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.  “  Formerly ­
  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  districts ­
  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  sufficient ­
  to  advance  them  funds.  Like  Prince  Bismarck,  who  has
lately  acknowledged  it  in  the  tribune  of  the  German  Parliament, ­
  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