Harry Frederick Ward

The Social Creed of the Chuches Harry Frederick Ward

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1914 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII INCOME AND PROPERTY For a living wage as. a minimum in every industry, and for the highest wage that, each industry can afford. For a new emphasis upon the application of Christian principles to the acquisition and use of property, and for the most equitable division of the product of industry that can ultimately be devised. The central issue in the whole program for the improvement of society is the question of income and property. The relation of the economic factor to life, the extent to which the,economic conditions determine life, may have been overestimated by those who have been pursuing the path of social progress apart from religion, but it has certainly been underestimated in religious circles. The difference between a low and a high plane of civilization may not be the difference between a piece of bread and a beefsteak, according to a recent epigram, but the possibilities of life are most certainly determined in a large degree by factors of nourishment and home environment. High standards of living are not possible on an income inadequate to provide the necessities and some of the comforts of life. All studies in social pathology clearly reveal the fact of low income as a large contributing cause to all of our social ills. The individual life that has to use up all of its energies in the struggle for existence has no adequate vitality to fight the struggle for moral and spiritual development, no sufficient resistance power to the forces of evil in our modern life. Populations that lived on the starvation level have never attained high religious development. It is only when a people has conquered nature and has produced sufficient wealth to set life free from the bare struggle for existence that it has developed its higher values. Th...