Unemployment and the Land

Extract

Father Vincent McNabb’s The Church and the Land is a book to be read by all who are concerned and anxious about the pressing problem of unemployment. But it would be a pity if our reading of this stirring book produced no effect except a vague feeling that something was wrong and an equally vague conviction that something ought to be done about it. It would be futile to read it as we might read Vergil’s Pastorals—to be thrilled and charmed by the vision of the sower casting his seed, the ploughman turning over his furrow or the harvester swinging his sickle. The flail song in threshing time and the joyous music of the churn when butter is a-making are fine glowing dreams and visions that must not be allowed to evaporate into airy nothings. Every chapter of this book should stimulate into action. Fr. Vincent McNabb describes his work as a bugle-call. Wherefore sound the bugle if there be none to answer the call?

The gist of the book could be given somewhat as follows : There are at the present moment more than a million workers unemployed. They are being paid for being unemployed. At the same time there are millions of acres of good arable land lying untilled; and there are many more acres unworked than there are men out of work.

The practical person will at once say, Yes, but the men who are employed are neither by temperament, training nor inclination the sort of people who would or could till the untilled fields even if it were possible for them to get at them.