THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1907 THE SOCIAL CRISIS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8543, 25 September 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1907 THE SOCIAL CRISIS.

"Will some Gibbon of Mongol race sit by the shore of the Pacific in the year A.D. 3000, and write on the Decline and Fall of the ChristianEmpire? Or will the 20th century mark for the future historian the real adolescence of humanity, the great emancipation from barbarism and from the paralysis of injustice, and the beginning of a progress in the intellectual, social, and moral life of mankir.d to which all past history has n6 parallel?" The answer to these supremo questions, says Mr Walter Rauschenbusch, depends "almost wholly on the moral force which the Christian nations can bring to the fighting line against wrong. It is either a revival of social religion or the deluge." Mr" Rauschenbusch is Professor of Church History in Rochester Theological Seminary, and he discusses the whole matter in an enthusiastic volume, entitled "Christianity and the Social Crisis." It is interesting to know that he got his first-hand information as to what the social crisis means tu men and women as pastor for eleven years of a church of working people on the west side of New York. That we are at a crisis neither he nor any other thoughtful man doubts, even though "the cry of./ Crisis! Crisis!' has become a weariness." "Every age," he says, "and every year are critical and fraught with destiny. Yet in the widest survey of history, Western civilization is now at a decisive point in its development." "If the 20th century could do for us in the control of social ieform forces what the 19th did for us in the control of natural forces," Mr Rauschenbusch declares that "our grandchildren would live in a society that would be justified in regarding our present social life as semi-barbar-ous." One of the most striking chapters in this book is that in which the writer discusses "Why has Christianity never undertaken the work of social reconstruction?" In this he comes to the conclusion that "the failure of the Church to undertake the work of a Christian re-

construction of social life has not been caused by its close adherence to the spirit of Christ and to the essence of ita reliigous task, but to .the deflecting influence of alien forces penetrating Christianity from without and clogging the revolutionary moral power inherent in it." Such a conception of Christian history, he admits, seems like a tremendous impeachment of the Church for apostacy and dereliction of duly, "but not to anyone who ! understands the patience of God and the infinite slowness and imperfection of historical progress. It takes so long for new ideas to trickle down through the solid strata of human life; so long for new conceptions to get sufficient grip on the mass of men to sway them; so long for the moral nature of the social body to be sensitised." Bushnell's great saying that the soul of a 1! improvement is the improvement of the soul is evidently a cardinal point with this Rochester pro- y lessor. For he says: "The greatest contribution which any man can make to the social movement is the contribution of a regenerated personality, of a will which sets justice above policy an.l profit, and of an intellect emancipated from fa'sehood."

THE BRITISH RAILWAY SERVICE.

There is some reason to suppose from recent cable messages that the dislocation of the greater part of the British railway service is threatened by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. The threatened strike would probably result in tremendous national loss. The point at issue at the present moment is one of recognition. The Society claim that the railway companies should accept its officials as representatives of their employees, but the directors of the companies refuse to do this. The companies aro willing to discuss relevant matters with their employees, but not with an organisation such as the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, which only represents a small minority. In refusing the request of the Society the facts of the case show that the directors are entirely within their moral as well as legal rights. The number of persons employed in working the railways of the United Kingdom is 581,000, of whom only 80,000 are members of the Amalgamated Society, leaving over half-a-million fcr whom it cannot claim to speak. Among the latter are the members of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A cablegram published on Monday morning stated that Mr Fox, Secretary of this Society, had declared that the Society would not join in any railway strike. The Society has a membership of 19,000, of whom the majority are engine-drivers, and their decision not to participate in any strike should carry considerable weight with railway employees. Mr Fox expresses it as his firm belief that there will be no strike. There is no gainsaying the fact that a strike would result in enormous national loss. For in the United Kingdom great cities have grown up as railway centres, and depend upon the railway systems, not only for daily supplies of food and raw material, but for the daily coming and going of their industrial" armies; great ports are but the coastal terminals of networks of lines which daily carry away the loading of innumerable vessels, and daily bring in return cargoes for their departing; while every phase of the intricate manufacturing, commercial and social life of a densely populated land is based upon the assumption that continued railway facilities are part of the established order of things. The development of the railway business in the United Kingdom has been in keeping with this general dependence upon its assistance. At the end of I 11905 the route mileage was 22,847 miles, and the average cost of the system was about £54,000 per mile. The capital sunk in the railway business by the various companies was £1,282,000,000. The number of passengers carried during the year 1905 was nearly 1,200,000,000, exclusive of season ticket-holders. The companies received from season ticket-holders over £4,000,000. Other passengers paid close on £49,000,000. Over £56,000,000 was paid for the carriage of goods. These figures give some idea of what the railways mean to the United Kingdom.