The Catholic group deserves to be considered first, because it intervened in the discussion much sooner than the Evangelical, and because it originated a much more important movement—larger in its dimensions than the other, and invested with additional consequence from the circumstance that being promoted under the countenance of dignitaries, it must be presumed to have received the sanction of the Roman Curia, and may therefore afford an index to the general attitude which the Catholic Church is disposed to assume towards Continental socialism. The socialist agitation had no sooner broken out, in 1863, than Dr. Döllinger, then a pillar of the Church of Rome, strongly recommended the Catholic clubs of Germany to take the question up. These clubs are societies for mutual improvement, recreation, and benefit, and are composed mainly of working men. Father Kölping, himself at the time a working man, had, in 1847, founded an extensive organization of Catholic journeymen, which, in 1872, had a total membership of 70,000, and consisted of an affiliation of small journeyman clubs, with a membership of from 50 to 400 each, in the various towns of Germany. Then there were also Catholic apprentice clubs—in many cases in alliance with those of the journeymen; there were Catholic master clubs, Catholic peasant clubs, Catholic benefit clubs, Catholic young men's clubs, Catholic credit clubs, Catholic book clubs, etc., etc. These clubs naturally afforded an organization ready to hand for any general purpose the members might share in common, and being composed of working men, they seemed reasonably calculated to be of effective service in forwarding the cause of social amelioration. Early in 1864, accordingly, Bishop Ketteler, of Mayence, warmly seconded Döllinger's idea, and at the same time published a remarkable pamphlet on "The Labour Question and Christianity," in which he unfolded his views of the causes and the cure of the existing evils.
William Immanuel, Baron von Ketteler, had been for twenty years a powerful and impressive figure in the public life of Germany. His high rank, social and ecclesiastical, his immense energy, his weight of character, his personal disinterestedness of purpose, and his intellectual vigour and acuteness, had combined to give him great importance both in Church and State. Born in 1811, of an ancient Westphalian family, he was trained in law and politics for the public service, and actually entered upon it, but resigned his post in 1838, in consequence of the dispute about the Cologne bishopric, and resolved to give himself to the work of the Church. After studying theology at Munich and Münster, he was ordained priest in 1844, and became soon afterwards pastor at Hopster, in Westphalia. Being sent as member for Langerich to the German National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848, he at once made his mark by the vigour with which he strove for the spiritual independence of the Church, by the lectures and sermons he delivered on questions of the day, and especially by a bold and generous oration he pronounced at the grave of the assassinated deputy, Prince Lichnowsky. This oration excited sensation all over Germany, and Ketteler was promoted, in 1849, to the Hedwigsburg Church, in Berlin, and in 1850 to the Bishopric of Mayence. In this position he found scope for all his powers. He founded a theological seminary at Mayence, erected orphan-houses and reformatories, introduced various religious orders and congregationist schools, and entering energetically into the disputes in Baden regarding the place and rights of the Catholic Church, he succeeded in establishing an understanding whereby the State gave up much of its patronage, its supervision of theological seminaries, its veto on ecclesiastical arrangements, restored episcopal courts, and assigned the Church extensive influence over popular education. He was one of the bishops who authorized the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, but he belonged to the opposition at the Vatican Council of 1870. He wrote a pamphlet strongly deprecating the promulgation of the dogma of infallibility, and went, even at the last moment, to the Pope personally, and implored him to abandon the idea of promulgating it; but as his objection respected its opportuneness and not its truth, he did not secede with Döllinger when his opposition failed, but accepted the dogma himself and demanded the submission of his clergy to it. Bishop Ketteler was returned to the German Imperial Diet in 1871, and led the Clerical Faction in opposing the ecclesiastical policy of the Government. He died at Binghausen, in Bavaria, in 1877, and is buried in Mayence Cathedral. Ketteler had always been penetrated with the ambition of making the Catholic Church a factor of practical importance in the political and social life of Germany, and with the conviction that the clergy ought to make themselves masters of social and political science so as to be able to exercise a leading and effective influence over public opinion on questions of social amelioration. He has himself written much, though nothing of permanent value, on these subjects, and did not approach them with unwashed hands when he published his pamphlet in 1864.
In this pamphlet, he says the labour question is one which it is his business, both as a Christian and as a bishop, to deal with: as a Christian, because Christ, as Saviour of the world, seeks not only to redeem men's souls, but to heal their sorrows and soften their condition; and as a bishop, because the Church had, according to her ancient custom, imposed upon him, as one of his consecration vows, that he would, "in the name of the Lord, be kind and merciful to the poor and the stranger, and to all that are in any kind of distress." He considers the labour question of the present day to be the very serious and plain question, how the great bulk of the working classes are to get the bread and clothing necessary to sustain them in life. Things have come to this pass in consequence of two important economic changes—which he incorrectly ascribes to the political revolution at the end of last century, merely because they have taken place mostly since that date—the spread of industrial freedom, and the ascendancy of the large capitalists. In consequence of these changes the labourer is now treated as a commodity, and the rate of his wages settled by the same law that determines the price of every other commodity—the cost of its production; and the employer is always able to press wages down to the least figure which the labourer will take rather than starve. Ketteler accepts entirely Lassalle's teaching about "the iron and cruel law," and holds it to have been so conclusively proved in the course of the controversy that it is no longer possible to dispute it without a deliberate intention of deceiving the people. Now there is no doubt that Ricardo's law of value is neither so iron nor so cruel as Lassalle took it to be; and that when Lassalle alleged that in consequence of this law 96 per cent. of the population of Germany had to support their families on less than ten shillings a week, and were therefore in a state of chronic starvation, he based his statement on a calculation of Dieterici's, which was purely conjectural, and which, besides, disregarded the fact that in working-class families there were usually more breadwinners than one. Ketteler, however, adopts this whole statement of the case implicitly, and says the social problem of our day is simply how to emancipate the labouring class from the operation of this economic law. "It is no longer possible to doubt that the whole material existence of almost the entire labouring population—i.e., of much the greatest part of men in modern states, and of their families—that the daily question about the necessary bread for man, wife, and children, is exposed to all the fluctuations of the market and of the price of commodities. I know nothing more deplorable than this fact. What sensations must it cause in those poor men who, with all they hold dear, are day after day at the mercy of the accidents of market price? That is the slave market of our Liberal Europe, fashioned after the model of our humanist, rationalistic, anti-Christian Liberalism, and freemasonry." The bishop never spares an opportunity of attacking "heathen humanist Liberalism," which he says has pushed the labouring man into the water, and now stands on the bank spinning fine theories about his freedom, but calmly seeing him drown.
After this it might be expected that Ketteler would be all for abolishing industrial freedom, and for restoring a régime of compulsory guilds and corporations; but he is not. He acknowledges that the old system of guilds had its advantages; it was a kind of assured understanding between the workman and society, according to which the former adjusted his work and the latter his wages. But it was the abuses of the compulsory powers of the guilds that led to industrial freedom; and, on the other hand, industrial freedom has great countervailing advantages of its own which he scruples to give up. It has immensely increased production and cheapened commodities, and so enabled the lower classes to enjoy means of life and enjoyment they had not before. Nor does Ketteler approve of Lassalle's scheme of establishing productive associations of working men upon capital supplied by the State. Not that he objects to productive associations; on the contrary, he declares them to be a glorious idea, and thinks them the true solution of the problem. But he objects to supplying their capital by the State, as involving a direct violation of the law of property. The Catholic Church, he says, has never maintained an absolute right of property. Her divines have unanimously taught that the right of property cannot avail against a neighbour who is in extreme need, because God alone is absolute proprietor, and no man is more than a limited vassal, holding under God, and on the conditions which He imposes; and one of these conditions is that any man in extremities is entitled to satisfy his necessity where and how he pleases.[1] In such a case, according to Catholic doctrine, it is not the man in distress that is the thief, but the proprietor who would gainsay and stop him. The distressed have a positive right to succour, and the State may therefore, without violating any of the rights of property, tax the parishes, or the proprietors, for the relief of the poor. But beyond this the State has no title to go. It may legitimately tax people for the purpose of saving working men from extremities, but not for the purpose of bettering their normal position.
But where the civil authority ends the Christian authority comes in, and the rich have only escaped the obligation of compulsory legal enactment, to find themselves under the more far-reaching obligations of moral duty and Christian love. The Church declares that the man who does not give alms where he ought to give it stands in the same category as a thief; and there is no limit to this obligation but his power of giving help, and his belief that it would be more hurtful to give than to keep it. Ketteler's plan, accordingly, is that the capital for the productive associations should be raised by voluntary subscriptions on the part of Christian people. He thinks he has made out a strong case for establishing this as a Christian obligation. He has shown that a perilous crisis prevails, that this crisis can only be removed by productive associations, that productive associations cannot be started without capital, and he says it is a vain dream of Huber's to think of getting the capital from the savings of working men themselves, for most of the working men are in a distressed condition, and if a few are better off, their savings could only establish associations so few in number and so small in scale, as to be little better than trifling with the evil. He sees no remedy but making productive associations a scheme of the Church, and appealing to that Christian philanthropy and sense of duty which had already done great service of a like nature—as, for example, in producing capital to emancipate slaves in Italy and elsewhere.
This remarkable proposal of the bishop seems to have fallen dead. Though he wrote and laboured much in connection with the labour question afterwards, he never reverted to it again; and when a Christian Socialist party was formed, under his countenance, they adopted a programme which made large demands not only on the intervention, but on the pecuniary help of the State. It was not till 1868 that any steps were taken towards the actual organization of such a party. In June of that year three Catholic clubs met together at Crefeld, and, after discussing the social question, agreed to publish a journal (the Christliche Sociale Blätter) to promote their views. In September of the following year the whole subject of the relations of the Church to the labour question was discussed at a conference of the Catholic bishops of Germany, held at Fulda, and attended by Ketteler among others. This conference strongly recommended the clergy to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with that and other economic questions, to interest themselves generally in the condition of the working class they moved among, and even to travel in foreign countries to see the state of the labourers there and the effects of the institutions established for their amelioration. The conference also approved of the formation of Catholic Labourers' Associations, for the promotion of the general elevation of their own class, but held that the Church had no call, directly or officially, to take the initiative in founding them. This duty was undertaken, however, later in the same month, by a general meeting of the Catholic Clubs of Germany, which appointed a special committee, including Professor Schulte and Baron Schorlemer-Abst, for the express purpose of founding and organizing Christian social clubs, which should strive for the economic and moral amelioration of the labouring classes. This committee set itself immediately to work, and the result was the Christian Social Associations, or, as they are sometimes called from their patron saint, the St. Joseph Associations. They were composed of, and managed by, working men, though they liked to have some man of eminence—never a clergyman—at the head of them, and though they allowed persons, of property, clergymen, and especially employers of labour, to be honorary members. They met every Sunday evening to discuss social questions, and politics were excluded, except questions affecting the Church, and on these a decided partisanship was encouraged.
The principles of this party—or what may be called their programme—is explained in a speech delivered by Canon Moufang to his constituents in Mayence, in February, 1871, and published with warm approbation, in the Christliche Sociale Blätter in March. Christoph Moufang is, like Ketteler, a leader of the German Clerical party, and entitled to the highest esteem for his character, his intellectual parts, and his public career. Born in 1817, he was first destined for the medical profession, and studied physic at Bonn; but he soon abandoned this intention, and betook himself to theology. After studying at Bonn and Munich, he was ordained priest in 1839. He was appointed in 1851 professor of moral and pastoral theology in the new theological seminary which Bishop Ketteler had founded at Mayence, and in 1854 was made canon of the cathedral. Moufang entered the First Hessian Chamber in 1862 as representative of the bishop, and made a name as a powerful champion of High Church views and of the general ecclesiastical policy of Bishop Ketteler. In 1868 he was chosen one of the committee to make preparations for the Vatican Council; but at the Council he belonged to the opponents of the dogma of infallibility, and left Rome before the dogma was promulgated. He submitted afterwards, however, and worked sedulously in its sense. Moufang sat in the Imperial Diet from 1871 to 1877, was a leading member of the Centre, and stoutly resisted the Falk legislation. He is joint-editor of the Katholik, and is author of various polemical writings, and of a work on the history of the Jesuits in Germany.
Moufang takes a different view of the present duty of the Church in relation to the social question from that which we saw to have been taken by Ketteler. He asks for no pecuniary help from the Church, nor for any special and novel kind of activity whatever. The problem cannot, in his opinion, be effectively and permanently solved without her co-operation, but then the whole service she is able and required to render is contained in the course of her ordinary ministrations in diffusing a spirit of love and justice and fairness among the various classes of society, in maintaining her charities for the poor and helpless in dispensing comfort and distress, and in offering to the weary the hope of a future life. Moufang makes much more demand on the State than on the Church, in this also disagreeing with Bishop Ketteler's pamphlet. He says the State can and must help the poorer classes in four different ways:—
1st. By giving legislative protection. Just as the landlord and the money-lender are legally protected in their rights by the State, so the labourer ought to be legally protected in his property, which are his powers and time of labour. The State ought to give him legal security against being robbed of these, his only property, by the operation of free competition. With this view, Moufang demands the legalization of working men's associations of various kinds, the prohibition of Sunday labour, the legal fixing of a normal day of labour, legal restriction of labour of women and children, legal provision against unwholesome workshops, appointment of factory inspectors, and direct legal fixing of the rate of wages. The last point is an important peculiarity in the position of the Catholic Socialists. Moufang contends that competition is a sound enough principle for regulating the price of commodities, but that it is a very unsound one, and a very unsafe one, for determining the price of labour, because he holds that labour is not a commodity. Labour is a man's powers of life; it is the man himself, and the law must see to its protection. The law protects the capitalist in his right to his interest, and surely the labouring man's powers of life are entitled to the same consideration. If an employer says to a capitalist from whom he has borrowed money: "A crisis has come, a depression in trade, and I am no longer able to pay such high interest; I will pay you two-thirds or one-third of the previous rate," what does the capitalist say? He refuses to take it, and why? Simply because he knows that the law will sustain him in his claim. But if the employer says to his labourer: "A depression of trade has come, and I cannot afford you more than two-thirds or one-third of your present wages," what can the labourer do? He has no alternative. He must take the wages offered him or go, and to go means to starve. Why should not the law stand at the labourer's back, as it does at the capitalist's, in enforcing what is right and just? There is no more infraction of freedom in the one case than in the other. Moufang's argument here is based on an illusive analogy; for in the contract for the use of capital the employer agrees to pay a fixed rate of interest so long as he retains the principal, and he can only avail himself of subsequent falls in the money market by returning the principal and opening a fresh contract; whereas in the contract for the use of labour the employer engages by the week or the day, returning the principal, as it were, at the end of that term, and making a new arrangement. The point to be noted, however, is that Moufang's object, like Ketteler's, is to deliver working men from their hand-to-mouth dependence on the current fluctuations of the market; that he thinks there is something not merely pernicious but radically unjust in their treatment under the present system; and that he calls upon the State to institute some regular machinery—a board with compulsory powers, and composed of labourers and magistrates—for fixing everywhere and in every trade a fair day's wages for a fair day's work.
2nd. The State ought to give pecuniary help. It advances money on easy terms to railway schemes; why should it not offer working men cheap loans for sound co-operative enterprises? Of course it ought to make a keen preliminary examination of the projects proposed, and keep a sharp look-out against swindling or ill-considered schemes; but if the project is sound and likely, it should be ready to lend the requisite capital at a low interest. This proposal of starting productive associations on State credit is an important divergence from Ketteler, who, in his pamphlet, condemns it as a violation of the rights of property.