STATE INTERVENTION IN SOCIAL ECONOMY. 465 



the world. To it is due the emancipation of labor, and the devel- 

 opment by that of public wealth in the nineteenth century. Be- 

 cause a generation or two, in two or three countries, have abused 

 it, is no reason for forgetting its services, especially at a time 

 when we see the old chains brought back, or new ones in forging, 

 with which to load industry and labor. 



The third part of the Pope's Encyclical is devoted to this im- 

 portant subject, and, after touching upon several aspects of the 

 question, he concludes that " equity requires that the state concern 

 itself with the workmen, and so act that, of all the goods they secure 

 for society, a suitable part shall return to them, such as habita- 

 tion and clothing, and that they may live at the cost of the fewest 

 pains and privations. "Whence it follows that the state should 

 favor all that closely or remotely appears calculated to ameliorate 

 their lot." Such is the Pope's theory ; but this is of less impor- 

 tance than the practice. If the state has a right to intervene, 

 what should be the conditions and what the limits of its interven- 

 tion ? The Pope is very careful in expressing himself on this 

 point, and declares that intervention ought not to be exercised ex- 

 cept when it is absolutely indispensable, or when there is no other 

 means of opposing the evils with which society is afflicted, and 

 should be limited to seeing that every individual's rights are re- 

 spected and preserved. If it comes to pass, he says, that work- 

 men, abandoning their work or suspending it by strikes, menace 

 public tranquillity ; that the natural bonds of the family are re- 

 laxed among them; that religion is violated by employers not 

 leaving them time to perform their duties of worship ; if, by pro- 

 miscuous mingling of the sexes or other excitations to vice, the 

 factories imperil morality ; if the employer imposes iniquitous 

 burdens on the workmen, or dishonors their manhood by un- 

 worthy and degrading conditions; if he endangers their health 

 by excessive tasks, disproportionate to their sex or age in such 

 cases it is necessary to use, within certain limits, the force and 

 authority of the laws. In the protection of private rights, the 

 Pope adds, the state should concern itself especially with the 

 weak and indigent ; and he qualifies his whole expression by say- 

 ing that the law should undertake nothing beyond what is neces- 

 sary to repress abuses and remove dangers. 



The idea of the state as a Providence appears to us not only 

 false and pernicious from the social point of view ; it seems to have 

 about it, too, in these days, something unchristian : it has a pagan 

 flavor, a scent of sacrilegious usurpation. We discern in it a pre- 

 tension of the state to erect itself into a divinity which shall take 

 the place of the invisible God and arrogate to itself his function 

 on the earth. It is as if there were a revolution in the govern- 

 ment of the universe, as if another Providence were coming in to 



VOL. XLI. 35 



