The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1912-10-26
80 simple, so patient, SO kind and true.

SCI III LIE Wesl VI Tie great 1HelIopOlls
but 1 spend all my free time among
q Gods set in the East End. I can tell
!. you one lovely thing, that may, per-
!. haps, be useful to you in your march
along the long road that we call Life.
Sometimes at the end of hard days
work in my parish, have come to the
evening when l made it my rule to go
to the poorer end of the city, and
have felt too tired to go, too worn out
to stir from my room. And then the
feeling has come to me that after all
the work among the poor Is my real
labor, that they are waiting for me
down yonder, and will welcome me as
only the really great Of heart can.
They have my heart and my SYM
pathy. Gladly would I lay down my
life for any one of them if need be,
but 1 tell them that Socialism is not
going to cure them, no more than ice
is inside. 1t is not what we have that
'moulds us, it is what we are. 1t is
character that moulds us"
Father Vaughan stated that he had
spent much time in studying the So
cialists and their methods of appeal.
He called them his soap box friends,
and the amount of soft soap" they
used in their arguments was prodigi-
Gus. They would point out to their
hearers, the workers, how they were
being ground under the Juggernaut
car Of Capitalism, how to vote for
their cause would secure them fair
living wage. He had seen them go
among the small farmers and demon
strate to their own infinite satisfaction
that the multi-millionaire farmer
would crush them out of the market.
Into the town they would go, and de-
scant from their lowly platforms up
on the iniquities of the sky-scrapers
and huge department stores; they
would demonstrate how the small
shop-keepers were being starved out
by gigantic enterprises and sound the
clarion rallycall to the red flag.
e Then they would call upon the ag-
,nostic, the atheist and the purely pa
gan. and, point out to them the mar
tyrdom of jbes and revilings they
had to face in remaining true to their
own just and legitimate opinions 1--WE
arc not concerned about any starland;
we seek our heaven here and now, so
rally to our standard. We are not
going to be priest-ridden and parson-
dictated-to.'
Then they would go to religious peo-
pie and try to bandage their eyes by
arguing that Socialism was not a re-
ligious but sociological question.
III it We're purely a political ques-
tion,' pursued Father Vaughan, II
would not attempt to speak of it. +
have no pilitics. I do not even vote.
Socialism is not so much an economic
as an ethical question. 1t entails evo-
tory, and must be regarded not as
new way of getting money, but as a
new way of life altogether. 1t aims at
shifting the center of gravity Of life.
Our heaven, according to the propa-
ganda set forth, is to be experienced
on earth-a sort of terrestrial para
disc.
1T is materialism that makes the
Christian and the Socialist walk in OPP
posite direction. One says 'Hcafen
above, the other Earth beneath Ii
is the people, they say. who are to re-
deem the people,
Continuing, Father Vaughan touch
ed OH the plans which Socialists stood
for. Briefly, they wanted the socializa-
ton of the instrument Of all the
wealth produced, and all methods of
They so often quoted the
post office as an example of what they
meant. They could not choose, in his
opinion. worse example. The post
office was not an instrument in the
production of wcalth-those who write
the letters and send the parcels are
the producers. The post Office does not
even distribute it, for it has to en-
ploy railway companies and steamship
lines.
y. Trenchantly the Father dealt with
the socialistic gloritlcation of the state
as the "summum bonum' in mans fe-
licity.
"They would make the state the one
landlord" he said. Stripped of all its
stage CLOTHES, what is the state? Did
the state create man? No, but man
created the state. 1t was meant to be
his servant. his minister, and not his
tyrant and master. Man is prior both
in nature and time.
"The state has been brought not to