[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.)