Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/644

 624 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Give the workingmen the same rights and privileges which the rich enjoy :

Mr. Paige. — If ihe church would let the workingmen have the same rights and privileges that the rich enjoy, the church would be too small to hold them all. Let the church help us fight some of our battles with the rich, and show it is friendly with the working classes.

Preach and study less theology and more social ethics: Miss Nason. — Set the ministers earnestly to studying, not theology, nor creeds, but social economy and its bearing on morality .... until the church repents of its money-worship it is not a fit companion for the common people.

Miss Nason prescribes the last remedy suggested by the labor-leader class. It is a no less radical one than driving the rich out of the church altogether. In Miss Nason's own words she proposes To drive the money-changers out of the temple.

Rev. Herbert N. Casson returns a reply still more startling. Mr. Casson despairs of any remedy until the church repents and is converted :

The church has nothing to give that we care to receive, and nothing to teach that we care to know. We are very well satisfied to have workingmen out of touch with the church. The church must learn before it can instruct.

The replies from workingmen who are churchgoers strike an entirely different note from the foregoing, as regards both cause and remedy. The causes assigned by this class are four in number :

Viciousness on the part of workingmen. A Christian work- ingman writes :

In the present shop where I am some devote Sunday to worldly pleasure, and in the case of some it would interfere with vicious ways.

The results of poverty :

Some think they cannot pay for religious privileges, and cannot dress well enough to be present in the church.

The inconsistencies of Christian men. A deacon writes :

All that the majority of my daily associates know about the church is what they see in the lives of us who are Christians. The most frequent reason I receive for non-churchgoing is that there are as good people out of the church