THE SOCIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY.

 III.—CHRIST AND LABOR.

[By the Rev. Jas. JEFFERIS, LL.D.]

Jesus, the Christ, was a working man. We ought to get some clear ideas on this subject from one who was brought up in the home of a carpenter, and who himself almost certainly wrought at the bench, winning His daily bread for several years by daily toil.

There is no need to tell you that of all the grave questions raised in our day touching the reconstruction of society this one concerning labor is at the very centre. Work and wages. What to do and what to get for doing it. The true relation between capital and labor. The equalisation of the rewards of industry. I do not pretend to understand these questions as well as some of you who are listening to me. But there are certain great principles of human conduct which afford a clue to the labyrinth of social difficulties, and if by fair exposition these can be brought to bear on the questions debated there will be some hope of answer—answer sufficient to remove entanglements and clear the way. Place a man, tolerably clear-sighted, with a good telescope, on a hill overlooking a battlefield. Would he not be able to see how the fight is waging, where defeat is imminent, where victory is inclining, better than those who are down there in the dust and smoke of battle? If in virtue of my office I stand apart from the conflicts of labor, I hope it is on some elevation of thought, and with desire to look dispassionately upon the fierce struggle that is proceeding.

You will not, then, misunderstand my position. I am not going to give you the result of a philosophical investigation of the laws of labor, and to answer certain views to be opposed by certain others to be advocated. There are too many issues involved for me to adopt a complete theory which shall pretend to embrace them all. The wisdom of the ages has been taxed for a solution, and it has not yet come. But a man may speak out his mind without attempting to speak with authority, and if he is true to himself and to his opportunities he need not speak altogether in vain. My contribution to your thinkings will be from a quarter of a century's reading and observation, but it will be chiefly from my knowledge of the teachings of Christ. My contention will be that certain words He uttered, certain principles He laid down, are of great value in enabling us to form a righteous Judgment about labor and its reward. And I have to express my conviction that these teachings of the Son of Man are more in accordance with the constitution of human nature and the facts of human history, and the righteous yearnings of the human soul, than the views which have been put forth by the more advanced leaders of socialism.

Look at the present position of affairs. Whatever may be the primary cause there can be no doubt that there has been during the last ten years very prevalent distress among the workers. From all parts have come tidings of poverty in its extreme form. The depression has extended over the whole of the civilised world. All the great manufacturing nations, and those that live chiefly by the produce of land, the older states and the new, England, Germany, France, and Russia, as well as America and Australia, are among the sufferers. We read of men by tens of thousands marching through the streets of Berlin and London, of insurrectionary gatherings in Belgium and France, of riots in Hyde Park, of the highways of America infested by armies of tramps, of the unemployed in Melbourne and Sydney and Adelaide demanding bread or work. These masses of men, for the most part gaunt and hungry, are working men (though too often joined by the idlers of our great cities), men out of work, and not knowing how to get it. Certainly we are as a people, to go no farther than ourselves, called on to explain why it is that labor is thus paralysed. In this empire of ours we have almost illimitable resources, stored up capital in countless millions, machinery of the most perfect kind, and laborers with capacity for work. These bad times have been ascribed to our enormous loans, to excessive war expenditure, to the increase of speculation, to unlimited competition, to machinery, to the crowding into cities instead of settling upon land. But underneath all this there is a more bitter subject of complaint. It is said that the existing framework of society is false, rotten, that it is tottering to its foundation, that nothing but a policy of reconstruction can save us. Workers say that the wages they receive for work when they have it are so inadequate that they afford only subsistence, and that no provision can possibly be made for times of calamity like the present. They lay the blame, very many of them at least, at the door of the capitalist and employer, and assert that existing laws enable them to fleece the workers with impunity.

Let us try to understand the drift of the controversy. It is declared, with more or less of truth, that labor creates all value, produces all wealth, and that the workers who supply this labor get less than half of what they produce ; that the greater part becomes the possession of certain others who do not work, or work but in small degree, and are therefore not entitled to it. Now all the enterprises of men require capital and labor, i.e., money made beforehand and, labor furnished now. But the men who provide the money have a great advantage, it is said, over the men who supply labor, so that they obtain a very large proportion of the new wealth created, leaving for the laborer only just enough, or less than enough, to find himself and those dependent on him in barest necessaries.

As to the main facts on which this argument is founded there can be little doubt. England has seen during the last two centuries such material progress and prosperity as the world never before enjoyed. And it is the labor of the free worker that has made her what she is, a spectacle of wonder to the world and the ages. How have her brave workers conquered material nature! What inexhaustible treasures have they dug from mines ! Before how many flaming forges have they smote with mighty hammers the intractable metals ! How have they rescued from moor and fen and wild worthless forest the corn bearing land covered with golden harvests! How with their looms and spinning jennies have they clothed the naked of the world in seemly garments of wool and cotton! What sea have they not crossed? What land have they not explored? From ice-bound Canada to the sunny regions of Australia have they not laid the foundations of commonwealths that in the coming years will be as great and strong as they are already free. Labor it is—thoughtful, stern, sad, continuous labor—that has wrought all this. But how have the toilers been rewarded ? What of the life condition of the millions ? For myself I think it, upon the whole, a most pitiful story. Wealth beyond the dreams of Croesus; private mansions such as Nero might have envied ; a great titled and a yet greater untitled aristocracy living in luxurious ease, very many of them absolutely idle and at their wit's end to find new methods of spending money on their pleasures. On the other hand, poverty more dreadful than in the days of serfdom, dwellings a disgrace to humanity, a factory population (I speak on the evidence of a Royal Commission) " pale, thin, emaciated, subject to permanent deformities of body, showing no disposition to mirth or cheerfulness," and an agricultural population about whom Canon Girdlestone wrote less than 25 years ago— "If the masters horses and cattle are better housed than the laborer's family, is it likely that chastity among the women and self-respect among the men can be looked for when they crowd together like swine and dress and undress and sleep in the same room?" That things are not much better to-day is told us by a hundred writers.

Let us agree that here in Australia the condition of things for the laborer is improved; but what an indictment could be brought against our social life. Here is a single case in one of the Australian cities, culled almost at random from Police Court proceedings not long ago :—A lodging-house with three rooms. In one seven beds, some of them in a filthy and half rotten state. In a smaller one two beds. On the upper-floor a garret, on an average only 3½ ft. high, eight beds. At the back of the house a filthy yard, with water lying about in an offensive state. If you think there can be nothing of this in the country you grievously mistake. Under our present haphazard methods of settlement selection often ends in slow starvation. Some of the deepest sorrows and most dreadful infamies are to be found in the bush huts and calico tents of those who have trusted themselves to the wilderness. The condition of things must be seriously wrong when in city and country so many of the poor workmen of Australia lead with their families such wretched and hopeless lives.

What remedy for all this? The best and most true-hearted men of all classes, and all creeds find all philosophies have been engaged in the endeavor to stop the progress of this poverty and the miseries and infamies which come in its train. It is most unjust to asperse the leading socialistic teachers. Their motives have been pure and their aims lofty. They have been inflamed with the desire to lift off the burden of human suffering and confer general happiness upon mankind. In a very true sense they are co-workers with Christ in their efforts to "heal the broken-hearted and give deliverance to the captives." If they have dreamed dreams they have been dreams of a golden age. If their philosophies will not stand the test of a rigid investigation many of the propositions they contain have become axioms of social life. Who that has read has not read with the thrillings of a great hope the "Utopia of Sir Thomas More" and Campanella's "City of the Sun," as well as the more sober treatises of St. Simon and Robert Owen, and Marlo and Louis Blanc? And if he has been depressed by the hard, stern treatises of the later German socialists, has he not honored their endeavors to save men in spite of human nature? In "Utopia" there are no rich and poor. All share alike. Hours of labor are greatly reduced. Everyone is compelled to work. Private property is abolished. In the "City of the Sun" there are alternate occupations and enjoyments. Hard-working trades are held in highest esteem. All work is done in groups, and men march to their labor to the sound of music. Four hours daily is deemed sufficient. Rousseau declares that property is the "grand abuse that has ruined mankind." Fourier demands compulsion, and asks "What is the good of liberty to a man well nigh famishing because of insufficient remuneration for his labor." St. Simon proposes an equitable division of work, and demands a new organisation of labor. "The main duty of Government," he declares, "is to bring about an amelioration in the well-being, physical and moral, of the working classes." "Co-operation is the religion of labor." With Louis Blanc as president, the French Republic on the 25th February, 1848, bound itself "to guarantee the means of livelihood to the laborer by work, and to procure work for all citizens." An endeavor was made to remove competition by means of co-operation, to expel the competition of individuals by the co-operation of State organisation with private enterprise, and to secure this by making the State the sole capitalist. Alas ! it all ended in barricades and blood and the Second Empire. The most recent socialism, which has been elaborated by German thought, demands that the State should undertake the supreme oversight and management of labor, that all instruments of production, wealth as capital, land, machinery, raw products, should be entrusted to its control; that the State should find work for everyone, and remunerate according to results. There is to be no Communism. Property is to be enjoyed by everyone who wins it, but is not to be used privately as an "instrument of production." The State thus is to be the one manufacturer, and the one merchant, and the one shopkeeper, and the one rail and tram and omnibus proprietor, and the one farmer, and the one miner. German socialism believes that in this way there will be a demand for the labor of all the citizens, ample means to pay for it at high rates of wages, and as the result a generally diffused prosperity. The hours of labor will be reduced, say, to six or four, because everyone will be able to earn in such time sufficient for all needs and comforts. Everyone will then enjoy leisure, the "mother of culture," and culture will change the moral nature of man. There will be no more peculations and embezzlements and drunken debauches. The inspiration of knowledge will lift man to a higher level than he has ever reached. A beautiful dream! But who dreams, save the dreamers, that it will ever be realised? I once knew a really clever architect who had planned a most original private house. Everything was symmetrical below and above. The upper story was especially comfortable. There were spacious lofty rooms with every convenience. But it was discovered on examination that there was no means of communication between the ground floor and the one above. The architect had forgotten the stairs. The whole plan had to be altered. It is just this fault I find with this very beautiful socialistic structure, the much-vaunted "Co-operative Commonwealth." The clever German architects have forgotten the stairs! And I venture to say that while human nature in its main features remains unchanged, the stairs will never be built, for every step from the lower to the higher is a virtue, and the State cannot furnish virtues. Henry George was right when he said "It is not the business of the Government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequence of his own folly."

But leaving speculation, let me indicate in a word or two the successive ameliorations in the condition of the English laborer. There was slavery, but it ended a thousand years ago. There was serfdom, but in 1574 we hear of the last of the serfs. There were laws kind but degrading, laws restrictive and unjust, but these during the last 25 years have been swept away. By the "Masters and Servants Act" of 1867, by the "Employer and Workman Act" of 1875 the last remnants of feudal subordination were removed. Wealth and labor stand in the eye of the law upon the same level. The rights of labor and the duties of wealth are now as clearly established as the rights of wealth, and the duties of labor. Before the tribunals of this empire the rich and poor meet together, and equal justice is administered to both. I might refer to other victories of labor, with which you will be more familiar. The rate of wages has greatly increased. The hours of toil have been sensibly shortened. A number of Factory Acts have done away with the worst abuses connected with the employment of women and children. Several Merchants' Shipping Acts have delivered our sailors from much suffering and tyranny. The entire agricultural population of Great Britain have begun to emerge from a degradation that has long been a scandal to the empire. Let me sum up. There are four possible methods of dealing with labor—compulsion, competition, co-operation, combination. English labor has passed through the era of compulsion. Slavery and serfdom are gone. It is passing through the era of competition, or, as it is sometimes called, "individualism," which has lasted now two or three centuries. The era of co-operation, when capital and labor shall join hands voluntarily and work together for the common good, is thought by many to have commenced. I would to God it were. The era of combination, the organising of labor, the founding of labor communities by the State, is that to which socialism is looking forward as the only possible salvation for the laborer. Socialism declares that competition has utterly failed, that the principle of it is "every man for himself," and that the chief result of it is intolerable wealth and aggravated poverty. It declares too that voluntary co-operation will fail, that it leaves untouched the chief problems of the labor question, that it would diminish the rate of wages, and ruin all the small traders and shopkeepers by intensifying the evils of competition. It says there is some good in trades unions, a species of co-operation, by educating their members for the coming social order, but pronounces them absolutely impotent to counteract the workings of individualism, and predicts a union of employers and capitalists that will crush them at the first trial of strength. Nothing, it is alleged, will succeed but the organisation of labor by the State, the establishment of labor communities controlled by the Government. This socialistic theory I oppose as a thinker, because it is contrary to the constitution of human nature. I oppose it as a citizen, because it is despotism in disguise. I oppose it as a philanthropist, because it would intensity the evils that it seeks to cure. I oppose it as a Christian, because it is contrary to the spirit and teaching of the Gospel.

If I have detained you too long upon the history and the science of labor, it has been in order to clear the question of entanglements produced by events and debates of the day. Let me now try to show you how the true socialism, the socialism of Christianity, deals with the problem of work and wages. You have often heard it said that religion has nothing to do with political or social economy. In measure this is true. And yet it is false, because it is not all the truth. Christianity has wrought vast changes in social life that cannot be traced to positive precepts. The spirit of Christianity has been the powerful solvent of manifold abuses which have been only indirectly attacked by it. You will find no precepts in the New Testament about the rights of labor against capital, about the number of hours of labor, about the rate of wages, about co-operative societies, trades unions, strikes. And yet there are maxims and principles which lead and have led to the ending of wrongs and the vindication of the right. The religion of Christ deals with hearts and lives, not with particular cases and persons. It is not a religion of class or caste. It takes no side with the rich against the poor, or the poor against the rich, with employers against the employed, or with the employed against employers. It proclaims a universal brotherhood. It preaches reconciliation, not revolt. It announces as divine laws that cannot be broken without sin. "Masters give unto your servants that which is just and equal." " Servants be obedient unto to them that are your masters according to the flesh. . . . with good will doing service as all to the Lord and not unto men." Wherever power is flagrantly abused, it lifts up its voice with a "Woe unto you." It declares that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and that wherever "the hire is kept back by fraud it enters into the ears of God." Wherever riches have been fraudulently gained, it tells the rich "to weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon them." It assumes that work is honorable and necessary, and says "if a man will not work, neither let him eat." You will not work? Starve then; die then. It is better for the world, better for yourself, even, that you should starve and die.

If you follow the history of labor in the history of England you will find that the Christian spirit was the moving cause in its progressive enfranchisement. Slavery, e.g., and Christianity could not live in harmony with each other. Either slavery must kill Christianity or Christianity must kill slavery. It is clear enough, not upon the testimony of parsons, but of sober-judging historians, that Christianity was the effective power that put an end to slavery and serfdom. Read Hallam. Read Robertson. Read Macaulay. They all unite in declaring that Christianity brought about the extinction of villenage. When the dying serfholder asked for absolution, which was the only method he knew of obtaining the favor of Heaven, the spirit of Christianity, speaking through its ministers, told him to put away his sin. "Set thy slaves at liberty, and thou shalt be for given. If thou wilt not, chains and slavery for thee in the prison house of eternal justice." It was the religious revolution under Wycliffe against the tyranny of the clergy that produced the peasants' revolt against the tyranny of their masters, for "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty"—liberty in religion, liberty in social life. John Ball, the Priest of Kent, may have been mad, as the clergy and landowners said, but it was a madness better than the ruling sanity. In the first strife in our history between capital and labor he appealed to religion against dogma, to religious instinct against cruel custom. "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was, then, the gentleman ?" 

"Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill aright.

 He hath grounded small, small.

 The King's son of Heaven,

 He shall pay for all."

 There is no sadder poem in the language than "the complaint of Piers Plowman," by William Longland. It was a cry, a wail from the very heart of English labor, like the bitter cry that recently went up from the heart of famished London. Religion gave it direction and intensity. It was an appeal to Heaven against the injustices of earth. He warns both the laborer and the knight. "Hunger," he says, "works God's will on the idler and the waster." He denounces the rich for misdoing the poor. "Though he be thine underling, well, mayhap in heaven, that he be worthier set, and with more bliss than thou." And so it has been during all the 500 years since the peasants' revolt. The true champions of the oppressed workers drew the inspiration of their courage, not from vague free thought with its socialistic dreams, but from the teachings of the Great Socialist, the Divine carpenter of Galilee. When Protestants broke out in revolt against the despotism of Rome they demanded redress for the grievances of the poor. When Puritans established the Commonwealth (a glorious word) the laboring class was uplifted for a short 20 years to a higher position than before or since. Listen to Green the historian (and I know not of one more impartial)—"Greatest among the solid gains to our national life was perhaps the new conception of social equality. Their common call, their common brotherhood in Christ, annihilated in the mind of the Puritans the over-powering sense of social distinctions. The meanest peasant felt himself ennobled as a child of God. The proudest noble recognised a spiritual equality in the poorest 'saint.' " And in our modern era who have been the leaders in the same great cause? Who pleaded for the slave like Wilberforce and Clarkson? Who worked for the pauper and criminal like Howard and Elizabeth Fry? Who proclaimed the true socialism more wisely than Maurice and Kingsley? Who was foremost in the emancipation of women and children in factory, field, and colliery, like the Earl of Shaftesbury ? Who has rescued sailors from tyranny and danger in the open seas, like Plimsoll? Who has delivered the agricultural laborer from serfdom that the law could not end, like Joseph Arch? Who is striving with noble passion to give the worker a heritage in the soil, like Henry George. These are all men of God, servants of Christ. They learnt their lessons of the "brotherhood of humanity" while sitting at the feet of Jesus of Nazareth. If you want to read the story of the enfranchisement of labor you must read the biography of Christian men. The Spirit of Christ in the lives of His followers has been the most potent factor in our social progress. And this is our only hope for the future. The cause of the worker is bound up with the Kingship of Christ and the Socialism of Christianity.

Express and Telegraph (Adelaide, SA ),  1894, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article209046076
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article209044874 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article208832749