
 in concentrics and sway the life of man by 
 massed opinion, and by accepted sentiment, and 
 by the unwritten and unconscious laws of control 
 which heredity has made irresistible. 
 
 It was the settled policy of the Roman Govern- 
 ment with conquered peoples that they should be 
 governed by their own laws, so far as that could 
 be done and hold them to the central empire. 
 In the day of her greatest conquests she did not 
 care to enter into the smaller features of the in- 
 ternal life of conquered nations. She adjusted 
 herself to all local conditions which she knew 
 she could not change immediately by any sort of 
 coercive power. Roman legislators were there- 
 fore obliged to study the laws of conquered terri- 
 tories, in order to fit the general Roman policy 
 into the peculiar ideas which these subject regions 
 might have of government. This broad policy 
 9
 
 130 Christ in the Industries 
 
 had a remarkable reflex advantage on the Roman 
 system of civil justice. It gave opportunity for 
 incorporation into the civil code whatever might 
 appear to be just; and these ideas of justice were 
 practically a consensus of the ideas of all con- 
 quered peoples. So far as Roman jurisprudence 
 is concerned, it is distinctly Roman; but it is not 
 provincial. As a system of law, it has in it the 
 principles of universality, because it has been 
 gathered from the legal practices of widely di- 
 vergent populations. Roman law, therefore, is 
 cosmopolitan. It has in it abundant material 
 which may be used by the broadest-minded legal 
 lights of any day. The Roman law, therefore, 
 did not spring up de novo. It was the slow de- 
 posit of centuries. It came from many different 
 codes, from many directions, from many schools 
 of thought, from many faiths in religion. The 
 one supremacy was the Roman spirit. That was 
 dominant and all masterful. To that sort of su- 
 premacy we believe the Christian religion is com- 
 ing to-day; for it is making use of all human 
 sentiments and all human conditions to accom- 
 plish its Divine ends.
 
 Some Industrial Problems 131 
 
 A modern likeness in some respects to the 
 Roman policy is the English colonial system. 
 English India to-day has a population double that 
 of the Roman Empire at its most populous pe- 
 riod. More than three hundred millions of people 
 now inhabit India. Leaving out the dialects, there 
 are more than three hundred different languages. 
 There are diverse social customs and human 
 beings in all stages of development, from the 
 lowest savage to the Indian gentleman of refine- 
 ment and of high philosophic attainment. What 
 a complicated and pliant political organization 
 to deal successfully with these discordant masses! 
 We have no explanation of the power that does it, 
 except that it is the English spirit. On the other 
 hand, the necessities of this world-wide rule 
 strengthen the Englishman's capacity for diverse 
 administrative interests. The Englishman is not 
 a provincial. His spirit and capacity to control 
 is manifest among all nations. 
 
 These are parallels to the kind of influence the 
 gospel of Christ has had on the world. It takes 
 its place in history. It shows itself strong enough 
 to sway the strongest nations and races. Its ef-
 
 132 Christ in the Industries 
 
 fects are everywhere now to sway the institutions 
 of civilized man. 
 
 (a) Universality of the Christ Idea 
 
 A remarkable feature of the time is the uni- 
 versality of the Christ spirit. Christ is all in all 
 in the popular mind. Among those who make 
 no pretension to obey him, he is the King of their 
 thought, because he is the mental standard of 
 their living, when they choose to have use for it. 
 Christ is exalted to-day, and has a name that is 
 above every human name. The battle of apology 
 for Jesus Christ is over. Human selfishness and 
 passion and hate may refuse to serve him, but 
 the universal judgment now receives Jesus as the 
 great Teacher, the model man, the supreme rep- 
 resentative of his race. The world at last has 
 an accepted ideal in Jesus Christ. 
 
 (b) The Ethical Basis of Modern Life 
 
 Civilization now has a distinct ethical basis. 
 This is its distinguishing feature. On the other 
 hand, we glorify the spirit of progress. We are 
 aware of the achievements of the human mind. 
 Intellectual culture is at the summit of all his-
 
 Some Industrial Problems 133 
 
 tory. Invention and discovery are having their 
 greatest influence. This rich territory of a New 
 World is putting intense energy into man, and 
 the hidden resources of earth and sky, on the 
 edge of being revealed, make him expectant and 
 hopeful. Reason is being enthroned, but it is 
 a very practical reason. It is being held by the 
 laws of moral conduct. The moral life of man 
 has risen to attention. Moral law is at the bot- 
 tom of things. The good desert of virtue and 
 the ill desert of vice, according to modern think- 
 ing, are the basal distinctions in the beginning 
 of government. The world now looks out from 
 this new standpoint, and it is creating a new 
 habit of thought. This conception of the basis of 
 action is Christian. It is the Christ-born idea. 
 Gibbon says: "The desire of perfection became 
 the ruling passion of the lives of Christians. It 
 was their austere morality that attracted atten- 
 tion. Christianity offered to show pagan men 
 made over." Guizot calls this turning of the 
 basis of action to the moral life "the crisis of 
 civilization." This is the Christ idea of man and 
 of his motives to action. The moral code of the
 
 134 Christ in the Industries 
 
 Bible has gained the assent of men, and it must 
 be put down as an applied achievement of the 
 Christian system. 
 
 (c) Bible Principles in the Civil Law 
 
 Some time ago we had occasion to examine 
 the likenesses between the civil principles em- 
 bodied in the constitutions of the several States, 
 and the same elements in the Ten Command- 
 ments. There is no formal recognition anywhere, 
 but substantial incorporation everywhere. A 
 member of a State Legislature not long ago in- 
 troduced a bill to make the Ten Commandments 
 the law of that State, with penalties attached for 
 violation. That would be a piece of legislative 
 monstrosity. The Ten Commandments in their 
 inspired form, and as the authoritative moral code 
 of the world, ought never to be put in the issue 
 of being decided for or against by a show of 
 hands. That degrades the Commandments, and 
 calls them to answer to a standard of human 
 opinion. Against any majority the Ten Com- 
 mandments stand as the law of God to men. If 
 I consent that the Commandments be obeyed or
 
 Some Industrial Problems 135 
 
 disobeyed as the majorities decide, I must accept 
 the will of the majority if it goes against them. 
 I prefer to reserve the right to preach the Ten 
 Commandments, even if there be none who be- 
 lieve or obey. The law of God to the Christian 
 must be held above questions of partisan expedi- 
 ency. The things involved in the Bible have 
 large application in our laws. The whole struc- 
 ture of the law to-day, with its ideas of justice 
 and personal right, and of civil liberty, and with 
 its whole penal code, appears to be built on the 
 Bible. The Bible actually is the Magna Charta 
 of our civil administration. The Bible was pres- 
 ent as a chief factor in the beginnings of the Eng- 
 lish code, and that has been the pattern of our 
 own. The early English laws were shaped by 
 clergymen, more than by any other class. Bible 
 ideas of justice, Bible ideas of fairness, Bible 
 ideas of mutual and common right, yet abide in 
 the English law as an inheritance of the old year- 
 books and kingly codes. The moral rules of 
 Christianity were transmuted into civil law by 
 these old-time preachers. Established decisions 
 in casuistrv, now operative in this country and in
 
 136 Christ in the Industries 
 
 England, were first set forth by the clergymen 
 many of them in the time of Henry VIII and 
 they constituted the only salt to save that notori- 
 ous reign. Many statutory provisions now are 
 below the Bible standard. Human venality has 
 entered in, and political ambition also. We strug- 
 gle to-day against special legislation, because we 
 have the gospel spirit, and we undertake for the 
 same reason to checkmate all laws that have by 
 indirection an immoral end. All the principles 
 of common equity to-day are found in the Bible. 
 Our laws are the expressions of what we think 
 to be right as between man and man, and as be- 
 tween man and the State. An attorney of expe- 
 rience gave this advice to a young lawyer with 
 his first case: "Just look over your case, and 
 then do what you think is right, and in nine cases 
 out of ten you will have the law on your side." 
 This young man's idea of what is right, in 
 nine cases out of ten, is a Bible standard so 
 thoroughly is Bible thought in the atmosphere. 
 The moral standards of the civilized world are 
 Bible standards.
 
 Some Industrial Problems 137 
 
 (d) The Self-governing Mind 
 
 In the old faiths was the cult of ceremony and 
 the spirit to please the gods; for the gods them- 
 selves were capricious. The favor of the gods 
 gave the pagan no absolute guarantees; but it 
 meant for him a species of good luck. The gods 
 themselves were not perfect, and had attributed 
 to them human passions and ambitions. Wor- 
 ship, therefore, had but little influence on the 
 character. It did not make men better. The 
 Christian's thought of one God as perfect in 
 power, wisdom, and goodness, exalts the mind 
 and satisfies the conscience. Out of that comes 
 life's obligation to worship and obey. When this 
 possesses man, the other obligations take their 
 proper place in his mind. This is the highest and 
 first. It is God's law involving a principle of 
 control for the life, and straightway there is a 
 rising to say, "I obey God rather than man." 
 How strong this spirit was among the martyrs! 
 It interprets the triumphs of the early Christians. 
 The soul here meets its highest duty and joy, the 
 whole force of which is to differentiate the per- 
 sonal life, and stand it out the monarch of all
 
 Christ in the Industries 
 
 earthly circumstances. Each separate man faces 
 for himself doty, and is confronted with a judg- 
 ment-day. That is a truth which magnifies itself 
 in him, and exalts him. It gives him an estimate 
 of his own value, and makes him feel the worth 
 of asserting his own rights. When a man can 
 say, "I obey God and follow his law," then he has 
 the temper to make contention for the law of God 
 among other men. While he is swayed by that 
 spirit, he will never be a slave. He will be a 
 free man, and resist tyranny from any quarter. 
 Mill says, "To crush individuality, that is des- 
 potism." The gospel magnifies individuality. 
 It produces great self-governing spirits. It is 
 the confession of a French statesman, that France 
 has exhausted its resources in making great 
 characters. The reason given is, lack of a high 
 standard. The explanation is easy. The public- 
 school work of France has a studied negation of 
 Deity. More pages of French literature can be 
 read without coming across the word God than 
 in the pages of the literature of any other people. 
 The spring of great characters in Christian his- 
 tory is the God idea. No really great soul was
 
 Some Industrial Problems 139 
 
 ever irreverent. The God idea in our system 
 and man's accountability to him has been far- 
 reaching in its social influence. It has produced 
 a self-governing mind. Habitual self-control is 
 the essence of free citizenship. The world will 
 advance in the principles of self-government as 
 the spirit of man is swayed with the greatness of 
 its companionship with God.
 
 The Future of Labor in America
 
 AND I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first 
 heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was 
 no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, 
 coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
 adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of 
 heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, 
 and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, 
 and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 
 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and 
 there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
 neither shall there be any more pain : for the former things 
 are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, 
 Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, 
 Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said 
 unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the begin- 
 ning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of 
 the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh 
 shall inherit all things : and I will be his God, and he shall 
 be my son. REV. xxi, 1-7. 
 
 142
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Future of Labor in America 
 
 1. be Hmerican Spirit 
 
 No discussion of an intelligent character 
 which involves man's welfare will ever lack in- 
 terest and attractiveness to the well-informed. 
 Man himself is the hero of all earthly dramas. 
 There is an extra quality in this subject to Ameri- 
 can readers, because we are all American citizens. 
 Next to the loyalty of devout hearts to Jesus 
 Christ, is loyalty to country. The two are never 
 in conflict, because they support each other. The 
 spirit of patriotism is akin to the spirit of wor- 
 ship. 
 
 There are American customs and American 
 ways of doing things. There is an atmosphere 
 of American thought and feeling. The American 
 people have been the first to bring self-govern- 
 ment into the foreground. For that reason 
 America has been a center of interest to the 
 world. It has not been many years since schol-
 
 144 Christ in the Industries 
 
 ars of the older Governments across the Atlantic 
 were known to be coming' here to study our in- 
 stitutions, to see in what our weakness consisted, 
 and where we would break down. Our problem 
 had such new and distinct features in it that the 
 faith of the empires was not secured for it until 
 it had stood the strain of two great wars, and by 
 these conflicts had been established beyond ques- 
 tion. Other people now who have faith in Amer- 
 ica are self-honored. We have been a text-book 
 to Europe to furnish them features in civil gov- 
 ernment unlike anything they have found else- 
 where. With the beginning of our national life 
 we had the advantages of all experience, and we 
 have been in a position to appropriate only that 
 which had adaptation to our needs. We have 
 been able to begin our national life on a new 
 territory, separated by an ocean from populations 
 waterlogged with the fragments of their dead 
 systems. We began here free from contact with 
 immobile custom and national complications, and 
 our political and industrial life has had natural 
 expansion. To build on the ruins of dead insti- 
 tutions evidently hinders the growth of repub-
 
 The Future of Labor in America 145 
 
 lies. The Western Hemisphere seems to have 
 been reserved until this time to civilized man. 
 If this country had been discovered even two 
 hundred years before it was, it might have been 
 settled by a people with religious and social 
 affinities so vastly different from those who did 
 settle here, that the American Republic might 
 never have appeared. 
 
 It may be questioned whether there could be 
 anything- distinctively American with a mass of 
 population made up of several races, and nearly 
 all the nations, and with such broad territory as 
 already to produce decided provincialisms. 
 
 With a mixed population and a large terri- 
 tory, the American spirit yet goes through every- 
 thing. The Americanizing process is dominant. 
 Evidently, in the future, all intellectual and social 
 leadership will be incorporated with the American 
 temper. 
 
 The man who sends out a cure-all in medicine 
 is a charlatan. A swift glance at the defects and 
 wrongs of industrialism, and the offering of a 
 swiftly-conceived specific, is about equal to say- 
 ing that everybody ought to be good. We can
 
 146 Christ in the Industries 
 
 not make a lot of abstract propositions stand up 
 with any sort of decorous behavior over against 
 the facts of society. The careful physician only 
 prescribes after a careful examination. The body 
 industrial is a living organism, with complicated 
 functions and with frequent diseases ; and a care- 
 ful investigation of special facts and conditions 
 precedes everything else. There are also first 
 and second steps in the application of social reme- 
 dies. There are cases where the finalities of heal- 
 ing can not be applied at once. There are cures 
 to be applied; but if applied at the wrong time, 
 they may cause the death of the patient. The 
 wise sociologist will not insist on bringing about 
 immediately all needed changes. In the nature 
 of things, that is not attainable. Among those 
 who are unwittingly the enemies of progress may 
 be counted the enthusiasts for race redemption, 
 who refuse consideration of all methods except 
 their own ideals. It is an element of strength 
 rather than weakness to gain an end by tidbits, 
 when that is the only way of attaining it.
 
 The Future of Labor in America 147 
 
 2. Bo "QHc Desire Industrial peace? 
 
 What avails this discussion and array of theory 
 about industrial peace? Do we want such a 
 thing? Do we want the ocean always to be calm? 
 Would not a perfectly smooth sea mean stag- 
 nation? Do we want the storm-cloud to be 
 driven from the mountain? Do we not prefer 
 its alarum with its majesty, rather than the death 
 stillness of a poisoned sky? Is not this industrial 
 war an incident of liberty? Is it not one of the 
 attendants of progress? 
 
 It is because the individual is unfettered; it is 
 because the man has been set free from the des- 
 potisms that belong to the military types of soci- 
 ety, and has been given his rights of free action 
 that these forms of strife have come about. 
 Strikes and labor organizations measure the high 
 tides of industrial movement. This strife, like 
 any other in which principle is involved, will have 
 results which are worth all they cost. 
 
 Discontent among workmen is caused by the 
 sight of others who are better off, and by the 
 conditions which are about a freeman in this 
 country, through alertness and tact to reach a
 
 148 Christ in the Industries 
 
 constantly better state. These workmen, in look- 
 ing after themselves, are putting characteristic 
 American energy into it. The movement is not 
 ominous, as our war with Spain is not ominous. 
 These men ought to be discontented as long as 
 they face some of the exasperating conditions 
 of the present. That sort of discontent keeps 
 their blood up, and gives them the purpose to 
 hold each new point of advantage as fast as it is 
 gained. The stirring labor movements of the 
 day, and the interest laborers are taking in their 
 condition, and the sympathy that has been awak- 
 ened for the cause of labor, are all favorable con- 
 ditions; though they have not brought to pass 
 every desirable thing. The laborer is making 
 headway. There was a time when he was a slave. 
 From that he went to serfdom; and from that to 
 freedom with poverty ; and from these to the pos- 
 session of economic advantages superior to any 
 other time. All of this means that the age is not 
 decadent. It means a future greater than the 
 past. Grievous as are some evils, and difficult as 
 may be the application of remedies, and hopeless 
 as may be the cure of others in the near future,
 
 The Future of Labor in America 149 
 
 the whole ferment is a prophecy of the coming 
 better day to be inaugurated. But that new day 
 will not be a calm. It will stand for a higher form 
 of conflict. 
 
 Failures of social experiment and of industrial 
 schemes indulged in by the few, are constant 
 object-lessons. They are factors in the educa- 
 tional process. Man learns the art of self-govern- 
 ment in his experiences, and he is constantly 
 acquiring more ability and skill. He is coming 
 to know about government. He sees the value 
 and sacredness of statecraft. So, as he becomes 
 better informed, is he less inclined to forsake the 
 social institutions which have come about by 
 slow degrees of growth and testing, and to follow 
 after the newest thing offered. 
 
 All things will not be done in a day. As time 
 goes many things will be tried, and what appears 
 to be the better way will be adopted. This is the 
 perpetual process. There will be times of in- 
 difference and panic. There will be times of 
 fidgety doubts and fears. There will be times 
 when the good and the bad will be swept away 
 together. An occasional mind will be attracted
 
 150 Christ in the Industries 
 
 with the new and untried. But the masses may 
 not be expected to go suddenly into anything. 
 It would be impossible to-day to convince the 
 majority that the world is in need of any radically 
 new industrial scheme. The body of the people, 
 who are most deeply affected by both adverse and 
 favorable industrial states, do not think much 
 about it in a reflective way. If stirred, they may 
 become lawless; but they seldom enter the region 
 of dreams. The masses of the people invested 
 with power mean to do right. The will of the 
 people may trample on personal interests now 
 and then, but its intent is honest. These people 
 will never put any industrial theory into practice 
 item by item. Social elements among them may 
 appear to be acting blindly and without effect, 
 but ultimately they will take their place among 
 the clear and accepted understandings. Among 
 the masses is always the wisdom that comes from 
 experience, and that is of a practical kind. 
 Among them, also, is the free working of a 
 healthful, rational faculty. Among them, also, 
 are the best expressions of the moral forces.
 
 The Future of Labor in America 151 
 
 These together may be depended on to keep civil- 
 ization from coming to an end. 
 
 We need not expect the future to give release 
 from social conflict. There is a sense in which 
 progress lies in the equipoise of antagonisms. 
 But this does not mean that we shall have no use 
 for the Beatitudes. It still holds that whatever 
 can be done to soften the asperities of the strife 
 must be done. We may not stop the war, but 
 we may go on the battle-field with a Red Cross 
 commission. We may hoist a flag of truce, and 
 carry water and healings for the wounded. The 
 warfare we are having shall be civilized, and not 
 barbarous. Opportunities for better living will 
 be increased, common righteousness will be bet- 
 ter guarded, and the toiler will be a happier man. 
 In the changes which are sure to come about, the 
 wit of man, as in the past, will appear to have but 
 little to do with it. 
 
 The mysterious laws which work for the better 
 ends of man's associative life go on as do the life 
 forces of the human system, while we wake and 
 while we sleep. Through it all we see a restless
 
 152 Christ in the Industries 
 
 and resistless energy, making in the sum total of 
 it action for human good. 
 
 3. private property a permanence 
 
 The principle and practice of private property 
 is in the world to stay. This can be depended 
 on. The mine and the thine are mental voices 
 almost as clear as the ought and ought not. To 
 do away with this principle, the whole structure 
 of society must be changed. It has prevailed 
 through history, except among a few, and these 
 have not made deep impression. The represent- 
 ative workmen of this country have never been 
 carried away to any large extent with the com- 
 munity idea of property. A workman of laconic 
 speech on that subject expresses himself as fol- 
 lows: "There are some men in the world who 
 would persuade us that the inequality of wealth 
 may be removed by anarchy and revolution, by 
 upsetting the farmer's wagon, and having a gen- 
 eral good time eating his watermelons. They 
 teach us a doctrine of forcible division of all 
 things, so that no man's share of gold, or silver, 
 or beef, or mutton, or cake and pie, shall be more
 
 The Future of Labor in America 153 
 
 than another. It never was, never can, and never 
 shall be done. A given amount of investment 
 or of work has its legitimate results. We may 
 not get it in every case, but when we do, no man 
 has a right to the eggs so long as we own the 
 hens ; or the crop, so long as we paid for the seed 
 and did our own plowing. What we want is not 
 division, but a system of co-operation and profit- 
 sharing that is distributive without being unjust. 
 Our purpose lies along the line of hard work, 
 common sense, and fair play." This expresses 
 the sentiment largely of the solid workmen of 
 America. 
 
 There are those who dream of some sort of 
 social apparatus put into action, by which the 
 good things of the earth may be meted out to 
 each and all without effort or care. They pro- 
 pose to do away with all the manly antagonisms 
 which call out and develop our best powers. In 
 these troubled social conditions about us is more 
 or less resistance to the nature of things. The 
 prizes of life can not be distributed evenly to 
 those who are not willing to make heroic effort. 
 The manly man who makes effort, and succeeds,
 
 154 Christ in the Industries 
 
 will never willingly divide with the man who does 
 not make effort. And he will not consent to the 
 pooling of his property into collective capital; 
 and as he is able to toil and strive and prosper 
 under the healthful stimulus of competition, he 
 is likely to outwit the nerveless failure if the strife 
 for collective capital should come about. 
 
 The industrial millennium of the socialist, who 
 expects the Government to take charge of every- 
 thing, and assume the role of a parent providing 
 for all alike, and issuing rations periodically, is 
 so far distant that it need not be taken into the 
 calculation just now. If Government should ever 
 become a paternity, the very ones who make 
 effort and get on now, would in all probability 
 have charge of the storehouses. Then those who 
 do not care to get on now, because of the cost of 
 it, might not then care to live. What. we mean is 
 this, we do not need a new order of society. This 
 that we see about us of civil law and social cus- 
 tom, has come up through the crucible of the 
 centuries. All the joints and ligaments of this 
 body politic have been tried. Not like Jonah's 
 gourd have they come up to wither in a day.
 
 The Future of Labor in America 155 
 
 Then, also, there is a relation between effort 
 and result in labor, which can not be extinguished 
 without sapping the energies of the race. A con- 
 dition that puts the workman on his mettle to 
 get along is the best for the workman, and the 
 best for his children. ' That each man should in 
 that way stand related to the whole body, will 
 cause the defeat of a workman now and then; 
 it shows an occasional man thrown under; but it 
 means a virile life that will always show spirit 
 when challenged for bread, or place, or power. 
 
 If every man should be relieved of the uncer- 
 tainties which demand of him that he shall be 
 alert to be successful, it will soon come to pass 
 that there will be none to furnish the relief. That 
 sort of a social order will soon breed a race of 
 weaklings. 
 
 4. ftbe Becag of Competition 
 
 In a natural way, the whole business of soci- 
 ety is co-operative. All its parts are inter-related, 
 and mutually dependent. Man is a being with 
 peculiar capacity for acting in concert. Man's 
 associative life comes out of his being. Isolation
 
 156 Christ in the Industries 
 
 is destruction. Here we are, in families, in neigh- 
 borhoods, in villages, towns, cities. We bury our 
 dead together and hope for an everlasting fel- 
 lowship. No man liveth to himself; no man dieth 
 to himself. Among civilized people there are 
 vast interests in which they unconsciously act 
 together for the common ends of society. Con- 
 sider the individual the unit, and give him full 
 liberty under the rights of the whole body, and 
 we still have a co-operative society. But that is 
 not the modern meaning of the word co-oper- 
 ation. It has been supposed that this first idea 
 of co-operation is not close enough for the pur- 
 poses of workmen. It has appeared as a matter 
 of experience that when the individual is left to 
 strive for himself, there will arise what is known 
 as competition. Competition is the life of trade, 
 it is said; but the death of the traders. Among 
 sparse populations, where natural resources are 
 abundant and where personal needs are not mul- 
 tiplied to the delicacies of refined living, compe- 
 tition is a healthful stimulus. But when popula- 
 tions increase, and when the social bond becomes 
 complex by the intermingling of many different
 
 The Future of Labor in America 157 
 
 interests, competition, unhindered, sets men to 
 eating each other up. Competition will drive 
 Jesus Christ from the marts of trade, and send 
 the world into the curves toward despair. The 
 course of competition has always been that it has 
 become so intense as to reach the state of a life- 
 and-death struggle. Business men see this, and 
 fence against it. Workmen see it, and all trade 
 unionism, as represented by combined effort, is 
 an attempt to escape from its destructiveness. 
 One meaning of the modern monopoly is an 
 attempt to escape competition. The word mo- 
 nopoly has an ominous and unholy sound to the 
 average American. Now a monopoly is not al- 
 ways opposed to public policy. If there could be 
 protection from the abuses of power in monopoly, 
 it would be a better form of the activity of capital 
 than competition. The modern trust is still an- 
 other form of combination. The idea is larger, 
 and the word itself seems to carry a great moral 
 message around with it, as if it were saying, "I 
 am a trust, and therefore I can be trusted." Its 
 intention is to get the advantages of a monopoly 
 without its odium.
 
 Christ in the Industries 
 
 Its fundamental objects, as a role, are to con- 
 trol production and prices, and escape compe- 
 tition. But all of this is in the interest of capital. 
 Labor may complain of it, and rightfully; but 
 in it is a lesson to labor. Labor is moving behind 
 just now, because large bodies move slowly. But 
 labor is gradually coming to such an understand- 
 ing with itself as to give direction to its aggre- 
 gate energies, and apply to its own great life the 
 principle of combination and division of labor, 
 rather than that of present conditions, wherein 
 a dozen men are in mortal strife for the same job 
 of work. Labor is a little later in the field. It 
 has more difficulty in handling itself, and it mani- 
 fests now and then some undesirable features; 
 but none of these are finalities. They are tenta- 
 tive, provisional activities. Labor in this col- 
 lective view is to assume higher forms. The out- 
 look is, that the industrial fife of this country will 
 be able, sooner or later, to solve the problem of 
 bread, so that the struggle will not be one of life 
 and death, but one of wholesome rivalry for bet- 
 ter conditions.
 
 The Future of Labor in America 1 59 
 
 5. Cooperation 
 
 From almost the beginning of the industrial 
 order of society, labor has been experimenting 
 in the direction of some modification of the pres- 
 ent wage system. To better the workman's con- 
 dition, to enhance his life, is the Christ coming to 
 him. What forms are to bring him the best food, 
 the best house, the best school, the best church? 
 What will help him to complete his character 
 and destiny? The two most prominent features 
 now up for practical inquiry are, co-operation and 
 profit-sharing. Labor in this country is likely to 
 test more thoroughly these forms of activity with 
 capital. Beyond question, the co-operative plan 
 is succeeding in many places; but it is subject at 
 all times to great abuses, which appear to be in- 
 evitable. Yet these do not stand in the way of its 
 being a hopeful effort for the end desired. Its 
 modifications under test, and with time to elimi- 
 nate defects, will probably make it one of the 
 permanent industrial forms for the future. 
 Among the English the principle has been more 
 successful than among us. Business in America 
 is yet too full of financial plunging. After we
 
 160 Christ in the Industries 
 
 have had as long to run as some of the Old World 
 industries, which show the success of co-oper- 
 ation, we shall doubtless be able to give better 
 account of the plan. 
 
 Co-operation is only adapted to the higher 
 order of workmen, and to a sober and steady race. 
 The weakness of co-operation lies in the prosy 
 fact that a hundred minds can not manage a busi- 
 ness successfully. It is an unnatural method in 
 the administration of an industrial enterprise. 
 This stands against co-operation, that it is an 
 attempt to work the theory of equality of ability 
 in a matter of business. It is a sort of majority 
 rule in business methods. It is not ethically 
 wrong to manage a business by a show of hands ; 
 but it is practically a failure. There is a differ- 
 ence in business ability belonging to men natur- 
 ally, and to put each man in the same gradgrind 
 is to wreck the industrial world. There are splen- 
 did workmen who have no talent whatever to 
 conduct a great enterprise. 
 
 Business success of any sort, in nearly every 
 case, shows the clear marks of having been run 
 through the alembic of a single brain. It is the
 
 The Future of Labor in America 161 
 
 despotism of a single mind. Shrewd business 
 men do not invest where a hundred minds have 
 equal voice in an enterprse, and for no other 
 reason than that it is not good business. It is 
 usually so that a single mind, or at most a very 
 few, must think a prosperous business through 
 beforehand. 
 
 6. 
 
 Profit-sharing is the division of profits, after 
 the interest on capital and salary and wages 
 have been paid. Where industrial conditions are 
 such as to hinder the free and healthful working 
 of the principle of wages as pay for labor, we 
 believe this is the most satisfactory way of re- 
 munerating the two industrial agents, the laborer 
 and the capitalist. It has also advantages by way 
 of adjusting the relation of wage-earners to the 
 employer. It brings about the fellowship and 
 mutual interest, and the good-will that grows 
 out of a kind of partnership. 
 
 The system has some favorable features all 
 around, and it is coming into favor more and 
 more as an evolution of the wage system. The 
 ii
 
 1 62 Christ in the Industries 
 
 principle of profit-sharing does not involve the 
 laborer's right to that which he produces, or to 
 any part of it in addition to his wages. Wages 
 means remuneration for labor; and if that ques- 
 tion could always be settled satisfactorily, there 
 would be no occasion for profit-sharing, or any 
 other modification of industrial laws. 
 
 If A furnishes the material for a pocket- 
 knife, and B furnishes the labor that makes 
 
 it, the knife in right belongs to both. But it is 
 not convenient to have joint ownership in such 
 
 property. The common thing to do is for A 
 
 to pay B for his work, or for B to pay 
 
 A for his material, so that one may be sole 
 
 owner of the knife. It is not wise for a husband 
 and wife to have joint ownership in a pocket- 
 knife. It is a source of family brawls, and a good 
 
 deal of sharp whittling. A paying B for 
 
 his work is what is known as wages, and is sup- 
 posed to be full remuneration, and therefore a re- 
 lease of all right and title to the thing made. 
 
 In a case of twenty carpenters working on a 
 house, under the primary economic right a man 
 has to the product of his own labor, each car-
 
 The Future of Labor in America 163 
 
 penter would own a part of the house. But such 
 ownership would not often be convenient, so 
 wages have been instituted as an equivalent for 
 the thing made. 
 
 Profit-sharing, therefore, is not advocated 
 under the principle that a workman has anything 
 in his work after he receives wages for it; but it 
 does mean that if the laborer receives a share of 
 the net profits of the business to which he is at- 
 tached, the wages he receives will be adjusted to 
 that fact. 
 
 This arrangement gives the laborer self-inter- 
 est in his work. The employer also has an extra 
 guarantee to his business that comes of such in- 
 terest. Profit-sharing involves also the induce- 
 ment for the workman to know something of the 
 business, and he is by that fact brought to a 
 better understanding with the capitalist. It is a 
 mutual helpfulness born of mutual interest, and 
 it is conducive to friendship and peace and pros- 
 perity. 
 
 An objection is urged against profit-sharing, 
 because it provides for sharing in profits, and not 
 in losses. It is claimed that this is not equitable.
 
 164 Christ in the Industries 
 
 What arrangement can be made in which labor 
 shall have profits, and not take losses? Is not 
 profit-sharing, in the very nature of things, one- 
 sided and unfair? 
 
 This criticism is modified, in the first place, by 
 the fact that no safe system of profit-sharing gives 
 the workman a voice in the management. He 
 can prescribe nothing in the way of policy. By 
 extra skill and diligence in his work, he is ex- 
 pected to increase the profits of the business ; and 
 with a safe business management very much lies 
 in this. It would not seem just for him to share 
 in losses, growing out of the state of trade or of 
 the management, in which he had no voice, and 
 when, from his profit-sharing interest, it is cer- 
 tain that in any case of loss he has contributed to 
 make it less than it would have been without his 
 personal interest. There is no way in which he 
 could do other than make less the loss, except by 
 bad workmanship, and in that case he ought to 
 be dropped from the partnership. If the year's 
 work brings no net profit, the employer receives 
 nothing, and the workman nothing in profits. 
 In this case the capitalist takes the actual loss,
 
 The Future of Labor in America 165 
 
 and the workman takes the loss of his extra dili- 
 gence born of the spirit and purpose to increase 
 the profits. Both are losses. Whether they are 
 in equity, is a question of fact as to the case in 
 hand. Loss in any case would seem to belong 
 to the commercial department, and not to labor. 
 
 If it be thought unjust because of the evident 
 danger to wage-earners if they should stand 
 under losses for the right to divide profits, it 
 could be so, and in most establishments of this 
 kind it is so, that a reserve fund is constituted 
 as a protection against years of loss. 
 
 It appears also in most establishments that 
 the larger share of the profits go to capital as 
 remuneration for the greater risk taken by it. 
 This objection, therefore, is not as strong as it 
 appears at first sight. Hundreds of firms are now 
 practicing this plan, and that objection must have 
 appeared to them from the start. It has evidently 
 been overcome in a practical way. Those who 
 have adopted the system, and have wisely con- 
 ducted it, bear witness that it pays, in the part- 
 nership feeling which it puts into the minds of 
 workmen. The partnership idea which cultivates
 
 1 66 Christ in the Industries 
 
 a candid friendship will finally settle all the seri- 
 ous difficulties of labor and capital. Many diffi- 
 culties now arise because there is such great room 
 for misunderstandings and estrangement. War 
 will last as long as there is alienation. 
 
 Profit-sharing meets with favor from those 
 who are averse to radical measures because it is 
 conservative. It does not propose revolution. 
 It keeps inviolate the rights of property and con- 
 tract. Its greatest proposal is to strengthen the 
 wage system at its weakest point, and to the ad- 
 vantage of both parties of an industrial enter- 
 prise. 
 
 The application of this system in detail and in 
 practice is, of course, like all others, involved in 
 difficulties which grow out of the stubborn facts 
 of human nature; and these facts may make the 
 plan in places quite impossible. In the face of the 
 fact that it may fail with certain classes of work- 
 men, and that it would be difficult of application 
 in certain kinds of business, it has all in all much 
 of the practical to recommend it. It is a simple 
 evolution of the wage system. 
 
 It has been urged as an objection, that in the
 
 The Future of Labor in America 167 
 
 years when no profits were realized, workmen 
 would be dissatisfied, and give trouble to the 
 management, because they would be unable to 
 understand the reasons for no dividend. There 
 is but one answer to this. The test cases of 
 which we have knowledge go to prove that work- 
 men are reasonable in most cases. A few years 
 ago the flouring mills of Minneapolis disbursed 
 one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in three 
 years in profits to wage-earners. Reverses in the 
 milling business followed, in which no dividends 
 were declared. The workmen were satisfied. 
 
 Profit-sharing is feasible and practical, and it 
 is not in the least visionary. It has no theory 
 for itself or for the world, which is not capable 
 of demonstration in practice. It is also the least 
 complicated and simplest of all arrangements. 
 The reader asks what this has to do with the gos- 
 pel. The answer is, If this question is settled, 
 capitalists and laborers will sit together in the 
 pews; if it is not, they will not, and then Jesus 
 Christ's gospel is scandalized.
 
 1 68 Christ in the Industries 
 
 7. Gbe 3Lea>ers of tbe IRew 
 
 Our country is well prepared for bringing the 
 labor life of the world to its greatest perfection. 
 It has a large and diversified territory and cli- 
 mate. It has a soil for nearly all products. Our 
 people are yet strong enough to throw off their 
 social destructives. There is a feeling among us 
 that the common man must not be hindered, if he 
 makes effort, from attaining a fair share of the 
 enjoyments of life. It is highly probable that we 
 are seeing as much of industrial chaos as we shall 
 ever see. We may be past our greatest perplex- 
 ities. The true democracy of the future will be 
 built on labor. Whoever shall contribute to per- 
 sonal or public need in any way, through labor, 
 shall find the best ministries of the world for his 
 use. 
 
 Men must be regarded as chief over money. 
 Property is subordinate. Capital must be for 
 use, and not as an investment of power. Men are 
 to be greater than things from now on. The 
 common man is to be the leader of the new age. 
 That is God's thought also, for he has made more 
 of that kind than of any other.
 
 The Future of Labor in America 169 
 
 The common man does not ask for special ad- 
 vantages or sympathy. He does not ask that 
 anybody help him shoulder his way through the 
 crowd. He asks for one thing, which he will take 
 sooner or later. Victor Hugo had the idea when 
 he made his plea for the mob. He says: "Sacri- 
 fice to the mob ; sacrifice to that unfortunate, dis- 
 inherited, vanquished, vagabond, shoeless, fam- 
 ished, repudiated, despairing, mob. Sacrifice to 
 it, if it must be ; and when it must be, thy repose, 
 thy fortune, thy joy, thy country, thy liberty, thy 
 life. The mob is the human race in misery. The 
 mob is the great victim of darkness. Sacrifice to 
 it thy gold, and thy blood which is greater than 
 thy gold, and thy thought which is more than 
 thy blood, and thy love which is more than thy 
 thought. Sacrifice to it everything but Justice." 
 The new gospel of liberty, of life, of bread, is 
 Justice. 
 
 The common man in this country will stand 
 for Justice. 
 
 The teeming millions of Asia to-day are cry- 
 ing for Justice.
 
 170 Christ in the Industries 
 
 The hopeless toiler of the Nile Valley says, 
 "Give me Justice." 
 
 The poor peasant of Russia says, "Give me 
 Justice." 
 
 Jesus Christ died on the cross for Justice, which 
 is the highest expression of God's love.
 
 General Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Achievement, A work-day - - ... 29 
 
 Asia, society stratified ------ 42 
 
 Anglo-Saxon, an exterminator - ... 44 
 
 and original European ..... 42 
 
 and the Australian ..... 45 
 
 and the South African . .... 45 
 
 and the American Indians ... - 45 
 
 and the Negro ---... 45 
 
 race limits ....... 46 
 
 Animalism, in man - - - - - - 51, 53 
 
 Affections, of universal application 65 
 Ambition, False ...... -70 
 
 Arthur, William 82 
 
 Ancient world, social state 88 
 
 Australians __-..... 45 
 
 American socialism, inceptive - ... 100, 103 
 
 its lasting effects ..... 105 
 
 first flush of success ..... 105 
 
 amiable spirit ------ 105 
 
 influence of great names on 101 
 
 Agriculture -------- 119 
 
 American spirit ._....- 143 
 
 American institutions ._.--- 144 
 
 America, advantages for laborers .... 168 
 
 171
 
 172 General Index 
 
 PAGE 
 Bonaventura, Cardinal ______ 29 
 
 Bread, a definition _______ 36 
 
 Bread, The battle for - - - - - 37, 53 
 
 Brotherhood, its decay ______ 85 
 
 Business, Spiritualized ------ 86 
 
 Brisbane, Albert _______ 101 
 
 Bible, its moral code - - - - - - 134 
 
 and the civil law - - - - - -134 
 
 and the Ten Commandments - 134 
 
 Civilization, Unrighteous ------ 41 
 
 Cuba, her wrongs ------- 44 
 
 Commercial tyranny -------46 
 
 Combines, Effects of ------ 48 
 
 Conscience, Rivalry of ----- 53, 54 
 
 Christ, in the strife ______ 56 
 
 and the social order _____ 79 
 
 His estimate of life ----- 84 
 
 excluded from industrialism, 85 
 
 and social obstructions - 88, 89 
 
 rebukes hypocrites ----- 89 
 
 the Savior of society ----- 3 
 
 passion the - - - - - - -125 
 
 universality of idea - - - - - 132 
 
 The spirit of- - - - - - -151 
 
 and competition - - - - - - 157 
 
 Capital, and labor -------73 
 
 its danger ------- 74 
 
 identified with labor ----- 77 
 
 Home __-__. 76 
 
 Charles I, his efforts at reform - - - - - 81 
 
 Character, arrested ----- 82, 83 
 
 Common man, Interest in - - - - 83, 168
 
 General I tide x 173 
 
 PACE 
 
 Common man, Justice for - - - - - 169 
 
 Church, social specialization - 87 
 
 Early, a democracy 88 
 
 Social caste in------ 91 
 
 and the labor problem .... 92 
 
 Early, socialistic ------ 109 
 
 Early, interpreted ----- no 
 
 Early, accepts private property - - - no 
 
 Communism, in France ----- 98 
 
 Channing, William H. ------ IOI 
 
 Curtis, George William ----- 101 
 
 Cities, their growth - - - - - - 122 
 
 Causes of ------- 121 
 
 Increased competition in - - - - 122 
 
 residence for agriculturists - - - - 123 
 
 Christianity applied - - - - - - '28 
 
 Competition, Decay of - - - - - - '55 
 
 Modern meaning of - - - - '5^ 
 
 Healthful '5 6 
 
 its success - - - - - - - '5^ 
 
 among the English - - - - - '59 
 
 among higher order of workmen - - - 160 
 
 its weakness ..----- 100 
 
 Domestic life, False ideas about - - 69 
 Democracy -------- 
 
 Differentiation, Social - 
 
 Dana, Charles A. 
 
 Dwight, John A. 
 
 Equality, The new age of 
 Edison, his helpers 
 Europe, Modern
 
 174 General Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Egypt, her laborers 42 
 
 Economy ________ 62 
 
 Employer, of labor 75 
 English Colonial system - - - - - -131 
 
 Ethical basis of modern life - - - - - 132 
 
 Ethnic faiths ___----- 137 
 
 Fowler, Bishop __-___- 31 
 
 Force, Supremacy of ------ 39 
 
 Financiering, its elements _____ 63 
 
 Fourier, Charles _______ 102 
 
 his social philosophy - 103 
 
 Fourier societies in America - 105 
 
 Food, Organic, social meaning - - - - 121 
 
 Farm life, its advantages - - - - - -122 
 
 France, - - - - - -- - 138 
 
 Gibbon ......... 153 
 
 Guilds 25 
 
 Government, its weakness _____ 74 
 
 Guizot, and human progress - - - - 78, 133 
 
 God, Idea of 133 
 
 Gospel, enthrones fraternity ----- 86 
 
 its power __----- 87 
 
 not coercive - - - - - - 128 
 
 its indirect social effects - - - - - 127 
 
 its collective influence - 136 
 
 Greeley, Horace _____-- 101 
 
 Hebrews 40 
 
 Home _____---- 64 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel ___-_- 101 
 
 Human nature, asocial guarantee - - - - 116 
 
 Hugo, Victor ___---- 169
 
 General Index 175 
 
 PACE 
 Institutions, produced by men - - - - - 12 
 
 Dependent ...... 20 
 
 Industrial war ........ 47 
 
 Improvidence _....__ 62 
 
 Indians ------ ...45 
 
 Industrial peace ..-.-.- 147 
 
 Jacob 23 
 
 Justice, in history ..----- 41 
 
 Labor, of value to the spirit - - - - 16, 18 
 
 essential to the character .... 14 
 
 a blessing in itself - - - - - - '5 
 
 its eternal consequences .... 16 
 
 its social products - -,- - - -21 
 
 its equality as to pursuits .... 23 
 
 some friends of it - - - - - 61 
 
 organizations ..-_-- 69 
 Definition of- - - - - - -69 
 
 a possible tyrant ------ 74 
 
 Combinations of - - - - - - 158 
 
 and democracy ------ 168 
 
 advantages for in America ... - 168 
 
 Lavater, his endurance ------ 
 
 Life, The right to 
 
 Value of among the ancients 83 
 
 Modern estimate of ... - - 84 
 
 Love, Sexual 
 
 Laborer, his desire ------- 
 
 his wife 
 
 his choice of pursuits - 
 
 Better conditions for 
 
 his fame ------- *3
 
 176 General Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Laborer, and the Church _____ 92 
 
 his discontent _----_ 148 
 
 his short-sightedness _____ 76 
 
 put on his mettle ______ 155 
 
 Labor Unions _______ 71 
 
 afford better opportunities - - - 71 
 
 a protection ______ 72 
 
 spread knowledge ------ 72 
 
 not against capital as such - 72 
 
 Educational work of _____ 72 
 
 the community feeling _ _ _ _ 73 
 
 their untenable position ----- 75 
 
 Lowell, James Russell ______ 101 
 
 London, socialist society - - - - - -in 
 
 its manifesto - - - - - - 112 
 
 Land areas, exhausted - - - - - -120 
 
 Law, Roman, a slow deposit ----- 130 
 
 Early English ------- 135 
 
 Literature, French ______ 138 
 
 Monuments, represent toil - - - - - 12 
 
 Man, a producer - _ - - - - - 21 
 
 Muscular skill --------27 
 
 Monopoly ..____- 47, 157 
 
 its dangers __----- 74 
 
 Morals, The new day of __... 51 
 
 vital to society ------ 55 
 
 Millennium, what produces it - 18 
 
 Machinery, its power of production - - - - 121 
 
 Moral evil ________ 126 
 
 Moral law in the statute _----- 134 
 
 Mind, Self-governing - - - - - - 138 
 
 Mill 138 
 
 Masses, Conservative - - - - - - 150
 
 General Index 177 
 
 
 PACK 
 
 Northmen, overran Italy - - - 
 
 - 40 
 
 Negro, a subordinate - 
 
 45 
 
 New Lanark enterprise ... 
 
 - 104 
 
 New Harmony enterprise 
 
 104 
 
 Nationalism ..... 
 
 - 114 
 
 its despotism 
 
 115 
 
 New age, The - - . - - 
 
 - 168 
 
 Professions, and the manual trades 
 
 26 
 
 Pope Gregory - - - - - 
 
 . 29 
 
 Positions, not for ease lovers - 
 
 30 
 
 Personal liberty, its limits 
 
 - 75 
 
 Paul, at Athens - - - - 
 
 86 
 
 Popular government, conservative 
 
 . 100 
 
 Parker, Theodore - 
 
 101 
 
 Peabody, Elizabeth P. - - - 
 
 - 101 
 
 Periodicals, Socialistic - - - 
 
 101 
 
 Paternity ------ 
 
 - 114, 154 
 
 Personal effort essential 
 
 115. 154 
 
 Progress ------ 
 
 - 13* 
 
 Preachers - - - - - 
 
 - - - 35 
 
 Patriotism - - - - - 
 
 - 143 
 
 Providence, in discovery of America 
 
 145. 
 
 Population, Mixed . - - - 
 
 . us 
 
 Private property - ... 
 
 151 
 
 Profit-sharing - 
 
 . 161 
 
 its theory of wages 
 
 162 
 
 its advantages 
 
 . . . 163 
 
 objections to it - 
 
 . . . 164 
 
 . 
 
 . 166 
 
 its practicability . - - 
 
 . . - 167 
 
 its identity with toil 
 
 37 
 
 12 

 
 178 General Index 
 
 PAGE 
 Religion, its commercial spirit ----- 38 
 
 not social first ------ 80 
 
 a social stay - - - - - - - 127 
 
 Russia --------- 43 
 
 Regeneration, Social - - - - - - -n 
 
 Roman policy - - - - - - - 129 
 
 Scott, Walter --------17 
 
 Social ethics -------- 50 
 
 Spirituality __--_--_ 54 
 Sorrow, a moral defection ----- 54 
 
 Song of Songs, interpretation ----- 65 
 
 Society, A life _.._.- 79 
 
 Sin, not abstract _.__-.-5 
 Socialism, a feature of civilization - 97 
 
 Radical 98 
 
 sympathy for the masses - 98 
 
 Negative -------98 
 
 Policy of------- 99 
 
 its rational elements ----- 99 
 
 its American features ----- 100 
 
 its weakness ------- 108 
 
 commands attention ----- 107 
 
 its rights ------- 107 
 
 Christian socialism - ... 109, ill 
 Social movements biological ----- 106 
 
 Selfishness -------- 108 
 
 Socialistic propositions - - - - - -112 
 
 Social forms of slow growth - - - - - 116 
 
 Schemes, Revolutionary - - - - - -117 
 
 Social laws, their constant movement - - - 119 
 Social reform slow - - - - - - -126 
 
 Social defects, how cured - - - - - 146
 
 General Index 179 
 
 PAG* 
 
 Social failures, object lessons - .... 149 
 
 Society, Co-operative - - - - - - 156 
 
 Soil products - - - - - - - -119 
 
 Soil ownership - - - - - - - 123 
 
 Slums, not subjects of industrialism .... 124 
 
 Moral elevation - - - - - - 125 
 
 The gospel and - - - - - -126 
 
 Sense of the Divine - - - - - - 128 
 
 Self-control, and citizenship ..... 139 
 
 Self-government .------ 143 
 
 Strife, the attendant of progress ... 147^ 151 
 
 Tribal life, Early - - - - 39 
 
 Trusts 49, 157 
 
 Thrift, its value -- 6l 
 
 Wesley, his influence ...... 87 
 
 Whitefield, ... 87 
 
 Wright, Fanny 1OI
 
 A 000 036 341 6 
 
 I