* Proletariat:  Derived originally from the Latin PROLETARII, the name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who were of value to the state only as the rearers of offspring (PROLES); in other words, they were of no importance either for wealth, or position, or exceptional ability.

“You never had the proletariat,” Ernest cried.  “The proletariat has grown up outside the Church and without the Church.”

“I do not follow you,” the Bishop said faintly.

“Then let me explain.  With the introduction of machinery and the factory system in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the great mass of the working people was separated from the land.  The old system of labor was broken down.  The working people were driven from their villages and herded in factory towns.  The mothers and children were put to work at the new machines.  Family life ceased.  The conditions were frightful.  It is a tale of blood.”

“I know, I know,” Bishop Morehouse interrupted with an agonized expression on his face.  “It was terrible.  But it occurred a century and a half ago.”

“And there, a century and a half ago, originated the modern proletariat,” Ernest continued.  “And the Church ignored it.  While a slaughter-house was made of the nation by the capitalist, the Church was dumb.  It did not protest, as to-day it does not protest.  As Austin Lewis* says, speaking of that time, those to whom the command ’Feed my lambs’ had been given, saw those lambs sold into slavery and worked to death without a protest.** The Church was dumb, then, and before I go on I want you either flatly to agree with me or flatly to disagree with me.  Was the Church dumb then?”

* Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in the fall election of 1906 Christian Era.  An Englishman by birth, a writer of many books on political economy and philosophy, and one of the Socialist leaders of the times.

** There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of the child and women slaves in the English factories in the latter half of the eighteenth century of the Christian Era.  In such industrial hells arose some of the proudest fortunes of that day.

Bishop Morehouse hesitated.  Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to this fierce “infighting,” as Ernest called it.

“The history of the eighteenth century is written,” Ernest prompted.  “If the Church was not dumb, it will be found not dumb in the books.”

“I am afraid the Church was dumb,” the Bishop confessed.

“And the Church is dumb to-day.”

“There I disagree,” said the Bishop.

Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and accepted the challenge.

“All right,” he said.  “Let us see.  In Chicago there are women who toil all the week for ninety cents.  Has the Church protested?”

“This is news to me,” was the answer.  “Ninety cents per week!  It is horrible!”