Catholic Responses to Industrialization

The spread of industrialization across the world over the last three centuries has created enormous new wealth for some, and desperate poverty for others. As industrialization accelerated in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, Americans debated vigorously how to best cope with the change.

American Catholics, too, weighed in on these issues. They brought their own unique perspectives to the debate, but they did not always agree. Monsignor John A. Ryan, for example, looked to the government to help the poor; others like Cardinal William O'Connell feared government intervention would be heavy handed and intrusive. Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, once a parochial school teacher but later alienated from the Church, looked to unions to earn workers a proper living.

See "Background" to begin.

One was a member of the U.S. Catholic clergy, director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Social Action Department, attendee to the Vatican II Council, and an authority on labor relations. The other was a farm worker, a lay member of the Church, and a union leader who was in on the ground floor of a revolution in farm labor organization. Together, Monsignor George G. Higgins and Cesar Chavez made a potent combination that helped bring a degree of labor justice to agricultural workers in California and other parts of the United States. Chavez and his United Farm Workers union sought higher pay and better working conditions for domestic agricultural laborers, using strikes and boycotts to induce growers to come to the bargaining table. Higgins and the Bishop’s Ad Hoc Committee on Farm Labor became a forceful negotiator between the sides. The combination eventually led to thousands of workers finding representation under the auspices of the UFW. Today, the memories of both men are cherished for their unrelenting crusade to better the lives of the workers in the fields.

While conditions for workers had been a concern through United States history, advocacy for the working class became particularly prominent by the 1930s, as the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935 attests.  While the Catholic Church had officially supported organized labor for decades, that support intensified in the 1930s. Pope Leo XIII had expressed support for organized labor in the late nineteenth century, and Pope Pius XI reiterated that commitment with the issuance of the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno in 1931. The Vatican asserted the right for workers to unionize and to earn a “just wage.”

Many Church leaders in the U.S. would enthusiastically embrace Pius XI's statement and begin to ally with unions across the country. The creation of the CIO would be of particular importance, as many in the Church would support, and in some cases join, the organization in order to bring what many leaders termed “social justice” to the working class. Much of the work of the Church in the area of labor would be conducted through the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Social Action Department (SAD), which would become a fervent supporter of workers' rights during the Great Depression. For the next several decades, the Church would play a critical role in the labor movement, spreading its Christian ideal of “economic democracy” to the working class, as the resources on this site reveal. 

See "Background" to begin