Rerum Novarum and Christian Social Teaching

Leo XIII dated his encyclical on capital and labour at St Peter’s in Rome on 15 May 1891 (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 64). It begins from the conflict of the age: the growth of industry, the changed relations of masters and workmen, the enormous fortunes of a few and the poverty of the masses (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 1, 3). A remedy, the pope says, must be found quickly for the misery pressing unjustly on the majority of the working class (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 1, 3). The old guilds had been abolished and nothing had replaced them, working men had been left isolated and helpless before the greed of unchecked competition, and a small number of very rich men had laid on the labouring poor “a yoke little better than that of slavery itself” (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 1, 3).

The letter rejects the socialist remedy: to make all possessions the common property of the community, it says, would hurt the working man first and would rob lawful owners (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 4). Private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature, and the law should favour ownership and lead as many people as possible to become owners (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 9, 46). It rejects equally the idea that class is naturally hostile to class: capital cannot do without labour, nor labour without capital (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 19).

Each side has duties. Workers are to do the work they have freely agreed to and never to use violence (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 20). Employers are not to treat their workers as bondsmen, are to respect their dignity as persons, and must not tax them beyond their strength; to defraud anyone of wages that are due is a crime that cries to heaven (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 20). Public authority must step in when the general interest or any class is harmed and the harm cannot otherwise be met, and the poor have a claim to its special care (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 36–37). Hours of work must not exceed what strength allows, children must not be put into workshops before they are sufficiently grown, and Sunday is to be a day of rest (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 41–42). Wages may be freely agreed, yet a dictate of natural justice older than any bargain requires that they be enough to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 45). The most important of the associations that can help are workingmen’s unions, and to form such societies is a natural right, which the state exists to protect (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 49, 51).

The year before, the Protestant William Booth had written that the usual remedies of Christian philanthropy were “lamentably inadequate” to the misery of the poor (Booth, In Darkest England preface); see William and Catherine Booth Found the Salvation Army. Forty years later Pius XI called Leo’s letter the “Magna Charta” on which Christian activity in the social field ought to be based (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno 39).