Rerum Novarum

Excerpt

Condemning the abolition of worker's protective associations

In the following passage Pope Leo sketches the process by which State abolition of the guild system .., State authorization of usury .., and the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few .. all worked together for the oppression of the working man.

- "some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the last [the eighteenth] century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself." (http://distributistreview.com/mag/2011/08/the-austrian-version-of-the-english-enclosures-iii/)