CHAPTER V

THE POOR AND THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS

My readers may be inclined to think that the Religious Orders are a kind of King Charles’ head, which I, a twentieth century Mr. Dick, am unable to keep out of this book. The truth is that in an attempt such as this to make intelligible the views and aspirations of the working classes of Spain, the Religious Orders are the central and dominating fact which overshadows everything else. Whether we discuss the material condition of the poor, their education, their political disabilities, or whatever it may be, and make any attempt to analyse the matter and discover the reasons of their deplorably backward condition, we always get back to the Religious Orders as the cause--if not in actual fact, at any rate in the firm and unshakeable conviction of the people--of all their misfortunes.

It must be remembered, in connection with the Religious Orders, that the position of nearly all of them in Spain is illegal. According to the Concordat, made before the expulsion of Isabel II., the only Orders allowed in Spain are those of St. Vincent of Paul, St. Philip Neri, and one other, to be nominated by the Pope by agreement with the Government, while all closed Orders of nuns are prohibited. The Pope has never yet named the third Order, and apparently no steps are ever taken to oblige him to carry out his part of the bargain.

I will now give--generally in the words of the narrators--typical instances of the way in which the Religious Orders are said to interfere with the livelihood of the working classes, and of the manner in which once wealthy families have been brought to ruin through their machinations.

The porter of a Jesuit college--for the servants of these institutions love their employers no better than do their friends and relatives outside--told his brother, who told me, that every night during the first two or three weeks in August, 1909, after the Barcelona riots, refugees were admitted to the college. At least eighty, he said, came in all. They slipped in secretly, after the lights were out, disguised in lay dress, often of the poorest description, having travelled half dead with fear [_muertos de miedo_] from Cataluña. That the porter’s story was true was proved by the large purchases of provisions made by the college during that month. A baker told me that the _frailes_ were more insistent than ever that all the waste bread should be given to them “for the poor.” And, he added, the “good Fathers” were already buying twice their usual supply of him. “The _frailes_ always demand all the bread we put by for the poor,” said my friend. “We would prefer to give it direct to the poor ourselves, for we do not feel sure how much of it they get from the _frailes_, whose house-keepers are great hands at making _pasteles_ and _dulces_[7] for sale to good Catholic families. These good Catholic families prefer to buy their _pasteles_ cheap from the friars, who say that they are sold for the good of the Church. We do not care to give our stale bread to be used in injuring the trade of our companions the confectioners; for the friars, having no taxes to pay, can naturally undersell ordinary tradesmen, and all the more when they get the bread for their confectionery free. But if we said that we wished to give our bread to our own acquaintances among the poor, the Jesuits would ruin us. They would tell all their clients that we were bad men and enemies of the Church, and we should lose all our trade. We know this by experience. So we give our stale bread to the _frailes_ and they let us live. But the poor are getting no bread from the _frailes_ since the Barcelona business.”

During the disturbances in Cataluña it was said that “shiploads” of monks and nuns were being landed in the middle of the night at sundry ports along the coast, and that they so effectually betrayed themselves by their nervousness of manner that the country people had not the slightest doubt as to who and what they were. But as the people had no desire to injure them personally--notwithstanding a certain amount of talk about cutting throats and hanging--they were permitted to pass unmolested, though it is true that there were occasional scowls at ill-clad individuals who wore their trousers “with a difference,” as though they missed the flowing skirts of their cloth.

And it must be remembered that at the very time that these frightened men and women were travelling the country in disguise, numbers of families were sorrowfully bidding farewell to sons, brothers, and husbands, on their departure to the war which, as the people will always believe, was begun in the interest of Jesuit capitalists, sheltering their ownership of the Morocco mines and the great steamer companies behind the names of lay millionaires.

The popular suspicion of Jesuit interference in these, as in almost all the other big commercial concerns in the Peninsula, may or may not be justified, but its effect on the attitude of the people towards the Religious Orders cannot be over-rated. Not the least extraordinary feature in the situation is that the Religious Orders profess to disregard the feeling that exists against them, although it is apparent on every hand to any one who goes about with eyes and ears open.

For years past I have noticed that no member of the working classes salutes a priest or friar in the streets. Day after day one summer I saw the same priests taking their afternoon walk along the same by-way, where the same artisans, to the number of twenty or thirty, watched the “long skirts” from the doors of their workshops. I never saw an artisan greet a priest or friar, or vice versa. The flowing robes of the ecclesiastics swept against the patched garments of the workmen, but no glance was exchanged. The priests kept their eyes bent on the ground, one hand grasping the skirts and the other pressed on the breast, a typical attitude, which is jeered at by the poor as “canting.” The workmen kept their eyes fixed on the work on which they were engaged. It is impossible to imagine anything more hostile than the silent defiance of the men, as they turned to watch the “long skirts” out of sight. I have seen single instances of the same thing elsewhere in many places, but here I had special facilities for observing the daily exhibition of armed neutrality, owing to the accident of my room at the back of the little country hotel looking out on the by-path. “I hate to see them,” one of the men said to me; “they are the ruin of us and our country.” What made it the more significant was that these same workmen had a pleasant word of greeting for every lay person, man or woman, acquaintance or stranger, who passed by them.

The economic question bulks largely among the causes of the popular hostility to the Religious Orders, and if only half the complaints generally made are based on fact, the people have reason on their side.

Formerly, say the women, it was easy to obtain a day’s wage by washing in well-to-do houses, and a laundress could make a decent living. Now in every town of any importance there are one or more convents called “Domestic Colleges,” where orphans or servants out of place are received, and these girls repay the nuns for their board and lodging by doing laundry-work for rich Catholic families. If the girls were allowed to keep even a portion of what they earn, the women say that they would not feel the system to be so unjust. But they declare that this is not the case. Whatever is paid goes to the nuns, and as they, having no taxes or wages to pay, can undersell the laundresses, who are called upon to provide both charges, the lay laundry trade is steadily declining, although the quality of the work is on a par with that done in the convents.

The nuns teach their protégées every class of needlework, lace-making, and a kind of embroidery or net-work which is largely used for priests’ vestments, altar-cloths, &c. This competition, which was one of the reasons given for the presence of women (if, indeed, they were present) in the attack on the convents in Barcelona, is felt in every part of Spain, but perhaps especially in the south and south-west, where skilled needlework, which is almost the only employment of women above the domestic servant class, is exceedingly common and badly paid at best. Nowadays, say such women, it is increasingly difficult to obtain employment of this kind at any price, owing to the quantity done in the convents and the reduced prices at which the nuns undertake it.

And finally, although this does not so directly affect women, the nuns do a large trade in the sweetmeats and _patisserie_ already referred to.

The grievances against the nuns, then, are chiefly related to their interference with the industrial market, and this, although a very real source of hardship, has not yet, except in a few isolated instances, given birth to anything like the active hostility that is expressed against the male Religious Orders. The closed Orders of nuns are regarded with aversion and contempt, as living at the expense of the nation and leading lives which, to the working classes, seem purely idle and self-indulgent--“doing nothing all day but pray for their own souls, or worse,” as they describe the life of contemplation. I have never heard working women express any desire to injure the nuns, much though they dislike them as a class. But when we come to the Jesuits, Maristas, Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, and all the long list of Orders lumped together in one condemnation by both men and women under the derisive name of “long skirts” (_sayones_), we find a much worse state of affairs.

The people declare that in many places the leading industries have been completely ruined by the competition of persons in the employ of the Jesuits--for they call all the friars indiscriminately Jesuits, although they are perfectly aware of the distinctions between the various Orders. And they will point out to you one family after another who have been reduced to penury by the “good Fathers,” and will relate innumerable instances of the methods they believe to have been employed to this end. Perhaps the best way to explain these will be to give a literal translation of one or two of the stories I have heard from the people, which, told as they are with an absolute conviction of their truth, show what ground the working classes have for distrusting and detesting those who ought to set an example of virtue and self-abnegation.

“A man I know saved 5,000 _duros_ [about £1,000], and he lent it all to the Jesuits for a building they were putting up, a building attached to the monastery, so that he looked upon it as a work for God. Some years went by, and my friend was growing old and wished to retire from his little business and live on his capital. So he asked the Jesuits to repay his loan. ‘Oh, no!’ they said, ‘do you not know, my son, that he who lends to God must expect no return? A loan to God is a gift for the salvation of thy soul.’ As I say, he was an old man, and he found himself ruined, without hope of earning more money. He left the good Fathers and went and cut his throat.”

“Why is the old Marquesa de Fulano starving? I will tell you. When her father, the last Marquis, was dying, the Jesuits never left him for a moment, and at last they persuaded him that his soul was of more consequence than his daughter’s livelihood, and he made a will by which he left all his money to found a college for boys in ----. When he was dead his daughter discovered that all she had was the family land, and not a farthing of the capital her father had invested. Soon afterwards a famine came, and there was no rain for nine months. The Marquesa gave food to all the labourers on the estate, although there was no work for them, for she is a very charitable lady. She spent all the money she had, and then sold all her jewels and other valuables to buy them food. You see, she is a widow without family to advise and help her. Of course she was too proud to betray her poverty, but even if she had told her friends they could have done nothing, for many landowners were ruined that year. Now the estate is mortgaged to the last acre, and she has sold everything she has and is almost without food for herself. If you wish to hear about the Jesuits, ask the Marquesa de Fulano! And you will understand that all the people employed on the estate lost their livelihood too, for it is now long since she has been able to afford to have it cultivated.”

“Yes, it is a pity to see that fine old oil-mill falling to ruin. It used to belong to a very rich man, but when he died the Jesuits got hold of his widow and induced her to build a large new chapel in the monastery of ----. Millions of pesetas they squeezed out of her for the work, and when it was finished, there was nothing left of the business. One of the sons meanwhile became a Jesuit, and as they have a big business in oil over there he naturally took the olive-groves for his share of the property. This happened twenty years ago: the younger brothers are married and have children to bring up. They have to earn their bread as they can. One of them rents ten acres and cultivates them himself, so he does not starve, but the other poor fellow has taken to drink, and he and his family mostly go hungry. It is all the work of the Jesuits.”

There are many such stories of gifts made to the Church _in articulo mortis_. The priests are said to urge the dying penitent to save his soul by benefiting the Religious Orders instead of providing for his family, on the ground that if he acts as his duty and instincts dictate he will lengthen his stay in purgatory. There seems no room for doubt that many once wealthy families have been reduced to poverty in consequence of such legacies to the Church. Indeed, it almost seems as if a new class of society is gradually arising among the very people who formerly were the strongest supporters of the Church--people of good birth and gentle breeding, with a family tradition of injury at the hands of the Jesuits, which has alienated them for ever from a Church to which they owe their worldly misfortunes, and is converting them into earnest recruits to the cause of Free Thought. From these men of gentle breeding will eventually come the leaders of the people in their final struggle against the Ultramontanes.

The ways which the Jesuits are reputed to employ in order to ruin those who defy them are many. The following story shows how easily it can be done, if it is true that the Company of Jesus condescends to such contemptible action against the industrial and working classes.

“Francisco Mengano used to have a very good business. He employed nine men to work for him. But he hated the friars, and he used to talk against them to a man who pretended to think as he did and came to sit with him every day, and encouraged him to say he would never let his daughters go to confession because he was afraid the priest would make love to them, and many other things. That vile man always talked in the same sort of way himself, and poor Francisco looked upon him as a friend. But when his eldest girl was old enough for her first Communion and Francisco refused to let her go to confession, he discovered that the man he trusted was himself a Jesuit, and had told the Jesuits everything Francisco had said. They waited to be sure his daughter was not going to confession, and then set to work to ruin him. It was quite simple. He was a cart-builder and wheelwright, and depended on the landowners in the neighbourhood for most of his work. The Jesuits merely sent word round that he was charging too much and doing bad work, and his trade was ruined and he became what you see--a poor old jobbing carpenter, who cannot even afford to employ a boy to do his heavy work.”

When I heard this story I recollected that about a year earlier, when passing Francisco’s workshop in company with a gentleman reputed to be friendly with the Jesuits, he had remarked, _apropos des bottes_, “Don’t employ Francisco if you should want any carpentering done; his work is bad and he overcharges abominably.” It naturally did not occur to me that this observation could have any other object than to save me, as a foreigner, from being cheated, and, all unconscious of what I afterwards discovered to be its injustice, I gave my work elsewhere.

Not only do the people accuse the Religious Orders of depriving them of employment by underselling them and destroying their trade by slanders, but they also bring grave charges of indifference, if not actual brutality, to the poor who ask them for help of any kind.

It seems to be a fact that no assistance was volunteered by any Religious House during the epidemic of typhus in Madrid in 1909. In another town, where a seminary for priests was temporarily converted into a hospital for the sick and wounded from Melilla, the cisterns ran dry one night owing to the unusual quantity of water used for the invalids. Not a man or a boy among the seminarists would take the trouble to pump more water, though a quarter of an hour’s work would have done all that was needed for the time, so workmen had to be fetched in the middle of the night to supply what was immediately required for the sufferers. This I heard from one of the men who did the work.

The working classes have as yet no plan of campaign against the Religious Orders. They are waiting in the hope that at no distant day they will have the suffrage in fact, not, as at present, in name only. But the bitterness of their hostility may be judged from the following incident, related to me by an eye-witness.

Three country people, dealers in charcoal, were sitting in a tramcar. My informant was sitting immediately behind them, and at his side was a priest. One of the charcoal-merchants, pretending to be unaware of the priest’s presence, related how he had been overtaken by night on the mountains, where he was buying wood in pursuit of his trade, and how he had gone to a large Jesuit college standing alone on the hillside, to ask permission to sleep under the portico, the season being mid-winter and the weather bitterly cold. The “good Father” who opened the door at his knock refused to admit him, telling him that “the college was not a house of call for tramps, and he could go and sleep under a tree by the roadside.” The narrator had no option but to do this, for the door was shut in his face, and “he thought he would have died of cold before morning.” “I wish,” he concluded, “that all the _frailes_ in Spain would come to my house some cold night and ask for shelter. Before morning I would leave every one of them under my trees with his throat cut.”

I have no doubt that the charcoal merchant uttered his theatrical threat on purpose to frighten the priest, and if that was his object he certainly succeeded, for the poor man turned white and trembled with alarm; but it is certain that no one of his class would have dared to express such sentiments before a priest or a monk previous to the Barcelona affair.

I have heard a gentle-looking old woman say deliberately: “I wish all the _frailes_ were going out to be shot this morning! How I should enjoy seeing them killed!”

And I have heard an artisan remark as a couple of “long skirts” went by:

“How I hate those vermin! It makes me sick to see them near me.”

The people who say these things are not Socialists nor Anarchists, nor even Republicans. They are decent, quiet, industrious working people, who know and care little about current politics, and simply judge of the priests and the Religious Orders by what they see. Once the confidence of such people is won, you will hear similar remarks by the score wherever two or three of the working class are gathered together, whether in town or country. Nor are their wives and daughters one whit behind the men in their expressions of hostility.

Here is an outburst which I took down word for word from a clever but quite illiterate working woman. The reference to the “ovens,” as will be seen, tallies with what I have quoted about the bakers, although the speakers were in different provinces, far apart.

“While we have that lot here we cannot live. The alms which ought to be given to the poor are given to them. I don’t believe they give to the poor the bread which they beg from the ovens. I believe they use it all to make _alforjillas_ and _piñonates_ for sale.[8] They cannot make them without bread. The Jesuits do not make them themselves. All the monasteries keep _amas de gobierno_[9] to cook and wash and mend and do everything required. They are quite independent, answerable to nobody. They eat us up as if they were ants. They let no one live, meddling with everything that doesn’t concern them. They tack themselves to a lady, an acquaintance, and she has linen to launder, and they order her to send it at once to be washed in one of the [religious] houses where poor unfortunates are taken in. Many of them are the children of the friars themselves and of the priests. There is a family in ---- Street whom they call ‘Curitas,’ five brothers and sisters, all children of one parish priest [_cura_]. Their ‘Uncle Cura,’ as they called him, brought them up and educated them and left them all he possessed. They were all the children of one mother; it was the same as if the priest had been married to her. He lived with her and maintained her all his life. But that is a great sin for the priest! They say that in your country the priests are allowed to marry. If it were the same here the Church would be purged of many sins, for all the priests live with women. If they are faithful to one woman I do not see what sin there is in it. It is natural. But it is more usual for them to have many women. I know that one old priest had at least ten or twelve children in ---- [a low quarter of the town], all by different women. He brought them all up, and gave them every year enough for their food. He was very rich. They called him ‘the Prior.’ The mothers said to the children: ‘Run along; the Prior will give thee money to buy food.’ I know this because my father used to work for him. The priest often said to him: ‘Look, what pretty children mine are!’ He was not in the least ashamed of owning that they were his.”

And here is another statement made by the father of growing lads whom he was educating as best he could to try for appointments in the Civil Service.

“You should be careful not to say anything about the Jesuits in those letters you are always writing,” he said. “In Madrid or Barcelona it may be all very well, but in a little country town like this you can never be sure how much the ‘good Fathers’ will find out. It is well known that Paco, who attends to the registered letters here, is the son of a Jesuit. Many of the clerks in the post-offices are the sons of priests or _frailes_, and that is why honest lads like my sons have no chance of getting a place there. The Jesuits have a plan by which their sons slip in without the examination imposed on others. Do you think that fool Paco would be where he is if he had had to pass a competitive examination? But be warned! He has been clever enough to learn how to open letters and seal them up again. The ‘good Fathers’ have taken care of that. And if they suspect that you write stories about them, they will take care to read your letters before they leave the post-office.”

In this connection I may mention a curious incident. A book sent to me from England went astray, and some six months later, after inquiry made by the English post-office, reached me minus its wrapper, with a note of apology from the local post-office, explaining that it had been recovered from a Jesuit college at least fifty miles from the place to which it had been addressed and registered by the publisher. Why it was delivered at the college instead of to me was not explained. I thought at the time it was merely a piece of characteristic Spanish carelessness, but I was reminded of the occurrence by my friend’s remarks about “Paco” and the post-office.

THE MONARCHY AND THE PEOPLE