In carrying out this programme the Catholic Church teaches and prac-fises, not the equal, but the unselfish distribütjon of material goods among men according to these principles of justice and fight—that. is, according to the moral code of the Ten Commandments. "Mother of the fich arid the poor alike, the weight of her authority has ever been on the side in of the poor and the under-privileged. None has ever spoken out more fearlessly than the Popes in defence of the poor man's rights. In their encyclicals, official pronouncements of the Head of the Catholic Church, is voiced a championship of the people which statesmen of many countries, pagan as well as Christian, have re-More than once they have proclaimed that after study of various social systems they have found nothing sounder than the principles expounded in the social encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI. Even her In dealing with the Middle Ages there is no more fascinating paga of history than the story of the gutlds—great trades unions which not only ensured a contented population, bui also produced those mirucies of workmanship, the Gothic cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The guilds were trades-unions in the highest meaning of the term, and were essentially religious in their constitution. Each guild had its patron saint, its chapel and its altar, where Mass was, celpbrajed for the living and dead members, They were mutual benefit societies, with a thoroughly developed system of insurance io cover the sick and the disabled; they took care of the E. widows and the orphans of dead members. They were a famil Organization in which the employer was responsible not merely for the trade of his apprentices but also for their moral and spiritual welfare. and|But probably the most striking feature about them was the brotherly character of the relations between employer and employed, to which undoubtedly must be ascribed in great part of the industrial peace which the world enjoyed for many centuries, These guilds flourished throughout Europe, but began to decline after the so-called Reformation of the sixteenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century they had completely disappeared and the lot of the working-man grew steadily worse. The whole history of Europe bears out these statements, and it is impossible to explain the equilibrium of social forces except we ascribe it to the fostering care and guidance of the Church—that is; of course, the Catholic Church, for there was no other form of Christianity down to that fatal sixteenth century.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.