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Individualism excerpt

In this encylcopedia entry, Ryan defines "individualism" as "the tendency to magnify individual liberty, as against external authority, and individual activity, as against associated activity." Extreme individualism, as defined by Ryan, rejects the…

Summary and Conclusion, p.213-216

Social Reconstruction Summary

This book was composed of a series of lectures delivered at Fordham University's School of Social Service at the end of 1919 and beginning of 1920 on the issue of social reconstruction, shortly after the issuance of the "Bishop's Program for Social…

Report of the Committee on Social Reconstruction

This the actual plan presented by the Committee on Social Reconstruction. The plan is called "a practical and moderate program." Though it deals with specific issues such as a living wage and vocational training, it does not provide specific…

O'Grady Autobiography Excerpt

Letter from Archbishop Edward Hanna of San Francisco, to Bishop Peter Muldoon, April 4, 1919

Ignatius Donnelly, Caesar's Column, Chapters XI & XII

In 1889, Donnelly wrote Caeser's Column, a utopian science fiction novel. The book is a cautionary tale set one hundred years in the future (1988). In Chapter XI, the protagonist learns that unbridled capitalism ruined the political and economic…

A Living Wage

Ryan's Ph.D. dissertation was published as A Living Wage in 1906. In it Ryan made an economic and moral argument for government-mandated minimum wage legislation. In the first excerpt, Ryan argues that the Natural Rights provide the justification for…