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 A PERPLEXED PHILOSOPHER. 
 
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 THE LAND QUESTION 
 What it involves and how alone it can be settled. 
 
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 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
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 ADDRESS. REMARKS.
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR 
 
 AN 
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY GEORGE 
 
 WITH ENCYCLICAL LETTER OP POPE LEO XIII. 
 ON THE CONDITION OF LABOB 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHAELES L. WEBSTEE & COMPANY 
 
 1893
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1881, 
 
 RY 
 HENRY GEORGE
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR 
 
 An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII. 
 
 To POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 Your Holiness : 
 
 I have read with care your Encyclical letter 
 on the condition of labor, addressed, through the 
 Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of your 
 faith, to the Christian World. 
 
 Since its most strikingly pronounced condemnations 
 are directed against a theory that we who hold it 
 know to be deserving of your support, I ask permission 
 to lay before your Holiness the grounds of our belief, 
 and to set forth some considerations that you have 
 unfortunately overlooked. The momentous serious- 
 ness of the facts you refer to, the poverty, suffering 
 and seething discontent that pervade the Christian 
 world, the danger that passion may lead ignorance in 
 a blind struggle against social conditions rapidly be- 
 coming intolerable, are my justification. 
 
 I. 
 
 Our postulates are all stated or implied in your 
 Encyclical. They are the primary perceptions of
 
 4 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 human reason, the fundamental teachings of the 
 Christian faith : 
 
 We hold : That 
 
 This world is the creation of God. 
 
 The men brought into it for the brief period of their 
 earthly lives are the equal creatures of His bounty, 
 the equal subjects of His provident care. 
 
 By his constitution man is beset by physical wants, 
 on the satisfaction of which depend not only the 
 maintenance of his physical life but also the develop- 
 ment of his intellectual and spiritual life. 
 
 God has made the satisfaction of these wants 
 dependent on man's own exertions, giving him the 
 power and laying on him the injunction to labor a 
 power that of itself raises him far above the brute, 
 since we may reverently say tha' it enables him to 
 become as it were a helper in the creative work. 
 
 God has not put on man the task of making bricks 
 without straw. With the need for labor and the power 
 to labor He has also given to man the material for 
 labor. This material is land man physically being 
 a land animal, who can live only on and from land, 
 and can use other elements, such as air, sunshine and 
 water, only by the use of land. 
 
 Being the equal creatures of the Creator, equally 
 entitled under His providence to live their lives and 
 satisfy their needs, men are equally entitled to the use 
 of land, and any adjustment that denies this equal 
 use of land is morally wrong. 
 
 As to the right of ownership, we hold : That 
 Being created individuals, with individual wants 
 and powers, men are individually entitled (subject of
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 course to the moral obligations that arise from such re- 
 lations as that of the family) to the use of their owii 
 powers and the enjoyment of the results. 
 
 There thus arises, anterior to human law, and 
 deriving its validity from the law of God, a right of 
 private ownership in things produced by labor a right 
 that the possessor may transfer, but of which to de- 
 prive him without his will is theft. 
 
 This right of property, originating in the right of 
 the individual to himself, is the only full and complete 
 right of property. It attaches to things produced by 
 labor, but cannot attach to things created by God. 
 
 Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires 
 a right of property in that fish, which exclusive right 
 he may transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain 
 a similar right of property in the ocean, so that he 
 may sell it or give it or forbid others to use it. 
 
 Or, if he set up a windmill he acquires a right of 
 property in the things such use of wind enables him 
 to produce. But he cannot claim a right of property 
 in the wind itself, so that he may sell it or forbid 
 others to use it. 
 
 Or, if he cultivate grain he acquires a right of prop- 
 erty in the grain his labor brings forth. But he cannot 
 obtain a similar right of property in the sun which 
 ripened it or the soil on which it grew. For these 
 things are of the continuing gifts of God to all genera- 
 tions of men, which all may use, but none may claim 
 as his alone. 
 
 To attach to things created by God the same right of 
 private ownership that justly attaches to things pro- 
 duced by labor is to impair and deny the true rights 
 of property. For a man who out of the proceeds of
 
 D THE CONDITION OF LABOB. 
 
 his labor is obliged to pay another man for the use of 
 ocean or air or sunshine or soil, all of which are to 
 men involved in the single term land, is in this de 
 prived of his rightful property and thus robbed. 
 
 As to the use of land, we hold : That 
 While the right of ownership that justly attaches to 
 things produced by labor cannot attach to land, there 
 may attach to land a right of possession. As your 
 Holiness says, " God has not granted the earth to man- 
 kind in general in the sense that all without distinction 
 can deal with it as they please," and regulations 
 necessary for its best use may be fixed by human laws. 
 But such regulations must conform to the moral law 
 must secure to all equal participation in the advan- 
 tages of God's general bounty. The principle is the 
 same as where a human father leaves property equally 
 to a number of children. Some of the things thus 
 left may be incapable of common use or of specific 
 division. Such things may properly be assigned to 
 some of the children, but only under condition that 
 the equality of benefit among them all be preserved. 
 
 In the rudest social state, while industry consists in 
 hunting, fishing, and gathering the spontaneous fruits 
 of the earth, private possession of land is not necessary. 
 But as men begin to cultivate the ground and expend 
 their labor in permanent works, private possession of 
 the land on which Jabor is thus expended is needed to 
 secure the right of property in the products of labor. 
 For who would sow if not assured of the exclusive 
 possession needed to enable him to reap ? who would 
 attach costly works to the soil without such exclusive
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 7 
 
 ib 
 
 possession of the soil as would enable him to secure 
 the benefit ? 
 
 This right of private possession in things created by 
 God is however very different from the right of private 
 ownership in things produced by labor. The one is 
 limited, the other unlimited, save in cases when the 
 dictate of self-preservation terminates all other rights. 
 The purpose of the one, the exclusive possession of 
 land, is merely to secure the other, the exclusive 
 ownership of the products of labor ; and it can never 
 rightfully be carried so far as to impair or deny this. 
 While anyone may hold exclusive possession of land so 
 far as it does not interfere with the equal rights of 
 others, he can rightfully hold it no further. 
 
 Thus Cain and Abel, were there only two men on 
 earth, might by agreement divide the earth between 
 them. Under this compact each might claim exclusive 
 right to his share as against the other. But neither 
 could rightfully continue such claim against the next 
 man born. For since no one comes into the world 
 without God's permission, his presence attests his 
 equal right to the use of God's bounty. For them to 
 refuse him any use of the earth which they had 
 divided between them would therefore be for them to 
 commit murder. And for them to refuse him any 
 use of the earth, unless by laboring for them or by 
 giving them part of the products of his labor he bought 
 it of them, would be for them to commit theft. 
 
 God's laws do not change. Though their applica- 
 tions may alter with altering conditions, the same 
 principles of right and wrong that hold when men 
 are few and industry is rude also hold amid teeming
 
 8 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 
 
 populations and complex industries. In our cities of 
 millions and our states of scores of millions, in a 
 civilization where the division of labor has gone so 
 far that large numbers are hardly conscious that they 
 are land users, it still remains true that we are all 
 land animals and can live only on land, and that land 
 is God's bounty to all, of which no one can be 
 deprived without .being murdered, and for which no 
 one can be compelled to pay another without being 
 robbed. But even in a state of society where the 
 elaboration of industry and the increase of permanent 
 improvements have made the need for private posses- 
 sion of land widespread, there is no difficulty in 
 conforming individual possession with the equal right 
 to land. For as soon as any piece of land will yield 
 to the possessor a larger return than is had by similar 
 labor on other land a value attaches to it which is 
 shown when it is sold or rented. Thus, the value of 
 the land itself, irrespective of the value of any 
 improvements in or on it, always indicates the precise 
 value of the benefit to which all are entitled in its 
 use, as distinguished from the value which as producer 
 or successor of a producer belongs to the possessor in 
 individual right. 
 
 To combine the advantages of private possession 
 with the justice of common ownership it is only 
 necessary therefore to take for common uses what 
 value attaches to land irrespective of any exertion of 
 labor on it. The principle is the same as in the case 
 referred to, where a human father leaves equally to his 
 children things not susceptible of specific division or 
 common use. In that case such things would be sold 
 or rented and the value equally applied.
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 9 
 
 It is on this common sense principle that we, who 
 term ourselves single tax men, would have the com- 
 munity act. 
 
 "We do not propose to assert equal rights to land by 
 keeping land common, letting any one use any part 
 of it at any time. We do not propose the task, 
 impossible in the present state of society, of dividing 
 land in equal shares ; still less the yet more impossible 
 task of keeping it so divided. 
 
 We propose, leaving land in the private possession 
 of individuals, with full liberty on their part to 
 give, sell or bequeath it, simply to levy on it for public 
 uses a tax that shall equal the annual value of the land 
 itself, irrespective of the use made of it or the 
 improvements on it. And since this would provide 
 amply for the need of public revenues, we would 
 accompany this tax on land values with the repeal of 
 all taxes now levied on the products and processes of 
 industry which taxes, since they take from the 
 earnings of labor, we hold to be infringements of the 
 right of property. 
 
 This we propose, not as a cunning device of human 
 ingenuity, but as a conforming of human regulations 
 to the will of God. 
 
 God cannot contradict himself nor impose on his 
 creatures laws that clash. 
 
 If it be God's command to men that they should 
 not steal that is to say, that they should respect the 
 right of property which each one has in the fruits of 
 his labor ; 
 
 And if He be also the Father of all men, who in His 
 common bounty has intended all to have equal 
 opportunities for sharing ;
 
 10 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 
 
 Then, in any possible stage of civilization, how- 
 ever elaborate, there must be some way in which 
 the exclusive right to the products of industry may be 
 reconciled with the equal right to land. 
 
 If the Almighty be consistent with Himself, it 
 cannot be, as say those socialists referred to by you, 
 that in order to secure the equal participation of men 
 in the opportunities of life and labor we must ignore 
 the right of private property. Nor yet can it be, as 
 you yourself in the Encyclical seem to argue, that 
 to secure the right of private property we must 
 ignore the equality of right in the opportunities of 
 life and labor. To say the one thing or the other 
 is equally to deny the harmony of God's laws. 
 
 But, the private possession of land, subject to the 
 payment to the community of the value of any special 
 advantage thus given to the individual, satisfies both 
 laws, securing to all equal participation in the bounty 
 of the Creator and to each the full ownership of the 
 products of his labor. 
 
 Nor do we hesitate to say that this way of securing 
 the equal right to the bounty of the Creator and the 
 exclusive right to the products of labor is the way 
 intended by God for raising public revenues. For wo 
 are not atheists, who deny God ; nor semi-atheists, 
 who deny that He has any concern in politics and 
 legislation. 
 
 It is time as you say a salutary truth too often 
 forgotten that " man is older than the state, and he 
 holds the right of providing for the life of his body 
 prior to the formation of any state." Yet, as you too 
 perceive, it is also true that the state is in the divinely
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 11 
 
 appointed order. For He who foresaw all things and 
 provided for all things, foresaw and provided that 
 with the increase of population and the development 
 of industry the organization of human society into 
 states or governments would become both expedient 
 and necessary. 
 
 No sooner does the state arise than, as we all know, 
 it needs revenues. This need for revenues is small 
 at first, while population is sparse, industry rude and 
 the functions of the state few and simple. But with 
 growth of population and advance of civilization the 
 functions of the state increase and larger and larger 
 revenues are needed. 
 
 Now, He that made the world and placed man in 
 it, He that preordained civilization as the means 
 whereby man might rise to higher powers and become 
 more and more conscious of the works of his Creator, 
 must have foreseen this increasing need for state 
 revenues and have made provision for it. That is to 
 say : The increasing need for public revenues with 
 social advance, being a natural, God-ordained need, 
 there must be a right way of raising them some way 
 that we can truly say is the way intended by God. 
 Tt is clear that this right way of raising public revenues 
 must accord with the moral law. 
 
 Hence : 
 
 It must not take from individuals what rightfully 
 belongs to individuals. 
 
 It must not give some an advantage over others, 
 as by increasing the prices of what some have to sell 
 and others must buy. 
 
 It must not lead men into temptation, by requiring
 
 12 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 trivial oaths, by making it profitable to lie, to swear 
 falsely, to bribe or to take bribes. 
 
 It must not confuse the distinctions of right and 
 wrong, and weaken the sanctions of religion and the 
 state by creating crimes that are not sins, and punish- 
 ing men for doing what in itself they have an un- 
 doubted right to do. 
 
 It must not repress industry. It must not check 
 commerce. It must not punish thrift. It must offer 
 no impediment to the largest production and the 
 fairest division of wealth. 
 
 Let me ask your Holiness to consider the taxes on 
 the processes and products of industry by which 
 through the civilized world public revenues are 
 collected the octroi duties that surround Italian 
 cities with barriers ; the monstrous customs duties 
 that hamper intercourse between so-called Christian 
 states; the taxes on occupations, on earnings, on 
 investments, on the building of houses, on the culti- 
 vation of fields, on industry and thrift in all forms. 
 Can these be the ways God has intended that govern- 
 ments should raise the means they need '( Have any 
 of them the characteristics indispensable in any plan 
 we can deem a right one ? 
 
 All these taxes violate the moral law. They take 
 by force what belongs to the individual alone ; they 
 give to the unscrupulous an advantage over the 
 scrupulous ; they have the effect, nay are largely in- 
 tended, to increase the price of what some have to 
 sell and others must buy; they corrupt government; 
 they make oaths a mockery ; they shackle commerce ; 
 they fine industry and thrift ; they lessen the wealth
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 13 
 
 that men might enjoy, and enrich some by impoverish- 
 ing others. 
 
 Yet what most strikingly shows how opposed to 
 Christianity is this system of raising public revenues 
 is its influence on thought. 
 
 Christianity teaches us that all men are brethren ; 
 that their true interests are harmonious, not an- 
 tagonistic. It gives us, as the golden rule of life, that 
 we should do to others as we would have others do 
 to us. But out of the system of taxing the products 
 and processes of labor, and out of its effects in increas- 
 ing the price of what some have to sell and others 
 must buy, has grown the theory of "protection," 
 which denies this gospel, which holds Christ ignorant 
 of political economy and proclaims laws of national 
 well-being utterly at variance with His teaching. This 
 theory sanctifies national hatreds; it inculcates a 
 universal war of hostile tariffs ; it teaches peoples 
 that their prosperity lies in imposing on the pro- 
 ductions of other peoples restrictions they do not wish 
 imposed on their own ; and instead of the Christian 
 doctrine of man's brotherhood it makes injury of 
 foreigners a civic virtue. 
 
 " By their fruits you shall know them." Can any- 
 thing more clearly show that to tax the products and 
 processes of industry is not the way God intended 
 public revenues to be raised ? 
 
 But to consider what we propose the raising of 
 public revenues by a single tax on the value of land 
 irrespective of improvements is to see that in all 
 respects this does conform to the moral law. 
 
 Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the 
 value we propose to tax, the value of land irrespective
 
 14 ttlft CONDITION OF LABOK. 
 
 of improvements, does not come from any exertion 
 of labor or investment of capital on or in it the 
 values produced in this way being values of improve- 
 ment which we would exempt. The value of land 
 irrespective of improvement is the value that attaches 
 to land by reason of increasing population and social 
 progress. This is a value that always goes to the 
 owner as owner, and never does and never can go to 
 the user ; for if the user be a different person from the 
 owner he must always pay the owner for it in rent or 
 in purchase money; while if the user be also the 
 owner, it is as owner, not as user, that he receives it, 
 and by selling or renting the land he can, as owner, 
 continue to receive it after he ceases to be a user. 
 
 Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement can- 
 not lessen the rewards of industry, nor add to prices,* 
 
 *As to this point it may be well to add that all economists are 
 agreed that taxes on land values irrespective of improvement or 
 use or what in the terminology of Political Economy is styled 
 rent, a term distinguished from the ordinary use of the word rent 
 by being applied solely to payments for the use of land itself 
 must be paid by the owner and cannot be shifted by him on the 
 user. To explain in another way the reason given in the text 
 Vrice is not determined by the will of the seller or tLe will of the 
 buyer, but by the equation of demand and supply, and therefore 
 as to things constantly demanded and constantly produced rests 
 at a point determined by the cost of production whatever tends 
 to increase the cost of bringing fresh quantities of such articles 
 t ) the consumer increasing price by checking supply, and what 
 ever tends ro reduce such cost decreasing price by increasing 
 supply. Thus taxes on wheat or tobacco or cloth add to the 
 price that the consumer must pay, and thus the cheapening in 
 the cost of producing steel which improved processes have made 
 in recent years has greatly reduced the price of steel. But land 
 has no cost of production, since it is created by God, not pro- 
 duced by man. Its price therefore is fixed 1 (monopoly rent), 
 where land is held in close monopoly, by what the owners can 
 extract from the users under penalty of deprivation and con- 
 sequently of starvation, and amounts to all that common labor 
 can earn on it beyond what is necessity to life ; 2 (economic 
 rent proper), where there is no special monopoly, by what the
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xlll. 15 
 
 nor in any way take from the individual what belongs 
 to the individual. They can only take the value that 
 attaches to land by the growth of the community, and 
 which therefore belongs to the community as a whole. 
 To take land values for the state, abolishing all taxes 
 on the products of labor, would therefore leave to the 
 laborer the full produce of labor ; to the individual all 
 that rightfully belongs to the individual. It would 
 impose no burden on industry, no check on commerce, 
 no punishment on thrift ; it would secure the largest 
 production and the fairest distribution of wealth, by 
 leaving men free to produce and to exchange as they 
 please, without any artificial enhancement of prices ; 
 and by taking for public purposes a value that cannot 
 be carried off, that cannot be hidden, that of all values 
 is most easily ascertained and most certainly and 
 
 particular land will yield to common labor over and above what 
 may be had by like expenditure and exertion on land having no 
 special advantage and for which no rent is paid ; and, 3 (specu- 
 lative rent, which is a species of monopoly rent, telling particu- 
 larly in selling price), by the expectation of future increase of 
 value from social growth and improvement, which expectation 
 causing land owners to withhold land at present prices has the 
 same effect as combination. 
 
 Taxes on land values or economic rent can therefore never be 
 shifted by the land owner to the land user, since they in no wise 
 increase the demand for land or enable land owners to check 
 supply by withholding land from use. Where rent depends on 
 mere monopolization, a case I mention because rent may in this 
 way be demanded for the use of land even before economic or 
 natural rent arises, the taking by taxation of what the land- 
 owners were able to extort from labor could not enable them to 
 extort any more, since laborers, if not left enough to live on, 
 will die. So, in the case of economic rent proper, to take from, 
 the land owners the premiums they receive, would in no way 
 increase the superiority of their land and the demand for it. 
 While so far as price is affected by speculative rent, to compel 
 the land owners to pay taxes on the value of land whether they 
 were getting any income from it or not. would make it more 
 difficult for them to withhold land from use ; and to tax the 
 full value would not merely destroy the power but the desire 
 to do so.
 
 16 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 cheaply collected, it would enormously lessen the 
 number of officials, dispense with oaths, do away with 
 temptations to bribery and evasion, and abolish man- 
 made crimes in themselves innocent. 
 
 But, further : That God has intended the state 
 to obtain the revenues it needs by the taxation of 
 land values is shown by the same order and degree of 
 evidence that shows that God has intended the milk 
 of the mother for the nourishment of the babe. 
 
 See how close is the analogy. In that primitive 
 condition ere the need for the state arises there are no 
 land values. The products of labor have value, but 
 in the sparsity of population no value as yet attaches 
 to land itself. But as increasing density of population 
 and increasing elaboration of industry necessitate the 
 organization of the state, with its need for revenues, 
 value begins to attach to land. As population still 
 increases and industry grows more elaborate, so the 
 needs for public revenues increase. And at the same 
 time and from the same causes land values increase. 
 The connection is invariable. The value of things 
 produced by labor tends to decline with social develop- 
 ment, since the larger scale of production and the 
 improvement of processes tend steadily to reduce 
 their cost. But the value of land on which popu- 
 lation centers goes up and up. Take Rome or 
 Paris or London or New York or Melbourne. 
 Consider the enormous value of land in such cities as 
 compared with the value of land in sparsely settled 
 parts of the same countries. To what is this due ? Is it 
 not due to the density and activity of the populations 
 of those cities to the very causes that require great
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 17 
 
 public expenditure for streets, drains, public buildings, 
 and all the many tilings needed for the health, con- 
 venience and safety of such great cities ? See how 
 with the growth of such cities the one thing that 
 steadily increases in value is land ; how the opening of 
 roads, the building of railways, the making of any 
 public improvement, adds to the value of land. Is it 
 not clear that here is a natural law that is to say a 
 tendency willed by the Creator ? Can it mean anything 
 else than that He who ordained the state with its 
 needs has in the values which attach to land provided 
 the means to meet those needs ? 
 
 That it does mean this and nothing else is confirmed 
 if we look deeper still, and inquire not merely as to 
 the intent, but as to the purpose of the intent. If we 
 do so we may see in this natural law by which land val- 
 ues increase with the growth of society not only such a 
 perfectly adapted provision for the needs of society 
 as gratifies our intellectual perceptions by showing us 
 the wisdom of the Creator, but a purpose with regard 
 to the individual that gratifies our moral perceptions 
 by opening to us a glimpse of His beneficence. 
 
 Consider : Here is a natural law by which as society 
 advances the one thing that increases in value is land 
 a natural law by virtue of which all growth of popula- 
 tion, all advance of the arts, all general improvements 
 of whatever kind, add to a fund that both the 
 commands of justice and the dictates of expediency 
 prompt us to take for the common uses of society. 
 Now, since increase in the fund available for the 
 common uses of society is increase in the gain that 
 goes equally to each member of society, is it not clear
 
 18 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 that the law by which land values increase with social 
 advance while the value of the products of labor do 
 not increase, tends with the advance of civilization to 
 make the share that goes equally to each member 
 of society more and more important as compared with 
 what goes to him from his individual earnings, and 
 thus to make the advance of civilization lessen rel- 
 atively the differences that in a ruder social state 
 must exist between the strong and the weak, the 
 fortunate and the unfortunate ? Does it not show the 
 purpose of the Creator to be that the advance of man 
 in civilization should be an advance not merely to 
 larger powers but to a greater and greater equality, 
 instead of what we, by our ignoring of His intent, are 
 making it, an advance towards a more and more 
 monstrous inequality ? 
 
 That the value attaching to land with social growth 
 is intended for social needs is shown by the final 
 proof. God is indeed a jealous God in the sense that 
 nothing but injury and disaster can attend the effort 
 of men to do things other than in the way He has 
 intended ; in the sense that where the blessings He 
 proffers to men are refused or misused they turn to 
 evils that scourge us. And just as for the mother 
 to withhold the provision that fills her breast with 
 the birth of the child is to endanger physical health, 
 so for society to refuse to take for social uses the pro- 
 vision intended for them is to breed social disease. 
 
 For refusal to take for public purposes the increasing 
 values that attach to laud with social growth is to 
 necessitate the getting of public revenues by taxes 
 that lessen production, distort distribution and corrupt
 
 OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XIH. 19 
 
 society. It is to leave some to take what justly 
 belongs to all ; it is to forego the only means by which 
 it is possible in an advanced civilization to combine 
 the security of possession that is necessary to improve- 
 ment with the equality of natural opportunity that 
 is the most important of all natural rights. It is thus 
 at the basis of all social life to set up an unjust 
 inequality between man and man, compelling some 
 to pay others for the privilege of living, for the chance 
 of working, for the advantages of civilization, for the 
 gifts of their God. But it is even more than this. 
 The very robbery that the masses of men thus suffer 
 gives rise in advancing communities to a new robbery. 
 For the value that with the increase of population 
 and social advance attaches to land being suffered 
 to go to individuals who have secured ownership of 
 the land, it prompts to a forestalling of and speculation 
 in land wherever there is any prospect of advancing 
 population or of coming improvement, thus produc- 
 ing an artificial scarcity of the natural elements of 
 life and labor, and a strangulation of production that 
 shows itself in recurring spasms of industrial depression 
 as disastrous to the world as destructive wars. It is 
 this that is driving men from the old countries to the 
 new countries, only to bring there the same curses. 
 It is this that causes our material advance not merely 
 to fail to improve the condition of the mere worker, 
 but to make the condition of large classes positively 
 worse. It is this that in our richest Christian countries 
 is giving us a large population whose lives are harder, 
 more hopeless, more degraded than those of the 
 veriest savages. It is this that leads so many men 
 to think that God is a bungler and is constantly
 
 20 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 bringing more people into His world than He has 
 made provision for ; or that there is no God, and that 
 belief in Him is a superstition which the facts of life 
 and the advance of science are dispelliner. 
 
 The darkness in light, the weakness in strength, 
 the poverty amid wealth, the seething discontent 
 foreboding civil strife, that characterize our civilization 
 of to-day, are the natural, the inevitable results of our 
 rejection of God's beneficence, of our ignoring of His 
 intent. Were we on the other hand to follow His 
 clear, simple rule of right, leaving scrupulously to the 
 individual all that individual labor produces, and 
 taking for the community the value that attaches to 
 land by the growth of the community itself, not 
 merely could evil modes of raising public revenues 
 be dispensed with, but all men would be placed on an 
 equal level of opportunity with regard to the bounty 
 of their Creator, on an equal level of opportunity 
 to exert their labor and to enjoy its fruits. And then, 
 without drastic or restrictive measures the forestalling 
 of land would cease. For then the possession of land 
 would mean only security for the permanence of its 
 use, and there would be no object for any one to get 
 land or to keep land except for use; nor would his 
 possession of better land than others had confer any 
 unjust advantage on him, or unjust deprivation on 
 them, since the equivalent of the advantage would be 
 taken by the state for the benefit of all. 
 
 The Right Reverend Dr. Thomas Nulty, Bishop 
 of Meath, who sees all this as clearly as we do, in 
 pointing out to the clergy and laity of his diocese * 
 
 * Letter addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese 
 of Meath, Ireland, April 2, 1381
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 21 
 
 the design of Divine Providence that the rent of 
 land should be taken for the community, says : 
 
 " I think, therefore, that I may fairly infer, on the 
 strength of authority as well as of reason, that the 
 people are and always must be the real owners of the 
 land of their country. This great social fact appears 
 to me to be of incalculable importance, and it is 
 fortunate, indeed, that on the strictest principles of 
 justice it is not clouded even by a shadow of 
 uncertainty or doubt. There is, moreover, a charm 
 and a peculiar beauty in the clearness with which 
 it reveals the wisdom and the benevolence of ' the 
 designs of Providence in the admirable provision He 
 has made for the wants and the necessities of that 
 state of social existence of which He is author, and 
 in which the very instincts of nature tell us we are 
 to spend our lives. A vast public property, a great 
 national fund, has been placed under the dominion 
 and at the disposal of the nation to supply itself 
 abundantly with resources necessary to liquidate the 
 expenses of its government, the administration of its 
 laws and the education of its youth, and to enable it 
 to provide for the suitable sustentation and support 
 of its criminal and pauper population. One of the 
 most interesting peculiarities of this property is that 
 its value is never stationary ; it is constantly progressive 
 and increasing in a direct ratio to the growth of the 
 population, and the very causes that increase and 
 multiply the demands made on it increase proportion- 
 ately its ability to meet them." 
 
 There is, indeed, as Bishop Nulty says, a peculiar 
 beauty in the clearness with which the wisdom and 
 benevolence of Providence are revealed in this great 
 social fact, the provision made for the common needs 
 of society in what economists call the law of rent. 
 Of all the evidence that natural religion gives, 
 it is this that most clearly shows the existence of a
 
 22 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 beneficent God, and most conclusively silences the 
 doubts that in our days lead so many to materialism. 
 For in this beautiful provision made by natural law 
 for the social needs of civilization we see that God 
 has intended civilization ; that all our discoveries and 
 inventions do not and cannot outrun His forethought, 
 and that steam, electricity and labor saving appliances 
 only make the great moral laws clearer and more 
 important. In the growth of this great fund, increasing 
 with social advance a fund that accrues from the 
 growth of the community and belongs therefore to 
 the community we see not only that there is no need 
 for the taxes that lessen wealth, that engender corrup- 
 tion, that promote inequality and teach men to deny 
 the gospel ; but that to take this fund for the purpose 
 for which it was evidently intended would in the 
 highest civilization secure to all the equal enjoyment of 
 God's bounty, the abundant opportunity to satisfy their 
 wants, and would provide amply for every legitimate 
 need of the state. "We see that God in His dealings 
 with men has not been a bungler or a niggard ; that 
 He has not brought too many men into the world ; 
 that He has not neglected abundantly to supply them; 
 that He has not intended that bitter competition of 
 the masses for a mere animal existence and that 
 monstrous aggregation of wealth which characterize 
 our civilization ; but that these, evils which lead so 
 many to say there is no God, or yet more impiously 
 to say that they are of God's ordering, are due to our 
 denial of His moral law. We see that the law of 
 justice, the law of the Golden Rule, is not a mere 
 counsel of perfection, but indeed the law of social 
 life. We see that if we were only to observe it
 
 OPEN LETTEK TO POPE LEO XIII. 23 
 
 there would be work for all, leisure for all, abundance 
 for all ; and that civilization would tend to give to the 
 poorest not only necessaries, but all comforts and 
 reasonable luxuries as well. We see that Christ was 
 not a mere dreamer when He told men that if they 
 would seek the kingdom of God and its right doing 
 they might no more worry about material things than 
 do the lilies of the field about their raiment ; but that 
 He was only declaring what political economy in the 
 light of modern discovery shows to be a sober truth. 
 
 Your Holiness, even to see this is deep and lasting 
 joy. For it is to see for one's self that there is a God 
 who lives and reigns, and that He is a God of justice 
 and love Our Father who art in Heaven. It is to 
 open a rift of sunlight through the clouds of our 
 darker questionings, and to make the faith that trusts 
 where it cannot see a living thing. 
 
 II. 
 
 Your Holiness will see from the explanation I have 
 given that the reform we propose, like all true re- 
 forms, has both an ethical and an economic side. By 
 ignoring the ethical side, and pushing our proposal 
 merely as a reform of taxation, we could avoid the 
 objections that arise from confounding ownership 
 with possession and attributing to private property in 
 land that security of use and improvement that can be 
 had even better without it. All that we seek practi- 
 cally is the legal abolition, as fast as possible, of taxes 
 on the products and processes of labor, and the con- 
 sequent concentration of taxation on land values 
 irrespective, of improvements. To put our proposals
 
 24 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 in this way would be to urge them merely as a 
 matter of wise public expediency. 
 
 There are indeed many single tax men who do put 
 our proposals in this way ; who seeing the beauty of 
 our plan from a fiscal standpoint do not concern them- 
 selves farther. But to those who think as I do, the 
 ethical is the more important side. Not only do we 
 not wish to evade the question of private property in 
 land, but to us it seems that the beneficent and far- 
 reaching revolution we aim at is too great a thing to 
 be accomplished by " intelligent self-interest," and can 
 be carried by nothing less than the religious con- 
 science. 
 
 Hence we earnestly seek the judgment of religion. 
 This is the tribunal of which your Holiness as the 
 head of the largest body of Christians is the most 
 august representative. 
 
 It therefore behooves us to examine the reasons 
 you urge in support of private property in land if they 
 be sound to accept them, and if they be not sound 
 respectfully to point out to you wherein is their error. 
 
 To your proposition that " Our first and most fun- 
 damental principle when we undertake to alleviate the 
 condition of the masses must be the inviolability of 
 private property " we would joyfully agree if we could 
 only understand you to have in mind the moral 
 element, and to mean rightful private property, as 
 when you speak of marriage as ordained by God's 
 authority we may understand an implied exclusion of 
 improper marriages. Unfortunately, however, other 
 expressions show that you mean private property in 
 general and have expressly in mind private property 
 in land. This confusion of thought, this non-distri-
 
 OPEN LETTKK TO POPE LEO XIII. 25 
 
 t jtion of terms, runs through your whole argument^ 
 leading you to conclusions so unwarranted by your 
 premises as to be utterly repugnant to them, as when 
 from the moral sanction of private prop2rty in the 
 things produced by labor you infer something entirely 
 different and utterly opposed, a similar right of pro- 
 perty in the land created by God. 
 
 Private property is not of one species, and moral 
 sanction can no more be asserted universally of it than 
 of marriage. That proper marriage conforms to the 
 law of God does not justify the polygamic, or poly- 
 andric or incestuous marriages that are in some 
 countries permitted by the civil law. And as there 
 may be immoral marriage so may there be im- 
 moral private property. Private property is that 
 which may be held in ownership by an individual, or 
 that which may be held in ownership by an individual 
 with the sanction of the state. The mere lawyer, the 
 mere servant of the state, may rest here, refusing to 
 distinguish between what the state holds equally law- 
 ful. Your Holiness, however, is not a servant of 
 the state, but a servant of God, a guardian of morals. 
 You know, as said by St. Thomas of Aquin, that 
 
 " Human law is law only in virtue of its accordance 
 with right reason and it is thus manifest that it Hows 
 from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates 
 from right reason it is called an unjust law. In such 
 case it is not law at all, but rather a species of 
 violence." 
 
 Thus, that any species of property is permitted by 
 the state does not of itself give it moral sanction. 
 The state has often made things property that are not 
 justly property, but involve violence and robbery.
 
 26 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 For instance, the things of religion, the dignity and 
 authority of offices of the church, the power of ad- 
 ministering her sacraments and controlling her tempo- 
 ralities have often by profligate princes been given 
 as salable property to courtiers and concubines. At 
 this very day in England an atheist or a heathen may 
 buy in open market, and hold as legal property, to be 
 sold, given or bequeathed as he pleases, the power of 
 appointing to the cure of souls, and the value of these 
 legal rights of presentation is said to be no less than 
 17,000,000. 
 
 Or again : Slaves were universally treated as property 
 by the customs and laws of the classical nations, and 
 were so acknowledged in Europe long after the ac- 
 ceptance of Christianity. At the beginning of this 
 century there was no Christian nation that did not, 
 in her colonies at least, recognize property in slaves, 
 and slave ships crossed the seas under Christian flags. 
 In the United States, little more than thirty years 
 ago, to buy a man gave the same legal ownership as 
 to buy a horse, and in Mohammedan countries law 
 and custom yet make the slave the property of his 
 captor or purchaser. 
 
 Yet your Holiness, one of the glories of whose 
 pontificate is the attempt to break up slavery in its 
 last strongholds, will not contend that the moral sanction 
 that attaches to property in things produced by labor 
 can, or ever could, apply to property in slaves. 
 
 Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of 
 the inclusive term " property " or " private " property, 
 of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed or 
 denied, makes your meaning, if we take isolated 
 sentences, in many places ambiguous. But reading
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 27 
 
 it as a whole, there can be no doubt of your intention 
 that private property in land shall be understood when 
 you speak merely of private property. With this 
 interpretation, I find that the reasons you urge for 
 private property in land are eight. Let us consider 
 them in order of presentation. You urge : 
 
 1. That what is bought with rightful property is 
 rightful property. (5.)* 
 
 Clearly, purchase and sale cannot give, but can only 
 transfer ownership. Property that in itself has no 
 moral sanction does not obtain moral sanction by 
 passing from seller to buyer. 
 
 If right reason does not make the slave the property 
 of the slave hunter it does not make him the property 
 of the slave buyer. Yet your reasoning as to private 
 property in land would as well justify property in 
 slaves. To show this it is only needful to change in your 
 argument the word land to the word slave. It would 
 then read : 
 
 " It is surely undeniable that when a man engages 
 in remunerative labor the very reason and motive of 
 his work is to obtain property, and to hold it in his own 
 private possession. 
 
 " If one man hire out to another his strength or his 
 industry he does this for the purpose of receiving 
 in return what is necessary for food and living; he 
 thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full and legal 
 right, not only to the remuneration, but also to the 
 disposal of that remuneration as he pleases. 
 
 " Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money and invests 
 his savings for greater security in a slave, the slave in 
 
 * To facilitate references the paragraphs of the Encyclical are 
 indicated by number,
 
 28 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 such a case is only his wages in another f orm ; and con- 
 sequently a working-man's slave thus purchased should 
 be as completely at his own disposal as the wages he 
 receives for his labor." 
 
 Nor in turning your argument for private property 
 in land into an argument for private property in men 
 am I doing a new thing. In my own country, in my 
 own time, this very argument, that purchase gave 
 ownership, was the common defense of slavery. It 
 was made by statesmen, by jurists, by clergymen, by 
 bishops ; it was accepted over the whole country by 
 the great mass of the people. By it was justified 
 the separation of wives from husbands, of children 
 from parents, the compelling of labor, the appropriation 
 of its fruits, the buying and selling of Christians by 
 Christians. In language almost identical with yours 
 it was asked, " Here is a poor man who has worked 
 hard, lived sparingly, and invested his savings in a 
 few slaves. Would you rob him of his earnings by 
 liberating those slaves ? " Or it was said : '' Here is 
 a poor widow ; all her husband has been able to leave 
 her is a few negroes, the earnings of his hard toil. 
 Would you rob the widow and the orphan by freeing 
 these negroes ? " And because of this perversion of 
 reason, this confounding of unjust property rights 
 with just property rights, this acceptance of man's 
 law as though it were God's law, there came on our 
 nation a judgment of fire ani blood. 
 
 The error of our people in thinking that what in 
 itself \va? not rightfully property could become rightful 
 property by purchase and sale is the same error into 
 which your Holiness falls. It is not merely formally 
 the same ; it is essentially the same. Private property
 
 OPEN LETTEIi TO POPE LEO Xttl. 29 
 
 in land, no less than private property in slaves, is a 
 violation of the true rights of property. They are 
 different forms of the same robbery; twin devices 
 by which the perverted ingenuity of man has sought 
 to enable the strong and the cunning to escape God's 
 requirement of labor by forcing it on others. 
 
 What difference does it make whether I merely 
 own the land on which another man must live or 
 own the man himself ? Am I not in the one case as 
 much his master as in the other ? Can I not compel 
 him to work for me ? Can I not take to myself as 
 much of the fruits of his labor ; as fully dictate his 
 actions ? Have I not over him the power of life and 
 death ? For to deprive a man of land is as certainly 
 to kill him as to deprive him of blood by opening 
 his veins, or of air by tightening a halter around his 
 neck. 
 
 The essence of slavery is in empowering one man 
 to obtain the labor of another without recompense. 
 Private property in land does this as fully as chattel 
 slavery. The slave owner must leave to the slave 
 enough of his earnings to enable him to live. Are 
 there not in so called free countries great bodies of 
 workingmen who get no more ? How much more of 
 the fruits of their toil do the agricultural laborers of 
 Italy and England get than did the slaves of our 
 Southern States ? Did not private property in land 
 permit the land owner of Europe in ruder times 
 to demand the jus primm noctis f Does not the 
 same last outrage exist to-day in diffused form in the 
 immorality born of monstrous wealth on the one 
 hand and ghastly poverty on the other ? 
 
 In what did the slavery of Kussia consist but in giv-
 
 30 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 ing to the master land on which the serf was forced to 
 live? When an Ivan or a Catherine enriched their 
 favorites with the labor of others they did not give men, 
 they gave land. And when the appropriation of land has 
 gone so far that no free land remains to which the 
 landless man may turn, then without further violence the 
 more insidious form of labor robbery involved in priv- 
 ate property in land takes the place of chattel slavery, 
 because more economical and convenient. For under 
 it the slave does not have to be caught or held, or to 
 be fed when not needed. He comes of himself, 
 begging the privilege of serving, and when no longer 
 wanted can be discharged. The lash is unnecessary ; 
 hunger is as efficacious. This is why the Norman con- 
 querors of England and the English conquerors of 
 Ireland did not divide up the people, but divided the 
 land. This is why European slave ships took their 
 cargoes to the New World, not to Europe. 
 
 Slavery is not yet abolished. Though in all Christian 
 countries its ruder form has now gone, it still exists in 
 the heart of our civilization in more insidious form, 
 and is increasing. There is work to be done for the 
 glory of God and the liberty of man by other soldiers 
 of the cross than those warrior monks whom, with the 
 blessing of your Holiness, Cardinal Lavigerie is send- 
 ing into the Sahara. Yet, your Encyclical employs 
 in defense of one form of slavery the same fallacies 
 that the apologists for chattel slavery used in defense 
 of the other ! 
 
 The Arabs are not wanting in acumen. Your 
 Encyclical reaches far. What shall your warrior 
 monks say, if when at the muzzle of their rifles they 
 demand of some Arab slave merchant his miserable
 
 OPEN 1ETTE& TO POPE LEO Xlll. 31 
 
 caravan, he shall declare that he bought them with 
 his savings, and producing a copy of your Encyclical, 
 shall prove by your reasoning that his slaves are conse- 
 quently " only his wages in another form," and ask 
 if they who bear your blessing and own your 
 authority propose to " deprive him of the liberty of 
 disposing of his wages and thus of all hope and 
 possibility of increasing his stock and bettering his 
 condition in life ? " 
 
 2. That private property in land proceeds from 
 man's gift of reason. (6-7.) 
 
 In the second place your Holiness argues that man 
 possessing reason and forethought may not only ac- 
 quire ownership of the fruits of the earth, but also of 
 the earth itself, so that out of its products he may 
 make provision for the future. 
 
 Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed 
 the distinguishing attribute of man ; that which raises 
 him above the brute, and shows, as the Scriptures de- 
 clare, that he is created in the likeness of God. And 
 this gift of reason does, as your Holiness points out, 
 involve the need and right of private property in 
 whatever is produced by the exertion of reason and 
 its attendant forethought, as well as in what is pro- 
 duced by physical labor. In truth, these elements of 
 man's production are inseparable, and labor involves 
 the use of reason. It is by his reason that man differs 
 from the animals in being a producer, and in this 
 sense a maker. Of themselves his physical powers 
 are slight, forming as it were but the connection 
 by which the mind takes hold of material things, so as to 
 utilize to its will the matter and forces of nature. It
 
 32 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 is mind, the intelligent reason, that is the prime 
 mover in labor, the essential agent in production. 
 . The right of private ownership does therefore in- 
 disputably attach to things provided by man's reason 
 and forethought. But it cannot attach to things pro- 
 vided by the reason and forethought of God ! 
 
 To illustrate : Let us suppose a company travelling 
 through the desert as the Israelites travel ed from 
 Egypt. Such of them as had the forethought to 
 provide themselves with vessels of water would ac- 
 quire a just right of property in the water so carried, 
 and in the thirst of the waterless desert those who had 
 neglected to provide themselves, though they might 
 ask water from the provident in charity, could not de- 
 mand it in right. For while water itself is of the 
 providence of God, the presence of this water in such 
 vessels, at such place, results from the providence of 
 the men who carried it. Thus they have to it an ex- 
 clusive right. 
 
 But suppose others use their forethought in push- 
 ing ahead and appropriating the springs, refusing when 
 their fellows come up to let them drink of the water 
 gave as they buy it of them. Would such forethought 
 give any right ? 
 
 Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of carrying 
 water where it is needed, but the forethought of seiz- 
 ing springs, that you S3ek to defend in defending the 
 private ownership of land ! 
 
 Let me show this more fully, since it may be worth 
 while to meet those who say that if private property 
 in land be not just, then private property in the 
 products of labor is not just, as the material of these 
 products is taken from land. It will be seen on con-
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 33 
 
 sideration that all of man's production is analogous to 
 such transportation of water as we have supposed. In 
 growing grain, or smelting metals, or building houses, 
 or weaving cloth, or doing any of the things that con- 
 stitute producing, all that man does is to change in 
 place or form pre-existing matter. As a producer 
 man is merely a changer, not a creator ; God alone 
 creates. And since the changes in which man's pro- 
 duction consists inhere in matter so long as they per- 
 sist, the right of private ownership attaches the 
 accident to the essence, and gives the right of owner- 
 ship in that natural material in which the labor of 
 production is embodied. Thus water, which in its 
 original form and place is the common gift of God 
 to all men, when drawn from its natural reservoir and 
 brought into the desert, passes rightfully into the 
 ownership of the individual who by changing its 
 place has produced it there. 
 
 But such right of ownership is in reality a mere 
 right of temporary possession. For though man may 
 take material from the storehouse of nature and change 
 it in place or form to suit his desires, yet from the 
 moment he takes it, it tends back to that storehouse 
 again. Wood decays, iron rusts, stone disintegrates 
 and is displaced, while of more perishable products, 
 some will last for only a few months, others for only 
 a few days, and some disappear immediately on use. 
 Though, so far as we can see, matter is eternal and 
 force forever persists ; though we can neither annihi- 
 late nor create the tiniest mots that floats in a sun- 
 beam or the faintest impulse that stirs a leaf, yet in the 
 ceaseless flux of nature, man's work of moving and com- 
 bining constantly passes away. Thus the recognition
 
 34 THE CONDITION OF LABOK. 
 
 of the ownership of what natural material is embodied 
 in the products of man never constitutes more than 
 temporary possession never interferes with the 
 reservoir provided for all. As taking water from one 
 place and carrying it to another place by no means 
 lessens the store of water, since whether it is drunk or 
 spilled or left to evaporate, it must return again to the 
 natural reservoirs so is it with all things on which man 
 in production can lay the impress of his labor. 
 
 Hence, when you say that man's reason puts it 
 within his right to have in stable and permanent pos- 
 session not only things that perish in the using, but 
 also those that remain for use in the future, you are 
 right in so far as you may include such things as 
 buildings, which with repair will last for generations, 
 with such things as food or firewood, which are de- 
 stroyed in the use. But when you infer that man 
 can have private ownership in those permanent things 
 of nature that are the reservoirs from which all must 
 draw, you are clearly wrong. Man may indeed hold 
 in private ownership the fruits of the earth produced 
 by his labor, since they lose in time the impress of 
 that labor, and pass again into the natural reservoirs 
 from which they were taken, and thus the ownership 
 of them by one works no injury to others. But he 
 cannot so own the earth itself, for that is the reservoir 
 from which must constantly be drawn not only the 
 material with which alone men can produce, but even 
 their very bodies. 
 
 The conclusive reason why man cannot claim owner- 
 ship in the earth itself as he can in the fruits that 
 he by labor brings forth from it, is in the facts stated
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO HI. 35 
 
 by you in the very next paragraph (T), when you 
 truly say : 
 
 " Man's needs do not die out, but recur ; satisfied 
 to-day they demand new supplies to-morrow. Nature 
 therefore owes to man a storehouse that shall never 
 fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this 
 he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth" 
 
 By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes 
 to all men be made the private property of some men, 
 from which they may debar all other men \ 
 
 Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness, 
 " Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall 
 never fail." By Nature you mean God. Thus your 
 thought, that in creating us, God himself has incurred 
 an obligation to provide us with a storehouse that shall 
 never fail, is the same as is thus expressed and carried 
 to its irresistible conclusion by the Bishop of Meath : 
 
 " God was perfectly free in the act by which He 
 created us ; but having created us He bound himself 
 by that act to provide us with the means necessary for 
 our subsistence. The land is the only source of this 
 kind now known to us. The land, therefore, of every 
 country is the common property of the people of that 
 country, because its real owner r the Creator who made 
 it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them. 
 ' Terram autem deditfiliis hominum? Now, as every 
 individual in that country is a creature and child of 
 God, and as all His creatures are equal in His sight, 
 any settlement of the land of a country that would 
 exclude the humblest man in that country from his 
 share of the common inheritance would be not only 
 an injustice and a wrong to that man, but, moreover, 
 
 be AN IMPIOUS RESISTANCE TO THE BENEVOLENT INTEN- 
 TIONS OF HIS CEEATOE."
 
 36 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 3. That private property in land deprives no one 
 of the use of land. (8.) 
 
 Your own statement that land is the inexhaustible 
 storehouse that God owes to man must have aroused 
 in your Holiness's mind an uneasy questioning of 
 its appropriation as private property, for, as though 
 to reassure yourself, you proceed to argue that its 
 ownership by some will not injure others. You say 
 in substance, that even though divided among private 
 owners the earth does not cease to minister to the 
 needs of all, since those who do not possess the soil can 
 by selling their labor obtain in payment the produce 
 of the land. 
 
 Suppose that to your Holiness as a judge of morals 
 one should put this case of conscience : 
 
 " I am one of several children to whom our father 
 left a field abundant for our support. As he assigned 
 no part of it to any one of us in particular, leaving 
 the limits of our separate possession to be fixed by 
 ourselves, I being the eldest took the whole field in 
 exclusive ownership. But in doing so I have not de- 
 prived my brothers of their support from it, for I 
 have let them wurk for me on it, paying them from 
 the produce as much wages as I would have had to 
 pay strangers. Is there any reason why my con- 
 science should not be clear ?" 
 
 What would be your answer ? Would you not tell 
 him that he was in mortal sin, and that his excuse 
 added to his guilt? Would you not call on him to 
 make restitution and to do penance ? 
 
 Or, suppose that as a temporal prince your Holi- 
 ness were ruler of a rainless land, such as Egypt, 
 where there were no springs or brooks, their want 
 being supplied by a bountiful river like the Nile.
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 37 
 
 Supposing that having sent a number of your subjects 
 to make fruitful this land, bidding them do justly and 
 prosper, you were told that some of them had set up 
 a claim of ownership in the river, refusing the others 
 a drop of water, except as they bought it of them ; 
 and that thus they had become rich without work, 
 while the others, though working hard, were so im- 
 poverished by paying for water as to be hardly able 
 to exist ? 
 
 Would not your indignation wax hot when this was 
 told? 
 
 Suppose that then the river owners should send to 
 you and thus excuse their action : 
 
 " The river, though divided- among private owners 
 ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, for 
 there is no one who drinks who does not drink of the 
 water of the river. Those who do not possess the 
 water of the river contribute their labor to get it ; so 
 that it may be truly said that all water is supplied 
 either from one's own river, or from some laborious 
 industry which is paid for either in the water, or in 
 that which is exchanged for the water." 
 
 Would the indignation of your Holiness be abated ? 
 Would it not wax fiercer yet for the insult to your 
 intelligence of this excuse ? 
 
 I do not need more formally to show your Holiness 
 that between utterly depriving a man of God's gifts 
 and depriving him of God's gifts unless he will buy 
 them, is merely the difference between the robber 
 who leaves his victim to die and the robber who puts 
 him to ransom. But I would like to point out how 
 your statement that " the earth though divided among 
 private owners ceases not thereby to minister to the 
 needs of all " overlooks the largest facts.
 
 38 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 From your palace of the Vatican the eye may rest 
 on the expanse of the Campagna, where the pious toil 
 of religious congregations and the efforts of the state 
 are only now beginning to make it possible for men 
 to live. Once that expanse was tilled by thriving 
 husbandmen and dotted with smiling hamlets. What 
 for centuries has condemned it to desertion ? History 
 tells as. It was private property in land ; the growth 
 of tlie great estates of which Pliny saw that ancient 
 Italy was perishing; the cause that, by bringing 
 failure to the crop of men, let in the Goths and Van- 
 dals, gave Roman Britain to the worship of Odin and 
 Thor, and in what were once the rich and populous 
 provinces of the East shivered the thinned ranks and 
 palsied arms of the legions on the cimiters of Moham- 
 medan hordes, and in the sepulchre of our Lord and 
 in the Church of St. Sophia trampled the cross to 
 rear the crescent ! 
 
 If you will go to Scotland, you may see great tracts 
 that under the Gaelic tenure, which recognized the 
 right of each to a foothold in the soil, bred sturdy 
 men, but that now, under the recognition of private 
 property in land, are given up to wild animals. If you 
 go to Ireland, your Bishops will show you, on lands 
 where now only beasts graze, the traces of hamlets that 
 when they were young priests, were filled with honest, 
 kindly, religious people.* 
 
 * Let any one who wishes visit this diocese and see with his own 
 eyes the vast and boundless extent of the fairest land in Europe 
 that has been ruthlessly depopulated since the commencement of 
 the present century, and which is now abandoned to a loneliness 
 and solitude more depressing than that of the prairie or the 
 wilderness. Thus has this land system actually exercised the 
 power of life and death on a vast scale, for which there is no 
 parallel even in the dark records of slavery. Bishop Nulty's letter 
 (o the (Jlergy and Laity of the Diocese of Meath,
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 39 
 
 If you will come to the United States, you will find 
 in a land wide enough and rich enough to support in 
 comfort the whole population of Europe, the growth 
 of a sentiment that looks with evil eye on immigration, 
 because the artificial scarcity that results from pri- 
 vate property in land makes it seem as if there is 
 not room enough and work enough for those already 
 here. 
 
 Or go to the Antipodes, and in Australia as in Eng- 
 land, you may see that private property in land is 
 operating to leave the land barren and to crowd the 
 bulk of the population into great cities. Go wherever 
 you please where the forces loosed by modern invention 
 are beginning to be felt and you may see that private 
 property in land is the curse, denounced by the prophet, 
 that prompts men to lay field to field till they 
 " alone dwell in the midst of the earth. " 
 
 To the mere materialist this is sin and shame. Shall 
 we to whom this world is God's world we who hold 
 that man is called to this life only as a prelude to a 
 higher life shall we defend it ? 
 
 4. That Industry expended on land gives owner- 
 ship in the land itself. (9-10.) 
 
 Your Holiness next contends that industry expended 
 on land gives a right to ownership of the land, and 
 that the improvement of land creates benefits indis- 
 tinguishable and inseparable from the land itself. 
 
 This contention, if valid, could only justify the 
 ownership of land by those who expend industry on 
 it. It would not justify private property in land 
 as it exists. On the contrary, it would justify 
 a gigantic no-rent declaration that would take land
 
 40 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 from those who now legally own it, the landlords, and 
 turn it over to the tenants and laborers. And if it 
 also be that improvements cannot be distinguished 
 and separated from the land itself, how could the 
 landlords claim consideration even for improvements 
 they had made ? 
 
 But your Holiness cannot mean what your words 
 imply. What you really mean, I take it, is that the 
 original justification and title of land ownership is in 
 the expenditure, of labor on it. But neither can this 
 justify private property in land as it exists. For is it 
 not all but universally true that existing land titles do 
 not come from use, but from force or fraud ? 
 
 Take Italy ! Is it not true that the greater part of 
 the land of Italy is held by those who so far from 
 ever having expended industry on it have been mere 
 appropriators of the industry of those who have? 
 Is this not also true of Great Britain and of other 
 countries? Even in the United States, where the 
 forces of concentration have not yet had time to fully 
 operate and there has been some attempt to give land 
 to users, it is probably true to-day that the greater 
 part of the land is held by those who neither use it 
 nor propose to use it themselves, but merely hold it 
 to compel others to pay them for permission to use it. 
 
 And if industry give ownership to land what are the 
 limits of this ownership ? If a man may acquire the 
 ownership of several square miles of land by grazing 
 sheep on it, doss this give to him and his heirs the 
 ownership of the same land when it is found to con- 
 tain rich mines, or when by the growth of population 
 and the progress of society it is needed for farming, 
 for gardening, for the close occupation of a great
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 4:1 
 
 city? Is it on the rights given by the industry of 
 those who first used it for grazing cows or growing 
 potatoes that you would found the title to the land 
 now covered by the city of New York and having a 
 value of thousands of millions of dollars ? 
 
 But your contention is not valid. Industry expended 
 on land gives ownership in the fruits of that in- 
 dustry, but not in the land itself, just as industry ex- 
 pended on the ocean would give a right of ownership 
 to the fish taken by it, but not a right of ownership 
 in the ocean. Nor yet is it true that private owner- 
 ship of land is necessary to secure the fruits of labor on 
 land ; nor does the improvement of land create benefits 
 indistinguishable and insepinble from the land itself. 
 That secure possession is necessary to the use and 
 improvement of land I have already explained, but 
 that ownership is not necessary is shown by the fact 
 that in all civilized countries land owned by one person 
 is cultivated and improved by other persons. Most 
 of the cultivated land in the British Islands, as in Italy 
 and other countries, is cultivated not by owners but 
 by tenants. And so the costliest buildings are erected 
 by those who are not owners of the land, but who have 
 from the owner a mere right of possession for a time 
 on condition of certain payments. Nearly the whole 
 of London has been built in this way, and in New 
 York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Sydney and 
 Melbourne, as well as in continental cities, the owners 
 of many of the largest edifices will be found to be 
 different persons from the owners of the ground. So 
 far from the value of improvements being inseparable 
 from the value of land, it is in individual transactions 
 constantly separated. For instance, one-half of the
 
 42 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 land on which the immense Grand Pacific Hotel in 
 Chicago stands was recently separately sold, and in 
 Ceylon it is a not infrequent occurrence for one person 
 to own a fruit tree and another to own the ground in 
 which it is implanted. 
 
 There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether 
 it be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating, the 
 digging of cellars, the opening of wells or the building 
 of houses, that so long as its usefulness continues 
 does not have a value clearly distinguishable from the 
 value of the land. For land having such improvements 
 will always sell or rent for more than similar land 
 without them. 
 
 If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what the 
 land irrespective of improvement would bring, it will 
 take the benefits of mere ownership, but will leave the 
 full benefits of use and improvement, which the 
 prevailing system does not do. And since the holder, 
 who would still in form continue to be the owner, 
 could at any time give or sell both possession and 
 improvements, subject to future assessment by the 
 state on the value of the land alone, he will be perfectly 
 free to retain or dispose of the full amount of property 
 that the exertion of his labor or the investment of 
 his capital has attached to or stored up in the land. 
 
 Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is im- 
 possible in any other way to secure, what you properly 
 say is just and right " that the results of labor should 
 belong to him who has labored." But private property 
 in land to allow the holder without adequate payment 
 to the state to take for himself the benefit of the value 
 that attaches to land with social growth and improve- 
 ment does ta^ke the results of labor from him who
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XILT. 43 
 
 has labored, does turn over the fruits of one man's 
 labor to be enjoyed by another. For labor, as the 
 active factor, is the- producer of all wealth. Mere 
 ownership produces nothing. A man might own a 
 world, but so sure is the decree that " by the sweat of 
 thy brow shalt thou eat bread," that without labor he 
 could not get a meal or provide himself a garment. 
 Hence, when the owners of land, by virtue of their 
 ownership and without laboring themselves, get the 
 products of labor in abundance, these things must 
 come from the labor of others, must be the fruits 
 of others' sweat, taken from those who have a right to 
 them and enjoyed by those who have no right to them. 
 
 The only utility of private ownership of land as dis- 
 tinguished from possession is the evil utility of giving 
 to the owner products of labor he does not earn. For 
 until land will yield to its owner some return beyond 
 that of the labor and capital he expends on it that is 
 to say, until by sale or rental he can without expendi- 
 ture of labor obtain from it products of labor, owner- 
 ship amounts to no more than security of possession, 
 and has no value. Its importance and value begin only 
 when, either in the present or prospectively, it will 
 yield a revenue that is to say, will enable the owner 
 as owner to obtain products of labor without exertion 
 on his part, and thus to enjoy the results of others' labor. 
 
 What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery 
 involved in private property in land is that in the most 
 striking cases the robbery is not of individuals, but of 
 the community. For, as I have before explained, it is 
 impossible for rent in the economic sense that value 
 which attaches to land by reason of social growth and 
 improvement to go to the user. It can go only to the
 
 44 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 owner or to the community. Tims those who pay 
 enormous rents for the use of land in such centres as 
 London or New York are not individually injured. 
 Individually they get a return for what they pay, and 
 must feel that they have no better right to the use of 
 such peculiarly advantageous localities without paying 
 for it than have thousands of others. And so, not 
 thinking or not caring for the interests of the com- 
 munity, they make no objection to the system. ' 
 
 It recently came to light in New York that a man 
 having no title whatever had been for years collecting 
 rents on a piece of land that the growth of the city had 
 made very valuable. Those who paid these rents had 
 never stopped to ask whether he had any right to them. 
 They felt that they had no right to land that so many 
 others would like to have, without paying for it, 
 and did not think of, or did not care for, the rights of all. 
 
 5. That private property in land has the support 
 of the common opinion of mankind, and has conduced 
 to peace and tranquility^ and that it is sanctioned by 
 Divine Law. (11.) 
 
 Even were it true that the common opinion of man- 
 kind has sanctioned private property in land, this would 
 no more prove its justice than the once universal prac- 
 tice of the known world would have proved the justice 
 of slavery. 
 
 But it is not true. Examination will show that 
 wherever we can trace them the first perceptions of 
 mankind have always recognized the equality of right 
 to land, and that when individual possession became 
 necessary to secure the right of ownership in things 
 produced by labor some method of securing equality,
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 45 
 
 sufficient in the existing state of social development, 
 was adopted. Thus, among some peoples, land used 
 for cultivation was periodically divided, land used for 
 pasturage and wood being held in common. Among 
 others, every family was permitted to hold what land 
 it needed for a dwelling and for cultivation, but the 
 moment that such use and cultivation stopped any one 
 else could step in and take it on like tenure. Of the 
 same nature were the land laws of the Mosaic code. The 
 land, first fairly divided among the people, was made 
 inalienable by the provision of the jubilee, under 
 which, if sold, it reverted every fiftieth year to the 
 children of its original possessors. 
 
 Private property in land as we know it, the attach- 
 ing to land of the same right of ownership that justly 
 attaches to the products of labor, has never grown up 
 anywhere save by usurpation or force. Like slavery, 
 it is the result of war. It comes to us of the modern 
 world from your ancestors, the Romans, whose civili- 
 zation it corrupted and whose empire it destroyed. 
 
 It made with the freer spirit of the northern 
 peoples the combination of the feudal system, in 
 which, though subordination was substituted for equal- 
 ity, there was still a rough recognition of the principle 
 of common rights in land. A fief was a trust, and to 
 enjoyment was annexed some obligation. The sover- 
 eign, the representative of the whole people, was the 
 only owner of land. Of him, immediately or medi- 
 ately, held tenants, whose possession involved duties 
 or payments, which, though rudely and imperfectly, 
 embodied the idea that we would carry out in the 
 single tax, of taking land values for public uses. The 
 crown lands maintained the sovereign and the civil
 
 46 TSE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 list ; the church lands defrayed the cost of public wor- 
 ship and instruction, of the relief of the sick, the 
 destitute and the wayworn ; while the military tenures 
 provided for public defense and bore the costs of war. 
 A fourth and very large portion of the land remained 
 in common, the people of the neighborhood being free 
 to pasture it, cut wood on it, or put it to other common 
 uses. 
 
 In this partial yet substantial recognition of common 
 rights to land is to be found the reason why, in a time 
 when the industrial arts were rude, wars frequent, 
 and the great discoveries and inventions of our time 
 unthought of, the condition of the laborer was devoid 
 of that grinding poverty which despite our marvellous 
 advances now exists. Speaking of England, the 
 highest authority on such subjects, the late Professor 
 Thorold Rogers, declares that in the thirteenth 
 century there was no class so poor, so helpless, so 
 pressed and degraded as are millions of Englishmen 
 in our boasted nineteenth century ; and that, save in 
 times of actual famine, there was no laborer so poor 
 as to fear that his wife and children might come to 
 want even were he taken from them. Dark and 
 rude in many respects as they were, these were the 
 times when the cathedrals and churches and religious 
 houses whose ruins yet excite our admiration were 
 built ; the times when England had no national debt, 
 no poor law, no standing army, no hereditary paupers, 
 no thousands and thousands of human beings rising in 
 the morning without knowing where they might lay 
 their heads at night. 
 
 With the decay of the feudal system, the system of 
 private property in land that had destroyed Rome was
 
 OPEN LETTEfc TO POPE LEO Xltt. 47 
 
 extended. As to England, it may briefly be said that 
 the crown lands were for the most part given away to 
 favorites ; that the church lands were parcelled among 
 his courtiers by Henry VIII., and in Scotland grasped 
 by the nobles ; that the military dues were finally re- 
 mitted in the seventeenth century, and taxation on 
 consumption substituted ; and that by a process be- 
 ginning with the Tudors and extending to our own 
 time all but a mere fraction of the commons were en- 
 closed by the greater land owners ; while the same 
 private ownership of land was extended over Ireland 
 and the Scottish Highlands, partly by the sword and 
 partly by bribery of the chiefs. Even the "military 
 dues, had they been commuted, not remitted, would 
 to-day have more than sufficed to pay all public ex- 
 penses without one penny of other taxation. 
 
 Of the New World, whose institutions but continue 
 those of Europe, it is only necessary to say that to the 
 parcelling out of land in great tracts is due the back- 
 wardness and turbulence of Spanish America ; that to 
 the large plantations of the Southern States of the 
 Union was due the persistence of slavery there, and 
 that the more northern settlements showed the earlier 
 English feeling, land being fairly well divided and 
 the attempts to establish manorial estates coming to 
 little or nothing. In this lies the secret of the more 
 vigorous growth of the northern states. But the idea 
 that land was to be treated as private property had 
 been thoroughly established in English thought before 
 the colonial period ended, and it has been so treated 
 by the United States and by the several States. 
 And though land was at first sold cheaply, and 
 then given to actual settlers, it was also sold in large
 
 48 THE CONDITION OF LABOB. 
 
 quantities to speculators, given away in great tracts 
 for railroads and other purposes, until now the 
 public domain of the United States, which a genera- 
 tion ago seemed illimitable, has practically gone. 
 And this, as the experience of other countries shows, 
 is the natural result in a growing community of 
 making land private property. When the possession 
 of land means the gain of unearned wealth, the strong 
 and unscrupulous will secure it. But when, as we 
 propose, economic rent, the " unearned increment of 
 wealth," is taken by the state for the use of the com- 
 munity, then land will pass into the hands of users 
 and remain there, since no matter how great its value, 
 its possession will only be profitable to users. 
 
 As to private property in land having conduced to 
 the peace and tranquility of human life, it is not neces- 
 sary more than to allude to the notorious fact that 
 the struggle for land has been the prolific source 
 of wars and of law suits, while it is the poverty en- 
 gendered by private property in land that make the 
 prison and the workhouse the unfailing attributes of 
 what we call Christian civilization. 
 
 Your Holiness intimates that the Divine Law gives 
 its sanction to the private ownership of land, quoting 
 from Deuteronomy, " Thou shalt not covet thy neigh- 
 bor's wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his man- 
 servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, 
 nor anything which is his." 
 
 If, as your Holiness conveys, this inclusion of the 
 words, " nor his field,'" is to be taken as sanctioning 
 private property in land as it exists to-day, then, 
 but with far greater force, must the words, ' his man- 
 servant, nor his maid-servant," be taken to sanction
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 49 
 
 chattel slavery ; for it is evident from other provisions 
 of the same code that these terms referred both to 
 bondsmen for a term of years and to perpetual slaves. 
 But the word "field" involves the idea of use and 
 improvement, to which the right of possession and 
 ownership does attach without recognition of prop- 
 erty in the land itself. And that this reference to 
 the " field " is not a sanction of private property in 
 land as it exists to-day is proved by the fact that the 
 Mosaic code expressly denied such unqualified owner- 
 ship in land, and with the declaration, " the land 
 also shall not be sold forever, because it is mine, and 
 you are strangers and sojourners with me, " provided 
 for its reversion every fiftieth year ; thus, in a way 
 adapted to the primitive industrial conditions of the 
 time, securing to all of the chosen people a foothold 
 in the soil. 
 
 Nowhere in fact throughout the Scriptures can the 
 slightest justification be found for the attaching to 
 land of the same right of property that justly attaches 
 to the things produced by labor. Everywhere is it 
 treated as the free bounty of God, " the land which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 
 6. That fathers should provide for their children 
 and that private property in land is necessary to 
 enable them to do so. (lJf.-17.) 
 
 With all that your Holiness has to say of the 
 sacredness of the family relation we are in full accord. 
 But how the obligation of the father to the child can 
 justify private property in land we cannot see. You 
 reason that private property in land is necessary to the
 
 50 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 discharge of the duty of the father, and is therefore 
 requisite and just, because 
 
 " It is a most sacred law of nature that a father 
 must provide food and all necessities for those whom 
 he has begotten ; and similarly nature dictates that a 
 man's children, who carry on as it were and continue 
 his own personality, should be provided by him with 
 all that is needful to enable them honorably to keep 
 themselves from want and misery in the uncertain- 
 ties of this mortal life. Now in no other way can a 
 father effect this except by the ownership of profitable 
 property, which he can transmit to his children by 
 inheritance." (14.) 
 
 Thanks to Him who has bound the generations of 
 men together by a provision that brings the tenderest 
 love to greet our entrance into the world and soothes 
 our exit with filial piety, it is both the duty and the 
 joy of the father to care for the child till its powers 
 mature, and afterwards in the natural order it becomes 
 the duty and privilege of the child to be the stay of 
 the parent. This is the natural reason for that rela- 
 tion of marriage, the ground work of the sweetest, 
 tenderest and purest of human joys, which the Catho- 
 lic Church has guarded with such unremitting 
 vigilance. 
 
 We do, for a few years, need the providence of our 
 fathers after the flesh. But how small, how transient, 
 how narrow is this need, as compared with our constant 
 need for the providence of Him in whom we live, 
 move and have our being Our Father who art in 
 Heaven ! It is to Him, " the giver of every good and 
 perfect gift," and not to our fathers after the flesh, 
 that Christ taught us to pray, " Give us this day our 
 daily bread." And how true it is that it is through
 
 OPKtf LETTER TO VOPE LEO XIII. 51 
 
 Him that the generations of men exist. Let the mean 
 temperature of the earth rise or fall a few degrees, an 
 amount as nothing compared Math differences produced 
 in our laboratories, and mankind would disappear as 
 ice disappears under a tropical sun, would fall as the 
 leaves fall at the touch of frost. Or, let for two or 
 three seasons the earth refuse her increase, and how 
 many of our millions would remain alive ? 
 
 The duty of fathers to transmit to their children 
 profitable property that will enable them to keep 
 themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties 
 of this mortal life ! What is not possible cannot be a 
 duty. And how is it possible for fathers to do that ? 
 Your Holiness has not considered how mankind really 
 lives from hand to mouth, getting each day its daily 
 bread; how little one generation does or can leave 
 another. It is doubtful if the wealth of the civilized 
 world all told amounts to anything like as much as one 
 year's labor, while it is certain that if labor were to 
 stop and men had to rely on existing accumulation, it 
 would be only a few days ere in the richest countries 
 pestilence and famine would stalk. 
 
 The profitable property your Holiness refers to, is 
 private property in land. Now profitable land, as all 
 economists will agree, is land superior to the land that 
 the ordinary man can get. It is land that will yield an 
 income to the owner as owner, and therefore that will 
 permit the owner to appropriate the products of labor 
 without doing labor, its profitableness to the individual 
 involving the robbery of other individuals. It is there- 
 fore possible only for some fathers to leave their chil- 
 dren profitable land. What therefore your Holiness 
 practically declares is, that it is the duty of all fathers
 
 52 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 to struggle to leave their children what only the few 
 peculiarly strong, lucky or unscrupulous can leave ; 
 and that, a something that involves the robbery of 
 others their deprivation of the material gifts of God. 
 
 This anti-Christian doctrine has been long in practice 
 throughout the Christian world. What are its results ? 
 
 Are they not the very evils set forth in your Encycli- 
 cal ? Are they not, so far from enabling men to keep 
 themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties 
 of this mortal life, to condemn the great masses of 
 men to want and misery that the natural conditions 
 of our mortal life do not entail ; to want and misery 
 deeper and more widespread than exist among heathen 
 savages ? Under the regime of private property in 
 land and in the richest countries not five per cent, of 
 fathers are able at their death to leave anything 
 substantial to their children, and probably a large 
 majority do not leave enough to bury them ! Some 
 few children are left by their fathers richer than it is 
 good for them to be, but the vast majority not only are 
 left nothing by their fathers, but by the system that 
 makes land private property are deprived of the bounty 
 of their Heavenly Father; are compelled to sue others 
 for permission to live and to work, and to toil all their 
 aves for a pittance that often does not enable them 
 to escape starvation and pauperism. 
 
 What your Holiness is actually, though of course 
 inadvertently, urging, is that earthly fathers should 
 assume the functions of the Heavenly Father. It is 
 not the business of one generation to provide the 
 succeeding generation with " all that is needful to 
 enable them honorably to keep themselves from want 
 and misery." That is God's business. We no more
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 53 
 
 create our children than we create our fathers. It is 
 God who is the Creator of each succeeding generation 
 as fully as of the one that preceded it. And, to 
 recall your own words (7), " Nature [God] therefore 
 owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail, the 
 daily supply of his daily wants. And this he finds 
 only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth." What 
 you are now assuming is, that it is the duty of men 
 to provide for the wants of their children by appropri- 
 ating this storehouse and depriving other men's chil- 
 dren of the unfailing supply that God has provided 
 for all. 
 
 The duty of the father to the child the duty pos- 
 sible to all fathers! Is it not so to conduct him- 
 self, so to nurture and teach it, that it shall come to 
 manhood with a sound body, well developed mind, 
 habits of virtue, piety and industry, and in a state of 
 society that shall give it and all others free access to 
 the bounty of God, the providence of the All-Father ? 
 
 In doing this the father would be doing more to 
 secure his children from want and misery than is 
 possible now to the richest of fathers as much more 
 as the providence of God surpasses that of man. For 
 the justice of God laughs at the efforts of men to 
 circumvent it, and the subtle law that binds humanity 
 together poisons the rich in the sufferings of the poor. 
 Even the few who are able in the general struggle to 
 leave their children wealth that they fondly think 
 will keep them from want and misery in the uncer- 
 tainties of this mortal life do they succeed \ Does 
 experience show that it is a benefit to a child to place 
 him above his fellows and enable him to think God's 
 
 law of labor is ot for bim \ Is not suck
 
 54: THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 oftener a curse than a blessing, and does not its expecta- 
 tion often destroy filial love and bring dissensions and 
 heart burnings into families ? And how far and how 
 long are even the ri6hest and strongest able to exempt 
 their children from the common lot '* Nothing is more 
 certain than that the blood of the masters of the world 
 flows to-day in lazzaroni and that the descendants of 
 kings and princes tenant slums and workhouses. 
 
 But in the state of society we strive for, where the 
 monopoly and waste of God's bounty would be done 
 away with and the fruits of labor would go to the 
 laborer, it would be within the ability of all to make 
 more than a comfortable living with reasonable labor. 
 And for those who might be crippled or incapacitated, 
 or deprived of their natural protectors and bread 
 winners, the most ample provision could be made out 
 of that great and increasing fund with which God in 
 his law of rent has provided society not as a matter 
 of niggardly and degrading alms, but as a matter 
 of right, as the assurance which in a Christian state 
 society owes to all its members. 
 
 Thus it is that the duty of the father, the obligation 
 to the child, instead of giving any support to private 
 property in land, utterly condemns it, urging us by the * 
 most powerful considerations to abolish it in the 
 simple and efficacious way of the single tax. 
 
 This duty of the father, this obligation to chil- 
 d-Ten, is not confined to those who have actually chil- 
 dren of their own, but rests on all of us who have 
 come to the powers and responsibilities of manhood. 
 
 For did not Christ set a little child in the midst of 
 the disciples, saying to them that the angels of such 
 little ones always behold the face of His father; saying
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 55 
 
 to them that it were better for a man to hang a 
 millstone about his neck and plunge into the utter- 
 most depths of the sea than to injure such a little 
 one? 
 
 And what to-day is the result of private property in 
 land in the richest of so called Christian countries ? 
 Is it not that young people fear to marry ; that married 
 people fear to have children ; that children are driven 
 out of life from sheer want of proper nourishment and 
 care, or compelled to toil when they ought to be at 
 school or at play ; that great numbers of those 
 who attain maturity enter it with under-nourished 
 bodies, overstrained nerves, undeveloped minds 
 under conditions that foredoom them, not merely to 
 suffering, but to crime ; that fit them in advance for 
 the prison and the brothel ? 
 
 If your Holiness will consider these things we are 
 confident that instead of defending private property 
 in land you will condemn it with anathema ! 
 
 7. That the private ownership of land stimulates 
 industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to the 
 soil and to their country. (51.) 
 
 The idea, as expressed by Arthur Young, that " the 
 magic of property turns barren sands to gold " springs 
 from the confusion of ownership with possession, of 
 which I have before spoken, that attributes to private 
 property in land what is due to security of the products 
 of labor. It is needless for me again to point out 
 that the change we propose, the taxation for public 
 uses of land values, or economic rent, and the aboli- 
 tion of other taxes, would give to the user of land far 
 greater security for the fruits of his labor than the
 
 56 THE CONDITION OF LABOK. 
 
 present system and far greater permanence of posses- 
 sion. Nor is it necessary further to show how it 
 would give homes to those who are now homeless and 
 bind men to their country. For under it every one 
 who wanted a piece of land for a home or for produc- 
 tive use could get it without purchase price and hold 
 it even without tax, since the tax we propose would 
 not fall on all land, nor even on all land in use, but 
 only on land better than the poorest land in use, and 
 is in reality not a tax at all, but merely a return to the 
 state for the use of a valuable privilege. And even 
 those who from circumstances or occupation did not 
 wish to make permanent use of land would still have 
 an equal interest with all others in the land of their 
 country and in the general prosperity. 
 
 But I should like your Holiness to consider how 
 utterly unnatural is the condition of the masses in the 
 richest and most progressive of Christian countries; 
 how large bodies of them live in habitations in which 
 a rich man would not ask his dog to dwell ; how the 
 great majority have no homes from which they are 
 not liable on the slightest misfortune to be evicted ; 
 how numbers have no homes at all, but must seek 
 Avhat shelter chance or charity offers. I should like 
 to ask your Holiness to consider how the great majority 
 of men in such countries have no interest whatever in 
 what they are taught to call their native land, for 
 whic'h they are told that on occasions it is their duty 
 to fight or to die. What right, for instance, have the 
 majority of your countrymen in the land of their birth? 
 Can they live in Italy outside of a prison or a poor? 
 house except as they buy the privilege from some of 
 the exclusive owners $f Italy? Cannot an English-
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 57 
 
 man, an American, an Arab or a Japanese do as much ? 
 May not what was said centuries ago by Tiberius 
 Gracchus be said to-day: "Men of Rome! you are 
 called the lords of the world, yet have no rig fit to a 
 square foot of its soil ! The wild beasts have their 
 dens, but the soldiers of Italy have only water and air /'' 
 What is true of Italy is true of the civilized world 
 is becoming increasingly true. It is the inevitable 
 effect as civilization progresses of private property in 
 land. 
 
 8. That the right to possess private property in land 
 is from Nature, not from, man that the state has no 
 right to abolish it, and that to take the value of land 
 ownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to 
 the private owner. (51). 
 
 This, like much else that your Holiness says, is 
 masked in the use of the indefinite terms private 
 property and private owner a want of precision in 
 the use of words that has doubtless aided in the con- 
 fusion of your own thought. But the context leaves 
 no doubt that by private property you mean private 
 property in land, and by private owner, the private 
 owner of land. 
 
 Hie contention, thus made, that private property 
 in land is from nature, not from man, has no other 
 basis than the confounding of ownership with 
 possession and the ascription to property in land 
 of what belongs to its contradictory, property in the 
 proceeds of labor. You do not attempt to show for 
 it any other basis, nor has any one else ever attempted 
 to do so. That private property in the products of 
 labor is from nature is clear, for nature gives sucl}
 
 58 - THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 things to labor and to labor alone. Of every article 
 of this kind, we know that it came into being as nature's 
 response to the exertion of an individual man or of 
 individual men given by nature directly and ex- 
 clusively to him or to them. Thus there inheres in 
 such things a right of private property, which originates 
 from and goes back to the source of ownership, the 
 maker of the thing. This right is anterior to the 
 state and superior to its enactments, so that, as we 
 hold, it is a violation of natural right and an injustice 
 to the private owner for the state to tax the processes 
 and products of labor. They do not belong to Csesar. 
 They are things that God, of whom nature is but an 
 expression, gives to those who apply for them in the 
 way He has appointed by labor. 
 
 But who will dare trace the individual ownership of 
 land to any grant from the Maker of land ? What 
 does nature give to such ownership ? how does she in 
 any way recognize it? Will any one show from 
 difference of form or feature, of stature or complexion, 
 from dissection of their bodies or analysis of their 
 powers and needs, that one man was intended by 
 nature to own land and another to live on it as his 
 tenant ? That which derives its existence from man 
 and passes away like him, which is indeed but the 
 evanescent expression of his labor, man may hold 
 and transfer as the exclusive property of the individual ; 
 but how can such individual ownership attach to land, 
 which existed before man was, and which continues to 
 exist while the generations of men come and go the 
 unfailing storehouse that the Creator gives to man for 
 " the daily supply of his daily wants 2" 
 
 Clearly, the private ownership of land is from the
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 59 
 
 state, not from nature. Thus, not merely can no 
 objection be made on the score of morals when it is 
 proposed that the state shall abolish it altogether, bat 
 insomuch as it is a violation of natural right, its exist- 
 ence involving a gross injustice on the part of the 
 state, an " impious violation of the benevolent inten- 
 tion of the Creator," it is a moral duty that the state 
 so abolish it. 
 
 So far from there being anything unjust in taking 
 the full value of land ownership for the use of the 
 community, the real injustice is in leaving it in private 
 hands an injustice that amounts to robbery and 
 murder. 
 
 And when your Holiness shall see this I have no fear 
 that you will listen for one moment to the impudent 
 plea that before the community can take what God 
 intended it to take, before men who have been disin- 
 herited of their natural rights can be restored to them, 
 the present owners of land shall first be compensated. 
 
 For not only will you see that the single tax will 
 directly and largely benefit small land owners, whose 
 interests as laborers and capitalists are much greater 
 than their interests as land owners, and that though 
 the great landowners or rather the propertied class 
 in general among whom the profits of land ownership 
 are really divided through mortgages, rent charges, 
 etc. would relatively lose, they too would be absolute 
 gainers in the increased prosperity and improved 
 morals ; but more quickly, more strongly, more per- 
 emptorily than from any calculation of gains or losses 
 would your duty as a man, your faith as a Christian, 
 forbid you to listen for one moment to any such palter- 
 ing with right and wrong.
 
 60 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 Where the state takes some land for public uses it is 
 only just that those whose land is taken should be com- 
 pensated, otherwise some land owners would be treated 
 more harshly than others. But where, by a measure 
 affecting all alike, rent is appropriated for the benefit 
 of all, there can be no claim to compensation. Com- 
 pensation in such case would be a continuance of the 
 same injustice in another form the giving to land 
 owners in the shape of interest of what they before 
 got as rent. Your Holiness knows that justice and in- 
 justice are not thus to be juggled with, and when you 
 f u'jly realize that land is really the storehouse that God 
 owes to all His children, you will no more listen to 
 any demand for compensation for restoring it to them 
 than Moses would have listened to a demand that 
 Pharaoh should be compensated before letting the 
 children of Israel go. 
 
 Compensated for what ? For giving up what has 
 been unjustly taken 2 The demand of land owners 
 for compensation is not that. We do not seek to spoil 
 the Egyptians. We do not ask that what has been 
 unjustly taken from laborers shall be restored- We 
 are willing that bygones should be bygones and to 
 leave dead wrongs to bury their dead. We propose 
 to let those who by the past appropriation of land 
 value have taken the fruits of labor to retain what they 
 have thus got. We merely propose that for the future 
 such robbery of labor shall cease that for the fu- 
 ture, not for the past, landholders shall pay to 
 the community the rent that to the community is 
 justly due,
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 61 
 
 III. 
 
 I have said enough to show your Holiness the injus- 
 tice into which you fall in classing us, who in seeking 
 virtually to abolish private property in land seek more 
 fully to secure the true rights of property, with those 
 whom you speak of as socialists, who wish to make all 
 property common. But you also do injustice to the 
 socialists. 
 
 There are many, it is true, who feeling bitterly the 
 monstrous wrongs of the present distribution of wealth 
 are animated only by a blind hatred of the rich and a 
 fierce desire to destroy existing social adjustments. 
 This class is indeed only less dangerous than those 
 who proclaim that no social improvement is needed 
 or is possible. But it is not fair to confound with 
 them those who, however mistakenly, propose definite 
 schemes of remedy. 
 
 The socialists, as I understand them, and as the 
 term has come to apply to any thing . like a definite 
 theory and not to be vaguely and improperly used to 
 include all who desire social improvement, do not, as 
 you imply, seek the abolition of all private property. 
 Those who do this are properly called communists. 
 "What the socialists seek is the state assumption 
 of capital (in which they vaguely and erroneously 
 include land), or more properly speaking, of large 
 capitals, and state management and direction of at 
 least the larger operations of industry. In this way 
 they hope to abolish interest, which they regard as a 
 wrong and an evil ; to do away with the gains of ex- 
 changers, speculators, contractors and middlemen, 
 which they regard as waste; to do away with the 
 wage system and secure general co-operation; and
 
 62 THE coi\i)iiioN OF IABOK. 
 
 to prevent competition, which they deem the 
 fundamental cause of the impoverishment of labor. 
 The more moderate of them, without going so far, 
 go in the same direction, and seek some remedy or 
 palliation of the worst forms of poverty by govern- 
 ment regulation. The essential character of socialism 
 is that it looks to the extension of the functions of the 
 state for the remedy of social evils ; that it would 
 substitute regulation and direction for competition; 
 and intelligent control by organized society for the 
 free play of individual desire and effort. 
 
 Though not usually classed as socialists, both the 
 trades unionists and the protectionists have the same 
 essential character. The trades unionists seek the 
 increase of wages, the reduction of working hours and 
 the general improvement in the condition of wage- 
 workers, by organizing them into guilds or associa- 
 tions which shall fix the rates at which they will sell 
 their labor ; shall deal as one body with employers in 
 case of dispute ; skall use on occasion their necessary 
 weapon, the strike; and shall accumulate funds for 
 such purposes and for the purpose of assisting mem- 
 bers when on a strike, or (sometimes) when out of em- 
 ployment. The protectionists seek by governmental 
 prohibitions or taxes on imports to regulate the in 
 dustry and control the exchanges of each country, so, 
 as they imagine, to diversify home industries and pre- 
 vent the competition of people of other countries. 
 
 At the opposite extreme are the anarchists, a 
 term which, though frequently applied to mere vio- 
 lent destructionists, refers also to those who, seeing the 
 many evils of too much government, regard govern- 
 ment in itself as evil, and believe that in the absence
 
 OPEN LKTTEK TO POPE LEO Xltf. 63 
 
 of coercive power the mutual interests of men would 
 secure voluntarily Avhat co-operation is needed. 
 
 Differing from all these are those for whom 1 would 
 speak. Believing that the rights of true property are 
 sacred, we would regard forcible communism as 
 robbery that would bring destruction. But we would 
 not be disposed to deny that voluntary communisai 
 might be the highest possible state of which men 
 can conceive. Nor do we say that it cannot be 
 possible for mankind to attain it, since among the 
 early Christians and among the religious orders of the 
 Catholic church we have examples of communistic 
 societies on a small scale. St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 St. Thomas of Aquin and Fra Angelico, the illus- 
 trious orders of the Carmelites and Franciscans, the 
 Jesuits, whose heroism carried the cross among the 
 most savage tribes of American forests, the societies 
 that wherever your communion is known have 
 deemed no work of mercy too dangerous or too re- 
 pellent were or are communists. Knowing these 
 things we cannot take it on ourselves to say that a 
 social condition may not be possible in which an all- 
 embracing love shall have taken the place of all other 
 motives. But we see that communism is only 
 possible where there exists a general and intense re- 
 ligious faith, and we see that such a state can be 
 reached only through a state of justice. For before a 
 man can be a saint he must first be an honest man. 
 
 With both anarchists and socialists, we, who for 
 want of a better term have come to call ourselves single 
 tax men, fundamentally differ. We regard them as err- 
 ing in opposite directions the one in ignoring the 
 social nature of man, the other in ignoring his individual
 
 64 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 nature. While we see that man is primarily an 
 individual, and that nothing but evil has come or can 
 come from the interference by the state with things 
 that belong to individual action, we also see that he 
 is a social being, or, as Aristotle called him, a political 
 animal, and that the state is requisite to social advance, 
 having an indispensable place in the natural order. 
 Looking on the bodily organism as the analogue of 
 the social organism, and on the proper functions 
 of the state as akin to those that in the human 
 organism are discharged by the conscious intelligence, 
 while the play of individual impulse and interest 
 performs functions akin to those discharged in the 
 bodily organism by the unconscious instincts and 
 involuntary motions, the anarchists seem to us like 
 men who would try to get along without heads and 
 the socialists like men who would try to rule the 
 wonderfully complex and delicate internal relations of 
 their frames by conscious will. 
 
 The philosophical anarchists of whom I speak are 
 few in number, and of little practical importance. It 
 is with socialism in its various phases that we have to 
 do battle. 
 
 With the socialists we have some points of agree- 
 ment, for we recognize fully the social nature of man 
 and believe that all monopolies should be neld and gov- 
 erned by the state. In these, and in directions 
 where the general health, knowledge, comfort and con- 
 venience might be improved, we, too, would extend 
 the functions of the state. 
 
 But it seems to us the vice of socialism in all its de- 
 grees is its want of radicalism, of going to the root. It 
 takes its theories from those who have sought to justify
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xllt. 65 
 
 the impoverishment of the masses, and its advocates 
 generally teach the preposterous and degrading doc- 
 trine that slavery was the first condition of labor. It 
 assumes that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the 
 nitural law, and seeks to abolish wages ; it assumes that 
 the natural result of competition is to grind down 
 workers, and seeks to abolish competition by restrictions, 
 prohibitions and extensions of governing power. Thus 
 mistaking effects for causes, and childishly blaming 
 the stone for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving 
 for remedies that when not worse are futile. Associat- 
 ed though it is in many places with democratic aspira- 
 tion, yet its essenca is the same delusion to which the 
 Children of Israel yielded when against the protest of 
 their prophet they insisted on a king ; the delusion 
 that has everywhere corrupted democracies and en- 
 throned tyrants that power over the people can be 
 used for the benefit of the people ; that there may be 
 devised machinery that through human agencies will 
 secure for the management of individual affairs more 
 wisdom and more virtue than the people themselves 
 possess. 
 
 This superficiality and this tendency may be seen 
 in all the phases of socialism. 
 
 Take, for instance, protectionism. What support 
 it has, beyond the mere selfish desire of sellers to 
 compel buyers to pay them more than their goods are 
 worth, springs from such superficial ideas as that pro- 
 duction, not consumption, is the end of effort ; that 
 money is more valuable than money's worth, and to 
 sell more pro ti table than to buy ; and above all from a 
 desire to limit competition, springing from an unan- 
 alyziug recognition of the phenomena that necessarily
 
 16 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 follow when men who have the need to labor are 
 deprived by monopoly of access to the natural and 
 indispensable element of all labor. Its methods 
 involve the idea that governments can more wisely 
 direct the expenditure of labor and the investment of 
 capital than can laborers and capitalists, and that the 
 men who control governments will use this power for 
 the general good and not in their own interests. They 
 tend to multiply officials, restrict liberty, invent crimes. 
 They promote perjury, fraud and corruption. And 
 they would, were the theory carried to its logical 
 conclusion, destroy civilization and reduce mankind 
 to savagery. 
 
 Take trades unionism. While within narrow lines 
 trades unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality 
 of interests, and often helps to raise courage and 
 further political education, and while it has enabled 
 limited bodies of workingmen to improve somewhat 
 their condition, and gain, as it were, breathing space, 
 yet it takes no note of the general causes that deter- 
 mine the conditions of labor, and strives for the eleva- 
 tion of only a small part of the great body by means 
 that cannot help the rest. Aiming at the restriction 
 of competition the limitation of the right to labor, 
 its methods are like those of an army, which even 
 in a righteous cause are subversive of liberty and 
 liable to abuse, while its weapon, the strike, is 
 destructive in its nature, both to combatants and non- 
 combatants, being a form of passive war. To apply 
 the principle of trades unions to all industry, as some 
 dream of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste 
 system. 
 
 Or take even such moderate measures as the limita-
 
 OPKN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 67 
 
 tion of working hours and of the labor of women and 
 children. They are superficial in looking no further 
 than to the eagerness of men and women and little 
 children to work unduly, and in proposing forcibly to 
 restrain overwork while utterly ignoring its cause, the 
 sting of poverty that forces human beings to it. And 
 the methods by which these restraints must be 
 enforced, multiply officials, interfere with personal 
 liberty, tend to corruption, and are liable to abuse. 
 
 As for thorough going socialism, which is the mors 
 to be honored as having the courage of its convictions, 
 it would carry these vices to full expression. Jump- 
 ing to conclusions without effort to discover causes, it 
 fails to see that oppression does not come Irom the 
 nature of capital, but from the wrong that robs labor 
 of capital by divorcing it from land, and that cre- 
 ates a fictitious capital that is really capitalized monop- 
 oly. It fails to see that it would be impossible for 
 capital to oppress labor were labor free to the natural 
 material of production ; that the wage system in 
 itaelf springs from mutual convenience, being a form 
 of co-operation in which one of the parties prefers a 
 certain to a contingent result ; and that what it calls 
 the "iron law of wages" is not the natural law of 
 wages, but only the law of wages in that unnatural 
 condition in which men are made helpless by being 
 deprived of the materials for life and work. It fails 
 to see that what it mistakes for the evils of competi- 
 tion are really the evils of restricted competition 
 are due to a one sided competition to which men 
 are forced when deprived of land. While its meth- 
 ods, the organization of men into industrial armies, 
 the direction and control of all production and ex-
 
 68 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 change by governmental or semi-governmental bu- 
 reaus, would, if carried to full expression, mean 
 Egyptian despotism. 
 
 We differ from the socialists in our diagnosis of the 
 evil and we differ from them as to remedies. We have 
 no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural hand- 
 maiden of labor; we look on interest in itself as 
 natural and just; we would set no limit to accumula- 
 tion, nor impose on the rich any burden that is not 
 equally placed on the poor ; we see no evil in com- 
 petition, but deem unrestricted competition to be as 
 necessary to the health of the industrial and social 
 organism as the free circulation of the blood is to the 
 health of the bodily organism to be the agency where- 
 by the fullest co-operation is to be secured. We would 
 simply take for the community what belongs to the 
 community, the value that attaches to land by the 
 growth of the community ; leave sacredly to the indi- 
 vidual all that belongs to the individual ; and, treat- 
 ing necessary monopolies as functions of the state, 
 abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those 
 required for public health, safety, morals and con- 
 venience. 
 
 But the fundamental difference the difference I 
 ask your Holiness specially to note, is in this : socialism 
 in all its phases looks on the evils of our civilization as 
 springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of 
 natural relations, which must be artificially organized 
 or improved. In its idea there devolves on the state 
 the necessity of intelligently organizing the industrial 
 relations of men ; the construction, as it were, of a great 
 machine whose complicated parts shall properly work 
 together under the direction of human intelligence.
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 69 
 
 This is the reason why socialism tends towards atheism. 
 Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, 
 it fails to recognize God. 
 
 On the other hand, we who call ourselves single tax 
 men (a name which expresses merely our practical 
 propositions) see in the social and industrial relations 
 of men not a machine which requires construction, 
 but an organism which needs only to be suffered to 
 grow. We see in the natural social and industrial 
 laws such harmony as we see in the adjustments of the 
 human body, and that as far transcends the power of 
 man's intelligence to order and direct as it is beyond 
 man's intelligence to order and direct the vital move- 
 ments of his frame. We see in these social and indus- 
 trial laws so close a relation to the moral law as must 
 spring from the same Authorship, and that proves the 
 moral law to be the sure guide of man where his intelli- 
 gence would wander and go astray. Thus, to us, all that 
 is needed to remedy the evils of our time is to do justice 
 and give freedom. This is the reason why our beliefs 
 tend towards, nay are indeed the only beliefs consistent 
 with a firm and reverent faith in God, and with the 
 recognition of His law as the supreme law which men 
 must follow if they would secure prosperity and avoid 
 destruction. This is the reason why to us political 
 economy only serves to show the depth of wisdom 
 in the simple truths which common people heard 
 gladly from the lips of Him of whom it was said with 
 wonder, " Is not this the Carpenter of Nazareth ? " 
 
 And it is because that in what we propose the 
 securing to all men of equal natural opportunities for 
 the exercise of their powers and the removal of all 
 legal restriction on the legitimate exercise of those
 
 70 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 powers we see the conformation of human law to the 
 moral law, that we hold with confidence not merely 
 that this is the 'sufficient remedy for all the evils you 
 so strikingly portray, but thai it is the only possible 
 remedy. 
 
 Nor is there any other. The organization of man 
 is such, his relations to the world in which he is placed 
 are such that is to say, the immutable laws of God 
 are such, that it is beyond the power of human in- 
 genuity to devise any way by which the evils born of 
 the injustice that robs men of their birthright can be 
 removed otherwise than by doing justice, by opening 
 to all the bounty that God has provided for all. 
 
 Since man can live only on land and from land, 
 since land is the reservoir of matter and force from 
 which man's body itself is taken, and on which he must 
 draw for all that he can produce, does it not irresistibly 
 follow that to give the land in ownership to some men 
 and to deny to others all right to it is to divide man- 
 kind into the rich and the poor, the privileged and the 
 helpless ? Does it not follow that those who have no 
 rights to the use of land can live only by selling their 
 power to labor to those who own the land ? Does it 
 not follow that what the socialists call " the iron law 
 of wages," what the political economists term " the 
 tendency of wages to a minimum," must take from the 
 landless masses the mere laborers, who of themselves 
 have no power to use their labor all the benefits of 
 any possible advance or improvement that does not 
 alter this unjust division of land. For having no 
 power to employ themselves, they must, either as 
 labor sellers or land renters, compete with one another 
 for permission to labor. This competition with one
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 71 
 
 another of men shut out from God's inexhaustible store- 
 house has no limit but starvation, and must ultimately 
 force wages to their lowest point, the point at which 
 life can just be* maintained and reproduction carried 
 on. 
 
 This is not to say that all wages must fall to this 
 point, but that the wages of that necessarily largest 
 stratum of laborers who have only ordinary knowledge, 
 skill and aptitude must so fall. The wages of 
 special classes, who are fenced off from the pressure of 
 competition by peculiar knowledge, skill or other 
 causes, may remain above that ordinary level. Thus, 
 where the ability to read and write is rare its posses- 
 sion enables a man to obtain higher wages than the 
 ordinary laborer. But as the diffusion of education 
 makes the ability to read and write general this 
 advantage is lost. So when a vocation requires special 
 training or skill, or is made difficult of access by 
 artificial restrictions, the checking of competition tends 
 to keep wages in it at a higher level. But as the prog- 
 ress o invention dispenses with peculiar skill, or 
 artificial restrictions are broken down, these higher 
 wages sink to the ordinary level. And so, it is only 
 so long as they are special that such qualities as indus- 
 try, prudence and thrift can enable the ordinary laborer 
 to maintain a condition above that which gives a mere 
 living. Where they become general, the law of 
 competition must reduce the earnings or savings of such 
 qualities to the general level which, land being 
 monopolized and labor helpless, can be only that at 
 which the next lowest point is the cessation of life. 
 
 Or, to state the same thing in another way : Land 
 being necessary to life and labor, its owners will be
 
 72 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 able, in return for permission to use it, to obtain 
 from mere laborers all that labor can produce, save 
 enough to enable such of them to maintain life as are 
 wanted by the land owners and their dependents. 
 
 Thus, where private property in land has divided 
 society into a land owning class and a landless class, 
 there is no possible invention or improvement, 
 whether it be industrial, social or moral, which, so 
 long as it does not affect the ownership of land, can 
 prevent poverty or relieve the general conditions of 
 mere laborers. For whether the effect of any inven- 
 tion or improvement be to increase what labor can 
 produce or to decrease what is required to support the 
 laborer, it can, so soon as it becomes general, result 
 only in increasing the income of the owners of land, 
 without at all benefiting the mere laborers. In no 
 event can those possessed of the mere ordinary power 
 to labor, a power utterly useless without the means 
 necessary to labor, keep more of their earnings than 
 enough to enable them to live. 
 
 How true this is we may see in the facts of to-day. 
 In our own time invention and discovery have enor- 
 mously increased the productive power of labor, and at 
 the same time greatly reduced the cost of many things 
 necessary to the support of the laborer. Have these 
 improvements anywhere raised the earnings of the 
 mere laborer ? Have not their benefits mainly gone 
 to the owners of land enormously increased land 
 values ? 
 
 I say mainly, for some part of the benefit has gone 
 to the cost of monstrous standing armies and warlike 
 preparations ; to the payment of interest on great public 
 debts; and, largely disguised as interest on fictitious
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 73 
 
 capital, to the owners of monopolies other than that of 
 land. But improvements that would do away with 
 these wastes would not benefit labor ; they would sim- 
 ply increase the profits of land owners. Were stand- 
 ing armies and all their incidents abolished, were all 
 m Duopolies other than that of land done away with, 
 were governments to become models of economy, 
 were the profits of speculators, of middlemen, of all 
 sorts of exchangers saved, were every one to become 
 so strictly honest that no policemen, no courts, no 
 prisons, no precautions against dishonesty would be 
 needed the result would not differ from that which 
 has followed the increase of productive power. 
 
 Nay, would not these very blessings bring starva- 
 tion to many of those who now manage to live ? Is it 
 not true that if there were proposed to-day, what all 
 Christian men ought to pray for, the complete dis- 
 bandment of all the armies of Europe, the greatest 
 fears would be aroused for the consequences of throw- 
 ing on the labor market so many unemployed 
 laborers ? 
 
 The explanation of this and of similar paradoxes 
 that in our time perplex on every side may be easily 
 saen. The effect of all inventions and improvements 
 that increase productive power, that save waste and 
 economize effort, is to lessen the labor required for a 
 given result, and thus to save labor, so that we speak 
 of them as labor saving' inventions or improvements. 
 Now, in a natural state of society where the rights of 
 all to the use of the earth are acknowledged, labor 
 saving improvements might go to the very utmost 
 that can be imagined without lessening the demand 
 for men, since in such natural conditions the demand
 
 7* THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 for men lies in their own enjoyment of life and the 
 strong instincts that the Creator has implanted in 
 the human breast. But in that unnatural state of 
 society whero the masses of men are disinherited of 
 all but the power to labor when opportunity to labor 
 is given them by others, there the demand for them 
 becomes simply the demand for their services by those 
 who hold this opportunity, and man himself becomes 
 a commodity. Hence, although the natural effect of 
 labor saving improvement is to increase wages, yet in 
 the unnatural condition which private ownership of 
 the land begets, the effect, even of such moral im- 
 provements as the disbandment of armies and the sav- 
 ing of the labor that vice entails, is by lessening the 
 commercial demand, to lower wages and reduce mere 
 laborers to starvation or pauperism. If labor saving 
 inventions and improvements could be carried to the 
 very abolition of the necessity for labor, what would 
 be the result? Would it not be that land owners 
 could then get all the wealth that the land was 
 capable of producing, and would have no need at all 
 for laborers, who must then either starve or live as 
 pensioners on the bounty of the land owners ? 
 
 Thus, so long as private property in land continue 
 so long as some men aro treated as owners of the 
 earth and other men can live on it only by their suffer- 
 ance human wisdom can devise no means by which 
 the evils of our present condition may be avoided. 
 
 Nor yet could the wisdom of God. 
 
 By the light of that right reason of which St. 
 Thomas speaks we may see that even He, the Al- 
 migiity, so long as His laws remain what they are,
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 75 
 
 could do nothing to prevent poverty and starvation 
 while property in land continues. 
 
 How could He ? Should he infuse new vigor into 
 the sunlight, new virtue into the air, new fertility 
 into the soil, would not all this new bounty go to the 
 owners of the land, and work not benefit, but rather 
 injury, to mere laborers ? Should He open the minds 
 of men to the possibilities of new substances, new ad- 
 justments, new powers, could this do any more to 
 relieve poverty than steam, electricity and all the num- 
 berless discoveries and inventions of our time have 
 done ? Or, if He were to send down from the heavens 
 above or cause to gush up from the subterranean 
 depths, food, clothing, all the things that satisfy man's 
 material desires, to whom under our laws would all 
 these belong ? So far from benefiting man, would not 
 this increase and extension of His bounty prove but a 
 curse, enabling the privileged class more riotously 
 to roll in wealth, and bringing the disinherited class 
 to more widespread starvation or pauperism ? 
 
 IY. 
 
 Believing that the social question is at bottom a 
 religious question, we deem it of happy augury to the 
 world that in your Encyclical the most influential of all 
 religious teachers has directed attention to the condi- 
 tion of labor. 
 
 But while we appreciate the many wholesome 
 truths you utter, while we feel, as all must feel, that 
 you are animated by a desire to help the suffering and 
 oppressed, and to put an end to any idea that the 
 Church is divorced from the aspiration for liberty and
 
 76 THE CONDITION OF LABOK. 
 
 progress, yet it is painfully obvious to us that one 
 fatal assumption bides from you tbe cause of tbe evils 
 you see, and makes it impossible for you to propose 
 any adequate remedy. Tbis assumption is, that pri- 
 vate prop arty in land is of tbe same nature and has 
 tbe same sanctions as private property in things pro- 
 duced by labor. In spite of its undeniable truths and 
 its benevolent spirit, your Encyclical shows you to be 
 involved in such difficulties as a physician called to 
 examine one suffering from disease of the stomach 
 would meet should he begin with a refusal to consider 
 the stomach. 
 
 Prevented by this assumption from seeing the true 
 cause, the only causes you find it possible to assign for 
 the growth of misery and wretchedness are the destruc- 
 tion of workingmen's guilds in the last century, the 
 repudiation in public institutions and laws of the 
 ancient religion, rapacious usury, the custom of work- 
 ing by contract, and the concentration of trade. 
 
 Such diagnosis is manifestly inadequate to account 
 for evils that are alike felt in Catholic countries, in 
 Protestant countries, in countries that adhere to the 
 Greek communion and in countries where no religion 
 is professed by the state ; that are alike felt in old 
 countries and in new countries; where industry is 
 simple and where it is most elaborate ; and amid all 
 varieties of industrial customs and relations. 
 
 But the real cause will be clear if you will consider 
 that since labor must find its workshop and reservoir 
 in land, the labor question is but another name for the 
 land question, and will re-examine your assumption 
 that private property in land is necessary and right. 
 
 See how fully adequate is the cause I have pointed
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XTH. 77 
 
 out. Tl)3 most important of all the material relations 
 of man is his relation to the planet he inhabits, and 
 hence, the " impious resistance to the benevolent inten- 
 tions of his Creator," which, as Bishop ISTulty says, is 
 involved in private property in land, must produce 
 evils wherever it exists. But by virtue of the law, 
 " unto whom much is given, from him much is required," 
 the very progress of civilization makes the evils pro- 
 duced by private property in land more widespread 
 and intense. 
 
 What is producing throughout the civilized world 
 that condition of things you rightly describe as intoler- 
 able is not this and that local error or minor mistake. 
 It is nothing less than the progress of civilization itself ; 
 nothing less than the intellectual advance and the ma- 
 terial growth in which our century has been so 
 pre-eminent, acting in a state of society based on private 
 property in land ; nothing less than the new gifts that 
 in our time God has been showering on man, but 
 which are being turned into scourges by man's " im- 
 pious resistance to the benevolent intention of his 
 Creator." 
 
 The discoveries of science, the gains of invention^ 
 have given to us in this wonderful century more than 
 has been given to men in any time' before ; and, in a 
 degree so rapidly accelerating as to suggest geometrical 
 progression, are placing in our hands new material 
 powers. But with the benefit conies the obligation. 
 In a civilization beginning to pulse with steam and 
 electricity, where the sun paints pictures and the phono- 
 graph stores speech, it will not do to be merely as just 
 as were our fathers. Intellectual advance and material 
 advance require corresponding moral advance. Knowl-
 
 78 THE COtftMTioK OP LABOR. 
 
 edge and power are neither good nor evil. They are 
 not ends but means evolving forces that if not con- 
 trolled in orderly relations must take disorderly and 
 destructive forms. The deepening pain, the increasing 
 perplexity, the growing discontent for which, as you 
 truly say, some remedy must be found and quickly 
 found, mean nothing less than that forces of destruction 
 swifter and more terrible than those that have shattered 
 every preceding civilization are already menacing ours 
 that if it does not quickly rise to a higher moral level ; 
 if it does not become in deed as in word a Christian 
 civilization, on the wall of its splendor must flame the 
 doom of Babylon : " Thou art weighed in the balance 
 and found wanting ! " 
 
 One false assumption prevents you from seeing 
 the real cause and true significance of the facts 
 that have prompted your Encyclical. And it fatally 
 fetters you when you seek a remedy. 
 
 You state that you approach the subject with confi- 
 dence, yet in all that greater part of the Encyclical 
 (19-67) devoted to the remedy, while there is an 
 abundance of moral reflections and injunctions, 
 excellent in themselves but dead and meaningless 
 as you apply them, the only definite practical 
 proposals for the improvement of the condition of 
 labor are : 
 
 1. That the State should step in to prevent over- 
 work, to restrict the employment of women ana 
 children, to secure in workshops conditions not un- 
 favorable to health and morals, and, at least where 
 there is danger of insufficient wages provoking strikes, 
 to regulate wages (39-40).
 
 OPEtf LfiTTEfc 1K> POPE LE6 Xllt. 79 
 
 2. That it should encourage the acquisition of 
 property (in land) by workingmen (50-51). 
 
 3. That workingmen's associations should be 
 formed (52-67). 
 
 These remedies so far as they go are socialistic, 
 and though the Encyclical is not without recognition 
 of the individual character of man and of the priority 
 of the individual and the family to the state, yet the 
 whole tendency and spirit of its remedial suggestions 
 lean unmistakably to socialism extremely moderate 
 socialism it is true ; socialism hampered and emas- 
 culated by a supreme respect for private possessions ; 
 yet socialism still. But, although you frequently use 
 the ambiguous term " private property " when the con- 
 text shows that you have in mind private property in 
 land, the one thing clear on the surface and becom- 
 ing clearer still with examination is that you insist 
 that whatever else may be done, the private owner- 
 ship of land shall be left untouched. 
 
 I have already referred generally to the defects 
 that attach to all socialistic remedies for the evil con- 
 dition of labor, but respect for your Holiness dictates 
 that 1 should speak specifically, even though briefly, 
 of the remedies proposed or suggested by you. 
 
 Of these, the widest and strongest are that the 
 state should restrict the hours of labor, the employ- 
 ment of women and children, the unsanitary condi- 
 tions of workshops, etc. Yet how little may in this 
 way be accomplished. 
 
 A strong, absolute ruler might hope by such regula- 
 tions to alleviate the conditions of chattel slaves. But 
 the tendency of our times is towards democracy, and
 
 80 THE CONDITION OP LABOR. 
 
 democratic states are necessarily weaker in paternal- 
 ism, while in the industrial slavery, growing out of 
 private ownership of land, that prevails in Christen- 
 dom to-day, it is not the master who forces the slave 
 to labor, but the slave who urges the master to let 
 him labor. Thus the greatest difficulty in enforcing 
 such regulations comes from those whom they are in- 
 tended to benefit. It is not, for instance, the masters 
 who make it difficult to enforce restrictions on child 
 labor in factories, but the mothers, who, prompted by 
 poverty, misrepresent the ages of their children even 
 to the misters, and teach the children to misrepresent. 
 
 But while in large factories and mines regulations 
 as to hours, ages, etc., though subject to evasion and 
 offering opportunities for extortion and corruption, 
 may be to some extent enforced, how can they have 
 any effect in those far wider branches of industry 
 where the laborer works for himself or for small 
 employers ? 
 
 All such remedies are of the nature of the remedy 
 for overcrowding that is generally prescribed with 
 them the restriction under penalty of the number 
 who may occupy a room and the demolition of unsani- 
 tary buildings. Since these measures have no ten- 
 dency to increase house accommodation or to augment 
 ability to pay for it, the overcrowding that is forced 
 back in some places goes on in other places and to a 
 worse degree. All such remedies begin at the wrong 
 end. They are like putting on brake and bit to hold 
 in quietness horses that are being lashed into frenzy ; 
 they are like trying to stop a locomotive by holding 
 its wheels instead of shutting oil steam ; like attempt- 
 ing to cure smallpox by driving back its pustules.
 
 OPEX LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 81 
 
 Men do not overwork themselves because they like 
 it ; it is not in the nature of the mother's heart to 
 send children to work when they ought to be at play ; 
 it is not of choice that laborers will work in dangerous 
 and unsanitary conditions. These things, like over- 
 crowding, come from the sting of poverty. And so 
 long as the poverty of which they are the ex- 
 pression is left untouched, restrictions such as you 
 endorse can have only partial and evanescent results. 
 The cause remaining, repression in one place can only 
 bring out its effects in other places, and the task you 
 assign to the state is as hopeless as to ask it to lower 
 the level of the ocean by bailing out the sea. 
 
 Nor can the state cure poverty by regulating 
 wages. It is as much beyond the power of the 
 state to regulate wages as it is to regulate the rates of 
 interest. Usury laws have been tried again and 
 again, but the only effect they have ever had has 
 been to increase what the poorer borrowers must pay, 
 and for the same reasons that all attempts to lower 
 by regulation the price of goods have always resulted 
 merely in increasing them. The general rate of 
 wages is fixed by the ease or difficulty with which 
 labor can obtain access to land, ranging from the full 
 earnings of labor, where land is free, to the least on 
 which laborers can live and reproduce, where land is 
 fully monopolized. Thus, where it has been com- 
 paratively easy for laborers to get land, as in the 
 United States and in Australasia, wages have been 
 higher than in Europe and it has been impossible to 
 get European laborers to work there for wages that 
 they would gladly accept at home ; while as monopoli- 
 zation goes on under the influence of private property
 
 82 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 in land, wages tend to fall, and the social conditions of 
 Europe to appear. Thus, under the partial yet sub- 
 stantial recognition of common rights to land, of which 
 I have spoken, the many attempts of the British 
 parliaments to reduce wages by regulation failed 
 utterly. And so, when the institution of private 
 property in land had done its work in England, all 
 attempts of Parliament to raise wages proved unavail- 
 ing. In the beginning of this century it was even 
 attempted to increase the earnings of laborers by 
 grants in aid of wages. But the only result was to 
 lower commensurately what wages employers paid. 
 
 The state could only maintain wages above the ten- 
 dency of the market (for as I have shown labor de- 
 prived of land becomes a commodity), by offering 
 employment to all who wish it ; or by lending its 
 sanction to strikes and supporting them with its 
 funds. Thus it is, that the thorough going social- 
 ists who want the state to take all industry into its 
 hands are much more logical than those timid social- 
 ists who propose that the state should regulate private 
 industry but only a little. 
 
 The same hopelessness attends your suggestion that 
 working people should be encouraged by the state 
 in obtaining a share of the land. It is evident that 
 by this you mean that, as is now being attempted 
 in Ireland, the state shall buy out large land owners 
 in favor of small ones, establishing what is known as 
 peasant proprietors. Supposing that this can be done 
 even to a considerable extent, what will be ac- 
 complished save to substitute a larger privileged class 
 for a smaller privileged class ? What will be done for
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 83 
 
 the still larger class that must remain, the laborers of 
 the agricultural districts, the workmen of the towns, 
 the proletarians of the cities ? Is it not true, as Pro- 
 fessor De Laveleye says, that in such countries as 
 Belgium, where peasant proprietary exists, the tenants, 
 for there still exist tenants, are rackrented with a 
 mercilessness unknown in Ireland ? Is it not true 
 that in such countries as Belgium the condition of the 
 mere laborer is even worse than it is in Great Britain, 
 where large ownerships obtain? And if the state 
 attempts to buy up land for peasant proprietors will 
 not the effect be, what is seen to-day in Ireland, to in- 
 crease the market value of land and thus make it more 
 difficult for those not so favored, and for those who 
 will come after, to get land ? How, moreover, on the 
 principle which you declare (36), that " to the state 
 the interests of all are equal, whether high or low," 
 will you justify state aid to one man to buy a bit of 
 land without also insisting on state aid to another 
 man to buy a donkey, to another to buy a shop, to 
 another to buy the tools and materials of a trade 
 state aid in short to everybody who may be able to 
 make good use of it or thinks that he could ? And 
 are you not thus landed in communism not the com- 
 munism of the early Christians and of the religious 
 orders, but communism that uses the coercive power 
 of the state to take rightful property by force from 
 those who have, to give to those who have not? 
 For the state has no purse of Fortunatus ; the state 
 cannot repeat the miracle of the loaves and fishes ; 
 all that the state can give, it must get by some form 
 or other of the taxing power. And whether it gives 
 or lends money, or gives or lends credit, it cannot give
 
 84 THE CONDITION OP LABOR. 
 
 to those who have not, without taking from those who 
 have. 
 
 But aside from all this, any scheme of dividing up 
 land while maintaining private property in land is 
 futile. Small holdings cannot co-exist with the treat- 
 ment of land as private property where civilization is 
 materially advancing and wealth augments. We may 
 S3e this in the economic tendencies that in ancient 
 times were the main cause that transformed world- 
 conquering Italy from a land of small farms to a land 
 of great estates. We may see it in the fact that while 
 two centuries ago the majority of English farmers 
 were owners of the land they tilled, tenancy has been 
 for a long time the all but universal condition of the 
 English farmer. And now the mighty forces of steam 
 and electricity have come to urge concentration. It is 
 in the United States that we may see on the largest 
 scale how their power is opsratiug to turn a nation of 
 land owners into a nation of tenants. The principle is 
 clear and irresistible. Material progress makes land 
 more valuable, and when this increasing value is left 
 to private owners land must pass from the ownership 
 of the poor into the ownership of the rich, just as dia- 
 monds so pass when poor men find them. What the 
 British government is attempting in Ireland is to 
 build snow houses in the Arabian desert ! to plant 
 bananas in Labrador t 
 
 There is one way, and only one way, in which 
 working people in our civilization may be secured a 
 share in the land of their country, and that is the way 
 that we propose the taking of the profits of land 
 ownership for the community.
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 85 
 
 As to workingmen's associations, what your Holi- 
 ness seems to contemplate is the formation and encour- 
 agement of societies akin to the Catholic sodalities, 
 and to the friendly and beneficial societies, like the 
 Odd Fellows, which have had a large extension in 
 English speaking countries. Such associations may 
 promote fraternity, extend social intercourse and pro- 
 vide assurance in case of sickness or death, but if they 
 go no further they are powerless to affect wages even 
 among their members. As to trades unions proper, it 
 is hard to define your position, which is, perhaps, best 
 stated as one of warm approbation provided that they 
 do not go too far. For while you object to strikes ; 
 while you reprehend societies that " do their best to get 
 into their hands the whole field of labor and to force 
 workingmen either to join them or to starve ;" while 
 you discountenance the coercing of employers and 
 seem to think that arbitration might take the place of 
 strikes ; yet you use expressions and assert principles 
 that are all that the trade unionist would -ask, not 
 merely to justify the strike and the boycott, but even 
 the use of violence where only violence would suffice. 
 For you speak of the insufficient wages of workmen 
 as due to the greed of rich employers ; you assume the 
 moral right of the workman to obtain employment 
 from others at wages greater than those others are will- 
 ing freely to give ; and you deny the right of any one to 
 work for such wages as he pleases, in such a way as 
 to lead Mr. Stead, in so widely read a journal as the 
 Review of Reviews, to approvingly declare that you 
 regard " blacklegging," i. e., the working for less than 
 union wages, as a crime. 
 
 To men conscious of bitter injustice, to men steeped
 
 86 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 
 
 in poverty yet mocked by flaunting wealth, such words 
 mean more than I can think you realize. 
 
 When fire shall be cool and ice be warm, when 
 armies shall throw away lead and iron, to try con- 
 clusions by the pelting of rose leaves, such labor 
 associations as you are thinking of may be possible. 
 But not till then. For labor associations can do 
 nothing to raise wages but by force. It may be force 
 applied passively, or force applied actively, or force 
 held in reserve, but it must be force. They must 
 coerce or hold the power to coerce employers ; they 
 must coerce those among; their own members dis- 
 
 o 
 
 posed to straggle ; they must do their best to get into 
 their hands the whole field of labor they seek tp 
 occupy and to force other workingmen either t j join 
 them or to starve. Those who tell you of trades 
 unions bent on raising wages by moral suasion alone 
 are like those who would tell you of tigers that live 
 on oranges. 
 
 The condition of the masses to-day is that of men 
 pressed together in a hall where ingress is open and 
 more are constantly coming, but where the doors for 
 egress are closed. If forbidden to relieve the gen- 
 eral pressure by throwing open those doors, whose 
 bars and bolts are private property in land, they can 
 only mitigate the pressure on themselves by forcing 
 back others, and the weakest must be driven to the 
 wall. This is the way of labor unions and trade 
 guilds. Even those amiable societies that you rec- 
 ommend would in their efforts to find employment for 
 their own members necessarily displace others. 
 
 For even the philanthropy which, recognizing the 
 evil of trying to help labor by alms, seeks to help
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 87 
 
 men to help themselves by finding them work, 
 becomes aggressive in the blind and bitter struggle 
 that private property in land entails, and in helping 
 one set of men injures others. Thus, to minimize the 
 bitter complaints of taking work from others and 
 lessening the wages of others in providing their own 
 beneficiaries with work and wages, benevolent so- 
 cieties are forced to devices akin to the digging of 
 holes and filling them up again. Our American so- 
 cieties feel this difficulty, General Booth encounters 
 it in England, and the Catholic societies which your 
 Holiness recommends must find it, when they are 
 formed. 
 
 Tour Holiness knows of, and I am sure honors, 
 the princely generosity of Baron Hirsch towards his 
 suffering co-religionists. But, as I write, the New 
 York newspapers contain accounts of an immense 
 meeting held in Cooper Union, in this city, on the 
 evening of Friday, September 4, in which a number 
 of Hebrew trades unions protested in the strong- 
 est manner against the loss of work and reduction of 
 wages that is being effected by Baron Hirsch's 
 generosity in bringing their own countrymen here 
 and teaching them to work. The resolution unani- 
 mously adopted at this great meeting thus concludes : 
 
 " We now demand of Baron Hirsch himself that 
 he release us from his ' charity ' and take back the 
 millions, which, instead of a blessing, have proved a 
 curse and a source of misery." 
 
 Nor does this show that the members of these 
 Hebrew labor unions who are themselves immi- 
 grants of the same class as those Baron Hirsch is 
 striving to help, for in the next generation they lose
 
 88 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 with us their distinctiveness are a whit less gen- 
 erous than other men. 
 
 Labor associations of the nature of trade guilds or 
 unions are necessarily selfish ; by the law of their being 
 they must fight for their own hand, regardless of who 
 is hurt ; they ignore and must ignore the teaching of 
 Christ that we should do to others as we would have 
 them do to us, which a true political economy shows is 
 the only way to the full emancipation of the masses. 
 They must do their best to starve workmen who do 
 not join them, they must by all means in their power 
 force back the " blackleg " as the soldier in battle 
 must shoot down his mother's son if in the opposing 
 ranks. And who is the blackleg 3 A fellow creature 
 seeking work a fellow creature in all probability 
 more pressed and starved than those who so bitterly 
 denounce him, and often with the hungry pleading 
 faces of wife and child behind him. 
 
 And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that trades 
 guilds and unions do but to impose more restrictions 
 on natural rights ; to create " trusts " in labor ; to add 
 to privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes; 
 and to press the weaker closer to the wall 3 
 
 I speak without prejudice against trades unions, 
 of which for years I was an active member. And 
 in pointing out to your Holiness that their principle 
 is selfish and incapable of large and permanent 
 benefits, and that their methods violate natural rights 
 and work hardship and injustice, I am only saying 
 to you what, both in my books and by word of 
 mouth, I have said over and over a^ain to them. 
 
 t o 
 
 Nor is what I say capable of dispute. Intelligent 
 trades unionists know it, and the less intelligent
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 89 
 
 vaguely feel it. And even those of the classes of 
 wealth and leisure who, as if to head off the demand 
 for natural rights, are preaching trades unionism to 
 working men, must needs admit it. 
 
 Your Holiness will remember the great London 
 dock strike of two years ago, which, with that of 
 other influential men, received the moral support of 
 that Prince of the Church whom we of the English 
 speech hold higher and dearer than any prelate has 
 been held by us since the blood of Thomas A'Becket 
 stained the Canterbury altar. 
 
 In a volume called " The Story of the Dockers' 
 Strike," written by Messrs. H. Lewellyn Smith and 
 Vaughan Xash, with an introduction by Sydney 
 Buxton, M. P., which advocates trades unionism as the 
 solution of the labor question, and of which a large 
 number were sent to Australia as a sort of official 
 recognition of the generous aid received from there 
 by the strikers, I find in the summing up, on pages 
 164-5, the following : 
 
 " If the settlement lasts, work at the docks will be 
 more regular, better paid, and carried on under better 
 conditions than ever before. All this will be an 
 unqualitied gain to those who get the benefit from it. 
 But another result will undoubtedly be to contract the 
 field of employment and lessen the number of those 
 for whom work can be found. The lower class casual 
 will, in the end, find his position more precarious 
 than ever before, in proportion to the increased regu- 
 larity of work which the " fitter " of the laborers will 
 secure. The effect of the organization of dock labor, 
 as of all classes of labor, will be to squeeze out t'<e 
 residuum. The loafer, the cadger, the failure in the 
 industrial race the members of ' Class B' of ]\ir. 
 Charles Booth's hierarchy of social classes will be no
 
 90 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 gainers by the change, but will rather find another 
 door closed against them, and this in many cases the 
 last door to employment" 
 
 I am far from wishing that your Holiness should 
 join in that pharisaical denunciation of trades 
 unions common among those who, while quick to 
 point out the injustice of trades unions in denying 
 to others the equal right to work, are themselves 
 supporters of that more primary injustice that denies 
 the equal right to the standing place and natural 
 material necessary to work. What I wish to point out 
 is that trades unionism, while it may be a partial 
 paliative, is not a remedy ; that it has not that moral 
 character which could alone justify one in the position 
 of your Holiness in urging it as good in itself. Yet, 
 so long as you insist on private property in land 
 what better can you do ? 
 
 Y. 
 
 In the beginning of the Encyclical you declare that 
 the responsibility of the apostolical office urges your 
 Holiness to treat the question of the condition of labor 
 u expressly and at length in order that there may be no 
 mistake as to the principles which trutli and justice 
 dictate for its settlement." But, blinded by one false 
 assumption, you do not see even fundamentals. 
 
 You assume that the labor question is a question 
 between wage-workers and their employers. But 
 working for wages is not the primary or exclusive occu- 
 pation of labor. Primarily men work for themselves 
 without the intervention of an employer. And the 
 primary source of wages is in the earnings of labor,
 
 OPEN LETTEK TO POPE LEO XIII. 91 
 
 the man who works for himself and consumes his 
 own products receiving his wages in the fruits of his 
 labor. Are not fishermen, boatmen, cab drivers, 
 peddlers, working farmers all, in short, of the many 
 workers who get their wages directly by the sale of 
 their services or products without the medium of an 
 employer, as much laborers as those who work for the 
 specific wages of an employer ? In your consideration 
 of remedies you do not seem even to have thought of 
 them. Yet in reality the laborers who work for 
 themselves are the first to be considered, since what 
 men will be willing to accept from employers depends 
 manifestly on what they can get by working for them- 
 selves. 
 
 You assume that all employers are rich men, who 
 might raise wages much higher were they not so 
 grasping. But is it not the fact that the great 
 majority of employers are in reality as much pressed 
 by competition as their workmen, many of them 
 constantly on the verge of failure ? Such employers 
 could not possibly raise the wages they pay, however 
 they might wish to, unless all others were compelled 
 to do so. 
 
 You assume that there are in the natural order two 
 classes, the rich and the poor, and that laborers naturally 
 belong to the poor. 
 
 It is true as you say that there are differences in 
 capacity, in diligence, in health and in strength, that 
 may produce differences in fortune. These, however, 
 are not the differences that divide men into rich and 
 poor. The natural differences in powers and aptitudes 
 are certainly not greater than are natural differences 
 in stature. But while it is. only by selecting giants.
 
 92 THE C >NDITIO.V OF LABOR. 
 
 and dwarfs that we can find men twice as tall as others, 
 yet in the difference between rich and poor that exists 
 to-day we find some men richer than other men by the 
 thousand fold and the million fold. 
 
 Nowhere do these differences between wealth and 
 poverty coincide with differences in individual powers 
 and aptitudes. The real difference between rich and 
 poor is the difference between those who hold the toll 
 gates and those who pay toll ; between tribute re- 
 ceivers and tribute yield ers. 
 
 In what way does nature justify such a difference ? 
 In the numberless varieties of animated nature we find 
 some species that are evidently intended to live on 
 other species. But their relations are always marked 
 by unmistakable differences in size, shape or organs. 
 To man has been given dominion over all the other 
 living things that tenant the earth. But is not this 
 mastery indicated even in externals, so that no one can 
 fail on sight to distinguish between a man and one of 
 the inferior animals. Our American apologists for 
 slavery used to contend that the black skin and wooly 
 hair of the neo-ro indicated the intent of nature that 
 
 o 
 
 the black should serve the white ; but the difference 
 that you assume to be natural is between men of the 
 same race. What difference does nature show between 
 such men as would indicate her intent that one should 
 live idly yet be rich, and the other should work hard yet 
 be poor ? If I could bring you from the United States 
 a man who has $2)0,000,000, and one who is glad 
 to work for a few dollars a week, and place them 
 side by side in your ante-chamber, would you be able 
 to tell which was which, even were you to call in 
 the most skilled anatomist? Is it not clear that
 
 OPES LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 03 
 
 God in no way countenances or condones the di- 
 vision of rich and poor that exists to-day, or in 
 any way permits it, except as having given them free 
 will he permits men to choose either good or evil, and 
 to avoid heaven if they prefer hell. For is it not clear 
 that the division of men into the classes rich and poor 
 has invariably its origin in force and fraud ; invariably 
 involves violation of the moral law ; and is really a 
 division into those who get the profits of robbery 
 and those who are robbed ; those who hold in exclusive 
 possession what God made for all, and those who are 
 deprived of His bounty ? Did not Christ in all His 
 utterances and parables show that the gross difference 
 between rich and poor is opposed to God's law? 
 Would he have condemned the rich so strongly as he 
 did, if the class distinction between rich and poor 
 did not involve injustice was not opposed to God's 
 intent ? 
 
 It seems to us that your Holiness misses its real signi- 
 ficance in intimating that Christ, in becoming the son of 
 a carpenter and Himself working as a carpenter, showed 
 merely that "there is nothing to be ashamed of in 
 seeking one's bread by labor." To say that is almost 
 like saying that by not robbing people He showed that 
 there is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty '? If you 
 will consider how true in any large view is the classifi- 
 cation of all men into workingmen, beggarmen and 
 thieves, you will see that it was morally impossible 
 that Christ during His stay on earth should have been 
 anything else than a workingman, since He who came 
 to fulfil the law must by deed as well as word obey 
 God's law of labor. 
 
 See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life
 
 94 THE CONDITION OP LABOR. 
 
 on earth illustrated this law. Entering our earthly 
 life in the weakness of infancy, as it is appointed that 
 all should enter it, He lovingly took what in the 
 natural order is lovingly rendered, the sustenance, 
 secured by labor, that one generation owes to its 
 immediate successors. Arrived at maturity, He earned 
 His own subsistence by that common labor in which 
 the majority of men must and do earn it. Then 
 passing to a higher to the very highest sphere of 
 labor, lie earned His subsistence by the teaching of 
 moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material 
 wages in the love offerings of grateful hearers, and 
 not refusing the costly spikenard with which Mary 
 anointed His feet. So, when Pie chose His dis- 
 ciples, He did not go to land owners or other mo- 
 nopolists who live on the labor of others, but to 
 common laboring men. And when He called them to 
 a higher sphere of labor and sent them out to teach 
 moral and spiritual truths, He told them to take, with- 
 out condescension on the one hand or sense of 
 degradation on the other, the loving return for such 
 labor, saying to them that the " laborer is worthy of 
 his hire," thus showing, what we 1 hold, that all labor 
 does not consist in what is called manual labor, but 
 that whoever helps to add to the material, intellectual, 
 moral or spiritual fullness of life is also a laborer.* 
 
 * Nor should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philoso- 
 pher, the teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not 
 engaged in the production of wealth, are not only engaged in the 
 production of utilities and satisfactions to which the production 
 of wealth is only a means, but by acquiring and diffusing knowl-' 
 edge, stimulating mental powers and elevating the moral sense, 
 may greatly increase the ability to produce wealth. For man 
 does not live by bread alone. * * * He who by any exertion of 
 mind or body adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth. increases 
 the sum of human knowledge, or gives to human life higher eleva-
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xltt. 95 
 
 In assuming that laborers, even ordinary manual 
 laborers, are naturally poor, you ignore the fact that 
 labor is the producer of wealth, and attribute to 
 the natural law of the Creator an injustice that 
 comes from man's impious violation of His benevolent 
 intention. In the rudest stage of the arts it is possible, 
 where justice prevails, for all well men to earn a living. 
 With the labor-saving appliances of our time, it should 
 be possible for all to earn much more. And so, in 
 saying that poverty is no disgrace, you convey 
 an unreasonable implication. For poverty ought to 
 be a disgrace, since in a condition of social justice, it 
 would, where unsought from religious motives or un- 
 imposed by unavoidable misfortune, imply recklessness 
 or laziness. 
 
 The sympathy of your Holiness seems exclusively 
 directed to the poor, the workers. Ought this to be 
 so ? Are not the rich, the idlers, to be pitied also ? 
 By the word of the Gospel it is the rich rather than 
 the poor who call for pity, for the presumption is that 
 they will share the fate of Dives. And to any one 
 who believes in a future life the condition of him who 
 wakes to find his cherished millions left behind must 
 seem pitiful. But even in this life, how really pitiable 
 are the rich. The evil is not in wealth in itself in 
 its command over material things ; it is in the possession 
 
 tion or greater fullness he is, in the large meaning of the words, 
 a "producer," a "working man," a 'laborer," and is honestly 
 earning honest wages. But he who without doing aught to make 
 mankind richer, wiser, better, happier, lives on the toil of others 
 he, no matter by what name of honor he may be called, or how 
 lustily the priests of Mammon may swing their censers before 
 him, is in the last analysis but a beggarman or a thief. Protec- 
 tion or Free Trade, pp. 74-75.
 
 06 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 of wealth while others are steeped in poverty ; in being 
 raised above touch with the life of humanity, from 
 its work and its struggles, its hopes and its fears, and 
 above all, from the love that sweetens life, and the 
 kindly sympathies and generous acts that strengthen 
 faith in man and trust in God. Consider how the rich 
 see the meaner side of human nature; how they are 
 surrounded by flatterers and sycophants ; how they find 
 ready instruments not only to gratify vicious impulses, 
 but to prompt and stimulate them ; how they must 
 constantly be on guard lest they be swindled ; how 
 often they must suspect an ulterior motive behind 
 kindly deed or friendly word ; how if they try to be 
 generous they are beset by shameless beggars and 
 scheming impostors; how often the family affections 
 are chilled for them, and their deaths anticipated with 
 the ill-concealed joy of expectant possession. The 
 worst evil of poverty is not in the want of material 
 things, but in the stunting and distortion of the 
 higher qualities. So, though in another way, the 
 possession of unearned wealth likewise stunts and 
 distorts what is noblest in man. 
 
 God's commands cannot be evaded with impunity. 
 If it be God's command that men shall earn their bread 
 by labor, the idle rich must suffer. And they do. See 
 the utter vacancy of the lives of those who live for 
 pleasure ; see the loathsome vices bred in a class who 
 surrounded by poverty are sated with wealth. See 
 that terrible punishment of ennui, of which the poor 
 know so little that they cannot understand it ; see the 
 pessimism that grows among the wealthy classes 
 that shuts out God, that despises men, that deems
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 97 
 
 existence in itself an evil, and fearing death yet 
 longs for annihilation. 
 
 "When Christ told the rich young man who sought 
 Him to sell all he had and to give it to the poor, He 
 was not thinking of the poor, but of the young man. 
 And I doubt not that among the rich, and especially 
 among the self-made rich, there are many who at 
 times at least feel keenly the folly of their riches and 
 fear for the dangers and temptations to which these 
 expose their children. But the strength of long habit, 
 the promptings of pride, the excitement of making 
 and holding what has become for them the counters 
 in a game of cards, the family expectations that have 
 assumed" the character of rights, and the real difficulty 
 they find in making any good use of their wealth, 
 bind them to their burden, like a weary donkey to his 
 pack, till they stumble on the precipice that bounds 
 this life. 
 
 Men who are sure of getting food when they shall 
 need it eat only what appetite dictates. But with the 
 sparse tribes who exist on the verge of the habitable 
 globe life is either a famine or a feast. Enduring 
 hunger for days, the fear of it prompts them to gorge 
 like anacondas when successful in their quest of game. 
 And so, what gives wealth its curse is what drives men 
 to seek it, what makes it so envied and admired the 
 fear of want. As the unduly rich are the corollary of 
 the unduly poor, so is the soul-destroying quality of 
 riches but the reflex of the want that embrutes and 
 degrades. The real evil lies in the injustice from 
 which unnatural possession and unnatural deprivation 
 both spring. 
 
 But this injustice can hardly be charged on individ-
 
 98 THE CONDITION OP LABOR. 
 
 uals or classes. The existence of private property in 
 land is a great social wrong from which society at large 
 suffers, and of which the very rich and the very poor 
 are alike victims, though at the opposite extremes. 
 Seeing this, it seems to us like a violation of Christian 
 charity to speak of the rich as though they individually 
 were responsible for the sufferings of the poor. Yet, 
 while you do this, you insist that the cause of 
 monstrous wealth and degrading poverty shall not be 
 touched. Here is a man with a disfiguring and 
 dangerous excrescence. One physician would kindly, 
 gently, but firmly remove it. Another insists that it 
 shall not be removed, but at the same time holds up 
 the poor victim to hatred and ridicule. Which is 
 right? 
 
 In seeking to restore all men to their equal and 
 natural rights we do not seek the benefit of any class, 
 but of all. For we both know by faith and see by fact 
 that injustice can profit no one and that justice must 
 benefit all. 
 
 Nor do we seek any " futile and ridiculous equality." 
 We recognize, with you, that there must always be 
 differences and inequalities. In so far as these are 
 in conformity with the moral law, in so far as they 
 do not violate the command, " Thou shalt not steal," 
 we are content. We do not seek to better God's work ; 
 we seek only to do His will. The equality we would 
 bring about is not the equality of fortune, but the 
 equality of natural opportunity; the equality that 
 reason and religion alike proclaim the equality in 
 usufruct of all His children to the bounty of Our 
 Father who art in Heaven. 
 
 And in taking for the uses of society what we
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 99 
 
 clearly see is the great fund intended for society in 
 the divine order, we would not levy the slightest tax 
 on the possessors of wealth, no matter how rich they 
 might be. JSTot only do we deem such taxes a violation 
 of the right of property, but we see that by virtue of 
 beautiful adaptations in the economic laws of the 
 Creator, it is impossible for any one honestly to ac- 
 quire wealth, without at the same time adding to the 
 wealth of the world. 
 
 To persist in a wrong, to refuse to undo it, is always 
 to become involved in other wrongs. Those who 
 defend private property in land, and thereby deny 
 the first and most important of all human rights, 
 the equal right to the material substratum of life, 
 are compelled to one of two courses. Either they 
 must, as do those whose gospel is " Devil take the 
 hindermost," deny the equal right to life, and by 
 some theory like that to which the English 
 clergyman Malthus has given his name, assert that 
 nature (they do not venture to say God) brings into 
 the world more men than there is provision for ; or, 
 they must, as do the socialists, assert as rights what in 
 themselves are wrongs. 
 
 Your Holiness in the Encyclical gives an example of 
 this. Denying the equality of right to the material 
 basis of life, and yet conscious that there is a 
 right to live, you assert the right of laborers to em- 
 ployment and their right to receive from their 
 employers a certain indefinite wage. ~No such rights 
 exist. No one has a right to demand employment of 
 another, or to demand higher wages than the other is 
 willing to give, or in any way to put pressure on
 
 100 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 another to make him raise such wages against his will. 
 There can be no better moral justification for such 
 demands on employers by workingmen than there 
 would be for employers demanding that workingmen 
 shall be compelled to work for them when they do 
 not want to and ' to accept wages lower than they are 
 willing to take. Any seeming justification springs 
 from a prior wrong, the denial to workingmen of 
 their natural rights, and can in the last analysis only 
 rest on that supreme dictate of self-preservation that 
 under extraordinary circumstances makes pardonable 
 what in itself is theft, or sacrilege or even murder. 
 
 A fugitive slave with the bloodhounds of his pur- 
 suers baying at his heels would in true Christian 
 morals be held blameless if he seized the first horse 
 he came across, even though to take it he had to 
 knock down the rider. But this is not to justify 
 horse-stealing as an ordinary means of traveling. 
 
 When his disciples were hungry Christ permitted 
 them to pluck corn on the Sabbath day. But He 
 never denied the sanctity of the Sabbath by asserting 
 that it was under ordinary circumstances a proper time 
 to gather corn. 
 
 He justified David, who when pressed by hunger 
 committed what ordinarily would be sacrilege, by 
 taking from the temple the loaves of proposition. 
 But in this He was far from saying that the robbing 
 of temples was a proper way of getting a living. 
 
 In the Encyclical however you commend the appli- 
 cation to the ordinary relations of life, under normal 
 conditions, of principles that in ethics are only to 
 be tolerated under extraordinary conditions. You 
 are driven to this assertion of false rights by your
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 101 
 
 denial of true rights. The natural right which each 
 man has is not that of demanding employment or 
 wages from another man ; but that of employing 
 himself that of applying by his own labor to the 
 inexhaustible storehouse which the Creator has in the 
 land provided for all men. Were that storehouse open, 
 as by the single tax we would open it, the natural de- 
 mand for labor would keep pace with the supply, the 
 man who sold labor and the man who bought it 
 would become free exchangers for mutual advantage, 
 and all cause for dispute between workman and em- 
 ployer would be gone. For then, all being free to em- 
 ploy themselves, the mere opportunity to labor would 
 cease to seem a boon ; and since no one would work for 
 another for less, all things considered, than he could 
 earn by working for himself, wages would necessarily 
 rise to their full value, and the relations of workman 
 and employer be regulated by mutual interest and 
 convenience. 
 
 This is the only way in which they can be satisfac- 
 torily regulated. 
 
 Your Holiness seems to assume that there is some 
 just rate of wages that employers ought to be willing 
 to pay and that laborers should be content to receive, 
 and to imagine that if this were secured there would 
 be an end of strife. This rate you evidently think of 
 as that which will give workingmen a frugal living, 
 and perhaps enable them by hard work and strict 
 economy to lay by a little something. 
 
 But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without 
 the " higgling of the market" any more than the just 
 price of corn or pigs or ships or paintings can be so 
 fixed? And would not arbitrary regulation in the
 
 102 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 one case as in the other check that interplay that most 
 effectively promotes the economical adjustment of 
 productive forces ? Why should buyers of labor, any 
 more than buyers of commodities, be called on to pay 
 higher prices than in a free market they are com- 
 pelled to pay ? Why should the sellers of labor be 
 content with anything less than in a free market they 
 can obtain? Why should workingmen be content 
 with frugal fare when the world is so rich ? Why 
 should they be satisfied with a life time of toil and 
 stinting, when the world is so beautiful ? Why should 
 not they also desire to gratify the higher instincts, the 
 finer tastes ? Why should they be forever content to 
 travel in the steerage when others find the cabin 
 more enjoyable 3 
 
 Nor will they. The ferment of our time does not 
 arise merely from the fact that workingmen find it 
 harder to live on the same scale of comfort. It is also 
 and perhaps still more largely due to the increase 
 of their desires with an improved scale of comfort. 
 This increase of desire must continue. For working- 
 men are men. And man is the unsatisfied animal. 
 
 He is not an ox, of whom it may be said, so much 
 grass, so much grain, so much water, and a little salt, 
 and he will be content. On the contrary, the more 
 he gets the more he craves. When he has enough 
 food then he wants better food. When he gets a 
 shelter then he wants a more commodious and tasty 
 one. When his animal needs are satisfied then men- 
 tal and spiritual desires arise. 
 
 This restless discontent is of the nature of man of 
 that nobler nature that raises him above the animals by 
 so immeasurable a gulf, and shows him to be indeed
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 103 
 
 created in the likeness of God. It is not to be quar- 
 relled with, for it is the motor of all progress. It is 
 this that has raised St. Peter's dome and on dull, dead 
 canvass made the angelic face of the Madonna to 
 glow ; it is this that has weighed suns and analyzed 
 stars, and opened page after page of the wonderful 
 works of creative intelligence ; it is this that has 
 narrowed the Atlantic to an ocean ferry and trained 
 the lightning to carry our messages to the remotest 
 lands; it is this that is opening to us possibilities 
 beside which all that our modern civilization has as 
 yet accomplished seem small. Nor can it be repressed 
 save by degrading and imbruting men ; by reducing 
 Europe to Asia. 
 
 Hence, short of what wages may be earned when 
 all restrictions on labor are removed and access to 
 natural opportunities on equal terms secured to all, it 
 is impossible to fix any rate of wages that will be 
 deemed just, or any rate of wages that can prevent 
 workingmen striving to get more. So far from it 
 making workingmen more contented to improve their 
 condition a little, it is certain to make them more dis- 
 contented. 
 
 Nor are you asking justice when you ask employers 
 to pay their workingmen more than they are compelled 
 to pay more than they could get others to do the 
 work for. You are asking charity. For the surplus 
 that the rich employer thus gives is not in reality 
 wages, it is essentially alms. 
 
 In speaking of the practical measures for the im- 
 provement of the condition of labor which your Holi- 
 ness suggests, I have not mentioned what you place
 
 104 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 much stress upon charity. But there is nothing 
 practical in such recommendations as a cure for 
 poverty, nor will any one so consider them. If it 
 were possible for the giving of alms to abolish poverty 
 there would be no poverty in Christendom. 
 
 Charity is indeed a noble and beautiful virtue, 
 grateful to man and approved by God. But charity 
 must be built on justice. It cannot supersede justice. 
 
 What is wrong with the condition of labor through 
 the Christian world is that labor is robbed. And 
 while you justify the continuance of that robbery it is 
 idle to urge charity. To do so to commend charity 
 as a substitute for justice, is indeed something akin in 
 essence to those heresies, condemned by your prede- 
 cessors, that taught that the Gospel had superseded 
 the law, and that the love of God exempted men from 
 moral obligations. 
 
 All that charity can do where injustice exists is here 
 and there to somewhat mollify the effects of injustice. 
 It cannot cure them. ]STor is even what little it can 
 do to mollify the effects of injustice without evil. 
 For what may be called the superimposed, and in this 
 sense, secondary virtues, work evil where the funda- 
 mental or primary virtues are absent. Thus sobriety 
 is a virtue and diligence is a virtue. But a sober aud 
 diligent thief is all the more dangerous. Thus 
 patience is a virtue. But patience under wrong is the 
 condoning of wrong. Thus it is a virtue to seek 
 knowledge and to endeavor to cultivate the mental 
 powers. But the wicked man becomes more cap- 
 able of evil by reason of his intelligence. Devils we 
 always think of as intelligent. 
 
 And thus that pseudo charity that discards and
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 105 
 
 denies justice works evil. On the one side, it demor- 
 alizes its recipients, outraging that human dignity 
 which as you say " God himself treats with reverence," 
 and turning into beggars and paupers men who to be- 
 come self supporting, self respecting citizens only need 
 the restitution of what God has given them. On 
 the other side, it acts as an anodyne to the consciences 
 of those who are living on the robbery of their fellows, 
 and fosters that moral delusion and spiritual pride 
 that Christ doubtless had in mind when he said it was 
 easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. 
 For it leads men steeped in in justice, and using their 
 money and their influence to bolster up injustice, to 
 think that in giving alms they are doing something 
 more than their duty towards man and deserve to be 
 very well thought of by God, and in a vague way to 
 attribute to their own goodness what really belongs to 
 God's goodness. For consider : Who is the All-pro- 
 vider? Who is it that as you say, "owes to man a 
 storehouse that shall never fail," and which " he finds 
 only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth." Is it 
 not God ? And when, therefore, men, deprived of 
 the bounty of their God, are made dependent on the 
 bounty of their fellow creatures, are not these crea- 
 tures, as it were, put in the place of God, to take 
 credit to themselves for paying obligations that you 
 yourself say God owes ? 
 
 But worse perhaps than all else is the way in which 
 this substituting of vague injunctions to charity for the 
 clear-cut demands of justice opens an easy means for 
 the professed teachers of the Christian religion of all 
 branches and communions to placate Mammon while
 
 106 THE CONDITION OF LABOB. 
 
 persuading themselves that they are serving God. 
 Had the English clergy not subordinated the teaching 
 of justice to the teaching of charity to go no further 
 in illustrating a principle of which the whole history 
 of Christendom from Constantino's time to our own is 
 witness the Tudor tyranny would never have arisen, 
 and the separation of the Church been averted; had the 
 clergy of France never substituted charity for justice, 
 the monstrous iniquities of the ancient regime would 
 never have brought the horrors of the Great Revolu- 
 tion ; and in my own country had those who should 
 have preached justice not satisfied themselves with 
 preaching kindness, chattel slavery could never have 
 demanded the holocaust of our civil war. 
 
 No, your Holiness ; as faith without works is dead, 
 as men cannot give to God His due while denying to 
 their fellows the rights He gave them, so charity 
 unsupported by justice can do nothing to solve the 
 problem of the existing condition of labor. Though 
 the rich were to " bestow all their goods to feed the 
 poor and give their bodies to be burned," poverty 
 would continue while property in land continues. 
 
 Take the case of the rich man to-day who is hon- 
 estly desirous of devoting his wealth to the improve- 
 ment of the condition of labor. What can he do ? 
 
 Bestow his wealth on those who need it ? He may 
 help some who deserve it, but will not improve gene- 
 ral conditions. And against the good he may do will 
 be the danger of doing harm. 
 
 Build churches ? Under the shadow of churches 
 poverty festers and the vice that is born of it breeds. 
 
 Build schools and colleges ? Save as it may lead 
 men to see the iniquity of private property in land.
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 107 
 
 increased education can effect nothing for mere la- 
 borers, for as education is diffused the wages of edu- 
 cation sink. 
 
 Establish hospitals ? Why, already it seems to la- 
 borers that there are too many seeking work, and to 
 save and prolong life is to add to the pressure. 
 
 Build model tenements ? Unless he cheapens house 
 accommodations he but drives further the class he 
 would benefit, and as he cheapens house accommoda- 
 tion he brings more to seek employment and cheapens 
 wages. 
 
 Institute laboratories, scientific schools, workshops 
 for physical experiments ? He but stimulates inven- 
 tion and discovery, the very forces that, acting on a 
 society based on private property in land, are crush- 
 ing labor as between the upper and the nether mill- 
 stone. 
 
 Promote emigration from places where wages are 
 low to places where they are somewhat higher ? If 
 he does, even those whom he at first helps to emi- 
 grate will soon turn on him to demand that such emi- 
 gration shall be stopped as reducing their wages. 
 
 Gire away what land he may have, or refuse to 
 take rent for it, or let it at lower rents than the mar- 
 ket price ? He will simply make new land owners or 
 partial land owners ; he may m&ke some individuals 
 the richer, but he will do nothing to improve the 
 general condition of labor. 
 
 Or, bethinking himself of those public spirited citi- 
 zens of classic times who spent great sums in improv- 
 ing their native cities, shall he try to beautify the 
 city of his birth or adoption ? Let him widen and 
 straighten narrow and crooked streets, let him build
 
 108 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 parks and erect fountains, let him open tramways and 
 bring in railroads, or in any way make beautiful and 
 attractive his chosen city, and what will be the result ? 
 Must it not be that those who appropriate God's 
 bounty will take his also? Will it not be that the 
 value of land will go up, and that the net result of 
 his benefactions will be an increase of rents and a 
 bounty to land owners ? Why, even the mere an- 
 nouncement that he is going to do such things will 
 start speculation and send up the value of land by 
 leaps and bounds. 
 
 What, then, can the rich man do to improve the 
 condition of labor ? 
 
 He can do nothing at all except to use his strength 
 for the abolition of the great primary wrong that robs 
 men of their birthright. The justice of God laughs 
 at the attempts of men to substitute anything else 
 for it. 
 
 If when in speaking of the practical measures your 
 Holiness proposes, I did not note the moral injunc- 
 tions that the Encyclical contains, it is not because we 
 do not think morality practical. On the contrary it 
 seems to us that in the teachings of morality is to be 
 found the highest practicality, and that the question, 
 What is wise ? may always safely be subordinated to 
 the question, What is right ? But your Holiness in 
 the Encyclical expressly deprives the moral truths you 
 state of all real bearing on the condition of labor, 
 just as the American people, by their legalization of 
 chattel slavery, used to deprive of all practical mean- 
 ing the declaration they deem their fundamental 
 charter, and were accustomed to read solemnly on
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xlll. 109 
 
 every national anniversary. That declaration asserts 
 that " We hold these truths to be self evident that 
 all men are created equal and are endowed by their 
 Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among 
 these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
 But what did this truth mean on the lips of men who 
 asserted that one man was the rightful property of 
 another man who had bought him ; who assarted that the 
 slave was robbing the master in running away, and 
 that the man or the woman who helped the fugitive 
 to escape, or even gave him a cup of cold water in 
 Christ's name, was an accessory to theft, on whose 
 head the penalties of the state should be visited ? 
 
 Consider the moral teachings of the Encyclical : 
 
 You tell us that God owes to man an inexhaustible 
 storehouse which he finds only in the land. Yet you 
 support a system that denies to the great majority 
 of men all right of recourse to this storehouse. 
 
 You tell us that the necessity of labor is a conse- 
 quence of original sin. Yet you support a system 
 that exempts a privileged class from the necessity for 
 labor and enables them to shift their share and much 
 more than their share of labor on others. 
 
 You tell us that God has not created us for the 
 perishable and transitory things of earth, but has 
 given us this world as a place of exile and not as our 
 true country. Yet you tell us that some of the exiles 
 have the exclusive right of ownership in this place of 
 common exile, so that they may compel their fellow 
 exiles to pay them for sojourning here, and that this 
 exclusive ownership they may transfer to other 
 exiles yet to come, with the same right of excluding 
 their fellows.
 
 110 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 You tell us that virtue is the common inheritance 
 of all ; that all men are children of God the common 
 Father ; that all have the same last end ; that all are 
 redeemed by Jesus Christ; that the blessings of 
 nature and the gifts of grace belong in common to 
 all, and that to all except the unworthy is promised 
 the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven ! Yet in 
 all this and through all this you insist as a moral duty 
 on the maintenance of a system that makes the reser- 
 voir of all God's material bounties and blessings to 
 man the exclusive property of a few of their num- 
 ber you give us equal rights in heaven, but deny us 
 equal rights on earth ! 
 
 It was said of a famous decision of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States made just before the civil 
 war, in a fugitive slave case, that " it gave the law to 
 the North and the nigger to the South.'' It is thus 
 that your Encyclical gives the gospel to laborers and 
 the earth to the landlords. Is it really to be won- 
 dered at that there are those who sneeringly say " The 
 priests are ready enough to give the poor an equal 
 share in all that is out of sight, but they take precious 
 good care that the rich shall keep a tight grip on all 
 that is within sight." 
 
 Herein is the reason why the working masses all 
 over the world are turning away from organized re- 
 ligion. 
 
 And why should they not ? What is the office of 
 religion if not to point out the principles that ought 
 to govern the conduct of men towards each other ; to 
 furnish a clear, decisive rule of right which shall 
 guide men in all the relations of life in the work-
 
 OPEN LETTEfi TO K>P LEO XITI. Ill 
 
 shop, in the mart, in the forum and in the senate, as 
 well as in the church ; to supply, as it were, a com- 
 pass by which amid the blasts of passion, the aberra- 
 tions of greed and the delusions of a short-sighted 
 expediency men may safely steer ? What is the use 
 of a religion that stands palsied and paltering in the 
 face of the most momentous problems? What is 
 the use of a religion that whatever it may promise for 
 the next world can do nothing to prevent injustice in 
 this? Early Christianity was not such a religion, 
 else it would never have encountered the Roman 
 persecutions ; else it would never have swept the 
 Roman world. The sceptical masters of Rome, tol- 
 erant of all gods, careless of what they deemed vulgar 
 superstitions, were keenly sensitive to a doctrine 
 based on equal rights ; they feared instinctively a re- 
 ligion that inspired slave and proletarian with a new 
 hope ; that took for its central figure a crucified car- 
 penter ; that taught the equal fatherhood of God and 
 the equal brotherhood of men ; that looked for the 
 speedy reign of justice, and that prayed, " Thy King- 
 dom come on Earth ! " 
 
 To-day, the same perceptions, the same aspirations, 
 exist among the masses. Man is, as he has been 
 called, a religious animal, and can never quite rid 
 himself of the feeling that there is some moral gov- 
 ernment of the world, some eternal distinction be- 
 tween wrong and right ; can never quite abandon the 
 yearning for a reign of righteousness. And to-day, 
 men who, as they think, have cast off all belief in re- 
 ligion, will tell you, even though they know not what 
 it is, that with regard to the condition of labor some-
 
 112 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 thing is wrong! If theology be, as St. Thomas of 
 Aquin held it, the sum and focus of the sciences, is it 
 not the business of religion to say clearly and fear- 
 lessly what that wrong is ? It was by a deep impulse 
 that of old when threatened and perplexed by gen- 
 eral disaster men came to the oracles to ask, In what 
 have we offended the gods ? To-day, menaced by 
 growing evils that threaten the very existence of soci- 
 ety, men, conscious that something is wrong, are put- 
 ting the same question to the ministers of religion. 
 What is the answer they get ? Alas, with few ex- 
 ceptions, it is as vague, as inadequate, as the answers 
 that used to come from heathen oracles. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the masses of men are losing 
 faith ? 
 
 Let me again state the case that your Encyclical 
 presents : 
 
 What is that condition of labor which as you truly 
 say is " the question of the hour," and " fills every 
 mind with painful apprehension ?" Reduced to its 
 lowest expression it is the poverty of men willing to 
 work. And what is the lowest expression of this 
 phrase ? It is that they lack bread for in that one 
 word we most concisely and strongly express all the 
 manifold material satisfactions needed by humanity, 
 the absence of which constitutes poverty. 
 
 Now what is the prayer of Christendom the uni- 
 versal pr.iyer ; the prayer that goes up daily and 
 hourly wherever the name of Christ is honored ; that 
 ascends from your Holiness at the high altar of St. 
 Peter's, and that is repeated by the youngest child
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 113 
 
 that the poorest Christian mother has taught to lisp a 
 request to her Father in Heaven ? It is, " Give us 
 this day our daily bread ! " 
 
 Yet where this prayer goes up, daily and hourly, men 
 lack bread. Is it not the business of religion to say 
 why ? If it cannot do so, shall not scoffers mock its 
 ministers as Elias mocked the prophets of Baal, say- 
 ing, " Cry with a louder voice, for he is a god ; and per- 
 haps he is talking, or is in an inn, or on a journey or 
 perhaps he is asleep, and must be awaked !" What 
 answer can those ministers give ? Either there is no 
 God, or He is asleep, or else He does give men their 
 daily bread, and it is in some way intercepted. 
 
 Here is the answer, the only true answer : If men 
 lack bread it is not that God has not done His part 
 in providing it. If men willing to labor are cursed 
 with poverty, it is not that the storehouse that God 
 owes men has failed ; that the daily supply He has 
 promised for the daily wants of His children is not 
 here in abundance. It is, that impiously violating 
 the benevolent intentions of their Creator, men have 
 made land private property, and thus given into the 
 exclusive ownership of the few the provision that a 
 bountiful Father has made for all. 
 
 Any other answer than that, no matter how it may 
 be shrouded in the mere forms of religion, is practi- 
 cally an atheistical answer. 
 
 I have written this letter not alone for your Holi- 
 ness, but for all whom I may hope it to reach. But 
 in sending it to you personally, and in advance of 
 publication, I trust that it may be by you person-
 
 114: THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 ally read and weighed. In setting forth the grounds 
 of our belief and in pointing out considerations which 
 it seems to us you have unfortunately overlooked, I 
 have written frankly, as was my duty on a matter of 
 such momentous importance, and as I am sure you 
 would have me write. But I trust I have done so 
 without offence. For your office I have profound 
 respect, for yourself personally the highest esteem. 
 And while the views I have opposed seem to us 
 erroneous and' dangerous, we do not wish to be un- 
 derstood as in the slighest degree questioning either 
 your sincerity or intelligence in adopting them. For 
 they are views all but universally held by the pro- 
 fessed religious teachers of Christendom, in all com- 
 munions and creeds, and that have received the 
 sanction of those looked to as the wise and learned. 
 Under the conditions that have surrounded you, and 
 under the pressure of so many high duties and 
 responsibilities, culminating in those of your present 
 exalted position, it is not to be expected that you 
 should have hitherto thought to question them. But 
 I trust that the considerations herein set forth may 
 induce you to do so, and even if the burdens and 
 cares that beset you shall now make impossible the 
 careful consideration that should precede expression 
 by one in your responsible position I trust that what 
 I have written may not be without use to others. 
 
 And, as I have said, we are deeply grateful for 
 your Encyclical. It is much that by so conspicuously 
 calling attention to the condition of labor, you have 
 recalled the fact forgotten by so many that the social 
 evils and problems of our time directly and pressingly
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 115 
 
 concern the Church. It is much that you should thus 
 have placed the stamp of your disapproval on that 
 impious doctrine which direc f ly and by implication 
 has been so long and so widely preached in the name 
 of Christianity, that the sufferings of the poor are 
 due to mysterious decrees of Providence which men 
 may lament but cannot alter. Your Encyclical will 
 be seen by those who carefully analyze it to be 
 directed not against socialism, which in moderate form 
 you favor, but against what we in the United States 
 call the single tax. Yet we have no solicitude for 
 the truth save that it shall be brought into discussion, 
 and we recognize in your Holiness' Encyclical a most 
 efficient means of promoting discussion, and of pro- 
 moting discussion along the lines that we deem of 
 the greatest importance the lines of morality and re- 
 ligion. In this you deserve the gratitude of all who 
 would follow truth, for it is of the nature of truth 
 always to prevail over error where discussion goes on. 
 
 And the truth, for which we stand has now made 
 such progress in the minds of men that it must be 
 heard ; that it can never be stifled ; that it must go on 
 conquering and to conquer. Far off Australia leads 
 the van, and has already taken the first steps towards 
 the single tax. In Great Britain, in the United States, 
 and in Canada, the question is on the verge of prac- 
 tical politics and soon will be the burning issue of 
 the time. Continental Europe cannot long linger be- 
 hind. Faster than ever the world is moving. 
 
 Forty years ago slavery seemed stronger in the 
 United States than ever before, and the market price 
 of slaves both working slaves and breeding slaves
 
 116 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 was higher than it had ever been before, for the title of 
 the owner seemed growing more secure. In the 
 shadow of the Hall where the equal rights of man 
 had been solemnly proclaimed, the manacled fugitive 
 was dragged back to bondage, and on what to 
 American tradition was our Marathon of freedom, 
 the slave master boasted that he would yet call the 
 roll of his chattels. 
 
 Yet forty years ago, though the party that was to 
 place Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential chair had 
 not been formed, and nearly a decade was yet to pass 
 ere the signal gun was to ring out, slavery, as we may 
 now see, was doomed. 
 
 To-day a wider, deeper, more beneficent revolution 
 is brooding, not over one country, but over the world. 
 God's truth impels it, and forces mightier than He 
 has ever before given to man urge it on. It is no 
 more in the power of vested wrongs to stay it than it 
 is in man's power to stay the sun. The stars in their 
 courses fight against Sisera, and in the ferment of to- 
 day, to him who hath ears to hear, the doom of 
 industrial slavery is sealed. 
 
 Where shall the dignitaries of the Church be in 
 the struggle that is coming, nay that is already here ? 
 On the side of justice and liberty, or on the side of 
 wrong and slavery ? with the delivered when the tim- 
 brels shall sound again, or with the chariots and the 
 horsemen that again shall be engulfed in the sea ? 
 
 As to the masses, there is little fear where they will 
 be. Already, among those who hold it with religious 
 fervor, the single tax counts great numbers of Cath- 
 olics, many priests, secular and regular, and at least
 
 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 117 
 
 some bishops, while there is no communion or denomi- 
 nation of the many into which English speaking 
 Christians are divided where its advocates are not to 
 be found. 
 
 Last Sunday evening in the New York church that 
 of all churches in the world is most richly endowed, I 
 saw the cross carried through its aisles by a hundred 
 choristers, und heard a priest of that English branch 
 of the Church that three hundred years since was sep- 
 arated from your obedience, declare to a great congre- 
 gation that the labor question was at bottom a relig- 
 ious question ; that it. could only be settled on the 
 basis of moral right; that the first and clearest of 
 rights is the equal right to the use of the physical 
 basis of all life ; and that no human titles could 
 set aside God's gift of the land to all men. 
 
 And as the Cross moved by, and the choristers sang, 
 
 " Raise ye the Christian's war-cry 
 The Cross of Christ the Lord !" 
 
 men to whom it was a new thing bowed their heads, 
 and in hearts long steeled against the Church, as the 
 willing handmaid of oppression, rose the " God wills 
 it !" of the grandest and mightiest of crusades. 
 
 Servant of the Servants of God ! I call you by the 
 strongest and sweetest of your titles. In your hands 
 more than in those of any living man lies the power 
 to say the word and make the sign that shall end 
 an unnatural divorce, and marry again to religion all 
 that is pure and high in social aspiration 
 
 Wishing for your Holiness the chiefest of all bless- 
 ings, that you may know the truth and be freed by
 
 118 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 the truth ; wishing for you the days and the strength 
 that may enable you by the great service you may 
 render to humanity to make your pontificate through 
 all coming time .most glorious ; and with the profound 
 respect due to your personal character and to your ex- 
 alted office, I am, 
 
 Tours sincerely, 
 
 GEORGE. 
 
 YORK, September 11, 1891.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER 
 
 OF 
 
 POPE LEO XIII. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF LABOR 
 
 OFFICIAL TRANSLATION
 
 To our Venerable Brethren, all Patriarchs, Primates, 
 Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, 
 in grace and communion with the Apostolic See, 
 Pope Leo XIII. 
 
 VENERABLE BRETHREN, HEALTH AND APOSTOLIC 
 BENEDICTION. 
 
 1. It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary 
 change, which has so long been predominant in the 
 nations of the world, should have passed beyond 
 politics and made its influence felt in the cognate field 
 of practical economy. The elements of a conflict are 
 unmistakable : the growth of industry, and the sur- 
 prising discoveries of science ; the changed relations of 
 masters and workmen ; the enormous fortunes of indi- 
 viduals, and the poverty of the masses ; the increased 
 self-reliance and the closer mutual combination of the 
 working population ; and, finally, a general moral 
 deterioration. The momentous seriousness of the pre- 
 sent state of things just now fills every mind with 
 painful apprehension ; wise men discuss it ; practical 
 men propose schemes ; popular meetings, legislatures, 
 and sovereign princes, all are occupied with it and 
 there is nothing which has a deeper hold on public 
 attention. 
 
 2. Therefore, Venerable Brethren, as on former 
 occasions, when it seemed opportune to refute false 
 teaching, We have addressed you in the interest of the 
 Church and of the common weal, and have issued 
 Letters on Political Power, on Human Liberty, on the 
 Christian Constitution of the State, and on similar sub- 
 jects, so now we have thought it useful to speak on the 
 CONDITION OF LABOR. It is a matter cm which We
 
 122 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 have touched once or twice already. But in this Letter 
 the responsibility of the Apostolic office urges Us to 
 treat the question expressly and at length, in order 
 that there may be no mistake as to the principles 
 which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The 
 discussion is not easy, nor is it free from danger. It is 
 not easy to define the relative rights and the mutual 
 duties of the wealthy and of the poor, of capital and of 
 labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agi- 
 tators constantly make use of these disputes to pervert 
 men's judgments and to stir up the people to sedition. 
 
 3. But all agree, and there can be no question what- 
 ever, that some remedy must be found, and quickly 
 found, for the misery and wretchedness which press so 
 heavily at this moment on the large majority of the 
 very poor. The ancient workmen's Guildes were de- 
 stroyed in the last century, and no other organization 
 took their place. Public institutions and the laws havo 
 repudiated the ancient religion. Hence by degrees it 
 lias come to pass that Working-Men have been given 
 over, isolated and defenseless, to the callousness of em- 
 ployers, and the greed of unrestrained competition. 
 The evil has been increased by rapacious Usury, which, 
 although more than once condemned by the Church, is 
 nevertheless, under a different form but with the same 
 guilt, still practiced by avaricious and grasping men. 
 And to this must be added the custom of working by 
 contract, and the concentration of so many branches 
 of trade in the hands of ti few individuals, so that a 
 small number of very rich men have been able to lay 
 upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than 
 slavery itself. 
 
 4. To remedy these evils the Socialists, working on 
 the poor man's envy of the rich, endeavor to destroy 
 private property, and maintain that individual posses- 
 sions should become the common property of all, to be 
 administered by the State or by municipal bodies. 
 They hold that, by thus transferring property from 
 private persons to the community, the present evil state 
 of things will be set to rights, because each citizen will 
 then have his equal share of whatever there is to <'njoy. 
 But their proposals are so clearly futile for all practi-
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 123 
 
 cal purposes, that if they were carried out the working- 
 man himself would be among the first to suffer. More- 
 over they are emphatically unjust, because they would 
 rob the lawful possessor, bring the State into a sphere 
 that is not its own, and cause complete confusion in 
 the community. 
 
 5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages 
 in remunerative labor, the very reason and motive of 
 his work is to obtain property, and to hold it as his own 
 private possession. If one man hires out to another his 
 strength or his industry, he does this for the purpose 
 of receiving in return what is necessary for food and 
 living ; he thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full 
 and real right, not only to the remuneration, but also 
 to the disposal of that remuneration as he pleases. 
 Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and invests 
 his savings, for greater security, in land, the land in 
 such a case is only his wages in another form ; and con- 
 sequently, a working man's little estate thus purchased 
 should be as completely at his own disposal as the 
 wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in 
 this power of disposal that ownership consists, whether 
 the property be land or movable goods. The Socialists, 
 therefore, in endeavoring to transfer the possessions of 
 individuals to the community, strike at the interests of 
 every wage-earner, for they deprive him of the liberty 
 of disposing of his wages, and thus of all hope and pos- 
 sibility of increasing his stock and of bettering his con- 
 dition in life. 
 
 6. What is of still greater importance, however, is 
 that the remedy they propose is manifestly against jus- 
 tice. For every man has by nature the right to possess 
 property as his own. This is one of the chief points of 
 distinction between man and the animal creation. For 
 the brute has no power of self-direction, but is gov- 
 erned by two chief instincts, which keep his powers 
 alert, move him to use his strength, and determine him 
 to action without the power of choice. These instincts 
 are self-preservation and the propagation of the species. 
 Both can attain their purpose by means of things which 
 are close at hand ; beyond their surroundings the brute 
 creation cannot go, for they are moved to action by
 
 124 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 sensibility alone, and by the things which sense per- 
 ceives. But with man it is different indeed. He pos- 
 sesses, on the one hand, the full perfection of animal 
 nature, and therefore he enjoys, at least as much as the 
 rest of the animal race, the fruition of the things of the 
 body. But animality, however perfect, is far from 
 being the whole of humanity, and is indeed humanity's 
 humble handmaid, made to serve and obey. It is the 
 mind, or the reason, which is the chief thing in us who 
 are human beings ; it is this which makes a human 
 being human, and distinguishes him essentially and 
 completely from the brute. And on this account viz., 
 that man alone among animals possesses reason it must 
 be within his right to have things not merely for tem- 
 porary and momentary use, as other living beings have 
 them, but in stable and permanent possession ; he must 
 have not only things which perish in the using, but 
 also those which, though used, remain for use in the 
 future. 
 
 7. This becomes still more clearly evident if we 
 consider man's nature a little more deeply. For man, 
 comprehending by the power of his reason things in- 
 numerable, and joining the future with the present 
 being, moreover, the master of his own acts governs 
 himself by the foresight of his counsel, under the eter- 
 nal law and the power of God, Whose Providence gov- 
 erns all things ; wherefore it is in his power to exercise 
 his choice not only on things which regard his present 
 welfare, but also on those which will be for his advant- 
 age in time to come. Hence man not only can possess 
 the fruits of the earth, but also the earth itself ; for of 
 the products of the earth he can make provision for the 
 future. Man's needs do not die out, but recur ; satis- 
 fied to-day, they demand new supplies to-morrow. Na- 
 ture, therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall 
 never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this 
 he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth. 
 
 8. Nor must we, at this stage, have recourse to the 
 State. Man is older than the State ; and he holds the 
 right of providing for the life of his body prior to the 
 formation of any State. And to say that God has given 
 the earth to the use and enjoyment of the universal hu-
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POFE LEO XlII. 125 
 
 man race is not to deny that there can be private prop- 
 erty. For God has granted the earth to mankind in 
 general ; not in the sense that all without distinction 
 can deal with it as they please, but rather that no part 
 of it has been assigned to any one in particular, and 
 that the limits of private possession have been left to 
 be fixed by man's own industry and the laws of indi- 
 vidual peoples. Moreover the earth, though divided 
 among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister 
 to the needs of all ; for there is no one who does not 
 live on what the land brings forth. Those who do not 
 possess the soil, contribute their labor ; so that ir, may 
 be truly said that all human subsistence is derived either 
 from labor on one's own land, or from some laborious 
 industry which is paid for either in the produce of the 
 land itself or in that which is exchanged for what the 
 land brings forth. 
 
 9. Here, again, we have another proof that private 
 ownership is according to nature's law. For that which 
 is required for the preservation of life, and for life's 
 well being, is produced in great abundance by the earth, 
 but not until man has brought it into cultivation and 
 lavished upon it his care and skill. Now, when man 
 thus spends the industry of his mind and the strength 
 of his body in procuring the fruits of nature, by that 
 act he makes his own that portion of nature's field 
 which he cultivates that portion on which he leaves, 
 as it were, the impress of his own personality ; and it 
 cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as 
 his own, and should have a right to keep it without 
 molestation. 
 
 10. These arguments are so strong and convincing 
 that it seems surprising that certain obsolete opinions 
 should now be revived in opposition to what is here laid 
 down. We are told that it is right for private persons 
 to have the use of the soil and the fruits of their land, 9 
 but that it is unjust for any one to possess as owner 
 either the land on which he has built or the estate 
 which he has cultivated. But those who assert this do 
 not perceive that they are robbing man of what his own 
 labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and 
 cultivated with toil and skill utterly changes its con-
 
 126 THE coNbiTtotf OF LABOR. 
 
 dition; it was wild before, it is now fruitful ; it was 
 barren, and now it brings forth in abundance. That 
 which has thus altered and improved it becomes so 
 truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistin- 
 guishable and inseparable from it. Is it just that the 
 fruit of a man's sweat and labor should be enjoyed by 
 another? As effects follow their cause, so it is just and 
 right that the results of labor should belong to him who 
 has labored. 
 
 11. With reason, therefore, the common opinion of 
 mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who 
 have maintained the opposite view, has found in the 
 study of nature, and in the law of Nature herself, the 
 foundation of the division of property, and has conse- 
 crated by the practice of all ages the principle of pri- 
 vate ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity 
 with human nature, and as conducing in the most un- 
 mistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of hu- 
 man life. The same principle is confirmed and enforced 
 by the civil laws laws which, as long as they are just, 
 derive their binding force from the law of nature. The 
 authority of the Divine Law adds its sanction, forbid- 
 ding us in the gravest terms even to covet that which is 
 another's: Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife; 
 nor his house, nor his field, nor his man-servant, nor his 
 maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything 
 which is his.* 
 
 12. The rights here spoken of, belonging to each in- 
 dividual man, are seen in a much stronger light if they 
 are considered in relation to man's social and do- 
 mestic obligations. 
 
 13. In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that 
 all are at full liberty either to follow the counsel of 
 Jesus Christ as to the virginity, or to enter into the 
 bonds of marriage. No human law can abolish the 
 
 natural and primitive right of marriage, or in any way 
 limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage, 
 ordained by God's authority from the beginning : In- 
 crease and multiply, f Thus we have the Family ; the 
 "society" of a man's own household ; a society limited 
 
 * Deuteronomy v., 21. t Genesis i., 28.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTEK OF POPE LEO XIII 12? 
 
 indeed in numbers, but a true "society," anterior to 
 every kind of State or nation, with rights and duties of 
 its own, totally independent of the commonwealth. 
 
 14. That right of property, therefore, which has been 
 proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must 
 also belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family ; 
 nay, such a person must possess this right so much the 
 more clearly in proportion as his position multiplies 
 his duties. For it is a most sacred law of nature that 
 a father must provide food and all necessaries for those 
 whom he has begotten ; and, similarly, nature dictates 
 that a man's children, who carry on, as it were, and 
 continue his own personality, should be provided by 
 him with all that is needful to enable them honorably 
 to keep themselves from want and misery in the un- 
 certainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way 
 can a father effect this except by the ownership of 
 profitable property, which he can transmit to his chil- 
 dren by inheritance. A family, no less than a State, is, 
 as "We have said, a true society, governed by a power 
 within itself, that is to say by the father. Wherefore, 
 provided the limits be not transgressed which are pre- 
 scribed by the very purposes for which it exists, the 
 Family has at least equal rights with the State in the 
 choice and pursuit of those things which are needful 
 to its preservation and its just liberty. 
 
 15. We say, at least equal rights ; for since the 
 domestic household is anterior both in idea and in fact 
 to the gathering of men into a commonwealth, the 
 former must necessarily have rights and duties which 
 are prior to those of the latter, and which rest more 
 immediately on nature. If the citizens of a State that 
 is to say, the Families on entering into association and 
 fellowship, experienced at the hands of the State hin- 
 drance instead of help, and found their rights attacked 
 instead of being protected, such association were rather 
 to be repudiated than sought after. 
 
 16. The idea, then, that the civil government should, 
 at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the family 
 and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake. 
 True, if a family finds itself in great difficulty, utterly 
 friendless, and without prosneot of help, it is right
 
 128 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 that extreme necessity be met by public aid ; for each 
 family is a part of the commonwealth. In like man- 
 ner, if within the walls of the household there occur 
 grave disturbance of mutual rights, the public power 
 must interfere to force each party to give the other 
 what is due ; for this is not to rob citizens of their 
 rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and 
 strengthen them. But the rulers of the State must go 
 no further : nature bids thorn stop here. Paternal 
 authority can neither be abolished by the State, nor 
 absorbed ; for it has the same source as human life 
 itself. " The child belongs to the father," and is, as it 
 were, the continuation of the father's personality ; 
 and, to speak with strictness, the child takes its place 
 in civil society not in itu own right, but in its quality 
 as a member of the family in which it is begotten. 
 And it is for the very reason that "the child belongs to 
 the father " that, as St. Thomas of Aquin says, " be- 
 fore it attains the use of free-will, it is in the power 
 and care of its parents."* The Socialists, therefore, in 
 setting aside the parent and introducing the providence 
 of the State, act against natural justice, and threaten 
 the very existence of family life. 
 
 17. And such interference is not only unjust, but it 
 is quite certain to harass and disturb all classes of 
 citizens and to subject them to odious and intolerable 
 slavery. It would open the door to envy, to evil speak- 
 ing, and to quarreling ; the sources of wealth would 
 themselves run dry, for no one would have any interest 
 in exerting his talents or his industry ; and that ideal 
 equality of which so much is said would in reality be 
 the levelling down of all to the same condition of misery 
 and dishonor. 
 
 18. Thus it is clear that the main tenet of Socialism, 
 the community of goods, must be utterly rejected ; for 
 it would injure those whom it is intended to benefit, it 
 would be contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and 
 it would introduce confusion and disorder into the com- 
 monwealth. Our first and most fundamental principle, 
 therefore, when we undertake to alleviate the condition 
 
 *St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 2a 2ae Q. x. Art. 13.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 129 
 
 of the masses, must be the inviolability of private prop- 
 erty. This laid down, We go on to show where We 
 must find the remedy that We seek. 
 
 19. We approach the subject with confidence, and in 
 the exercise of the rights which belong to Us. For no 
 practical solution of this question will ever be found 
 without the assistance of Religion and of the Church. 
 It is We who are the chief guardian of Religion and the 
 chief dispenser of what belongs to the Church, and We 
 must not by silence neglect the duty which lies upon 
 Us. Doubtless this most serious question demands the 
 attention and the efforts of others besides Ourselves 
 of the rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the 
 wealthy, and of the working population themselves for 
 whom We plead. But We affirm without hesitation, 
 that all the striving of men will be vain if they leave 
 out the Church. It is the Church that proclaims from 
 the Gospel those teachings by which the conflict can be 
 put an end to, or at the least made far less bitter ; the 
 Church uses its efforts not only to enlighten the mind, 
 but to direct by its precepts the life and conduct of 
 men ; the Church improves and ameliorates the condi- 
 tion of the workingman by numerous useful organiza- 
 tions ; does its best to enlist the services of all ranks in 
 discussing and endeavoring to meet, in the most prac- 
 tical way, the claims of the working classes ; and acts 
 on the decided view that for these purposes recourse 
 should be had, in due measure and degree, to the help 
 of the law and of State authority. 
 
 20. Let it be laid down, in the first place, that 
 humanity must remain as it is. It is impossible to re- 
 duce human society to a level. The Socialists may do 
 their utmost, but all striving against nature is vain. 
 There naturally exist among mankind innumerable 
 differences of the most important kind ; people differ 
 in capability, in diligence, in health, and in strength ; 
 and unequal fortune is a necessary result of inequality 
 in condition. Such inequality is far from being dis- 
 advantageous either to individuals or to the com- 
 munity ; social and public life can only go on by the 
 help of various kinds of capacity and the playing of 
 many parts ; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part
 
 130 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 which peculiarly suits his case. As regards bodily 
 labor, even had man never fallen from the state of in- 
 nocence, he would not have been wholly unoccupied ; 
 but that which would then have been his free choice 
 and his delight, became afterwards compulsory, and 
 the painful expiation of his sin. Cursed be the earth in 
 thy work ; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days 
 of thy life.* In like manner, the other pains and hard- 
 ships of life will have no end or cessation on this earth ; 
 for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, 
 and they must be with man as long as life lasts. To 
 suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity ; 
 let men try as they may, no strength and no artifice 
 will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills 
 and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pre- 
 tend differently who hold out to a hard-pressed people 
 freedom from pain and trouble, undisturbed repose, 
 and constant enjoyment they cheat the people and 
 impose upon them, and their lying promises will only 
 make the evil worse than before. There is nothing 
 more useful than to look at the world as it really is 
 and at the same time to look elsewhere for a remedy to 
 its troubles. 
 
 21. The great mistake that is made in the matter now 
 under consideration is to possess one's self of the idea 
 that class is naturally hostile to class ; that rich and 
 poor are intended by nature to live at war with one an- 
 other. So irrational and so false is this view, that the 
 exact contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of 
 the human body is the result of the disposition of the 
 members of the body, so in a state it is ordained by 
 nature that these two classes should exist in harmony 
 and agreement, and should, as it were, fit into one an- 
 other, so as to maintain the equilibrium of the body 
 politic. Each requires the other ; capital cannot do 
 without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual 
 agreement results in pleasantness and good order ; per- 
 petual conflict necessarily produces confusion and out- 
 rage. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in 
 making it impossible, the efficacy of Christianity is 
 
 *Genesie iii., 17.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF K>1>E LEO XHI. 131 
 
 marvelous and manifold. First of all, there is nothing 
 more powerful than Religion (of which the Church is 
 the interpreter and guardian) in drawing rich and poor 
 together, by reminding each class of its duties to the 
 other, and especially of the duties of justice. Thus 
 Eeligion teaches the laboring man and the workman to 
 carry out honestly and well all equitable agreements 
 freely made ; never to injure capital, or to outrage the 
 person of an employer ; never to employ violence in re- 
 presenting his own cause, or to engage in riot or disor- 
 der ; and to have nothing to do with men of evil prin- 
 ciples, who work upon the people with artful promises, 
 and raise foolish hopes which usually end in disaster 
 and in repentance when too late. Religion teaches the 
 rich man and the employer that their work people are 
 not their slaves ; that they must respect in every man 
 his dignity as a man and as a Christian ; that labor is 
 nothing to be ashamed of, if we listen to right reason and 
 to Christian philosophy, but is an honorable employ- 
 ment, enabling a man to sustain his life in an upright 
 and creditable way ; and that it is shameful and in- 
 human to treat men like chattels to make money by, 
 or to look upon them merely as so much muscle or phy- 
 sical power. Thus, again, Religion teaches that, as 
 among the workman's concerns are Religion herself and 
 things spiritual and mental, the employer is bound to 
 see that he has time for the duties of piety ; that he be 
 not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous oc- 
 casions ; and that he be not led away to neglect his 
 home and family or to squander his wages. Then, 
 again, the employer must never tax his work people be- 
 yond their strength, nor employ them in work unsuited 
 to their sex or age. His great and principal obliga- 
 tion is to give to every one that which is just. Doubt- 
 less before we can decide whether wages are adequate, 
 many things have to be considered ; but rich men 
 and masters should remember this that to exercise 
 pressure for the sake of gain upon the indigent and the 
 destitute, and to make one's profit out of the need of 
 another is condemned by all laws, human and divine. 
 To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a crime 
 which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. Behold,
 
 132 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 the Hire of the laborers . . . which by fraud hath 
 been kept back by you, crieth / and the cry of them hath 
 entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.* Finally, 
 the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the 
 workman's earnings, either by force, by fraud, or by 
 usurious dealing ; and with the more reason because 
 the poor man is weak and unprotected, and because his 
 slender means should be sacred in proportion to their 
 scantiness. 
 
 22. Were these prospects carefully obeyed and fol- 
 lowed, would not strife die out and cease ? 
 
 23. Bat the Church, with Jesus Christ for its Master 
 and Guide, aims higher still. It lays down precepts 
 yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in 
 friendliness and good understanding. The things of 
 this earth cannot be understood or valued rightly with- 
 out taking into consideration the life to come, the life 
 that will last for ever. Exclude the idea of futurity, 
 and the very notion of what is good and right would 
 perish ; nay, the whole system of the universe would 
 become a dark and unfathomable mystery. The great 
 truth which we learn from Nature herself is also the 
 grand Christain dogma on which Eeligion rests as on 
 its base that when we have done with this present life 
 then shall we really begin to live. God has not created 
 us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, 
 but for things heavenly and everlasting ; He has given 
 us this world as a place of exile, and not as our true 
 country. Money, and the other things which men call 
 good and desirable we may have them in abundance, 
 or we may want them altogether ; as far as eternal hap- 
 piness is concerned, it is no matter ; the only thing 
 that is important is to use them aright. Jesus Christ, 
 when he redeemed us with plentiful, redemption, took 
 not away the pains and sorrows which in such large 
 proportion make up the texture of our mortal life ; He 
 transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions 
 of merit ; and no man can hope for eternal reward un- 
 less he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his 
 Saviour. If we suffer ivith Him, we shall also reign 
 
 * St. James v., 4.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 133 
 
 with Him.* His labors antl his sufferings, accepted by 
 His own free-will, have marvelously sweetened all suf- 
 fering and all labor. And not only by his example, 
 but by His grace and by the hope of everlasting recom- 
 pense, He has made pain and grief more easy to endure ; 
 for that which is at present momentary and light of our 
 tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly 
 an eternal weight of glory. \ 
 
 24. Therefore those whom fortune favors are warned 
 that freedom from sorrow and abundance of earthly 
 riches are no guarantee of the beatitude that shall 
 never end, but rather the contrary ; J that the rich 
 should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ 
 threatenings so strange in the mouth of Our Lord ; 
 and that a most strict account must be given to the 
 Supreme Judge for all that we possess. The chiefest 
 and most excellent rule for the right use of money is 
 one which the heathen philosophers indicated, but 
 which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not 
 only made known to men's minds, but has impressed 
 upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is 
 one thing to have a right to the possession of money, 
 and another to have a right to use money as one pleases. 
 Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural 
 right of man ; and to exercise that right, especially as 
 members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely 
 necessary. It is lawful, says St. Thomas of Aquiii,/o/* 
 a man to hold private property ; and it is also necessary 
 for the carrying on of human life.\\ But if the question 
 be asked, How must one's possessions be used ? the 
 Church replies without hesitation in the words of the 
 same holy Doctor : Man should not consider his out- 
 ward possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to 
 share them without difficulty when others are in need. 
 Whence the Apostle saith, Command the rich of this 
 world . . . to give with ease, to communicate.^ True 
 no one is commanded to distribute toothers that which 
 is required for his own necessities and those of his 
 household ; nor even to give away what is reasonably 
 
 Timothy ii. 12. t 2 Corinthians iv. 17. J St. Matthew six. 23, 2/4, 
 
 St. Luke vi. 24, 25. J 2a 2se Q. Ixvi. Art. ?. 
 
 T 2a 2ae Q. Ixv. Art. 2..
 
 134: THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 required to keep up becomingly his condition in life ; 
 for no one ought to live unbecomingly.* But when 
 necessity has been supplied, and one's position fairly 
 considered, it is a duty to give to the indigent out of 
 that which is over. That which remaineth, give alms.\ 
 It is a duty, not of justice (except in extreme cases), 
 but of Christian charity a duty which is not enforced 
 by human law. But the laws and judgments of men 
 must give place to the laws and judgments of Christ 
 the true God, Who in many ways urges on his fol- 
 lowers the practice of almsgiving // is more blessed to 
 give than to receive ;\ and Who will count a kindness 
 done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Him- 
 self as long as you did it to one of My least brethren, 
 you did it to Me. Thus, to sum up what has been 
 said : Whoever has received from the Divine bounty a 
 large share of blessings, whether they be external and 
 corporeal or gifts of the mind, has received them for 
 the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his 
 own nature, and, at the same time, that he may em- 
 ploy them, as the minister of God's Providence, for the 
 benefit of others. He that hath a talent, says St. 
 Gregory the Great, let him see that he hide it not; he 
 that hath abundance, let him arouse himself to mercy and 
 generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best 
 to share the use and utility thereof with his neighbor. \\ 
 
 25. As for those who do not possess the gifts of for- 
 tune, they are taught by the Church that, in God'.s sight 
 poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be 
 ashamed of in seeking one's bread by labor. This is 
 strengthened by what we see in Christ Himself, Who 
 whereas He was rich, for our sakes became poor; ^f and 
 Who, being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to 
 seem and to be considered the son of a carpenter nay, 
 did not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a car- 
 penter Himself. Is not this the carpenter, the Son of 
 Mary? ** From the contemplation of this Divine ex- 
 ample it is easy to understand that the true dignity and 
 excellence of man lies in his moral qualities, that is, in 
 
 * Ibid. Q. xxxii. Art. 6. t St. Luke xi. 41. t Acts xx. 35. 
 
 St. Matthew xxv. 40. II St. Gregory the Great, Horn. ix. in Evangel, n. 7. 
 
 1 2 Corinthians vjii. 9, ** gt. Mark vl 3.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTEK OF POPE LEO XIII. 135 
 
 virtue ; that virtue is the common inheritance of all, 
 equally within the reach of high and low, rich and 
 poor ; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever 
 found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting 
 happiness. Nay, God Himself seems to incline more to 
 those who suffer evil ; for Jesus Christ calls the poor 
 blessed ; * He lovingly invites those in labor and grief 
 to come to Him for solace ; f and He displays the ten- 
 derest charity to the lowly and the oppressed. These 
 reflections cannot fail to keep down the pride of those 
 who are well off, and to cheer the spirit of the afflicted ; 
 to incline the former to generosity and the latter to 
 tranquil resignation. Thus the separation which pride 
 would make tends to disappear, nor will it be difficult 
 to make rich and poor join hands in friendly concord. 
 
 26. But, if Christian precepts prevail, the two 
 classes will not only be united in the bonds of friend- 
 ship but also in those of brotherly love. For they will 
 understand and feel that all men are the children of 
 the common Father, that is, of God ; that all have the 
 same last end, which is God Himself, Who alone can 
 make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly 
 happy ; that all and each are redeemed by Jesus Christ 
 and raised to the dignity of children of God, and are 
 thus united in brotherly ties both with each other and 
 with Jesus Christ, the firstborn among many brethern; 
 that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace be- 
 long in common to the whole human race, and that to 
 all, except to those that are unworthy, is promised the 
 inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven. If sons, heirs 
 also; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs of Christ. \ 
 
 27. Such is the scheme of duties and of rights which 
 is put forth to the world by the Gospel. Would it not 
 seem that strife must quickly cease were society pene- 
 trated with ideas like these ? 
 
 28. But the Church, not content with pointing out 
 the remedy, also applies it. For the Church does its 
 utmost to teach and to train men, and to educate them ; 
 
 * St Matthew v. 3: " Blessed are the poor in spirit." 
 
 t Itrid- xi. 28: " Come to Me all you that labor and are burdened, and I vnll 
 refresh you." 
 
 ^Romans viii. 17.
 
 136 THE CONDITION OF LABOK. 
 
 and by means of its Bishops and Clergy it diffuses its 
 salutary teachings far and wide. It strives to influence 
 the mind and heart so that all may willingly yield 
 themselves to be formed and guided by the command- 
 ments of God. It is precisely in this fundamental and 
 principal matter, on which everything depends, that 
 the Church has a power peculiar to itself. The agencies 
 which it employs are given it for the very purpose of 
 reaching the hearts of men, by Jesus Christ Himself, 
 and derive their efficiency from God. They alone can 
 touch the innermost heart and conscience, and bring 
 men to act from a motive of duty, to resist their 
 passions and appetites/ to love God and their fellow- 
 men with a love that is unique and supreme, and 
 courageously to break down every barrier which stands 
 in the way of a virtuous life. 
 
 29. On this subject We need only recall for one mo- 
 ment the examples written down in history. Of these 
 things there cannot be the shadow of doubt ; for in- 
 stance, that civil society was renovated in every part by 
 the teachings of Christianity ; that in the strength of 
 that renewal the human race was lifted up to better 
 things nay, that it was brought back from death to 
 life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect 
 had been known before, or will come to pass in the ages 
 that have yet to be. Of this beneficent transformation 
 Jesus Christ was at once the first cause and the final 
 purpose ; as from Him all came, so to Him all was to 
 be referred. For when, by the light of the Gospel mes- 
 sage, the human race came to know the grand mystery 
 of the Incarnation of the Word and the redemption of 
 man, the life of Jesus Christ, God and Man, penetrated 
 every race and nation, and impregnated them with 
 His faith, His precepts, and His laws. And if Society 
 is to be cured now, in no other way can it be cured 
 but by a return to the Christian life and Christian in- 
 stitutions. When a society is perishing, the true advice 
 to give to those who would restore it is, to recall it to 
 the principles from which it sprung ; for the purpose 
 and perfection of an association is to aim at and to 
 attain that for which it was formed ; and its operation 
 should be put in motion and inspired by the end and
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 137 
 
 object which originally gave it its being. So that to 
 fall away from its primal constitution is disease ; to go 
 back to it is recovery. And this may be asserted with 
 the utmost truth both of the State in general and of 
 that body of its citizens by far the greater number 
 who sustain life by labor. 
 
 30. Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of 
 the Church is so occupied with the spiritual concerns 
 of its children as to neglect their interests temporal 
 and earthly. Its desire is that the poor, for example, 
 should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and should 
 better their condition in life ; and for this it strives. By 
 the very fact that it calls men to virtue and forms them 
 to its practice, it promotes this in no slight degree. 
 Christian morality, when it is adequately and completely 
 practiced, conduces of itself to temporal prosperity, for 
 it merits the blessing of that God Who is the source of 
 all blessings ; it powerfully restrains the lust of posses- 
 sion and the lust of pleasure twin plagues, which too 
 often make a man without self-restraint miserable in the 
 midst of abundance*; it makes men supply by economy 
 for the want of means, teaching them to be content 
 with frugal living, and keeping them out of the reach 
 of those vices which eat up not merely small incomes, 
 but large fortunes, and dissipate many a goodly inherit- 
 ance. 
 
 31. Moreover, the Church intervenes directly in the 
 interest of the poor, by setting on foot and keeping up 
 many things which it sees to be efficacious in the relief 
 of poverty. Here again it has always succeeded so well 
 that it has even extorted the praise of its enemies. Such 
 was the ardor of brotherly love among the earliest 
 Christians that numbers of those who were better off de- 
 prived themselves of their possessions in order to re- 
 lieve their brethren ; whence neither was there any one 
 needy among them]. To the order of Deacons, insti- 
 tuted for that very purpose, was committed by the 
 Apostles the charge of the daily distributions ; and the 
 Apostle Paul, though burdened with the solicitude of 
 
 * " The root of all evils is cupidity" I Tim. vi. 10. 
 tActsiT.34.
 
 138 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 all the churches, hesitated not to undertake laborious 
 journeys in order to carry the alms of the faithful to 
 the poorer Christians. Tertullian calls these contribu- 
 tions, given voluntarily by Christians in their assem- 
 blies, deposits of piety; because, to cite his words, they 
 were employed in fending the needy, in burying them, 
 in the support of boys and girls destitute of means and 
 deprived of their parents, in the care of the aged and in 
 the relief of the shipwrecked. * 
 
 32. Thus by degrees came into existence the patri- 
 mony which the church has guarded with religious care 
 as the inheritance of the poor. Nay, to spare them the 
 shame of begging, the common Mother of rich and 
 poor has exerted herself to gather together funds for 
 the support of the needy. The Church has stirred up 
 everywhere the heroism of charity, and has established 
 Congregations of Religious and many other useful in- 
 stitutions for help and mercy, so that there might be 
 hardly any kind of suffering which was not visited and 
 relieved. At the present day there are many who, like 
 the heathen of old, blame and condemn the Church for 
 this beautiful charity. They would substitute in its 
 place a system of State-organized relief. But no human 
 methods will ever supply for the devotion and self- 
 sacrifice of Christian charity. Charity, as a virtue, be- 
 longs to the Church ; for it is no virtue unless it is 
 drawn from the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ ; and he 
 who turns his back on the Church cannot be near to 
 Christ. 
 
 33. It cannot, however, be doubted that to attain the 
 purpose of which We treat, not only the Church, but 
 all human means must conspire. All who are con- 
 cerned in the matter must be of one mind and must 
 act together. It is in this, as in the Providence which 
 governs the world ; results do not happen save where 
 all the causes cooperate. 
 
 34. Let us now, therefore, inquire what part the 
 State should play in the work of remedy and relief. 
 
 35. By the State We here understand, not the partic- 
 ular form of government which prevails in this or that 
 
 * Apologia tiecunda, xxxix.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 139 
 
 nation, but the State as rightly understood; that is to 
 say, any government conformable in its institutions to 
 right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of 
 the Divine wisdom which We have expounded in the 
 Encyclical on the Christian Constitution of the State. 
 The first duty, therefore, of the rulers of the S ate 
 should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, 
 the general character and administration of the com- 
 monwealth, shall be such as to produce of themselves 
 public well-being and private prosperity. This is the 
 proper office of wise statesmanship and the work of the 
 heads of the State. Now, a State chiefly prospers and 
 flourishes by morality, by well regulated family life, by 
 respect for religion and justice, by the moderation and 
 equal distribution of public burdens, by the progress of 
 the arts and of trade, by the abundant yield of the 
 land by everything which makes the citizens better 
 and happier. Here, then, it is in the power of a ruler 
 to benefit every order of the State, and amongst the 
 rest to promote in the highest degree the interests of 
 the poor ; and this by virtue of his office, and without 
 being exposed to any suspicion of undue interference 
 for it is the province of the commonwealth to consult 
 for the common good. And the more that is done for 
 the working population by the general laws of the 
 country, the less need will there be to seek for particular 
 means to relieve them. 
 
 36. There is another and a deeper consideration which 
 must not be lost sight of. To the State the interests of 
 all are equal, whether high or low. The poor are 
 members of the national community equally with the 
 rich ; they are real component parts, living parts, 
 which make up, through the family, the living body : 
 and it need hardly be said that they are by far the 
 majority. It would be irrational to neglect one portion 
 of the citizens and to favor another ; and therefore the 
 public administration must duly and solicitously pro- 
 vide for the welfare and the comfort of the working 
 people, or else that law of justice will be violated 
 which ordains that each shall have his due. To cite 
 the wise words of St. Thomas of Aquin : As the part 
 and the whole are in a certain sense identical) the part
 
 14:0 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 may in some sense claim what belongs to the whole.* 
 Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would 
 do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act 
 with strict justice with that justice which is called in 
 the Schools distributive towards each and every class. 
 
 37. But although all citizens, without exception, can 
 and ought to contribute to that common good in which 
 individuals share so profitably to themselves, yet it is 
 not to be supposed that all can contribute in the same 
 way and to the same extent. No matter what changes- 
 may be made in forms of government, there will always 
 be differences and inequalities of condition in the State: 
 Society cannot exist or be conceived without them. 
 Some there must be who dedicate themselves to the 
 work of the commonwealth, who make the laws, who 
 administer justice, whose advice and authority govern 
 the nation in times of peace, and defend it in war. 
 Such men clearly occupy the foremost place in the 
 State, and should be held in the foremost estima- 
 tion, for their work touches most nearly and effect- 
 ively the general interests of the community. Those 
 who labor at a trade or calling do not promote the 
 general welfare in such a fashion as this ; but they 
 do in the most important way benefit the nation, 
 though less directly. We have insisted that, since it is 
 the end of society to make men better, the chief good 
 that Society can be possessed of is Virtue. Neverthe- 
 less, in all well constituted States it is a by no means 
 unimportant matter to provide those bodily and exter- 
 nal commodities, the use of which is necessary to virtu- 
 ous action.^ And in the provision of material well 
 being, the labor of the poor the exercise of their skill 
 and the employment of their strength in the culture of 
 the land and the workshops of trade is most efficacious 
 and altogether indispensable. Indeed, their coopera- 
 tion in this respect is so important that it may be truly 
 said that it is only by the labor of the workingman 
 that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands 
 that the interests of the poorer population be carefully 
 
 *2a2seQ. Ixi. Art lad 2. 
 t St. Thomas of Aquin. De Regimine Printfpiwm, I. cap. 15,
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OP POPE LEO XIII. 141 
 
 watched over by the Administration, so that they who 
 contribute so largely to the advantage of the commu- 
 nity may themselves share in the benefits they create 
 that being housed, clothed, and enabled to support life, 
 they may fiud their existence less hard and more 
 endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to be 
 conducive to the well being of those who work should 
 receive favorable consideration. Let it not be feared 
 that solicitude of this kind will injure any interest; on 
 the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all ; for it 
 cannot but be good for the commonwealth to secure 
 from misery those on whom it so largely depends. 
 
 38. We have said that the State must not absorb the 
 individual or the family; both should be allowed free 
 and untrammelled action as far as is consistent with 
 the common good and the interest of others. Never- 
 theless, rulers should anxiously safeguard the com- 
 munity and all its parts ; the community, because the 
 conservation of the community is so emphatically the 
 business of the supreme power that the safety of the 
 commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a 
 Government's whole reason of existence; and the parts, 
 because both philosophy and the gospel agree in laying 
 down that the object of the administration of the State 
 should be, not the advantage of the ruler but the bene- 
 fit of those over whom he rules. The gift of authority 
 is from God, and is, as it were, a participation of the 
 highest of all sovereignties ; and it should be exercised 
 as the power of God is exercised with a fatherly 
 solicitude which not only guides the whole, but reaches 
 to details as well. 
 
 39. Whenever the general interest of any particular 
 class suffers, or is threatened with, evils which can in 
 no other way be met, the public authority must step in 
 to meet them. Now, among the interests of the pub- 
 lic, as of private individuals, are these : that peace and 
 good order should be maintained ; that family life 
 should be carried on in accordance with God's laws and 
 those of nature ; that religion should be reverenced and 
 obeyed ; that a high standard of morality should prevail 
 in public and private life; that sanctity of justice should 
 be respected, and that no one should injure another
 
 142 THE CONDITION Off LABOR. 
 
 with impunity; that the members of the commonwealth 
 should grow up to man's estate strong and robust, and 
 capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their 
 country. If by a strike, or other combina f ion of work- 
 men, there should be imminent danger of disturbance 
 to the public peace; or if circumstances were such 
 that among the laboring population the ties of family 
 life were relaxed; if Keligion were found to suffer 
 through the workmen not having time and opportunity 
 to practice it; if in workshops and factories there were 
 danger to morals through the mixing of the sexes or 
 from any occasion of evil; or if employers laid burdens 
 upon the workmen which were unjust, or degraded 
 them with conditions that were repugnant to their 
 dignity as human beings ; finally, if health were en- 
 dangered by excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex 
 or age in these cases, there can be no question that, 
 within certain limits, it would be right to call in the 
 help and authority of the law. The limits must be de- 
 termined by the nature of the occasion which calls for 
 the law's interference the principle being this, that 
 the law must not undertake more, or go further, than 
 is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of 
 the danger. 
 
 40. Rights must be religiously respected wherever 
 they are found ; and it is the duty of the public au- 
 thority to prevent and punish injury, and to protect 
 each one in the possession of his own. Still, when 
 there is question of protecting the rights of individuals, 
 the poor and helpless have a claim to special consider- 
 ation. The richer population have many ways of pro- 
 tecting themselves, and stand less in need of help from 
 the State ; those who are badly off have no resources of 
 their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly rely upon 
 the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason 
 that wage-earners, who are undoubtedly among the 
 weak and necessitous, should be specially cared for and 
 protected by the commonwealth. 
 
 41. Here, however, it will be advisable to advert ex- 
 pressly to one or two of the more important details. It 
 must be borne in mind that the chief thing to be se- 
 cured is the safeguarding, by legal enactment and
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTEfc OF POPE LEO Xltt. 143 
 
 policy, of private property. Most of all is it essential 
 in these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude 
 within the line of duty ; for if all may justly strive to 
 better their condition, yet neither justice nor the com- 
 mon good allows any one to seize that which belongs 
 to another, or, under the pretext of futile and ridicu- 
 lous equality, to Jay hands on other people's fortunes. 
 It is most true that by far the larger part of the people 
 who work prefer to improve themselves by honest labor 
 rather than by doing wrong to others. But there are 
 not a few who are imbued with bad principles and are 
 anxious for revolutionary change, and whose great pur- 
 pose it is to stir up tumult and bring about a policy of 
 violence. The authority of the State should intervene 
 to put restraint upon these disturbers, to save the 
 workmen from their seditious arts, and to protect law- 
 ful owners from spoliation. 
 
 42. When work people have recourse to a strike, it is fre- 
 quently because the hours of labor are too long, or the 
 work too hard, or because they consider their wages insuf- 
 ficient. The grave inconvenience of this not uncommon 
 occurrence should be obviated by public remedial meas- 
 ures; for such paralysis of labor not only affects the mas- 
 ters and their work people, but is extremely injurious to 
 trade, and to the general interests of the public ; more- 
 over, on such occasions, violence and disorder are gen- 
 erally not far off, and thus it frequently happens that 
 the public peace is threatened. The laws should be 
 beforehand, and prevent these troubles from arising ; 
 they should lend their influence and authority to the 
 removal in good time of the causes which lead to con- 
 flicts between masters and_ those whom they employ. 
 
 43. But if the owners of property must be made 
 secure, the Workman, too, has property and possessions 
 in which he must be protected ; and, first of all, there 
 are his spiritual and mental interests. Life on earth, 
 however good and desirable in itself, is not the final 
 purpose for which man is created ; it is only the way 
 and the means to that attainment of truth, and that 
 practice of goodness in which the full life of the soul 
 consists. It is the soul which is made after the image 
 and likeness of God ; it is in the soul that sovereignty
 
 144 THE CONDITION OF LABOK. 
 
 resides, in virtue of which man is commanded to rule 
 the creatures below him, and to use all the earth and 
 the ocean for his profit and advantage. Fill the earth 
 and subdue it ; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and 
 the fowls of the air, and all living creatures which move 
 upon the earth.* In this respect all men are equal ; 
 there is no difference between rich and poor, master 
 and servant, ruler and ruled, for the same is lord over 
 all.\ No man may outrage with impunity that human 
 dignity which God Himself treats with reverence, nor 
 stand in the way of that higher life which is the prep- 
 aration for the eternal life of Heaven. Nay, more ; a 
 man has here no power over himself. To consent to 
 any treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and 
 purpose of his being is beyond his right ; he cannot 
 give up his soul to servitude ; for it is not man's own 
 rights which are here in question, but the rights of 
 God, most sacred and inviolable. 
 
 44. From this follows the obligation of the cessation 
 of work and labor on Sundays and certain festivals. 
 This rest from labor is not to be understood as mere 
 idleness ; much less must it be an occasion of spending 
 money and of vicious excess, as many would desire it 
 to be ; but it should be rest from labor consecrated by 
 religion. Repose united with religious observance dis- 
 poses man to forget for a while the business of this 
 daily life, and to turn his thoughts to heavenly things 
 and to the worship which he so strictly owes to the 
 Eternal Deity. It is this, above all, which is the reason 
 and motive of the Sunday rest ; a rest sanctioned by 
 God's great law of the ancient covenant, Remember thou 
 keep holy the Sabbath Day, \ and taught to the world by 
 His own mysterious " rest " after the creation of man ; 
 He rested on the seventh day from all His work which 
 He had done. 
 
 45. If we turn now to things exterior and corporeal, 
 the first concern of all is to save the poor workers from 
 the cruelty of grasping speculators, who use human 
 beings as mere instruments for making money. It is 
 neither justice nor humanity so to grind men down 
 
 * Genesis i. 28. t Romans x. 12. J Exod. xx. 8. Genesis il. 2.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 145 
 
 with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and 
 wear out their bodies. Man's powers, like his general 
 nature, are limited, and beyond these limits he cannot 
 go. His strength is developed and increased by use and 
 exercise, but only on condition of due intermission and 
 proper rest. Daily labor, therefore, must be so regu- 
 lated that it may not be protracted during longer hours 
 than strength admits. How many and how long the 
 intervals of rest should be, will depend on the nature 
 of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and 
 on the health and strength of the workman. Those 
 who labor in mines and quarries, and in work within 
 the bowels of the earth, should have shorter hours in 
 proportion as their labor is more severe and more try- 
 ing to health. Then, again, the season of the year 
 must be taken into account ; for not unf requently a 
 kind of labor is easy at one time which at another is in- 
 tolerable or very difficult. Finally, work which is 
 suitable for a strong man cannot reasonably be re- 
 quired from a woman or a child. And, in regard to chil- 
 dren, great care should be taken not to place them in 
 workshops and factories until their bodies and minds 
 are sufficiently mature. For just as rough weather de- 
 stroys the buds of Spring, so too early an experience of 
 life's hard work blights the young promise of a child's 
 powers, and makes any real education impossible. 
 Women, again, are not suited to certain trades ; for a 
 woman is by nature fitted for home work, and, it is that 
 which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty 
 and to promote the good bringing up of children and 
 the well being of the family. As a general principle it 
 may be laid down that a workman ought to have leis- 
 ure and rest in proportion to the wear and tear of his 
 strength ; for the waste of strength must be repaired 
 by the cessation of work. 
 
 46. In all agreements between masters and work 
 people there is always the condition, expressed or un- 
 derstood, that there be allowed proper rest for soul and 
 body. To agree in any other sense would be against 
 what is right and just ; for it can never be right or just 
 to require on the one side, or to promise on the other,
 
 146 THE CONDITION OF LAfcOR. 
 
 the giving up of those duties which a man owes to his 
 God and to himself. 
 
 47. We now approach a subject of very great import- 
 ance, and one on which, if extremes are to be avoided, 
 right ideas are absolutely necessary. Wages, we are 
 told, are fixed by free consent ; and, therefore, the em- 
 ployer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done 
 his part and is not called upon for anything further. 
 The only way, it is said, in which injustice could hap- 
 pen would be if the master refused to pay the whole of 
 the wages, or the workman would not complete the 
 work undertaken ; when this happens the State should 
 intervene, to see that each obtains his own but not 
 under any other circumstances. 
 
 48. This mode of reasoning is by no means convincing 
 to a fair-minded man, for there are important considera- 
 tions which it leaves out of view altogether. To labor 
 is to exert one's self for the sake of procuring what is 
 necessary for the purposes of life, and most of all for 
 self-preservation. In the siveat of thy brow thou shall 
 eat bread.* Therefore a man's labor has two notes or 
 characters. First of all, it is personal, for the exertion 
 of individual power belongs to the individual who puts 
 it forth, employing this power for that personal profit 
 for which it was given. Secondly, man's labor is neces- 
 sary, for without the results of labor a man cannot live; 
 and self-conservation is a law of Nature, which it is 
 wrong to disobey. Now, if we were to consider labor 
 merely so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be 
 within the workman's right to accept any rate of wages 
 whatever ; for in the same way as he is free to work or 
 not, so he is free to accept a small remuneration or even 
 none at all. But this is a mere abstract supposition ; 
 the labor of the workingman is not only his personal 
 attribute, but it is necessary; and this makes all the 
 difference. The preservation of life is the bounden 
 duty of each and all, and to fail therein is a crime. It 
 follows that each one has a right to procure what is re- 
 quired in order to live, and the poor can procure it in 
 no other way than by work and wages. 
 
 * Genesis iii. 19.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER Otf POPE LEO XIII. 147 
 
 49. Let it be granted then that, as a rule, work- 
 man and employer should make free agreements, and 
 in particular should freely agree as to wages ; never- 
 theless, there is a dictate of nature more imperious and 
 more ancient than any bargain between man and man, 
 that the remuneration must be enough to support the 
 wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort. If 
 through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman 
 accepts harder conditions because an employer or a 
 contractor will give him no better, he is the victim of 
 force and injustice. In these and similar questions, 
 however such as, for example, the hours of labor in 
 different trades, the sanitary precautions to be ob- 
 served in factories and workshops, etc. in order to 
 supersede undue interference on the part of the State, 
 especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ 
 so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to Soci- 
 eties or Boards such as We shall mention presently, or 
 to some other method of safeguarding the interests of 
 wage earners ; the State to be asked for approval and 
 protection. 
 
 50. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him 
 to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in rea- 
 sonable comfort, he will not find it difficult, if he is a 
 sensible man, to study economy; and he will not fail, 
 by cutting down expenses, to put by a little prop- 
 erty; nature and reason would urge him to this. We 
 have seen that this great Labor question cannot be 
 solved except by assuming as a principle that private 
 ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The 
 law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy 
 should be to induce as many of the people as possible 
 to become owners. 
 
 51. Many excellent results will follow from this; and 
 first of all, property will certainly become more equit- 
 ably divided. For the effect of civil change and re- 
 volution has been to divide society into two widely dif- 
 fering castes. On the one side, there is the party 
 which holds the power because it holds the wealth ; 
 which has in its grasp all labor and all trade, which 
 manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes 
 all the sources of supply, and which is powerfully rep-
 
 14:8 THE CONDITION OF LAiiOR. 
 
 resented in the councils of the State itself. On the 
 other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, 
 sore and suffering, and always ready for disturbance. 
 If working people can be encouraged to look forward 
 to obtaining a share in the land, the result will be that 
 the gulf between vast wealth and deep poverty will be 
 bridged over, and the two orders will be brought 
 nearer together. Another consequence will be the 
 greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men al- 
 ways work harder and more readily when they work on 
 that which is their own; nay, they learn to love the very 
 soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, 
 not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things 
 for themselves and those that are dear to them. It is 
 evident how such a spirit of willing labor would add to 
 the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the com- 
 munity. And a third advantage would arise from this: 
 men would cling to the country in which they were 
 born; for no one would exchange his country for a 
 foreign land if his own afforded him the means of liv- 
 ing a tolerable and happy life. These three important 
 benefits, however, can only be expected on the condi- 
 tion that a man's means be not drained and exhausted 
 by excessive taxation. The right to possess private 
 property is from nature, not from man; and the State 
 has only the right to regulate its use in the interests of 
 the public good, but by no means to abolish it alto- 
 gether. The State is therefore unjust and cruel if, in 
 the name of taxation, it deprives the private owner of 
 more than is just. 
 
 52. In the last place employers and workmen may 
 themselves effect much in the matter of which We 
 treat, by means of those institutions and organizations 
 which afford opportune assistance to those in need, and 
 which draw the two orders more closely together. 
 Among these may be enumerated : Societies for mutual 
 help ; various foundations established by private per- 
 sons for providing for the workman, and for his widow 
 or his orphans, in sudden calamity, in sickness, and in 
 the event of death ; and what are called "patronages" 
 or institutions for the care of boys and girls, for young 
 people and also for those of more mature age.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 149 
 
 53. The most important of all are Workmen's Asso- 
 ciations ; foi these virtually include all the rest. His- 
 tory attests what excellent results were effected by the 
 Artificers' Guilds of a former day. They were the 
 means not only of many advantages to the workmen, 
 but in no small degree of the advancement of art, as 
 numerous monuments remain to prove. Such associa- 
 tions should be adapted to the requirements of the 
 age in which we live an age of greater instruction, of 
 different customs, and of more numerous requirements 
 in daily life. It is gratifying to know that there are 
 actually in existence not a few Societies of this nature, 
 consisting either of workmen alone or of workmen and 
 employers together ; but it were greatly to be desired 
 that they should multiply and become more effective. 
 We have spoken of them more than once ; but it will be 
 well to explain here how much they are needed, to 
 show that they exist by their own right, and to enter 
 into their organization and their work. 
 
 54. The experience of his own weakness urges man to 
 call in help from without. We read in the pages of Holy 
 Writ : It is better that two should be together than one ; 
 for they have the advantage of their society. If one fall 
 he shall be supported by the other. Woe to him that is 
 alone, for when he falleth he hath none to lift him up* 
 And further : A brother that is helped by his brother is 
 like a strong city. f It is this natural impulse which 
 unites men in civil society; and it is this also which makes 
 them band themselves together in associations of citizen 
 with citizen ; associations which, it is true, cannot be 
 called societies in the complete sense of the word, but 
 which are societies nevertheless. 
 
 55. These lesser societies and the society which consti- 
 tutes the State differ in many things, because their im- 
 mediate purpose and end is different. Civil society ex- 
 ists for the common good, and therefore is concerned 
 with the interests of all in general, and with individual 
 interests in their due place and proportion. Hence it 
 is called public society, because by its means, as St. 
 Thomas of Aquin says, Men communicate with one an- 
 
 * Eccleeisstes j y . 9, jo, t Proverbs jviii, 19.
 
 150 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 other in the setting up of a commonwealth* But the 
 societies which are formed in the bosom of the State 
 are called private, and justly so, because their immediate 
 purpose is the private advantage of the associates. Now 
 a private society, says St. Thomas again, is one which is 
 formed for the purpose of carrying out private business ; 
 as when two or three enter into a partnership with the 
 view of trading in conjunction.^ Particular societies, 
 then, although they exist within the State, and are 
 each a part of the State, nevertheless cannot be pro- 
 hibited by the State absolutely and as such. For to 
 enter into " society " of this kind is the natural right of 
 man ; and the State must protect natural rights, not de- 
 stroy them ; and if it forbids its citizens to form asso- 
 ciations, it contradicts the very principle of its own ex- 
 istence ; for both they and it exist in virtue of the same 
 principle, viz., the natural propensity of man to live in 
 society. 
 
 56. There are times, no doubt, when it is right that the 
 law should interfere to prevent association; as when men 
 join together for purposes which are evidently bad, un- 
 just, or dangerous to the State. In such cases the pub- 
 lic authority may justly forbid the formation of asso- 
 ciations, and may dissolve them when they already ex- 
 ist. But every precaution should be taken not to 
 violate the rights of individuals and not to make un- 
 reasonable regulations under the pretense of public 
 benefit. For laws only bind when they are in accord- 
 ance with right reason, and therefore with the eternal 
 law of God.J 
 
 57. And here we are reminded of the Confraternities, 
 Societies, and Religious Orders, which have arisen by the 
 Church's authority and the piety of theChristian people. 
 The annals of every nation down to our own times testify 
 to what they have done for the human race. It is indis- 
 putable, on grounds of reason alone, that such associa- 
 tions, being perfectly blameless in their objects, have the 
 
 * Contra impugnantes Dei cullum et rtligionem, Cap. II. t Ibid. 
 
 \TJuman law is law only in. virtue of Us accordance with right reason ; and 
 thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates 
 from riqht reason it is called an vr/just law ; in such case it is not, law at all, 
 b"t rather a species of violence St. Thomas of Aquin, Svmma Theotccnca., la 
 $e ty. xciii. Art. iii.
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 151 
 
 sanction of the law of nature. On their religious side 
 they rightly claim to be responsible to the Church alone. 
 The administrators of the State, therefore, have no 
 rights over them, nor can they claim any share in their 
 management ; on the contrary, it is the State's duty to 
 respect and cherish them, and, if necessary, to defend 
 them from attack. It is notorious that a very different 
 course has been followed, more especially in our own 
 times. In many places the State has laid violent hands 
 on these communities, and committed manifold injustice 
 against them ; it has placed them under the civil law, 
 taken away their rights as corporate bodies, and robbed 
 them of their property. In such property the Church 
 had her rights, each member of the body had his or 
 her rights, and there were also the rights of those 
 who had founded or endowed them for a definite pur- 
 pose, and of those for whose benefit and assistance they 
 existed. Wherefore We cannot refrain from complain- 
 ing of such spoliation as unjust and fraught with evil 
 results ; and with the more reason because, at the very 
 time when the law proclaims that association is free to 
 all, We see that Catholic societies, however peaceable 
 and useful, are hindered in every way, whilst the utmost 
 freedom is given to men whose objects are at once hurt- 
 ful to Religion and dangerous to the State. 
 
 58. Associations of every kind, and especially those 
 of workingmen, are now far more common than for- 
 merly. In regard to many of these there is no need at 
 present to inquire whence they spring, what are their 
 objects, or what means they use. But there is a good 
 deal of evidence which goes to prove that many of these 
 societies are in the hands of invisible leaders, and are 
 managed on principles far from compatible with Chris- 
 tianity and the public well being; and that they do 
 their best to get into their hands the whole field of 
 labor and to force workmen either to join them or to 
 starve. Under these circumstances Christian workmen 
 must do one of two things : either join Associations in 
 which their religion will be exposed to peril, or form 
 associations among themselves unite their forces and 
 courageously shake off the yoke of an unjust and in- 
 tolerable oppression, Uo one who does not wish to
 
 152 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 expose man's chief good to extreme danger will hesitate 
 to say that the second alternative must by all means be 
 adopted. 
 
 59. Those Catholics are worthy of all praise and there 
 are not a few who, understanding what the times re- 
 quire, have, by various enterprises and experiments, 
 endeavored to better the condition of the working 
 people without any sacrifice of principle. They have 
 taken up the cause of the workingman, and have striven 
 to make both families and individuals better off ; to 
 infuse the spirit of justice into the mutual relations of 
 employer and employed ; to keep before the eyes of 
 both classes the precepts of duty and the laws of the 
 Gospel that Gospel which, by inculcating self-re- 
 straint, keeps men within the bounds of moderation, and 
 tends to establish harmony among the divergent in- 
 terests and various classes which compose the State. It 
 is with such ends in view that We see men of eminence 
 meeting together for discussion, for the promotion of 
 united action, and for practical work. Others, again, 
 strive to unite working .people of various kinds into 
 associations, help them with their advice and their 
 means, and enable them to obtain honest and profitable 
 work. The Bishops, on their part, bestow their ready 
 good will and support ; and with their approval and 
 guidance many members of the clergy, both secular and 
 regular, labor assiduously on behalf of the spiritual and 
 mental interests of the members of Associations. And 
 there are not wanting Catholics possessed of affluence 
 who have, as it were, cast in their lot with the wage- 
 ear-ners, and who have spent large sums in founding 
 and widely spreading Benefit and Insurance Societies; 
 by means of which the workingman may without diffi- 
 culty acquire by his labor not only many present ad- 
 vantages, but also the certainty of honorable support 
 in time to come. How much this multiplied and earn- 
 est activity has benefited the community at large is 
 too well known to require Us to dwell upon it. We 
 find in it the grounds of the most cheering hope for 
 the future ; provided that the Associations We have 
 described continue to grow and spread, and are well 
 and wisely administered. Let the State watch over
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 153 
 
 these Societies of citizens united together in the exer- 
 cise of their right ; but let it not thrust itself into their 
 peculiar concerns and their organization ; for things 
 move and live by the soul within them, and they may 
 be killed by the grasp of a hand from without. 
 
 60. In order that an Association may be carried on 
 with unity of purpose and harmony of action, its or- 
 ganization and government must be firm and wise. 
 All such Societies, being free to exist, have the further 
 right to adopt such rules and organization as may best 
 conduce to the attainment of their objects. We do not 
 deem it possible to enter into definite details on the 
 subject of organization : this must depend on national 
 character, on practice and experience, on the nature 
 and scope of the work to be done, on the magnitude of 
 the various trades and employments, and on other cir- 
 cumstances of fact and of time all of which must be 
 carefully weighed. 
 
 61. Speaking summarily, we may lay it down as a 
 general and perpetual law, that Workmen's Associa- 
 tions should be so organized and governed as to furnish 
 the best and most suitable means for attaining what is 
 aimed at, that is to say, for helping each individual 
 member to better his condition to the utmost in body, 
 mind, and property. It is clear that they must pay 
 special and principal attention to piety and morality, 
 and that their internal discipline must be directed pre- 
 cisely by these considerations ; otherwise they entirely 
 lose their special character, and come to be very little 
 better than those Societies which take no account of 
 Religion at all. What advantage can it be to a Work- 
 man to obtain by means of a Society all that he re- 
 quires, and to endanger his soul for want of spiritual 
 food? What doth it jjrofit a man if he gain the ivhole 
 world and suffer the loss of his oivn soul?* This, as 
 Our Lord teaches, is the note or character that dis- 
 tinguishes the Christian from the heathen. After all 
 these things do the heathens seek. . . . Seek ye first 
 the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these 
 things shall be added unto you.\ Let our associations, 
 
 * St. Matthew xvi. 26. t St. Matthew vi, 32, 33.
 
 154: THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 then, look first and before all to God ; let religious in- 
 struction have therein a foremost place, each one being 
 carefully taught what is his duty to God, what to be- 
 lieve, what to hope for, and how to work out his salva- 
 tion ; and let all be warned and fortified with especial 
 solicitude against wrong opinions and false teaching. 
 Let the workingman be urged and led to the worship 
 of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among 
 other things, to the sanctification of Sundays and fes- 
 tivals. Let him learn to reverence and love Holy 
 Church, the common Mother of us all ; and so to obey 
 the precepts and to frequent the Sacraments of the 
 Church, those Sacraments being the means ordained by 
 God for obtaining forgiveness of sin and for leading a 
 holy life. 
 
 62. The foundations of the organization being laid 
 in Religion, we next goon to determine the relations of 
 the members one to another, in order that they may 
 live together in concord and go on prosperously and 
 successfully. The offices and charges of the Society 
 should be distributed for the good of the Society itself, 
 and in such manner that difference in degree or position 
 should not interfere with unanimity and goodwill. 
 Office bearers should be appointed with prudence and 
 discretion, and each one's charge should be carefully 
 marked out ; thus no member will suffer wrong. Let 
 the common funds be administered with the strictest 
 honesty, in such way that a member receive assistance 
 in proportion to his necessities. The rights and duties 
 of employers should be the subject of careful consider- 
 ation as compared with the rights and duties of the em- 
 ployed. If it should happen that either a master or a 
 workman deemed himself injured, nothing would bo 
 more desirable than that there should be a committee 
 composed of honest and capable men of the Association 
 itself, whose duty it should be, by the laws of the Asso- 
 ciation, to decide the dispute. Among the purposes 
 of a Society should be to try to arrange for a continuous 
 supply of work at all times and seasons ; and to create 
 a fund from which the members may be helped in their 
 necessities, not only in cases of accident, but also in 
 sickness, old age, and misfortune,
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTEE OF POPE LEO XIII. 155 
 
 63. Such rules and regulations, if obeyed willingly 
 by all, will sufficiently insure the well-being of poor 
 people; whilst such mutual Associations among Cath- 
 olics are certain to be productive, in no small degree, 
 of prosperity to the State. It is not rash to conjecture 
 the future from the past. Age gives way to age, but 
 the events of one century are wonderfully like those of 
 another ; for they are directed by the Providence of 
 God, who overrules the course of history in accordance 
 with His purposes in creating the race of man. We 
 are told that it was cast as a reproach on the Christians 
 of the early ages of the Church, that the greater num- 
 ber of them had to live by begging or by labor. Yet, 
 destitute as they were of wealth and influence, they 
 ended by winning over to their side the favor of the 
 rich and the good will of the powerful. They showed 
 themselves industrious, laborious, and peaceful, men of 
 justice, and, above all, men of brotherly love. In the 
 presence of such a life and such an example prejudice 
 disappeared, the- tongue of malevolence was silenced, 
 and the lying traditions of ancient superstition yielded 
 little by little to Christian truth. 
 
 64. At this moment the condition of the working 
 population is the question of the hour ; and nothing 
 can be of higher interest to all classes of the State than 
 that it should be rightly and reasonably decided. But 
 it will be easy for Christian workingmen to decide it 
 right if they form Associations, choose wise guides, and 
 follow the same path which with so much advantage to 
 themselves and the commonwealth was trod by their 
 fathers before them. Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, 
 and so is the love of money ; but if the sense of what 
 is just and right be not destroyed by depravity of heart, 
 their follow citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly 
 feeling towards men whom they see to be so industrious 
 and so modest, who so unmistakably prefer honesty to 
 lucre, and the sacredness of duty to all other considera- 
 tions. 
 
 65. And another great advantage would result from 
 the state of things We are describing : there would be 
 so much more hope and possibility of recalling to a 
 sense of their duty those workingmen who baye either
 
 156 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 
 
 given up their faith altogether, or whose lives are at 
 variance with its precepts. These men, in most cases, 
 feel that they have been fooled by empty promises and 
 deceived by i'alse appearances. They cannot but per- 
 ceive that their grasping employers too often treat them 
 with the greatest inhumanity and hardly care for them 
 beyond the profit their labor brings ; and if they belong 
 to an Association, it is probably one in which there ex- 
 ists, in place of charity and love, that intestine strife 
 which always accompanies unresigned and irreligious 
 poverty. Broken in spirit and worn down in body, 
 how many of them would gladly free themselves from 
 this galling slavery ! But human respect, or the dread 
 of starvation, makes them afraid to take the step. To 
 such as these Catholic Associations are of incalculable 
 service, helping them out of their difficulties, inviting 
 them to companionship, and receiving the repentant to 
 a shelter in which they may securely trust. 
 
 66. We have now laid before you, Venerable Breth- 
 ren, who are the persons and what are the means, by 
 which this most difficult question must be solved. 
 Every one must put his hand to the work which falls 
 to his share, and that at once and immediately, lest 
 the evil which is already so great may by delay become 
 absolutely beyond remedy. Those who rule the State 
 must use the law and the institutions of the country ; 
 masters and rich men must remember their duty ; the 
 poor whose interests are at stake, must make every 
 lawful and proper effort ; and since Religion alone, as 
 We said at the beginning, can destroy the evil at its 
 root, all men must be persuaded that the primary thing 
 needful is to return to real Christianity, in the absence 
 of which all the plans and devices of the wisest will be 
 of little avail. 
 
 67. As far as regards the Church, its assistance will 
 never be wanting, be the time or the occasion what it 
 may; and it will intervene with the greater effect in 
 proportion as its liberty of action is the more unfet- 
 tered : let this be carefully noted by those whose office 
 it is to provide for the public welfare. Every minister 
 of holy Religion must throw into the conflict all the 
 energy of his mind and all the strength of his endu-
 
 ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO Xltt. 157 
 
 ranee ; with your authority Venerable Brethren, and 
 by your example, they must never cease to urge upon 
 all men of every class, upon the high as well as the 
 lowly, the Gospel doctrines of Christian life ; by every 
 means in their power they must strive for the good of 
 the people ; and above all they must earnestly cherish 
 in themselves, and try to arouse in others, Charity, the 
 mistress and queen of virtues. For the happy results 
 we all long for must be chiefly brought about by the 
 plenteous outpouring of Charity ; of that true Christ- 
 ian Charity which is the fulfilling of the whole Gospei 
 law, which is always ready to sacrifice itself for others' 
 sake, and which is man's surest antidote against worldly 
 pride and immoderate love of self ; that Charity 
 whose office is described and whose Godlike features 
 are drawn by the Apostle St. Paul in these words : 
 Charity is patient, is kind . . . seeketh not her 
 own . . . sufferetli all things . . . endureth 
 all things* 
 
 68. On each one of you, Venerable Brethren, and on 
 your Clergy and people, as an earnest of God's mercy 
 and a mark of our affection, We lovingly in the Lord 
 bestow the Apostolic Benediction. 
 
 Given at St. Peter's, in Rome, the fifteenth day of 
 May, 1891, the fourteenth year of Our Pontificate. 
 
 LEO XIII., POPE. 
 
 * I Corinthians xiii. 4-7.
 
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