of Commissioner Neill, "The most of us realize that this labor movement is a world-wide movement, but we do not realize that it is a worldold 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." 4 "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 moving the wrong way. Through the middle

5

ages there were no more momentous movements than the abolition of slavery and serfdom; the peasant revolts, such

4 "The Social Application of Religion,” p. 66.

5 Cf. Mommsen: "History of Rome," Vol. 3, pp. 304

as those of Tyler and Cade in England, of the Jacquerie in France, of the Anabaptists in Germany; and the rise and power of tradeguilds in the cities of all Europe. Upon these facts and forces, all of them obviously phases of the continuous and underlying labor movement, 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 establishment of popular governments in the civilized world has been based upon the political, social, and economic enfranchisement of the working classes. In Great Britain, the Factory 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 modern industry; the great social equities of the Lloyd-George Budget followed closely by stateinsurance of the working classes against old age, sickness and unemployment, and the establishment 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 culminating in the Civil War and the subsequent rise of labor-unionism are the most vital facts of American history?

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 individual destinies, and for each to live the deepest, the fullest, the richest life possible, and to develop to the fullest all the capacities with which his Creator may have endowed him.” 6

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 sacramental. 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 carpenters, the miners, the smiths, the weavers, and all hand-workers of subsequent times to take

6 See "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 68-69.

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 ir 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 equality 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 industrial 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

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."7 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 potency 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 characters 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.