The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1872-06-23
Capital and Labor.

othere yet to come.
Capital and Labor.
The slavery question is agitating the
North again but on issues much nearer home
this time than on former occasion. The
perpetual effort of capital to aggrandize it.
self at the expense of labor is simply per-
petual effort to establish slavery. The poor
or classes of laborers in nearly all countries
are virtually slaves. They have no liberty
that is worth anything because they have
mo means to do what they arc free to do.
They mast perform the daily task Of hard
labor set before them or perish. With
African slavery the failure to do the days
work entaifed nothing. but q whipping;
with white slavery, such as it exists in
England and Germany, it means hunger
and cold not only for the laborer but for
his family. It means o wife and children
pale and emaciated, famished and en-
feebied. Negro slavery was fat and sleek,
it was we'll cared for in sickness and old
age; white slavery calls itself freedom, but
it is gaunt and ragged at its best, neglected
and sq ualid in sickness, condemned to the
penal servitude Of poor house in its old
age or misfortune.
We'say that according to the working Of
human nature poverty gets to be slavery.
1t is Of the perversity of the degenerate
human heart for man to prey upon man. b.
fore the age of G christianity, the most enlight-
ened nations recognized open slavery in it's
most revolving forms. Men enslaved others
of their own race, and in o manner the
most absolute and arbitrary. The slave
had NO right whatever; even his life was in
the hand Of his master, he was no longer a
person but q mere chattel. The people Of
Rome and Greece In an age when human
| intelligence shone with lustre which has
not since been equalled, were totally igno.
rant Of the commonest principles of justice
| on this point and as brutal in their ideas of
slavery as the widest savages. All their
learning, all their eloquence. all their po-
likeness. all their philosophy, never sug-
gested to them that there existed sach q
! law as that of love.
Degenerate man naturally preys upon
| man and there is, no limit to his selfish
aggressiveness except the policy which re-
quires some allies in controlling victims.
If one man could possibly keep all others
in subsection, the strongest would soou be
master and the rest slaves. There would
be no Jaw but the will of the one, and that
as capricious as his own whims. But no
strength has been found equal to this task,
and even the strongest have been obliged
to form combinations for mutual support.
These combinations make what is called
/ government, and their compromises are
what we call law. So far, then, az the
mighty need it, there is law, bat beyond
that the old principle prevails Of aggran-
dizement for the strong and oppression for
the feeble, wherever human nature is left
to its own light in human government.
Here Christianity appears upon the field
and introduces an entirely new element
into the science of government. 1t is not
only new but it is divine, it is the element
Of brotherly love. It tells the strong war
rior that he must not enter the territory OF
a neighbor and carry off captives as slaves
to cultivate his fields; it tells the rich man
that he must not take advantage Of the
poverty Of his fellow man to buy him body
and soul for the mere necessaIieS of life
it tells those in power and authority that
they must not frame laws to make the rich
richer and the poor poorer, to create SER
vile class of population by faVoriRg mono
paly and aristocracy while giving no pro.
lection to misfortune Uad poverty. =
But in this age it is becoming most aps
parent that this benefcent influence. d
Christianity is nearly extinct in all Pro-
testant countries. Aristocracy and wealth
have it all their own way. The fortunes Of
the rich grow to gigantic proportions, white
the poor sink to n lower level of abject
misery. There is still enough externa!!
respect fOr.tbe principles of Christianity to
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