The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-05-04
Continued from Page ~
LAWLEsS SOCIALISM.

the field of opportunity: with good
reason it may be named opportunity,
opportunity equal to all. But oppor-
tunity to all is not success to all. No
one in this regard has more fittingly
defined democracy than the one who,
himself a despot, willed democracy for
all others, the First Napoleon.
Democracy" said Napoleon, "is a
clear pathway for merit of whatever
kind" But the merit must be at hand,
that the pathway, however open and
clear of barrier, may lead to the goal
of success. And, so, necessarily, there
will be the poorer and the richer:
necessarily some will have much, and
some little or nothing. Theorize as
we may on. what this world of men
ought to be, fashion in dream as we
may utopias of governments and COM
monwealths, in the hard matter-of-fact
field in which we live and work, there
always will be the man who can pur-
chase out of his store the labor of
other men, and the man who, to enjoy
livelihood, must be the toiler in the
service of other men: there always
will be the employer and the employee,
the capitalist and the laborer.
To attempt the use of powers of a
government, be that government the
freest of democracies, in order to
make the world of men other than
what nature has willed it, is the most
futile of tasks, doomed by nature to
failure, sure, if long pursued, to de-
stroy the government itself and the
social organism in whose behalf it was
instituted.
The Government and Economic
Conditions.
Does all this, however, signify that
no duties devolve to a government in
the economic field, that no room is
open to the individual citizen with a
view to make more fortunate than it
is the lot of the poorer, to repress
the excuses, such as cupidity may
suggest in the richer, and thus in some
measure, to soften the asperities of
inequality, guard better than at times
they are guarded the natural and in
dustrial rights of the poorer, and take
from the richer the power to enlarge
their opportunities into fraud and I'M
righteous oppression? By no manner
of means To government and to in
dividual effort, under the sway of
Gods eternal justice, much is allowed
along the lines of economic better
ment, much is counselled, much too is
commanded.
God forbid that I rejoice not over
the transformation wrought in past
DAYS in the conditions of the toiler,
lifting him from the slave to the serf,
from the serf to the freeman, from the
mere freeman to the fully-endowed
citizen. God forbid that today I do
not lend a sympathetic heart and a
helping hand to all movements tend
ing to broaden among men the brother
hood of all towards all-the brother
hood of the divine sonship granted to
all by Him who is the Creator and
the Father of all, and to hasten, SO
far as human shortcomings permit, the
reign among all of charity to all, OF
Justice to all. Were to think and to
do otherwise, I were not myself the
child of the Almighty God, certainly
not the disciple and the minister Of the
Redeemer of Galilee. To the poorer OF
my fellow-men, to those who YEARLY
toll for daily bread, I say, as I should
say-seek by all legitimate methods
to improve your lot, to lift yourselves
to a higher plane of manly tndepen
dence and material comfort, to secure
to yourselves the full reward that jus
tice should measure out to talent and
industry. Effort to this end, personal
or combined, is praiseworthy: 1t is
a duty you owe to yourselves and tc
those who are dependent upon you fol
maintenance in life. And with this
end in view it is your right to invoke
serviceable legislation, and in secur
ing it to make use of your politica
privileges as citizens and voters. This
may well be said to the honor OF the
people of America-it is no wish o
theirs that those who are the poorer
shall be held to their poverty, thai
honest toll shall be barred from suffi
cient and adequate remuneration
None in America will resent efforts
put forth in fair play towards The
social betterment of any class in th<
population, especially when that elias:
are those upon whom weigh mos
heavily the burthens of human life, ant
without whose earnest and willing
concourse the talent Of others il
doomed to idleness, and industry ant
enterprise put out of commission.
The Theories and Methods of
Socialism.
Tf this were the meaning and inten