'Father Hagerty, Socialist'

New Zealand Tablet, 22 October 1908, Page 9

'Father Hagerty, Socialist'

A Catholic worker forwards us a Socialist pamphlet written by the Rev. T. J. Hagerty. The author is described in an accompanying leaflet as a ' Roman Catholic priest, 1 and the inference that the casual reader would draw from the further letterpress is that the Rev. Father is exercising the sacred ministry in New York. A copy of the pamphlet in question has been for some time in our possession, and we understand that it has been extensively circulated among Catholic workers throughout New Zealand. Father Hagerty is, no doubt, a Socialist. But his Socialism is much more akin to the extreme variety that is known on Continental Europe than .to anything that we have thus far personally met with in New Zealand, There may be (and probably are) Socialists of the Continental brand in the Dominion. But we write here of those only whom we have personally met and conversed with on the question; and they appear to us to belong to the milder and more mitigated form of Socialism which is more properly called Social Reform. They are worlds away from the extreme views voiced at times by the Rev. T. J. Hagerty.- Some of his writings are said to be innocuous, or at least, free from extreme or violently expressed' views. But his platform utterances were at times of so inflammatory a nature that his spiritual superiors found it necessary to visit him with ecclesiastical censure and to deprive him of his priestly, faculties. He has been for many years past an ex-priest. Few/ if any, of our worker-Socialists (so-called) in New Zealand .will, for instance, be inclined to agree with his theory that the full labor-day should be only two hours. Much less would they sympathise with the principles of spoliation enunciated in a harangue which he is reported

to have delivered to a crowd at^Telturide (Colorado).- on July 3, 1902, on the occasion of the dedication of a monument to an Italian who had been killed during the riots against non-unionist miners in that 'town. Th# following quotation from the speech in question ,'ts~ taken from Kress's Questions of Socialists (Cleveland, Ohio, 19*05, p. 126): 'That railroad is yours; the trams ar,e yours ; those large business blocks and office-buildings down town, that bring in big rents, are yours ; the mercantile stocks of goods are yours ; the bames and the moneys there on deposit are yours; if you want them, go and take them.'