stopped in every country affected by the war. 9932 13. Unionism is to be credited with some religious 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 everywhere revere the name and the lordship of Jesus. Surely organized labor has a long and honorable record of service rendered to the general 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 pronounce it a prime factor in progressive civilization. 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 better acquainted with the labor unions, and laboring-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 labor 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 obtained. 1. The church has created the moral sentiment to which labor appeals and by which social service subsists. It is true that nearly all the gains of the 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: "Nature has made neither bootmakers nor blacksmiths; such occupations degrade the people engaged in them, miserable mercenaries excluded 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 virtue." 99 1 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 from Christ the natural tendency is to come back to the standpoint of the Greeks and despise the masses." 2 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. is its power to fit human beings for harmonious social life. It is, in the last analysis, the repository 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 Civilization." 3 And Professor Dewey says: "The highest product of the interest of man in man is the Church." 4 2. 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 Emperor, but the fact that a Carpenter is worshiped as God by the nations of the earth, and this is the achievement of the Church. And the teaching of the Carpenter, perpetuated 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 interest 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. 4 "Psychology," p. 343. it through the centuries," the earliest, most enduring, and most beneficent labor legislation 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."5 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 All great movements for popular welfare are typified, as to their essential character, by such popular uprisings as those of the one." 6 5 H. L. Nash: "The Genesis of the Social Conscience." • See "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 93-94. |