CONDITIONS OF LABOR IN THE CATHOLIC MIDDLE AGES.

New Zealand Tablet, 15 May 1919, Page 28

CONDITIONS OF LABOR IN THE CATHOLIC MIDDLE AGES.

m When people read so .much about the eight-hours working day, they are- inclined to ascribe the movement ; to .socialistic or anarchistic influences (says the Catholic : Watchman of Madras). They forget the working-man is trying earnestly to return at least in some .respects to the conditions of labor that prevailed in the Catholic Middle Ages. If their methods are not much in accordance with the order-loving Catholic Church, yet their objects have the full sanction of the great Pope of the laborers, Leo XIII. The laborer of the Middle Ages lived in entirely different circumstances. There were no great factories, there was hardly a question of competition, and there was no work done by artificial light. His work lasted as long as there was daylight and varied considerably in accordance with the season. In the short winter days he would work no more than eight hours, whilst in the long summer days he worked sometimes double that time. Yet on an average he worked but 2852 hours a year whilst a modern workman, laboring for ten hours a day. works 3000 hours a year. The reason is that the Middle Age workman observed all the Catholic festivals, in those days far more numerous than at present, amounting yearly to 115 free days. Though his working day was often long, yet there was not.the nervous strain of the present day, and he was not merely part of a machine but an intelligent worker, and his average of working-hours during the year was considerably smaller than that of outworkers. Even the free Saturday afternoon which they are clamoring for now is a relic of the olden days when the festival started with first Vespers on its vigil and the Catholic workman was given his opportunity to attend the services and go to confession. Again the Trade Unions so powerful at the present day are but a substitute for the old guilds where master and man met amicably and where differences were settled by the voice of all interested. We talk about democracy: would to God we had the democracy of the Middle Ages when Catholic principles were the foundation of life in all its aspects. There are not many social students among us- — C.T.S. tracts areread except those belonging to the Social Series. With the result that Catholics know little or nothing about social questions and their history, and that they are easily led to believe that it is “democracy” that is ruling the world without the Church, whilst, as a matter of fact, after four centuries of Reformation people have lost their faith and their money, and they cannot find anything better than to go back to the despised methods of the Catholic Middle Ages. Lay apostles should make it their duty to study social questions, for many a Catholic young man thinks that the social enlightenment of the present day prevents him from being a faithful Catholic and the ignorances by which we permit souls to be lost is sinful Whatever good there is in the present social movement is based on Catholic principles; whatever evil there is in it is the sad heritage of the Reformation. 11 you want to talk and think sensibly about social matters, then begin by reading the great Encyclical of Leo XIII. on the condition of the working people, called by its first phrase Iternm . A ararum; and your eyes will be opened to the marvellous light shed there on social questions, and you will have to admit that without the Church the world at large, and the worker in particular, will have ! no chance. -