STATE INTERVENTION IN SOCIAL ECONOMY. 463 



tions occur. In all other mining distinctly profitable objects are 

 sought, and purposes are carried out beneficial generally to man- 

 kind. This remark would apply to gold mines, to coal mines, to 

 tin, copper, and lead mines ; but at the De Beers mine all the 

 wonderful arrangements I have described above are put in force 

 in order to extract from the depths of the ground, solely for the 

 wealthy classes, a tiny crystal to be used for the gratification of 

 female vanity in imitation of a lust for personal adornment 

 essentially barbaric if not altogether savage. 







STATE INTERVENTION IN SOCIAL ECONOMY. 



By M. ANATOLE LEROY BEAULIEU. 



THE Church has now a social doctrine which some Catholics 

 assume to impose on the faith as a teaching of infallible au- 

 thority. The papacy, turning toward the democracy, has pre- 

 sented a programme of social reform ; * and in the face of the 

 courtiers and of the people has declared to the age that the first 

 article of the social reform must be a moral reform. This is a 

 hard word to many ears, and the wise men of the world hearing 

 it shake their heads and pass on. " Is that all you have to tell 

 us ? " the children of the age seem to say ; " we have other things 

 "to do than stop to hear your wise advice. The time for these moral 

 lessons has passed. Our progressive age wants something newer 

 and more substantial, which it will hardly go for to Rome." 

 Pope Leo XIII seems to have anticipated these sarcastic reflec- 

 tions, and his language is in marked distinction from that of his 

 predecessors, by his not talking of religion and morals alone. He 

 knows that this is not enough for the unbelieving masses ; and 

 after having reminded us that God alone can save us, he does not 

 refuse to consider the means proposed by the wisdom or imagina- 

 tion of men for the pacification of contemporary society ; and he 

 examines these means with a kindly and patient solicitude, not as 

 & mystic bent on exposing their vanity, but as a practical man 

 anxious to find early solutions, and sincerely desiring to amelio- 

 rate the material position of the working classes. 



Two ways to this result are open to our society : one by the 

 intervention of the state, the other by special associations. Leo 

 XIII has examined them both very carefully ; and we purpose 

 to see what he thinks of the first, the broadest one, on which the 

 masses would cast themselves as if by instinct. Is the Church 

 in favor of the intervention of the state or against it ? The ma- 



* In the Labor Encyclical. 



