Article April 3, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from R. F. Horton, J. Fort Newton

[R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D., in The Christian World, London]

To say, as the economist did, that the interests of employer and employed are necessarily antagonistic and the conflict continuous, is totally to misrepresent human life and the world as God made it. If they are antagonistic they have to be reconciled. Employer and employed ought to be mutually serviceable; they ought to serve each other equally. The employer should be as beneficial to the employed as the employed is to the employer. There is no reason in the nature of things why they should not, in that beautiful Scriptural phrase, "by love serve one another." But if ever we are to overcome this dogma of the dismal science, if ever we are to get the right relation between the management and the labor in industry, there must come into it all another spirit. It cannot be settled by a conflict or a calculation of interests. It must be settled by something more human, more divine. It will only be done if we get back into life the great element of religion, the great power of God. Now, the reconciliation between labor and Christianity is, as I hinted, the one thing that is needed. Christ's solution of the industiral problem is the only solution which will not prove worse that the present troubles. . . .

Now I suppose it is almost superfluous for me to say to you that I personally am quite sure that Christ lives, that he lives and works to-day on just the same principles as he showed in his life; that his words spoken then apply now, that the spirit he manifested in his human life is the spirit that is ever at the disposal of men who will receive it and live by it. I need not say that my firm belief is that Christ lives, that Christ is accessible, that Christ is moving among us in such a way that if we were willing we could have his guidance and his power, and could find the settlement of our difficulties from his unfailing interest and his almighty gift of grace and love to the men whom he died to save. Now I would put that in a more definite and concrete form. If all employers of labor would honestly seek to know from Christ how he would have them treat the employed, if they would make it their business to learn from Christ the treatment of the employed, the whole way would begin to open out before them.

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