In Darkest England and The Way Out [175]
Conquered. Difficult? You must try this thing. Once try it with the understanding that it will and shall have to be done. Try it as ye try the paltrier thing, making of money! I will bet on you once more, against all Jotuns, Tailor-gods, Double-barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens of Chaos whatsoever!"--("Past and Present," pages 236-37.)
"A question arises here: Whether, in some ulterior, perhaps not far-distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labour,' your Master-Worker may not find it possible, and needful, to grant his Workers permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs? So that it become, in practical result, what in essential fact and justice it ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the Chief Master down to the lowest Overseer and Operative, economically as well as loyally concerned for it? Which question I do not answer. The answer, near or else far, is perhaps, Yes; and yet one knows the difficulties. Despotism is essential in most enterprises; I am told they do not tolerate 'freedom of debate' on board a seventy-four. Republican senate and plebiscite would not answer well in cotton mills. And yet, observe there too, Freedom--not nomad's or ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom; this is indispensable. We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile Despotism with Freedom--well, is that such a mystery? Do you not already know the way? It is to make your Despotism just. Rigorous as Destiny, but just, too, as Destiny and its Laws. The Laws of God; all men obey these, and have no 'Freedom' at all but in obeying them. The way is already known, part of the way; and courage and some qualities are needed for walking on it." ("Past and Present ," pages 241-42)
"Not a May-game is this man's life, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces, waited on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours: it is a stern pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men, loves men, with inexpressible soft pity, as they cannot love him, but his soul dwells in solitude in the uttermost parts of creation. In green oases by the palm-tree wells he rests a space, but anon he has to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and the Splendours, the Archdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing from the Immensities send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep."--("Past and Present," page 249.)
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
The Rev. Dr. Barry read a paper at the Catholic Conference on June 30th, 1890, from which I take the following extracts as illustrative of the rising feeling of this subject in the Catholic Church. The Rev. Dr. Barry began by defining the proletariat as those who have only one possession--their labour. Those who have no land, and no stake in the land, no house, and no home except the few sticks of furniture they significantly call by the name, no right to employment, but at the most a right to poor relief; and who, until the last 20 years, had not even a right to be educated unless by the charity of their "betters." The class which, without figure of speech or flights of rhetoric, is homeless, landless, property less in our chief cities-- that I call the proletariat. Of the proletariat he declared there were hundreds of thousands growing up outside the pale of all churches.
He continued: For it is frightfully evident that Christianity has not kept pace with the population; that it has lagged terribly behind; that, in plain words, we have in our midst a nation of heathens to whom the ideals, the practices, and the commandments of religion are things unknown--as little realised in the miles on miles of tenement-houses, and the factories which have produced them, as though Christ had never lived or never died. How could it be otherwise? The great mass of men and women have never had time for religion. You cannot expect them
"A question arises here: Whether, in some ulterior, perhaps not far-distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labour,' your Master-Worker may not find it possible, and needful, to grant his Workers permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs? So that it become, in practical result, what in essential fact and justice it ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the Chief Master down to the lowest Overseer and Operative, economically as well as loyally concerned for it? Which question I do not answer. The answer, near or else far, is perhaps, Yes; and yet one knows the difficulties. Despotism is essential in most enterprises; I am told they do not tolerate 'freedom of debate' on board a seventy-four. Republican senate and plebiscite would not answer well in cotton mills. And yet, observe there too, Freedom--not nomad's or ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom; this is indispensable. We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile Despotism with Freedom--well, is that such a mystery? Do you not already know the way? It is to make your Despotism just. Rigorous as Destiny, but just, too, as Destiny and its Laws. The Laws of God; all men obey these, and have no 'Freedom' at all but in obeying them. The way is already known, part of the way; and courage and some qualities are needed for walking on it." ("Past and Present ," pages 241-42)
"Not a May-game is this man's life, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces, waited on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours: it is a stern pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men, loves men, with inexpressible soft pity, as they cannot love him, but his soul dwells in solitude in the uttermost parts of creation. In green oases by the palm-tree wells he rests a space, but anon he has to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and the Splendours, the Archdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing from the Immensities send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep."--("Past and Present," page 249.)
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
The Rev. Dr. Barry read a paper at the Catholic Conference on June 30th, 1890, from which I take the following extracts as illustrative of the rising feeling of this subject in the Catholic Church. The Rev. Dr. Barry began by defining the proletariat as those who have only one possession--their labour. Those who have no land, and no stake in the land, no house, and no home except the few sticks of furniture they significantly call by the name, no right to employment, but at the most a right to poor relief; and who, until the last 20 years, had not even a right to be educated unless by the charity of their "betters." The class which, without figure of speech or flights of rhetoric, is homeless, landless, property less in our chief cities-- that I call the proletariat. Of the proletariat he declared there were hundreds of thousands growing up outside the pale of all churches.
He continued: For it is frightfully evident that Christianity has not kept pace with the population; that it has lagged terribly behind; that, in plain words, we have in our midst a nation of heathens to whom the ideals, the practices, and the commandments of religion are things unknown--as little realised in the miles on miles of tenement-houses, and the factories which have produced them, as though Christ had never lived or never died. How could it be otherwise? The great mass of men and women have never had time for religion. You cannot expect them