self-effacing servants of the common good Jesus spoke his most unmeasured praise: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me." 1 1 Matt. xxv. 34, 40. CHAPTER VI THE TEACHING OF JESUS CONCERNING THE INDUSTRIAL ORDER The Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister. IN all that has been thus far said of various social questions there has been a sense of incompleteness and fragmentariness, as though in each case we were dealing with one aspect of a more inclusive problem. The problem of the family expanded as it was considered, until it was seen to involve further issues of economic and social life; the problems of wealth and of poverty opened into larger questions of ownership and occupation, of work and idleness, of the distribution of products and the utilization of leisure. Wealth, we observed, should contribute, first of all, to economic justice; charity must provide, first of all, for economic self-help. Round these inner circles of social relationship which hold the family and the community sweeps the larger circle of the industrial order. If we extend the radius of the family circle, we enter the sphere where men meet as employers and employed. If we follow the circumstances of wealth and poverty out to their margin, we pass into consideration of the use, or the misuse, or the incapacity to make use, of industrial opportunity. The philosophy of socialism, it is true, grossly exaggerates this truth when it announces that this relation of concentric circles is a relation of cause and effect, as though the key of every social question must be sought in the industrial problem. The family is more than an economic unity, and is modified by other motives than those of economic interest; wealth and poverty spring from many other causes besides industrial conditions. Yet it is none the less true that the industrial question environs like an atmosphere the whole body of social life. The integrity of the family is profoundly affected by economic changes and defects; wealth and poverty are inevitable social facts under the prevailing conditions of ownership and of industry. What, then, is this industrial problem in which all other social questions are thus deeply involved? The problem has two aspects. On the one hand is the form which it assumes, on the other hand is the spirit which it represents. These two aspects of modern industry must be carefully distinguished and may be considered in turn. The form of the industrial problem has become determined by the amazing expansion of modern industrial methods, the vast combinations of employers and of employed, and the enormous prizes which reward strategy or good fortune. These characteristics of modern industry have brought the factors of industry to a situation which appears not unlike a state of war. The forces of production - are maintained on a war footing. The modern "captain of industry" is of the same stuff which makes great generals. He is a farsighted, determined leader of men, with his mind fixed on a single end, and with an industrial army at his command. Over against him are many opposing forces, — the force of his immediate competitors in business, the remoter hostility of competing nations, and, more than all, the spirit of industrial disaffection stirring in his own troops and inciting to mutiny. More and more the industrial world finds itself occupied by two armed camps, the force of the employed combined to meet what seem the aggressions of the employers, and the force of the employers combined to resist what seem the unreasonable demands of the employed. Strikes and lock-outs are temporary raids across the enemy's frontier; organization on both sides disciplines and drills the contending armies; industrial arbitration, like international arbitration, offers itself as a last substitute for 'battle; while, hanging on to the skirts of the two forces, threatening the employers with violence, and weakening by its competition the power of the employed, is that unorganized and shifting mass which we call the army of the unemployed. Even international diplomacy is now concerned quite as much with questions of industrial warfare as with political issues, and the treaties, the competitions, and the territorial expansion of nations have become more and more the weapons of the warfare of trade. If this is a true picture of the competitions of industry, then the present form of the industrial question becomes plain. It is a question of adequate substitutes for economic war. It is the problem of industrial peace. This peace may be sought in many ways. Sometimes it is temporarily secured by the sheer superior force of one party in the conflict. Such peace, however, in industrial, as in political life, is unstable and disturbed. The force that has been crushed waits for its occasion to renew resistance. Industrial slavery, like political slavery, prophesies revolution. Again, industrial peace is sought by retreating from the field of industrial conflict into the uncompetitive tranquillity of some communistic society, as pious souls in other days retreated from the conflicts of the world to the monastic life. Such peace, however, is even at its best for the few only. The hurrying world of modern industry passes by these undertakings, as a railway train in Italy sweeps by some lingering monastery on its secluded height. Sometimes, again, industrial peace is actually established within a limited circle, as in the substitution of mutual interest for commercial antagonism in the coöperative system. Finally, such peace is sometimes dreamed of as universal and permanent, within a coöperative commonwealth of common ownership and industrial democracy. All such schemes and dreams assume that the present war footing of industry, like that of nations, is both extravagant and unnecessary; all are wit |