An improvement in the conditions of the working classes is urged by the Argentine Hierarchy in a joint pastoral issued at the close of the year. The pastoral is signed by Cardinal Copello, Primate of Argentina, and the six Archbishops and 14 Bishops of that country.
" We find ourselves," the pastoral said, " with over-production of virtually all the necessaries of life, but with lamentable unemployment, very inadequate wages for workers, and with the majority of their families without homes and without any chance to improve their economic lot. Poverty and misery are everywhere."
The pastoral then speaks particularly of those workers who are employed far from the centres of population, and denounces the practice which rompels them to pay disproportionate prices for the things they need to sustain life.
THE LIVING WAGE
The question of a living wage is taken up, and the pastoral quotes from the writings of the Pontiffs with regard to the need for establishment of a family wage scale. " The living wage," the pastoral says, " should be one that would embrace all the needs of the worker and his family, and one that would include the provision of insurance against accident, illness and old age. It is necessary that this wage system should be put into effect at once without waiting for action by t of workers to organise is fully the e t a right . recognised and championed in the pastoral.