A reasonable social policy for Christian people

HN 64
.H44
Copy 1

Social Service Series

A Reasonable Social
Policy for Christian

People Henderson

The Interest of Each
Is the Concern of AU

Social Service Series — No. I, Division 3

A

Reasonable Social Policy
for Christian People

Charles R. Henderson, Ph. D.

Professor of Sociology

in the
University of Chicago

Published for the Social Service Committee
of the Northern Baptist Convention

American Baptist Publication Society

PhOadelphia

Boston Chicago St. Louis

Atlanta Dallas

Copyright 1909 by
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary

Published May, 1909

UiiKARY Of CONGRESS
Two Copies Received

KlIAY 191909,

A REASONABLE SOCIAL POLICY
FOR CHRISTIAN PEOPLE

This discussion takes for granted that the readers
are Christians at heart, and that they sincerely pray
" Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." The pul-
pit and public worship have prepared the spirits of
millions for hearing a sober call to specific forms
of human service. The church is conservative by
instinct, and is not open to revolutionary visions.
Its membership almost universally respects the his-
toric institutions of private property, constitutional
government, monogamic marriage, and peaceful
methods of progress. To such minds this out-
line of a social policy is fraternally offered for con-
sideration.

The church is not asked to vote or pass resolu-
tions on its propositions, or to take sides in disputes
between employers and employed, or to declare any
group schismatic or heretical which opposes them,

3

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or to identify itself with any programme, or bill for
a law or party; but only to give an opportunity,
especially to younger men, to consider the new view
of social obligations so that each individual can do
his own duty with enlightened understanding.

There are eternal principles of justice, reason, and
love which never change; they are of the very
nature of God, and are written very deep in human
souls. These principles shine out in our sacred
Scriptures in the biographies of saints and heroes, in
the divine process of national education, and su-
premely, in the story of Jesus our Lord and Saviour.
The sun of righteousness rose to the zenith in those
dark hours when Jesus died upon the cross for man-
kind. Beyond that the revelation of love could
never go. His own word was, " It is finished."
The artist of holiness gave the last touch to a perfect
picture.

But the life of Christ is continuous. The stream
of goodness is a widening river whose fountain is
his throne. God is ever shifting the conditions of
life. Duty is the conduct required in a particular
time and land and group, and it cannot be foretold
or written once for all in a book; we need divine
guidance on every question and wisdom from on

jl Reasonable Social Policy 5

high for every new work. As truly as did Abraham
must each generation of young Christians go into a
new land never seen before by mortals; they must
go out not knowing whither they journey, knowing
only that God is Friend and Guide.

The Holy Spirit is given us by promise to lead us
into all truth ; and his method is one of wisdom,
and is called among men the scientific method. This
method is inspired by love of truth, and has no
other end. It searches for facts of experience, for
their tendency and meaning, and for the best way of
utilizing them for human welfare.

/. The individualistic bias and presumption in
America.

Any person who attempts to promote a common
effort to improve human life by law finds himself
in the chill atmosphere of an inherited prejudice
which envelops law, ethics, and theology.

This country was settled by isolated farmers, and
perhaps a majority of families still live in isolated
dwellings without the habit of co-operation with
large groups. Each man works alone and turns his
hand to a great variety of tasks.

In frontier days each farmer carried his own rifle

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and defended himself against Indians ; only in
urgent necessity did he join a company or army,
and this he quit as soon as possible. Washington's
soldiers, at Braddock's Ford, imitated the Indian
style, and each man, protected by a tree, picked out
his Indian for a well-aimed shot. Thus our fore-
bears plowed and killed as individualists, and they
could have done no other.

Furthermore, our American ancestors were strug-
gling to break the shackles of tyranny in Church,
in State, in business. They built up their laws and
governments and institutions in the eighteenth cen-
tury, when all were demanding liberty from clergy,
feudal lords, and kings. Men really believed that
freedom was the one thing needful ; that each man,
in following his own interest, would serve mankind
wisely and effectively. Each man wished to be left
alone, and claimed the same right for all. Under
the circumstances of that age it was a seductive
creed, and strong men liked it ; some grew rich
and more powerful by means of it. They made it
the basis of our constitution, and judges interpreted
statutes according to it.

Then the theology and popular sermons of the
church were dominated by the same individualistic

Jl Reasonable Social Policy 7

bias and prejudice, for theologians are children of
their age. Emphasis was laid upon one aspect of
religious truth, the individual soul, individual duty,
individual responsibility, individual peril, individual
salvation. They proclaimed and urged a truth, but
it was not all the truth, and one side of the sun was
eclipsed in their teaching. There was good in all
this tendency, an element which the world can never
afford to lose or forget. In industry there was
wonderful initiative, in business immense energy,
in religion intense fervor and zeal; and these are
qualities we must keep while we go on to the larger
view. But " the good is often enemy of the best."
Individualism unmodified by altruism becomes self-
ish; egotism masks itself under the disguise of
liberty; and in pursuit of one's own salvation one
is in danger of leaving his brethren in an earthly
inferno. And this happened in industry. States-
men made an idol of an abstract theory, and it
resembled a Moloch, to whom they sacrificed chil-
dren, defenseless women, and oppressed men.

//. We live m an era of corporations

What individual could carry out a scheme of
transcontinental railways or intercontinental steam-

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ship lines ? The petty shopkeeper's notions of barter
are not large enough to meet the demand of the
world-wide commerce. The movement toward com-
binations is not the work of noisy agitators, but is
the current of destiny.

The concentration of capital about huge mills and
factories, with costly machines driven by steam and
electricity, is not a human invention, but a demand
of human need and reason; that method alone sup-
plies the wants of men at least sacrifice. Every
buyer seeks the place which sells the desired goods
at the lowest price, and this search always discovers
a merchant who buys of the most efficient manu-
facturer with vast capital. The " captains of in-
dustry," responding to the requirements to pro-
duce commodities cheaply, bring wage-earners
together in masses. It is not the labor agitator, it is
the business manager who first lifts his trumpet to
call workmen into assemblies.

The manufacturer, in order to transport his goods
to the merchant and consumer at the lowest cost,
asks for cheap and swift methods of transportation,
and offers to pay for the service. The response
is seen in railway, steamship, telegraph, telephone,
and express corporations. It all goes back to the

Jl Reasonable Social Policy 9

shoppers and their insistence on goods at least
sacrifice. The bargain counter commands union of
efforts.

PoHtically, the war for the Union cemented
States into a nation, the most magnificent and power-
ful " trust " on earth, above all other combinations
in authority and power.

Ethically and religiously we are passing up and
away from theories of selfish fear into the purer
air and loftier view of a divine patriotism, a uni-
versal brotherhood, a justice which knows no class
barriers. We are trying to rediscover our social
gospel — the gospel of the kingdom of God — and
now multitudes are prepared to inquire what that
kingdom means to a voter, here and now. What
the foreign mission enterprise is extensively, char-
ity and social legislation are intensively and at
home.

///. While the souls of the generous and just have
become expectant of this coming of the Lord in
power and glory, a hitter cry ascends from the
wage-earners.

There is grim determination expressed in the
demand for a social policy. This demand is not

/ 0 Social Service Series

artificial, but a natural product of our situation.
What are the vital facts of this situation ?

1. The semi-dependent position of the wage-
earners. Once the worker tilled his own land,
owned his tools, controlled his surroundings ; now
the capital is owned by a powerful syndicate; the
raw materials he handles are not owned by the
manipulator ; the profits belong to another ; the rule
of the shop is made by the manager. The manager
holds over each individual employee the power of
life or death — employment on the terms of the em-
ployer, or starvation. In this situation, the pretense
that the workman is " free " to make or decline the
terms offered by the master of his fate is hypocritical
mockery. He is not free ; he must do as he is
ordered. " Free contract " does not actually exist
when a manager can dictate terms to a hungry man
with children asking for bread.

2. The social need is written in the fact that the
neglected degenerating class is a menace to the
wealth, the vigor, the character of the common-
wealth and nation. Capital decays unless the laborer
has energy to make it multiply. Diseases start in
unfit dwellings, but spread to mansions. Victims
of temptation in poverty become the temptresses of

ji Reasonable Social Polic}) I f

sons of wealth. The winds of heaven carry flies
with germs of typhoid from the cesspools of the
neglected slums to the lips of innocent children on
the boulevards. We cannot afford to have diseased,
tempted, ignorant, base, angry multitudes in a
republic.

3. The growing and rising industrial multitudes
are in our times awake; they can read; they are
becoming conscious of their power in our cities ;
they are often in a majority; they are disposed to
take care of themselves, and many of them believe
that they cannot look for help to others. Is it safe
to leave such a vast class to care for its own interests
without help from law?

There is the ever-imminent danger that the
trade unions, hoping for no aid from law, will help
themselves by anti-social means — the boycott, the
strike, the picketing — all words expressive of battle
and hate, all stirring hot blood. Of course, anti-
social methods must be suppressed, and we have the
injunction, the police, the militia, the federal troops,
at the sight of whom feelings of rebellion are
aroused and hate intensified.

There is danger in certain arguments and slogans
of the Socialists, as in their appeal to the " class

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consciousness," in their call to " crush the oppres-
sors." Not all the doctrines of socialism are vi-
cious; many of their criticisms are true and just;
some of their constructive suggestions have been
wise ; but this appeal to " class consciousness " is
the forerunner of revolt, a call to arms, the insti-
gator of inhuman passions. We believe in a justice
which knows no class, a fellowship of mankind;
and, therefore, we believe that a partisan watchword
may become deadly. Yet if we do nothing but
criticize, restrict, control, punish, can we expect any
real reverence for the law?

IV. The fundamental principle of a Social Policy
is the co-operation of all for the welfare
of all.

I. A social policy is not based on class privileges,
nor does it ask for special advantages to a particular
group. " Class legislation " is distinctly unconsti-
tutional, and ought to be. It is neither necessary
nor fair to rob a few fortunate persons to enlarge
the incomes of the lazy. Charity is for the relief of
a comparatively few and exceptional cases and can-
not be relied on for the support of any considerable
group of the population.

Jl Reasonable Social Policy 13

2. The community, in a social policy, identifies
itself with all its members. The eye, the hand, the
foot, the teeth are joined in one nervous system ; an
injury to one member is felt as pain by all. No
commonwealth is rich while a multitude remain in
abject misery. A look into the fiery pit does not
enhance the joy of heaven for any person fit to be
in heaven. When the multitude despise art no
artistic work is secure. Only when the people are
all intelHgent is science safe in the universities.

Our venerated parents who struggled to es-
tablish free schools were able to educate their
own children in private schools; but they could
not bear to see their poorer and less intelligent
neighbors left to their own ignorance and spiritual
night.

3. There must be found a legal way to protect the
rights and promote the interests of all. We must
train men to look to the law as their constant friend,
not their foe, not a mere club of repression.

V. What is the programme of a reasonable Social
Policy r

We must make a selection and restrict the pres-
ent brief outline to a few illustrations. We can

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merely hint at solutions of vast problems of supreme
moment.

I. Such a policy must include a programme for
the promotion of public health, and especially the
physical integrity and efficiency of the semi-depend-
ent, the wage-earners, and their families.

( 1 ) We must begin with little children and rescue
them by law from exploitation in mines, mills,
quarries, factories, shops. The banner carried by
the National Child Labor Committee leads the way
for a holy crusade. The feeble little workers are
victims of their own inexperience, of the ignorance
of their parents, of the greed of unscrupulous and
unenlightened employers, and of the wicked neglect
of a Christian people.

(2) The nation must regard the working women
as its care. They have no votes ; they have no access
to the public press ; they are poor, and feel the spur
of poverty. All honor to those who in dire stress
of hunger repel the temptation to gilded pleasure
and remain constant to their womanly ideals ! What
can so properly be invoked for the defense of these
women as majestic, chivalrous law?

The domestic employees, too generally and snob-
bishly called " servants," constitute a class of wage-

JL Reasonable Social Policy 15

earners who have been too much neglected by Chris-
tian people. They need the protection of law against
the abuses of the ordinary employment bureau, and
it would be well to erect special municipal offices for
their accommodations. Their lowly and isolated
life is exposed to endless temptations, and they are
often driven to public dance halls for their necessary
opportunities of social enjoyment and acquaintance
with men. The heads of families are notoriously
suffering the penalty of long neglect. The happi-
ness and health of families and the character of
children are profoundly affected by the household
employees, and their training and surroundings
should, therefore, be a theme for thought by the
church.

Another group of wage-earners in our cities
deserves special consideration — the girls in factories,
mills, and mercantile establishments. They need
the protection of law against the exploitation of
unscrupulous employers. When they are homeless
and friendless they require better surroundings than
are furnished in lodging and boarding-houses. In
many cases the wages paid for exhausting toil will
not keep soul and body together, and this situation
in a strange city is unspeakably perilous.

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We must learn by careful study, by observation of
men working under varied conditions, by consult-
ing physicians who practise among wage-workers,
and visiting nurses familiar with their home sur-
roundings what are the causes of sickness and
wounds and death. It is the duty of Christian men
who profess to be patriotic to study the factory in-
spectors' reports and learn how defective our pro-
tective laws are as compared with those of older
civilized lands. The history of industry proves that
employers need to be taught how to save the life and
limbs of their employees, and they ever require the
compelling pressure of inspection and penalties to
secure their observance of the legal requirements.
A factory law not enforced by a sufficient corps of
inspectors, is a wicked mockery instead of justice.
Law sets a standard and educates the conscience of
the masters of men.

A reasonable social policy will include modern
regulation of the condition of family dwellings
among working people. The rich and comfortable
class can protect themselves ; can build or rent homes
which meet hygienic requirements. But multitudes
of wage-earners are compelled to live near the
mines or mills when they are employed long hours ;

Ji Reasonable Social Policy^ 17

they may be turned out if they complain; and they
have no means of protecting themselves, even if
they know the evils of unwholesome houses.

A community owes it to the artisans and the
laborers to guarantee that every dwelling shall have
light, air, sufficient space and privacy, sewerage,
and bath, and not be overcrowded. This it can do
by inspection of dwellings, by condemnation of
houses unfit for human habitation, and by build-
ing decent houses for rent, if landlords fail to pro-
vide a sufficient number of tenements of proper
standard.

The opportunity to work for wages is not always
furnished by the community. It is not true that an
honest and industrious man can find employment
at any time. Many a strong and willing man has
been transformed into a hopeless vagrant by the
necessity of begging his way along the road to find
occupation. There are difficulties in the way of
finding where the employers need labor, even when
there is a local demand. Many of the employment
bureaus are directed by unscrupulous men, who
take fees but do not furnish work. Immigrants,
ignorant of our language and customs and in-
dustries, are especially exposed to peril. Hence we

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must study and act in relation to the best methods
of guiding idle workmen to places where reward
is waiting for the worker.

The rights of the wage-earners to organize them-
selves into associations for mutual benefit is as
clear as the right of employers to form corporations
for personal benefits. This is conceded now by the
moral judgment of all civilized nations and is recog-
nized by law. That men abuse this right is not an
argument that should create prejudice against as-
sociations, unions, or corporations as such, but is
simply a reason for guarding against perversions by
legal enactments and judicial decisions. Part of a
modern social policy will, include a sane and sym-
pathetic attitude of religious people to the trade
union and a system of regulation which will con-
serve the advantages and rebuke the abuses of such
powerful agencies.

A reasonable social policy will seek to secure for
every wage-worker an assured income in times
when, from no fault of his own, he is unemployed
and deprived of means of support. Such times are
sickness, disablement from accident, prolonged
invalidism, the feebleness of old age, death, and the
weeks or months when establishments are closed.

ji Reasonable Social Policy 1 9

It is true that a savings fund will provide some-
thing for such periods ; but experience has shown
that the ordinary laborer's wages are too small to
leave much margin for savings, and that the largest
sum he can gather in twenty years is swallowed up
within a few months of sickness.

A more reliable, quick, and economical method of
providing a steady inflow of money during such
periods of enforced incapacity for labor is indus-
trial insurance. It is strange that a system so rea-
sonable and effective in all the other great nations
of Christendom should not be understood or appre-
ciated in America. Perhaps we are not so superior
in mental quickness or alertness as our Fourth of
July orators try to make us believe. Perhaps our
individualistic philosophy and traditions have been
an opiate to our consciences and made them sleepy.
At any rate, until quite recently there was little in-
quiry for information on the subject. After long
waiting there seems to be some public Interest in a
neglected means of preventing untold and incal-
culable misery in countless homes. The principles
of insurance involved are few and simple, although
in drawing up laws, establishing rates, and organi-
zing administration, experts must be employed. All

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intelligent persons know that it is ruinous to neglect
fire insurance and life insurance. Many persons
know that bonds can be bought of fidelity companies
which secure payments of losses due to occasional
dishonesty. By the payment of a small sum by all
owners of houses and goods, those few who are hurt
by fire can receive an indemnity which enables them
to rebuild and start again in home or shop. The
blow hurts, but does not kill. So also no man knows
when he will die, but he knows that he must some
day die — it may be to-morrow. By paying a small
premium to a strong company one buys a legal right
for his family to receive a large sum even the next
week, in case of his death, and so they feel secure.
In a similar way wage-workers can be guaranteed a
payment of income during illness or old age when
they cannot work. The principle is now generally
accepted by all those who have given serious at-
tention to the subject that so far as the business
causes injury to a workman the loss occasioned by
that injury should be paid for out of the product of
the business, whether it be a wound, mutilation,
sickness, or death. It is not fair for the public
which enjoys the cheapened products of the machine
manufacture to shirk the cost of production. Part

ji Reasonable Social Policy 21

of the cost of producing food, fuel, clothing, houses
is this injury suffered by workmen.

The method of equalizing or distributing this cost
is by requiring the employer to set apart a certain
sum each day for each employee, to create a fund for
paying him income during his incapacity resulting
from the work. Every prudent manufacturer sets
aside a sum every year for the repair or renewal of
tools, machines, and buildings, and he regards this
as part of the cost of production. When he esti-
mates the price to be charged customers, he counts
this cost of repairs and renewal in the price of sale,
and so in the end the consumers who enjoy the
goods pay for the worn-out or broken tools, ma-
chines, and shop buildings. We now see that the
employer ought to estimate the loss of time and
energy of workmen as part of the cost of producing
goods, buy insurance to cover this cost, and charge
the amount in the price charged customers and
consumers. Thus the loss would be easily borne,
being widely distributed and paid in very small
additions to the prices of goods by the millions
of consumers, many of whom are the workmen
themselves.

Since part of the cause of sickness and death is

22 Social Service Series

found in the conduct of the workmen or in general
conditions outside of the industry, it seems fair to
require the wage-earners to contribute to the in-
surance premiums and to ask the general public also
to add a reasonable sum from taxes.

Such a vast system could not be organized and
carried through by private companies. It can be
done only by legal methods and by the adminis-
trative machinery of city, commonwealth, and na-
tion. The federal government has already enacted a
law which guarantees compensation for certain
classes of its own employees. But Congress has no
power to make other employers insure their em-
ployees; this is left to the legislatures of different
States under our constitution. These legislatures
never act; indeed, they cannot act, until there is a
general and aggressive demand from the voters.
Therefore, our first duty, as a Christian people, is
to urge upon our representatives in the various
State legislatures, the appointment of strong and
active commissions to study this question and bring
in well-considered laws for the alleviation of the
suffering caused by past errors and neglect. When
we consider hov/ many persons and families are
hungry, cold, or dying in poor-houses because of

Jl Reasonable Social Policy 23

our long neglect, we can see that our action should
be prompt.

No reliable method has as yet been found for
insuring income in case of enforced unemployment.
The trade unions, through their out-of-work benefits,
help many workmen ; but this is confined to a limited
number. The experiments of cities with the col-
lection of premiums from workmen for the creation
of a fund for seasons of unemployment have thus
far failed of their purpose, or only partly succeeded.
A postal savings system, supplemented by local mis-
sionary effort to promote thrift, would help to some
extent to relieve the situation.

One of the most pressing needs of the industrial
group is cheap, swift, and reliable justice. When
men must wait long years, and pay lawyers' heavy
fees and court costs, and be bandied about from
place to place, and lost in an unintelligible jargon of
antiquated technicalities, they are educated to hate
law and government and distrust the whole political
arrangement of society. They see that rich men can
carry on litigation and employ the best legal talent,
while they despair in case of appeal to a higher
court, and often are defrauded because their lawyers
are incompetent.

24 Social Service Series

Justice and social security demand that all cases
of disputes between workmen, or between employers
and employed, should be decided without compli-
cated process, in special industrial courts, such as
those which France, Germany, and other countries
have long enjoyed. In these courts the matter in
dispute is presented in plain language and a judg-
ment is rendered without costs, and parties go back
to work without rancor or suspicion. Canada has
a law that provides that before a strike occurs the
parties in dispute shall repair to a commission which
hears the arguments and seeks to reconcile the an-
tagonists before they are arrayed in open warfare.

A reasonable social policy to be advocated by
Christian men will include a complete system of
education for all people, with special adaptations to
the needs of wage-earners who cannot establish and
maintain private schools. Since wealth uses skilled
workmen to make profits, it should be taxed for the
training of skilled workmen, and it can well afford
to bear the burden. It is now a well-established
principle that the public schools should prepare
youth for the shop, the mine, the factory, the store,
and they are striving to meet this demand.

The movement to improve technical education,

ji Reasonable Social Policy 25

however, may fall short of the full aim of educa-
tion. It is not the sole or final end of a working-
man to be a useful tool, a part of a machine to
serve the employer more effectively. The working-
man is a man, and has all the rights of a man in
our heritage of culture. He has a human right of
access to natural beauty and the works of art. To
him belong the thoughts of poets, philosophers,
historians, statesmen, theologians. For these enjoy-
ments he must be protected in' his leisure; he must
have a legal limit to exhausting toil ; he must have
a recognized claim to his Sunday rest, his hours
of domestic fellowship, his periods for sleep.

The cities must open beautiful parks and play-
grounds for rest and recreation, and for the whole-
some enjoyment of children. Public libraries, read-
ing-rooms, and art galleries, with competent and
interesting interpreters, must be provided at public
expense. The workman deserves these privileges ;
he has toiled to produce wealth; he has risked his
life; he has spent his blood; he has drained his
strength for social wealth ; and therefore we ask
for him not charity, but his just rights when we ask
for such means of spiritual satisfaction. If the
wage-earners are excluded from these nobler en-

26 Social Service Series

joyments, nothing is left them but crude animal
gratifications which stupefy the intellect, destroy
efficiency, and unfit men for political duties.

It will be noticed that we have not here discussed
public and private charity. Our " social policy "
deals only with self-respecting men who own not
only their own support, but a surplus for others —
some of it spent in luxury and guilty display of
waste. Workingmen ask not charity, but justice,
and to discuss benevolent societies here would raise
a false issue.

Nor do we here discuss the important subject of
social treatment of crime, because few real wage-
earners belong to the criminal class. They feed and
clothe society, while criminals prey upon their
fellow-men.

VI. The right attitude of Christian men to such a
Social Policy.

I. We must come to believe in our business world,
that the entire people are to be considered. When
a great railroad man cursed the public and told them
that they had no right to touch " his business," he
stirred the blood of revolution. When another
conspicuous leader of industry was reported to

ji Reasonable Social Policy 27

claim that he was deputed by the Almighty to take
care of the rights of the workmen, independent of
their own views, the claim was universally felt to be
blasphemous and anti-American. We are not going
back to the times when the kings ruled by " divine
right." We recognize no valid claim to private
property except its service to mankind.

Only representatives elected by the people have a
right to make laws affecting their health, their com-
fort, and their character. Corporations are the
creatures of law for public ends, and when they fail
to serve the public they have no moral or legal
foundation for their special privileges.

Business men must learn that they are trustees
intrusted with power and wealth, and that power to
mar human bodies and souls can never be left to the
arbitrary caprice of owners of property. Business
men cannot logically and consistently ask their em-
ployees to be law-abiding, while they who assert
superiority are themselves tax-dodgers or tyrants in
abuse of their trust.

2. Wage-earners, as Christian men, are called
upon by every social interest to look only to legal
methods of righting wrongs and promoting their
welfare. They must be patient, even when courts

28 Social Service Series

rule according to ancient precedent, rather than
according to common sense and present-day require-
ments. For the sake of all that is valuable in civili-
zation they are asked to be patient when legislators
are slow to change the statutes and bring them into
accord with the demands of our contemporary hu-
manity. Constitutions seem to be fixed and petri-
fied ; but, in fact, they are living things which grow,
though slowly; and while they exist they deter-
mine the decisions of judges.

Appeal to force is not to be thought of ! It is
the method of ruffians, savages, frontiersmen, and
criminals. Between nations we are learning to
organize justice by courts of arbitration and peace-
ful discussion.

Nor is appeal to force necessary ; because history
proves that the people in due time can make their
judgments felt in laws, and with universal suffrage
the wage-earners have but to urge a measure and it
will become the law which governors and presidents
are obliged to enforce.

3. The teachers of the nation, as Christian men,
have a special duty in respect to this social policy;
they are set to study and teach it. As a nation
thinks in its heart, so it becomes. They who shape

ji Reasonable Social Policy 29

men's thoughts give form to their deeds and
statutes.

4. The church has a duty in relation to this social
policy. Its fundamental idea is one with the prin-
ciple of Christianity, love for God and man ; justice
between man and man; reason in law and institu-
tions.

The church cannot enter politics and take sides
with parties, cliques, agitators, or particular inter-
ests. Its ministry is to all citizens alike ; its doc-
trine is for the entire people.

Nor can the preacher assume the task of giving
instruction to mixed audiences of men, women,
and children on the complex problems here out-
lined. The time of the sermon is too short, and its
inspirational value will be lowered by details and
economic arguments.

Yet the church can be helpful, and chiefly by
means of the classes of men and meetings of brother-
hoods, as well as by providing for lectures by com-
petent specialists at proper times.

In an address before the Religious Education As-
sociation, in 1909, the present writer has discussed
this aspect of the matter. Young men have by
instinct and necessity an interest in physical energy,

30 Social Service Series

in business or industry, and in politics. It is in these
spheres that they try to do their moral thinking
and form their religious character. When they think
of righteousness, it is chiefly in terms of right and
wrong in sports, in business, or in politics. Hence
the most direct, easy, and natural way for the
church to guide the inner life of men is to help them
to discuss with all freedom the actual problems of
their own lives. Discussion is the only teaching
method which produces educational results which we
can test. It is next to impossible to find out whether
a man has learned anything from a sermon to which
he has listened passively, for he does not pass any
examination, nor make any kind of response. But
when he takes part in a real discussion of a prob-
lem of the community, he is all alive, creative, ener-
getic, forceful, and self-revealing.

Furthermore, the class can immediately set their
conclusions into action and report results. They
can, as individuals, undertake to help clean an alley,
open a playground or park, defeat a scoundrel at
the polls, or push a desirable ordinance through the
city council. They can, as a class, undertake to
furnish probation officers for a juvenile court, or vis-
itors to a charitable society, or leaders of clubs for

Jl Reasonable Social Policy 3 /

a settlement or mission. They can entertain repre-
sentatives of the wage-earners and give them a
chance to tell their side of the question.

But if the church officers attempt to choke dis-
cussion, to suppress freedom of speech, the class is
dead. Young men of spirit will go off to some club
where the atmosphere is tolerant. The best cor-
rective of error is by discussion, because extremists
call each other to account, and truth comes out of
the melting-pot refined.

The church can furnish rooms, invite lectures,
provide leaders, without being responsible for all
that is said. If the spirit of the congregation is
earnest, patriotic, humane, the class will feel the
inspiration of religion and the discussions will move
straight to some useful service of God in helping
man.

The development of this modern programme in all
its details is not possible in a pamphlet ; it is the
labor of multitudes of men and women, in churches,
universities, trade unions, legislatures, editorial
rooms. The materials for study are found in a vast
number of volumes of documents, records, reports,
and books. Yet each intelligent citizen can con-
tribute something to the cause of promoting the

32 Social Service Series

health, safety, comfort, and spiritual enjoyment of
the working people.

The Carpenter of Nazareth is our Inspiring
Leader. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of
these ye have done it unto Me."

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