nd figure out just what it would mean to be obliged
to maintain a family of four or five on such a stipend as is indicated
in any of these trades--even those best paid. Find out how much should
have to go for rent, and how much for food, and how much for the
plainest clothing, and how much for doctor's bills, and school books,
and street-car fare, and how much would be left, after that, for books
and church contributions and the wholesome pleasures which we ought to
count among the necessaries of life. Life can be maintained on such an
income, but is it the kind of life that we wish our fellow men to live?
And is there any need that life, for the humble laborer, should be
reduced in this rich land to its lowest terms? With the marvelous
productiveness of fields and mines and forests and waters, with the
immense development of machinery, by which the wealth of the nation is
multiplied, might we not have an organization of industry and a method
of distribution which would give to the army of manual toilers a much
larger average income?

That is the question they are asking, and it calls for a candid answer.
Their needs are not as dire as were those of the German peasants of the
sixteenth century, but they are real and serious needs. Now, as then, a
tremendous industrial revolution has dislocated industries and
demoralized and impoverished many; now, as then, the concentration of
capital in great companies has destroyed small enterprises and left
many who were once thrifty stranded and discouraged; now, as then,
glaring contrasts in condition excite the resentments of the needy; now,
as then, the propertiless are wondering whether this is the kind of
thing that the church has been looking for when she has prayed that the
kingdom of God may come. And there is a feeling now, as there was then,
among the millions of the toilers, that the church which assumes to
represent Jesus Christ needs to be reformed, in order that through its
testimony and its leadership the kingdom of God may come.

It is sadly true that there are many among these toiling millions who
are embittered against the church, who have no faith in it, and no
expectation that any good will come out of it; but the great majority
are not hostile to the church; at worst they are indifferent, and this
indifference is due to their belief that the church no longer represents
Jesus Christ. Toward him there is often a pathetic outreaching of hope;
if the church would c