Labor Sunday Message

When His Holiness Pope Pius XI issued last May his Labor Encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (TIME, June 1), he was reasoning and pronouncing for 331,500,000 Roman Catholics throughout the world. To do approximately the same thing for 22,000,000 U. S. Protestants, there exists the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. It has no way of making its pronouncements authoritative ; but it may and does annually issue a Labor Sunday message to be read in churches throughout the land. Stronger than many a previous one was last week's.

In 1928 the Council listed its social and industrial recommendations: abolition of child labor; protection of women in industry; abatement of poverty; protection of all from occupational diseases and enforced unemployment; old age pensions; rights of employer and employe alike to organize; a living wage. In 1929 it said: ''[The churches] have called attention to persistent and serious unemployment, to the economic insecurity of old age among the workers, and to low standards of income and therefore of living in large sections of the population. ... All are involved in responsibility for these evils."

This was just before Black Friday of 1929. Year later, the Council pointed out: "While in the fall of 1929 the fever of speculation overreached itself ... it cannot be said that any large number of people have . . . become sensitive to the ethical problem involved. . . . Our generation . . . socially blind and morally so callous . . . has insisted on the rights of property to dividends but has concerned itself too little with the right of workers. . . ."

First need this year, reported the Council last week, is relief. But then "are we to continue indefinitely to drift . . . through lack of any adequate social planning? . . . Our economic life now seems to be without a chart." Chief trouble is the present distribution of wealth: "the stark contrast of vast fortunes and breadlines." The average worker earns (according to 1927 statistics) $23.17 a week; millions fall below the average. Of all the wealth in the U. S. in 1921, 33% was owned by 1% of the population; 64% by 10%. Society treats the needy in these times as if they were "dependents, hangers-on, social liabilities." Solution: let their rights --health and unemployment insurance, maternity benefits, et al.--be given them. Let "the best minds" reconstruct our life "on sound religious principles." Let there be a "Christian motive of service."

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