Our Benevolent Feudalism

by William J. Ghent

It is not, as has been said, so much through their editorial expressions as through their coloring of the news that the weeklies and dailies mould the opinions of the mass. A growing scepticism averts the former influence; but against the latter there is no prophylactic. News is assorted, pruned, improved, to accord with a predetermined policy. From an anti-imperialist publication one gets small notion of other happenings in the Philippines than devastations, rapes, battle, murder, and sudden death; and from an administration organ one may learn only of Peace piping her “languid note,” of the diffusion of education, and the progress of industry, varied only now and then by slight outbreaks from a few ladrones. In the far more important matter of the irrepressible class conflict here at home, like influences color the news; and as ninety-nine out of every one hundred periodicals support, in greater or less degree, the existing régime, the impress upon the public mind is overwhelming. Some of the “yellows” set up a bar to the universal pervasion of this influence; and the activities of the social reformers, through their weekly journals, their tracts, and their public discussions, somewhat affect it. But, on the whole, these effects are but a ripple on the deep and powerful stream that fertilizes the opinions of the public.

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Our laudatory stump orators have their measure of influence on social thought, no doubt; but it is one that surely declines, and the subject may be passed with but scant mention. Likewise, the heterogeneous small fry of seigniorial retainers in the various walks of life, whose business it is, in season and out, to glorify the prevailing régime, may be noticed and dismissed in a sentence. The influence of the pulpit, however, is a subject that requires some attention. This influence, while greater than that of either of the groups just mentioned, is unquestionably less than that of either the editors or the professional lay publicists. Among practical men in the upper orders there is a widespread prejudice against pastoral interference in social and political matters, unless it be directed solely to seigniorial justification. The shoemaker should stick to his last, runs the adage; and no less it is urged that the pastor should stick to his text. He should, furthermore, discriminate and sort his texts, making careful avoidance of the ethical precepts of Jesus. For these are needlessly disturbing to the code that prevails in commerce and politics, and both politicians and magnates resent their citation. A future “popular” version of the Bible may eliminate them, and thus do away with a fertile cause of discord; but until that is done the better part of pastoral valor will continue to lie in discretion.

The sentiments of the politicians and the magnates toward the pulpit filter down to the common mass of the laity, and still further weaken pastoral influence. But weakened as it has been, it is yet felt by the magnates to be an instrument of social control which by proper use can be made to perform a needed service. A constant pressure is, therefore, brought to bear upon pastoral utterances. It is the “safe” men who are in most request to fill pulpits; and it is the “safe” men who draw to their churches the largest endowments. Under the influence of this pressure there has gradually been developed a code of pulpit ethics, outside the limits of which no prudent minister will dare range. The minister may be “long” on spirituality, but he must be “short” on social precepts. He may preach faith, hope, and charity, and also the future punishment of the unregenerate, so long as unregeneracy is depicted in general terms; but he must avoid, with the nicest delicacy, the mention of tax-dodging and stock-watering as punishable sins. He may denounce violence, and for a modern instance he may cite the occasional riotous conduct of striking workmen; but let him at his peril cite such venial backslidings from grace as the blowing up of a competitor’s refinery, the seizure of a street for track-laying, or the employment of armed mercenaries for a private purpose. Political evils may be denounced in the abstract, and the bribery of voters in the concrete. The latter is an offence usually committed by irreverent ward politicians, and may justly receive, without injury to the State and to society, the scathing anathemas of the pulpit. But he that in a moment of inadvertence miscalls by the name bribes the “gentle rewards,” the “gratuities,” as they were known in Bacon’s time, which magnates frequently bestow upon legislators and judges, had best resign his pastorate and seek some other field. Nor must any slight be thrown upon any of the conventional practices in the ordinary daily conduct of “business.” These are hallowed by custom, and are beyond criticism. Such a declaration as that of a certain minister in a recent number of the Christian Endeavor World—“What we call Napoleonic genius in business is sometimes simply whitewashed highway robbery on a gigantic scale”—verges closely upon contumacy. It is relieved slightly by the qualifying “sometimes,”—much virtue in your “sometimes,” as the immortal bard would remark,—but for all that, it is a dangerous utterance, and one apt to cause its enunciator grave trouble.

But pastoral pronouncements on social questions are permitted—nay, welcomed—if only they properly rebuke the occasional discontent and unquiet of the masses and the aggression of those foes of order, the labor unions. Such a pronouncement, for instance, is that of the Rev. Lyman Abbott, put forth in his recent philosophical disquisition, “The Rights of Man.” “Trades-unions ... are ruled over generally,” he declares, “by a directory scarcely less absolute than that which governed the revolutionists in the day of Mirabeau.” This is unexceptionably decorous, and runs no risk whatever of seigniorial censorship. The recent coal strike brought forth a large number of pastoral utterances of a like character, which must ultimately redound to the great glory of the declaimers. The good Bishop Potter, in his address before the Diocesan convention in New York City, September 24, felt called upon to rebuke envy and hatred and to deny the existence of social classes in the republic: “Wealth is unequally distributed, we are told, and the sophistries that are born of envy and hatred are hawked about the streets to influence, in a land which refuses to enthrone one class above another, the passions of the less clever or thrifty or industrious against those who are more so.” The eminent Dr. Ethelbert Talbot, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Central Pennsylvania, according to his public letter of September 28, saw in the coal strike only a demand upon the part of the miners “that the operators shall no longer manage their own business.” “How can the question of whether a man has a right to conduct his own business,” he asks, with painfully defective forethought for what subsequently happened, “be submitted to arbitration?” The no less eminent Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, in his recent address before the Chicago Society of New York, demanded a wall of bayonets from Washington to Wilkesbarre. The Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage of the Church of the Messiah also called for arms instead of arbitration, and the Rev. Dr. W. R. Huntington of Grace Church echoed the good Bishop Talbot’s opinion, and “from the point of view of simple justice” could not see “that we have any reason to blame the mine-owners for refusing to allow the management of their own business to be taken out of their hands.” From Calvary, too,—or at least from the Calvary Baptist Church of New York,—came a further demand for soldiery. “These labor leaders,” declared the Rev. Dr. R. S. MacArthur, “with their large salaries, are forcing the men to be idle. They are more tyrannical than the Czar of Russia.” These are but samples of the “safe” utterances on social questions—the kind that involve no penalties, but on the contrary, reap sure harvests of glory and recompense.

Occasionally from too close and exclusive reading of the synoptic gospels, with their recital of Jesus’ specific teachings on social matters, a young and ardent minister loses his perspective, and seeing over-large the industrial and social evils of his time, seeks to remedy them. Usually, however, the mood is but transitory, and a few months, or at most a few years, witness the reaction. Renunciation of heretical doctrines follows, and ultimately the errant is restored to the fold of the “safe.” But let no one imagine that in seigniorial halls his sins are remembered against him. On the contrary, there is more joy over the recovery of one strayed sheep than over ninety and nine that remain faithful.

Sometimes, it must be conceded, there are to be found those who refuse to be forced or cajoled, and who hold their intrepid way in defiance of power. The World assails them, in the words of Matthew Arnold, with its perpetual challenge and warning:—

“‘Behold,’ she cries, ‘so many rages lulled;

So many fiery spirits quite cooled down.

Look how so many valors, long undulled,