J28 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY.
Catholic charity has already established countless institutions
of every kind : convents, schools, refuges, hospitals, succour
for all needs and all infirmities ! To-day it is the labourers
to whom aid must come. This is the special mission of
Catholicism.”
Monseigneur von Ketteler ends his book with the most
earnest appeals to the rich manufacturers and nobility. “ For
merly it was the nobility who enriched the Church and the
monasteries. Nothing now could be more pleasing to God
and more conformable to the spirit of Christianity, than to
constitute an association which should have for its object the
founding of co-operative societies of production in those dis
tricts where the condition of the labourers is the worst.” It is
evident that the Bishop of Mayence believed, with Lassalle,
that to insure the success of co-operative societies, it was suffi
cient to advance them funds. Like Prince Bismarck, who has
lately acknowledged it in the tribune of the German Parlia
ment, Von Ketteler had been completely gained over to this
idea by the brilliant Socialist, “ one of the most intelligent and
most charming men I ever met,” added the Chancellor, who
still has faith in co-operative societies. In a former chapter,
when discussing the plans of reform of this seductive agitator,
I pointed out the difficulties which this kind of association has
to encounter. The French labourers described them accurately
in their Congress in Paris in 1876.
Such elevated thoughts, uttered by so eminent a prelate,
and moreover developed with undeniable eloquence, were
bound to produce a profound impression upon the German
Catholic clergy. Christian charity, no doubt, prompted thena
to receive the new doctrine kindly ; but as they soon preache
it to the electors of universal suffrage, it may well be thought
that they saw in it the means of gaining allies among the
labourers in their struggle against the government 1 he
Kulturkampf and the May laws having driven the clergy to
extremity, they did not hesitate to hold out a hand to the
Socialists. An entire programme of Catholico-Socialist reforms
was elaborated. A canon of the cathedral of Mayence, ^
learned priest and a clever orator, the Dom capitular
