It is a commonplace that Socialism has already become a powerful world-wide movement and is destined to acquire still greater momentum. The strength which it already possesses in the German Empire is considered to be one of the most significant factors in the political world today, and many competent persons are of the opinion that if German Socialism could but dissociate itself from the anti-religious elements of its constitution it would at once obtain an immense accession of Catholic workingmen. If you wish to gauge its power in England, you have but to observe the present situation in which a responsible government has endeavored to meet the recent national, industrial and commercial crises by the introduction of legislative measures, which the most prominent English statesman has designated as pure, unadulterated Socialism. In America the strength of the Socialist party is comparatively slight, but its numbers are by no means trivial; and the extent to which Socialist views prevail is not to be measured by the figures which represent the strict party affiliation. There are many organizations which though not constituents of the Socialist party itself are yet active promoters of Socialist economic and political ideas. Besides, outside of all Socialist and semiSocialist associations, the feeling and conviction is in the atmosphere of the wage-earning world that the toilers are not getting their just share of the wealth which, without them,

would not exist—and this atmosphere is the very one to favor the growth of Socialism. For, to great numbers of those who suffer under the present distribution of the good things of life, Socialism presents itself as the messiah announcing a new kingdom of justice wherein the worker shall receive the full product of his labor, and where if any man shall not work neither shall he eat. What is the source whence Socialism draws its vitality and vigor? To this question a unanimous answer is returned by clouds of witnesses, many of whom would agree upon scarcely any other matter regarding the subject. Here Leo XIII and Archbishop Kettler are in accord with Mr. Bax and Mr. Hyndman. "It is the giant task of our age," declared Kettler, "to fill up again the abyss that divides the rich from the poor and woe to us if it is not filled up." Said Leo XIII: “ All agree and there can be no question whatever that some remedy must be found and found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so heavily and unjustly at this moment on the vast majority of the working classes." The twenty years that have elapsed since these words were written, which epitomize ten thousand pages of burning invective thrown out continually by the Socialist press, have not witnessed the application of the needed remedy. It certainly does not lie within the lines of thought developed by Mr. Mallock who would preach to the workingman that he is very well off indeed, if he only knew it; and is obtaining more than his fair share of the fruits of industry. "Injustice," iterates the Socialist, "continues to press heavily on the working classes; and matters will not cease to grow worse until you cut the root of the evil, that is, the present system of capitalism, in which the workers are robbed of the fruit of their toil, in order that the idle rich may live, not merely in comfort, but in boundless luxury and splendor." There can, he argues, be no adequate improvement obtained from the present political, economic and social constitution. The two great political parties? A plague o' both your houses; they, like the judiciary, the legislature and the executive are controlled by the money-bags. Individualism means capitalism;

and capitalism means, and will, till it is abolished, continue to mean the exploitation of the wage-earner in the interest of the money-owners! These ideas are set forth skilfully, in form best adapted to stir the blood and imagination of the workers and of those who resent the evils of the present condition. Parallel columns are drawn up. On one side, the factory-worker striving to feed a wife and children on six or seven dollars a week; the unhealthy factory and the still more unhealthy tenement or shanty; anaemic childhood and pauper old age; girls toiling for a pittance insufficient to support them, and the abodes of infamy recruited largely through the pressure of penury. On the other side, the five thousand dollar bulldog, the hundred thousand dollars paid for my lady's pearl necklace, or to decorate a church for a bridal ceremony; a million and a half spent on champagne in the public hostelries of one city to welcome in the new year with its message of good will; the fortunes sunk to buy a European title for the daughter of some successful exploiter. The Socialist suffers from no lack of colors on his palette to cover the canvases that he presents to the labor world with "Look on this picture and on that." This attack on the abuses of capitalism and the injustices engendered by them is one feature of the Socialist campaign. If it were the only one, the duty of the Catholic Church to oppose the party would be much less obvious than it actually is. There is another feature, which is a downright warfare against religion and especially against the Catholic Church as the one consistent representative of the supernatural; and the great danger which threatens in many quarters of the country the welfare of Catholic flocks is that many Catholics. see in Socialism only the former character, ignoring or denying altogether the existence of the latter. The term Socialism has acquired a vague, shifting, elastic signification which leads not merely to confusion but also to a great deal of pernicious deception. The pastor who finds himself called on to protect or rescue any of his people from the Socialist drift should know that he must, in the first place, be able to grasp and to expose the various ideas, doctrines, principles, programs, parties, as

pirations, movements, which now in the aggregate, now separately, are designated under the terms Socialist and Socialism. In the second place he must be able to present the principles of Catholic ethics upon which may be based a program of social reform broad enough and deep enough to satisfy the aspirations of those whose Socialism consists in a very reasonable dissatisfaction with the abuses of the present condition, and a willingness to promote any movement that promises to bring about a salutary change.

What are the various implications gathered under the term Socialism? It means a certain economic theory regarding the production and the distribution of the material goods used for the satisfaction of human needs and desires. It means, in the second place, a philosophy of life, a sociology; and a scheme of social and political organization constructed upon this economic and its associated philosophic theory. Again, it means an organized party or parties, with a definite history behind. them, that have advocated and prosecuted a movement to bring about the reconstruction of society in accordance with this economic and philosophic doctrine that is, in the concrete, the Socialists. Again, Socialism is used to designate this party's immediate and ultimate programs; sometimes only the immediate; at other times, this or that measure proposed by the Socialists; and very frequently it simply means an attitude of sympathy with the provisional measures of social reform proposed by the party-and approved by many who are strongly and irrevocably opposed to socialist philosophy and to the party inasmuch as it is committed to that philosophy. Finally, not to pursue distinctions unnecessarily far, owing to the discordant oracles issued by the professed exponents of Socialism, quite disparate and even contrary ideas and programs are presented as being, respectively, the genuine tenets of the Socialist party. The Socialist party is atheistic, declares Mr. Jones, for has he not read Belfort Bax and Hyndman and Ferri and a long list of other Socialist authorities stretching back to Marx and Engels themselves, not to speak of the uninterrupted witness of the current socialist newspapers? Not at all, replies Mr.

Smith, you are mistaken; read Spargo and Kirkup; look at the official program of the American Socialists in 1910, in which they squarely affirm that the Socialist party is primarily an economic and political movement; and is not concerned with matters of religious belief. In a similar fashion Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith argue over the destruction of the family, free love, confiscation of private property, etc., etc., till the wordy duel ends with each party standing exactly where he stood at first, except that he has probably conceived a very low opinion of either the intellect or the sincerity of his adversary. Nowhere more than in serious discussion with persons who are inclined towards Socialism, but are not actually members of the Socialist party-with the genuine, confirmed Socialist argument is usually thrown away-is there profit to be reaped from keeping in mind the words of Locke: "If the idea be not agreed upon betwixt the speaker and the hearer for which the words stand the agreement is not about things but names. As often as such a word whose signification is not ascertained betwixt them comes into use their understandings have no other object wherein they agree but barely the sound; the things they think of at that time as expressed by the word being quite different."

Of Socialism properly speaking, that is, the professions and aims of the Socialist party, the economic theory may be said to be the very essence. That theory is formulated as follows by one of the foremost American exponents of the system. today: "Socialism advocates the transfer of ownership in the social tools of production, the land, factories, machinery, railroads, mines, etc., from the individualist capitalist to the people to be operated for the benefit of all." This statement may be called the greatest common measure of every group or body that can lay claim to the name of Socialist. It was proposed by Marx, it continues to be the definition of the ultimate aim of the party to-day. Frequently the economic theory which is embodied in this principle is said to be the only doctrine maintained by official Socialism today as the basis of its activity and its practical program. Many a man who