THE HOME AND THE WORKER —n

By Father Eugene Langdale
IN our previous article, we gave a rapid sketch of some of the difficulties confronting family life among the workers. We did not fail to point out that much had been done to alleviate suffering and lessen those difficulties by the various social services, both official and voluntary.
In fact, it is generally admitted that our system of social services is one of the finest in the world; many Englishmen, and especially Englishwomen, are gifted with a high degree of social sense, which is however not unmixed with a certain " flair " for minding their neighbour's business. And it is precisely here that the danger lies. Our social workers, in their zeal for the workers' welfare, may tend to forget that their duty is simply to assist the family in performing its own proper task.
If in some cases social workers have to substitute their own activity for that of the parents, they should always remember that it is a palliative, a temporary makeshift, not a permanent solution of a social problem. Lady Bountiful may very easily be transformed into Mrs. Wretch.
In the last few generations parental authority has been considerably weakened by the fact that the State, public authorities and voluntary organisations have cheerfully shouldered many burdens which should normally fall on the family itself. It is no answer to say that these tasks have only been taken on because working-class families were economically incapable of fulfilling them. In the circumstances palliatives were most certainly necessary, but on no account should they be considered as a final solution of the problem. Our duty as Catholics is to face this danger, and to do our utmost to restore the economic stability of workingclass family life, since, in a properly ordered state of society, the family possesses inalienable rights and responsibilities, and it is the duty of the State and other public authorities to see that parents are enabled to fulfil their duties. In this connection the doctrine of the family living wage is of paramount importance.
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One of the first duties of the community, and especially of Catholics as responsible citizens, is to see that young people are adequately trained to fulfil their future duties of parenthood. It is an indisputable fact that in all classes of society little thought is given to preparatiorl for marriage, but the consequences of this among the workers are positively disastrous, since the working-class father or mother has to shoulder many more burdens single-handed than in middle-class or upper-class families. An enquiry, made a few years ago by the French J.O.C.F., revealed the astonish ing fact that only 11 per cent. of workingclass girls are adequately prepared for running a home with reasonable chances of success.
One shudders to think what the proportion must be in England! No doubt the young woman mentioned in the French enquiry, who patched her husband's trousers with glue is an exception, but one needs very little experience of working-class home life to realise that much needs to be done in order to prepare girls for their duties as wives and mothers.
But if material preparation is important, moral preparation is infinitely more so.
Marriage is the normal vocation of most men and women, and it is the state of life in which they will have to work out their salvation. Yet it needs little thought to realise that the perfect fulfilment of this vocation is something very difficult. It involves the blending of two different personalities and temperaments for the achievement of a common purpose, and if both parties have not been carefully prepared from childhood for this task, so that they can share in the same exalted ideal, the result will be failure if not disaster. Sometimes unhappy marriages are the result of the union of two people with differing conceptions of married life, but more often they happen because neither party has any proper conception of marriage at all, 0 • • • If we are to sanctify the home of the worker, and reconquer to Christ the hundreds of thousands of workers who are slowly drifting away from Him, we must put foremost on our programme the preparation for marriage of the young worker. Unlike the more fortunate boys and girls of the middle-classes, the young workers are forced into contact with the world at the most dangerous period of their lives, when their senses are awakening and their moral judgment is yet unformed. They are at the mercy of the cynical and the evilminded, of had companions and corrupters of youth, without any protection except a vague memory of the Catechism (imperfectly understood) and a few moral lessons of their Catholic school.
The boy or girl may occasionally hear a breezy sermon by Father X or Y on Christian Morals, and many dull ones from Father Z, but all this is of very little practical use when they have to withstand the daily contact of fellow-workers, their immoral talk and bad example, slowly but completely debasing their ideas on sex and their ideals of marriage.
These young workers are indeed lucky if they have the example of a good home to sustain them; but this is at present the privilege of a minority. Soon the inevitable result shows itself in the vast majority of cases; the boy has lost his respect for womanhood, the girl her sense of dignity and purity, and if both have not entirely drifted away from the Church and the Sacraments, yet they have almost lost touch with the moral tradition of their Catholic faith.
How can Christian homes be built up on such insecure foundations? We cannot expect people who have grown up in a corrupt moral atmosphere, whose notions of marriage have been largely gained from smutty conversations and coarse jokes, to show respect for the laws of God in regard to marriage when they reach maturity, to love their partner " as Christ has loved the Church," and to bring up their children in the atmosphere of a true Catholic home, They cannot fulfil such an ideal, because they have hardly ever caught a glimpse of it.
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When we reflect on these things, it is truly astonishing to realise that in spite of these tremendous handicaps, many of our workers, with the help of God's Grace and the frequentation of the Sacraments, have founded really Christian homes and have remained faithful to God's laws, that many young workers have kept the purity of their faith and their moral integrity, and are preparing themselves for the same ideal of married life. But we must admit that they have to fight against great odds. It is an indisputable fact that the moral atmosphere of many of our factories, offices, workshops and pits is utterly poisonous. Some well-meaning attempts have been made to deny this, but the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. Recent enquiries, conducted in the industrial areas by the Young Christian Workers (a movement which should be well-known to readers of the CATHOLIC HERALD) have revealed a very terrible state of affairs. Many priests, in spite of their vast experience, have said they could hardly believe such things were possible. Yet there is no denying the evidence of these young people, who only spoke of what had come within their own experience. Every year, thousands of our boys and girls have to face all this for the first time, with little preparation and no one to help or protect them. How then can we wonder that in a very short time so many join the great army of the lapsed?
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The Young Christian Workers, in obedience to the commands of the Pope, have realised that the first apostles of the woiMers must be workers themselves, and they have set to work in their own characteristic fashion to remedy this state of affairs.
The whole movement is based on a truth at once simple and profound, that the aver
age young worker cannot be trained merely by listening to talks and lectures, that be can only he led to appreciate the value of principles and to act in accordance with them if they are brought in living contact with the concrete facts of his own experience.
The members of the movement are expected to conduct enquiries on every aspect of their own lives, in which they face honestly and frankly all their difficulties, material, moral and spiritual. Very soon they realise all the obstacles which prevent them and their fellow-workers from living a full Christian life.
With the help of their priests, they contrast this state of affairs with the ideal set before them by Our Lord. And they must then resolve to do something to change things—it matters little how small the beginnings may be, provided they realise that their duty is to be apostles among their fellow-workers.
They possess opportunities which are denied to the priest. They can bring into the factory and the workshop the example of a Christian life, they can influence the boys and girls of their own age in a way no one else can. Many have exercised this apostolate already without being members of the Y.C.W.; but this movement gives them the advantage of a carefully prepared technique, and the feeling that they are not isolated units, but members of a vast body of young workers which has spread like wildfire throughout the Catholic world, which in little more than ten years after its foundation can claim a membership of over half a million in twenty countries. In the words of Cardinal Verdier, it is a new miracle in the Church; and a great scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel, has recently told us that he considers it to be " one of the greatest achieVements of our time."
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The Y.C.W. lays great emphasis on preparation for marriage, since the majority of its members must save their souls as married men and women.
In its enquiries it examines with the greatest care all the material and moral difficulties the young worker has to face, and it infuses into its members a great love and veneration for the Christian ideal of marriage. As the movement grows stronger in this country, we may expect to see it playing a great part in the development of living Christian ideals among the workers and in the sanctification of the workingclass home. The Y.C.W. can only concern itself with the young unmarried worker. It cannot accept anyone who is married or over 25 years of age. Put sooner or later, the problem of the adult married worker will have Ito be faced. The Y.C.W. is doing great work in pre paring the young workers to become truly Christian men and women, but as it is essentially a youth movement, it cannot assist its members once they have left it on marriage or on attaining the age limit. There is evidently a gap here, which will be felt more and more as the Y.C.W. becomes more powerful in this country. In this connection the experiments which are now being conducted in France are worthy of the closest attention. Two years ago, a movement called the Ligue Ouvriere Chretienne (L.O.C.) was officially launched in France, and has already met with considerable success. It follows closely the organisation and tech. nique of the Y.C.W., with separate sections for men and women, but with general meetings in common. Its purpose is to carry out the apostolate of the workingclass family by families of the workers themselves. We cannot give a description of the work they have done, and of the truly remarkable results which have already, been achieved. But it seems to us that this movement, like the Y.C.W., is on the right lines, and is beginning to fulfil one of the great needs of our times—the apostolate of the working-class by the workers themselves.