THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL-REFORM MOVEMENT 47
proportion to individual means." They are also in favor of regu- lating, and so far as possible abolishing, all unnecessary night work, and the employment of children and women, especially married women, in factories or in any work that overtaxes their strength, despoils them of their modesty, or compels them to neglect their domestic duties. Employers are bound to consider the health of their workmen, and legal measures to enforce this duty are of great importance. The plan, so ably defended by the anarchist Prince Krapotkine, of doing away with the present factory system, by substituting industrial villages, in which each workman can perform his share of the work under his own roof, with the aid of electric distribution of power, finds much favor with Catholic reformers, on account of its tendency to the restora- tion of family life and the personal dignity of the workman.
The Catholic position on education is well known. It is held that religious and moral instruction is the most important of all, both to the individual and the commonwealth ; and all education should be duly proportioned to the capacities and needs of its subjects, and should be directed toward enabling them to fulfill as perfectly as possible the duties of their particular state and condition of life. The rights of the parents are paramount in education, and cannot be justly contravened by either the state or any other outside power, save in extreme cases when they are forfeited by criminal negligence or abuse.
The welfare of the agricultural interest, the foundation of the national life and prosperity, is the object of the special solici- tude of the Catholic school, and to it many institutions calculated to promote this end, such as the rural unions, cooperative agri- cultural banks, institutes of land credit, etc., owe their origin and diffusion.
In the field of international law the publicists of the dis- tinctly Catholic school teach that the rights and duties of governments are analogous to those of individuals, families, and corporations. War is permissible only in self-defense, or in the vindication of undoubted rights. Annexation of territory is allowable only in cases when it is unoccupied, or destitute of any stable government, or has been forfeited by the crimes of the
