this world. I know that the Church has lost the--what you call the
proletariat."*

* Proletariat: Derived originally from the Latin PROLETARII,
the name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who
were of value to the state only as the rearers of offspring
(PROLES); in other words, they were of no importance either
for wealth, or position, or exceptional ability.

"You never had the proletariat," Ernest cried. "The proletariat has
grown up outside the Church and without the Church."

"I do not follow you," the Bishop said faintly.

"Then let me explain. With the introduction of machinery and the factory
system in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the great mass of
the working people was separated from the land. The old system of labor
was broken down. The working people were driven from their villages and
herded in factory towns. The mothers and children were put to work at
the new machines. Family life ceased. The conditions were frightful. It
is a tale of blood."

"I know, I know," Bishop Morehouse interrupted with an agonized
expression on his face. "It was terrible. But it occurred a century and
a half ago."

"And there, a century and a half ago, originated the modern
proletariat," Ernest continued. "And the Church ignored it. While a
slaughter-house was made of the nation by the capitalist, the Church
was dumb. It did not protest, as to-day it does not protest. As Austin
Lewis* says, speaking of that time, those to whom the command 'Feed my
lambs' had been given, saw those lambs sold into slavery and worked to
death without a protest.** The Church was dumb, then, and before I go on
I want you either flatly to agree with me or flatly to disagree with me.
Was the Church dumb then?"

* Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist
ticket in the fall election of 1906 Christian Era. An
Englishman by birth, a writer of many books on political
economy and philosophy, and one of the Socialist leaders of
the times.

** There is no more horrible page in history than the
treatment of the child and women slaves in the English
factories in the latter half of the eighteenth century of
the Christian Era. In such industrial hells arose some of
the proudest fortunes of that day.

Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to this
fierce "infighting," as Ernest called it.

"The history of the eight