A WRONG PRINCIPLE by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jun 7, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 23.

A WRONG PRINCIPLE.

By Editor

IN speaking of the effort to patch up the strike in Buffalo by appealing to a Roman Catholic bishop to arbitrate between the parties, the Omaha American well remarks:—

There is a principle underlying this attempt to have a Roman Catholic bishop settle a difficulty between an employer and his men which should not be permitted to rear itself on American soil. It is the principle of ecclesiastical power being better able to cope with bands of law-defying men than the civil power. The same claim was put forth prior to or during the Rebellion, and the grand patriots who were at the head of our national government denied the charge and crushed the principle.

Yet, with that persistency and that adroitness, of which the prelates of Rome are such masters, the question has been resolved into such a character that both capital and labor seek the protection of a representative of a foreign and a despotic power; ignoring the avenue duly constituted for the redress for injuries and the protection of property interests. And this brings the State institutions for judicial inquiry into disrepute and elevates and exalts in the minds of the people an ecclesiastical official of an organization which has been man's relentless enemy and capital and power's willing tool for twelve hundred and sixty years.

In addition to this feature we see another objection. In time the laborers will become the vassals of the prelate, and the prelate will be the paid agent of the corporations, as they were often proved to be in the miners' strike in Pennsylvania a few years ago. And it is as much in the interests of the laborers—tho they may be Roman Catholics—as of the government that we declare against ecclesiastics entering a sphere that should be under the civil arm of government.