92 THE CONDITION OP LABOR.
page after page of the wonderful works of creative intelligence ; it is this that has narrowed the Atlantic to an ocean ferry and trained the lightning to carry our messages to the remotest lands ; it is this that is opening to us possibilities beside which all that our modern civilization has as yet accomplished seem small. Nor can it be repressed save by degrading and embruting men; by reducing Europe to Asia.
Hence, short of what wages may be earned when all restrictions on labor are removed and access to natural opportunities on equal terms secured to all, it is impos- sible to fix any rate of wages that will be deemed just, or any rate of wages that can prevent working-men striving to get more. So far from it making working-men more contented to improve their condition a little, it is certain to make them more discontented.
Nor are you asking justice when you ask employers to pay their working-men more than they are compelled to pay more than they could get others to do the work for. You are asking charity. For the surplus that the rich employer thus gives is not in reality wages, it is essen- tially alms.
In speaking of the practical measures for the improve- ment of the condition of labor which your Holiness sug- gests, I have not mentioned what you place much stress upon charity. But there is nothing practical in such recommendations as a cure for poverty, nor will any one so consider them. If it were possible for the giving of alms to abolish poverty there would be no poverty in Christendom.
Charity is indeed a noble and beautiful virtue, grateful to man and approved by God. But charity must be built on justice. It cannot supersede justice.
What is wrong with the condition of labor through the Christian world is that labor is robbed. And while
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