The Church and Modern Life

by Washington Gladden

In the textile trades, with 661,451 workers, the average weekly wage of all workers is $6.07; of men over sixteen, $7.63; of women, $5.18; of children under sixteen, $2.15.

In the iron workers' trades, with 222,607 workers, the average weekly wage is $10.46.

In the boot and shoe trades, with 142,922 workers, the average for all is $7.96; for men over sixteen, $9.11; for women, $6.13; for children under sixteen, $3.40.

In the men's clothing trades, with 120,950 workers, the average for all is $7.06; for men, $10.90; for women, $4.88; for children, $2.61.

These weekly wages are obtained by dividing the annual wage by 52. Often the weekly rate is much higher, but for many weeks the workers are unemployed; the only fair estimate is that which is based upon the annual wage.

Have we any right to be content with conditions like these? Is the average wage of the average worker, as it is here indicated, all that he ought to ask? Should society wish him to be content with such an income? Sit down yourself and figure out just what it would mean to be obliged to maintain a family of four or five on such a stipend as is indicated in any of these trades--even those best paid. Find out how much should have to go for rent, and how much for food, and how much for the plainest clothing, and how much for doctor's bills, and school books, and street-car fare, and how much would be left, after that, for books and church contributions and the wholesome pleasures which we ought to count among the necessaries of life. Life can be maintained on such an income, but is it the kind of life that we wish our fellow men to live? And is there any need that life, for the humble laborer, should be reduced in this rich land to its lowest terms? With the marvelous productiveness of fields and mines and forests and waters, with the immense development of machinery, by which the wealth of the nation is multiplied, might we not have an organization of industry and a method of distribution which would give to the army of manual toilers a much larger average income?

That is the question they are asking, and it calls for a candid answer. Their needs are not as dire as were those of the German peasants of the sixteenth century, but they are real and serious needs. Now, as then, a tremendous industrial revolution has dislocated industries and demoralized and impoverished many; now, as then, the concentration of capital in great companies has destroyed small enterprises and left many who were once thrifty stranded and discouraged; now, as then, glaring contrasts in condition excite the resentments of the needy; now, as then, the propertiless are wondering whether this is the kind of thing that the church has been looking for when she has prayed that the kingdom of God may come. And there is a feeling now, as there was then, among the millions of the toilers, that the church which assumes to represent Jesus Christ needs to be reformed, in order that through its testimony and its leadership the kingdom of God may come.

It is sadly true that there are many among these toiling millions who are embittered against the church, who have no faith in it, and no expectation that any good will come out of it; but the great majority are not hostile to the church; at worst they are indifferent, and this indifference is due to their belief that the church no longer represents Jesus Christ. Toward him there is often a pathetic outreaching of hope; if the church would come back to the simplicity that is in Christ and would plant itself on the Sermon on the Mount, it would quickly win their loyalty. And I cannot help feeling that now, as in the sixteenth century, there is in the minds of the toiling millions "a confused dream that the kingdom of God might be set up in the land," and that the time is ripe for it. Nor can I deem it possible that this great expectation of the multitude will now be disappointed. The church of this day must be able to see that this call of the poor and the humble is the call of its Master. It is with the weak and the needy that he is always identified; service of them is loyalty to him; neglect of them is scorn of him. It is his own word.

The coming reformation will be signalized by a great change in the attitude of the church toward the toiling classes. It will not turn its back on them, as it did in Luther's day; it will not maintain toward them an attitude of kindly patronage, as it has done in our day; it will recognize the fact that its welfare is bound up with them; that the barriers which separate them from its sympathies and fellowships must be broken down, at whatever cost; that it must make them believe that the church of Jesus Christ is their church; that it needs them quite as much as they need it; that it is a monstrous thing even to conceive that a church of Jesus Christ could exist as a class institution, with the largest social class in the community outside of it.

The coming reformation will consist in the awakening of the church to its social responsibilities. It will see more clearly than it has ever yet seen, that those who pray that the kingdom of God may come, and who are responsible, as citizens of a republic are responsible, for the answering of that prayer, must see to it that justice and liberty and opportunity are established in the land. The church of Jesus Christ, with a passion that is born of loyalty to its Master, must set itself to the task of realizing, in the social order, the principles of his teaching. That was what the peasants of the sixteenth century called upon it to do; and for answer it turned and smote them to the earth. It will not repeat that blunder, which was nothing short of a crime. It hears the same call to-day, and when it obeys, as obey it must, it will save its own life and that of the nation with whose destiny it is put in trust.