[1031] It was no Christian Socialist, but Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism, who wrote: “The original equality of men is not a doctrine founded simply upon the observation of social facts. It was only clearly affirmed for the first time by Christianity.” (Traité de Politique, vol. i, p. 407.)

[1032] Frédéric Le Play (1806-82) was a mining engineer, and was educated at the École Polytechnique. He subsequently became a professor at the École des Mines and a Counseiller d’État. In 1855 he published a collection of monographs dealing with working-class families under the title of Les Ouvriers européens, in one volume (the second edition, which appeared in 1877, consisted of six volumes). In 1864 he published an exposition of his social creed in La Réforme sociale, a book that Montalembert declared to be “the most original, the most courageous, the most useful, and altogether the most powerful book of the century.” It hardly deserves such extravagant praise, perhaps, but it is true that many of its more pessimistic prophecies concerning the future of France have been very curiously verified.

In 1856 Le Play founded La Société d’Économie sociale, which since 1881 has been responsible for the publication of La Réforme sociale. He organised the Universal Exhibition in 1867, and was one of the first to arrange exhibitions of social work. For a résumé of his life and work see Frédéric Le Play d’après lui-même, by Auburtin (Paris, 1906).

[1033] Programme des Unions de la Paix sociale, chap. 1.

[1034] “The gravest and most dangerous error of all, and one that has been the parent of all our revolutions, is the false principle which the innovators of 1789 would put into practice and which affirms the original perfection of mankind. It also encourages the belief that a society composed of ‘natural’ men would enjoy peace and happiness without any effort at all, and that these desiderata are just the spontaneous outcome of every free society.”

[1035] “It is the great misfortune of France that the family should be immersed in the commune, the commune in the department, the department in the State.” (La Réforme sociale, vol. iii, Book VII.)

[1036] “It [the patriarchal régime] in all matters relating to economic action or to social life shows greater attachment to the past than concern for the future. Obedience is the keynote rather than initiation. The family group tends to arrest the enterprise which would characterise the action of the more independent members of the family in a somewhat freer atmosphere.” (La Réforme sociale, Book III.)

[1037] “In short, I have never met with a social organisation which to the same extent vitiates the laws both of nature and morality.”

[1038] Le Play, who had some influence over Napoleon III, tried to get him to consent to some such modification of the Civil Code. But the Emperor, though favourably inclined, and despot as he was, dared not alienate public sympathy in the matter. And really fathers seldom exercise the full authority which the law gives them even now. The evil, then, if it is an evil, is deeper than Le Play imagined, and seems to be moral rather than legal.

[1039] “Human societies should aim not so much at the creation of wealth as such, but rather at increasing the well-being of mankind. Well-being includes daily bread, but it does not exclude social peace.” (Claudio Jannet in a lecture on Les Quatre Écoles d’Économie sociale.)

[1040] We must remember that these were the orthodox views then. Villermé, writing in 1840 in his celebrated Tableau de l’État moral et physique des Ouvriers, thought it was the employers really who could best improve the circumstances and character of the workers.

[1041] We get some idea of the importance which he attributed to the permanence of engagements when we realise that he contemplated the abolition of slavery with a measure of regret. (La Réforme sociale.)

[1042] Principles, Book IV, chap. 7.

[1043] “Among the panaceas advocated in our time none has been more criticised than ‘association.’ From a practical point of view these societies seem to present none of the advantages ordinarily associated either with complete independence or with a well-managed business concern.”

[1044] “I have frequently posted as much as 1000 kilometres in order to consult some eminent landowner living on the confines of Europe.” (Letter to M. de Ribbes, October 3, 1867.)

[1045] “This method is based upon a careful observation of each fact and its past history. Nothing is left to the imagination, the presupposition, or the prejudices of the observer. It is essentially scientific and exact.” (La Réforme en Europe.)

[1046] These monographs appeared first of all, as we have seen, in his great work on the European workmen in 1855. The work has been carried on by his disciples and the results incorporated in the Ouvriers des Deux Mondes, which already numbers above a hundred volumes. They have also employed the method in writing monographs on industries and communes, etc.

The method requires supplementing by reference to statistics of population and wages, which can only be supplied, of course, by Governments.

[1047] “The comparison of receipts and expenditure should help to discover any oversight, just as the weight of a chemical substance both before and after an experiment helps to determine the nature of the chemical reaction.” (Bureau, L’Œuvre d’Henri de Tourville.)

[1048] With a good deal of candour he admits offering a reward to anyone who could show him a single happy family except under conditions of this kind. “But,” he adds, “all my efforts proved fruitless.” (Les Ouvriers européens, vol. iv, introduction.)

[1049] When Le Play teaches us that the essential condition of society implies

• A double foundation—the Decalogue and paternal authority,
• A twofold link—religion and sovereignty, and
• Three kinds of material—the community, private property, and employers,

we cannot help thinking that the so-called method of observation has a very pronounced trait of dogmatism in its constitution.

[1050] “The principal object to aim at here is the limitation of the ecclesiastical personnel with a view to keeping them all fully employed,” as he adds later on. He had the same antipathy to religious congregations as he had to other forms of association.

[1051] “No social phenomenon can ever be explained if it is taken out of its own setting. All social science is based upon this law.” (Demolins, La Classification sociale.)

[1052] The similarity noted here has given rise to emphatic protests on the part of certain members of this school. There is no need to take offence at the epithet, however, provided we are careful to distinguish it from philosophic materialism and recognise that it does not necessarily exclude idealism.

[1053] This branch of the school, of which Tourville and Demolins were the earliest leaders, has given us several excellent books. Demolins’ own work on the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons caused quite a stir. Then there is M. de Rousiers’ book on producers’ industrial unions, and P. du Maroussem’s. We would also specially mention Paul Bureau’s Le Contrat de Travail (1902), La Participation aux Bénéfices, and La Crise morale des Temps nouveaux. Bureau’s work is characterised by precise impartial analysis of facts combined with great moral fervour.

[1054] Huet was a professor at Ghent, which accounts for his being considered a Belgian, just as Walras is generally considered a Swiss.

[1055] He was the first to emphasise the importance of borrowers combining. Only in this way can the poor hope to offer some real security. “How is it that the worker cannot borrow? Simply because he has no security to offer except just his work in the future. That future guarantee can only become real and certain by means of combination. Union eliminates the uncertainty which hitherto made the security worthless and the loan impossible.” (La Question du Travail, p. 25.)

“The problem is to outline a state of society where working men will work only for themselves and not for others; where none will reap but has already sown, and where each will enjoy the fruits of his own labour.” (Ibid.)

[1056] “Christianity and revolution as far as humanity is concerned have identical aims, and the one is the natural outcome of the other.” (Buchez, Traité de la Politique, vol. ii, p. 504.)

[1057] Moufang’s principal writings were published in 1864 under the title of Le Question ouvrière et le Christianisme. He could never make up his mind as between the corporative and the co-operative ideal, however. The latter was very much to the front just then, not only in France, but also with the English Christian Socialists and with the German socialist Lassalle. This was before the co-operative movement was eclipsed by trade unionism.

Hitze, however, shows none of his master’s hesitation, but emphatically declares that “the solution of the social question is essentially and exclusively bound up with a reorganisation of trades and professions. We must have the mediæval régime of corporations re-established—a régime which offers a better solution of the social problem than any which existed either before or after. Of course times have changed, and certain features of the mediæval régime would need modification. But some such corporative régime conceived in a more democratic spirit must form the economic basis.” (Capital and Labour.)

[1058] “We must direct all our private initiative and concentrate public attention upon this one reform—the corporative reorganisation of society.” (Programme de l’Œuvre des Cercles ouvriers, April 1894.)

Co-operative association is dismissed altogether. The Social Catholics have especially little sympathy with the small retail co-operative stores, because they threaten the existence of the small merchant and the small artisan—types of individuals that are dear to the heart of the Catholics. On the other hand, it shows itself very favourably inclined towards co-operative credit, because of the possibility of assisting the classes already referred to—the shopkeeper and the small merchant.

[1059] In 1894 the Congress of Catholic Circles which met at Rheims declared that, “without minimising the difficulties which stand in the way of extending the mixed syndicats, the formation of such syndicats must be our chief aim.” In 1904 Father Rutten, one of the leaders of the Belgian Catholic Syndical movement, in a report on the syndicalist movement writes as follows: “We do not despair of the mixed syndicat, which in theory we certainly think is nearest perfection. But we must not blind ourselves to facts, and whether we will or no we have to admit that at the present moment the mixed syndicat in ninety industries out of every hundred seems quite Utopian.” (Quoted by Dechesne, Syndicats Ouvriers belges, p. 76; 1906.)

[1060] Such is the programme as outlined especially in Austria, which is one of the countries where Social Catholicism seems fairly powerful. As a matter of fact, the corporative régime has never quite disappeared there, and for some years now attempts have been made to revive it in the smaller crafts. The new corporation would take the form of a centralised organisation, whose regulations would be obligatory upon all the members of the craft.

[1061] “The commune has always been organised. Is there any reason why the trade should not be? In both cases special relations are established, special needs arise, there are frequent conflicts and occasional harmony between the different interests. But all of them are nevertheless intimately bound together, and the links connecting them must be co-ordinated on some regular plan if every one is to be safe, and free to follow his own bent.” (Henri Lorin, Principes de l’Organisation professionnelle, in L’Association catholique, July 15, 1892.)

To this it might be replied that the majority generally makes the law for the commune, but that in the case of a free corporation it is often the minority that rules. To which it might be retorted that the so-called majority is often not better than a minority of the electors, and a very small minority indeed of the whole inhabitants—who of course include women, who generally have no votes. Moreover, as soon as the rules of the syndicat became really obligatory the majority if not the whole of the workers in the trade would be found within the union.

[1062] Father Antoine writes as follows in his Cours d’Économie sociale, p. 154; “The social question can never be completely solved until we have a complete revival of Christian morals.” Still more categorical is the declaration of M. Léon Harmel in L’Association catholique for December 1889: “We can see only one remedy, and that is that the authority of the Pope should be recognised all the world over, and his ruling accepted by all people.”

The annual study reunions which go by the name of les Semaines sociales, and which afford one of the best manifestations of the kind of activities which Social Christianity gives rise to everywhere, are not so exclusive. Economic questions of all kinds are discussed, but the programme is not strictly Catholic at all, and the basis is wide enough to include everyone who is a professed Christian.

[1063] “The corporations which would be set up under the ægis of religion would aim at making all their members contented with their lot, patient in toil and disposed to lead a tranquil, happy life” (sua sorte contentos, operumque patientes et ad quietam ac tranquillam vitam agendam inducant). (Encyclical of Leo XII, December 28, 1878, called the Quod Apostolici. See History of Corporations, by M. Martin Saint-Leon.)

[1064] “The corporation is simply the model of the Church. Just as for the Church all the faithful are equal in the sight of God, so here. But equality ends there. For the rest it is a hierarchy.” (Ségur-Lamoignon, L’Association catholique, July 13, 1894.)

[1065] The Ligue sociale d’Acheteurs, founded in Paris in 1900, is of Social Catholic inspiration.

[1066] “More important even than free will, whether of masters or of men, is that higher and more ancient law of natural justice which demands that wages should always be sufficient to enable the worker to lead a sober and honest life. But lest the public authority in this case, as in some other analogous cases, such as the question of the length of the working day, should unwisely intervene, and in view of the great variety of circumstances, it is better that the solution should be left in the hands of the corporations or the unions.” (Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, 1891.)

[1067] The Social Catholics wherever found are usually Protectionists, the reason being that they think their “corporative régime could never be kept going without some protection against foreign competition,” and also because most of their adherents are drawn from the ranks of the agricultural unions. (Programme de l’Œuvre des Cercles ouvriers, Art. 7.)

[1068] “The so-called productivity of capital, which constitutes the greatest iniquity of profit-making society, and which is from an economical point of view the final cause of social suffering, is nothing better than a word invented to hide the real fact, namely, the appropriation of the fruits of labour by those who possess the instruments of labour.” (Loesewitz, Législation du Travail, in L’Association catholique, 1886.)

[1069] Extract from a report of a meeting of the Sillon, November 1907:

“Marc Sangnier. The social transformation which we desire to see, comrades, will aim, not at absorbing the individual, but rather at developing him. We want the factories, the mines, and the industries in the possession, not of the State, but of groups of workers.

“An Interrupter. That is socialism.

“Marc Sangnier. You can call it socialism if you like. It makes no difference to me. But it is not the socialism of the socialists, of the centralising socialists. We don’t want to set the proletarians free from the control of the masters to put them under the immediate control of one great master, the State; we want the proletarians themselves, acting collectively, to become their own masters.”

[1070] Milcent, in L’Association catholique, 1897, vol. ii, p. 58. There is a Catholic Social school which is Liberal and individualist in its tendencies, and which is represented by such writers as the late Charles Périn, professor at Louvain, author of La Richesse and La Socialisme chrétien, and by M. Rambaud, author of Cours d’Histoire des Doctrines. Nor ought we to forget their connection with the development of agricultural credit banks of the Raiffeisen type which have been established in Germany, France, and Italy—although their inception in Italy is largely the work of a Jew named Wollemborg.

[1071] Such, for example, is the opinion of Nitti in his book on Catholic Socialism, and because of that rather unsatisfactory reason he only devotes a few pages to it.

[1072] There are several historical considerations that may with advantage be kept in mind in dealing with this subject, such as, for example, the notable fact that while the Catholic Church has always been opposed to usury, it was Calvin and Calvinists like Saumaise and the ancient jurist Dumoulin who first justified the practice of taking interest.

[1073] The Christian Socialist was preceded by another paper called Politics for the People, founded in 1848, which may be taken as the birthday of the movement. In any case the date is significant in view of the contemporary revolution in France.

It is only just to note that Channing, the American pastor, who died in 1842, was one of the pioneers. His writings on social questions are still read.

Those who wish for more information either on the history or on the other aspects of Social Christianity should consult the New Encyclopædia of Social Reform, published in America.

[1074] The following year Charles Kingsley preached a sermon in London which caused such a sensation that the vicar of the parish felt bound to protest against its tone even during the service. In the course of the sermon Kingsley remarked that any social system which enabled capital to become the possession of a few, which robbed the masses of the land which they and their ancestors had cultivated from time immemorial, and reduced them to the condition of serfs working for daily wage or for charity, was contrary to the spirit of the Kingdom of God, as revealed in Christ. The sermon was afterwards published under the title of The Church’s Message to the Workers.

[1075] Maurice declared that everyone who is a Christian must also be a socialist. But the significance of the word “socialist” has changed somewhat since then. According to Maurice, “The motto of the socialist is co-operation; of the anti-socialist, competition.”

[1076] “There is no doubt about association being the form which industrial government will take in future, and I have no doubt as to its success, but a preliminary training extending possibly over a couple of generations is necessary before the worker has the requisite ability or moral strength to make use of it.” (Kingsley in 1856.)

And this is how State intervention appealed to him: “The devil is always ready to urge us to change law and government, heaven and earth even, but takes good care never to suggest that we might change ourselves.”

[1077] The official organ of the Christian Social Union, which is definitely connected with the Church of England, is the Economic Review, published at Oxford—not to be confused with the Economic Journal, which is published in London by the Royal Economic Society.

[1078] E. Gounelle, Le Mouvement des Fraternités.

[1079] Mr. Josiah Strong, director of the Institute of Social Service at New York, is the publisher of a review called The Gospel of the Kingdom, which has for its programme “the study of economic facts in the light of the Gospel,” and in which he maintains that “if the world is ever to be Christianised industry must be Christianised first of all.” On the question of unemployment, for example, he refers us to Matthew xx, 6, and on the still more vexed question of the closed or open shop we are referred to 1 Corinthians xii, 16, 26. We must also mention Rauschenbusch’s eloquent book, Christianity and the Social Crisis.

The well-known economist Professor Richard T. Ely is another of the leaders of this movement. Nor must we omit Herron, who caused some sensation by declaring that it is necessary to go well beyond collectivism, which he thinks altogether too conservative and reactionary. He adds that Karl Marx is a crusted Tory compared with Jesus, “for any one who accepts private property in any form whatsoever, even in matters of consumption, must reject Christ.”

[1080] At a conference held at Geneva in 1891. At this conference M. Stöcker defined his programme as follows: “We do not believe that we can do anything without the State, but we also believe in the spirit of association. We have told the masters that their duty is to make some sacrifice for the sake of solving the question in a way that will be agreeable to their men. We have also told the workers that they must work hard, economically, and conscientiously, even if they never obtain a better situation.”

[1081] He was formally repudiated by the Emperor in 1896 in a telegram addressed to a powerful employer, Baron Stumm.

[1082] Goehre is the author of a work entitled Three Months in a Workshop. The book has been a great success and has produced a crop of imitations.

[1083] Kutter’s book Sie Mussen caused quite a flutter. The author attempts to show that the socialists are to-day the real disciples of Christ, but have been disowned by the Church.

[1084] For the past twenty years M. de Boyve, the leader of the co-operative movement in France, has been the president, which confirms us in the suspicion that the two schools had a common parentage, both really springing from the École de Nîmes. Periodical congresses are held in connection with it, and it also has a review called Le Christianisme Social.

[1085] Pastor Tomy Fallot, the initiator of this movement, indicates the path that should be followed thus: “The essential thing is to get a rough outline of that perfect type which is known as co-operation. Just now it seems the only thing that contains a prophecy of better times.” (L’Action Bonne.) Compare this with Maurice’s formula.

“We are Social Christians because we are solidarists. In our search for solidarity we have found the Messiah and His Kingdom. Solidarity is the layman’s term, the Kingdom of God the theologian’s, but the two are the same.” (Gounelle, L’Avant-Garde,1907.)

[1086] This group found its earliest recruits among the young pastors who ministered in the great industrial towns (M. Wilfred Monod at Rouen and M. Gounelle at Roubaix, for example), and thus found itself in close touch with poverty, suffering, and discontent. But several laymen have also joined it, among them being a son of the economist who was regarded as the doyen of the Liberal school—Frédéric Passy.

The Christian Socialist group publishes a journal of its own, entitled L’Espoir du Monde.

[1087] “‘For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren,’ writes St. Paul; in other words, ‘I do not want to be saved alone, and I shall be completely saved only when humanity as a whole has been saved.’ And so the evangelical doctrine would subordinate the full realisation of my personal salvation to the salvation of others.” (W. Monod, La Notion apostolique du Salut.)

[1088] Or, as he epitomises it elsewhere, “It is useless to speak of giving ourselves until we are certain that we own ourselves.”

[1089] Ruskin himself did not think that his doctrines were only of slight importance. The introduction to Munera Pulveris (1862) contains the following words: “The following pages contain, I believe, the first accurate analysis of the laws of Political Economy which has been published in England.”

See also the preface to Unto This Last, which has for its sub-title “Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy.”

[1090] There are a great number of novels dealing with social questions. For the English novels bearing on this topic see M. Cazamian, Le Roman social.

[1091] So much was this the case with Ruskin that Mme. Brunhes has published a book called Ruskin et la Bible, and Tolstoy on his side has an edition of the Gospels to his credit which is said to be much nearer the original than the ordinary version of the canon.

[1092] See Fors Clavigera, passim. Tolstoy writes in a similar strain. Money is just a conventional sign giving the right or the possibility of claiming the service of others. But although money is all-powerful in the matter of exploiting the worker it is quite useless when it comes to a question of furthering his well-being. There is a curious development of this thesis in Tolstoy’s What is to be Done?

[1093] “All this has come of the spreading of that thrice accursed, thrice impious doctrine of the modern economist, that ‘To do the best for yourself, is finally to do the best for others.’ Friends, our great Master said not so.” (Ruskin, Crown of Wild Olive, Lecture II).

[1094] Especially in that celebrated passage: “It [Political Economy] sounds with Philosophico-Politice-Economic plummet the deep dark sea of troubles, and having taught us rightly what an infinite sea of troubles it is sums up with the practical inference and use of consolation that nothing whatever can be done in it by man, who has simply to sit still and look wistfully to ‘time and general laws,’ and thereupon without so much as recommending suicide coldly takes its leave of us.” (Chartism.)

[1095] “If thou ask again … What is to be done? allow me to reply: By thee, for the present, almost nothing.… Thou shalt descend into thy inner man, and see if there be any traces of a soul there; till then there can be nothing done!… Then shall we discern, not one thing, but, in clearer or dimmer sequence, a whole endless host of things that can be done. Do the first of these.” (Past and Present. Book I. chap. 4.)

[1096] See particularly Fors Clavigera.

[1097] “Why, the four-footed worker has already got all that this two-handed one is clamouring for, and you say it is impossible.” (Carlyle, Past and Present, chap. 3; and see also Chartism, chap. 4.)

[1098] This was the ideal which he had in mind in founding the Guild of St. George. See an article by Professor Marshall, The Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry, in the Economic Journal, March 1907. There is no reference to Ruskin in it, however.

[1099] When the Christian Socialists in 1854 organised a course of lectures for working men in London Ruskin volunteered to give a few addresses, not on social economics or on history, but on drawing.

[1100] One naturally thinks first of such industrial villages as Bournville and Port Sunlight. But in 1903 an entirely new city of this kind was begun at Letchworth, Herts. The idea has recently undergone a considerable development by a society that owes its inspiration to Ruskin.

[1101] Story of a Horse, in his First Stories (1861).

[1102] See a book entitled Labour, which consists of the meditations of a muzhik called Bondareff upon those words of Genesis, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” followed by a long commentary by Tolstoy.

[1103] “Pleasure and pain are undoubtedly the ultimate objects of the calculus of economics. To satisfy our wants to the utmost with the least effort, to procure the greatest amount of what is desirable at the expense of the least that is undesirable, in other words, to maximise pleasure, is the problem of economics.” (Stanley Jevons, Theory of Political Economy, p. 40.)

[1104] “The errors of the Classical school are, so to speak, the ordinary diseases of the childhood of every science.” (Böhm-Bawerk, The Austrian Economists, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1891.)

[1105] Recherches sur les Principes mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses.

[1106] Let P = value of product and x, y, z represent wages, interest, and rent respectively, then x + y + z = P, which is insoluble.

Nor does it seem much more hopeful when written out thus:

[1107] “The theory of economic equilibrium is quite distinct from the theory of final utility, although the public are apt to confuse them and to think that they are both the same.” (Vilfredo Pareto, L’Economie pure, 1902.)

[1108] The name varies a little with different authors and in different countries. “The final degree of utility” is the term used by Jevons, “marginal utility” by the Americans, “the intensity of the last satisfied want” by Walras. Walras also speaks of it as “scarcity,” using the term in a purely subjective fashion to denote insufficiency for present need. This very plethora of terms suggests a certain haziness of conception. The term “marginal” seems clearer than the term “final,” although in some cases it may be impossible to oust the latter.

It appears that the first suggestion of final utility in the sense in which it is employed by the Psychological school is due to a French engineer of the name of Dupuit. He threw out the suggestion in two memoirs entitled La Mesure de l’Utilité des Travaux publics (1844) and L’Utilité des Voies de Communication (1849), both of which were published in the Annales des Ponts et Chaussées, although their real importance was not realised until a long time afterwards. Gossen also, whose book is referred to on p. 529, was one of the earliest to discover it.

In its present form it was first expounded by Stanley Jevons in his Theory of Political Economy, and by Karl Menger in his Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftlehre (1871). Walras’s conception of scarcity, which is just a parallel idea, was made public about the same time (1874). Finally Clark, the American economist, in his Philosophy of Value, which is of a somewhat later date (1881), seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion by an entirely different method—a remarkable example of simultaneous discoveries, which are by no means rare in the history of thought.

Despite its cosmopolitan origin, the school is generally spoken of as the Austrian school, because its most eminent representatives have for the most part been Austrians. Among these we may mention Karl Menger, already referred to, Professor Sax (Das Wesen und die Aufgabe der Nationalökonomie, 1884), Wieser (Der natürliche Werth, 1889), and of course Böhm-Bawerk (author of Grundzüge der Theorie des wirtschaftlichen Güterwerths, in Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie, 1886, and the well-known book on capital and interest).

Lately, however, the doctrine seems to have changed its nationality and become wholly American. The American professors J. B. Clark, Patten, Irving Fisher, Carver, Fetter, etc., are assiduous students of marginal utility, applying the conception not only to problems of capital and interest, but also to the question of distribution.