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 CHRISTIANITY AND 
 
 LABOR 
 
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CHRISTIANITY AND THE 
 LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM MONROE BALCH 
 
 Formerly Secretary of the Methodist Federation 
 for Social Service 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERIVMN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
CoPTlIGHT, 1912 
 
 Shehmax, French & Company 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 THE REVEREND MANNING BROWN BALCH 
 
 MY FATHER 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The labor problem may be considered with 
 regard to conditions or theories or duties. The 
 relation of Christianity to the labor movement 
 is essentially ethical and is here discussed chiefly 
 in that aspect. Hence conditions and theories 
 afi'ecting the labor problem are not treated ex- 
 haustively, but only in those essentials in which 
 the conditions create and the theories may ex- 
 plain the duties in view. To enforce the ur- 
 gent social mission of the Church, to indicate 
 the critical duties thrust upon us by the labor 
 problem, to mark some paths toward timely so- 
 cial service, are the purposes of the present 
 study of Christianity and the Labor Movement. 
 
 Considerable portions of this volume formerly 
 appeared in a series of articles contributed to 
 "Methodist Men" by the present writer and are 
 published in the following chapters by courtesy 
 of the editor of that periodical. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 I Peuspective and Pkoportions . . 1 
 II The Estrangement of the Church 
 
 AND THE Wage-Earners ... 9 
 
 III Labor's Complaint Against the 
 
 Church 18 
 
 IV Labor's Complaint Against the 
 
 Social Order 28 
 
 V The Cheapness of Human Life 42 
 VI What Church-Men Should Know 
 
 about Labor Unions .... 53 
 VI What Wage-Earners Should 
 
 Know about the Church . . 70 
 VIII The Social Creed of the Church 80 
 
 IX Socialism 91 
 
 X What Christian Men Should Do 100 
 
PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 
 
 Organized religion and organized labor are 
 chief dynamic factors in the progress of modern 
 society. Organized capital is also a great so- 
 cial factor but is conservative rather than pro- 
 gressive. No menace to the future can be so 
 serious as a lasting estrangement between the 
 labor movement and Christianity. No emer- 
 gency could be more critical than the present 
 and pressing necessity of a better understand- 
 ing} and a more cordial cooperation between the 
 Church and the labor unions. 
 
 It is primarily important for the modern 
 Christian man to see the labor movement in its 
 true proportions and perspective. Those who 
 think of it as a "modern inconvenience," or a 
 sort of cutaneous eruption on the surface of the 
 social body, have all but missed the meaning of 
 past history and present times. What, then, 
 is the labor movement.? 
 
 Richard T. Ely says, "The labor movement, 
 then, in its broadest terms, is the effort of men 
 to live the lives of men. . . . The end and 
 purpose of it all is a richer existence for the 
 
% PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 
 
 toilers, and that with respect to mind, soul, and 
 body." 1 
 
 Dean Hodges says, "It is a product partly 
 of the discontent which is at the heart of prog- 
 ress, and partly of the fraternal spirit which is 
 of the essence of the Christian religion." ^ 
 
 Charles P. Neill, United States Commissioner 
 of Labor, says that the labor movement is "the 
 systematic organization of crafts or of indus- 
 tries to secure control of the amount of wages 
 they will receive, the hours they will work, and 
 the conditions under which they will perform 
 their labor." ^ 
 
 The foregoing definitions may be summarized 
 by saying that the labor movement is the in- 
 dustrial aspect of democracy ; that is, indus- 
 try of the people, for the people, and by the 
 people. And Christianity is the religious in- 
 terpretation of democracy ; that is, religion of 
 the people, for the people, and by the people. 
 Thus Christianity and the labor movement are 
 in vital affinity, and "what God hath joined to- 
 gether, let no man put asunder." 
 
 What are the facts that warrant so large an 
 estimate of the labor movement.'' 
 
 First, human history itself. In the words 
 
 1 Quoted^ in "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 
 64-65. 
 
 2 "Faith and Social Service," p. 144. 
 
 3 See "The Social Application of Religion," p. 63. 
 
PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 3 
 
 of Commissioner Neill, "The most of us realize 
 that this labor movement is a world-wide move- 
 ment, but we do not realize that it is a world- 
 old one. Yet this is the keynote to the whole 
 subject, and until we do understand this, we 
 cannot correctly gauge any other aspect of it." * 
 "The economic interpretation of history," a 
 working principle of all scientific historians, 
 implies as one of its essentials, that the facts of 
 history are at no point intelligible save with 
 reference to the struggles of the laboring 
 classes to raise their standards of living. 
 
 It is a modern reading, but not altogether a 
 misreading, of the old story of the Exodus 
 which characterizes it as a strike preceded by 
 a demand on the part of a walking delegate for 
 a living wage and a recognition of the union. 
 It has been discussed somewhat in this view by 
 at least two accredited authorities. 
 
 The history of Rome is essentially that of the 
 economic struggle of the masses against the 
 classes and the decline of classic civilization is 
 essentially a story of the labor movement mov- 
 ing the wrong way. ^ 
 
 Through the middle ages there were no more 
 momentous movements than the abolition of 
 slavery and serfdom ; the peasant revolts, such 
 
 * "The Social Application of Religion," p. 66. 
 5Cf. Mommsen: "Historjr of Rome," Vol. 3, pp. 304- 
 305. 
 
4 PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 
 
 as those of Tyler and Cade in England, of the 
 Jacquerie in France, of the Anabaptists in 
 Germany ; and the rise and power of trade- 
 guilds in the cities of all Europe. Upon these 
 facts and forces, all of them obviously phases 
 of the continuous and underlying labor move- 
 ment, depended the rise and fall of feudalism, 
 and then of absolute monarchy, together with 
 the possibilities of the religious reformation. 
 
 Since the French Revolution the general es- 
 tablishment of popular governments in the civi- 
 lized world has been based upon the political, 
 social, and economic enfranchisement of the 
 working classes. In Great Britain, the Fac- 
 tory Acts prohibiting the exploitation of labor; 
 the repeal of the Conspiracy Laws which had 
 hitherto made illegal the organization of labor ; 
 the Compensation Acts, relieving labor of the 
 fearful cost in life and limb incident to modem 
 industry ; the great social equities of the 
 Lloyd-George Budget followed closely by state- 
 insurance of the working classes against old 
 age, sickness and unemployment, and the estab- 
 lishment of minimum wage boards, — these are 
 simply the statutory way-marks in the progress 
 of the labor movement. And is it too much 
 to say that the anti-slavery movement culminat- 
 ing in the Civil War and the subsequent rise of 
 labor-unionism are the most vital facts of 
 American history? 
 
PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 5 
 
 Commissioner Neill again says truly, "The 
 labor movement is a struggle that has gone on 
 since the beginning of the political history of 
 society — a ceaseless and endless conflict — going 
 back to the first effort of the subjugated and 
 disfranchised to overthrow oppression, to 
 sweep away privilege, and coming down to the 
 present struggle to secure complete equality of 
 opportunity for all men alike to work out their 
 highest indi'V'idual destinies, and for each to 
 live the deepest, the fullest, the richest life pos- 
 sible, and to develop to the fullest all the 
 capacities with which his Creator may have en- 
 dowed him." * 
 
 This large conception of the labor movement 
 is further warranted by the New Testament laws 
 of labor. 
 
 First, we have the law of the divine dignity 
 of labor; "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as 
 to the Lord." The conditions of toil must be 
 transformed from the sordid to the sacra- 
 mental. Labor's task is to perfect God's 
 material creation. When God made the world. 
 He saw indeed that it was good. But it was 
 only a good beginning. It was a universe of 
 raw materials, and He left it for the carpen- 
 ters, the miners, the smiths, the weavers, and 
 all hand-workers of subsequent times to take 
 
 «S€e "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 68-69. 
 
6 PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 
 
 those raw materials and work them over into 
 the varied forms of beauty and usefulness 
 which were to enrich and comfort the life of 
 man. And so it was a fitting thing that God's 
 Son, when he came as a Man, came also as a 
 Carpenter. 
 
 Labor's task is also the perfecting of 
 humanity. The human race, like the physical 
 universe, is in raw material. And in daily toil, 
 not only commodities, but character is the 
 product. 
 
 Again we have the Christian law of labor's 
 liberty. To an oppressed and revolutionary 
 workingman the Christ declared that God being 
 the Father of all, "then are the children free." 
 And the labor movement, in making for equal- 
 ity of opportunity, is achieving that only sort 
 of liberty which is consistent with good order 
 and economic progress and so fulfills the law of 
 Christ. 
 
 Thirdly, we have the Christian law of indus- 
 trial democracy, "Ye know that the rulers of 
 the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great 
 ones exercise authority over them. Not so 
 shall it be among you, but whosoever would be 
 great among you shall be your minister, 
 and whosoever would be first among you 
 shall be your servant; even as the Son 
 of man came not to be ministered unto 
 but to minister, and to give his life a ran- 
 
PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 7 
 
 som for many." On a fair interpretation, 
 these words seem to be identical with labor's 
 demand for a share in the control as well as in 
 the profits of industry. As Lyman Abbott 
 says, "Autocracy in industry has had a fair 
 trial with disastrous results. It has worked 
 no better in industry than it has in the Church 
 and in the State." ^ Of course the time will 
 never come when business can be conducted 
 without leaders, but the leaders must not be 
 lords. In Christ's kingdom there will still be 
 chieftains of industry, but the chieftain will 
 be merely the chief servant and 
 
 "Man to man, the warld o'er 
 Will brothers be for a' that." 
 
 So the labor movement is vast, venerable, and 
 vital, — venerable, because of its age-long po- 
 tency in human history; vast, because of its 
 implications and influences with regard to the 
 general welfare of mankind; vital, because its 
 moral ideas and results involve those things 
 by which civilizations live and die and the 
 kingdom of heaven prevails. In these char- 
 acters the labor movement relates itself, all but 
 identifies itself, with the vitality and progress 
 of the kingdom of Christ. In that relation it 
 is to be considered in these pages. 
 
 If it be asked. Why the Church and Labor 
 
 7 "The Industrial Problem,", p. 129. 
 
8 PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 
 
 rather than tlie Church and Capital, there 
 are two sufficient answers. First, because labor 
 is a function of life, while capital is a func- 
 tion of things. "At the last analysis labor 
 means the laborer." * Second, because labor- 
 ers are the rule, and capitalists the exception. 
 As Professor Ely says, "The labor movement 
 represents mankind as it is represented by no 
 other manifestation of the life of the nations 
 of the earth, because the vast majority of the 
 race are laborers." ® 
 
 8L. A. Banks: "Common Folks' Religion," p. 59. 
 » "The Social Application of Religion," p. 66. 
 
II 
 
 THE ESTRANGEMENT OF THE 
 CHURCH AND THE WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 The most startling truth that can be told 
 is lately being told so often that it is ceasing 
 to startle us. It is this : that the modern 
 Church and the wage-earning class are mu- 
 tually estranged. Unless we move out of our 
 fool's paradise in time, the present estrange- 
 ment may at last develop a life-and-death 
 emergency. Eor the Christian Church, if fi- 
 nally alienated from the working-classes, would 
 not be Christian. And the labor movement, un- 
 inspired by Christian ideals, would be sordid in 
 motive and chaotic in result. And society at 
 large, with its two most potent forces thus 
 perverted, would suffer disaster in its most 
 vital interests. Such calamity may seem far- 
 off, but the means of averting it are near at 
 hand to-day, though they may not be to-mor- 
 row. It is the purpose of the present chapter 
 to inquire as to the extent, the nature, and the 
 causes of the estrangement in question. 
 
 1. As to its extent, we must first of all get 
 
 clear of the notion that the Church is suffer- 
 9 
 
10 CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 ing a general decline. A recent and widely- 
 read book ftsserts the estrangement of the 
 working-classes to be so complete that 
 "church-membership is steadily declining in 
 proportion to population."^ Almost simulta- 
 neously with that statement appeared the no- 
 table Census Bulletin which reported that in six- 
 teen years the membership of the churches of 
 the United States had increased over 60 per 
 cent., while population was increasing but 34 
 per cent. Nor can the former percentage be 
 explained away by attributing it to immigra- 
 tion from Roman Catholic countries. For the 
 Protestant church-membership has increased 
 nearly 44 per cent., which is 10 per cent, faster 
 than population. The writer quoted makes 
 sweeping denial of the reliability of church 
 statistics. In that regard it should be suffi- 
 cient to note that such statistics usually afford 
 inadequate rather than an excessive enumera- 
 tion of actual adherents ; witness the un- 
 counted company of "brothers-in-law" and 
 other supporters of the churches whose names 
 are nowhere enrolled or reported. 
 
 Misleading inferences are also drawn from 
 the proportion of wage-earners counted in 
 Sunday congregations. It is thus overlooked 
 that laborers, by the conditions of their life, 
 
 1 C. B. Thompson : "The Churches and the Wage Earn- 
 ers," pp. viii and 7. 
 
CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 11 
 
 are necessarily irregular in church attendance. 
 Even when they so desire, they are unable to 
 maintain the same frequency of attendance as 
 other social classes. With the extensive in- 
 dustrial employment of women this considera- 
 tion becomes an increasing' factor. A grave 
 error is also made by those who overlook the 
 millions of our working people adhering to the 
 Romanist, the Greek and the Hebrew faiths. 
 While our present concern is with Protestant- 
 ism, we must not count these non-Protestant 
 worshipers among "the estranged." It is, 
 however, a matter of grave import that several 
 million lapsed Romanists are to be found 
 among the workingmen of this country, while 
 we have it on good authority that there is also 
 a serious "drift from the synagogue." 
 
 Nor should we forget, as is often done, that 
 two of the most numerous elements in the wage- 
 earning population are by no means estranged 
 from the churches. First, there are the so- 
 called "soft-handed" laborers — clerks, sales- 
 men, book-keepers, and many kinds of 
 "agents." Secondly, there are the manual 
 laborers of all trades in the smaller towns and 
 villages. These two classes, millions strong, to- 
 gether with the professional classes, who in 
 their way are also wage-earners, probably con- 
 stitute a majority of those who work for wages 
 as well as a majority of adult church-members. 
 
12 CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 On the other hand, these wage-earners have 
 little or no class-consciousness or group cohe- 
 sion; they are not unionized, and their social 
 and personal affinities are largely with the other 
 social classes. In other words, these who are 
 not estranged are also not the laborers who 
 make the labor movement. 
 
 On the other hand, we are too complacent in 
 citing the farmers as a class lo3'al to the 
 Church. They are indeed laborers in the sense 
 that they labor. But they are not "wage- 
 earners" ; they are capitalists. "Farm- 
 hands," on the contrary, are wage-earners, 
 and, we have much reason to believe, are also 
 generally estranged from the Church. At the 
 same time they sustain no active or direct part 
 in the labor movement. 
 
 We have still to consider the manual laborers 
 of the cities, together with railway and mine 
 workers. These workingmen are class-con- 
 scious and unionized and are the movers of the 
 labor movement. Are they estranged from the 
 churches? Here we have come to the vital 
 point in the modern social problem. Sadly be 
 it said that the straws seem to indicate an 
 adverse wind. President Plantz states that 
 there were recently in this country 15,000,000 
 men between sixteen and thirty-five years of 
 age, and that 6,000,000 were in touch with the 
 Church and 9,000,000 out of touch with it. 
 
CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 13 
 
 whether Protestant or Catholic.^ It has been 
 ascertained that in London only about six per 
 cent, of the people attend church, while in the 
 suburbs the percentage is about twenty-nine. 
 A similar, though less extreme, condition ob- 
 tains in American cities. Ex-President Bas- 
 com states that in Pittsburg and Allegheny, 
 with a working class population of some 300,- 
 000 and a Protestant membership of 48,000, 
 only 10 per cent, of the latter were working- 
 men.^ The present writer has made inquiry 
 as to the labor-membership of his own denomi- 
 nation in certain cities.* Replies from seven 
 city churches in six states afford the following 
 results : aggregate membership of the churches 
 replying, 3,300 ; number of members who are 
 manual laborers, 570 ; domestic employees, 
 122; accountants, salesmen, stenographers, 
 agents, clerks and teachers, 581 ; members of 
 labor unions, 90. These figures should be con- 
 sidered in view of two qualifying facts ; first, 
 that most of the churches reporting are so con- 
 ducted and environed as to reach an unusual pro- 
 portion of working people; second, that in sev- 
 eral of these churches the manual laborers re- 
 ported as church-members were, in dispropor- 
 tionate number, women and minors. From the 
 
 2 "The Church and the Social Problem," p. 197. 
 
 3 "Social Theory," pp. 2131-214. 
 
 i See "Methodist Men," October, 1910. 
 
14. CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 reports, thus explained, it seems on the one 
 hand that these figures do not confirm the more 
 alarming estimates sometimes made regarding 
 the alienation of labor from the church, nor on 
 the other hand, the easy optimism that sees no 
 occasion for alarm at all. These figures, like 
 others that have been compiled and analyzed 
 with due care, seem to indicate that our city 
 churches are not proportionately constituted 
 of manual laborers and still less of trades-un- 
 ionists. The seriousness of the matter lies not 
 only in the great numbers thus alienated, but 
 in the further facts : first, that the evil is char- 
 acteristic of our cities, \7here all the social prob- 
 lems have appeared in their most difficult 
 forms ; second, that the classes concerned are 
 practically inclusive of organized labor. 
 
 2. In what sense are the Church and the 
 wage-earners estranged.'' A reliable answer is 
 indicated in President Plantz's instructive cor- 
 respondence with labor leaders. Of ninety- 
 three who answered his inquiries, six expressed 
 their attitude toward the Church as "cordial," 
 eleven were "indifferent," seventy-three "dissat- 
 isfied," three "hostile." Positive hostility and 
 positive cordiality seem to be exceptional, and 
 indifference or dissatisfaction all but universal 
 among those wage-workers now under con- 
 sideration.^ The more thoughtful among them 
 
 5 "The Church and the Social Problem," p. 81. 
 
CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 15 
 
 often suspect that the labor movement is not 
 understood by the Church, that laboring-men 
 are not heartily welcomed to its worship and 
 membership, that money or the want of it con- 
 trols the Church. As to the less thoughtful, 
 the Church is often not in their thoughts at all. 
 
 Nor is this all, or the worst. The Church, in 
 much the same sense, is estranged from the 
 wage-earners. While church-people are not, 
 of course, positively hostile to laboring people, 
 it is yet true that indifference and impatience 
 too often mark the attitude of churchmen to- 
 ward the labor movement. The Church thinks 
 about as much and about as little of the union 
 as the union does of the Church. Important 
 as it is that workingmen should have a better 
 appreciation of the Church, it is at least as 
 important that churchmen should have a bet- 
 ter appreciation of the labor movement. 
 
 3. The causes of this evil are not far to 
 seek. It is only blind uncharity that attributes 
 it to the "sinfulness of laboring men." In 
 that case all classes would be estranged from 
 the Church, "for all have sinned and come 
 short of the glory of God." The chief cause 
 of the workingman's indifference is probably 
 his complete preoccupation with other things. 
 Exhausting labor and the menace of poverty, 
 the break-up of household regularity, the clat- 
 ter of traffic and transportation, the brilliancy. 
 
16 CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 
 
 variety and excitement of life in the modern 
 city, are more than enough to pre-engage the 
 mind and overcharge the life of the working- 
 man in advance of the somewhat tardy and not 
 too-pressing solicitations of the Church. And 
 when the indifference awakens into conscious 
 dissatisfaction, it is chiefly by way of reaction 
 against the seeming indifference of the Church 
 toward the labor movement. This reaction 
 may be greatly in excess of its occasion, but 
 what should concern Christian men is that it 
 should have any occasion at all Another 
 chief cause of the evil is immigration, bringing 
 to us, as it has, millions of workingmen who 
 lose their old-world ideals of religion without 
 acquiring the new. 
 
 We note with devout gratitude a tendency 
 toward a better understanding on both sides. 
 The Outlook recently said : "Certainly a few 
 years ago there was abundant reason for the 
 belief that most wage-earners, and particularly 
 members of trades-unions, felt either unwel- 
 come or unregarded in church, and, on the 
 whole, when not indifferent, rather resentful 
 that the churches had so little to say about 
 their problems of life and about the relation 
 of religion to their peculiar struggles. Within 
 a few years, however, there has occurred a 
 marked change." 
 
 Slarking this change are such signs as the 
 
CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 17 
 
 organic declarations of the religious denomina- 
 tions concerning the labor problems, the ob- 
 servance of Labor Sunday, the opening of labor 
 gatherings with prayer, the exchange of 
 fraternal delegates between ministerial bodies 
 and labor unions, the mutually gratifying ut- 
 terances of Church press and labor press, and 
 the work of the social service organizations of 
 the several denominations and the Social Ser- 
 vice Commission of the Federated Churches. 
 Probably no man can speak in this re- 
 gard with more authority than Charles 
 Stelzle, who says : "While there is still 
 considerable alienation of the workingman 
 from the Church, there is no other class of 
 men among whom there is this conspicuous 
 movement toward the Church."^ 
 
 And yet the breach is not closed. 
 
 6 "The Church and Labor," p. 33. 
 
Ill 
 
 LABOR'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE 
 CHURCH 
 
 "Let judgment begin at the house of the 
 Lord." The Church can save neither the social 
 order nor itself unless it shall recognize its own 
 short-comings. Of these the most perilous 
 is its estrangement from the labor movement, 
 an estrangement largely due to mutual misun- 
 derstandings. Hence it is a primary necessity 
 that churchmen should give a full, patient, and 
 candid hearing to the complaints of laboring 
 men against the Church. In so doing, our 
 purpose must not be to controvert our critics, 
 but to get a sympathetic understanding of their 
 views, to judge and mend our own ways, and to 
 find the common ground where they and we can 
 work together for that grand-total of all 
 human interests which we call the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 A statement follows of labor's complaint 
 against the Church. It may not be all the 
 truth nor even all true, but it is urged by men 
 who speak in good faith, and hence it should 
 help us to know the truth. 
 18 
 
LABOR AND THE CHURCH 19 
 
 1. It is charged that the Church "has al- 
 ways stood by the ruling classes, because — it 
 did not dare to oppose the men or the govern- 
 ment which gave it support."^ In Richard 
 Heath's phrase, it is "the captive City of God," 
 and in the younger Henry George's, "the 
 Nobles of Privilege are the chief patrons of the 
 Church and have an overmastering influence."^ 
 In evidence of such charges they cite the co- 
 incidence of ecclesiastical wealth and popular 
 poverty during th^ middle ages ; the opposi- 
 tion of Luther to the rising of the German 
 peasants ; the alliance of King and Church 
 against the Commons of England; Adam 
 Smith's arraignment of the Church in the 
 Eighteenth Century for its servility to wealth,* 
 the attitude of American churches toward the 
 anti-slavery movement ; the almost unanimous 
 vote of the English bishops in the House of 
 Lords against the Workingmen's Compensation 
 Act, the anti-liquor bills, and the Lloyd-George 
 budget ; the familiar clerical apologies for 
 Standard Oil, and the opposition of prominent 
 laymen to child-labor laws and social legisla- 
 tion of almost every sort. 
 
 It might seem easy to argue that all this 
 
 iSee C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 9. 
 
 2 "The Menace of Privilege," p. 321. 
 
 3 See "The Wealth of Nations," Book V, Ch. I, Part 
 III, Art. III. 
 
20 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 
 
 IS only a part-truth, and even a perverted view 
 of that part. But it will be more profitable 
 for us to reflect on the part that is true in 
 spite of partial or perverted views. There is 
 at least occasion for complaint on the part of 
 laborers and for concern on the part of church- 
 men. 
 
 2. It is charged that the Church is usually 
 neutral when not hostile toward labor's eff^orts 
 to uplift humanit3\ Josiah Strong writes that 
 he "knows personally of a committee of labor 
 men who tried to secure the passage of a law 
 limiting child-labor, and in a great city not one 
 clergyman could be found to give them more 
 than casual help ;" while, "in another city, 
 some years ago, not one clergyman could be 
 found to aid the bakers agitate for a law giv- 
 ing them Sunday rest." * The Commission of 
 the Federated Churches of America found that 
 in a recent and already historic strike for a 
 weekly rest day, the local ministerial union had 
 administered a sharp rebuke to the strikers for 
 alleged disorders, but no corresponding rebuke 
 to the employers who, for some years, had been 
 requiring an unnecessary and increasing 
 amount of Sunday labor. The Archbishop of 
 Canterbury said that he worked seventeen hours 
 a day, and had no time left to solve the prob- 
 
 i "The Gospel of the Kingdom," May, 1910, p. 63. 
 
LABOR AND THE CHURCH 21 
 
 lem of the unemployed ; to which Keir Hardie 
 replied : "A religion ■which demands seventeen 
 hours a day for organization and leaves no 
 time for thought about starving men, women, 
 and children, has no message for this age." ^ 
 In other words, the Church is too much pre- 
 occupied with working its own machinery. 
 
 Of course it can be said again that this is 
 only a partial truth. But again it will be bet- 
 ter for us to dwell on the partial truth than on 
 the partial error of such complaints. Or, we 
 may point to the organic declarations of the 
 several Protestant denominations and to those 
 of their Federal Council, by all of which the 
 churches are committed to the cause of labor 
 and against all social injustice. To this the 
 laboring men may reply that the Church, by 
 such declarations, has not fully put itself in the 
 right, but has rather acknowledged a standard 
 of right by which not only the social order but 
 the Church itself is to be judged. And work- 
 ingmen are now asking with some sharpness 
 whether our deeds are fulfilling the promise of 
 our declarations. 
 
 3. A working-man asks : "Is it not a fact 
 that in most churches to-day the great 
 majoritv of so-called 'better class' people look 
 down upon the workingman, who spends his life 
 
 5 See "Annals of the American Academy of Social 
 Science," Nov., 1907, p. 18. 
 
22 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 
 
 in toiling for their necessities and luxuries, and 
 do not associate with him as a brother?"'' A 
 distinguished High Church rector testifies that 
 there are churches in which "the presence of the 
 poor is regarded as bad form. If Christ him- 
 self were to enter them, the pew-opener would 
 ask, What is that Carpenter doing here ?" '^ 
 A prominent English man of letters writes : "I 
 regard pews and pew-rents as distinctly anti- 
 Christian. They foster class-distinctions. 
 They keep the poor at a distance. They en- 
 courage snobbishness, and give point to the 
 sneer that Churches only want those who are 
 able to pay." Personally, one may be sure 
 that much of this appearance of exclusiveness 
 is a misunderstanding due to differences between 
 the conventional manners of the rich and the 
 poor. Nevertheless, every man who travels is 
 probably acquainted, as is the writer, with 
 churches where a measure of snobbery is unmis- 
 takable. It were better for the Church to be 
 patient under a hundred false suspicions than to 
 countenance this abomination in a single in- 
 stance. 
 
 4. Wage-earners join the outcry against 
 the discrepancy between the way we worship on 
 
 « See George Haw: "Christianity and the Working 
 Classes," p. 4, cf. p. 144. 
 
 7 Quoted by H. George, Jr.; "The Menace of Priv- 
 ilege," p, 407, 
 
LABOR AND THE CHURCH 23 
 
 Sunday and the way we do business on Mon- 
 day. They declare that many of the injustices 
 which they combat are practiced by men who 
 seem to be acceptable members of the Churches. 
 I still believe that churchmen are responsible 
 less often than other employers for such abuses 
 as child-labor, unfenced machinery, unsanitary 
 shops, and unjust blacklisting. Nevertheless 
 the difference is so inconsiderable that work- 
 ingmen seeking work do not usually inquire 
 which employers are church-members and which 
 are not. And without conceding all that is 
 said concerning such inconsistencies, it is yet 
 undeniable that the moral teachings of the 
 Church have not yet proved effective to the 
 degree of making social injustices equally 
 scandalous with drunkenness or adultery on tlie 
 part of church-members. 
 
 5. Wage-earners charge the Church with 
 culpable ignorance. The Hon. Arthur Hen- 
 derson, jNI. p., one of the world's great labor 
 leaders and also a leader in Christian work, 
 writes thus : "The Churches have not ap- 
 preciated the real meaning and the true in- 
 wardness of many of the movements which the 
 workers themselves have initiated and developed 
 for their social and industrial ameliora- 
 tion. . . . Possessed of only a very super- 
 ficial knowledge of the question, the Churches, 
 for instance have concluded that unemployment 
 
24 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 
 
 was mainly due to intemperance, pauperism, 
 the result of thriftlessness, and like the Priest 
 and the Levite, they have passed by on the 
 other side." ^ Or consider the exasperating 
 untactfulness of the ministers who lately asked 
 of a body of strikers, "Is it reasonable to ex- 
 pect that, by attacking your employer openly 
 and in secret and by trying to destroy his 
 property and his business, you can best per- 
 suade him to deal generously and magnani- 
 mously with you?" No one ought to meddle 
 with labor controversies until he understands 
 that self-respecting workingmen regard as an 
 insult the insinuation that they ask for "gen- 
 erosity" or "magnanimity" or anything else 
 than simple justice. 
 
 No graver duty rests with Christian men 
 than to understand the labor problem. They 
 must know it by careful study of economic 
 authorities and by living and fraternal contact 
 with the laboring people. They must know 
 what the gospel has to say about it and how 
 that gospel applies to the crisis of to-day. 
 Otherwise the Church remains at fault. 
 
 6. We must consider without pre-judgment 
 
 the workingman's complaint that we are often 
 
 unjust and inconsistent in our criticisms of the 
 
 labor movement. He says that we often con- 
 
 8 See George Haw: "Christianity and the Working 
 Classes," pp. 120, 134.. 
 
LABOR AND THE CHURCH 25 
 
 demn a great and beneficent social movement 
 because of certain minor incidents ; that we 
 are content with hearing one side of the con- 
 troversy, and that the anti-labor side. He adds 
 that the Church itself "need not go very far 
 back in its own history to find duplicated nearly 
 everything we deplore in Organized Labor to- 
 day, even down to boycotting and slugging," ® 
 witness certain memories of Smithfield and of 
 Boston Common. Or, with modem reference, 
 he complains that we denounce the unions for 
 certain practices which we follow in the 
 churches ; for instance, that "the ministry is a 
 closed shop, guarding its privileges as jealously 
 as does the average trade-union." 
 
 7. Wage-workers complain of the Church 
 "that it teaches the poor to be submissive under 
 present injustice, since all things will be made 
 right in heaven." Or, as Ruskin puts it, "You 
 knock a man into the ditch and then tell him 
 to remain content in the position in which 
 Providence has placed him." Perhaps it is 
 nearer the truth to say that the patience we 
 preach in these days is an active patience, — - 
 invincible perseverance, optimism, courage and 
 unselfishness, striving not indeed to revenge 
 wrongs but to rectify them. Yet under labor's 
 error here, lies an error of the Church. For 
 
 9 C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," pp. 11 and 14. 
 
26 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 
 
 has not the Church hitherto, while duly wit- 
 nessing for providence and immortality, some- 
 what failed in witnessing for social justice? 
 And have we duly developed the masculine and 
 militant type of piety? 
 
 8. "We labor men," writes Arthur Hender- 
 son, "are not unmindful of the vast amount of 
 effort the Churches are making; visiting the 
 sick, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, 
 comforting the sorrowing. What we deplore 
 is the fact that co-incident with such relief 
 the Churches have not attempted to get at the 
 root-cause of all the evil and distress. If they 
 would display the same amount of energy in 
 seeking to eradicate from our collective life the 
 evil it contains, that they have shown in seek- 
 ing to deliver the individual life from sin, there 
 would have been less call for their relief 
 work." ^^ Concerning this charge there is one 
 comment to be made: it is substantially true. 
 
 A final summary is thus put into a parable 
 by Hugh Price Hughes : Someone was com- 
 mending a certain preacher in highest terms. 
 But a listener made this unanswerable an- 
 swer : "After all, he doesn't remind me of Jesus 
 Christ." Zion's Herald adds : "The minister 
 and the Church may be doing very creditable 
 and useful work, but they are not Christian in 
 
 10 See G. Haw: Op. cit. p. 135. 
 
LABOR AND THE CHURCH 27 
 
 the full and essential use of the term if the 
 laboring man is still able to say, 'They do not 
 remind me of Jesus Christ.' " 
 
IV 
 
 LABOR'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 One of the great religious denominations has 
 lately made the organic declaration: "We 
 cordially declare our fraternal interest in the 
 aspirations of the laboring classes, and our de- 
 sire to assist them in the righting of every 
 wrong." Are there any such wrongs to be 
 righted? Labor answers with the following 
 grave complaints against the social order, 
 namely, non-employment, over-employment, un- 
 just distribution, unfair discrimination, and the 
 under-appraisement of humanity. The first 
 four will be considered in the present and the 
 fifth in our next chapter. 
 
 1. NON-BMPLOYMENT 
 Truly said Carlyle: "A man willing to woi-lc 
 and unable to find work is perhaps the saddest 
 sight that Fortune's inequality exhibits under 
 the sun." Always there are many such men. 
 Not long ago there were probably three million 
 in the United States. Organized wage-earners 
 probably suffer the least from this cause and 
 
 yet we have it on the authority of the New York 
 
 28 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 29 
 
 State Commission that "organized workers lose 
 on the average twenty per cent, of their pos- 
 sible income through unemployment." ^ 
 
 It is a two-fold wrong. First, to the labor- 
 ing man, because the right to labor is a neces- 
 sary corollary of the right to life. The 
 world owes no man a living but does owe every 
 man a chance to make a living. Unemploy- 
 ment is also a wrong to society. The unem- 
 ployed often become the unemployable. The 
 idle are natural candidates for mendicancy, 
 vagrancy and crime, and are often forced into 
 pauperism, temporary or chronic. The New 
 York Commission gives data from the charit- 
 able societies showing that "from twenty-five to 
 thirty-five per cent, of those who apply to them 
 for relief every year have been brought to their 
 destitute condition primarily through lack of 
 work." 2 
 
 On these facts Louis D. Brandeis makes the 
 following just comments : "Some irregularity in 
 employment is doubtless inevitable; but in the 
 main irregularity is remediable. It has been 
 overcome with great profit to both employer 
 and employee in important businesses which 
 have recognized the problem as one seriously 
 demanding solution. Society and industry 
 need only the necessary incentive to secure a 
 
 1 See "The Otulook," June 10, 1911, pp. 293-294. 
 
 2 See "The Outlook," loc. cit. 
 
30 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 great reduction in irregularity of employment. 
 In the scientifically managed business irregular- 
 ity tends to disappear. So far as it is irreme- 
 diable it should be compensated for like the in- 
 evitable accident." ^ 
 
 2. OVER-EMPLOYMENT 
 
 Not only are many who ought to work de- 
 prived of work, but many who work are over- 
 worked, and many who ought not to work are 
 compelled to work. Nor is it relevant to say 
 that there is no law of nature prescribing the 
 eight-hour day. The law of nature does pre- 
 scribe that the hours of work must not pass the 
 "point at which normal fatigue becomes 
 pathological fatigue." For it is known to 
 science that over-work literally poisons the 
 worker. And with physical comes spiritual 
 demoralization. Twelve hours a day for seven 
 days in the week, the actual labor-time of many 
 thousands, means the abolition of life save in 
 its animal and mechanical processes. The 
 workingman is often told that he works no 
 harder nor longer than his employer. But he 
 knows that all factories are open earlier than 
 most offices, that employers take summer vaca- 
 tions and foreign tours, while he himself rarely 
 travels except on foot hunting a job, and that 
 even the hardest-working employer is working 
 
 3 See "The Outlook," loc. cit. 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 31 
 
 for himself and his own ambition, which makes 
 the greatest difference in the world. 
 
 The supreme evil of over-employment is the 
 exploitation of the labor of women and children. 
 Concerning the former, for instance, it is a law 
 of nature that women should work fewer hours 
 per day and fewer days per month than 
 men, and when economic greed violates this law 
 the penalty in disqualified motherhood is the 
 costliest price that human society can pay for 
 its sins. The present coincidence between the 
 diminished general birth-rate and the increased 
 birth-rate of defectives and degenerates is the 
 most disheartening portent that now appears, 
 or could appear, at this time of social crisis. 
 And these two ominous facts are attributable, 
 according to high authority, in large measure 
 to the overstrain of modern industrialism, par- 
 ticularly in its exhausting demands on woman- 
 hood.* 
 
 In the United States some two million chil- 
 dren under sixteen years of age are gainfully 
 employed. Of these, 800,000 are ten to thir- 
 teen years old, unknown thousands under 
 ten, and 400,000 engaged in occupations 
 usually deleterious to child-life. ^ Yet figures 
 are inadequate. For the tragedy of the pres- 
 
 i Dr. M. G. Schlapp in "The Outlook," April 6, 1912, 
 p. 783. 
 
 5 The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, art. "Child 
 Labor." 
 
32 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 ent is only suggestive of the consequences yet 
 to ensue. The evil does not end with the pain 
 and pleading of the children. Beyond these is 
 the evil which society must suffer in its most 
 vital interests, — the standard of living, the in- 
 tegrity of the home, and the future intelligence 
 and efficiency of its citizens. In some coming 
 crisis of our history, the alternative may then 
 be decided by the votes of illiterates and de- 
 generates, or its armies destroyed by bacilli 
 more deadly than bullets. 
 
 3. UNJUST DISTRIBUTION 
 
 Labor complains of three conditions under 
 which it gets less than its equitable share of 
 the total economic product. 
 
 First, when it gets less than a living wage. 
 The New York City Charity Organization 
 estimates $800 to $900 per annum as a living 
 wage in that city for a man with average 
 family.^ In this light ponder the fact that 
 some million families enjoy an annual income 
 of less than $500 ^ and that our average fac- 
 tory wages are $572. ® Surely all family-in- 
 comes falling below the latter average are less 
 than a living wage, and such families include 
 
 s See E. T. Devine; "Misery and its causes" pp. 107- 
 108. 
 
 7 See articles in the American Magazine, March, 1907, 
 by J. Jacobs and March, 1910, by Ida M. Tarbell. 
 
 8 See "The Survey," Sept. 3, 1910, p. 810. 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 33 
 
 a large proportion of our working population. 
 Again, labor receives less than its share when- 
 ever others receive more than theirs. One per 
 cent, of our people own 50 per cent, of the 
 wealth and nine per cent, own 71 per cent.® 
 Can we believe that one per cent, of the people 
 have earned as much as the other ninety-nine 
 per cent..' Or nine per cent, of us, two and a 
 half times as much as the other ninety-one per 
 cent..? The presumption thus raised seems quite 
 conclusive when we note the sources of these for- 
 tunes. The New York Tribune has published 
 a list of 1103 millionaires in that city. It fur- 
 ther appears that three-fourths of these men 
 had derived their wealth chiefly from some form 
 of economic surplus, — as monopoly, marginal 
 betting, unearned increment of land, some sort 
 of "special privilege," — or in one word, 
 plunder. For all this wealth had been pro- 
 duced by somebody, and any part of it not pro- 
 duced by those who have taken it, must have 
 been taken from those who have produced it, 
 namely, the v/age-earning class. All this gives 
 too much reality to such familiar and unlovely 
 phrases as "predatory wealth," "the favored 
 few," and "the disinherited masses." As 
 Henry D. Lloyd said, "The fortunes of these 
 lords of industry and these interceptors of 
 
 9 See J. Bascom: "Social Theory," p. 269, and R. T. 
 Ely: "Socialism and Social Reform," pp. 274-375. 
 
34 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 trade are not remuneration for services, — they 
 are the ransom paid by the people for their 
 lives." 
 
 Thirdly, it appears that labor receives less 
 than its share when it receives a diminishing 
 proportion of the increase of wealth. Note 
 that it is not said "portion" but "proportion." 
 For the following calculations approximate 
 correctness, not absolute exactness, is claimed.^'' 
 From 1860 to 1880 the per capita wealth of the 
 country increased 70 per cent., while real wages 
 (measured in purchasing power) had not in- 
 creased, perhaps had slightly decreased. From 
 1881 to 1900 per capita wealth had increased 
 43 per cent, and real wages not more than 25 
 per cent. From 1900 to 1910 money-wages in- 
 creased about 19 per cent., but owing to dis- 
 proportionate increase in prices, real wages de- 
 creased at least 11 per cent. And yet, daring 
 only four years of this latter period the na- 
 tional wealth had increased twenty billion dol- 
 lars, the greatest advance in material pros- 
 
 10 Cf. R. T. Ely: "The Evolution of Industrial So- 
 ciety," pp. 103, 112-113; W. Gladden: "Applied Chris- 
 tianity," p. 120; the Aldrich Senate Report, 1893, on 
 "Wholesale Prices, Wages," etc.. Part I, p. 100; the pub- 
 lications of the American Statistical Association, March, 
 1899, article by Professor C. J. Bullock; The New En- 
 cyclopaedia of Social Reform, p. 1266; Bulletins of the 
 U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1900, p. 914, and March, 1903, 
 p. 235; "The Outlook," March 12, 1910, p. 570. 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 35 
 
 perity ever recorded in the history of any na- 
 tion. 
 
 Again the wrong to labor re-acts upon 
 society. For social cohesion is weakened and 
 social progress checked when a great social 
 class, unable to share proportionately in the 
 general prosperity, is thus fore-doomed to 
 thwarted effort and chronic discontent. With 
 regard to the rich who will not work and the 
 poor who can't get work, labor has a grievance 
 until all men are laborers. 
 
 4. UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION 
 
 Labor complains that its cause has not been 
 given an impartial hearing, and that the higher 
 ideals and influences of the labor movement 
 and of the labor unions have not been duly 
 recognized. The public press is necessarily 
 owned by capital and edited by men belonging 
 to the so-called "higher classes," and hence, in 
 spite of good intentions, often seems to give 
 labor less than a square deal. For instance, 
 the frequent assumption that labor-unionism is 
 nothing else than organized disorder is largely 
 due to the fact that the worse features of 
 unionism are always given the widest publicity, 
 and the better often quite ignored. The Na- 
 tional Civic Federation, perhaps better quali- 
 fied than any other agency to render a dis- 
 criminating and unbiased finding, has published 
 
36 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 a most impressive protest against the injustice 
 thus done the cause of labor. ^'^ 
 
 Labor complains of less than a square deal 
 in the courts. Mr. Roosevelt thus defines the 
 position which he holds in common with the 
 representatives of the laboring-class : "I do not 
 for one moment believe that the masses of our 
 judges are actuated by any but worthy motives. 
 Nevertheless, I do believe that they often 
 signally fail to protect the laboring man and 
 the laboring man's widow and children in their 
 just rights and that heart-breaking and pitiful 
 injustice too often results therefrom; and this 
 primarily because our judges lack either the 
 opportunity or the power thoroughly to under- 
 stand the working man's and working woman's 
 position and vital needs." ^^ In this regard it 
 is to be noted, first, that the expense of litiga- 
 tion largely nullifies for the poor man the prin- 
 ciple of equality before the law. Justice at the 
 end of his suit is an empty promise unless mean- 
 while he can afl!^ord to pay for "legal talent" 
 and "the law's delay." It is no less an au- 
 thority than President Taft who says : "The 
 one thing which disgraces our civilization to- 
 day is the delays of civil and criminal justice 
 and these delays always work in favor of the 
 
 11 See Adams and Sumner: "Labor Problems," p. 211n. 
 Cf. J. Bascom: "Social Theory," pp. 109, 114. 
 
 12 "The New Nationalism." 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 37 
 
 man with the longest purse." " At a recent 
 date there were pending in the courts two cases 
 of workinginen's claims still undertermined 
 after ten years of litigation and another after 
 eleven years. ^* And now comes the report of 
 damages awarded to an injured workingman 
 after twenty-two years of litigation, the crown- 
 ing disgrace of American judicature. ^'' In 
 nearly every nation of Europe these poor 
 people would have received immediate justice 
 without having to go to law at all. Further- 
 more, as said by Greorge L. Bolen, one of the 
 severest critics of organized labor, "The courts 
 are too often bound unduly by the views and 
 predilections of the capitalistic class to which 
 by birth and association they belong." ^* 
 This may account in part for some of the 
 antiquated precedents which govern employers' 
 liability, freedom of contract, class legislation, 
 and the writ of injunction, all serving to put 
 working people at a disadvantage in the courts. 
 As to injunctions, laboring-men may often be 
 in the wrong. Nevertheless many of us will 
 agree that the workingmen are in the right 
 when protesting that the injunction power is 
 abused when used as follows: (1) to enjoin men 
 
 13 See McClure's Magazine, June, 1910, p. 151. 
 i< Do, p. 154. 
 
 16 See "The Outlook," Dec. 23, 1911, p. 924. 
 16 "Getting a Living," p. 565. 
 
38 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 from doing concertedly what they have the 
 legal right to do individually: (2) as a sub- 
 terfuge for depriving unconvicted men of trial 
 by jury: (3) to suspend men's rights without 
 notice and tlien leave them undetermined pend- 
 ing a long-deferred hearing. 
 
 At present there is a great outcry against 
 any criticism of the courts at all. Mr. Roose- 
 velt, no less than Mr. Gompers, is denounced 
 because he ventures to express an opinion of 
 his own regarding certain adjudications. Now 
 both may be wrong in their criticisms but it 
 does not follow that criticism is wrong. If so, 
 then the courts themselves must be guilty of 
 the same wrong, for they criticise one another. 
 And every member of our Supreme Court itself 
 must often thus do wrong, for every one of them 
 has often dissented from the decisions of the 
 majority. And Abraham Lincoln must have 
 been wrong, for his criticisms of the Supreme 
 Court makes ]\Ir. Roosevelt's sound tame. And 
 history itself must be wrong, for it now sanc- 
 tions Lincoln's criticisms of the Dred Scott de- 
 cision. The truth is that a judicial decision is 
 usually something more than a declaration of 
 the law ; it is a declaration of how the law ap- 
 plies to facts. Granting that the judges are the 
 best judges of the law, it is still true that the 
 sociologist, the legislator, the labor leader, or 
 even the "man on the street," may be a better 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 39 
 
 judge of the facts to which the law is applied. 
 Hence the laboring man is not necessarily pre- 
 sumptous when he makes a calm and candid ap- 
 peal from the courts to public opinion. To 
 claim infallibility for the courts is no less than 
 political superstition. The courts make no 
 such claim for themselves. Indeed it is a Jus- 
 tice of the Supreme Court of New York who has 
 lately written the following remarkable words : 
 "Confidence in our courts does not require 
 that their decisions on economic questions shall 
 be regarded as binding rules of political con- 
 duct on such questions. ... So long as 
 our courts exercise this power to pass upon the 
 constitutionality of statutes which reflect legis- 
 lative policy on matters affecting the common 
 good, so long will the principles of government 
 underlying their decisions in such cases be sub- 
 ject to debate." " 
 
 Such is labor's complaint against the social 
 order, with this added, — the under-valuation of 
 human life by a world that over-values gold 
 and gain. Nor can it be dismissed by saying 
 that the labor-movement itself is only a mani- 
 festation of greed, the sordid envy of "the have- 
 nots" for "the haves." For the demand for 
 higher wages and shorter hours simply voices 
 the demand for justice, and this it is that gives 
 moral authority to the labor-movement. 
 
 17 See "The Outlook," March 4, 1911, p. 489. 
 
40 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 Nor can we silence labor's complaint by say- 
 ing that it is the best paid labor which com- 
 plains the most. This cynical commonplace 
 has its reproof in the words of Thomas Car- 
 lyle: "No doubt of it. The best paid work- 
 men are they alone that can so complain ! How 
 shall he, the handloomweaver, who in the day 
 that is passing over him has to find food for 
 the day, strike work? If he strike work, he 
 starves within the week. He is past complaint ! 
 The fact itself, however, is one which, if we 
 consider it, leads us into still deeper regions of 
 the malady. . . . It is not what a man 
 has outwardly or wants that constitutes the 
 happiness or misery of him. . . . It is the 
 feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all 
 men. . . . No man can bear it, or ought 
 to bear it. A deeper law than any parchment- 
 law whatsoever, a law written direct by the 
 hand of God in the inmost being of man, in- 
 cessantly protests against it. What is injus- 
 tice ? Another name for disorder, for unverac- 
 ity, unreality, a thing which veracious created 
 Nature, even because it is not Chaos and a 
 waste-whirling baseless Phantasm, rejects and 
 disowns. It is not the outward pain of injus- 
 tice; that, were it even the flaying of the back 
 with knotted scourges, the severing of the head 
 with guillotines, is comparatively a small mat- 
 ter. The real smart is the soul's pain and 
 
LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 41 
 
 stigma, the hurt inflicted on the moral self. 
 The rudest clown must draw himself up into an 
 attitude of battle, and resistance to the death, 
 if such be offered him. He cannot live under 
 it ; his own soul aloud, and all the universe, with 
 silent continual beckonings, says 'It cannot 
 be.' " ^^ Thus the labor problem is more than a 
 sordid! conflict between "the haves and the have- 
 nots." Its concern is with the rights of men 
 and therefore with the will of God. And with 
 a great poet of modern Christendom we may 
 well believe that the Christ sees and cares : 
 
 "O Nazareth Carpenter who curst ' 
 
 The pride and avarice of thy day, 
 We would observe thy birth, but first 
 Thy Sermon on the Mount obey. 
 
 "If thou shouldst come once more to men 
 In this, thy later promised land. 
 
 Would not Thy great heart break again 
 To find these wrongs on every hand. 
 
 "Labor, heart-smitten, left to die. 
 
 Beneath the feet of Conquest hurled. 
 Or, lifting Hatred's torch on high. 
 Wreaking revenge upon the world." 
 18 "Chartism": Chapters ly and V. 
 
V 
 
 THE CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 Labor's gravest charge against our economic 
 system is the under-appraisement of human life. 
 Business proceeds too largely on the assump- 
 tion that money is worth more than men. 
 
 It is reliably estimated that 30,000 wage- 
 earners are killed annually by industrial acci- 
 dents and .500,000 seriously injured;^ that there 
 are over 13,000,000 cases of sickness each year 
 among industrial workers and 50,000 deaths 
 from industrial diseases ; that at least one-third 
 of this suffering and mortality is preventable; 
 that the pecuniary loss to the laboring class 
 from these causes is at least three-quarters of a 
 billion dollars annually.^ It was a startling 
 coincidence that during three years of the Boer 
 War the number of British soldiers killed was 
 almost an exact equation with the number killed 
 on American railways during the same three 
 
 1 Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1906. 
 
 2 "The American Labor Legislation Review," Jan., 
 1911, p. 127, and "The Prevention of Industrial Acci- 
 dents," pp. 1 and 2, published by the Fidelity and 
 Casualty Company of New York. 
 
 42 
 
CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 43 
 
 years.^ In the United States in 1909 nine rail- 
 way employees were killed every twenty-four 
 hours and one either killed or injured every 
 seven minutes.* "At the present rate it would 
 take only se\enteen years to kill or injure all 
 the railway employees on the rolls." ^ Or what 
 could be more startling than the fact that the 
 number of lives sacrificed to the industries of the 
 United States during the last four years is 
 about the same as the number killed in battle 
 during the four years of the Civil War? It is 
 also a tragic record that among the employees 
 of at least ten of the leading industries of the 
 United States from one-third to one-half the 
 deaths were due to tuberculosis and that one- 
 third to two-fifths of these fatal cases of tuber- 
 culosis were fairly attributable to the character 
 of the employment. In other words, taking 
 account of only a single disease and of no acci- 
 dents, these industries are chargeable with eleven 
 to twenty per cent, of all deaths among their 
 employees.® Still more tragic are the records 
 of certain great insurance companies showing 
 that the average death-rate among working- 
 
 3 J. G. Brooks: "The Social Unrest," p. 210. 
 
 * D. L. Cease in "The American Labor Legislation Re- 
 view," Jan., 1911, p. 43. 
 
 5 McClure's Magazine, June, 1910, p. 165. 
 
 8 Publication No. 10 of the American Association for 
 Labor Legislation. 
 
44 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 men at their most productive age — 25 to 35 
 years — is nearly twice as great as the death 
 rate among men engaged in other than manual 
 occupations^ 
 
 We must remember that this is more than a 
 matter of dry statistics. Back of the statistics 
 are human beings. An "industrial accident" 
 does not mean merely that another unit is to 
 be added to a column of figures. It means the 
 "agony of the crushed arm or the anguished 
 leap of the workman's nerve under the boiling 
 metal." It means the rush of the ambulance, 
 the carnage of the operating table, the long 
 nights of burning" thirst and infernal delirium in 
 the hospital. It means the asylum or the alms- 
 house. Nor is an "occupational disease" just 
 a medical classification. It means, for instance, 
 "phossy jaw," a horror so loathsome that ex- 
 perienced surgeons sometimes faint while treat- 
 ing it, so persistent that sometimes life can be 
 saved only by amputation of the victim's jaw, 
 lea\ing him a life worse than death. In one 
 form or another some human tragedy is repre- 
 sented by every unit in these thousands and 
 millions of industrial casualties and diseases. 
 Not war alone, but work sometimes, is hell. 
 
 Labor demands justice, not pity. For these 
 tragedies of our industrial warfare, while due 
 
 7 Louis D. Brandeis in "The Outlook," June 10, 1911, 
 p. 293. 
 
CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 45 
 
 in some cases to the fact that they are unavoid- 
 able, are due in many cases to the fact that it 
 would cost money to avoid them. Phosphorus 
 necrosis, the culminating horror of occupational 
 diseases, is due solely to an economy of five per 
 cent, in the manufacture of matches. On one 
 of our great railroads the casualties in 1906 
 were 2097. The next year the road's traffic 
 had greatly increased in all respects, ton-mile- 
 age, passenger-mileage, train-mileage, and car- 
 mileage, and yet the casualties had diminished 
 to 1209 as the result of an effective system of 
 block signals and safety appliances installed 
 that year.* In the year 1911 the Chicago and 
 Northwestern Railroad put into operation a 
 thorough system of safety appliances and regu- 
 lations resulting in the reduction of fatal acci- 
 dents among several classes of employees in the 
 following percentages : train-men 50 per cent., 
 switchmen 40 per cent., station-men 50 per 
 cent., car-repairers and inspectors 85 per cent.® 
 From such data it is no strained inferencce that 
 at least one-third of our railroad accidents has 
 been attributable to the homicidal parsimony 
 which would not pay for the available safe- 
 guards. In the coal mines of the United States 
 
 8 See The Saturday Evening Post, July 25, 1908, ar- 
 ticle, "The Carnage of Peace." 
 
 » See "The Northwestern Christian Advocate," Jan. 
 10, 1912. 
 
46 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 30,000 men have been killed during the last 
 twenty years, and while we have neglected the 
 methods of prevention and rescue in general use 
 in Europe, the annual death-rate of the coal 
 regions has been steadily rising here and steadily 
 declining there. Mills and machines aflFord 
 the same evidence. Broken belts cause many 
 of our cruelest accidents. Yet belts can be 
 protected. The bursting of over-pressed 
 boilers in 1905 caused 385 deaths and 505 in- 
 juries in this country; largely a needless 
 carnage, as appears from the fact that Great 
 Britain compels precautions which have kept 
 the number of like casualties there at the low 
 average of S8 deaths and 60 injuries per 
 annum during a period of twenty years. ^^ In 
 the year 1906 in factories of one state a hun- 
 dred men were killed, or crippled for life, by 
 one little shop-device called the set-screw. ^^ 
 "The set-screw stands up from the surface of 
 the rapidly revolving shafts and, as it turns, 
 catches dangerously at hands and clothes. 
 For thirty-five cents this danger-device could 
 be recast into a safety-device." Thus from 
 all ranges of industry come the damning evi- 
 
 11 The Saturday Evening Post, loc. cit. 
 
 12 E. T. Davis, State Factory Inspector of Illinois, 
 quoted by W. Hard in "Injured in Course of Duty." 
 See also "The Prevention of Industrial Accidents," p. 
 185. (Published by the Fidelity and Casualty Co. of 
 N. Y). 
 
CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 47 
 
 dences of our national greed. Labor's demand 
 for legal protection to life and limb is a de- 
 mand for the most elementary justice. 
 
 Adequate justice would consist in the pre- 
 vention of these evils. So far as this proves 
 impracticable, the minimum of justice would 
 then be assured compensation. Yet the truth 
 is that the doctrines of our courts as to con- 
 tributory negligence, the negligence of fel- 
 low-servants, and the assumption of risks, are 
 such that compensation is the exception rather 
 than the rule. It is estimated "that not one 
 in eleven injured workmen sues, and of those 
 who sue not one in ten recovers." If our in- 
 dustries must consume arms, legs, lungs and 
 lives, why shouldn't we pay for them? There 
 is moral authority hardly less than prophetic 
 in the demands which a modern journalist thus 
 puts to the social conscience: "Shall* the 
 laborer really donate that arm to us, or shall 
 not we, refusing to live on lost arms, return 
 to him the mere, but exact, commercial value 
 of the loss he has sustained.? Why shouldn't 
 every industry carry the burden of its own 
 killed and wounded.'' Why shouldn't compen- 
 sation for disability be just as much a cost of 
 the business as it is of the cost of war.f" Why 
 shouldn't the industrial soldier, meeting his 
 death in forms as terrible as those of any 
 battle-field, die knowing that he will leave, if 
 
48 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 not glory, at least a few years' food to his 
 family? Why shouldn't society, having in- 
 vented machines which make business one long 
 war, treat the enlisted men at least like en- 
 listed men and, if they are incapacitated, as- 
 sign them temporarily or permanently, to the 
 rank and pay of pensioners of peace ?" ^^ And 
 it seems about time that Emerson's prophecy 
 should come true : "When it is presented to the 
 American people, I believe they will say it is 
 just as fair to charge up every year the 
 depreciation in men as it is to charge 
 up the depreciation in machinery and build- 
 ings." " 
 
 These considerations call for the enactment 
 of the following program. (1) The radical 
 modification of the common-law defenses 
 against employers' liability. (2) The es- 
 tablishment of governmental institutions for 
 the invention of safety and sanitary devices, 
 and for the scientific study, prevention and 
 treatment of occupational diseases. (3) 
 Laws enforcing the use of every approved 
 safety-mechanism and sanitary provision in 
 industry. (4) Laws insuring equitable, im- 
 mediate and certain compensation to all victims 
 of industrial casualty and disease, or their 
 families. The latter measure would be doubly 
 
 13 W. Hard, op. cit. 
 
 I'' Essay oni Compensation. 
 
CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 49 
 
 efficacious. Beside affording effective relief to 
 actual sufferers, it would also reduce such 
 suffering to the minimum ; for when it must 
 all be paid for in full, then it will be found 
 cheaper to employ every safeguard. The 
 equities of this matter are thus summarized by 
 the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church in their official address of 1908: "So 
 far as greed makes such things possible the 
 Master whom we serve demands from us the 
 protest of his Church and for the sufferers the 
 tenderest sympathy. The love we owe our 
 brother man warrants and compels us to plead 
 for greater protection against accident and 
 greater mercy and justice, even to care in old 
 age, for the wounded and crippled from the 
 industrial battlefield." 
 
 Here, as everywhere, the fear that it will 
 cost too much to do right, is a fear as foolish 
 as it is wicked. The one cost which can be 
 afforded under no circumstances is the present 
 cost in life and limb. Justice to labor involves 
 injustice to no one. There would be no in- 
 justice to employers. The cost of such com- 
 pensation would be shifted from the employers 
 to society at large. Like any other expense 
 common to all who are conducting a given in- 
 dustry, this expense also enters into the costs 
 of production and is finally paid by the public 
 as an element in price. In other words, it is 
 
50 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 essentially an indirect tax to be paid by the 
 consumer. 
 
 Yet even to the public at large, working- 
 men's compensation would cost little or noth- 
 ing in the end. For the immediate expense 
 would be ultimately balanced by several econ- 
 omies. First of all, a large proportion of 
 the present number of injuries, illnesses, and 
 deaths would then be averted by improved 
 preventive measures. In consequence of this 
 happy result there would follow ultimately a 
 great reduction in present expenses of liability- 
 insurance and damage-suits, with immediate 
 saving to industry and ultimate saving to the 
 public. Furthermore, public charities would 
 be relieved of enormous charges made upon 
 them for the support of the thousands now re- 
 duced toi dependency through our dangerous 
 and unsanitary industries. In Chicago it was 
 ascertained that 109 out of 1000 cases of 
 destitution were due in whole or in part to 
 some kind of industrial accident. Again, the 
 industrial efficiency and social worth of thou- 
 sands would become an increasing asset to 
 society through coming generations as the re- 
 sult of the abolition of the woman-labor, child- 
 labor, dependency and delinquency of which our 
 present system of non-compensation is a 
 prolific source. 
 
 Nor is there any grave danger that such 
 
CHEAPNESS OF HU:MAN LIFE 51 
 
 laws may drive away industries from the 
 states which enact them to others which do 
 not. As we have just seen, industry would 
 thus be put to little, if any, net expense. 
 Furthermore, actual experience shows that 
 other labor laws, even when involving' much 
 immediate expense, have not driven away in- 
 dustries from the states enactino- them.'^ In 
 this regard it is hardly less than decisive that 
 the German Empire, subject to strict and 
 comprehensive compensation and insurance 
 laws, has yet been conspicuous in its recent in- 
 dustrial development in spite of the competi- 
 tion of the world. Furthermore, our Ameri- 
 can states are carefully forestalling the diffi- 
 culty in question, first, by tentatively regulating 
 the scale of legal compensation with regard to 
 the admitted wastefulness of the present sys- 
 tem and the probable economies of the new sys- 
 tem ; second, by co-operative legislation, framed 
 and enacted after conference of the representa- 
 tives of the several states, or by directly copy- 
 ing one another's enactments. 
 
 Christian men of to-day must remember the 
 Priest and the Levite of old who passed by on 
 the other side, — possibly not so much heart- 
 less as busy men, probably engaged just then 
 in "church-work." And while these church- 
 men hurried on unheeding, the great work of 
 15 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. S9T. 
 
52 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 
 
 the Church was left to a despised "outsider," 
 who did it well. To-day humanity lies plun- 
 dered and bleeding by the highway. God for- 
 bid that we should pass by on the other side. 
 
VI 
 
 WHAT CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 ABOUT THE LABOR UNIONS 
 
 The most noteworthy criticism of the labor 
 unions ever published is probably the recent 
 work of President Eliot entitled, "The Future 
 of Trade-Unionism and Capitalism in a Demo- 
 cracy." And yet President Eliot concedes 
 therein that "the efforts which trade-unions 
 have made to improve the conditions of em- 
 ployment in all the chief industries which sup- 
 port civilized society are so commendable that 
 society at large ought to be patient with the 
 false theories or bad practices which have im- 
 paired or counteracted their work." ' And 
 George L. Bolen, a critic no less severe, char- 
 acterizes unionism as a "great and noble 
 movement for the upliftment of humanity" 
 with "a long array of achievements that 
 proved as beneficial to society as to its own ad- 
 herents." ^ 
 
 To enumerate some of the achievements for 
 social welfare which command such commenda- 
 
 1 Op. cit., p. 51. 
 
 2 "Getting a Living," pp. 179, 288. 
 
 53 
 
54 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 tion from the most uncompromising critics is 
 the purpose of this chapter. For several rea- 
 sons appreciation seems here and now more 
 timely than criticism. First, because such 
 criticisms are already familiar, perhaps too 
 familiar. Again, because the social situation 
 will be the more profitably discussed, not by ap- 
 portioning blame, but by awarding honor 
 wherever due and whenever possible. Fin- 
 ally, because it is the right of any in- 
 stitution to be judged by its fixed ideals 
 and net results rather than by its in- 
 cidental methods and occasional abuses ; other- 
 wise, the banking system and monogamous 
 marriage, even the Church and the State, as 
 justly as the labor-union, would stand con- 
 demned. We will do well indeed to heed the 
 eloquent counsel of Bishop Mclntyre : "Judge 
 the union by its best, not by its worst. Paul 
 cried, with lifted hands in chains, 'Remember 
 my bonds.' He could not do all he would. 
 Labor is beset with bitter conditions. To 
 fling censure is easy, and gelatinous es- 
 says concocted from a denatured Bible are use- 
 less." 3 
 
 1. The organization of labor has elevated the 
 general standard of living. 
 
 The standard of living is that degree of 
 3 See 'The Methodist Review," March, 1913, p. 232. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 55 
 
 economic good which a social class is able to 
 maintain as the material basis of its life. 
 "Beyond all controversy, that frightful de- 
 terioration of the industrial classes which the 
 large system of industry set in deadly opera- 
 tion has been arrested, and the lot of the labor- 
 ing man has been vastly improved during the 
 last seventy-five years. . . . No such hor- 
 rible living conditions can be found to-day in 
 the great factory towns of Great Britain ; 
 even the submerged tenth are living far more 
 decently now than the average mechanic was 
 living then. Even Pittsburg, in all its misery, 
 is a paradise compared with Manchester and 
 Glasgow in the third and fourth decades of 
 the nineteenth century. Many causes have 
 wrought together to produce this improve- 
 ment, but the students of social science agree 
 in their judgment that the most efficient cause 
 of that improvement has been the organiza- 
 tion of labor." * 
 
 This is unionism's noblest social service. 
 More than that, it is the noblest possible ser- 
 vice to social welfare. For the workingman's 
 standard of living means nothing else than the 
 effectiveness of his purpose to participate in 
 the civilization and progress of humanity. 
 "The rising standards of living are due to the 
 
 * Washington Gladden in "The Outlook," March 4, 
 1911, p. 502. 
 
56 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 ideal which religion has taught us all to have 
 of manhood and womanhood, wifehood and 
 childhood." ^ The sociology of the times seems 
 unanimous in the view that only as the stand- 
 ard of living rises can civilized society be saved 
 from the alternative disasters of general over- 
 population on the one hand and the out- 
 populating power of inferior stocks on the 
 other. "The rosy glow thrown upon the 
 future by the progress of the industrial arts 
 proves but a false dawn unless the common 
 people acquire new wants and raise the plane 
 upon which they multiply." ® 
 
 ^. The shortening of the labor-day, averag- 
 ing in modern times at least three 
 hours, is chiefly to the credit of the 
 unions. 
 
 To the workers this is more than an economic 
 gain ; it is a spiritual gain. Again, it is 
 more than a gain to the workers ; it is a 
 gain to society at large. For it "has doubt- 
 less been the main cause of the rise of 
 British and American workmen in efficiency, 
 intelligence, and capable citizenship — the 
 
 5 Graham Taylor in "The Social Application of Re- 
 ligion," p. 101. 
 
 «E. A. Ross: "The Foundations of Sociology," p. 
 580, ff. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 57 
 essential elements of strength in a nation." '' 
 
 3. Organized labor is one of the chief de- 
 fenses of public health. 
 
 Every over-worked and debilitated laborer is 
 a ready transmitter of all the germ-diseases, 
 and the unions, in their successes against ex- 
 cessive hours and over-speeding, have actually 
 been defending health and life for all of us. 
 Their effective campaigns against tuberculosis, 
 with such incidents as their hospital-homes for 
 consumptives and the epoch-making achieve- 
 ments of the cigar-makers' union in gi'eatly 
 reducing the abnormal prevalence of the "white 
 plague" in that industry, is a matter of well- 
 known and honorable record.^ The sanitary 
 reforms of the New York and Chicago bake- 
 shops, whereby the bread of millions has been 
 cleansed from unspeakable filth and deadly 
 germs, are praiseworthy beyond words to the 
 unions which fought the good fight for all the 
 people.^ Their relentless crusade against the 
 tenement sweat-shop, the prolific breeding- 
 place of consumption, scarlet fever and diph- 
 theria, has probably saved first and last the 
 lives of thousands who know little and care 
 less about the labor-unions. 
 
 ■! G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 401 ff. and 746. 
 Cf. The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 1226. 
 
 8 See C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 68-69. 
 
 9 See "The Survey," June 18, 1910, p. 483 ff. 
 
58 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 4. Tlie unions afford the chief protection 
 
 against the exploitation of the labor of 
 women and children. 
 
 These abuses really amount to the present 
 exhaustion of the future assets of society. 
 And thus the labor union not only strives 
 chivalrously for woman and child ; it strives 
 thus for the rights of posterity and even the 
 possible permanency of civilization.^" 
 
 5. Unionism is a safeguard against unemploy- 
 
 ment and its social ill-consequences. 
 
 By their service as employment bureaus, and 
 again by their "out-of-work" benefits, the 
 unions seem to render more effective service 
 than any other agencies for the like purpose. 
 
 6. The benefit funds of the unions are among 
 
 the great benevolences of the age. 
 
 Nearly all pay burial expenses of members 
 and some provide homes or pensions for the 
 aged and ill. In one year the Brotherhood 
 of Locomotive Engineers paid $800,000 in 
 death and accident benefits, ^^ and the unions 
 affiliated with the American Federation of 
 Labor more than four and a half millions in 
 
 10 See "Social Ministry," (edited by H. F. Ward) p. 
 158; C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 82; G. L. 
 Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 479. 
 
 11 G. L. Bolen, op. cit., pp. 173-174.. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 59 
 
 benefits of all kinds. ^^ "The members of old 
 unions seldom appear on the lists of recipients 
 of alms and trade-unionism has come to be one 
 of the chief bulwarks against pauperism. "^^ 
 
 7. Unionism often protects employers against 
 unscrupulous competitors. 
 In every industry there is likely to be a 
 number of unprincipled competitors who, 
 though usually a minority, are able to "flood 
 the market'' with cheap goods produced by 
 under-paid or over-worked labor, sometimes 
 driving their more conscientious competitors 
 out of business. Their attitude menaces alike 
 the interests of the other employers and all the 
 employees in the trade concerned, and the 
 trade-unions, by exacting just and humane 
 terms from the unscrupulous, are the effective 
 champions, not only of the employees, but of 
 the better and the greater number of the em- 
 ployers as well.^* Historic examples are 
 afforded by the strike of the New York gar- 
 ment-workers in 1904,^'^ the bake-shop regula- 
 tions of 1910 in the same city,'** the unionizing 
 of the Illinois coal-miners in 1897,^^ and very 
 
 12 W. A. White in "The Old Order Changeth." 
 
 13 C. R. Henderson: "Social Elements," p. 179; Cf. 
 C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," pp. 68-70. 
 
 "See J. G. Brooks: "The Social Unrest," p. 15. 
 
 15 See McClure's Magazine, December, 1904, p. 138. 
 
 16 "The Survey," June 18, 1910, p. 483 ff. 
 
 17 G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 731. 
 
60 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 impressively on the occasion when the ribbon 
 manufacturers of Coventry contributed £16,- 
 000 to assist the weavers' union in holding 
 other competing employers to the union scale 
 of wages. ■'^ 
 
 Unionism further benefits employers by in- 
 creasing the efficiency of labor and consequently 
 by increasing the quantity and improving the 
 quality of the out-put. In spite of the un- 
 deniable tendencies of rabid unionism to the 
 contrary, union men usually know that in or- 
 der to maintain they must also earn a high 
 rate of wages ; that employers cannot in the 
 long run pay more than it pays to pay. If 
 the better terms of employment procured 
 through the unions prove permanent, that is, 
 if they do not thus exhaust the capital that 
 affords employment, then it is evident that "the 
 rise in the standard of living has been accom- 
 panied by at least an equal rise in the stand- 
 ard of working." The pressure of unionism 
 for higher wages also tends to the extended 
 use of machinery and to the improvement of 
 technical processes and industrial organiza- 
 tion, while these results in turn require ever- 
 increasing efficiency on the part of the in- 
 dividual worker. It is to be noted that these 
 benefits accijue not only to employees and their 
 employers, but ultimately to the public as well. 
 
 18 G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 182. ' • 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 61 
 
 8. Trade-unionism is a jnain factor in popu- 
 lar education. 
 
 As declared by the resolutions of the Fed- 
 eral Council of Churches: "By them (the un- 
 ions) society at large is benefited ... in 
 the educational influence of the multitudes 
 who in the labor unions find their chief, some- 
 times their only, intellectual stimulus." 
 
 Unionism has been the chief educator of the 
 co-operative man. The actual successes of the 
 unions depend on the degree in which they de- 
 velop in their members the co-operative vir- 
 tues of fraternity, patience, discipline, "team- 
 work," self-sacrifice and the collective exercise 
 of sound judgment. As Shailer Mathews de- 
 clares : "There is many a church which in point 
 of general altruism and loyalty to its profes- 
 sions of high purpose, could not endure a com- 
 parison with the work of some labor unions." ^' 
 Hence it is no surprise to discover that co- 
 operative enterprises flourish where trade-un- 
 ionism has flourished and rarely anywhere 
 else.^'J 
 
 In other ways also unionism has been an effec- 
 tive school of citizenship. By their continual 
 agitation for labor legislation, the unionists 
 are compelled to think out a political program 
 
 19 "The Church and the Changing Order," p. 125. 
 
 20 See G. L. Bolen : "Getting a Living," pp. 88-89. 
 
62 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 which not only pleases themselves but will 
 please the public sufficiently to procure its 
 legal enactment and enforcement, and in so 
 doing they must acquaint and relate themselves 
 with the political institutions and conditions 
 of the country. 
 
 Again, their successes in procuring a hu- 
 mane degree of leisure and a living wage make 
 possible for the working classes the "time and 
 strength and spirit to think" without which 
 good citizenship' is impossible, — for it is evi- 
 dent that most men, if compelled to work 
 twelve hours or more every day of the week 
 and to live on meager supplies of the mere 
 animal necessities, are likely to become either 
 animals or anarchists in the end. Thus the 
 union hasi promoted popular knowledge of poli- 
 tics, economics and the social sciences. Its 
 members, in attending to the union's affairs, to 
 its large financial interests, to its general social 
 policies, have been trained in business eflBciency. 
 It has taught them how to bargain for their 
 wages, "perhaps the most useful to them of 
 all earthly knowledge." In short, it has 
 been the great popular teacher of "associated 
 self-help, the main force in public movements." 
 Such considerations fairly warrant the saying 
 of William E. Gladstone that "trade unions 
 are the bulwarks of modem democracies" ^' and 
 
 21 Quoted by G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 191. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 63 
 
 Lyman Abbott's that "by training in habits of 
 co-operation and combination unionism has 
 laid the foundation of future perfected social 
 democracy." ^^ 
 
 9. The union is the greatest influence for the 
 
 Americanizing of the immigrant, save 
 only the public school. 
 
 After enumerating certain particulars, Car- 
 roll D. Wright declares: "It is doubtful if any 
 other organization than a trade-union could 
 accomplish these things. . . . Certain it 
 is that no other organization is attempting to 
 do this, at least not by amalgamation, which 
 is the only way assimilation can be secured 
 among the foreign elements." ^^ Mr. Wright 
 further points out that it is through the union 
 that the immigrant most often hears that he is 
 not the victim of but a partner in our govern- 
 ment and must do his part in making the part- 
 nership beneficial to all. 
 
 10. Unionism is an influence for law and or- 
 
 der. 
 It is true that the unions are not often 
 thought of in this character and too often ap- 
 pear in the contrary character. Nevertheless 
 this very claim in their behalf can be established 
 
 22 See "The Outlook," August 20, 1911, p. 881. 
 
 23 U. S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin No. 56, January, 
 1905. 
 
6i CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 on good grounds. There are few, if any, laws 
 on the statute-books more important to the 
 public welfare than those relating- to the in- 
 dustrial employment of women and children, 
 sweat-shop and tenement conditions, industrial 
 safety and sanitation, and the observance of 
 Sunday in industry and commerce. And it is 
 well-known that the enforcement of these and 
 kindred forms of social legislation, has its 
 chief security in the unremitting vigilance of 
 the labor unions."^ 
 
 With regard to the industrial conflicts in 
 which the unions engage, the disorders with 
 which they are too often charged should in 
 justice be offset by the active support of the 
 law with which they are not often enough ac- 
 corded their due credit. "For example, when 
 funerals were picketed in Chicago the grew- 
 some fact was heralded throughout the land. 
 But when a little later in the same city, a local 
 union fined one of its members for assaulting 
 a non-union workman and furnished the wit- 
 nesses to secure his conviction in a criminal 
 court, the incident received only passing local 
 attention and elsewhere was ignored. Again, 
 when a union at Schenectady that had fallen 
 under socialistic influence, expelled a member 
 because he belonged to the militia, the widely 
 published statement evoked severe and sweeping 
 
 24 Cf. "The Survey," June 18, 1910, p. 488. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 65 
 
 criticisms of an attitude which was ascribed to 
 unionism in general. Eut when, soon after- 
 wards, the annual convention of garment 
 workers by a large majority declared its sup- 
 port of the militia, or when Mr. Gompers, in 
 a trenchant article, defended the militia, daily 
 journalism took no notice of the fact." "'' 
 
 A well known Boston capitalist reminds us 
 that "from the beginning labor has had to 
 fight the enemy not only from without but from 
 within as well, and this because, from the very 
 nature of its cause, it has had to take in all 
 kinds of working people, no matter whether 
 they were fit or not.""® As an inevitable re- 
 sult of this inevitable condition the reckless 
 revolutionary element sometimes comes to the 
 front and the top in the unions. But we must 
 remember that this is not the rule but the excep- 
 tion. For in the unions, as everywhere, the 
 men with cool heads and steady nerves tend 
 to assume their natural leadership, and such 
 men well know that the interests of the union, 
 as well as their own continued leadership, de- 
 mand that the hot-heads and the fire-eaters be 
 effectually restrained. Much current criticism 
 of the unions seems to ignore the fact that the 
 
 25 Report of the Executive Council of the National 
 Civic Federation quoted by Adams and Sumner, Labor 
 Problems, p. 211n. 
 
 26 See "The Survey," Dec. 30, 1911, p. 1418. 
 
66 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 same disorderly and desperate men would still 
 exist even if there were no unions, and with- 
 out the unions would be far more dangerous 
 than they are within the unions where they are 
 associated witli the wiser and better men who 
 are usually in the majority. This noiseless 
 but pervasive restraint is more effective than 
 that of the police because it comes closer home. 
 Sometimes, indeed, this restraint proves in- 
 effectual, arson, dynamiting, or street-rioting 
 ensues, the newspapers publish the horror, and 
 we all know all about it. But at most times 
 it is effectual, the newspapers publish nothing 
 and the rest of us know nothing about it. 
 When a million men merely behave themselves 
 and compel their associates to do the same, 
 that does not make a "story" for the papers, 
 but one McNamara with a stick of dynamite 
 always does. Without his union and the hope it 
 begets, the wage-earner, given over to the mad 
 anger of despair, would usually become a ter- 
 rible recruit to the ever-swelling ranks of 
 anarchy. "Take this fresh hope of better 
 days through unionism from him and I would 
 tremble for the commonwealth," writes Bishop 
 Mclntyre; "let no black prejudice spawned in 
 the dark ages choke down the lid on this safety- 
 valve of aspiration lest the ship of state be 
 imperilled." ^^ 
 
 27 See the Methodist Review, March, 1912, p. 228. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 67 
 
 11. Organized labor is an influence for 
 temperajice. 
 
 Unionism makes for a higher standard of 
 living. A higher standard of living in turn 
 means better homes. And good homes are the 
 sovereign remedy for saloons. For similar 
 reasons, the shortening of the work-day, due 
 chiefly to unionism, has generally promoted 
 temperate habits among workers."^ The 
 Knights of Labor have always refused member- 
 ship to employees of the liquor business. The 
 stereotypers' union of New York fines members 
 who come on duty drunk. The Brotherhood of 
 Locomotive Engineers requires total abstinence 
 of its members and all the railway brother- 
 hoods are rigid in their temperance regula- 
 tions.^® In Great Britain there is a temper- 
 ance society composed exclusively of walking 
 delegates and other union officials, its object 
 being "the promotion of total abstinence and 
 the removal of trades' society meetings from 
 licensed premises." Nearly every labor-mem- 
 ber of Parliament belongs to it.^" A similar 
 movement is now under way among labor 
 leaders in this country and has promise of 
 much influence and usefulness. In spite of the 
 affiliation of the bar-tenders' union with the 
 
 28 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 412. 
 
 29 See G. L. Bolen, op. eit., p. 189, 297. 
 
 3»See C, Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 76 ff. 
 
68 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
 
 American Federation of Labor, the national 
 officers of the latter have pronounced them- 
 selves strongly against the saloon and are 
 systematically endeavoring to procure for un- 
 ions everywhere meeting places other than 
 saloon-premises. The Federation in a recent 
 national convention has refused to go on record 
 against marked activity in no-license cam- 
 paigns of its General Treasurer, Mr. John B. 
 Lennon. 
 
 1^. Organized labor is a chief influence for 
 international peace. 
 
 Its adherents are everywhere well aware 
 that the intolerable burdens of war and arma- 
 ment fall chiefly upon the working classes. An 
 English authority reports that "in Europe the 
 general hope for peace is centered in the work 
 done by labor organizations," adding, "we 
 hope that as soon as these organizations 
 achieve their efficiency, they will organize them- 
 selves into international bodies to prevent 
 vrar."^^ And hardly less than prophetic is 
 Keir Hardie's prediction of "the time when 
 an organized working class would take its 
 place in the politics of the world by declaring 
 that on the day on which a war was declared 
 tools would be dropped and every wheel 
 
 31 Harold Gorst, quoted in "The Christian Ministry 
 and the Social Order," p. 293. 
 
CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 69 
 
 stopped in every country affected' by the 
 war."32 
 
 13. Unionism is to he credited with some re- 
 ligious spirit. 
 
 As it raises the standard of living, it sets 
 men free from bondage to material things 
 and so makes possible for them the things of 
 the spirit. Labor, although estranged from 
 the Church, is yet manifestly responsive to 
 fraternal overtures from the Church. Best of 
 all, workingmen every^vhere revere the name 
 and the lordship of Jesus. 
 
 Surely organized labor has a long and hon- 
 orable record of sein'ice rendered to the gen- 
 eral welfare of mankind. By essential facts 
 and forces such as these, not by questionable 
 or even deplorable incidents, must Christian 
 men appraise the labor movement and pro- 
 nounce it a prime factor in progressive civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 32 See "The Outlook," February 11, 1911, p. 325. 
 
VII 
 
 WHAT WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 
 ABOUT THE CHURCH 
 
 "How can I hate him? I know him," said 
 Charles Lamb. Better: acquaintance is the 
 way to good will. When church-men get bet- 
 ter acquainted with the labor unions, and labor- 
 ing-men with the churches, mutual esteem and 
 fraternal co-operation, to the benefit of both, 
 will ensue. And in the long run a benefit 
 greater still will accrue to society at large. 
 
 What churchmen should know about the la- 
 bor unions, was the subject of the preceding 
 chapter. It is now in order to consider, 
 What laboring-men ought to know about the 
 Church. If the reader is a laboring man, he 
 is challenged to give the Church a square deal. 
 If he is a churchman, he is charged to present 
 the claims of the Church to laboring men and 
 their unions whenever a hearing can be ob- 
 tained. 
 
 1. The church has created the moral senti- 
 Ttient to which labor appeals and by 
 which social serime subsists. 
 
 It is true that nearly all the gains of the 
 7? 
 
WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 71 
 
 labor movement have been made on demand of 
 the labor unions rather than of the churches. It 
 is equally true that such demands would never 
 have been accorded, nor even heard, apart 
 from the social conscience which the churches 
 have created. The unions have been able to 
 do for the masses in America what could not 
 have been done in any heathen country simply 
 because we have churches in America. In the 
 pre-Christian world the highest social thought 
 was attained by Plato and Aristotle. Here 
 is Plato's best; word concerning labor: "Na- 
 ture has made neither bootmakers nor black- 
 smiths ; such occupations degrade the people 
 engaged in them, miserable mercenaries ex- 
 cluded by their very position from political 
 rights." And here is Aristotle's : "In the state 
 which is best governed the citizens must not 
 lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for 
 such a life is ignoble and inimical to vir- 
 tue." ^ The difference between the world of 
 that and the world of this day simply registers 
 the fact that in the meantime the Church has 
 had its word to say. As Professor Ely writes : 
 "Apart frorri Christ the natural tendency is 
 to come back to the standpoint of the Greeks 
 and despise the masses." ^ And Professor 
 Ross says : "What keeps the Church most alive 
 
 1 See G. Hodges : "Faith and Social Service," p. 58. 
 
 2 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 648. 
 
72 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 
 
 is its power to fit human being-s for harmonious 
 social life. It is, in the last analysis, the re- 
 pository of certain related ideas, convictions, 
 symbols, and appeals which have more efficacy 
 in socializing the human heart than any other 
 group of influences known to Western Civiliza- 
 tion." * And Professor Dewey says : "The 
 highest product of the interest of man in man 
 is the Church." * 
 
 ^. The church through the course of history 
 has always been a main factor in the 
 upliftment of the masses. 
 
 What is the most democratic fact of history? 
 Not a primitive folk-moot in a North German 
 forest, nor the red-handed Jacquerie of France, 
 nor Napoleon crowned as the people's Em- 
 peror, but the fact that a Carpenter is wor- 
 shiped as God by the nations of the earth, 
 and this is the achievement of the Church. 
 And the teaching of the Carpenter, perpet- 
 uated by the Church, is everywhere recognized 
 as the divine charter for the worth and rights 
 of the common people. 
 
 The greatest single institution in the inter- 
 est of labor is the weekly rest day "secured for 
 the toilers of Christendom by the very charter 
 of the Church and defended on their behalf by 
 
 3 See "The Outlook," August 28, 1897. 
 i "Psychology," p. 343. 
 
WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 73 
 
 it through the centuries," — the earliest, most 
 enduring, and most beneficent labor legisla- 
 tion known to history. "The Sabbath stood 
 for the idea that man belonged to God, and 
 that the lowliest man should be a man of leisure 
 on that day, owing his time to nobody but God. 
 The Council of Wessex (691 A. D.)' legislated 
 that if a slave was forced by his master to 
 work on the Sabbath, he was to be free. The 
 slave is God's man on that day ; and God warns 
 the mighty not to trespass on his domain."^ 
 
 Again it is never to be forgotten that the 
 great stream of philanthropy, which partly 
 compensates the inequalities of society, has its 
 perennial source in the influence of the Church. 
 And not only the impulse to help the less 
 favored, but likewise the upward aspirations 
 of the less favored themselves have arisen from 
 the same inexhaustible source. In the words 
 of Graham Taylor: "The Christian evangel 
 has long held the ideal overhead and the 
 dynamic within the heart which has inspired a 
 divine discontent. Every now and then the 
 gospel strikes the earth under the feet of the 
 common man, and he rises up to be counted as 
 one." ^ All great movements for popular wel- 
 fare are typified, as to their essential charac- 
 ter, by such popular uprisings as those of the 
 
 5 H. L. Nash: "The Genesis of the Social Conscience." 
 « See "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 93-94. 
 
74 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 
 
 German peasantry in the sixteenth century and 
 of the laborers of England following the min- 
 istry of John Wycliffe, both of which asserted 
 the rights of the masses in terms of the gospel 
 which came to them through the Church. To 
 reply that the organized Church does not im- 
 mediately and everywhere enlist itself in such 
 movements, is only to cite the irrelevant fact 
 that whenever truth is newly discovered it is 
 not discovered by everybody all at once ; there 
 must always be seers and pioneers. And the 
 Church does infinitely more for the masses than 
 any other institution, even should we admit 
 that it does no more than perpetuate the 
 sources from which alone the seers and pioneers 
 of humanity must ever renew their vision and 
 their strength. 
 
 The abolition of slavery was the greatest of 
 all labor movements. And the common scoff 
 that the Church did not abolish slavery misses 
 its point. The Golden Rule abolished slavery. 
 And the Church has carried the Golden Rule 
 down the centuries and around the world. Ac- 
 cording to an authority so impartial as Ben- 
 jamin Kidd, slavery was abolished in Europe, 
 where formerly universal, largely through the 
 quiet and all but forgotten persuasions of 
 priests and prelates in the middle ages.^ And 
 Carroll D. Wright attributes its final abolition 
 T See "Western Civilization." 
 
WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 75 
 
 throughout the British Empire to the unmis- 
 takable influence of the Wesleyan revival.* It 
 is well-known that the emancipation-crusade 
 of William Wilberforce was the direct con- 
 sequence of his evangelical conversion.® 
 
 3. Laboring men should take account of the 
 social movement in the Church to-day. 
 
 Nothing is at present so engaging the heart 
 and the hands of the Church. It is too true 
 that the Church has done far less than it ought 
 for the social welfare in general and for labor 
 in particular ; but it is also true that no critics 
 of the Church are more unsparing in this re- 
 gard than those of its own membership. And 
 the Church at large, so far from being hostile, 
 or even indifferent to such criticism, welcomes 
 and lays it to heart. When an institution 
 regularly generates and responds to self- 
 criticism it manifests a prime qualification of 
 social fitness and survival. The response of 
 the Church to social needs is evidenced in the 
 departments of labor and social service au- 
 thorized by nearly all of the denominations, 
 the observance of Labor Sunday and the identi- 
 fication of many ministers with the unions or 
 their interests, the increasing concern of the 
 churches for labor-legislation, the official dec- 
 
 8 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 649. 
 
 » See Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. "Wilberforce." 
 
76 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 
 
 larations of the chief denominations committing 
 them to the labor movement, and especially the 
 like declaration of the Federal Council of the 
 Churches and the work of its Social Service 
 Commission, whereby the Protestantism of 
 America is committed with authority to a social 
 creed and a social program. Beyond all this, 
 it is to be remembered that the larger part of 
 the social work of the Church is that which its 
 members are doing as individuals in pursuance 
 of its teachings. The help which the Church 
 renders the cause of labor is not measured by 
 the visible activity of its organization or 
 officials, but by the degree in which all who ren- 
 der any service are actuated by the Christian 
 spirit and motives which the Church inculcates. 
 When laboring men complain that our reso- 
 lutions and sermons are "mere talk" and that 
 the churches ought to "do something," their 
 complaint is a mingling of wisdom with unwis- 
 dom. We may properly require them to ob- 
 serve that "talk" in the sense of instraction, 
 reproof and persuasion, is not to be disparaged ; 
 that in this sense it is at once the chief func- 
 tion of the Church and a chief force in all 
 human affairs, in labor unions for instance; 
 that the right kind of "talking" is "doing." 
 Again they should consider that the Church 
 must never do more than persuade men ; that 
 its attempt to coerce men has been its greatest 
 
WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 77 
 
 historic error. Yet we cannot demand that 
 such critics be entirely satisfied with the 
 Church. Our preachings and resolutions, our 
 teachings and testimony, ought to be more 
 timely, more practical, more human, more pro- 
 phetic. As organizations the churches ought 
 to "talk," not less but better, and also "do" 
 many more things than now. But when all is 
 said and done, the talking will have led to the 
 doing. 
 
 4. Laboring men should not under-estimate 
 the democratic constituency and spirit 
 of the church. 
 
 The Church is still essentially the Church of 
 the people. I speak of the rule, not the ex- 
 ception. There are exceptions, — a few city 
 churches which are conspicuous because ex- 
 ceptional, and exceptional because so few in 
 comparison to the tens of thousands of humble 
 churches composed of humble people. 
 
 It is true that the operations of the Church 
 are so extended and complicated as to require 
 business ability of the highest order and 
 financial resources in large amounts. Never- 
 theless the attempts of "big business" and 
 "big money" to take advantage of these re- 
 quirements are apparently infrequent and in 
 certain instances the repudiation of such at- 
 tempts has been sharp and conclusive. The 
 
78 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 
 
 great business enterprises of the churches are 
 largely conducted by men who have come from 
 humble stations in life and are now rendering 
 great services at small salaries. And the ex- 
 penses are paid, not chiefly by the few large 
 gifts of the rich, but by the many small gifts 
 of the poor. Nor are all the great churches in 
 great cities dominated by "predatory wealth." 
 Among the most eminent champions of labor 
 and of social reform are some of the distin- 
 guished city pastors of every denomination. 
 
 5. Laborers should recognize the free minis- 
 tration and open fellowship of the 
 churches. 
 
 In an earUer chapter it was frankly ac- 
 knowledged that snobbery is the manifest sin 
 of some churches. Nevertheless I know of 
 more than a few churches where this suspicion 
 is due to misunderstanding entirely. Let 
 laborers who demand justice for themselves be 
 sure to accord it to the Church. 
 
 It ought to be more generally recognized 
 that the Church is the one great social institu- 
 tion sustained at great expense by voluntary 
 gifts and offering its ministrations without 
 charge to all the people. Furthermore, "un- 
 like the fraternal orders, with which it is un- 
 favorably compared, the Church welcomes all 
 grades of people, not having the black-ball 
 
WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 79 
 
 method of restricting membership." There- 
 fore church-men may rightly address wage- 
 earaers in this wise: The Church needs you. 
 You need the Church. Meantime if you are 
 not entirely pleased with the Church, remember 
 that the Church isn't entirely pleased with it- 
 self. Don't grumble, but lend a hand. There 
 are enough of you to make the Church what- 
 ever you want it to be, and you can take pos- 
 session any day you please. The door to 
 membership is open, — why not all come in at 
 once, — in the fear of God, seeking pardon for 
 sin, justice for society, fellowship with human- 
 ity ? What a vision ! 
 
VIII 
 
 THE SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 In 1908 the Federal Council of the Churches 
 of Christ, officially representing thirty-three de- 
 nominations of American Protestantism, promul- 
 gated a declaration which has been generally 
 received as "the social creed of the Church." 
 It should be distinctlj;^ recognized that this 
 august body was commissioned with authority 
 competent to commit to its utterances the par- 
 ticipating denominations collectively. But 
 further, the same denominations, by their own 
 official utterances, have committed themselves 
 severally to the same principles. For the his- 
 toric declaration of the Federal Council was 
 preceded by an almost identical utterance of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church and was fol- 
 lowed by equivalent utterances on the part of 
 nearly all the Protestant denominations. 
 With a view to defining the position of the 
 Church as to the labor movement, I will now 
 quote in order, commenting on each, the social 
 principles for which, by their own avowal, "the 
 churches must stand." 
 
 1. "For equal rights and complete justice for 
 
 all men in all stations of life." 
 80 
 
SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 81 
 
 Here is a two-fold demand, namel}', for 
 equality' and for justice, each in the Christian 
 sense. When Christ taught all men, without 
 respect of person, to say "Our Father," He 
 put them on an equal level of worth in relation 
 to God. So far as human relations put men 
 on unequal levels of worth, the social system 
 becomes unchristian and ungodly. "Equal 
 rights for all men in all stations of life" means 
 equality of opportunity, not equality of pos- 
 sessions, and universality of rights, not uni- 
 formity of station. Not the equal capacities 
 of all men, but the equal right of all to make 
 the most of their unequal capacities, is as- 
 serted. Hence all economic combinations and 
 all social conditions which limit the oppor- 
 tunity of any man or hinder him from realiz- 
 ing any of the proper ends of his being, are 
 contrary to the spirit of Jesus and the law of 
 His kingdom. And social justice, no less than 
 private morality, must be the uncompromising 
 demand of the Church if it is to be worthy of 
 its Master's name. 
 
 '2. "For the right of all men to the oppor- 
 tunity for self-maintenance, a right 
 ever to he wisely and strongly safe- 
 guarded against encroachments of every 
 kind. For the right of workers to some 
 protection against the hardships often 
 
82 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 resulting from the swift crises of in- 
 dustrial change." 
 Tliis language seems fairly to commit the 
 Church to the epoch-making doctrine of "the 
 right to labor." We may not be committed to 
 all the alleged implications of that doctrine; to 
 be committed to its admitted implications is 
 sufficiently revolutionary. The right to labor 
 is necessary to the right to live, and should be 
 supported, not by barren permission, but by 
 adequate legal enactments and social institu- 
 tions. Whether or not the means to this end 
 are now apparent, the end itself should be 
 recognized as a moral imperative and the means 
 should be diligently sought and employed. 
 But "he that will not work, neither shall he 
 eat." Voluntary and involuntary idleness are 
 alike demoralizing. Their abolition should be 
 the accepted work of all Christian nations. 
 Against this principle Goldwin Smith thus ar- 
 gues : "Nor can the right to employment be 
 asserted when no employment offers, in the 
 case of an artisan any more than in that of a 
 lawyer for whom there are no clients, or a phy- 
 sician for whom there are no patients." ^ This 
 assumes wrongly that the artisan's right to 
 employment means the right to earn the special 
 wage-rate Incident to his special skill in his 
 trade. The right really claimed Is rather the 
 1 "Labour and Capital," p. 9, 
 
SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 83 
 
 simple right to a living wage, which belongs 
 unconditionally to the artisan and the profes- 
 sional man alike on the simple ground that they 
 have a right to live, and is a very different mat- 
 ter from the exceptional wage paid for their ex- 
 ceptional abilities, which becomes their right 
 onh' on condition that somebody promises to 
 pay it. 
 
 3. "For the principal of conciliation and ar- 
 bitration in industrial dissensions." 
 In such dissensions the general public is al- 
 ways a party in interest, sometimes the chief 
 party in interest. The interests of the im- 
 mediate disputants should ever be amenable to 
 this larger social interest. Hence the public 
 should always reserve, and when necessary ex- 
 ercise, the right to intervene in its own behalf, 
 especially when transportation or other public 
 services, or such necessities of life as fuel or 
 foodstuffs, are involved, and whenever pub- 
 lic peace and order are menaced. While 
 such intervention should be primarily con- 
 ciliatory and persuasive, yet in defense of 
 public interests it should be potentially deci- 
 sive on occasions of great social emergency. 
 
 4- "For the protection of the worker from 
 dangerous machinery, occupational dis- 
 ease, injuries and mortality." 
 An earlier chapter has been given to this 
 
84 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 subject. The following conclusions may be 
 here re-stated. The prevention of these evils 
 should be secured by every available precau- 
 tion and safeguard. When not preventable, 
 they should be regarded as incidental to the 
 economic progress of society, and as such 
 should be borne, as far as possible, by society 
 at large rather than by the wage-earner, his 
 family, or his social class. With a view to pre- 
 vention and compensation alike, the Church and 
 Christian men should earnestly promote the due 
 reformation of industrial processes and cus- 
 toms and the enactment of effective legislation 
 in this regard. This course is called for not 
 only in justice to the working class, but in de- 
 fense of the social interests which now suffer 
 through the disintegration of family life, the 
 untimely labor of children and women, the in- 
 capacity and consequent pauperism,, and the 
 race degeneracy, all so largely due to the need- 
 less or uncompensated accidents and diseases 
 of modern industry. 
 
 5. "For the abolition of child-labor." 
 
 The sacred rights of childhood are the rights 
 to home, health, play and education. Chris- 
 tian citizens are therefore called upon to use 
 all influences for the enactment and enforce- 
 ment of laws that will prevent the employment 
 of children at an undue age, during excessive 
 
SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 85 
 
 hours or under any condition detrimental to 
 health, happiness, efficiency or character. 
 Every state should also maintain a system of 
 free, compulsory and adequate education, such 
 system being so co-ordinated with the code 
 affecting child-labor that their operation shall 
 be mutually supplementary and together se- 
 cure childhood from ignorance on the one hand 
 and habitual idleness on the other. Thus the 
 interests of childhood, of labor, of the common 
 wealth and of posterity will be alike conserved. 
 
 6. "For such regulation of the condition of 
 labor for women as shall safeguard the 
 physical and moral health of the com- 
 munity." 
 
 The Supreme Court of the United States has 
 lately declared that such regulation should be 
 "imposed not solely for her benefit but also 
 largely for the benefit of all." The health, 
 culture and character of woman, involving her 
 qualification for good motherhood, whether 
 physical, mental or moral, are possibly the most 
 valuable assets of the human race. The in- 
 dustrial employment of women should be 
 limited in respect to the number of working 
 hours per day and the number of working days 
 per month, and in all respects necessary to pro- 
 tect the woman-worker and the social interests 
 involved in her welfare. 
 
86 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 7. "For the suppression of the sweating sys- 
 
 tem." 
 
 Piece-work in the tenement is the proHfic 
 source of the miseries, diseases and vices of the 
 city poor. Low wages, long hours, child-labor, 
 abnormal thirst, foul air, organic and inor- 
 ganic filth, under-feeding, over-crowding, the 
 breeding and broad-casting of tuberculosis, 
 scarlet fever and all manner of germ-diseases ; 
 the break-up of the family and the out-break 
 of anarchy, are some of the by-products of the 
 sweating system. The Church ought to be the 
 eager rival of the labor-union in reaching and 
 removing this crime against civilization. 
 
 8. "For the gradual and reasonable reduc- 
 
 tion of the hours of labor to the lowest 
 practical point, and for that degree of 
 leisure for all which is the condition of 
 the highest human life." 
 
 The reasonable reduction of labor-time is not 
 to be regarded as a concession, to indolence but 
 as a contribution to the health, culture and 
 domestic integrity of the masses. The self-re- 
 spect of civilized communities demands the uni- 
 versal abolition of the twelve-hour day except 
 under pressure of unavoidable emergency. 
 Every successful reduction of the labor-day, 
 when not accompanied by ai reduction of wages 
 
SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 87 
 
 or of product, is to be viewed as a social 
 gain. 
 
 9. "For the release from employment one day 
 
 in seven." 
 
 This demand is sanctioned by physical, 
 economic and divine laws. The Social Service 
 Commission of the Federated Churches has since 
 defined the practical application of this doc- 
 trine as f oUows : "(a) One day of rest for 
 every six days of work; (b) This day of rest, 
 wherever possible, to be made the Lord's Day ; 
 (c) The pay of every worker for six days of 
 work to be made sufficient for the needs of 
 seven days of living." 
 
 10. "For a living-wage as a minimum in 
 
 every industry." 
 
 The living wage cannot be defined in terms 
 of money. Nevertheless it is a definite de- 
 mand. It is such a waere-rate as will maintain 
 
 o 
 
 in life and health a family of average number, 
 affording elementary education to the children 
 and due provision for sickness and old age, and 
 not requiring wage-labor on the part of the 
 wife and mother, nor of young children. The 
 social and moral value of a living-wage will be 
 manifest in betterment of family life, sexual 
 morality, public health, industrial efficiency, 
 general culture and good citizenship. 
 
88 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 11. "For the highest wage that each industry 
 can afford and for the most equitable 
 division of products of industry that 
 can ultimately be devised." 
 
 The common product should be distributed 
 according to the following principles: (1) No 
 man should receive less than a living wage. 
 (2) No man should receive more than he pro- 
 duces or more than a fair equivalent for a ser- 
 vice rendered. (3) The general increase of 
 wealth should be accompanied by a proportion- 
 ate increase of wages. In a Christian society 
 the actual distribution of wealth should be con- 
 stantly challenged by, and as far as possible 
 governed by, these conditions. To this end in- 
 dustry and commerce must morally and legally 
 be purged of monopoly, exploitation and 
 special privilege. 
 
 13. "For suitable provision for the old age 
 of the workers and for those incapacit- 
 ated by injury." 
 
 Old age in almshouse corners flung is a re- 
 proach to civilization. In years of strength a 
 man has but the right to inalce a living, but in 
 old age he has a right to a living. "Suitable 
 provision for old age" must be accorded to men, 
 not as charity, but justice. This is now more 
 than the testimony of the Church or the clamor 
 of the radical ; it is the enacted law of the 
 
SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 89 
 
 world's mightiest empire. And "suitable pro- 
 vision for those incapacitated by injury" is no 
 longer to be contingent on the demonstrable 
 negligence of employers and limited by the 
 costs and uncertainties of litigation, but is to 
 be automatic and assured, presumptively evi- 
 denced hj the mere fact of the injury, and ac- 
 corded not as a gratuity but as a right. Since 
 this testimony of the Church was delivered, and 
 we trust in some measure on account of it, 
 eleven American states have embodied its prin- 
 ciple in statute law and it is probable that 
 practically all will do so in the early future. 
 
 13. "For the abatement of poverty." 
 
 When Henry George declared that poverty 
 could and must be abolished there were few to 
 treat him seriously. To-day the charity ex- 
 perts and the sociologists are all but unani- 
 mous in the deliberate judgment that involun- 
 tary poverty is a preventable evil. The faith 
 of the churches should be no less. True it is 
 said, "the poor ye have always," but not, 
 "ought to have." And it is also said, "Seek ye 
 first the kingdom and all these things, (life's 
 material conditions), shall be added unto you." 
 And that promise will yet be literally fulfilled 
 when we seek the kingdom socially as well as 
 individually. 
 
 The supreme act of Christian faith in our 
 
90 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 generation is the belief that the industrial 
 world can indeed be Christianized and the reso- 
 lution that it shall be done. That such a faith 
 can be held and make headway amid the reg- 
 nant selfishness, injustice and cruelty of the 
 times is no less than the modern manifestation 
 of the mind of Christ and the unfading 
 splendor of the Apocalypse. May the men of 
 Christ's Church be not disobedient unto the 
 heavenly vision ! 
 
IX 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 The most significant outgrowth of the mod- 
 ern labor movement is Socialism. In its fun- 
 damental criticism of the present social order, 
 in its exalted vision of the future social order, 
 and in its living faith in that vision, Socialism 
 ranks next to Christianity itself among the 
 idealisms of history. No study could be more 
 timely, whether for Socialist, Labor-unionist 
 or Christian, than the study of Socialism in its 
 relations with the labor movement and Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 1. SOCIALISM ITSELF 
 
 In these days one is likely to be bluntly 
 asked, "Do you believe in Socialism?" The an- 
 swer is at once as difficult and as easy as though 
 the question had been, "Do you believe in re- 
 ligion?" For just as religion may mean any- 
 thing from fetichism to "the mind that was 
 in Christ Jesus," so Socialism may mean any- 
 thing from "the red fool-fury of the Seine" to 
 the Holy City of the Apocalypse. The many 
 and varied Socialisms may be classified under 
 four types. First, Ideal Socialism, which may 
 91 
 
92 SOCIALISM 
 
 mean merely the general prevalence of the so- 
 cial sph-it — of fraternity and service. Second, 
 Cooperative Socialism, which seeks all ways to 
 replace competition with cooperation through- 
 out the economic realm. ^ Third, Evolutionary 
 Socialism, which proposes the gradual and ex- 
 perimental extension of state-action, with the 
 complete cooperative commonwealth as the fixed 
 but remote ideal. Fourth, Revolutionary So- 
 cialism, which proposes the immediate estab- 
 lishment of the cooperative commonwealth as 
 a substitute for our entire system of competi- 
 tive industry and private ownership of land 
 and large capital. Revolutionary Socialism is 
 not necessarily a program of disorder and dy- 
 namite; its representative programs are 
 strictly political and pacific. 
 
 Whether certain of these four types are en- 
 titled to thcj name of Socialism is sometimes 
 denied both by adherents and opponents, and 
 yet all these types have been so named and 
 have so named themselves. To avoid confu- 
 sion, the present discussion will be confined to 
 the third, the evolutionary type, and without 
 further explanation it may be assumed that 
 the word "Socialism" will be here used with 
 that reference. In this sense it is well defined 
 by the late Edmond Kelley as "the theory that 
 the production, transportation, and distribu- 
 iSee T. Kirkup: "History of Socialism," pp. 400-402. 
 
SOCIALISM 93 
 
 tlon of the necessities of life can to a certain 
 extent to-day, slowly to a larger degree, and 
 perhaps eventually altogether, be best under- 
 taken by the collective action of the city or 
 state through the substitution of cooperation 
 for competition, and social for self-interest." ^ 
 Thus we eliminate from the present discussion 
 many points of controversy. In this sense, for 
 instance. Socialism is not artificial nor "con- 
 trary to nature," but, as truly as Individualism, 
 is an original factor in nature, as seen in the 
 "collectivism" of the ant-hill and the bee-hive.^ 
 Nor is such Socialism altogether visionary and 
 untried. It is even now the operative principle 
 of the family, the school and the church, and 
 even in the political state is exemplified by our 
 highways, parks, water-works, postal-system, 
 and all those colossal properties involved in the 
 present conservation problem. It was general 
 in primitive society and generic in primitive 
 Christianity.* 
 
 Nor does Socialism propose altogether to 
 abolish private property. Goods for consump- 
 tion would, of course, remain the private prop- 
 erty of the consumers. Goods for production, 
 (that is, capital), might be either private or 
 
 2 "Individualism and Collectivism," p. 4. 
 3Cf. E. Kelley: Op. cit, p. 4. 
 
 * See W. Rauschenbusch: "Christianity and the Social 
 Crisis," pp. 388-393 and 413-414. 
 
9* SOCIALISM 
 
 common property, according to whether they 
 are for private use or for common use. That 
 is, the carpenter's saw or the artist's pencil 
 might be private property, but a railroad or 
 a factory would be public property. Reason- 
 able Socialists would probably say that a man 
 might properly own any kind of property ex- 
 cept such as gives him control over other 
 men's living; property of the latter kind 
 should be owned by all men in common. In a 
 word, the choice is not between Individualism 
 and Socialism as mutually exclusive, but just as 
 Individualism now is largely socialistic, so 
 would Socialism then be largely individualistic. 
 Socialism also disclaims any menace to the 
 individuality of personal character. It is true 
 indeed that in the lower industrial processes 
 which satisfy those physical needs in which in- 
 dividuals are nearest alike, work would then be 
 done by routine and the workers would be 
 regimented. But this kind of work, accord- 
 ing to the socialistic exposition, would thus be 
 reduced to the minimum, and this done, all the 
 workers would still have abundant time and 
 vitality for those higher pursuits in which men 
 exercise their choices and develop their indi- 
 vidualities. Says John A. Hobson : "In a word, 
 the highest division of labor has not yet been 
 attained, — that which will apportion machin- 
 ery to the collective supply of the routine 
 
SOCIALISM 95 
 
 needs of life, and art to the Individual supply 
 of the individual needs. In this way alone can 
 society obtain the full use of the labor-saving 
 character of machinery, minimizing the amount 
 of human exertion engaged in tending machin- 
 ery and maximizing the amount engaged in 
 the free and interesting occupations." ^ Thus 
 Socialism proposes that individuality shall 
 have for its security, no longer the "special 
 privilege" of the few, but "equality of oppor- 
 tunit}'" for everyone. 
 
 2. SOCIALISM AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 In its fundamental character the labor move- 
 ment is more than a strife for higher pay and 
 shorter hours. It is the progress of industrial 
 democracy, and its consummation will come 
 when the economic order, as well as the political 
 government, shall be "of the people, for the 
 people, and by the people." Inasmuch as 
 trade-unionism is a fighting force for obtain- 
 ing specific economic gains to labor, it can 
 never be adequate to the fulfillment of the labor 
 movement in its higher ideals of universal 
 democracy, justice, fraternity and peace. 
 Socialism is the collective name for these ideals. 
 
 Socialists maintain that the laboring-class, 
 no matter how well "unionized," is always at 
 a disadvantage in its present struggle with 
 
 6 "The Evolution of Modern Capitalism." 
 
96 SOCIALISM 
 
 capital. Hunger forever fights against the 
 class that lives by its labor only, and for the 
 class that lives by capital ; for capital is but 
 another name for the opportunity to labor and 
 live. Hence, "Whatever terms organized 
 labor may succeed in winning are always tem- 
 porary and insecure, like the hold which a 
 wrestler' gets on the body of his antagonist. 
 Moreover ... it has to wrestle on its 
 knees with a foeman who is on his feet." ® 
 Socialism proposes that no class nor man shall 
 hold such an advantage over others, but.ihat 
 social capital shall be held in common for the 
 common good. 
 
 Socialists maintain, again, that trade-union- 
 ism is inadequate because it implies the con- 
 tinued division of society into hostile classes, — • 
 capitalists and wage-workers. As a war-meas- 
 ure unionism serves the higher ends of the 
 labor movement in the same imperfect way that 
 an efficient army serves the true welfare of a 
 nation. Hence Socialism proposes that all 
 laborers become also capitalists, and all 
 capitalists become laborers, and so that the in- 
 dustrial war shall end in the fusion of the war- 
 ring classes. 
 
 Socialists further maintain that unionism is 
 no remedy for monopoly. The tendency to 
 monopoly is one of the most ominous phe- 
 6 W. Rauschenbusch: Op. cit., p. 407. 
 
SOCIALISM 97 
 
 nomena of the time and the power thus de- 
 veloped is probably the greatest power ever 
 exerted by men over their fellowmen. Were 
 this power to be transferred from the directors 
 of some great corporation to the executive com- 
 mittee of some great labor union, or to be held 
 jointly by both, the interests of society would 
 be no more secure than at present ; on the lat- 
 ter supposition probably less so, since the most 
 powerful monopolies even now seem to be those 
 in which there is apparent collusion between 
 the monopolistic management and its unionized 
 employees.^ Hence Socialism proposes that 
 the whole public be admitted into the combina- 
 tion ; in other words that society become its 
 own monopolist. 
 
 To set labor free from the advantages of 
 capital in our present industrial war, to end 
 the industrial war itself, to provide that 
 monopoly shall accrue to the public good in- 
 stead of private gain, — to achieve these ends 
 would at once fulfill the labor movement and 
 inaugurate the socialistic state. 
 
 3. SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Whatever disagreement may be asserted be- 
 tween Socialism and Christianity, it can hardly 
 be denied that they agree in their motive and 
 in their aim. For the common motive of 
 
 7Cf. J. A. Hobson: "The Evolution of Modern 
 Capitalism," p. 358. 
 
98 SOCIALISM 
 
 Christianity and Socialism is conscientious con- 
 cern for the injustices and ci'uelties of the pres- 
 ent social order. And the common aim of 
 Christianity and Socialism is the perfection of 
 the social order. 
 
 With agreement as to motive and aim, the 
 only possible disagreements would be as to 
 methods. Many Socialists there are who pro- 
 fess to repudiate with hatred and scorn, not only 
 certain! sects, creeds and dogmas, but Chris- 
 tianity itself. Many Christians there are who 
 profess to repudiate with equal hatred and 
 scorn, not only certain socialistic programs, 
 platforms and propositions, but Socialism it- 
 self. An increasing number, among Socialists 
 and Christians alike, are moved by the convic- 
 tion that socialistic schemes, apart from the 
 divine vitality of Christianity, will be ever inert 
 and sterile, while Christian principles, apart 
 from their application to the human realities 
 of society, are perverted from their divine pur- 
 pose. Hence, the demand that, in addition to 
 the common motive and common aim of 
 Socialism and Christianity, we now find such 
 common methods as shall make complete an 
 adequate and operative system of Christian 
 Socialism. 
 
 To this end it will not be necessary for either 
 party to champion every theory or proposal 
 which may call itself by the name of Chris- 
 
SOCIALISM 99 
 
 tianity or the name of Socialism. But it will 
 be necessary for all concerned to understand 
 one another better than at present. Chris- 
 tian men must give unprejudiced hearing to 
 the cause of the Socialists and must invite re- 
 ciprocal candor toward the cause of Christ. 
 The Christian must thankfully honor the 
 Socialist's noble faith that the brotherhood of 
 man can really be made to work. The Social- 
 ist must thankfully honor the Christian's faith 
 that the Fatherhood of God will make it work. 
 The Christian must unlearn his notion that So- 
 cialism proposes nothing but social conflagra- 
 tion in this world. The Socialist must unlearn 
 his notion that Christianity proposes nothing 
 but insurance against spiritual conflagration 
 in the world to come. Each must recognize 
 in the other the witness of an exalted vision. 
 Each must recognize in the other's vision his 
 own from another angle. And finally both 
 must seek the ways of working together in or- 
 der that their visions at last may be embodied 
 in the fact and substance of that co-operative 
 commonwealth which will also be the new 
 Jerusalem out of Heaven from God. 
 
X 
 
 WI-IAT CHRISTIAN MEN SHOULD DO 
 
 "Christianity and the Labor Movement" is 
 much more than a subject for thought. It is a 
 call for action. As in the sacred story, so it is 
 to-day: "While Peter thought on the vision, 
 the Spirit said, Behold, three men seek thee ;" 
 after the vision, God's call to human service. 
 And the book that tells the story is rightly 
 called the book of Acts. And so, we now con- 
 clude these studies of the labor movement with 
 the question. What to do? and with the answer 
 in the motto of the Wesleyan Union for Social 
 Service, — "See and Serve." 
 
 First, Christian men must see. It is no less 
 than unchristian for us to act on prejudiced 
 or partial views of the labor movement. Chris- 
 tian men should give to its study much of the 
 same diligent attention whichi they apply to 
 vital problems of their private business ; for 
 the King's business cannot be less vital. 
 
 One's attitude of mind is the first factor in a 
 
 true understanding. A distinguished leader of 
 
 the Church-brotherhood movement says with 
 
 too much truth that "the average Church-man 
 
 has been inclined to view the labor union merely 
 100 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 101 
 
 as an organization of malcontents whose par- 
 ticular purpose it is to 'run the business of 
 the employer,' to declare strikes, to commit acts 
 of violence and to demand higher wages." ^ 
 The Christian whose social environment is not 
 that of the working-class, or he who has had 
 some exasperating experience in dealing with 
 that class, will confess to nothing worse than 
 human nature in frankly recognizing that he 
 probably has prejudices which he ought 
 promptly to detect and dispel. He must 
 recognize at the least that unionism has come 
 to stay ; that the present social order makes 
 it inevitable. He should also recognize that 
 the way to bring unionism to its highest pos- 
 sibilities of good is to meet it with respect, 
 candor and Christian fraternity. One who is 
 a leader in the church and in the union says 
 it is too generally true that union-men have 
 formed the habit of anticipating little else than 
 harsh and unintelligent criticism from church- 
 men. This, of course, tends to react by pro- 
 voking on the part of the unionists the very 
 perversities which have first been imputed to 
 them. On the other hand, according to a 
 familiar trait in all men, an imputed virtue 
 tends to become an imparted virtue. Hence 
 Christian men by manifest good-will can do 
 
 iW. B. Patterson: "Modem Church Brotherhoods," p. 
 220. 
 
102 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 
 
 much to elicit reciprocal good-will. And good- 
 will is prerequisite to a true understanding of 
 the present social situation. To know the 
 social problem we must know the men involved, 
 and to know them we must first honor and love 
 them. 
 
 The critical necessity of such an under- 
 standing appears when we consider that there 
 are some sixteen millions of our citizens, half 
 at least being in the churches, who must be 
 the final arbitrators of the labor movement, the 
 gravest responsibility which ever has been laid 
 upon public conscience and judgment in any 
 land. And it is not the unionist alone who 
 fears that church-men are not yet competent 
 to understand and judge the labor-movement. 
 An accredited sociologist lately said: "It is a 
 question in my mind whether those sixteen 
 millions will serve as impartial arbitrators. 
 In my opinion a good many of us who are now 
 so solicitous about the rights of the working- 
 men will scurry to cover as soon as the real 
 demands of the laboring-classes appear." ^ 
 And Professor Earp adds the comment that the 
 great task of the Church to-day is so to educate 
 this neutral group in righteousness, peace, 
 andi Christian brotherhood that they wiU 
 be compelled to judge impartially, what- 
 
 2 Professor A. S. Johnson in "The Journal of Amer- 
 ican Sociological Society," 1908, p. 155. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 103 
 
 ever may be the ultimate demands of labor.* 
 To this end the accredited representatives 
 of the labor movement should be everywhere 
 and frequently invited to address the brother- 
 hood chapters of the churches. They should 
 there be encouraged to set forth frankly and 
 fully the ideals and the claims of the unions. 
 On such occasions they should never be "bad- 
 gered" or "patronized." In many places such 
 chapters may do well to hold "open forums" in 
 which, from time to time, the labor problem 
 shall be treated in its various aspects by com- 
 petent speakers, followed by a general discus- 
 sion open to any and all who desire to par- 
 ticipate, — a plan already well-approved by ex- 
 perience. Mutual good-will has also been pro- 
 moted where church brotherhoods have invited 
 particular unions, or all the union officers in 
 a city, to a supper followed by an evening of 
 social enjoyment. To these social courtesies, 
 as well as to the invitations for public hear- 
 ings, the unions have sometimes reciprocated by 
 like invitations given to the church-men. 
 These courtesies will, however, be fatally vi- 
 tiated if they are undertaken only as schemes to 
 inveigle wage-earners into church attendance. 
 Workingmen will not fail to "see through" 
 such devices and will discount them accord- 
 ingly. The only worthy and practical motive 
 
 3 See "The Socialized Church," p. 86. 
 
104 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 
 
 will be the honest purpose on the part of 
 church-men to know the laboring-men, the 
 labor-movement and the unions, face to face 
 and heart to heart. 
 
 The men of every church should be organized 
 for systematic study and discussion of these 
 matters. In many churches this can best be 
 done under the auspices of the brotherhood 
 chapter. Two lines of study should be care- 
 fidly followed. First, the social problem in 
 general, including special attention to the labor 
 problem. For this purpose two or three ap- 
 proved text-books should be read by all, while 
 a few good reference volumes, one or two social 
 service periodicals, at least one high-grade 
 labor journal, and the bulletins of the Social 
 Service Commission of the Federated Churches, 
 should be conspicuously accessible in the read- 
 ing-rooms of the Church or in the head-quar- 
 ters of the chapter. The method of conduct- 
 ing such study-classes must depend on the con- 
 ditions of each case. Often the men's class 
 in the Sunday-school affords favorable op- 
 portunities, and everywhere such study is prob- 
 ably the most urgent matter with which these 
 classes could be concerned. 
 
 A second study of imperative importance to 
 Christian men is that of the social and labor 
 conditions of their own, local community. 
 Through the social service committee of the 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 105 
 
 local brotherhood in co-operation with the 
 united brotherhoods of the city, a careful and 
 comprehenisve investigation should be made of 
 local conditions as to wages and hours of labor, 
 Sunday work, unemployment, the labor of 
 women and children, immigrant labor, work- 
 accidents, and industrial diseases, (and the re- 
 lation of the two latter items to local poverty 
 and pauperism), housing and sanitation as 
 affecting the health of the working-classes, the 
 local trade unions and their demands, local 
 socialistic organizations and their spirit, strong 
 drink as a local factor in the labor problem, 
 and not the least, the attitude of the laboring 
 classes toward religion and the churches. The 
 aim of all such investigations should be, not 
 merely to make a "survey," but to devise ways 
 and means for civic betterment, to make hap- 
 pier and holier the lives of all the people in 
 town. It should also be remarked that village 
 and rural communities have their peculiar labor 
 problems to which churchmen must not be in- 
 different. 
 
 Our churches, and especially their "brother- 
 hood" chapters, must see to it that they are 
 uncompromisingly democratic. It is not 
 enough that wage-earners are permitted to 
 "join" if they care to do so. They must be 
 made to care. Their capacity for leadership 
 should be duly honored by their frequent elec- 
 
106 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 
 
 tion to the offices and by careful solicitude for 
 their advice and co-operation. The social 
 gatherings of the church, its receptions and 
 banquets, should never be marked by such an 
 excess of expense or "dress" as will be pro- 
 hibitive or uncomfortable for the working class 
 of the congregation. This can surely be 
 avoided without going to the other extreme of 
 making them cheap and shabby, which would 
 be equally displeasing to self-respecting work- 
 ing-people. The heart of the matter is re- 
 vealed in these words spoken by a labor leader 
 to a company of Christian men : "The danger 
 in the conflict is the bitterness of the class- 
 feeling. Nothing will add so much to this bit- 
 terness as class churches." 
 
 Not only should the workingmen be active 
 in the churches. Christian men should join 
 the labor-unions whenever eligible. As a rule 
 it is not the critical outsider but the co-opera- 
 tive insider who helps any organization to 
 come to its highest usefulness. One cannot 
 praise too highly the testimony of Bishop Mc- 
 Intyre of the Methodist Church that he glories 
 in his membership in the union and his advice 
 to the ministers to join some union whenever 
 they can. Let laymen do likewise. 
 
 Besides assuming the attitude of courtesy 
 and good-will and seeking close acquaintance 
 with the labor problem and laboring men, there 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 107 
 
 remain many specific tasks which Christian men 
 may take up in behalf of labor and in the name 
 of Christ. Brotherhoods, like ministerial as- 
 sociations, may procure exchange of fraternal 
 delegates with the unions. Brotherhood con- 
 ventions may provide for a "labor-fellowship 
 meeting" to be addressed by such men as John 
 Mitchell or John B. Lennon. Church-men in 
 the unions should encourage those organiza- 
 tions to appoint chaplains, as some unions 
 have already done. Not only should unions 
 in their campaigns for Sunday-rest find every- 
 where a fighting alliance with all church-men, 
 but church-men in this behalf ought more often 
 to open the campaign. When well approved 
 social legislation is before legislative commit- 
 tees the representatives of the unions ought to 
 be able to rely implicitly on finding by their side 
 at every hearing the representatives of the 
 churches. In every demand for social justice, 
 whether made before public authorities, at the 
 office of corporations or the bar of public opin- 
 ion, wage-earners should be able to count on 
 the unanimous and active support of church- 
 men. Of course this involves "lobbying" and 
 the like, and to any of us who are too dainty 
 for such things, I would recommend the words 
 of Walter Rauschenbusch : "There are prob- 
 ably few denominations which would hesitate 
 a moment to fling their full force on a legisla- 
 
108 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 
 
 ture if the tenure of their property or the free- 
 dom of their church was threatened. If it is 
 right to lobby in their own behalf, it cannot 
 well be wrong to lobby in behalf of the 
 people." In most places a great opportunity 
 is aiforded by Labor Sunday preceding- Labor 
 Day in September. The pastor of the church 
 will usually, on such occasions, welcome the 
 co-operation of the brotherhood-chapter, not 
 only because such co-operation re-enforces him 
 in inviting the church attendance of working- 
 men, but because it re-enforces his attitude and 
 utterances as their friend. 
 
 All this does not mean that the Church or 
 church-men are to sanction every demand of 
 every labor union, or in any other way to be 
 partial or partisan. But it does mean that 
 church-men are to stand for social justice 
 everywhere, all the time and at any cost. It 
 means that every demand of labor, whether wise 
 or unwise, shall be heard with friendliness and 
 judged without prejudice. It means that the 
 Church shall stand, not merely for the charity 
 that alleviates the symptoms, but for the jus- 
 tice that removes the causes, of our social ills. 
 It means finally that Christianity can, and 
 Christian men must, impart to the social order 
 the only ideals and motives which can direct 
 toward perfection the progress of mankind. 
 
 i "Christianity and the Social Crisis," p. 372-373.