26o ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



the endless forms of charitable and educational work through- 

 out the state — I do not mean the institutions which are purely 

 Catholic in origin and management — which require the intel- 

 ligent, energetic service of every man who can assist and 

 uplift his fellow-man. Yet how many Catholics are there upon 

 such boards and committees, working side by side with their 

 fellow-citizens? The questions of labor, wages, working 

 hours, factory laws, compensation for accidents, protection 

 from machinery, child labor, women's work, co-operative 

 banks and building associations, housing, tenement reform, 

 sweat-shop, home industries, and the myriad questions of 

 capital, labor and just treatment which concern these things, 

 require Catholics, as well as non-Catholics, to solve them and 

 set them aright. 



There is immense room for constructive social work, such 

 as congestion in cities, reformation of young delinquents, the 

 incoming of immigration, placing the foreign population where 

 it will do the most good both to itself and to the state at 

 large, and there is even greater room for the discussion and 

 solution of the larger civic and moral questions, which I need 

 not touch upon in detail. In each of these. Catholics should 

 take large part. It ought to be worth while for our neighbors 

 to know that there is often a Catholic point of view upon all 

 such things, just as there is a Catholic view upon the questions 

 concerning the family and the home and all that tends to drag 

 them down, and it ought to be made worth their while to have 

 them know our opinion upon all those things, even if only 

 for the sake of broad enlightenment, and to ask our cordial 

 assistance in every movement which makes for the betterment 

 of man, and the production of a nobler citizen for the state. 



We have the men capable of studying and of giving vast 

 assistance in the solution of all the complex problems of the 

 higher, greater and wider citizenship which looks after the 

 well-being and improvement of our fellow-men, and which 

 looks further than the mere carrying of the election at hand. 

 Our citizenship cannot be better employed than in entering 

 upon these larger fields of human endeavor. Just as we have 

 already made an impression upon the political life of this 

 and other states, just as we have convinced the powers who 

 write political platforms that we are persons to be in a meas- 

 ure reckoned with, either for votes or for office, so also should 



