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 H a 
 
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 A More Christian 
 Industrial Order 
 
 By 
 
 Henry Sloane Coffin 
 
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(Qornell Itttucrattg Ethrarg 
 
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 THE GIFT OF 
 
 ALFRED C. BARNES 
 
 1889 
 

 Date Due 
 
 
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 PRINTED IN 
 
 U. S. A, 
 
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 NO. 23233 
 
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A MORE CHRISTIAN 
 INDUSTRIAL ORDER 
 
OTHER BOOKS 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Ceeed of Jestjs and Otheb Sebmons 
 
 Social Aspects of the Ceoss 
 
 Univeesitt Skbmons 
 
 The Ten Commandments 
 
 With a Christian Application to Pres- 
 ent Conditions 
 
 Some Chbistian Convictions 
 
 In a Day of Social Ee-Buildino — 
 
 Lyman Beeeher Lectures on the Min- 
 istry of the Church. 
 
A MORE CHRISTIAN 
 INDUSTRIAL ORDER 
 
 Spiritui tuut botmg dedueet ma in terram reetam 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY SLOANE COFFIN 
 
 Minister in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church 
 
 and Associate Professor in the Union 
 
 Theological Seminary, New 
 
 York City 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1920 
 
 A.U rights reeerved 
 
 n 
 
Hn 
 K 
 
 "B-xcs 
 
 1 
 
 : 1921, 
 
 OOPTBIOET, 
 
 bt the maomillan company 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Fabliahed, Much, 1980 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Intkoduction 1 
 
 CSAPTEB 
 
 I The Christian as Producer .... 5 
 
 II The Christian as Consumer . ... lit 
 
 III The Christian as Owner 31 
 
 IV The Christian as Investor ..... 45 
 
 V The Christian as Employee and Bm- 
 
 PLOTEE ..... 59 
 
 Conclusion. Democraot ajjd Faith ... 75 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030246627 
 
INTEODUOTION 
 
 A distinguished ethical teacher of New York City 
 recently remarked in conversation : " The Christian 
 Church believes that Jesus is the disclosure of the 
 purpose of God for aU time. Why, then, does not 
 the Church find in Jesus a solution for the industrial 
 question of our day and offer the guidance which it 
 claims to possess ? " It is a challenge which Chris- 
 tians dare not refuse. It puts to the practical test 
 our assertion that Jesus is the wisdom of God. 
 
 There are some who postpone aU Christian read- 
 justments of society until the present evil age shall 
 have been ended by the visible advent of Christ in 
 judgment. Until that occurs they see no prospect of 
 abolishing war or terminating industrial strife. 
 But to most Christians of our generation the judg- 
 ment is no future event merely, but an experience 
 through which we have lived in the awful years of 
 war with its exposure of greed and pride and trust 
 in force. Others are content to sketch the vision 
 of the Christian society as it exists in their ideal; 
 they have no interest in its very partial attainment 
 in the immediate future. But valuable as are such 
 visions to shame the sordid actual and to kindle 
 
 hope, we who must live in the next five or forty years 
 
 1 
 
3 INTEODTTOnON 
 
 want guidance for to-day and to-morrow and the 
 day after. If by a solution of the industrial ques- 
 tion is meant a detailed plan for the organization of 
 the world's work, we know from experience that we 
 cannot expect such explicit guidance from Christ, 
 Our Father shows His confidence in His sons and 
 daughters, and educates us by making us in every 
 century work out the Christian solution for our time. 
 We cannot call our conceptions of what should be, 
 " The Christian Industrial Order." We live in a 
 growing world, and society is a living organism. 
 Nothing final and fixed can be reached in the state- 
 ment of religious belief or in the formulation of the 
 principles that should govern industry. But we be- 
 lieve that in the Spirit of Jesus we have a Guide 
 enabling us to think out what is our Father's mind 
 for any situation, and we come with that Spirit's 
 leading to the circumstances of our day, and ask what 
 is our Christian duty as producers and consumers, 
 as owners and investors, as employers and employees. 
 We say that the Spirit of Jesus is our Guide. 
 We are not piecing together Jesus' fragmentary and 
 occasional sayings which have a bearing on industrial 
 matters, and making out of them a law. He and 
 His first followers anticipated in their time a speedy 
 ending of the world. Their relative carelessness of 
 political and economic affairs, and their disparage- 
 ment of material possessions, are partly accounted 
 for by this expectation. To Paul it did not make 
 much difference whether one were married or un- 
 
INTBODTJOTION « 
 
 married, slave or freeman, in view of the shortness 
 of the time before Christ's return and the beginning 
 of a new age. But allowing for their immediate out- 
 look, and for the political situation in which Chris- 
 tianity came to birth in a subject people in the Ro- 
 man Empire, there is a Spirit which breathes through 
 the sayings of the Master and of His followers that 
 is applicable to all times, because their interest 
 was not apocalyptic but ethical. To us Christians 
 it is the Spirit of the living God. Each generation 
 is responsible only for its day. We do not blame 
 either our Lord or St. Paul for not attacking the in- 
 stitution of slavery. Emancipation was not a liv- 
 ing issue which they had to face. But they faced 
 the issues of their age, and we must face those of ours 
 with their Spirit. St. Paul pointed out to both the 
 runaway Onesimus and his owner Philemon their 
 Christian obligations. Christianity is not dynamite 
 but leaven. We take the situations in which we find 
 ourselves and seek to permeate them with the mind 
 of Christ. We do not deal with the ideas of democ- 
 racy as though democracy were the crowning di- 
 vine arrangement of human history ; but democracy 
 is the issue which confronts us to-day. Our suc- 
 cessors, a century or half a century hence, may face 
 other aspects of the problem. We are not asking 
 what is the Christian industrial order, and hoping to 
 see and, if possible, establish the final economic or- 
 ganization of mankind. We are asking what the 
 Spirit of Jesus would create out of the existing social 
 
4 ^tKTEOBUCTlON 
 
 system in drder that we may be led into a more 
 Christian industrial order. This is our task as- 
 signed us in this oux momentous day. 
 
A MORE CHRISTIAN 
 INDUSTRIAL ORDER 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE CHEISTIAN AS PEODUCEE 
 
 In our world where war has wrought such destruc- 
 tion, and want is so widespread, production is the 
 most urgent of problems. Statesmen are summon- 
 ing their people to work, and every attempt to 
 remedy ills brings us back to the need of more things 
 to be grown and made. And the word " producer " 
 is congenial to the Christian ideal. We are trying 
 to be perfect as our Father is perfect, who is to us 
 the Creator. Every child of His must have a crea- 
 tive occupation. To cultivate the soil to bear food, 
 to drain swamps and increase fruitful acres, to manu- 
 facture goods, to train minds, to develop powers of 
 appreciation and add to people's enjoyment, to 
 sharpen consciences to a finer sense of duty, to sup- 
 ply convictions, hopes, reinforcements in God — this 
 is to follow Jesus in becoming like His Father. 
 
 This rules out (does it not?) non-productive 
 careers. If one is not serving the world's comfort 
 or health or knowledge or beauty or faith, he cannot 
 
 5 
 
6 A MOEE CHEISTIAir INDUSTRIAL OEDEB 
 
 claim the name of Christian. Gtentlemen and ladies 
 of leisure, comer loafers and hoboes, whatever their 
 professed religion, are plain pagans. If man or 
 woman is so circumstanced that daily toil is not 
 necessary to keep the wolf from the door, some vol- 
 untarily assumed productive labor is a Christian 
 obligation. In a Christianized economic order there 
 will be no leisure class : " If any will not work, 
 neither let him eat." Jewish fathers taught their 
 sons trades, so that Saul, the student destined for 
 the Law, knew how to weave. Ought not some 
 manual labor to be included in all education ? And 
 ought not all boys and girls, whatever their families 
 may possess to-day, be given trades in which they can 
 support themselves and add to the world's wealth? 
 Certainly no one can appropriate the name of the 
 Carpenter of Nazareth and the Teacher of Caper- 
 naum, who is not, like Him, augmenting the physi- 
 cal and spiritual goods of mankind. 
 
 And this seems to rule out for Christians occu- 
 pations which do not directly add to human well-be- 
 ing. For some years Church people have eyed with 
 buspicion the business of a distiller or a bartender. 
 They themselves may not have been teetotalers or 
 prohibitionists; but they would not have felt com- 
 fortable manufacturing or selling intoxicants, nor 
 did they wish their sons and daughters in this busi- 
 ness. Should we not feel similarly towards a 
 number of other callings — towards types of broker- 
 age which do not assist production but help gambling 
 
THE CHRISTIAN AS PEODUCEK 7 
 
 in stocks or cotton or real estate, and towards the work 
 of such middlemen as render no essential service in 
 getting goods from producer to consumer? It may 
 not be possible to legislate these occupations out of 
 existence. It is often difficult to draw sharp linos 
 between callings which do and do not render an es- 
 sential service. But Christians are men and women 
 of finer conscience than the rest of mankind. We 
 are with God creating a new world by altering the 
 standards of the existing world. We must scrutinize 
 ways of earning a living with the searching mind of 
 Christ, and choose for ourselves, and for boys and 
 girls, callings which are definitely productive. 
 Every Christian is bound to ask : " Is this position 
 of mine a necessary ministry to the family of God's 
 children ? " If it be not, we cannot fill it, saying 
 with Jesus; "I must be about my Father's busi- 
 ness." 
 
 And as Christians we are opposed to arrangements 
 which prevent men and women from doing the ut- 
 most in their callings consistent Avith their health 
 of mind and body. Christian democracy in industry 
 cannot mean leveling down, retarding the speediest 
 to the pace of the slowest, and limiting the vigorous 
 to the capacities of the frail. That is to restrain 
 God-given powers. In industry, as in other matters, 
 " we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of 
 the weak." There should be fellowship in sharing 
 the results of labor and generous treatment of the less 
 capable but there is nothing Christian in confining 
 
8 A MOEB CHKISTIAN INDUSTEIAL, OEDEE 
 
 the able within the limits of the feeble. The rela'r 
 tion of pay to the quantity or quality of work is an- 
 other matter, and no Christian works primarily for 
 what he makes in money; but every man must be 
 free to give in service to the community as much as 
 in him is. 
 
 Christians as producers wish to put themselves 
 into their work : " Whatsoever ye do, work heartily," 
 that is " from the soul." The worker's interest and 
 conscience must go into his task, whether that be 
 writing a sermon or feeding a furnace. When so 
 much of the world's work is necessarily mechanical 
 — repeating the same movement of hand or foot 
 thousands of time a day in unison with a machine, 
 sewing buttons on cards, chopping tickets, — it is not 
 easy to let the result express the laborer's self. And 
 in so many industries the individual worker is one 
 of a vast army, doing again and again a single small 
 part in a complicated process, that it is hard for 
 him to see that he is embodying himself in the 
 product. It seems essential for the preservation 
 and development of his personality, for the enlist- 
 ment of his soul, that he have some voice in the con- 
 duct of the enterprise. To a degree this is true 
 already where labor is organized; but its voice 
 speaks rarely save to protest or threaten, and there 
 is scanty opportunity for its speaking productively. 
 Politically we are trying a form of government which 
 expresses our collective selves. " We, the people of 
 the United States," our Constitution commences. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN AS PEODUCER 9 
 
 Our govemment had its people behind it in the war, 
 not only because the -leaders were of our choosing, 
 but also because they had so to lead as to carry public 
 opinion with them. " War," we were repeatedly 
 told, " is dependent upon the morale ai the entire 
 population." Production is similarly a matter of 
 the spirit of all the participants in an industry. 
 Should not the leaders in a business hold their posi- 
 tions as representatives of the investors and workers 
 in that undertaking? Should not the enterprise be 
 so organized that it is responsive to and expressive 
 of the minds and consciences of all engaged in it? 
 That would mean that its affairs were made known 
 to and shared in by all concerned in it. Democracy 
 is not mainly a matter of voting, although some 
 means of registering opinion and exercising control, 
 have to be devised; it is more a matter of a fellow- 
 ship of spirit. A church has to be led by ministers 
 and officers who command the syinpathy and utter the 
 ideals of the congregation. As a rule a mere frac- 
 tion of the people take part in the annual meeting; 
 but all the while leaders feel out the will of the led 
 and keep their backing. Must there not be in a 
 store or a factory a similar fellowship — the sense 
 that the leaders represent the workers and that every 
 person involved in the business is given the chance 
 to express himself in it ? Until the humblest laborer 
 says instinctively, "we, in our business," there is 
 not the morale for production. 
 
 And this democratic readjustment of industry is 
 
10 A MOEE CHEISTIAW INDUSTBIAi OBDEE 
 
 of vital interest to us as Christians. We are trying 
 to produce seK-reliant and brotherly sons of God. 
 The present organization, of society often thwarts us 
 and actually undoes our work. A Scotch missionary 
 in India, speaking of the political situation there, 
 wrote recently : " Those who have been engaged in 
 the work of missionary Colleges in India must have 
 been struck by the tendency of young men who, in 
 their student days, had come very near to the King- 
 dom, to revert with years to a more Hindu type of 
 faith. It is my belief that the cause is partly this : 
 that under the influence of Christian education they 
 had been inspired vdth very Christian dreams of a 
 life of free and noble service, but finding no career 
 open to them of the kind for which they had hoped, 
 they gradually acquired that mood of disillusion- 
 ment and world-weariness to which philosophical 
 Hinduism especially appeals. If this be at all a true 
 diagnosis of the case, may not the gradual introduc- 
 tion of the institutions of responsible goverimlent, 
 with the careers of public usefulness which that 
 would throw open, prove to be just the supplement 
 which missionary education requires for its abiding 
 and widespread fruitfulness ? " And that can be 
 said of our own business world. In home and school 
 and church a young Christian is inspired to " a life 
 of free and noble service." He enters an office or a 
 factory where service of the community is not the 
 pervading motive, but the making of profits. If 
 without capital, h& has no sense of proprietorship in 
 
THE CHRISTIAlir AS PKODUCEE 11 
 
 the business, and consequently feels scant responsi- 
 bility for its efficiency. So long as he receives his 
 wages, he has no zeal in piling up the profits of the 
 proprietors of the concern. Or if he be a large 
 stockholder, he finds a gulf between himself and the 
 mass of the workers; he is not responsible to them, 
 and in many instances he feels that their interests 
 are antagonistic to his. He usually has little per- 
 sonal contact with them, and loses the sense of com- 
 radeship in toil. The want of self-expression and 
 the want of fellowship destroy Christian character 
 and impoverish both factors in our industrial enter- 
 prises. Men acquire the mood of disillusionment and 
 become, if not Hindus, cynics and pessimists. 
 
 Our Christian interest is not first in the distribu- 
 tion of the gains of industry as wages or dividends. 
 Increasing pay does not necessarily procure better 
 work, nor do larger wages or profits mean better 
 men. Most of the finest work in the world can never 
 be paid for, and we shall not solve our industrial 
 difficulties by treating them as questions of money. 
 Strikes settled by granting higher pay seldom stay 
 settled. We are concerned with the status of work- 
 ers and investors as sons and daughters of God. We 
 wish them all to have the chance to put their con- 
 sciences into industry, and to work together in it as 
 a company of Christian brethren. Maximum pro- 
 duction results from a right spiritual adjustment of 
 those who labor. It is plain that men's hearts are 
 not in the enterprises of to-day; and the consequent 
 
12 A MORE CHEISTIAlSr INDUSTEIAL OHDER 
 
 production is often half, or considerably less than 
 half, what it might be. Must we not look for solu- 
 tions that will give men a feeling of proprietorship 
 and obligation in their work, a voice in its control 
 and a knowledge of its policies, with an appeal in 
 it to their hearts to do their utmost for the service 
 of the community? 
 
 Fundamentally we Christians are interested in 
 producing sons and daughters of God after the like- 
 ness of Christ, confident that such workers will pro- 
 duce the requisite goods for men's bodies and minds. 
 We, therefore, scan our industries as formers of char- 
 acter. What sort of persons does this department 
 store, or this railroad, or this domestic employment, 
 make of those who engage in its work ? Many will 
 deny that man-making is the business of factories and 
 mines and offices ; they will assign that function to the 
 home, the school, and the church. " We are mining 
 coal not men; we are producing shirt-waists, not 
 women; we are transporting freight, not carrying 
 workmen from one moral level to another." And to 
 be sure home and school and church have an earlier 
 and a bigger chance to mold character; but our in- 
 dustries and professions, whether they acknowledge 
 the obligation or not, are in the man-making trade. 
 Shakespeare was right when he spoke of his nature 
 as "subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's 
 hand." A physician's, or an insurance agent's, or a 
 banker's, or a butler's, occupation usually sets its dis- 
 tinctive mark on him. He has the air of his calling. 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS PEODUCEE 13 
 
 There is a subtle atmosphere about a store or an office 
 which infects those who work there. If services are 
 rewarded by tips, a premium is placed on servility. 
 If competitors are to be outwitted, shrewd trickery 
 is encouraged. The conditions of a calling shape the 
 men and women in it. As producers of Christlike 
 children of God, we csinnot be indifferent to these 
 man-making or man-marring circumstances in occu- 
 pations. Each of us has to ask what sort of persons 
 does the household of which we are part, or the busi- 
 ness undertaking in which we gain our living, 
 create ? 
 
 It is evident that the problem of production is 
 of the utmost seriousness at the moment. Every 
 strike or lockout decreases the supply of something 
 which men need, sends up prices, entails suffering, 
 and worst of all breeds bitterness. The will to work 
 is not in the mass of mankind. What is wanted is 
 an infusion of the creative spirit, and that is the 
 task of religion, for the creative spirit is the Spirit 
 of God. 
 
 Religion kindles the imagination. Once let a man 
 have God in his mind, let him look out on the world 
 and see God's hands everywhere shaping mountain 
 and seashore, plant and human form, eye for beauty 
 and heart to love, and he will connect his work with 
 the business of the Most High. He is building a 
 house for men to dwell in, or meeting their need for 
 food, or furnishing access to knowledge. Vision is 
 the incentive to labor. In the war we sought to have 
 
14: A MOEB CHRISTIAN INDUBTEIAX/ OEDEB 
 
 soldiers and sailors see for what they were enduring 
 and toiling and hazarding their all. It was a vision 
 of a free and fraternal world that caught the devo- 
 tion of the finest spirits. Too few people see man- 
 kind's necessities of body, mind and soul, and view 
 their tasks as answers to them. Faith supplies the 
 vision of God, and brings men to say : " My Father 
 worketh even until now, and I work." 
 
 Eeligion furnishes an adequate motive to make a 
 man do his best. Personal ambition is a strong in- 
 centive, but in many occupations there is no getting 
 ahead, and by middle age most men have little ad- 
 vancement in prospect. Self-interest drives some 
 people a long distance, but it does not move the best 
 persons, nor appeal to the highest in any of us, and 
 after a certain point it has no power to keep at work 
 those who think themselves comfortable. Love of 
 one's family and the desire to do for them is a more 
 compelling motive, and it has kinship with the 
 highest. But only devotion to an ideal, a feeling of 
 obligation to the family of God, will send men day 
 after day to their labor with consecration of heart 
 and soul. That is faith's contribution to industry: 
 "Here are your brethren in the household of God. 
 Here are you with God-given strength and skill. 
 Here is your Father serving His children, serving 
 you, and counting on you to serve with Him." And 
 the believing toiler responds, declaring as he pounds 
 a typewriter or wields a pick : " We are God's f el- 
 low-workers." 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS PBODUGEK 15 
 
 And religion sets men in fellowship with one an- 
 other. No believer in the Father of Jesus Christ, 
 be he an unskilled laborer or a many-millioned capi- 
 talist, can be content to find himself separated from 
 fellow children of God by hostile class-interest. If 
 he be among the less privileged, it is not surprising 
 that he should look out upon the world to-day with 
 a sense of injustice, and not for himself alone, but 
 for millions of his kind deprived of the chance of 
 full lives in things true, lovely and honorable, should 
 resolve to assert the right of the lowliest workers to 
 a voice in the control of the industries in which they 
 toil. If he be among the more privileged, it would 
 be shocking if he should take it for granted that he 
 was entitled to a so much larger share of earth's ad- 
 vantages than his brethren enjoy, if he should at- 
 tempt to keep them in their present place and him- 
 self in his, and have no sympathy with those who 
 are trying to compass a more fraternal organization 
 of our business enterprises, and if he should not 
 welcome the chance to be brought into closer com- 
 munity of interest with the mass of his fellow-mor- 
 tals. His religion may not tell him precisely how 
 this closer fellowship is to be worked out in the trade 
 or craft with which he is concerned. But if it be 
 genuinely Christian religion, it will make him open- 
 minded to inquire into all fraternal methods of 
 industrial readjustment, and very ready, even at 
 personal sacrifice, to remove causes of envy, misun- 
 derstanding and ill will. For it is fellowship which 
 
16 A MORE CHEISTIAW INDUSTEIAli OEDEE 
 
 enables men to compass their finest achievements. 
 When the carpenter encourages the goldsmith, when 
 the captain and the lieutenant and the private of 
 industry understand and trust each other, when the 
 whole force in an enterprise pulls together, there is 
 Christian production — the animating Holy Spirit of 
 brotherhood. Then there will be produced sufficient 
 goods, and — better still — Christian men and 
 women. 
 
OHAPTEE II 
 
 THE CHEISTIAH- AS CONStTMEE 
 
 The word " consumer," unlike the word " pro- 
 ducer," does not at once connect itself in our thought 
 with the Christian point of view. It suggests 
 " using up," and fills us with alarm. But the under- 
 lying faith of the entire Bible is that the Lord of 
 the universe is a bountiful Father, who provides in 
 no niggardly fashion for His children's necessities. 
 In His house, as Jesus pictured it in a parable, there 
 is " enough and to spare " for the entire household. 
 A psalmist sings : " Thou openest thy hand and 
 satisfiest the desire of every living thing. The Lord 
 is gracious [that is ' generous '] in all his works." 
 The dismal forebodings of those who predict a famine- 
 stricken world, where population exceeds the supply 
 of food, are at variance with the confidence of Jew- 
 ish and Christian believers. Such apprehensions 
 cast a serious reflection upon the housekeeping abili- 
 ties of our Father Grod. Israelites, whose country 
 was vastly poorer than many other parts of the globe, 
 spoke of it as a land flowing with milk and honey. 
 
 Blessed of Jehovah be His land, 
 For the precious things of heaven, for the dew, 
 
 17 
 
18 A MOEE CHEISTIAH INDUSTHIAL OKDEE 
 
 And for the deep that couclietli beneath. 
 And for the precious things of the fruits of the sun, 
 And for the precious things of the growth of the months, 
 And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, 
 And for the precious things of the everlasting hills. 
 And for the precious things of the earth and the fulness 
 thereof. 
 
 That is an ancient and poetical way of expressing 
 the assumption of present-day scientists that there 
 are incalculable resources of heat, of force, of pro- 
 ductivity, in atmosphere and soil, awaiting discovery. 
 Every investigator in chemistry, in physics, in medi- 
 cine and agriculture, takes it for granted that new 
 factors for healing or power or fertility are latent, 
 and can be found and utilized. It is the unconscious 
 testimony of the human heart to its trust in a faith- 
 ful Creator. If there be a shortage of a staple com- 
 modity, if there be a human being in physical want, 
 it is not God's will, but the result of man's ignor- 
 ant or foolish or unjust management. God may use 
 poverty, as He employs every circumstance, for our 
 education; but He never chooses it of preference; 
 it is forced upon Him by our blunders. It may be 
 the consequence of an individual's recklessness or 
 laziness. It may be due to the wicked destruction 
 of war — and war is never God's method of settling 
 differences, but a desperate last resort when we have 
 disregarded His ways. Poverty is oftener to be set 
 down to the unbrotherly social conscience which in 
 the midst of God's plenty allows some of His chil- 
 
THE OHKISTIAW AS CONSTTMEE 19 
 
 dren to be born disiiiherited, to grow up unendowed, 
 to labor insufficiently rewarded, to become ill or old 
 uncared for. Our Father is Himself open-handed; 
 the pinch of penury comes from the slothful or grasp- 
 ing hand of man. 
 
 Hence there is nothing religious in abstemiousness. 
 " The Son of man came eating and drinking." He 
 was called by His critics " a gluttonous man and a 
 wine-bibber." Food for body, for eye, for mind, 
 for heart, for soul, is here to be taken. " Every crea- 
 ture of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it 
 be received with thanksgiving." The only kind of 
 fasting which is thoroughly Christian is that wise 
 self-control which orders diet so as to keep one's self 
 entirely fit for God's service. There is no virtue 
 in self-denial, nothing meritorious in refraining from 
 things pleasant. There may be self-denial for the 
 sake of others, but Christ's purpose for us is life 
 abundant. Some Christians have felt that things 
 agreeable were dangerous. Lady Stephen once 
 asked her son : " Did you ever know your father do 
 a thing because it was pleasant ? " And Sir Leslie 
 Stephen says that his father once smoked a cigar but 
 found it so delicious that he never smoked again. 
 There are excellent reasons to be found for not 
 smoking, but certainly not this. " God giveth us all 
 things richly to enjoy." Our capacities of appre- 
 ciation are measures of our Christlikeness. 
 
 But while our Father is open-handed. He does not 
 allow waste. In the story of the manna, every man 
 
20 A MORE CHEISTIAN IND0STKIAX. OEDEE 
 
 is said to take according to his need: "he that 
 gathered much had nothing over, and he that 
 gathered little had no lack." Jesus was at pains 
 to instill in His disciples the lesson of thrift. He 
 made them go about after the crowds had been fed, 
 and collect in baskets the broken pieces that remained. 
 Food was to Him too precious as a means of life to 
 allow it to be squandered. The small boy who 
 breaks an empty milk-bottle on the street for the sheer 
 fun of smashing something and unconsciously in- 
 creases the expenses of the milk industry, the fol- 
 lower of fashion who discards clothing before it is 
 outworn in order to keep up with the arbitrarily 
 set " latest style," the person who takes more on 
 his plate than he eats, the lumber company which 
 denudes a mountain-side without providing for a 
 future growth, the wholesalers who allow a cargo of 
 fish to rot rather than suffer prices to be lowered, the 
 farmers who throw away part of a crop to keep up 
 the market — every waster in the community is to 
 that extent antichristian. War-time economies in 
 food, in clothes, in fuel, in labor, were an admirable 
 discipline for this extravagant people. A follower 
 of Jesus is one who puts everything which he is and 
 has to fullest use. 
 
 And our Father's bounty places on the family the 
 obligation of seeing that His generous supplies are 
 wisely and fairly distributed. Ought any to have 
 cake, while some lack bread? When nations felt 
 the necessity of keeping their people united in order 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS CONSUMER 21 
 
 to win a war, they did not trust the hit-and-miss 
 methods of individual initiative, and the "natural 
 laws " of demand and supply, so loudly commended 
 by economists of a bygone generation ; but they made 
 it a public concern to see that no inhabitant of the 
 land was in needless want. Is the maintenance of 
 national unity and goodwill any less essential in 
 peace to prevent class conflicts and to enable a people 
 fully to discharge its duties to mankind? Why, 
 then, do away with our public controls? We tried 
 collective housekeeping on a national scale. There 
 were priority lists in fuel, which made it impossible 
 for a man of wealth to consume coal in running a 
 greenhouse, while many homes or workrooms went un- 
 heated. Patriotic pressure prevented the devotion of 
 soil, labor and fertilizer to lawns and flower-beds, 
 when there was danger of insufficient wheat and po- 
 tatoes. Our world would be the poorer were there 
 no orchids or chrysanthemums; and it seems plain 
 that a Creator who makes possible the lovely does 
 not wish it uncultivated. But is it Christian that 
 a community should allow any of its school-children 
 to be underfed, or any of its workers to be un- 
 healthily housed, while some of its people indulge 
 themselves in lavish outlays for personal pleasure? 
 Granting that many well-to-do persons are prepared 
 to contribute their share to relieve poverty, it is 
 patent that many others are not, and that private 
 initiative in the form of charity, however well-or- 
 ganized, is inadequate. Can a city be called Chris- 
 
22 A MOEE CHEISTIAN II^DUSTRIAL OEDEE 
 
 tian, can it be called Old Testament Jewish, which 
 permits children to grow up physically unfit, as our 
 draft-boards found numbers of young men, and 
 which herds together in overcrowded blocks not idle 
 paupers but thousands of its hardest-working labor- 
 ing people who perform most of its disagreeable and 
 straining chores, while a portion of its inhabitants 
 are allowed to spend huge sums on various amuse- 
 ments, or on personal adornment, or on the grati- 
 fication of their whims and fancies? It is easy to 
 point out that the kind of city government to which 
 we Americans are accustomed to treat ourselves, with 
 occasional intervals of political sanity, is ill-fitted 
 to handle these economic questions, and would handle 
 them extravagantly and possibly corruptly. But we 
 have the kind of government which we deserve, and 
 we can have a better any time we make up our minds 
 to take the necessary trouble. A government with 
 more social obligations would enlist the interest and 
 service of the socially minded. Nor is it desirable 
 that many of these social tasks, like the feeding of 
 under-nourished children, should be a function of 
 either government or of private charity ; feeding is a 
 responsibility of the family. Such wages as will 
 support a man and his dependents in reasonable com- 
 fort ought to be a first charge upon every industry. 
 This has been one of the laudable aims of organized 
 labor. It probably will be a necessary duty of gov- 
 ernment to see that every willing worker is offered 
 employment, and to keep some public work in re- 
 
THB OHBISTIAlSr AS CONStTMBB 23 
 
 serve for slack periods. The main point for us to 
 stress is that luxury and want cannot exist side by 
 side in any community which calls itself Christian. 
 This is not to say that inequalities in possessions are 
 unchristian. So long as God gives us five-talent and 
 two-talent and one-talent men and women, there wiU 
 be difFerences in wealth. But while a community 
 has sufficient food, no child can be allowed the physi- 
 cal handicap of under-nourishment, any more than 
 we tolerate his remaining illiterate. As a commun- 
 ity we must determine a minimum standard of liv- 
 ing, and consider it a public obligation to see that 
 no family lacks the chance to earn that. 
 
 Doubtless this involves some form of public control 
 of essential industries. We cannot trust the self- 
 interest either of leaders or of laborers to achieve 
 the result; there must be some authoritative repre- 
 sentative of the community whom both serve and 
 to whom both are accountable. Nor can we rely on 
 so-called " natural laws," like that of supply and de- 
 mand, to meet our economic needs. No farmer 
 trusts natural laws to produce a crop; he cultivates 
 the soil. " Nature," whether in a field or a human 
 group is responsive to intelligent stimuli. Social re- 
 lations are to be made productive, as we till a field. 
 Children of God are not meant to take anxious 
 thought, saying, " What shall we eat, or what shall 
 we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed ?" Our 
 thought is to have other interests; and our Father, 
 who knows that we have need of these things, abun- 
 
24: A MOBE CHBISTIAN INDUSTKIAL OEDEE 
 
 dandy provides the requisite supply, especially in 
 this richly favored country. But unless we make it 
 a family concern to see that a wise and just distribu- 
 tion is assured, a great many sons and daughters of 
 God are doomed to take unchristian anxious thought. 
 Some may say that fear of want is the only sufficient 
 antidote to laziness, the only goad which wiU drive 
 men to work. That is true in some cases, and we 
 shall have to conserve wholesome compulsions against 
 idleness. Paul had no pity upon loafers among the 
 Thessalonians. But fear of want is hardly a Chris- 
 tian motive to be encouraged. Pear never produces 
 the best work, as slavery attests. When men are 
 freed from fear, they -can concentrate on good work- 
 manship. And " give us this day our daily bread " 
 is a social prayer, carrying with it a collective re- 
 sponsibility so to employ God's liberal answer that 
 none is overlooked. If the hastily improvised at- 
 tempts at public control during the war were not al- 
 together satisfactory, that is not surprising. In this 
 country from the earliest days we have cultivated 
 private enterprise, and we are still novices at team- 
 work. Our various war boards accomplished some 
 excellent results in bettering the status of labor, in 
 eliminating speculative middlemen, in distributing 
 the supplies where they were needed, and occasion- 
 ally in lowering costs of production. Our mistakes 
 are no reason for giving up the attempt to learn to 
 operate an industrial commonwealth, democratically 
 controlled, in which, however the machinery be or- 
 
THE CHEISTIAlir AS CONSUMER 25 
 
 ganized, want, save as the result of sloth or of -wrong- 
 doing, is unknown. 
 
 And as Christians we cannot limit this fellowship 
 of consumers by national boundaries. When, im- 
 mediately after the Armistice, a few ministers ven- 
 tured to say from their pulpits that it was a Chris- 
 tian duty to restore former enemies to fellowship and 
 to meet their urgent needs for food, for credit, for 
 raw materials, they were instantly challenged by 
 irate patriots; but just one year later leading Amer- 
 ican bankers and business-men made a public plga 
 for the assistance of Germany's industrial recupera- 
 tion as the only means of saving her from Bolshev- 
 ism. When will we learn that our Christian instincts 
 are our safest guides in practical affairs, and that 
 " the foolishness of God is wiser than men " ? The 
 " us " and " our " of the Lord's prayer include man- 
 kind. Nations are to serve each other in commerce 
 and industry, and missionary motives must control 
 both. The international labor conferences pro- 
 vided for in the Covenant of the League of Na- 
 tions are happy signs of the growth of a Christian 
 conscience in the world. Pauper conditions in China 
 and India are the concern of America. A minimum 
 standard of decently comfortable living there is ne- 
 cessary to safeguard the standards here, not to speak 
 of what we owe our needy brother and his dependents 
 yonder, exactly as we are responsible for some needy 
 family only a block away. As we learn commercial 
 foreign missions we shall hear less from provincial 
 
26 A MOKE OHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OBDBE 
 
 souls wIlo wish to furnish the bread of life to limited 
 districts only, and to suffer the more remote to stay 
 their spirits on any starvation diet available. We 
 may hope that our war experiences in sharing food 
 and fuel with our allies, and our present experiences 
 of extending credit to former enemies, will form in 
 us a fraternal conscience that shall govern us in fu- 
 ture trade and tariff discussions, and dominate our 
 spirit in our rapidly expanding foreign commerce. 
 As consumers we must cultivate the sense of member- 
 ship in an earth-wide household of God. 
 
 While we accept all good things at the hand of a 
 generous Providence, we cannot forget that almost 
 none of them reach us without the toil of human 
 hands. What we consume is in part the labor of 
 men and women. We must inquire what it is which 
 we eat and drink, and with what we are clothed and 
 amused. David once longed for a drink from the 
 well of his native Bethlehem, and three of his bold 
 followers gratified his wish by breaking through the 
 Philistine lines at the risk of their lives and fetching 
 him water. But David " would not drink thereof. 
 And he said, Shall I drink the blood of the men that 
 went in jeopardy of their lives ? " Like him, we 
 surely will refuse to consume the school hours and 
 playtime and future health of children, doomed by 
 poverty or greed of parents to premature toil ; or to 
 drain the motherly attention of women taken out of 
 their homes to factories and offices, when they 
 should be bringing up their little ones; or to eat 
 
THE CHEISTIAW AS CONSUMBE 27 
 
 the leisure of men for rest and worship and family- 
 life, who are denied a weekly rest-day and are kept 
 overlong at toil. Hood's " Song of the Shirt " is 
 sadly still applicahle to some workers in our cities : — 
 
 Work — work — work 
 
 Till the brain begins to swim> 
 Work — work — work 
 
 Till the eyes are heavy and dim! 
 Seam, and gusset, and band. 
 
 Band, and gusset, and seam, 
 TiU over the buttons I f aU asleep. 
 
 And sew them on in a dream! 
 
 O Men with Sisters dear ! 
 
 O Men with Mothers and Wives I 
 It is not linen you're wearing out, 
 
 But human creatures' lives! 
 Stitch — stitch — stitch 
 
 In poverty, himger and dirt. 
 Sewing at once, with a double thread, 
 
 A Shroud as well as a Shirt. 
 
 We cannot have our necessities met by industries in 
 which the operatives jeopardize their health or their 
 safety ; and we recall that the casualties of our mines, 
 factories and railways are annually in excess of our 
 losses in the war. It is not pleasant reading to look 
 over the figures of occupational diseases, or to scan 
 the statistics of the length of life in certain callings. 
 A modern David would pause before using the pro- 
 ducts of some of our industries : there is much more 
 blood on them than we realize. In the stoke-room 
 
28 A MOEE CHEISTIAIir IWDTJSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 on ocean liners, in the furnaces of steel plants, in 
 glass factories, on fishing smacks off our coast in 
 winter, beneath the rivers where " sand-hogs " sink 
 tunnels for our transit lines, hardships and dangers 
 are encountered comparable to those faced by our 
 soldiers and sailors, and with none of the patriotic 
 attention which was paid them. And some of the 
 world's work is necessarily wearing drudgery or ex- 
 tremely repugnant. Should we not recognize the 
 principle that the more disagreeable a calling is, like 
 handling garbage or working in the humid atmos- 
 phere of a tobacco factory or in the extreme heat of 
 a furnace, and the more straining on nerves or dull- 
 ing to intelligence, the shorter the period of employ- 
 ment should be ? And there are forms of some occu- 
 pations, now tolerated, like certain theatrical per- 
 formances, in which spectators consume the modesty 
 and self-respect of yoimg women. Shall we amuse 
 ourselves at the price of blood ? 
 
 No American can have read with satisfaction the 
 reports submitted as a working basis for the first in- 
 ternational labor conference in Washington. Six- 
 teen countries have eight-hour laws applicable to 
 most industries, but ours is not on that list. Twenty- 
 one lands place special safeguards about the employ- 
 ment of mothers before and after childbirth, but ours 
 is not recorded among them. Nearly every indus- 
 trial nation forbids the employment in factories of 
 children under fourteen, but Eoumania, India, Spain, 
 China, and the United States of America (what com- 
 
THE CHEISTLOr AS CONSUMEB 29 
 
 pany to be in!) are among the lands not yet on that 
 ethical level. When we speak of Americanizing our 
 foreign-born population, to what are we lifting them ? 
 
 As individuals, we cannot, like David, know just 
 what it is that we consume. As members of a yet 
 unchristianized community, we may well beware of 
 blood, and demand public supervision, both in our 
 own and other lands, of the conditions under which 
 the world's work is done, and the enactment of safe- 
 guards for the lives of our comrades in the fellow- 
 ship of labor. 
 
 To the Corinthian Christians St. Paul wrote: 
 " When therefore ye assemble yourselves together, it 
 is not possible to eat the Lord's Supper : for in your 
 eating each one taketh his own supper; and one is 
 hungry, and another is drunken." The grasping and 
 competitive spirit of Corinth had invaded the fellow- 
 ship of the Church, and the love-feast had become a 
 disorderly grab, where one overdrank while another 
 found nothing left for him. Our Lord often likened 
 His kingdom to a feast. Life seemed to Him a fes- 
 tive banquet, spread by a generous Eather. The 
 whole of it should be sacramental — suggestive of 
 God's continual presence with us. His loving and 
 thoughtful care unfailingly given to every one of His 
 children. Instead of letting the spirit of Corinth 
 invade the fellowship of the Church, it is our task 
 as Christians to carry the spirit of the Lord's Table 
 — our thankfulness to the Provider of all good, our 
 considerate thought that all our brethren in Christ 
 
30 A MOEB CHEISTIAN INDtTSTEIAL OEDEB 
 
 share with us, our own care that we use aright what 
 we ourselves receive — into the Oorinths where we 
 dwell, and so employ the gifts of God in food and 
 drink, in fuel and clothing, in comforts and delights, 
 in knowledge and inspirations, that all life becomes 
 as suggestive of God as the Supper of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE CHEISTIAN AS OWNEE 
 
 The fundamental principle of the Bible regarding 
 property is that Grod is the owner of everything. 
 David, speaking of Israel's offerings for the build- 
 ing of the Temple, is reported by the Chronicler as 
 praying: "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the 
 power, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth 
 is Thine, Both riches and honor come of Thee. 
 O Lord our God, all this store that we have pre- 
 pared cometh of Thine hand, and is all Thine own. 
 O Lord, the God of our fathers, keep this forever 
 in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of 
 Thy people." Man's tenure of anything can be only 
 for a few years : " for " runs this same prayer, " we 
 are strangers before Thee, and sojourners as all our 
 fathers were ; our days on the earth are as a shadow, 
 and there is none abiding." All that men possess 
 is a loan terminable at the will of the Divine Lender : 
 " We brought nothing into this world ; and it is cer- 
 tain that we can carry nothing out." Property be- 
 longs to God, and remains in His disposal. When 
 friends and family were gone. Job said : " The 
 Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." As 
 
 31 
 
32 A MOKE CHRISTIAN INDTJSTBIAL OEDEE 
 
 human beings, therefore, we have no property rights. 
 1^0 man may say : " Is it not lawful for me to do 
 what I will with mine own ? " The Divine Voice 
 challenges him: "What hast thou that thou didst 
 not receive ? " and he must be prepared to give to 
 the real Owner an account of his stewardship. 
 
 The second principle is that God loans posses- 
 sions to the conmaunity of His children, and to indi- 
 viduals through the community. In the Old Testa- 
 ment the community is the nation. The land belongs 
 to Israel, and is allotted among its tribes and families. 
 According to the ideal of Leviticus^ it " shall not be 
 sold in perpetuity," but shall revert in the jubilee 
 year to its original owner. The prophets in an age 
 of industrial change, when a wealthy class was rising 
 and becoming possessors of the land, while a depend- 
 ent class tilled it, constantly denounced this state 
 of things as an infraction of brotherhood : " Jehovah 
 will enter into judgment with the elders and princes 
 of His people. It is ye that have eaten up the vine- 
 yard ; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What 
 mean ye that ye crush My people, and grind the 
 face of the poor ? " " Woe unto them that join 
 house to house, that lay field to field, till there be 
 no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst 
 of the land ? " After the Exile, l^ehemiah per- 
 suades the well-to-do to restore to every Israelite his 
 small ancestral holding, so that none is without a 
 home and the means of earning his living. 
 
 In the New Testament the community is the whole 
 
THE CHEISTIAISr AS OWNER 33 
 
 family of maiikind ; and the Church, which considers 
 herself bound to exemplify what the world should 
 become, attempts in Jerusalem a common holding 
 of possessions, so that no believer is allowed to want, 
 and wealthier Christians place their property at the 
 call of the brotherhood. This is hardly an industrial 
 system. It seems to have been instituted only in 
 Jerusalem, and then probably because of poverty. 
 It was not compulsory upon Christians, for Peter 
 says to Ananias of his property : " While it re- 
 mained, did it not remain thine own? and after 
 it was sold, was it not in thy power ? " It was a 
 fraternal attempt under high emotion to create a 
 common store for the community's needs. As an 
 economic experiment it was not a success, for we 
 find Paul constantly taking up a collection for the 
 poor Christians at Jerusalem in all his churches, 
 where no such communistic plan was attempted. 
 But the underlying principle is clear that Christians 
 regarded property as God's loan to the community 
 of His believing children. In our circumstances 
 this would be interpreted to stress the social control 
 of property. 
 
 Aud third, the Bible implies that it is the com- 
 munity's duty to see that every member of society 
 is a property-owner. So far from minimizing the 
 moral worth of possessions, the Bible considers owner- 
 ship of property most valuable for the development 
 of character. When St. Paul is trying to make a 
 man out of a thief, he writes : " Let him labor that 
 
34 A MOEE CHBISTIAS INDUSTEIAli OEDEE 
 
 he may Jiave." Until the man possesses something 
 which he calls his own, he is hardly a complete man, 
 and therefore he will lack a sense of social obligation 
 and be unable to feel himself a full member of so- 
 ciety. Paul shows him what to do with his posses- 
 sions : " that he may have whereof to give to him 
 that hath need." But he cannot give until he has. 
 That which a man controls extends his personality 
 and exercises his conscience. Public spirit is un- 
 likely to be found in those who own nothing. Patri- 
 otism comes with a stake in the country. Since for 
 Christians the main business of life is to grow a 
 brotherly conscience, property is a great spiritual 
 asset. In the picture of the early Church in the 
 Book of the Acts, it is written : " Not one of them 
 said that aught of the things which he possessed was 
 his own," but the " say " was his, and in the volun- 
 tary placing of his possessions at the command of 
 the fellowship, each disciple used his conscience. 
 
 A Christian's main quarrel with the existing eco- 
 nomic order is not that some possess large wealth, 
 but that so many possess practically nothing. A 
 big fortune is a perilous trust, but a Christian may 
 be trained to administer it conscientiously; and we 
 have known men and women of large means who 
 probably made their money do more good for the 
 community than a numerous group of small owners 
 might have done with a similar amount. When, 
 however, a man is without property, it is difficult 
 to-day to educate him in a Christian sense of obliga- 
 
THE CHKISTIAU AS OWNER 35 
 
 tion. Indeed the Christian appeal seems not as 
 likely to awaken response in the possessionlesa, as in 
 those who own something. Farmers, and even ten- 
 ant-farmers, are more apt to connect themselves with 
 a church than are the farm laborers. The property- 
 less are restless. They do not consider that the com- 
 munity does much for them, and they do not feel 
 bound to do aught for it. The I. W. W. and similar 
 extreme radicals are recruited from the workers in 
 mines, lumber-camps, and factories, who have noth- 
 ing of their own. They lack a feeling of responsi- 
 bility for the country, or for the town in which they 
 live; and it is to consciences awake that the Chris- 
 tian Gospel mainly appeals. Our reshaping of so- 
 ciety will not be directed towards taking wealth away 
 from its possessors, but towards giving those with 
 nothing the chance to call something their own. 
 Property is an enlargement of personality; and 
 ownership is a spiritual relation which we crave for 
 every child of God. 
 
 To be sure we cannot pass over the constantly re- 
 peated warnings in the New Testament, and espe- 
 cially from the lips of our Lord Himself, of the dan- 
 gers of wealth. " How hardly shall that that have 
 riches enter into the kingdom of God ! It is easier for 
 a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich 
 man to enter into the kingdom of God." Very few 
 wealthy persons are not cumbered by their posses- 
 sions and hindered from personal human service. 
 Inasmuch as they feel themselves expected to live 
 
36 A MORE CHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OEDEK 
 
 upon a certain scale and to do as others of their 
 position do, they have houses and estates which re- 
 quire the labor of many to keep up and which in- 
 crease their cares ; and the maintenance of their poss- 
 essions engrosses their time and thought. Rarely do 
 rich men or women take active part in civic and 
 religious organizations; their belongings hamper 
 their personal activity. Eiches tend to place their 
 possessors in a suspicious attitude towards people; 
 there are so many hangers-on to take advantage of 
 them; they become wary, distrustful, and often in- 
 humanly isolated. Kiches tend to render them self- 
 sufficient, self-important, self-indulgent. No won- 
 der Jesus found them hostile to the childlike spirit 
 which the kingdom demands. Keligious leaders 
 have either, like Francis of Assisi, espoused poverty, 
 or at least looked askance at large fortunes. Martin 
 Luther wrote to his friend, Spalatin : " It is said 
 that Schifer is dead, and has left a million gulden 
 to Dr. Carola. He would indeed be a bold Chris- 
 tian who would not dread such a mountain of gold." 
 We have all known some men and women of large 
 means who were conspicuously hard-working, frater- 
 nal, humble, self-spending disciples of Christ. They 
 seemed successfully to be passing through the needle's 
 eye, and none could dispute their useful place in the 
 kingdom of God. Further it is fair to admit that 
 in our country and time it seems hard for those with- 
 out property to enter the kingdom, perhaps fully as 
 hard as for those with many millions. Both for 
 
THE CHEISTIAlir AS OWWEE 37 
 
 spiritual development and for vigorous personal ser- 
 vice, an industrial order is desirable which attempts 
 to ansvfer Agur's wise prayer : " Give me neither 
 poverty nor riches." 
 
 An eminent British economist, Professor Hob- 
 house of London University, has drawn a suggestive 
 distinction between two kinds of property, which 
 he terms, " property for use " and " property for 
 power." By the former he means these possessions 
 which a man uses for himself in association with his 
 nearest and dearest — a house, a garden, tools or 
 equipment for his work. By the latter his share in 
 and control of industrial enterprises which make him 
 master of other lives. He points out that there is 
 a difference between the possession of things which 
 gives a man freedom and security, and the control of 
 other persons through things, which gives power. 
 He argues that the first should be secured to the in- 
 dividual as private property, while the second should 
 be kept under the scrutiny and control of the demo- 
 cratic state. The clear working out of the distinc- 
 tion is no easy matter ; but it suggests a clew to what 
 is mainly the individual's and what is mainly so- 
 ciety's part in the ownership of property. 
 
 Our first concern as Christians to-day is that every 
 man shall have the chance to become an owner. 
 Israel's national history began in a labor movement 
 by people who felt that as slaves without possessions 
 of their own they could not be truly religious: 
 " The Lord spake unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, 
 
38 A MOEE CHEISTIAIT IWDXJSTEIAL OBDEE 
 
 and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let My 
 people go that they may serve Me." If a man is a 
 bondman whose work and idleness are not in his own 
 power, whose conscience cannot control his labor, who 
 is without stimuli to initiative, to perseverance, to 
 thrift, to generosity, he is handicapped in attaining 
 sonship with God. Israel, born into national life in 
 this struggle for industrial liberty, carefully pro- 
 tected a man's chance to work and his possession of 
 tools. " No man shall take the mill or the upper 
 mill-stone to pledge; for he taketh a man's life to 
 pledge." That with which a man earns his living 
 for himself and his family, and renders his service 
 to the community, ought to be sacredly conserved 
 to him. He should own at least that — the means 
 to support his dependents in reasonable comfort. 
 
 It becomes difficult to interpret this in our more 
 complex modern society, where many persons are 
 not land-owners and where most of the world's work 
 is done by machinery. An acre or two of soil and 
 a couple of mill-stones are a simple problem beside 
 a laborer's rights to be housed and to a status in the 
 mine where he picks coal, or the plant in which he 
 pours steel, or the many-acred farm on which he is 
 one of a gang running tractor plows and huge 
 reapers and binders. It is even more difficult to 
 think through the question of the status of employees 
 in department stores, railways, offices, households. 
 What is the present-day equivalent of the small hold- 
 ing of land and the mill? This must be patiently 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS OWNEE 39 
 
 tkought out by those with, first-hand acquaintance 
 with particular industries and with commercial en- 
 terprises. But the Biblical ideal seems to demand 
 under modern conditions that a worker be assured 
 a stake in the enterprise in which he labors, so that 
 he has a reasonable security of employment at a re- 
 turn which will keep him and his family at a stand- 
 ard which the community regards as just. 
 
 Our next concern as Christians is the establish- 
 ment of the principle that property exists for people, 
 and not people for property. Possessions are ex- 
 cellent servants but ruinous masters. " Take heed, 
 and keep yourselves from all covetousness : for a 
 man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth." This was a saying 
 spoken to a man with a desire for a larger share of 
 an estate. It applies both to those who have wealth 
 and to those who would like to have it. When a 
 Christian finds that the care of his property so en- 
 grosses him that he is prevented from giving his 
 community his personal service, Christ would urge 
 him, as He did the rich young ruler, to disembarrass 
 himself of the impeding possessions. It is our per- 
 sonal relations with men that count for both them 
 and ourselves. If a man has so many houses or 
 places to keep up, or feels that his private interests 
 so absorb his whole energy, that he cannot take on 
 civic and church responsibilities, a Christian apostle 
 would bid him "lay aside" part at least of this 
 " weight." It would be better for him to be poorer 
 
40 A MOEE CHEISTIAIT INDUSTRIAL OEDEE 
 
 in goods and wealthier in contacts with men and 
 women. If a woman feels that her occupation with 
 the domestic and financial problem of living upon 
 a certain scale, hinders her from using fully her 
 abilities for human helpfulness, Jesus would cer- 
 tainly deal with her, as He dealt with Martha, and 
 warn her that she was missing " the good part." 
 And we may be sure that He would be equally frank 
 with that large number of poorer persons who are 
 always thinking of money, and of what money could 
 buy, and wishing they had it. 
 
 In a community property rights must never be 
 allowed to stand in the way of human well-being. 
 Time and again the defenders of certain interests — 
 the race-track proprietors when gambling was under 
 discussion, the brewers and saloon-keepers when pro- 
 hibition is to the fore, manufacturers and mine- 
 owners when legislation to prevent overlong hours 
 or the employment of women and children, or to 
 compel appliances against accidents, is up, owners of 
 buildings and real estate interests when sanitary or 
 fire laws are in point, plead the rights of property 
 in opposition to those who argue for human lives. 
 To be sure some reformers are unwise, and no man 
 whose business has been held legitimate ought to be 
 unfairly dealt with by a sudden change of law. But 
 a Christian community cannot measure its wealth 
 by the profits of its industries or the volume of its 
 trade, but by the richness of the lives of its men, 
 women and children. A city's worth must be com- 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS OWNER 41 
 
 puted in terms of the characters and services of its 
 citizens. Like the Sahbath, things are for folks, not 
 folks for things. 
 
 Our supreme interest with property is that men 
 should hold whatever they own as a trust allotted to 
 them hy their Father God through the community 
 of His children. No man can possess anything more 
 than his own brute strength may seize and keep save 
 as society by its customs, laws, and police, assures 
 him in his property. He must, therefore, use it as 
 their trustee under God. Whatever we spend upon 
 our own or our family's housing, clothing, food, 
 amusement, comfort, must be viewed as a public 
 allowance to us. We must mentally open our books 
 to the eyes of the brotherhood of our fellow-citizens 
 and of the world-wide family of God, and show them : 
 " Thus and thus, have I done with that which was 
 yours and mine." They naturally ask themselves 
 whether we and our families are worth our keep, 
 whether our services to the city, the country, the 
 world, are commensurate with the outlay made upon 
 us. 'No self-respecting man wishes to be carried by 
 the commimity ; he wants to pay his way. Whatever 
 any one employs to maintain himself and his depend- 
 ents, whether it comes as income from an inheritance 
 or from an investment of his savings, from the earn- 
 ings of a business in which he shares or from his 
 wages, is a salary which the human race pays him. 
 As Christians we wish to be honest, and render an 
 equivalent in work of mind and heart and hand. 
 
42 A MORE CHEISTIAW INDITSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 At the bar of our consciences we must make up our 
 accounts witli the family of God's children, and be 
 answerable to them. 
 
 Such an accounting is no light thing. Men used 
 to tremble in anticipation of the Day of Judgment, 
 and wonder how their reckoning would stand. We 
 no longer think of a dramatic scene in the presence 
 of the returning Christ and His angels. The judg- 
 ment is for us a continuous process, and it is going 
 on now. The books are kept in our own characters 
 and in our influence for good or ill upon our neigh- 
 bors, and kept with an accuracy which rivals that 
 of any recording angel. Christ is for us constantly 
 arriving; His kingdom is always at hand; and His 
 Spirit is waiting to dominate all hearts and all 
 spheres of human life. The eyes, of which we think 
 as scanning our records, are not those only of the 
 Son of man who looks to see how we deal with the 
 least of His brethren, but also those of our brethren 
 themselves, small and great, — recent comers to our 
 city, a child bom last night, boys and girls, men and 
 women, of every land — all peering over the pages 
 of our accounting of that which is theirs as well as 
 ours. Are we square with society? We have 
 " property for use " ; can we satisfy our brethren, 
 can we satisfy our consciences before them, that we 
 are employing it wisely and faithfully? Some of 
 us have "property for power": we control, or con- 
 trol in part, the conditions under which they labor. 
 Can we face them, and face our consciences in their 
 
THE CHEISTIAIT AS OWNER 43 
 
 presence ? Surely these are queries as searching as 
 any which our conscientious forefathers proposed to 
 themselves in their self-examinations preparatory to 
 the final judgment. And they are questions which 
 we are not left free to-day to put or not as we choose ; 
 they are being forced upon us by the spirit of our 
 time, by men and women awake to social obligations, 
 by young men who were told that they owed their 
 country and humanity their lives and must not with- 
 hold them in a day of need, and who are insistent 
 that each owner of property be told the service which 
 he owes country and world. A judgment day is 
 here, and every one of us must be fully prepared to 
 give , an account of his stewardship at the bar of the 
 social conscience. 
 
 To Christians ownership of property is a momen- 
 tous matter, for, like kinship with people, it seems 
 an abiding spiritual relation. In a striking passage 
 Jesus places our relations to things and to people 
 side by side : " Verily I say unto you. There is no 
 man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake, 
 and for the Gospel's sake, but he shall receive a 
 hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, 
 and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, 
 with persecution." The interesting point is His set- 
 ting houses and lands in the same connection with 
 kinsfolk: ownership and kinship appear to be last- 
 ing relations. Possessions loaned to us for three 
 score and ten years more or less appear in His 
 
44 A MOEB CHKISTIAIT INDUSTEIAL OEDEB 
 
 thought to have their eternal counterparts. He 
 speaks of " true riches " and of something which we 
 can call " our 'own " as awaiting us in the kingdom 
 of God. Ownership here becomes an education for 
 a similar permanent responsibility. " If therefore 
 ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mam- 
 mon (the wealth of earth inevitably tainted with 
 imperfect production and distribution) who will 
 commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye 
 have not been faithful in that which is another's 
 (God's or the conununity's property), who will give 
 you that whicih is your own ? " 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE CHBISTIAIf AS IN-VESTOK 
 
 In ancient Babylon as far back as the days of 
 Hammurabi, about 2200 b. c, we find the system 
 of loaning money at interest; but in the Old Testa- 
 ment there is no trace of commercial credit. The 
 Israelites were an agricultural people, and their trade 
 was mostly in the hands of the Phoenicians and other 
 foreigners. A loan of money was looked on as the 
 sad result of some misfortune — the failure of a 
 crop, a raid by marauders, the pressure of taxation 
 — or as the consequence of extravagant living. The 
 prophets and law-givers hold up lending as a duty 
 of the rich to the poor, but they mean lending with- 
 out interest. " If there be with thee a poor man, 
 one of thy brethren, within any of thy gates in thy 
 land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee, thou shalt 
 not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from thy 
 poor brother; but thou shalt surely open thy hand 
 unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufiicient for 
 his need in that which he wanteth." Careful pro- 
 vision is made to protect certain kinds of collateral 
 which the borrower may ofEer. The creditor may 
 not take away a workman's tools, nor keep his heavy 
 
 45 
 
46 A MOEE CHEISTIAN INDTTSTKIAL OEDEE 
 
 cloak over night, nor go into his house to seize his 
 goods. Lending to the poor is praised by psalmists 
 and wise men, while " he that putteth out his money 
 to interest " is classed with liars and slanderers as 
 unfit to enter the Lord's tabernacle. 
 
 There are indications, however, that these princi- 
 ples were the ideal held up before the godly, and 
 that they were rarely enforced as statutes of the 
 land. Creditors and debtors are named among the 
 classes in the population, the borrower is spoken of 
 as servant of the lender, and special injunctions are 
 given to prevent creditors selling their fellow-Israel- 
 ites for debt into slavery. "When the Law is taken 
 seriously, its interpreters discovered ways of getting 
 round its provisions against interest. Our Puritan 
 forebears, who regarded the Bible as an infallible rule 
 of practice, as well as of faith, and placed the Old 
 Testament on the same level with the New, managed 
 similarly to shut their eyes to these prohibitions or to 
 explain them away; and they built up our present 
 capitalistic system, which rests upon money loaned 
 at interest. At present the ultra-orthodox will con- 
 demn a preacher who does not believe in the his- 
 toric accuracy of the narrative of some miracle, but 
 one never hears of a heresy trial because a pillar of 
 the church has money in stocks and bonds. Be- 
 lievers in the inerrancy of the Bible are marvelously 
 inconsistent ; and in this instance, at least, it is prob- 
 ably wise that they .do not press the application of 
 the Biblical text. 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS INVESTOB 47 
 
 But these laws against taking interest applied only 
 to fellow-Israelites : " Thou shalt not lend upon in- 
 terest to thy brother; interest of money, interest of 
 victuals, interest of anything that is lent upon in- 
 terest: unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon in- 
 terest." One of the promised blessings of national 
 observance of the Deuteronomic Law was " thou shalt 
 lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow." 
 Taking interest of one's fellow countrymen and co- 
 religionists was deemed wicked, but outsiders were 
 fair game. Here is another instance of the neces- 
 sity for Christians of reading even the Bible under 
 the guidance of the Spirit of Christ. 
 
 When we turn to the IsTew Testament we find the 
 developed commercial credit system of the Eoman 
 world as the background. In the same spirit which 
 moved the' prophets and law-givers, Jesus- encourages 
 lending : " Of him that would borrow of thee turn 
 not thou away." " If ye lend to them of whom ye 
 hope to receive, what thank have ye? even sinners 
 lend to sinners, to receive again as* much." Many of 
 the Church fathers forbade? all loaning of money 
 upon interest, basing their teaching on such sayings 
 of Christ and on the passages of the Old Testament. 
 During many Christian centuries a man who loaned 
 money was regarded somewhat as a pawn-broker is 
 looked on among ourselves. The lenders were mostly 
 Jews, whose Law put no obstacles in the way of their 
 lending to Christians, and such usurers were de- 
 spised, as Shakespeare ridicules Shylock. 
 
48 A MORE CHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAL, OEDEE 
 
 In Jesus' parables, however, we see Him accept- 
 ing the credit system of His day, drawing illustra- 
 tions from it, and speaking of it without condemna- 
 tion. He represents the master as saying to the 
 negligent servant : " thou oughtest to have put my 
 money to the bankers, and at my coming I should 
 have received back mine own with interest." But 
 Jesus cannot be quoted as favoring or as forbidding 
 a particular economic system. That is a question 
 He did not consider. 
 
 Whatever may be the commercial order of some 
 to-morrow, fifty or a hundred years hence, the world 
 of our time requires capital. Men may differ over 
 questions of its control by the government or by pri- 
 vate individuals ; but in any case the government, or 
 a corporation, or an individual, to carry on large 
 enterprises has to borrow capital, and capital is the 
 savings which somebody living or dead has managed 
 to accumulate. 
 
 The Bible says practically nothing about saving 
 money; but it assumes it, for no man can be either 
 a giver or a lender, who does not spend less than he 
 owns. Jesus trained His disciples in saving when 
 He had them collect the fragments which remained 
 after the crowds had been fed ; and Paul encouraged 
 the members of the churches to lay by them in store 
 as God prospered them. Thrift is not a distinctly 
 Christian virtue, but it is a virtue. We had it im- 
 pressed on us during the war, and as a nation we 
 need it even more at the present hour. The report 
 
THE OHBISTIAN AS INVESTOR 49 
 
 of the Federal Eeserve Bank for November 1919 
 gives some startling figures of extravagant buying, 
 and declares that it is not the wage-earners nor those 
 who have possessed wealth for some time who are 
 spending recklessly, but those whose incomes have 
 recently gone up beyond that which is necessary to 
 maintain their former standard of living. Such per- 
 sons may easily reply to the Bank's strictures that 
 no special class is entitled to luxuries, to wear jewelry 
 and furs, to possess musical instruments and ride in 
 automobiles; and that, if others do, they may, now 
 that they have the price. But as Christians, when 
 a devastated and impoverished world needs capital 
 with which to restore its industries, and when the 
 spread of the kingdom of God both at home and 
 abroad ought to have a much larger financial support, 
 are we not led by the Spirit of Christ to save as 
 much as we can ? Some will say : " Let those who 
 have had luxuries for years do the saving, and give 
 those who have never had them the chance." We 
 cannot lay down a rule and define what is luxury. 
 Under existing conditions what seems to one person 
 a bare necessity appears to another a wild extrava- 
 gance. It is possible that we may some day arrive 
 at more general agreement on these matters of neces- 
 sary and unnecessary expenditure. For the present 
 it is evident from the experience during the war that 
 many of us can save far more than we usually do. 
 A general wave of saving would lower prices, so help- 
 ing our poorer brethren, which is a plain Christian 
 
50 A MOEE CHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAI, OKDEK 
 
 duty ; would supply us with more to loan for the de- 
 velopment of our country's industries and to extend 
 credit to other lands ; and would enable us to invest 
 much larger sums in the all-important Christian en- 
 terprise of furnishing our land and the world with 
 the convictions and ideals of Jesus, by which we be- 
 lieve international and industrial problems are to be 
 solved, and men, women and children given abun- 
 dant life. Saving, then, at this moment, for all who 
 possibly can do it, is an unmistakable Christian ob- 
 ligation. 
 
 With regard to the investment of our savings what 
 prompting do we receive from the Spirit of Christ? 
 
 A Christian business-man said recently that years 
 ago he set a certain sum, and made up his mind that, 
 if ever he possessed that much capital, he would 
 make no further income-producing investments, but 
 give away everything that he could save. Here 
 again people will differ widely as to what is the 
 limit of the income-bearing wealth they are justified 
 in retaining. The number of their dependents, their 
 manner of life, their own tastes, are determining 
 factors. Possibly the graduated income-tax may af- 
 fect men's views on this subject. But ought not 
 many more of our comfortably circumstanced Chris- 
 tians make this business-man's principle theirs? 
 With the perils of great wealth plainly pointed out 
 by our Lord, why should a Christian wish to pile 
 up capital ? A useful merchant or professional man 
 need not retire from business because he does not 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS INVESTOE 61 
 
 need to make more money. His business or his pro- 
 fession is a service which he should continue to ren- 
 der the community, so long as he has health and 
 strength, unless there be some unremunerative posi- 
 tion in which he can be more useful. But let him 
 not go on amassing capital. " Lay not up for your- 
 selves treasures upon the earth." Let him, while he 
 lives, invest as much as he can in distinctively 
 Christian undertakings to serve the physical, the 
 mental and the spiritual needs of men. Does not 
 that seem a principle after the mind of Christ? 
 
 With regard to income-producing investments can 
 we discover any leadings of the Spirit? 
 
 On the porch of a summer club in a group of men a 
 young college graduate let fall the remark that he had 
 taken a flier the previous month in an oil stock, then 
 very active in the market, and had cleared several 
 thousand dollars. A banker who was present asked 
 him abruptly : " What service to the community do 
 you think you performed which entitled you to a 
 sum as large as the salary of many of your hard- 
 working classmates ? " Our economists tell us that 
 speculative trading in commodities by experts in 
 them helps to stabilize the market, although Pro- 
 fessor Taussig implies that only a small number of 
 such traders are necessary. Men have to be ven- 
 turesome with their capital as they are with their 
 brains or their labor, if new enterprises are to be un- 
 dertaken, new inventions developed, new services 
 rendered mankind through commerce and industry. 
 
52 A MOKE CHBISTIAN INDTJSTBIAL OEDEB 
 
 In addition to Professor Hobtouse's " property for 
 use " and " property for power," named in the last 
 chapter, there is a function for " property for ex- 
 periment." But taking fliers in stock, as this young 
 man had done, is like gambling with cards or bet- 
 ting on games, a bad thing for the man himself, 
 teaching him to try to get something for nothing, and 
 it also tends to send up the rate of interest on legiti- 
 mate loans, and so to increase prices, and to place the 
 necessities out of the reach of the poor. The 
 banker's question suggests a Christian principle: 
 " What service to the community do you think you 
 performed by that use of money?" We were urged 
 to invest in Liberty Bonds to help our country in a 
 great cause. Why should Christians make invest- 
 ments for any lower motive? Industries in time 
 of , peace render fully as exalted public service as 
 did the army and navy during the war. Should not 
 a Christian satisfy himself that any enterprise — a 
 building, a mine a railway, a factory — into which 
 he puts his savings is fulfilling a necessary ministry 
 to the community, and fulfilling it in a manner that 
 makes for the public welfare ? We are followers of 
 One who came to minister, and we wish everything 
 that we control to be serving. We cannot put money 
 into an undertaking simply because it assures large 
 returns; it must approve itself to our consciences as 
 accomplishing a service to the commonwealth. 
 
 John Wesley laid down for his followers the three 
 maxims : " Gain all you can ; save all you can ; give 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS INVESTOK 53 
 
 all you can." They have seemed sufficient to many 
 good Christians in the past; but the first maxim 
 hardly satisfies our consciences to-day. Many per- 
 sons have felt that in making an investment, all they 
 need think of was the return which they would reap, 
 and that their Christian duty began with the use to, 
 which they put their income. But we remember 
 Amos's warning of profiteers who made " the ephah 
 small and the shekel great." Tew here will dis- 
 agree that we must go further to-day and assure our- 
 selves that the investment itself performs a service 
 to the community, and a service commensurate with 
 the return on the capital. 
 
 Now can we excuse the community through its 
 law-makers and courts from protecting such invest- 
 ments and seeing that they are employed in the pub- 
 lic interest? In some of our large cities down to 
 very recent times there has been a disgraceful abuse 
 of investors by those who managed to get possession 
 of street railway companies. Men and women who 
 put their capital into what was considered a public 
 service corporation possess to-day in their certifi- 
 cates of stock " scraps of paper " ; while our laws 
 have been either so insufficient, or their execution 
 so remissly handled, that the looters of the property 
 have gone to their graves in peace, or still live to 
 build churches with their ill-got gains. While we 
 deplore " reds," let us deal with men who help to 
 produce them. The truest upholders of orderly so- 
 ciety are those who set themselves to correct itc 
 
54 A MOEE CHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 abuses. Investors must be safe-guarded against 
 financial freebooters, and the community whieb asks 
 persons to save and invest owes them a reasonable 
 protection. 
 
 One sometimes bears men of business use the 
 expression " playing the game," and speak of the fas- 
 cination of " putting through " some project. Such 
 language may be employed quite harmlessly, but is it 
 safe? Marshaling truth into a sermon and putting 
 it through speech into men's minds has a fascination 
 as an act of skill. Handling a knife and perform- 
 ing a delicate operation is an interesting task to 
 which a surgeon gives himself with zest. But we 
 should shrink from speaking of preaching or operat- 
 ing as fascinating games. One wants to see the 
 ministry of trade and finance on the same level as 
 the ministry of truth and of health. The gusto of 
 a game consists often in beating an opponent; but 
 when this is taken into the sphere of business, in 
 which men's livelihoods are at stake, it becomes a 
 perilous point of view. One wishes that the lan- 
 guage of our commercial life could be Christianized. 
 Such adjectives as " cold " and " hard " so frequently 
 applied to a business proposition become hostile to its 
 Christian character ; for our God is not a " cold, 
 hard " God, and is ruled out of the control of trans- 
 actions to which these adjectives are applied. Busi- 
 ness should be thought and talked of as a ministry, 
 not as a game. Then what a man receives for his 
 investment in, it, in profits or dividends or rent, be- 
 
THE CHEISTIAN AS IWVESTOE 55 
 
 comes not his winnings, but his pay; and he will 
 look on it as men did on that which they drew in the 
 service of the country during the war. A right 
 attitude to mind is essential to the creation of a 
 right system: we must Christianize our thought of 
 our relation to business questions before we can see 
 a system in operation that will satisfy our consciences. 
 And all of us, whether we can save anything or 
 not, have investments to make which will not neces- 
 sarily bring in any interest in money. Jesus said 
 much of such investments. Over against all uses of 
 capital for the ordinary business of earth which is 
 liable to loss. He urged : " Lay up for yourselves 
 treasures in heaven." We usually interpret this 
 celestial investment to mean : " Do good things for 
 which you will get little thanks here below, but for 
 which you will receive deferred dividends hereafter." 
 There may be truth in that, but it is hardly our 
 Lord's meaning. We discover what He considered 
 heavenly treasures by looking at the. things in which 
 He was Himself wealthy. There was His power of 
 appreciation — appreciation of grass of the field and 
 the play of children in the market-place; apprecia- 
 tion of people — Simon Peter, John, Nathanael, the 
 young ruler, Zacchaeus, and the rest of the figures 
 who live on the Gospel pages; appreciation of God. 
 Appreciativeness pays huge dividends: and it both 
 yields an unfailing income and is ever increasing its 
 capital. There was His ability to get on with peo^ 
 pie — His consideration, tact, patience, friendliness 
 
56 A MOEE CHKISTIABT INDUSTEIAL OBDEE 
 
 — ^ these enrich a man in his contacts with his fel- 
 lows and help him to get on with his Father in 
 heaven, to be " rich toward God." There was His 
 skill in doing for people which made Him so valu- 
 able an addition to any circle or town, any home or 
 synagogue, in which He was, and would enable Him 
 to bring imtold wealth to the city of God. Learn- 
 ing to appreciate, to get on with others, to be skilled 
 in doing for them — these are ways of laying up 
 treasure in heaven, methods of accumulating capital 
 which wiU never pass its dividends here or in any 
 other part of God's universe. 
 
 The Church as the Body of Christ is the incor- 
 poration of a number of His disciples investing to- 
 gether their wealth of appreciation, of fellowship, of 
 skill in serving their community and world. Un- 
 fortunately the membership roll of most churches 
 contains the names of many who make no investment. 
 An owner of a chicken farm in Connecticut recently 
 had one of the experts in the state's employ visit his 
 farm. Prior to the expert's coming a careful record 
 had been kept of the eggs laid daily in each house. 
 The expert looked the hens over and put aside sixty 
 per cent, as slackers. In the weeks that followed the 
 record showed that the remaining forty per cent. 
 produced ninety-five per cent, of the eggs, while the 
 sixty per cent, of the hens contributed only five per 
 cent. In most churches there is a similar propor- 
 tion of workers and slackers, and the slackers are by 
 no means exclusively or predominantly among the 
 
THE CHEISTIAKr AS INVESTOE 57 
 
 ecclesiastical hens. A farmer can order his unprof- 
 itable chickens to instant execution; but a church's 
 problem with its unproductive members is more diffi- 
 cult of solution. 
 
 Jesus definitely connects the investment of money 
 with heavenly wealth : " Make to yourselves friends 
 by means of the mammon of unrighteousness." He 
 would have us turn our savings in money into rela- 
 tionships with people. A business which is carried 
 on as a service of men's needs, or a loan made to an 
 impoverished nation to set its industries on their feet, 
 fulfills that requirement. Such an investment of 
 capital sets mills going, carries people and goods 
 where they need to be taken, supplies food, affords 
 pleasure. Would that we could see the text applied 
 to every dollar invested in bonds or placed in a sav- 
 ings bank ! To substitute the friendly hand for the 
 grasping hand in the use of capital is to Christianize 
 its investment. Paul was speaking of the use of 
 money when he spoke of sowing to the Spirit. 
 
 And Jesus' saying about making friends out of 
 money suggests, more particularly, friendly ap- 
 proadies to men from which we expect no financial 
 return. The support of hospitals, of schools, of 
 churches, are all friendly services. And as Chris- 
 tians we need to think carefully of the levels on 
 which we wish to try to be friends. All kindly peo- 
 ple, whatever their beliefs, want to befriend men in 
 physical want, and Christians will do their share in 
 this. All intelligent people, whatever their creed. 
 
58 A MOEE CHEISTIAN INDTJSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 want to befriend the mental needs of mankind ; and 
 Christians will do their full part in the work of edu- 
 cation. But to-day when we have had brought home 
 to us through the terrors of war that healthy bodies 
 and highly trained minds may belong to beastly men, 
 that nations may have abundance for the physical 
 and intellectual necessities of their people and leave 
 them spiritually paupers, Christians will want above 
 all things to befriend men's spirits. In view of the 
 capital that is in Christian hands, the enterprise of 
 pushing the kingdom of Christ ought to have a vastly 
 larger investment. This is to turn money into the 
 highest form of friendliness, the friendship of men 
 in Christ. 
 
 And Jesus gives His reason for urging this trans- 
 mutation of wealth from possession of things, which 
 can exist for us here only, into contacts with people 
 who will be with us forever : " Make to yourselves 
 friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, 
 that when it shall fail, they may receive you into the 
 eternal tabernacles." Whatever such dwellings may 
 be, it will be friendly people who will make them 
 homelike for you and me. What a prospect of enter- 
 ing on a fellowship with persons, many of whom we 
 have never seen, but with whom we begin on the 
 basis of friendship in the eternal kingdom, because 
 we invested ourselves and our means in undertakings 
 which enriched them with the friendship of Christ, 
 the mutual Friend of us all ! 
 
CHAPTEK m 
 
 SHE CHEISTIAir AS EMPLOYEE AND EMPLOYEE 
 
 The Old Testament has little to say iipoii employer 
 and employed because throughout a large part of Is- 
 rael's history it was not a common relation. The 
 word translated "servant" usually means "slave," 
 and the bondman, like a wife or an ox or an ass, was 
 considered his master's property. War and want 
 were the two chief sources of slaves. A successful 
 military leader, such as Joshua or David, made cap- 
 tives who served as the drudges of their victors, their 
 hewers of fire-wood and drawers of water. The 
 failure of a crop or some other calamity might re- 
 duce a small farmer to debt, and compel him to sell 
 himself and his family to a wealthier neighbor who 
 could maintain them. It was against this bondage 
 for debt that Amos protested, when he spoke of the 
 needy as sold for a paltry sum, the price of a pair 
 of shoes. The Hebrews could not forget that they 
 had themselves been slaves in Egypt, and in the midst 
 of a world where slavery was universal their legis- 
 lation attempted to assure an enslaved Hebrew his 
 social and his religious rights ; and it also threw some 
 himiane safeguards about the enslaved foreigner. 
 
 59 
 
60 A MOEE CHEISTIAIT INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 The later law-givers undertook to prohibit alto- 
 gether the holding of fellow-Israelites, and to permit 
 only the possession of slaves belonging to other na- 
 tions : " If thy brother be waxed poor with thee, and 
 sell himself unto theej thou shalt not make him to 
 serve as a bondservant. As a hired servant he shall 
 be with thee; he ^hall serve with thee unto the year 
 of jubilee: then shall he go out from thee, he and 
 his children with him, and shall return unto his own 
 family, and imto the possession of his fathers shall 
 he return. And as for thy bondmen and thy bond- 
 maids, whom thou shalt have ; of the nations that are 
 round about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and 
 bondmaids." Hired servants are occasionally 
 mentioned; but the only specific provision for them 
 in the Law decrees the prompt payment of their 
 wages : " Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that 
 is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, 
 or of thy sojourners that are in thy land within thy 
 gates : in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither 
 shall the sun go down upon it (for he is poor and 
 setteth his heart upon it) ; lest he cry against thee 
 unto Jehovah, and it be sin unto thee." We may 
 sum up the Old Testament's teaching as a plea for 
 humaneness. 
 
 In the New Testament also " servant " remains 
 usually a translation for " slave " ; and the back- 
 ground is the more degraded position of the bond- 
 man in Grseco-Eoman society. In Palestine slaves 
 seem not to have been more than a fraction of the 
 
EMPLOTBE AND EMPLOTBE 61 
 
 population. When, the exiles returned under Ne- 
 hemiah, the figures are some forty-two thousand freer 
 men to ahout seven thousand slaves: a ratio of six 
 to one. But in the Athens of the corresponding date 
 it is estimated that there were four slaves to every 
 citizen. In the little island of ^gina, slightly less 
 than twice the size of Manhattan in extent, there 
 were at one period 470,000 slaves. "Wealthy Koman 
 land-owners are said to have possessed as many as 
 ten or twenty thousand on their estates. The slave 
 was at his master's disposal: he had no rights of 
 marriage; and for the smallest offense he might be 
 scourged, mutilated, crucified, or thrown to the wild 
 beasts. It is a well known fact that wherever slaves 
 are common, free labor has a low position; and the 
 hireling is not esteemed when he is mentioned in the 
 New Testament : " The hireling fleeth because he is 
 an hireling." 
 
 Jesus was familiar with slavery in its milder 
 Palestinian form; but in one of His parables He 
 alludes to the power of the master to punish a bond- 
 man : " the lord of that slave shall come in a day 
 when he expecteth not and shall cut him with scourg- 
 ing " ; and in another parable He speaks of a master 
 delivering his slave to the tormenters. He gives no 
 specific teaching as to slavery, and it is doubtful 
 whether He judged the institution one way or an- 
 other; but He proclaims the brotherhood of all men 
 as God's children. He refers occasionally to hired 
 servants; and His own feelings may be caught in 
 
62 A MOEB CHEISTIAIT INDTrSTEIAL OBDEE 
 
 tbat suggestive parable where a proprietor seeking 
 laborers finds the unemployed in the market-plaee, 
 and with a conscience for the living wage gives those 
 who work only a fraction of the day a full day's pay. 
 But Jesus does not treat of the relation of employer 
 and employed. He inculcates the spirit of service 
 and of brotherhood, and leaves men to apply it. 
 
 Paul encountered the severer slavery of the Grseco- 
 Eoman world. It is unlikely that he ever considered 
 the moral basis of the institution; that was not a 
 question in his time. He sends back the runaway, 
 Onesimus, and, like Jesus, he bids Philemon treat 
 him as "a brother beloved." He advised bond- 
 men who could obtain their freedom to avail them- 
 selves of the chance : " If thou canst become free 
 use it " ; and he warned Christians against falling 
 into the status of slaves : " Ye were bought with a 
 price; become not bondservants of men." He in- 
 sisted that in Christ there could not be bond and 
 free ; and so he did away, at least as between Chris- 
 tians, with the servile relation of property to owner. 
 Jesus and His apostles were not revolutionists, in 
 the sense of assaulting a particular social system; 
 but they were radicals, who put leaven into society 
 that was destined to work a complete transformation. 
 Three centuries after Paul, we find a Christian 
 preacher, John Chrysostom, telling his hearers that, 
 if they really care for their slaves, they must " buy 
 them, and having taught them some art that they 
 
EMPLOYEE AWD EMPLOYEE 63 
 
 may maintain themselves, set them free." "I 
 know," he adds, as a preacher of to-day occasionally 
 feels when discussing industrial questions, " I know 
 that I am annoying my hearers ; hut what can I do ? 
 For this purpose I am appointed, and I will not 
 cease speaking so." The total effect of Christianity 
 upon relations which seem to imply superiority and 
 inferiority was well expressed in a hook written by 
 Goldwin Smith in 1863, when the slavery struggle 
 was still on in this country : " The brotherhood of 
 man is the idea which Christianity in its social phase 
 has been always striving to realize, and the progress 
 of which constitutes the social history of Christen- 
 dom. With what difficulties this idea has struggled ; 
 how it has been marred by revolutionary violence, 
 as well as impeded by reactionary selfishness; to 
 what chimerical hopes, to what wild schemes, to what 
 calamitous disappointments, to what desperate con- 
 flicts, it has given birth ; how often being misunder- 
 stood and misapplied, it has brought not peace on 
 earth but a sword — it is needless here to rehearse. 
 StiU, as we look back over the range of past history, 
 we can see beyond doubt that it is towards this goal 
 that Christianity as a social principle has been al- 
 ways tending and still tends." 
 
 In applying Christian principles to the relation- 
 ships of employers and employed in our time, it is 
 convenient to distinguish between personal relations, 
 such as a farmer has with his help, a housekeeper 
 
64 A MORE CHBISTIAN INDUSTRIAL OEDEE 
 
 with domestics, or a business-man with his secretary 
 or office-boy, and the more impersonal relations of 
 wage-earners and employers in industrial enterprises. 
 In the personal contacts of employer and employed 
 sincere Christians have found it possible to embody 
 the Spirit of Christ in both positions. They have 
 lived together in these relations in mutual respect, 
 confidence and affection. That seems to be the cor- 
 rect order in which these nouns should be placed. 
 Let employer and employed learn first to respect each 
 other, then to trust and be worthy of each other's 
 trust, and brotherly love follows. In this country 
 the use of the words " master " and " mistress " in 
 this connection is practically obsolete, save in real 
 estate parlance, where the phrase "masters' bed- 
 rooms " remains current ; but that is merely a con- 
 venient designation, and the housing accommodations 
 of those in service have markedly improved within a 
 generation. Among us no Christian employer feels 
 justified in asking for an attitude of deferential 
 servility — that is recognized as both unamerican 
 and unchristian. An employer's main obligation 
 can be summed up in the words " considerate jus- 
 tice." He must be thoughtful of an employee's 
 leisure, a leisure that may be fairly counted on and 
 is not subject to sudden change or interruption; 
 thoughtful of his independence, so that he does not 
 intermeddle with private matters nor attempt, how- 
 ever benevolently, to play providence and arrange 
 another's affairs; thoughtful of his employee's so- 
 
BMPLOTEE AND EMPLOYEE 65 
 
 oial and spiritual opportunities. Certain positions 
 appear to doom those who fill them to needless lone- 
 liness and reduce them to mental starvation. And 
 even nominally Christian employers are shamefully 
 unregarding of the spirits of those who serve them. 
 A woman in domestic employment in bringing her 
 church letter said that the employer in whose house- 
 hold she lived had the impression that she was a 
 Roman Catholic, " and " she said, " please do not 
 let her know that I'm not ; because when they think 
 you a Roman Catholic, they feel that you miist be 
 let off to attend chnrch, and will even help to get you 
 there ; while, if you're a Protestant, it doesn't much 
 matter." 
 
 And " considerate justice " may equally sum up 
 the duties of the employee in these personal rela- 
 tions. It is a great shame that certain customs such 
 as the receiving of commissions on purchases, occa- 
 sional pilfering, and the taking of tips, tend to lower 
 the dignity of some employments. These are prac- 
 tices which should be abolished by common Chris- 
 tian consent. Both positions of employer and em- 
 ployed have been used by tactful and earnest Chris- 
 tians as opportunities to exert an influence for 
 Christ. One might suppose that an employer had 
 more advantages in this matter; but in experience 
 one discovers employees even more conscientious in 
 drawing their employers, and particularly their em- 
 ployers' children, to the friendship of Christ. 
 
 It is in the largely impersonal relations of modern 
 
66 A MORE CHEISTIAK INDUSTEIAIi OEDEE 
 
 industry that we have been less successful in em- 
 bodying Christian brotherhood. The impersonal 
 character of the relations is responsible for much. A 
 JJ^ew England manufacturer who served on the War 
 Labor Board ascribes eighty per cent, of the diffi- 
 culties between employers and employed which came 
 under his observation to absentee management. The 
 more remote a member of the employing group is 
 from the laborer, the less likely is he to appreciate his 
 point of view. But this is not the entire difficulty. 
 No one can be content with the present situation in 
 which employers and employed are drawn up in mu- 
 tually suspicious and hostile camps, and the com- 
 munity suffers from an epidemic of wasteful and em- 
 bittering strikes and lockouts, calling often for . the 
 armed intervention of police and troops. Thought- 
 ful men realize that the existing state of affairs can- 
 not be indefinitely prolonged. Some cataclysm will 
 occur, and by this time, God knows, we ought to ap- 
 preciate what cataclysms mean. As Christians we 
 are confident that we possess the secret of avoiding 
 such a disaster; we know that the situation can be 
 entirely changed if we can induce men to adopt our 
 spiritual principle. We look on society as a living 
 organism, and believe that social systems have to be 
 grown, not made; so we are not advocating some 
 ready-made schemer of industrial reorganization. 
 We are eager for the intelligent and hearty adop- 
 tion of the Christian point of view. We know how 
 slavery was immediately altered and ultimately 
 
EMPLOYEB Airo EMPLOYEE 67 
 
 abolished when men accepted Christian brotherhood. 
 ,We are convinced that once the Christian mind 
 dominates our industrial situation, methods of 
 Christian adjustment will follow. We, therefore, try- 
 to face present conditions with the searching con- 
 science of Christ. 
 
 A first criticism of ourselves is of our attitude 
 both as employers and employees towards the pub- 
 lic; we are too generally competing for private gain 
 instead of co-operating for public service. There 
 was a time, and that not so remote, when the atti- 
 tude of those in control of some of our large corpora- 
 tions was expressed in the graphic phrase : " The 
 public be damned ! " To-day a similar attitude is 
 occasionally taken by the leaders of a powerful labor 
 union. We have to remind both that from the 
 Christian standpoint they are fellow-servants of the 
 community. And we cannot fail to be sympathetic 
 vnth. efforts made by the community to assert its 
 right to be served, and to insist that employers and 
 employed concern themselves primarily with meeting 
 its needs, looking only for a compensation which the 
 community considers a reasonable return for the ser- 
 vices they render. A city's milk supply cannot be 
 left to the milk companies and their employees ; both 
 may combine to exploit the public. We have for 
 some years protected the city's health by rules re- 
 garding the production and delivery of milk. We 
 are evidently going further, and inquiring what are 
 the costs of milk, and what are fair compensations 
 
68 A MOEE CHEISTIAK IND0STEIAL OEDEE 
 
 for those who participate in the industry — compen- 
 sations that offer sufficient inducements to procure 
 the supply which we need. Such determinations 
 are difficult and delicate. Public service commis- 
 sions may be unintelligent and even unjust. But 
 the trend of the day is towards some form of social 
 control of essential industries. It is a further de- 
 velopment of democracy ; and, as Christians, we can- 
 not do other than sympathize with it, because it as- 
 serts and attempts to embody our fundamental prin- 
 ciple that all who take part in industry are servants 
 of the commonwealth. We do not allow soldiers or 
 policemen to strike; their loyalty to the community 
 demands that they fulfil their functions. But have 
 not those who are charged with the ministry of neces- 
 sary industries, be they owners of mines or of sugar 
 plantations, or employees in any vital public service, 
 a similar responsibility ? Must we not remind them 
 that they, too, have a civic duty? To be sure we 
 must guarantee to them proper means of airing 
 grievances and righting wrongs. We must grant 
 them the right to resign from their positions, as we 
 allow public servants to give up their posts. No man 
 can be compelled to work. But the community's 
 right to be served must be paramount in a Christian 
 society. We have a great deal of machinery to de- 
 velop and set in operation to make this effective, but 
 the Christian principle involved seems clear as day. 
 We tell ourselves as employers and employed in all 
 the essential ministries of transportation, of fuel, of 
 
EMPLOYEE AND EMPLOYEE 69 
 
 food, of clothing, of health, of education, of religion, 
 that we are fellow-servants of the community and 
 must work together in its service. 
 
 Our next criticism has to do with the relation of 
 employers and employed to each other. Hitherto 
 the employee has been usually looked on as a 
 "hand," rather than as a citizen of industry. His 
 labor has been viewed as a commodity to he sold in 
 the " labor market." His work has been more con- 
 sidered than his personality. If it were more prof- 
 itable to employ him casually, he was .taken on and 
 laid off, regardless of the ill effects casual employ- 
 ment has in producing casual character. He has had 
 no voice in the enterprise in which he served. The 
 employer has been givrai autocratic control of in- 
 dustry, so far as his employees were concerned. It 
 may have made for efficiency in material organiza- 
 tion; it has not promoted brotherhood in the rela- 
 tions of man and man. 
 
 And it is plain that this, too, is rapidly passing. 
 Labor has organized to protect its interests. The 
 combination of wage-earners in unions for collective 
 bargaining is justified, like universal military train- 
 ing, by the necessities of a time of strife. The two 
 systems are closely akin. Both organize men for 
 defense ; both stress loyalty to the group ; both tend 
 io subordinate the individual's freedom and con- 
 science to the group's will. Both claim many in- 
 cidental advantages for those whom they thus or- 
 ganize — training in common action, in self-sacri- 
 
To A MOEE CHRISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 fice, in devotion to a cause. Both lay stress upon 
 discipline — conformity to rules. But from a 
 Christian point of view both have the grave defect 
 of being organizations for conflict. They stimulate 
 the combative and not the creative spirit. We 
 should not have a more Christian adjustment of our 
 industries, if all employers were combined on one 
 side, in their organizations, and all employees on the 
 other side in their unions, any more than we should 
 have more Christian international relations did all 
 nations drill every able-bodied male inhabitant in 
 their populations. 
 
 Kecently both in Britain and in this country a 
 number of organizations have sprung up, known as 
 Works Councils, or by some similar title, which try 
 to combine employers and employed in a given en- 
 terprise in a common attempt to increase the effi- 
 ciency of their business, to settle differences, to fos- 
 ter goodwill, and to give all concerned a voice in the 
 control and a sense of responsibility for the success 
 of their industry. The forms of organization vary; 
 the extent to which employees participate in control 
 differs. The movement is as yet in its infancy, and 
 the results are still too meager to make a sound 
 judgment on the plan possible. Like all methods, its 
 success depends upon the spirit in which it is con- 
 ceived and attempted. If it be a pretense at brother- 
 hood, it is foredoomed. But in less than two years 
 this scheme, which is widely used in Britain, has been 
 adopted by more than two hundred establishments in 
 
EMPLOYEE AND EMPLOYEE 71 
 
 this country employing half a million workers. It 
 seems a congenial method of advance for the Chris- 
 tian spirit. 
 
 And it is of vital moment that we Christians exer- 
 cise our ministry of reconciliation in our industries 
 to-day. The radical would do away with the em- 
 ployer and place the employees in complete control, 
 but industry requires trained leadership. The con- 
 servative would maintain efficiency by keeping the 
 control exclusively in the employer's power; but 
 production requires the hearty goodwill of the em- 
 ployees, and that is notoriously lacking. As fol- 
 lowers of Jesus we believe in fellowship, in bring- 
 ing representatives of seemingly hostile inteifests 
 face to face, and keeping them in personal contact, 
 in getting them to share responsibilities and to lose 
 their selfishness in the more inclusive aim of the 
 community's service. 
 
 And this brings us to our most serious quarrel with 
 things as they are — ^ the assumption 'that every man, 
 employer or employee, can be moved only by his self- 
 interest. When the Constitutional Convention was 
 discussing the question of allowing slavery in the 
 new Eepublic, John Eutledge of South Carolina 
 said: "Eeligion and humanity have nothing to do 
 with this question. Interest alone is the governing 
 principle with nations. The true question is 
 whether the Southern States shall or shall not be 
 parties to the union." When religion and humanity 
 are subordinated to self-interest, an economic and in- 
 
72 A MOBE CHBISTIAK INDTTSTEIAL OEDEB 
 
 dustrial catastrophe is prepared for, as happened in 
 the Civil "War; and the disaster was severest for 
 those whose forebears chose the path of self-interest. 
 Any scheme which appeals mainly to this incentive 
 is doomed to a similar tragic judgment. We can- 
 not build a golden society out of leaden motives. 
 We did not appeal to self-interest when we asked men 
 to hazard their lives for the world's freedom, and 
 they responded gloriously to a far loftier appeal. 
 We must plead for their consecration to render our 
 industries worthy of the day of brotherhood for 
 which many of the soldier-dead wistfully dreamed. 
 The parable of Jesus in which laborers receive the 
 same pay for longer and shorter days expressly 
 teaches that what a man gets is not to be his incen- 
 tive to work. Paul wisely told both slaves and free- 
 men to abide in their callings " with God." This 
 means that both employers and employed seek first 
 to share the point of view and the motives of the 
 Father of Jesus Christ. With such outlooks and 
 aims, agreements can be reached; for persons who 
 seem to touch nowhere else can find themselves in 
 contact in the love of God. And despite all cynical 
 remarks about human nature, is it not true that by 
 and large employers and employed to-day really wish 
 to end the straining, embittering, warlike reign of 
 self-seeking, and to substitute the reign of devoted 
 service? They may not phrase it in that language; 
 but is not every chamber of commerce and employers' 
 association, and every workingmen's union, sincerely 
 
EMPLOYEE AND EMPLOYEE 73 
 
 eager to have done with the present era of selfish 
 strife ? Here is the Church's chance to interpret to 
 men their own desires, to point out that whatever 
 they think they want — and they may be thinking 
 largely in terms of material good things for them- 
 selves and theirs — they really want to serve in 
 brotherhood, and that this alone would satisfy them 
 and make possible the attainment of other things 
 which are always added to those who seek first to 
 serve in fellowship. Here is our chance to hold 
 up before them and before ourselves God as willing 
 this better day, willing it just as soon as we are will- 
 ing to let Him give it to us, for a day of the Lord 
 is always " at hand." Here is our chance to re- 
 assert our Christian faith in men — in captains of 
 industry and in the lowliest privates in the ranks — 
 as capable of working in the trades and commerce 
 of to-day, as did the Carpenter of Nazareth, and of 
 forming together one comradeship of labor, as the 
 mind which was in Christ is formed in us. 
 
 And before we leave this subject it is worth noting 
 that the writers of the New Testament, who so con- 
 stantly stress brotherhood between man and man, 
 when they think of their relation to Jesus, do not 
 call themselves His brethren, although they think He 
 so calls them; nor do they regard themselves as his 
 hired servants, as though they were free to leave him 
 at wiU, With all their newly awakened manhood, 
 they subscribe themselves " slaves of Jesus Christ." 
 They give themselves to Him completely and for- 
 
74 A MOEE CHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 ever. They wish to be owned by Him outright. 
 While with one another and with all men they are 
 brethren, One is their Master, even Christ. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 DEMOCBACT AND FAITH 
 
 The movement in the industrial world of our day 
 is often described as a demand for industrial democ- 
 racy. The phrase needs to be defined. It is evi- 
 dently employed in widely differing senses by Presi- 
 dent "Wilson and Bill Haywood, a leader of the 
 Industrial Workers of the World. It has been used 
 as the sub-title of a book, in which the writer de- 
 scribes a limited participation of factory operatives 
 in the control of the conditions of their work and 
 in the share of half of a certain arbitrarily calculated 
 increased profit. But there are three factors at pres- 
 ent in industry — the investors, the workers, and the 
 consumers — and we cannot label " industrial de- 
 mocracy " any form of organization in which all three 
 are not represented and in which the determining 
 factor is not the public — the community whom the 
 industry serves. 
 
 Democracy is not a distinctively Christian pro- 
 duct, although Christianity has probably been the 
 most potent single force in developing it; but it is 
 so congruous with the Spirit of Christ that to-day 
 
 Christians cannot do otherwise than sympathize 
 
 75 
 
76 A MOEE CHEISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 with its political and industrial advances. And de- 
 mocracy makes a vast demand upon faith — faith in 
 the capacities of ordinary men and women, faith in 
 the power of spiritual ideals, faith in the universe 
 as friendly to hrotherhood. 
 
 Faith in the capacities of ordinary men and 
 women. Those who oppose allowing the workers a 
 voice in the management of a factory or a mine are 
 wont to say : " Do you suppose that unskilled 
 laborers, or even fairly skilled laborers, are fit to 
 share in running this enterprise ? " On the other 
 hand radicals assert that the present capitalists are 
 not worthy to be entrusted with any control in the 
 railroads or mills of the system which they hope to 
 inaugurate. Both sides approach the subject with a 
 want of faith in man. 
 
 Wars have usually been followed by reactionary 
 periods in which counsels of timidity and distrust 
 have prevailed and there has been a tendency to 
 concentrate authority in a few strong hands. After 
 the Wars of the Eoses came the Tudors; after the 
 civil strife of the Commonwealth era the Stuarts 
 were restored; after the Napoleonic epoch the 
 Bourbons returned. In 1812 we find Walter Soott 
 writing to Robert Southey in words that sound 
 strangely familiar at this moment : " You are quite 
 right in apprehending a Jacquerie: the country is 
 mined below our feet. Last week, learning that a 
 meeting was to be held among the weavers of a large 
 manufacturing village of Galashiels, for the purpose 
 
DEMOOBACT AND FAITH 77 
 
 of cutting a man's web from his loom, I apprehended 
 the ringleaders and disconcerted the project; but 
 in the course of my inquiries, imagine my surprise 
 at discovering a bundle of letters aad printed mani- 
 festoes, from which it appeared that the Manchester 
 Weavers' Committee corresponds with every manu- 
 facturing town in the South and West of Scotland 
 and levies a subsidy of 2s.6d. per man — (an im- 
 mense sum) — for the ostensible purpose of petition- 
 ing Parliament for redress of grievances, but doubt- 
 less to sustain them in their revolutionary move- 
 ments. An energetic administration would soon 
 check all this; but it is sickening to think of our 
 situation." But we recall the pitiable plight of the 
 weavers at that time when power-looms were being 
 introduced, and know that Scott's Tory feelings, 
 intensified by his military training in the local 
 militia, which had been organized to ward off a feared 
 attack by Napoleon on Britain, led him to cruel dis- 
 trust of his fellow-countrymen. 
 
 It is easy to run down the mass of human beings. 
 Millions are woefully ignorant; millions more are 
 lazy; most are hideously selfish. The war revealed 
 abysmal depths in Germans and Turks, and race 
 riots have shown no less brutality in some white 
 Americans. It is perilous to have a blind confidence 
 in people — to expect uneducated negroes to show 
 the same self-control as long-civilized Anglo-Saxons, 
 to anticipate the operatives of a factory to be sud- 
 denly gifted with business skill to assume its direo- 
 
Y8 A MOBE CHEISTIAW INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 tion, to fancy Chinese coolies and Russian peasants 
 in a twinkling competent for self-government, to 
 think a labor-union less selfish than the stockholders 
 of a corporation. But it is even more perilous to 
 trust people too little — to believe that negroes must 
 remain moral and mental inferiors to be cowed by 
 violence, that workers cannot be developed to share 
 business responsibilities, that Chinese or Koreans 
 or Hindus are incapable of being trained to self- 
 government, that both stockholders and workers can- 
 not be inspired with the motives of public service. 
 With such unbelief we shall fall back on a creed, 
 like Nietzsche's, that a few supermen ought to be 
 allowed by their shrewdness and force to inherit the 
 earth and impose their will on the herd of common 
 folk. But how are we to gain this faith in the 
 capacities of ordinary men and women, the crea- 
 tive faith which awakens in them that which they 
 are trusted to be ? That is our first problem. 
 
 A second faith which an enthusiast for democ- 
 racy requires is belief in the power of spiritual 
 ideals. It is supposed that self-interest is the only 
 motive strong enough to drive men to fight or to 
 work or to do any of life's difficult and monotonous 
 things. Many insist upon looking at labor disputes 
 as quarrels over money only; and the notion that a 
 workman wishes to be a citizen of industry and to be 
 recognized as a partner is far above out of their 
 sight. It is the same frame of mind which insists 
 
DEMOCEAO^ AND FAITH 79 
 
 on viewing the settlement of the Peace solely from 
 the angle of national interest. 
 
 Those were timely lines which Alfred Noyes 
 penned last summer : — 
 
 Now in this morning of a nobler age. 
 
 Though night-born eyes, long taught to fear the sun. 
 Would still delay the world's great heritage. 
 
 Make firm, O God, the peace our dead have won, 
 Por folly shakes the tinsel on her head 
 
 And points us back to darkness and to hell, 
 CacMing — "Beware of visions," while our dead 
 
 Still cry, "It was for visions that we fell." 
 
 1^0 democracy, either in war or in peace, can dis- 
 pense with the stimulus of vision. And the exten- 
 sion of democracy to industry presupposes respon- 
 siveness to the claims of the community, consecra- 
 tion to the service of the commonwealth, consciences 
 sensitive to the appeals of brotherhood. Many 
 frankly have no confidence in the potency of altruis- 
 tic ideals. How are we to steady our own faith and 
 render it contagious? That is our second problem. 
 A third faith which the devotee of democracy must 
 possess is belief m the universe as friendly to this 
 fraternal order. One is amazed at the naive con- 
 fidence of many socially minded persons who are so 
 sure that a juster and kindlier industrial order is 
 possible, without troubling to ask themselves whether 
 the world in which we live is meant for a human 
 brotherhood. The fabric of nature seems con- 
 
80 A MOBB OHBIHTIi05r IWDUSTBIAX. OEDBB 
 
 structed along contrary lines. The race is to the 
 swift and the battle to the strong. Wars rage every- 
 where among germs, plants, insects, fish, beasts, and 
 have always been waged by men. The advocates of 
 social progress have often found nature a stumbling 
 block. " The whole subject of the brute creation," 
 wrote Dr. Thomas Arnold, " is to me one of such 
 painful mystery that I dare not approach it." And 
 scientists hardly increase our faith by their predic- 
 tions of what is to be. In 1909 M. J. de Morgan, 
 a leading French anthropologist, wrote: "The 
 glacial period is far from being ended; our times 
 which still make an integral part of it, are charac- 
 terized by an important retreat of the glaciers, 
 started long before the beginnings of history. It is 
 to be supposed that this retreat of the ice is not de- 
 finitive, but that the cold will return, and with it the 
 depopulation of a part of our globe, iN^othing can 
 enable us to foretell the amplitude of this future 
 oscillation, or the lot which the laws of nature des- 
 tine to humanity. During this cataclysm revolu- 
 tions will occur which the most fecund imagination 
 cannot conceive — disasters the more horrible be- 
 cause, while the population of the earth goes on in- 
 creasing every day, and even the less favored dis- 
 tricts become little by little inhabited, the different 
 groups, crowded back one on another and finding no 
 more space for existence, will be driven to internecine 
 destruction." That is hardly a prospect calculated 
 to confirm our hope of the progress of brotherhood. 
 
DEMOCEACY AND FAITH 81 
 
 Milton makes his Eve, the day after the first tragedy 
 in Eden, say to Adam : 
 
 See, the mom. 
 All tmconcem'd with our unrest, begins 
 Her rosy progress smiling. 
 
 What assurance have vre that this earth, in which 
 ■we are hoth children and aliens, is the ally of our 
 hopes, is meant for a democratic society of friendly 
 nations and an industrial order of brethren labor- 
 ing together in mutual trust and service? That is 
 our third problem. 
 
 The supreme contribution which Christians have 
 to offer is the religious solution of these three prob- 
 lems. Our historic faith in God corresponds to de- 
 mocracy's threefold need for faith — faith in the 
 capacities of plain people, faith in the power of 
 spiritual ideals, faith in the universe as friendly 
 to brotherhood. We believe in God revealed in a 
 plain Man, the Carpenter of Nazareth; in God the 
 Holy Spirit present in all ideals akin to those of 
 this Man; in God the Father, Lord of heaven and 
 earth, assuring the alliance of the entire creation 
 with such ideals and guaranteeing their victory. A 
 more Christian industrial order can come only as 
 the answer to a larger confidence in the God and 
 Father of Jesus Christ. According to our faith it 
 is done unto us. 
 
 We believe in the capacities of ordinary men and 
 women because we have seen what a man can be in 
 
82 A MOEE CHBISTIAN INDUSTEIAL OEDEE 
 
 Jesus, the Son of God. If one child of the Father's, 
 made in all points like unto His brethren, can as 
 a workman at his bench and as a teacher with his 
 pupils contain the fulness of the Godhead, can be 
 governed by the love and disclose the wisdom of the 
 Lord of the universe, every child of God is equally 
 capacious. Jesus lived in a subject people, with no 
 more voice in its government than a Korean in the 
 Japanese Empire or a negro in some of our south- 
 ern states. What a loss to the Syria of the First 
 Century and to the Roman Empire that a conscience 
 and mind like His had no chance to be felt directly 
 in public policies! When an autocratic employer 
 asks : " Are the operatives in this mill fit to share 
 in its management ? " we must probably answer : 
 " Not wholly ; nor, for that matter, are you entirely 
 fit. But both you and they have capacities as chil- 
 dren of God, which must be developed by the chance 
 to put conscience and heart in a fellowship of ser- 
 vice. Wbo knows what enrichment to this enter- 
 prise, to you and to them, will follow the sense that 
 the business is your joint ministry to the common- 
 wealth ? " We believe in the capacities of men, not 
 because of what we see in them at prbsent, but be- 
 cause of what we have seen in our Kinsman, the 
 Son of man, and because in trusting in one another, 
 as He trusted us, we can evoke the human nature 
 which He brings out. 
 
 We believe in the power of Ohristlike ideals — 
 ideals of justice, of service, of brotherhood — not be- 
 
DEMOCEACT AND FAITH 83 
 
 cause we see these triumpliing all about us. Viewed 
 across long stretches of history it is manifest that 
 they do conquer. The union or the corporation 
 which sets itself to thwart justice is doomed. The 
 nation which violates brotherhood will reap a 
 ghastly harvest. The man who snaps his fingers at 
 the obligations of public service will find himseH an 
 impoverished soul. But these results take time in 
 which to show themselves; and there are periods in 
 which ideals appear to lose their force. Bishop Gore 
 said recently : " There is now the usual depression 
 and lowering of moral aims which always follows a 
 time of war. For the real terror of war is not dur- 
 ing the struggle; then the war has very ennobling 
 powers. It is the after-war periods which are the 
 curse of the world, and it looks as though this were 
 going to prove true to-day. I own that I never felt 
 anxiety such as I do now. I think the aspect of 
 things has never been quite so dark as at this moment. 
 I think the temper of the nations has degraded since 
 the Armistice to a degree that is almost terrifying." 
 But our faith in the potency of spiritual ideals rests 
 in our conviction that they are no mere aspirations of 
 high-minded men and women; they are inspirations 
 from the Most Highest; they are the Spirit of God 
 in man. Tbe restlessness of our day is partly earth- 
 bom — the selfish striving for the possession of 
 things, that " covetousness, which is idolatry"; 
 partly it is the breath of heaven, stirring our con- 
 sciences to a more just distribution both of the bur- 
 
84 A MOEE CHBIflTULN INDUSTRIAL OBDBB 
 
 dena and of the satisfactions of life, to a more con- 
 siderate arrangement of our methods of work and 
 enjoyment, so that the whole family of mankind, 
 severally and collectively, receive their Father's 
 bounteous provision for their bodies, minds and 
 spirits. Lincoln, the most conspicuous exponent of 
 the democratic ideal, wrote to his friend, Joshua 
 Speed : " I have no doubt it is the peculiar misfor- 
 tune of both you and me to dream dreams of Ely- 
 sium far exceeding all that anything earthly can 
 realize." " PeauMar misfortune "? — they were his 
 power by which the union was conserved and the 
 slave set free. The Christlike ideals which haunt 
 us in this day of international reorganization and 
 industrial readjustment — however scoffed at as 
 chimerical — are to us promptings of the All-wise, 
 which we may calmly, courageously and confidently 
 espouse. 
 
 And we believe that the universe is friendly to 
 the brotherly scheme of things, not because nature 
 looks differently to us than to other men. Who of 
 us is not time and again baffled and overcome by 
 the inexplicable in the structure of the earth we 
 know, by the sufferings of human beings, by the 
 dark mysteries which leave us saying with our 
 wisest Guide : " My God, why ? " In every age 
 the world, as men view it, has been a cross to faith. 
 But followers of Jesus reach up into the unseen and 
 lay hold of One like Him, His Father, and tell them- 
 selves that He is God. It is not a pure assumption ; 
 
DEMOCEACY AWD FAITH 85 
 
 we pile up corroborative evidence. We try to make 
 this brute universe answer the needs of men and we 
 discover that it responds to our mastery. We turn 
 deserts into gardens by irrigation; we make an 
 acre yield a larger crop by scientific agriculture ; we 
 breed better horses and cattle; we conquer many 
 diseases or render ourselves immune against their at- 
 tacks; we convert pestilential regions into healthy 
 dwelling-places ; we satisfy the wants of many more 
 men as the result of inventions. And this requires 
 cooperation — brother leagued with brother. If the 
 dwellings on one block are left unsanitary, tubercu- 
 losis, starting there, menaces an entire city. Our 
 plague of Influenza is thought to have originated in 
 North China, so that hospitals and physicians sent 
 to mission fields may be no small factor in safeguard- 
 ing health in home lands. Every man's invention 
 is a trust which he dare not keep for his private use. 
 All progress is due to team-work, the chemist assist- 
 ing the pathologist, the student in the laboratory the 
 farmer in the field, the scientist the manufacturer. 
 It is man's collective approach to which nature re- 
 sponds. But it remains an act of faith on our part 
 to fancy that the universe is designed to serve and 
 befriend us, and that to our fellowship in study and 
 toil it will yield a gracious answer. That faith 
 rests in a fatherly God, who made and rules it for 
 the good of the family of His children. 
 
 On the eastern border of California amid the high 
 Sierras above the Nevada desert lies a deep lake. 
 
86 A MORE CHRISTIAN INDUSTRIAL ORDER 
 
 For ages it has been there, waiting with its life-giv- 
 ing water to befriend the arid plain below. Some 
 years since its waters were carried down through a 
 tunnel and a canal, and sent out over the dry waste 
 through irrigating ditches. And to-day the former 
 desert is green with alfalfa and trees and gardens. 
 That fructifying water on the heights, coming 
 through these opened approaches, showing its presence 
 in the fruitful plain is a symbol of the Christian 
 God " over all, and through all, and in all," — 
 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
 
 It is a happy augury for the Christian Church 
 that men are resolving to seek a more fraternal in- 
 dustrial order. We can heartily sympathize with 
 their endeavor. We must spiritualize their draires, 
 lifting them from things as ends, to things as means 
 to mutual service. We must use the Spirit of 
 Christ to point out the next steps to be taken by us 
 as producers and consumers, owners and investors, 
 employers and employees. We shall find in the un- 
 conscious faith of our time a predisposition to the 
 historic faith of the Church, and we can fortify 
 men's resolve and establish their confidence by pro- 
 claiming God — the God whom they want, and the 
 God who to those who trust Him assures the coming 
 of the more Christian industrial order of our pas- 
 sionate hope. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE TJNITBD STATES OT AMEKIOA