The Religious Condition of the Working Men of America and the Effect of Recent Theological Discussion Upon Them

BY

SAMUEL M. JONES, Esquire

HE religious condition of working men and of all other men is practically the same. Society is a unit. Man is a social being, and the fact that one is asked to write under a title such as forms the head of this article, is one of the evidences that we are not yet free from the most deadly form of scepticism; that is unbelief in one's fellows, the evidence of the unbelief being manifest in the suggestiveness of the title indicating that the idea that man can be dealt with as classes has not yet disappeared from the public mind. I do not accept the class idea at all. In my own life, I have been a working man, a superintendent, a business man, a manufacturer and a mayor, and in all of these various relations to society I cannot see that I was anything other than a man, always, to a very great extent, moved by the same impulses, inspired by the same hopes and ambitions and subject to the same disappointments, failures and conflicting emotions.

The very idea that we must deal with people as classes, in addition to being irreligious, sceptical and atheistic, is misleading, confusing and almost an absolute hindrance to one's usefulness as a factor in the educational work that is carrying the race forward to larger liberty.

The religious condition of the working men in America must, of necessity, be the reflex of the religious condition of the business men and the professional men, or the men who do not work. If anything can be said to be social rather than in

dividual, it must be our religion, for there is no way in which our religion can find expression except in social relation; for if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? It follows then that my religious condition will be reflected in the condition of those most closely related to me; under the existing capitalistic system, these are the working men, commonly called my employees, upon the fruit of whose toil I may be living an entirely idle and wholly useless life; to such an extent as I am so living, my life is an immoral one. I am not eating my bread in the sweat of my face, but rather I am eating bread produced by the sweat of another man's face, and that other man my brother. And it is as certain that the immorality which I am practising by using my fellow men as mere instruments to gather profit will be reflected in their lives as the virus of smallpox is certain to show itself when injected into the human body.

I have said that I have been unconscious of being anything but a man in the various conditions of life through which I have passed, and I know that I get closer to the God in my fellow men when I meet them, treat them and deal with them as equals, as integral parts of a social whole, as people, than I could possibly get by, as it were, putting them under a microscope and studying them as classes or as representatives of a class.

So to those who want to improve the religious condition of the working men of America I think I can safely say, first remove the beam from thine own eyes, then shalt thou see clearly to remove the mote from the eye of thy brother." As the God in us finds opportunity for more perfect expression through more and more just dealing with our fellow men, our eyes will be opened and we will see our fellow men, not as classes or separate and distinct individuals, the highest duty according to prevailing notions being material interest, being the getting of things, property, for himself; but we shall look upon society as a human whole and we shall find our chief joy and delight in doing as a duty our utmost to contribute to the

happiness of the whole social body. Such a title as the one under which this article is written will have fallen into disuse, the term working men will have become obsolete, for when all are religious then all will work, for nothing can be more irreligious than to live an idle and useless life; every one that so lives, every one that does not render to society useful service is living a useless life and living upon the toil of some other

one.

We reach the conclusion, then, stated in the form of a proposition in the beginning of this article that the religious condition of the working men is the religious condition of all men, and we understand more clearly than before that "no man liveth to himself." Of course, I have not used the word religious in any narrow sense; I have rather used it as including all that is best in man. In the narrow and technical sense, I presume the business and the professional classes are more religious than the working men; that is, that in a larger proportion they are Church members and attend the "means of grace," and so on. But the Church itself, no longer deceived, is coming to see that there is a difference between Pharisaism and religion, that there is no real difference between love to God and love to man, and that the only way of expressing one's love to God is in one's dealings with men. And I believe that in the evolutionary processes that now distinctively mark this present epoch, we can see the transformation that is taking place inside the Church that will one day lead the Church to take the high place that must be held by some form of institution, whether you call it "hall of reason or Church or what not, where men and women will gather together and dismiss their cares and "shake their hearts out together" as the Germans say, in fellowship one with another. When those better days come, we shall see days that are less strifeful for we shall have learned that "life consisteth not in things" but rather in being, in doing, in giving, instead of in getting.

The one hopeful sign of the times that bids us all take courage is seen in the growth of the religious sentiment-I mean

the sure enough religious as separated from the pietistic notion-for, in the best sense of the word, the movement for social reform is a religious movement. The growth of the idea of the Unity of the entire race is full of encouragement to all lovers of righteousness. No one can be truly religious who does not accept this important fundamental, for the thought of oneness is as scientific as it is religious. If God is All-Father then "it follows as the night the day" that all mankind are brothers. This lesson is being taught in many ways. The true spirit of Socialism, that has grown so marvelously in our country during the last few years, is the spirit of Brotherhood, is religious, and while there are many advocates of Socialism who are yet teaching according to the narrow conceptions of individualism as it finds expression in the party idea in our politics, yet I believe that the day is not far distant when all will see that this teaching must give way to the logical interpretation of the broad principle towards the realization of which humanity is progressing. Socialism is growing among all so-called classes-perhaps among working men faster than anywhere else.

The complaint of the party socialists is directed wholly against the competitive system, and the competitive system is, of course, a system of warfare. We can easily see that competition is wrong in economics, in material things; that the system can never bring peace to the world; that it means the survival of the strongest; in short as has been many times said, competition is war. The awakening of the social conscience and the religious impulse within us will bring us to see that if competition is wrong anywhere, then the competitive principle must be wrong everywhere. But we are not led to see this great truth by the appeals that are made to our material interests, but only as the appeal comes to the religious instinct; that is, to the idea of Brotherhood and duty. All will admit that natural brothers ought not to fight either for trade, advantage, through the methods of business, or for any other advantage by the fiercer methods of warfare. The competitive