Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

But in every community are scores of earnest, hungry students anxious to learn but knowing not how to get the knowledge that they crave, mature students settled in homes and in business, to such university extension offers chances for improvement and refreshing labor that were never known before. Then it is no longer imperative to reside in the vicinity of the university, or to forever remain ignorant of university learning, for wherever a score or more of students may congregate, there can be brought from college halls a master workman to direct the work.

It is easy, then, to realize the scope of the American society. It can stretch its influence into every corner of the country; it can enter every town and city; it can enter even the isolated home. Ordinarily colleges and universities of the country are anxious to work with the National Society, for in this way even the small college becomes a link in this great chain of organization, and the efforts of its faculty may bear fruit, whereas unsystematized work is little better than a failure. By such cooperation the work of extension teaching may have come to have such a positive educational value that its certificates, when awarded by the members of a college faculty, may, in that institution, at least, pass current for a definite amount of the work required for a degree. At Cambridge, England, students from centres that are in affiliation with that institution can thus save one year's residence at the university. Is it, then, visionary to expect as much here?

University extension, however, offers no royal road to learning; it is as yet, as it were, laying the ties for a broad gauge track where only those that have the strength to work their passage may travel. But when operated by the American Society, it is far in advance of the overland or Panama routes of the forty-niners in extension travel. This society seems to have solved the problem, and promises to become the great American University that Washington proposed, Jefferson planned, and scores have, since the founding of our government, prophesied and awaited.

POPE LEO ON LABOR.

BY THOMAS B. PRESTON.

In reading the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII. on the condition of labor, one is chiefly struck by his earnest desire for the welfare of all mankind, his clear recognition of the existence of a grave social problem, and the singular want of logic which he exhibits in his attempt to solve it. His views on this subject certainly deserve careful and thoughtful analysis on account of the influence which they are bound to exert in the world, owing to his peculiar position as head of the largest of the Christian churches. They should be read without bias, each argument being given its due weight irrespective of any conclusions but those of common sense and right reason. Unfortunately there is much division of opinion as to the value of the document. Those Catholics who are superstitious give to these opinions of the Pope the force of a revelation from God. And on the other hand there are many so-called liberals who regard these utterances as the words of a crafty old man, ambitious of acquiring wealth, power, and fame in the world for himself and for the hierarchy of his Church. Putting aside all prejudice of either kind, let us examine what Pope Leo says in the light of reason, having faith enough to believe that the interests of true religion cannot suffer in the slightest degree from

such an examination.

[ocr errors]

In his opening sentences the Pope speaks in a tone of regret of the "spirit of revolutionary change" predominant in the nations, and seems to connect it with "a general moral deterioration." He does not appear to have considered that the change may be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and that the "general moral deterioration" is quite as much due to the efforts of reactionary politicians and 'churchmen who aim to retain for the classes all the constantly increasing wealth-producing power of the world, keeping the masses down to the same bare level of subsist

ence as formerly, while their capacity for enjoyment has been vastly enlarged through the increased general average of civilization and refinement. This naturally produces on the one side the piled-up accumulations of individuals garnered by the few, an inordinate display of wealth and luxury, and the vices of intemperance and immorality; while on the other, maddened and starving crowds are likely to resort to violence, and the poorer population to indulge whenever they get a chance in the same pleasures as the rich. But with all these disadvantages in the modern economic situation it may fairly be questioned whether the general moral deterioration is as great as in the good old times, the "ages of faith," when the Inquisition flourished along with the Borgias, the droit du seigneur was a recognized custom, and bribery and violence were everywhere prevalent.

"Public institutions and the laws," says Pope Leo, “have repudiated the ancient religion." But is not this repudiation in large part due to the refusal of the ministers of the ancient religion to accommodate themselves to new conditions in the world's history, so that with the growth of modern civilization the world has moved more rapidly than the Church, and the latter has become dissociated from the masses, chiefly owing to the ignorance and inten conservatism of her rulers and their entirely unnecessary distrust of the discoveries of science? Pope Leo admits that this is "an age of greater instruction, of different customs, and of more numerous requirements in daily life," but he cannot divest himself of the trammels of ecclesiasticism which seem to mould his thoughts and lead him to consider it "essential in these times of covetous greed to keep the multitude within the line of duty." With him it is With him it is "the multitude" who seem possessed of an insane desire to break out of the line of duty. His theory is like that of the man who accounted for the overcrowding in large cities on the ground that the poor and unfortunate had a strange and uncontrollable propensity for swarming in tenement-houses. He does not

give sufficient force to the influence of conditions upon human acts, and apparently is chiefly anxious that “strife should cease," forgetting that until justice be done the worst thing that could happen would be the cessation of strife.

The flattering surroundings and aristocratic training of Pope Leo cannot, however, dull the generous sympathies of

his heart, or blind his clear vision of "the misery and wretchedness which press so heavily at this moment on the large majority of the very poor." He says: "The condition of the working population is the question of the hour." This will be a rude awakening to those conservative Catholic churchmen who have in recent years been insisting that things as they are were altogether lovely, and that the talk about the misery of the poor was only the exaggeration of a few cunning agitators who wanted to excite the people so that in a general upheaval these agitators themselves might personally profit. Pope Leo's voice of sympathy is heard declaring that there is a social problem, and that "it is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by or to look upon them merely as so much muscle or physical power.

[ocr errors]

Charity, as Pope Leo frequently understands it, would indeed effect a wonderful amelioration in the world. But it is that charity "which is always ready to sacrifice itself for others' sake" and the chief characteristic of which is the love of justice. It has been degraded in these later years into the sense of alms-giving, so that the Christian pulpits of every denomination have too often thus been preaching charity while ignoring justice.

Is it any wonder the world rebelled? The victories of the Church were won when she possessed the sublime strength of weakness, and when her martyrs and saints in language only matched by that of the radicals of to-day were proclaiming the essential liberty, fraternity, and equality of all men, and denouncing the iniquities of imperial Rome. But when she took the fatuous step, and placed on her own brow the crown of the Cæsars, then she too became conservative, then the words of her popes began to be regulated by policy, then charity became alms-giving, and piety degenerated into ecclesiasticism. Authority was strained until it snapped, and a suffering world revolted from the outrageous assumptions of ecclesiastical power. A return to Christianity is, indeed, needed, but the Church will have quite as much of a journey to go as the world, so far as her methods are concerned.

With regard to the position of the family in the state, Pope Leo is the advocate of freedom as against the interference of public authority in domestic affairs. He admits, however, that the state should interfere in cases of family dis

turbance "to force each party to give the other what is due," herein differing from the philosophical anarchists. He discerns clearly that the interests of labor and of capital are not antagonistic, but what he does not see is that the interests of labor and capital may both be antagonistic to the interests of monopoly, and that until the latter is destroyed the two former will be continually forced into positions of seeming antagonism. He denounces "rapacious usury," and says that it was "more than once condemned by the Church," conveniently overlooking the fact that the usuria, which was condemned, was not only "rapacious" but was all taking of money for the use of money, all interest on loans a condemnation which, if insisted upon by the Church to-day, would soon empty her sanctuaries. He refers to the "greed of unrestrained competition" but does not grasp the idea that under conditions of justice unrestrained competition would be an advantage, constantly leading men to emulate each other, and becoming a sure guarantee of progress. It is the competition of those who have nothing but their labor, or their brains, or their capital to sell with the owners of vast monopolies who exact from production an ever-increasing toll that needs to be restrained, and this not by abolishing "the custom of working by contract," or by state interference and legislative tinkering, to which the Pope leans in spite of his protests against socialism, but by the abolition of the monopolies or their absorption into the functions of the state.

The Pope is almost a Spencerian in his bias towards individualism, but he forgets that individualism can never be - maintained in practice except through the assumption by the state of those monopolies which, if left in private hands, would benefit the few at the expense of the many. True individualism requires equality of opportunity. The instant the idea of monopoly enters, equality of opportunity becomes impossible, and individualism is destroyed. It is through want of seeing this fact that the Pope, in common with most political economists, goes floundering round in a sea of contradictions, now proclaiming principles almost like those of the anarchists, and again favoring extreme socialism, while all the time imagining himself an individualist. Their theories remind one of the labored attempts to explain the solar system by the old Ptolemaic method of epicycles and deferents, when the one simple law of centripetal and centrifu

« ZurückWeiter »