mation of trusts and combinations to limit and restrain competition.
There are also a growing number of enterprises which are purely
philanthropic, such as the provision of cheap and healthy homes for
working men and women.

In the conduct of business, too, public opinion does not approve of the
man who exacts the utmost farthing, and weighs and measures to the
closest fraction. The most grasping creditor, who precipitates the ruin
upon the bankrupt, and the landlord or money-lender, who exacts
pitilessly and turns a deaf ear to the call of a brother for mercy, are
also condemned at the bar of public opinion.

These and many other considerations lead us to some knowledge of the
inestimable value of the principle of fraternity to correct the harsh
and inequitable working of the industrial organism. It remains only to
be said that in this sphere of action its influence is but a small
fraction of what it ought to be and what it promises to become.

It is through their conscience, as well as through their innate sense of
justice and right, that men are coming to see how the extortion by
monopolies and the waste of competition in which they have engaged are
an injury to the common weal and an expression of might rather than of
right. It is in this way that we are beginning to discern the faults and
imperfections of our present industrial system and to recognize that
progress toward better things is to be found by recognizing, not
covering, these faults, and doing all in our power to remedy them. In
this work the Christian Church should be in the lead; and a large
proportion of its pastors, accustomed to an earnest and sympathetic
appreciation of social evils, are among the foremost to second the
efforts of modern reformers. Of the rank and file of the Church,
however, it is to be regretfully said that they are eminently
conservative; and that, with very many notable exceptions, they are
certainly not in the lead in the efforts to equalize the injustices
which have grown up under the laws of competition. It is largely because
the course of Christians is in this respect so inconsistent with their
professed belief in that grand doctrine of man's divine origin and
universal brotherhood, that the Church, is losing the respect of the
laboring classes. Nor will it regain that respect until it shows by
unmistakable evidence to the men who toil with their hands that it is
alive to the questions of the day,--alive to the injustice o