Excerpt from A Retrospect of Fifty Years, Vol. 1It was just at the time when I was made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII that the rise of the Labor Unions in America brought about what might have been a crisis in the life of the Ameri can Church. For some years the Church stood at the crossroads. It had to choose between allying itself with what looked like elements of disaster and revolution, or consenting to a theory of economics which could not be justified upon Christian principles. The duty had been laid upon it of preserving society, the rights of prop erty and at the same time protecting the rights of individuals to the fruits of their labors, also of protecting the poor from the encroachment of uncontrolled capital.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.