A BISHOP ON SOCIALISM.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 48, 20 November 1907, Page 3

A BISHOP ON SOCIALISM.

Preaching at the Cathedral Church, Birmingham, recently, the Bishop of Bmninghain (Dr. Gore) said it was a fact that there were workers who were paid a wage on which they could not live; What was the meaning of this exaggerated . and inflated wealth and luxury at the one end of the social scale and the misery and poverty of a vast proportion of the population at the other' end? In the past, perhaps, men had ventured to plead economic laws; that they must not interfere with the law of supply and demand. That was tho magical formula that used to leap to their lips. But economic science reiterated thtifc cry no more. It had learnt that the real life of a nation consisted not only in the production but in the distribution of economic good, and in the number of individuals who had enough to flourish on, while the real poverty of a nation lay in the number of those whoso lives wore stunted and dwarfed and thwarted; so that if they proclaimed what was now economically known as the doctrine of a minimum wage, they would not find the economists of to-day raising any objection. There was rising, not in England only, but throughout Europe, a great cry for justice. It was called Socialism. Socialism was an economic theory, and with the economic theory Christianity was certainly not identified; but there was tho great moral claim of justice, for the just distribution of tho proceeds of industry. Yet the Christian Church, on the whole, had had very little to say to it. Why did they take it so easily while there were so many being starved, so many flives being impoverished and embittered? The jir.iyer "Thy Kingdom come" meant something which, in the light of what the organisation of society was to-day, was indeed tremendous.