In England, workers found a friend among Roman Catholics in Henry Edward Cardinal Manning (d. 1892), a convert from evangelical Anglicanism. As early as December, 1872, Manning appeared at a meeting held to promote the cause of farm workers. It was a courageous act, since it was the first time in England that a Roman Catholic prelate had so openly taken the side of labor. He followed this up with a letter to Prime Minister Gladstone urging two things: the passage of laws prohibiting he labor of children under a certain age, and the regulation of housing. In 1874 he delivered a lecture, "The Rights and Dignity of Labor", in which he defended the right of the worker to organize, called for laws to regulate the hours of work, and made a plea for people to look into the horrible abuses associated with child labor.
[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Henry-Edward-Manning, history[/tags]