We are officially told that "Socialist Sunday Schools are intended to serve as a means of teaching economic causes of present-day social evils and of implanting a love of goodness in the child mind."[1026]
The following extracts from the "Red Catechism" serve to show how "love of goodness" is inculcated in the Socialist Sunday Schools:
"Q. Is there any difference in the teachings at Socialist Sunday schools and other Sunday schools? A. Yes.—Q. What is taught in Christian schools? A. Christian morals and capitalist teachings.—Q. What is meant by the term 'employing men for profit'? A. Capitalists, when they pay wages, make the workers produce three or four times the amount they pay them. The extra which the men produce over their wages is called profit.—Q. What evidence is there that the workers earn a great amount and get very little? A. The national amount of wealth produced every year is two thousand millions and the amount paid out in wages is only five hundred millions, showing that the poor are poor because they are robbed.—Q. Who creates all wealth? A. The working class.—Q. Who creates all poverty? A. Our capitalist society.—Q. Who are the workers? A. Men who work for wages.—Q. What class of men get into Parliament? A. The capitalist and aristocratic class?—Q. How is that? A. Because the workers are opposed by men interested in keeping them poor.—Q. How many children are there in London who go to school insufficiently fed and clothed? A. It is stated as many as 100,000; a number equal to the population of a small county.—Q. To what class do these poor starving children belong? A. The working class.—Q. Is it not the working class which creates all wealth? A. Yes.—Q. Do the rich trouble about the poor children of London who are ill-fed and clothed? A. No.—Q. What is a pauper? A. One who lives upon others, while being able to work?—Q. Are the rich class able to work? A. Yes; because they are well cared for when young and grow up strong?—Q. Do they work? A. No; they consider it menial and beneath them.—Q. Then they are paupers? A. Yes.—Q. Do the rich and their children live at the expense of those who work? A. Yes.—Q. What does machinery enable the workers to do? A. To produce wealth quicker.—Q. Do the workers benefit by machinery? A. No. On the contrary. It generally reduces their wages and throws them out of work.—Q. Why is that? A. Because the machinery is controlled by the capitalist class.—Q. What is a wage-slave? A. A person who works for a wage and gives all he earns to a capitalist.—Q. What proportion does a wage-slave receive of what he earns? A. On the average about a fourth. The slave and serf always had food, clothing, and shelter. The wage-slave, when he is out of work, must now starve or go into the workhouse and be made miserable, or commit suicide.—Q. What is the remedy for wage-slavery? A. Socialism.—Q. Who pays the rent? A. Father and mother.—Q. Who demands the rent? A. The landlord.—Q. Can you say how much the landlord takes from the wages of father, generally for rent? A. Yes; a fourth.—Q. That is sheer robbery, is it not? A. Yes; but working men cannot help it.—Q. Why is that? A. Because the landlord class have a monopoly of land and houses, and workmen have no land and are too poor to build for themselves."[1027]
With this mendacious stuff the "Religion of Love" systematically poisons the innocent minds of little children. The religion of Socialism is indeed a political religion, as Mr. Snowden, M.P., has stated.
FOOTNOTES:
[1012] Ball, The Moral Aspects of Socialism, p. 23.
[1013] Bebel, Woman, p. 213.
[1014] Bax, Religion of Socialism, p. 81.
[1015] Snowden, The Christ that Is to be, pp. 6, 7.