The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-11-07
BISHOP sPALD ING, S VIEWS.

Elsewhere we present some reflections aroused
by the Socialist vote cast in Salt Lake and else
where. The Boston Republic is at hand and its
leading feature is an interview with Bishop
Spalding of PEORIA who happened to be in Bos-
ton at the time. Bishop Spalding has given the
question of capital and labor profound study. He
has been no idle observer of industrial conditions.
No man in the country has been i'll closer touch
with the wage Garner outside of leaders like John
Mitchell Bishop Spaldng was one of the persons
selected by President Roosevelt to arbitrate the
coal strike. We believe this selection made in
Difference to the labor sentiment much as it
was made TO fulfill the conditions imposed by the
coal barons that an ecclesastic should be one of
the arbitration commission.
"Why should Socialism grow" queried Bishop
Spalding. What radical wrong has it upon which
to erect its ladder of vague promises that leads
into the clouds. In the United States there is no
gulf between the very rich and the very poor, but
q graduation of widely distributed wealth. Why,
let the readers of the Republic remember that more
than eight million families in this country are
andholders and of the thirteen million families
among whom the wealth of the country is divided,
eleven million families run the tables of statistics,
men? No problem there surely, for it will be found
difficult to hold these enormous fortunes together,
and if putocrats spend their time between uttering
futile, almost blasphemous, sentiments on Christi
anity and wealth, the people, without any radical
reconstruction, will, in an appreciable time, be
strengthened by the wine of released plutocratic
fortune running swiftly through the veins of our
national life Socialism is frequently but the pouts
of the petulant. Diatribes against wealthy men fire.
quently spring from unworthy passions rather than
from any sense of wrong inflicted by them.
The good sense of the American democracy
will lead it to look upon the assertions of the So
cialist agitation with distrust The wood they burn
in their temples is green, and the smoke gets be-
tween them and the Supreme good, to which they
bow the knee-a reformed social order The i'm
preston that the thousand and one difusive agen-
cies which make the widest read-f not the
best rcdd-peope of the earth, teaches to regard
the radical reformer as of those enthusiasts
who mistake visions for accomplished facts and
exaggerate the evil which they seek to remedy.
"This tendency to exaggeraton, this flaw in the
metal of revolutionary proposals, makes the la
boring man, whatever incidental evils he might suf
fer under the condition of competitive production,
unwilling to run the risk of putting in jeopardy
the two things the American respects the most-lib
erty and individuality,
Conc has only to read the papers with dscrimi-
nation and scan statistics with enlightenment to
know that our social arrangements are in some re-
spects provisional only There is no more reason
for believing that the regime of industriaism will
not be sloughed off in the upward march of the race
than there was reason for Dante to believe that
feudalism was the fna-the petrifed-form of So
ciety But the point is that this development can
DC nationally forecast, while the scheme of
glorifed social order purged of injustice
and greed, not only cannot be inferred from past
history but all that history teaches points in an
opposite direction. This is you suggest, an era of
change. Certainly; freely admitted, but in era
If change the last thing the man of common sense
md level wisdom will counsel is the rushing into
visionary and untried schemes of social reform;
md such scheme, involving whole people, re-
member Socialism certainly is.
Have you ever stopped to consider what the
ocial order is? IF you have, you find that it is
IN infinitely complex web, the outcome of many
orces. So intimately does it affect our thinking
md whole circle of mental and emotional activities
hat are practically its creature. SO much so
hat in order to change it we would have to change
human nature.
Until this changes, you may be as sure as you
re sure you are holding a fountain pen at this
noment that men will continue to believe that they
ave right to their own property, and they will
ontinue to regard the possession of home, the
esut of frugality, thrift and legitimate PRIDE as
ne of the chief boons of life. This means that
nan has made relatively independent existence
or his wife and children, and that he is not the
auperized recipient of the community's goods. I
ont believe that the poorest resident of Haver-
i'll, if he freed himself from the fumes of So
iast phrases, would barter his little for all the
ldiant promises of an experimental Socialist para
ise."