[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.