WHAT TO DO
his Bible and won through to repentance for his past and faith in God, it was a triumph of religion. There are two great entities in human lire,— the human soul and the human race, — and religion is to save both. The soul is to seek righteousness and eternal life; the race is to seek righteousness and the kingdom of God. The social preacher is apt to overlook the one. But the evangelical preacher has long overlooked the other. If is due to that protracted neglect that we are now deluged by the social problem in its present acute form. It is partly due to the saine neglect that out churches are overwhelmingly feminine. Woman nurtures the individual in the home, and God has equipped her with an intuitive insight into the problems of the individual lire. Man's life faces the outward world, and his instincts and interests lie that way. Hence men crowd where public questions get downright discussion. Our individualistic religion has helped to feminize our churches. A very protracted one-sidedness in preaching has to be balanced up, and if some now go to the other extreme, those who have created the situation hardly have the right to cast the first stone. It seems likely that even after this present inequality of emphasis is balanced, some preachers will put more stress on the social aspects of religion. In that case we must apply Paul's large and tolerant principle, "There are diversities of gifts, but the saine Spirit." Some by nature and training have the gift of dealing with individuals and the loving insight into personal needs; others have the passionate interest in the larger life and its laws. The Church needs evangelists and pastors, but it needs prophets too. If a mlnister uses the great teaching powers of the pulpit sanely and wisely to open the minds of the people to the moral importance of the social questions, he may be of the utmost usefulness in the present crisis. Intelligent men who lire in the midst of social problems do hOt yet know that there is a social problem, just as one may pass among the noises and sights of a city street without noticing them. If the minister can simply induce his more intelligent hearers to focus what is in their very field of vision, thereafter they can hOt help seeing it, and information will begin to collect automatically in their minds. The Church itself bas riveted the attention of the people on other aspects of lire hitherto and thereby bas diverted their attention from the social problems. It ought to make up for this. A minister mingling with both classes can act as an interpreter to both. He can soften the increasing class hatred of the working class. He can infuse the spirit of moral enthusiasm into the economic struggle of the dispossessed and lift it to something more than a "stomach question." On the other hand, among the well-to-do, he can strengthen the consciousness that the working people bave a real grievance and so increase the disposition to make concessions in practical cases and check the inclination to resort to force for the suppression of discontent. If the ministry would awaken among the wealthy a sense of social compunction and moral uneasiness, that alone might save out nation from a revolutionary explosion. It would be of the utmost importance to us all if the inevitable readjustment could be secured by a continuous succession of sensible demands on the one side and willing concessions on the other. We can see now that a little more t John Morley, in the "Life of Cobden": "Great economlc and social forces flow with a tidal sweep over communities that are only hall conscious of that which is befalling thern.»
WAT TO O 369 wisdom and justice on both sides mîght bave round a peaceable solution for the great social problem of slavery. Instead of that the country was plunged into the Civil War with its fearful cost in blood and wealth. We have been cursed for a generation with the legacy of sectional hatred, and the question of the status of the black race has hOt been solved even at such cost. If Pharaoh again hardens his heart, he will again bave to weep for his first-born and be whelmed in the Red Sea. It is a question if we can rally enough moral insight and good-will to create a peaceable solution, or if the Bourbon spirit is to plunge our nation into a long-continued state of dissolution and anarchy which the mind shrinks from contemplating. The influence of the Christian ministry, if exercised in the spirit of Christian democracy, might be one of the most powerful solvents and the decisive influence for peace.
The spiritual force of Christianity should be turned against wh, Chr tian conthe materialism and mammonism of our industrial and social ception ¢ order, liIe and property, If a man sacrifices his human dignity and self-respect to increase his income, or stunts his intellectual growth and his human affections to swell his bank account, he is to that extent serving mammon and denying God. Likewise if he uses up and injures the lire of his fellow-men to make money for himself, he serres mammon and denies God. But our" industrial order does both. It makes property the end, and man the means to produce it. Man is treated as a thing to produce more things. Men are hired as hands and not as men. They are paid only enough to maintain their working capacity and not enough B to develop their manhood. When their working force is exhausted, they are flung aside withot/t consideration of their human needs. Jesus asked, "Is not a man more than a sheep?" Our industry says "No." It is careful of its live stock and machinery, and careless of its human working force. It keeps its electrical engines immaculate in burnished cleanliness and lets îts human dynamos sicken in dirt. In the xsth Assembly District in New York City, between oth and th avenues, 32 familles in 896 had three bathtubs between them. Our industrial establishments are institutions for the creation of dividends, and not for the fostering of human life. In all our public life the question of profit is put first. Pastor StScker, in a speech on child and female labor in the German Reichstag, said: "We have put the question the wrong way. We have asked: How much child and female labor does industry need in order to flourish, to pay dividends, and to sell goods abroad? Whereas we ought to have asked: How ought industry to be organized in order to protect and foster the family, the human individual, and the Christian life?" That simple reversal of the question marks the difference between the Christian conception of life and property and the mammonistic. "Life is more than food and raiment." More, too, than the apparatus which makes food and raiment. What is all the machinery of our industrial organization worth if it does not make human life healthful and happy? But is it doing that? Men are first of all men, folks, members of our human family. To view them first of all as labor force is civilized barbarism. It is the attitude of the exploiter. Yet unconsciously we have all been taught to take that attitude and talk of men as if they were horse-powers or volts. Our commercialism has tainted our sense of fundamental human verities and values. We measure our national prosperity by pig-iron and steel instead of by the welfare of the people. In city affairs the property owners have more influence than the family owners. For instance, the pall of coal smoke hanging over our industrial cities is injurious to the eyes; it predisposes to diseases of the respiratory organs; it depresses the joy of living; it multiplies the labor of housewives in cleaning and washing. But it continues because it would impose expense on business to install smoke consumers or pay skilled stokers. If an agitation is begun to abolish the smoke nuisance, the telling argument is not that it inflicts injury on the mass of human life, but that the smoke "hurts business," and that it really "pays" to consume the wasted carbon. In political life one can constantly see the cause of human life pleading long and vainly for redress, like the widow before the unjust judge. Then suddenly cornes the bass voice of Property, and all men stand with hat in hand. Our scientific political economy has long been an oracle of the false god. It has taught us to approach economic questions from the point of view of goods and not of man. It tells us how wealth is produced and divided and consumed by man, and not how man's life and development can best be fostered by material wealth. It is significant that the discussion of "Consumption" of wealth has been most neglected in political economy; yet that is humanly the most important of all. Theology must become christocentric; political economy must become anthropocentric. Man is Christianized when he puts God before self; political economy will be Christianized when it puts man before wealth. Socialistic political economy does that. It is materialistic in its theory of human life and history, but it is humane in it aires, and to that extent is closer to Christianity than the orthodox science has been. It is the function of religion to teach the individual to value his soul more than his body, and his moral integrity more than his income. In the same way it is the function of religion to teach society to value human life more tban property, and to value property only in so far as it forms tbe material basis for the higber development of human life. When life and property are in apparent collision, life must take precedence. This is not only Christian but prudent. When commercialism in its headlong greed deteriorates the mass of human life, it defeats its own covetousness by killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Humanity is tbat goose m in more senses than one. It takes faith in the moral law to believe that tbis penny-wise craft is really suicidal folly, and to assert that wealth which uses up the people paves the way to beggary. Religious men have been cowed by the prevailing materialism and arrogant selfishness of our business world. They should have the courage of religious faith and assert that "man liveth not by bread alone," but by doing the will of God, and that the Iife of a nation "consisteth hot in the abundance of things" which it produces, but in the way men lire justly with one another and humbly with their God.
When the social activity of the Church îs discussed, it is usuaIly assumed that the churches are to influence legislation and to watch over the execution of the laws. The churches are within their rights in doing both. There are probably few denominations which would hesitate a moment to fling their full force on a legislature if the tenure of their property or the freedom of their church administration were threatened. If it is right to lobby in their own behalf, it cannot well be wrong to lobby on behalf of the people. But we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of laws. Our legislative bodies are the greatest law factories the world has ever seen. Our zest for legislation blinds us to the subtle forces behind and beyond the lo.w. Those influences which really make and mar human happiness and greatness are beyond the reach of the law. The law can compel a man to support his wife, but it cannot compel him to love her, and what are ten dollars a week to a woman whose love lies in broken shards at ber feet? The law can compel a father to provide for his children and can interfere if he maltreats them, but it cannot compel him to give them that loving fatherly intercourse which puts backbone into a child forever. The law can keep neighbors from trespassing, but it cannot put neighborly courtesy and good-will into their relations. The State can establish public schools and hire teachers, but it cannot put enthusiasm and moral power into their work; yet those are the qualifies which distinguish the few true teachers to whom we look back in after years as the real makers of our lives. The highest qualifies and influences are beyond the law and must be created elsewhere. The law is a moral agency, as effective and as rough as a policeman's club, sweeping in its operation and unable to adjust itself to individual needs and the finer shadings of moral life. It furnishes the stiff skeleton of public morality which supports the finer tissues, but these tissues must be deposited by other forces. The State is the outer court of the moral law; within stands the sanctuary of the Spirit.
Religion creates morality, and morality then deposits a small part of its contents in written laws. The State can protect the existing morality and promote the coming morality, but the vital creative force of morality lies deeper. The law becomes impotent if it is hot supported by a diffused, spontaneous moral impulse in the community. If religion implants love, mutual helpfulness, and respect for the life and rights of others, there will be little left to do for the law and its physical force. The stronger the silent moral compulsion of the community, the less need for the physical compulsion of the State. If parents have to resort to physical punishment constantly, it furnishes presumptive evidence that their training has been defective in its moral factors. If we have to order out the militia frequently to quell flots and protect property, it constitutes a charge of inefiïciency against the religious and educational institutions of the community. Thus it is clear that the Church has a large field for social activity before touching legîslation. It cannot make laws, but it can make customs, and "quid leges sine moribus?" Of what avail are laws without customs? Out two words, "morals" and "ethics," the one from the Latin and the other from the Greek, both mean that which is customary. There is a singular lack of appreciation in American thought for the importance of custom; possibly because in out new and plastic life customs are less rigid and formative than anywhere on earth. Yet out life, too, is ruled largely by unenacted laws. Out helpfulness toward children and old people, out respect for womanhood and the consequent unparalleled freedom of woman's social intercourse, the comparative disappearance of profanity and obscenity from conversation- all this tests on custom and not on law, and these customs are in large part the product of purified modern religion. The disappearance of alcoholic liquors from the homes of great strata of our people is in most localities due to custom rather than law. Religion first demanded it, and educational, scientific, and economic motives have since reenforced the custom. Religion first created the custom of Sunday rest and the law then protected it. The weekly rest day is a gift of religion to the people. If it was not already so firmly established in our life, it would be almost impossible to v«rest one full day from the whirl of modern commercialism. The law did not create Sunday rest; neither is it able to maintain its finer qualities. It can prohibit work, but it cannot prescribe how the day shall be spent. It is entirely feasible for the Church to mitigate the social hardships of the working classes by lending force to humane customs. Its help would make the Saturday hall holiday in summer practicable. It could ease the strain of the Christmas shopping season. It could secure seats and test rooms for the girls in the department stores. It could counteract the tendency of tenement ow.ners to crowd the people. It could encourage employers in making a place for their aged employees and discourage the early exploitation of children. A single frank and prayerful discussion of one of these questions in a social meeting of the church or its societies would create more social morality and good custom than many columns in the newspapers. Such an activity would not solve the fundamental questions of capitalism, but it would ease the pressure a little and would save the people from deterioration, while the social movement is moving toward the larger solution. Good customs are perpetually in danger, and the Church can act as a conservative influence in guarding them againsl hostile inroads. For instance, the custom which barred alcoholic drinks from respectable and educated homes is now being undermined by the influence of the idle upper class which needs stimu|ants and copies their use from foreign society, ancl tne OEurcn slould undertake a new temperance crusade with all the resources of advanced physiological and sociological science. The head of an important Eastern institution a few years ago proposed to introduce beer in the social gatherings of students in order to make them more sociable. Such an innovation would not merely create the habit of moderate drinking in many young men, but wouM introduce a foreign custom into American life. Many of out public dinners are now wholly free from the flush of wine or beer. The excellence of American after-dinner speaking, and the prevalence of real humor and fun at our public dinners, are mainly due to the fact that both speaker and audience are in full control of their critical faculties and therefore demand fine intellectual work and are in condition to appreciate it. The alcoholic paralysis begins with the brain and lessens the capacity for self-scrutiny and self-restraint.,MI alcoholized audience will howl at anything unseemly and be too dull for anything really witty. Even if the students of that institution should all stop drinking when they graduated, a lasting damage would be done to American college life if it became customary for the college community to pass into partial narcosis as a preparation for social enjoyment. Against all such corruptions of good custom the Church should do sentinel duty. Any permanent and useful advance in legislation is dependent on the previous creation of moral conviction and custom. It is a commonplace that a law cannot be enforced w_;thout the support of public opinion, and that an unenforced law breaks down the usefulness of all related laws and the reverence for law in general. If the law advances faster than the average moral sense, it becomes inoperative and harmful. The real advance, therefore, will have to corne through those social forces vhich create and train the sense of right. The religious and educational forces in their totality are the real pover that runs the cart uphill; the State can merely push a billet of wood under the wheels to keep it from rolling down again. Some of the gravest evils of our day are either hOt covered by enacted law or the law against them does hOt work. In such cases the forces which create active moral conviction are under accusation for neglect of duty. The process of guarding, creating, or strengthening useful institutions is similar to the process of creating good customs. It is a function in which religious sentiment and the organized Church can work freely. For instance, our public parks are an institution of the highest value to the physical and moral life of the cities. About fifty years ago no city in the United States had purchased an acre of land for park purposes. Mainly through the influence of public-spirited raen, supported by enlightened moral sentiment, parks bave been created and are now hOt only increasing their acreage and their beauty, but their usefulness. They are beginning to offer sand-hills for the little children, swimming baths in summer, skating in winter, music on holidays, gymnastic apparatus, and open-air gaines. Instead of warning the people to "keep off the grass," they are bidding for the inflow of the people. Yet it is safe to say that every one of thesc advances cost some struggle and effort, and at every such moment of struggle a lift from the powerful shoulders of tb organized religious community would be practically decisive. The Hague Tribunal is an institution of far-reaching historical importance which bas grown up under our eyes. real origin was in the hearts of idealists who supported theiI protest against war and armed peace by scientific reasoning. These ideas round lodgement in the mind of Czar Nicholas, and by the power of initiative vested in a great monarch he was able by a single manifesto to compel world-wide attention to the question and force a theory into the field of practical politics. But the suspicion and non-ideM conservatism of governments is so great that they would bave let the movement die still-born, if it had not awakened the moral enthusiasm of the common people in those countries in which democracy had trained the people to act, and in which purified religion had stored the strongest ethical dynamic. English and American public sentiment were probably the decisive factor which made the first conference at the Hague more than a dress parade. The aim for which the Conference was really called, was hot accomplished; the increase in armaments was hOt checked. Instead of that a permanent tribunal of international arbitration was created. For a time no use was ruade of it. Many made mock of this puny outcorne of a movement which had been mistakenly heralded as a proposition for universal peace. Many religious journals sat on the seats of the scornful. Then another strong man with convictions put his hand on the idle machinery and set it in motion. President Roosevelt secured the reference of the "Pious Fund" dispute with Mexico and later the reference of the Venezuelan disputes, and therewith the Hague Tribunal became an operative force in history. Andrew
Carnegie, that one of our great millionnaires who has the strongest leaven of democratic idealism, has undertaken to house the Tribunal in adequate splendor. It is safe to say that the institution will now perpetuate itself and gradually enlarge its functions. Here we have under our eye the various forces which cooperate to advance humauity; the dissemination of ideas by idealistic thinkers, the action of individuals strong by hereditary position, personal character or wealth, and the support of enlightened public opinion. History will do the rest. It will be immeasurably easier to assign additional powers to the Tribunal than to create it in the first place. These forces triumphed over the sullen reluctance and cynical doubt of some governments and the amused ridicule of many "p.ractical men." Many religious people looked askance, because peace on earth can be established only by the coming of Christ. Others hailed it with a shout of triumph as another step in the coming of Christ. The future will probably look back to it as the faint beginniug of a new era in international relations and will marvel that any doubted the clear call of Christ at such a turning-point.
« In the years that have been I have bound man closer to man And closer woman to woman; And the stranger hath seen in a stranger his brother at last And a sister in eyes that were strange. In the years that shall be I will bind me nation to nation And shore unto shore," saith our God. « Lo! I am the burster of bonds and the breaker of barrîers» I am he that shall free," saith the Lord. « For the lingering battle, the contest of ages is ending, And victory followeth me." 1
Such a co6peration of the religious and political forces of the cornrnunity furnishes the positive solution of the problern of Church and State. Historical experience has compelled us to separate Church and State because each can accomplish its special task best without the interference of the other. But they are not unrelated. Our life is not a mechanical duality, built in two air-tight compartments. Church and State both rninistcr to something greater and larger than either, and they find their true relation in this unity of aim and service. When the State supports morality by legal constraint, it co6perates with the voluntary rnoral power of the Church; but if it should seek to control the organization and influence of the Church by appointing its officers or interfering with its teaching, it would tarnper with the seedplot of moral progress. When the Church irnplants religious irnpulses toward righteousness and trains the rnoral convictions of the people, it co6perates with the State by creating the most delicate and valuable elernents of social welfare and progress; but if it should enter into politics to get funds frorn the public treasury or police support for its doctrine and ritual, it would inject a divisive and corrosive force into political life. The machinery of Church and State must be kept separate, but the output of each must mingle with the other to make social life increasingly wholesorne and normal. Church and State are alike but partial organizations of humanity for special ends. Together they serve what is greater than either: humanity. Their comrnon aire is to transform humanity into the kingdom of God.
Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the parables of the talents and pounds 1 he evidently meant to define ail human ability and opportunity as a trust. His description of the head servant who is ruade confident by the continued absence of his toaster, tyrmmizes over his subordinates, and fattens his paunch on h,s master's property, is meant to show the temptation which besets all in authority to forget the responsibility that goes with power. 2 His portrayal of the tricky stevard who is to be dismissed for dishonesty, but manages to make one more grand coup before his authority ends, hOt only shows the keen insight of Jesus into the ways of the grafter, but also shows that he regarded all men of wealth as stewards of the property they hold. The parable of the peasants who jointly rent a vineyard and then try to do their absent owner not only out of his rent, but out of the property itself, vas meant by Jesus to condense and dramatize the whole history of the ruling class in IsraelJ The illustration of the fig tree which has had all possible advantages of soil and care without returning fruit, and which merely gets a year's reprieve through the hopeful pleading of the gardener, expresses the indionation of Jesus against the waste of intrusted opportunity3 The terrible invective against the scribes and Pharisees is directed against teachers who had misused their influence to darken truth and leaders who had treated their leadership as a chance to get profit and honor for themselves. « The fact that Jesus in his diagnosis of wrong moral relations so often puts his finger on trust abused and betrayed, is proof of his penetrating social insight. Nearly ail powers in society are essentially delegated powers. The more complex society becomes, the less will it be possible for the individual to attend to all his needs himself, and the more will he have to intrust others with specialized functions and powers. When a savage killed an animal for food and dressed its hide for clothing, he knew what he was getting. When a man buys canned meat and a ready-made suit, he has to trust to the honesty of others for what he gets. When a man deposits money in a savings bank or pays an insurance premium, he exercises trust. When he engages a lawyer to conduct a suit or search a title, the lawyer is a steward of intrusted power. When he submits the body of his child to a surgeon's knife, or its intellect to a school-teacher, or its soul to a preacher, he trusts, and these professional men are his trustees. Our lire is woven through with such relations. Trust is the foundation of all higher social lire. Lire is good and restful in the measure in which it is sale to trust. Lire turns back to the haunting suspicion and fear of the savage when man can no longer safely trust man. On the other hand, the more complex society becomes, the more difficult is it to watch over the fidelity of all the trustees, and the greater is the temptation of a trustee or steward to divert the trust to his own use. A farming community in New England can watch how the selectmen of the township use their delegated powers. The ordinary citizen in our great cities does not understand the machinery of the government and has only a shadowy idea of what is really being done by public officers with his property and under his authority. He is, in effect, the absentee landlord whose servants are ruade bold to piller and cheat because the eye of the owner is not on them.
Moreover, it is only when society arrives at wealth and power that "grafting" cornes to pay. In a poor and savage community the individual has so little that the only way to get wealth without work is by downright robbery of the weak. As the average of wealth rises, and the aggregate of wealth becomes more enormous, a mere "rake-off" is enough to enrich the grafter. Hence in a savage community we have robbers and bandit chiefs; in a civilized community we have a parasitic class who live in idleness and splendor by converting to their own use some kind of intrusted wealth or delegated power. "Grafting" is a highly perfected modern sin. Its essence is hot stealing, but the corruption of a steward by one party and the betrayal of trust by a second party, who together profit at the expense of a third party, most frequently the public. The scale on which the parable of the wicked husbandmen has been reënacted in human history is stupendous. For instance, the king or duke in primitive Teutonic life was simply a capable man chosen for temporary leadership in war. This temporary power tended to become permanent. This permanent power tended to become hereditary. Tenure by capable service tended to become tenure "by divine right." The limited monarchy tended to shake off its limitations, to suppress co6rdinate forces of government, and to become absolutism. When Louis XIV asserted, "L'Etat, c'est moi," the steward was calmly facing the owner and asserting that the owner existed by leave of the steward. The steward had embezzled the property so long that the relationship between owner and steward had been turned upside down in his mind. When Frederick the Great of Prussia said, on the other hand, that "the king is the foremost servant of the State," the royal philosopher felt the breath of the coming French Revolution fanning his brow. But the fact that so obvious a truth had tobe stated at all is the most convincing proof that the stewardship of kings had long been a buried idea. The great movement of modem democracy, which is still so far from its goal, is simply an effort to bring one set of faithless stewards to terms and restore their power to the people from whom it was alienated. The great feudal system, under which medieval society lived and did business just as we live under capitalism, was fundamentally a systematized network of stewardship. A great noble was given a province by the crown on condition that he render certain services, usually the military protection of public peace and safety. He in turn conferred smaller domains on smaller lords under similar conditions. But just as in the case of the kings, the feudal lords tended to shake off the obligation incurred and to s/rengthen their hold on the power conferred. Feudal stewardship turned into ownership and then shifted its fundamental military duties and taxes on other classes of the population, until the people, who were the owners of the land, sa/ shivering on the doorsteps of the stewards and ruade obeisance when they were kicked. These are simply two illustrations on a large scale to sho- how vast bave been the embezzlements of power from thv people, and what a long historical struggle is necessary to oust the fraudulent steward and regain possession for the people. It would be easy to multiply the illustrations from history. It is more to the point to mark the same process to-day. When a public officer secures government positions for his relatives or for those who worked for his election, or succulent contracts for the patriotic business men who put up campaign funds, he uses the property of the people to pay for services rendered to himself. That is essentially embezzlement by an agent. When President Cleveland solenmly announced that "public office is a public trust," it was greeted as a noble assertion of a great principle. What would be the condition of mathematical science in a nation if the solemn announcement that "two times two is four" should be hailed as an enlightening utterance? The standard of honor in public life has fallen so low in out country that it is very difficult to secure the conviction of cven flagrant offenders because the oflïcial world, by community of sin, has lost its capacity for moral indioaation. When the law touches one man on the shoulder, a shiver of apprehension runs down the whole line. Out political parties, at least in their local administration, are largely held together by the cohesive necessities of common plunder. Democracy is paralyzed by the party managers. The owner is once more being ousted by the steward. Our public service corporations exist because the community grants them the use of public property and exercises the sovereign right of eminent domain on their behalf. They are stewards of public property and powers. But we have all seen in recent years that they have been very close to forgetting that they are stewards and bave acted as if they were the owners. The present movement for rate-regulation, for instance, is simply an effort to assert the rights of the owner over the steward, and the aggrieved astonishment with which this movement has been met by the class that owns the railways is interesting proof that the usual historical process was very far advanced. C
It has gone much farther in the case of mining rights. Oint laws have been exceedingly open-handed to those who discovered and developed the mineral resources of our country. But this generosity has always been based on the tacit sumption that it was a good thing for the entire community to have the minerals brought out and cheapened, and that the grantees of mining rights would hasten to bring them out and compete in selling them. Mining rights are a form of public franchise and are conditioned on public service. It is preposterous to think that an individual or a corporation can ever have absolute ownership in a rein of coal or copper. A mining company owns the holes in the ground, for it ruade the holes; it does not own the coal, for it did not make the coal. The coal is the gift of God and belongs to the people. If the people intrust the mining of the coal to any one, itis a delegated right and can be recalled if the stewardship is abused. If mining rights are now used to keep coal in and make it dear, instead of bringing coal out and making it cheap, that would be ample moral ground for cancelling ail rights. The present movement for federal and state interference and control over corporations, of which President Roosevelt is the most eminent exponent and leader, is an effort to reassert the ownership and mastership of the people and to force these stewards of public powers back into the position of public servants. The next decade will probably show whether they are willing to take the position of well-paid servants and cease from ousting the owner. If not, the people will have to say, "Render the account of thy stewardship, for thou canst no longer be steward." This movement is of far-reaching historical significance.
WHA TO DO 387 It could be immensely quickened if the moral forces of the community would strengthen it by stiffening public sentiment on stewardship. The Church should tutu whatever advanced moral insight it possesses, like a searchlight, on everything that claims to be ownership and scrutinize it to see if it is hOt in fact merely stewardship which has thrown off its responsibility and is running away with the property. Itis said that all the cordage used by the English navy has a red thread running through the hemp, which proves that itis public property wherever it may be found. It would be interesting if the rigging of out private commercial craft could be overhauled to find the red thread of public omership. We all draw our life, our safety, our intellect, our information, our organizing ability, from the common fund of the community, and we have not paid our obligations when we have settled our tax bill. The community could well turn on each of us and ask: "XVhat hast thou that thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why doest thou boast as if thou hadst not received it?" The doctrine of" Christian stewardship" has been strongly emphasized in church life in recent years, but mainly from the churchly point of view. It is a new formula designed to give our modern men of wealth a stronger sense of responsibility and to induce them to give more largely to the Church and its work. But if a rich man withdraws a million from commerce and gives it to a missionary society or a college, that simply shifts the money from one steward to another, and from one line of usefulness to another. The ecclesiastical idea of stewardship needs to be intensified and broadened by the democratic idea. Every man who holds wealth or power is not only a steward of God, but a steward of the people. He derives it from the people and he holds it in trust for the people. If he converts it to his own use, the people can justly call him to accourir in the court of public opinion and in the courts of law. If the law has hitherto given an absolute title to certain forms of property and has neglected to insist on the ingredient of public property and rights involved in it, that does hOt settle the moral title in the least. The people may at any rime challenge the title and resume its forgotten rights by more searching laws. The Christian Church could make a splendid contribution to the new social justice if it assisted in pointing out the latent public rights and in quickening the conscience of stewards who have forgotten their stewardship. In turn, the religious sense of stewardship would be reënforced by the increased sense of social obligation. Our laws and social institutions have so long taught men that their property is their own, and that they can do what they will with their own, that the Church has uphill work in teaching that they are not owners, but administrators. Our industrial individualism neutralizes the social consciousness created by Christianity.
It is assumed as almost self-evident in popular thought that communism is impracticable and inefficient, an antiquated method of the past or a dream of Utopian schemers, a system of society sure to impede economic development and to fetter individual liberty and initiative. Thus we flout what was the earliest basis of civilization for the immense majority of mankind and the moral ideal of Christendom during the greater part of its history. Communistic ownership and management of the fundamental means of production was the rule in primitive society, and large remnants of it have survived to our day. For fifteen centuries and more it was the common consent of Christendom that private property was due to sin, and that the ideal life involved fraternal sharing. The idea underlying the monastic life was that men left the sinful world and established an ideal community, and communism was an essential feature of every monastic establishment. The progressive heretical movements in the Middle Ages also usually involved an attempt to get closer to the communistic ideal. It is a striking proof how deeply the ideas of the Church have always been affected by the current secular thought, that our rnodern individualisrn has been able to wipe this irnmemorial Christian social ideal out of the mind of the modern Church almost completely. The assumption that comrnunistic ownership was a hindrance to progress deserves very critical scrutiny. Itis part of that method of writing history which exalted the doings of kings and slighted the life of the people. For the grasping arm of the strong, communistic institutions were indeed a most objectionable hindrance, but to the common man they were the strongest bulwark of his independence and vigor. Within the shelter of the old-fashioned village community, which constituted a social unit for military protection, economic production, morality, and religion, the individual could enjoy his life with some feadessness. The peasant who stood alone was at the mercy of his lord. Primitive village communism was not freely abandoned as an inefficient system, but was broken up by the covetousness of the strong and selfish members of the community, and by the encroachments of the upper classes who wrested the common pasture and forest and gaine from the peasant communities. Its disappearance nearly everywhere rnarked a decline in the prosperity and moral vigor of the peasantry and was felt by them to be a calamity and a step in their enslavement. But we need not go back into history to get ajuster verdict on the practicability and usefulness of communism. We have the material right among us. Ask any moral teacher who is scouting communism and glorifying individualism, what social institutions to-day are most important for the moral educatior of mankind and most beneficent in their influence on human happiness, and he will probably reply promptly, "The home, the school, and the church." But these three are communistic institutions. The home is the source of most of our happiness and goodness, and in the home we live communistically. Each member of the family has some private property, clothes, letters, pictures, toys; but the rooms and the furniture in the main are common to all, and if one member needs the private property of another, there is ready sharing. The income of the members is more or less turned into a common fund; food is prepared and eaten in common; the larger family undertakings are planned in common. The housewife is the manager of a successful communistic colony, and it is perhaps not accidental that our women, who move thus within a fraternal organization, are the chief stays of our Christianity. Similarly our public schools are supported on a purely communistic basis; those who have no children or whose children are grown up, are nevertheless taxed for the education of the children of the community. The desks, the books to some extent, the flowers and decorations, are common property, and it is the aim of the teachers to develop the communistic spirit in the children, though they may not call it by that naine. Our churches, too, are voluntary communisms. A number of people get together, have a cornrnon building, cornrnon seats, cornmon hynm-books and Bibles, support a pastor in common, and worship, learn, work, and play in comrnon. They are so little individualistic that they fairly urge others to corne in and use their property. Private pews and sirnilar encroachrnents of private property within this cornrnunistic institution are now generally condernned as contrary to the spirit of the Church, while every new step to widen the communistic serviceableness of the churches is greeted with a glow of enthusiasm. Thus the three great institutions on which we rnainly depend to train the young to a moral life and to make us all good, wise, and happy, are essentially cornrnunistic, and their success and efficiency depend on the continued rnastery of the spirit of solidarity and brotherhood within thern. It is nothing short of funny to hear the very men who ceaselessly glorify the home, the school, and the church, turn around and abuse comrnunism. It can fairly be rnaintained, too, that the State, another great moral agent, is comrnunistic in its very nature. It is the organization by which the people adrninister their comrnon property and attend to their comrnon interests. It is safe to say that at least a fourth of the land in a rnodern city is owned by the city and cornrnunistically used for free streets and free parks. Our modern State is the outcome of a long development toward cornrnunism. Warfare and rnilitary defence were formerly the private affair of the nobles; they are now the business of the entire nation. Roads and bridges used to be owned largely by private persons or corporations, and toll charged for their use; they are now cornrnunistic with rare exceptions. Putting out rires used to be left to lrivate enterprise; to-day our tire departments are communistic. Schools used to be private; they are now public. Great men formerly had private parks and admitted the public as a matter of favor; the people now bave public parks and admit the great men as a matter of right. The right of jurisdiction was formerly often an appurtenance of the great landowners; it is now controlled by the people. The public spirit and foresight of one of the greatest of all Americans, Benjamin Franklin, early ruade the postal service of our country a communistic institution of ever increasing magnitude and usefulness. In no case in which communistic ownership has firmly established itself is there any desire to recede from it. The unrest and dissatisfaction is all at those points where the State îs hot yet communistic. The water-works in most of our cities are owned and operated by the community, and there is never more than local and temporary dissatisfaction about this great necessity of life, because any genuine complaint by the people as users of water can be promptly remedied by the people as suppliers of water. On the other hand, the clamor of public complaint about the gas, the electric power and light, and the street railway service, which are commonly supplied by private companies, is incessant and increasing. While the railway lines were competing, they wasted on needless parallel roads enough capital to build a comfortable home for every family in the country. Now that they have nearly ceased to compete, the grievances of their monopoly are among the gravest problems of our national life. The competitive duplication of plant and labor by our express companies is folly, and their exorbitant charges are a drag on the economic welfare and the common comfort of our whole nation. This condition continues hot because of their efticiency, but because of their sinister influence on Congress. They are an econorrdc anachronism. Thus the State, too, is essentially a communistic institution. It bas voluntarily limited its functions and lcft many things to private initiative. The political philosophy of the nineteenth century constantly preached to the State that the best State was that which governed least, just as the best child was that which moved least. Yet it bas almost imperceptibly gathered to itself many of the functions which were formerly exercised by private undertakings, and there is no desire anywhere to turn public education, fire protection, sanitation, or the supply of water over to private concerns. But the distinctively modern utilities, which have been invented or perfected during the reign of capitalism and during the prevalence of individualistic political theories, bave been seized and appropriated by private concerns. The railways, the street railways, the telegraph and telephone, electric power and light, gas- these are all modern. The swift hand of capitalism seized them and bas exploited them to its immense profit. Other countries have long ago begun to draw these modern public necessities within the communistic functions of the State. In our country a variety of causes, good and bad, have combined to check that process; but the trend is manifestly in the direction of giving state communism a wider sweep hereafter. Private ownership is hot a higher stage of social organization which has finally and forever superseded communism, but an intermediate and necessary stage of social evolution between two forms of communism. At a certain point in the development of property primitive communism becomes unworkable, and a higher form of communism has hot yet been wrought out; consequently men manage as best they can with private ownership. To take a simple illustration: on the farm or in a country village the creek is common property for bathing purposes; the "swimmin'-hole" is the communistic bath-tub for all who want to refresh their cuticle. As the village grows, the march of the houses drives the bathers farther out; the pervasiveness of the "eternally feminine" robs the boys of their bath; the primitive communism of the water ceases. Some families now are wealthy enough to install private bath-tubs and bave the increased privilege of bathing all the year around. The bulk of the people in the cities have no bathing facilities at all. At last an agitation arises for a public bath. A beginning is ruade with enclosed river-baths, perhaps, or with shower-baths. At last a plungebath is built and opened summer and winter. The bathing instinct of the community revives and increasingly centres about the public bath. The communism of the water has returned. From the communistic swimming-hole to the marble splendor of the communistic bath the way lay through the individualistic tub of the wealthy and the unwashed deprivations of the mass. In the saine way there is no need of parks in primitive society, because all nature is open. As cities grow up, the country recedes; a few are wealthy enough to surround their homes with lawns and trees; the mass are shut off from nature and suffocate amid brick and asphalt. Then cornes the new communal ownership and enjoyment of nature: first the small square in the city; then the large park on the outskirts; then the distant park on the seashore or by the river and lake; and finally the state or national reservation where wild lire is kept intact for those who want to revert to it. Thus we pass from communism to communism