The Irish standard., 1909-10-09
A TIMELY DISCOURSE
TO THE W0RK|NGMEN
Reform, Not Destruc ton, is
the Proper Remedy for the
Ills of Toilers, Says Mgr.
White of Brooklyn, N. Y,
toMembers ofLocal Unions
alta Special Service Held in
His Church--Late Pope Leo
and the Socialists.

~O~A&SAAONOo
Monsignor William ]. White, of the
Visitation Church, Brooklyn, N. Y,
preached on recent Sunday on THE
Church and the Workingman." Taking
his text from Saint Marks gospel,
"Is not this the carpenter, the Son of
Mary" Monsignor White is reported by
the Tablet as follows:
"'When parades are in evidence
says James Duncan, vice president OF
the American Federation Of, Labor, in
the September 'Federationist,' march
with heads erect, proud of your calling
and your cause This exhortation was
directed to the labor unions taking
part in the Labor Day parade, and
newspaper reports show that it was
obeyed. How few of those who took
part in the various exercises that
marked the recurrence of the first
Monday in September stopped to think
what a debt of gratitude manual labor
owes to Christianity. I am not speak
ing now of the redemption, or the sac
raments, or the Church, but of the
action of Christian teaching on the
status of the workingman. If today
the man whose hands are calloused and
whose face is sun-hardened from, daily
otoil ,is4, proud of his calling and con-
scious of his dignity as an important
factor In the production of wealth, let
him not t.ss forget that his justiffable pride
has been made possible by conditions
which Christianity created. There was
time when a workingman was classed
with the beasts of burden and with
plows and wagons. He was simply a
piece of property, belonging absolute
ly to his master. He was thing, not
a person, and could be lent, pledged,
master. In pagan Rome the servile
population was three times as large ,s
the free population. Not only was
hand labor performed by slaves, but
they were the physicians and school
teachers; the architects and the artists
in Rome and Greece.
"Now, how did Christianity, in the
presence of this vast institution. act?
BY it's teaching it seemed to strengthen
it. The dignity of poverty, the neces-
sity of obedience and the beauty of
humiliation, these were what the new
converts listened to. Slaves were told
to obey their masters. Slavery was not
condemned; it was not approved; it
was accepted as fact But the
Church, by it's doctrines and practices,
dealt it a deathblow. Slaves must not
obey their masters when immortality or
injustice was commanded, and the
Christian master was reminded that
his slaves were men, of like nature rs
himself, and redeemed by the blood OF
Jesus Christ There was no more uu-
limited power of man over man. No
matter what Roman law might say,
slavery as an institution had ceased to
exist. OF course, this work was not
done in day, but it was begun when
the Gospel was preached and though
the seed sometimes fell on stony soil,
it eventually brought forth fruit
hundredfold.
"The Church was always conscious
of the fact that our Blessed Lord and
Saviour, the wisdom of the Father,
when he came on earth passed by the
palaces of kings, the tents of military
leaders and the halls of philosophers
to take up His abode: in the. simple
home of a workingman. is not this
These few words of the evangelist are
worth more than all the rhetoric that
orators and writer's have used to prove
the dignity of manual labor. The
religious orders that came into being
in the fifth and sixth centuries prac-
ticed hard labor. 1t was part of their
rule. Toll was invested with dignity
and given a religious significance. IF
the members of labor unions held their
heads high last Labor. Day, it was be-
cause of those old fashioned Benedic-
tine monks whose sweat has water.d
the fairest countries of Europe, and
whose calloused hands have blessed