FOREWORD ADMIRAL WM. S. BENSON, LL. D., U. S. N. (RETIRED) P ROBABLY as part of the general intellectual stimulation that has attended the political developments of the last few years, there has been a decided awakening of interest in the part that was taken by those of the Catholic Faith in the building of this great nation of ours. Such interest, on the one hand, has developed among those of the Faith who have begun to realize more keenly than perhaps would have been possible for their co-religionists of former days, that notable service was rendered from the very outset in developing the moral, intellectual and material life within our ever-spreading frontiers by Catholic pioneers. On the other hand, our non-Catholic fellow citizens have been enough impressed by the account we have given of ourselves in recent days of stress and storm, to scrutinize our previous record more carefully and take into account factors heretofore overlooked. The Catholic, like his fellow citizen of other religious affiliation, is to be found in every profession, in every trade and in every walk of life. The proportions vary widely and are determined by economic and geographical factors, just as is the choice of callings made by others. To an extent that is rather remarkable, when one takes into consideration the cost of education to those of moderate circumstances, a goodly proportion of the sons and daughters of Catholic families have been given, in all the years of the country's history, the benefits of higher education and professional training. The identification of the Catholic Church with all that is enduring and true in the work of culture makes it ever a natural thing that her children should cultivate the classics, literature and the other elements of inspiration, which, in the last analysis, furnish the most telling diagnosis of a given period of civilization. If it is a course wholly in harmony with the age-long tradition of the Church that many of her sons and daughters should aspire to the professions, and, by reason of thorough preparation, unremitting application and consistent probity, achieve substantial success therein, it is no less true that Catholic men and women surely have taken their share, and perhaps more, in the pioneer work of rendering the material surroundings in which we live and work better places to carry on the busy drama of American life. Coming as they do from nearly all the races that have borne the heat and burden of the up-hill progress of civilization, those of the Catholic Faith who have settled in this country from the earliest colonial period down to our own day have had among them many men of physical strength and endurance, of mechanical aptitudes, of natural instinct for successful management of the soil, and of a readiness to meet and analyze every problem of construction, no matter how gigantic or exacting. When one thinks of the part played in the development of our great industries by Catholic engineers and foremen and laborers, he is led to reflect that the spirit of the Church in infusing devotion to the task before each one of us until Providence in His inscrutable wisdom shall assign us another, possesses perhaps a key to the successful solution of social problems that may outlast other more elaborate formulae. The railroads constructed in one generation or another to so large an extent with the aid of laborers of German, of Irish, of Italian, birth or descent, eloquently record the part that countless sons of the Catholic Church have taken in making possible the material prosperity of the country. In the maritime trades, in the great industries, textile, leather, chemical, metallurgical, in agriculture, one cannot enumerate the leaders without finding a substantial proportion of members of the Catholic Church. From these two great broad classes of human activity, the industries and material callings, on the one hand, and the professions and intellectually creative tasks, on the other, there have come into public life many Catholics applying the high ideals of the Church to the grave and pressing questions of public relations, both political and social, often mismanaged for lack of firm guidance based on a proper interpretation of our Christian ethical heritage. Then, too, many eminent men, often foremost members of that profession most respected in the eyes of all true sons of the Faith, the priesthood, have occupied positions of genuinely public character, even though they have not held official positions or public office; and by their precept and practice they have given inspiration even to thousands not of their religion, and have rendered invaluable service to the nation by their wise counsel and the rich fruit of their long experience in the study and guidance of human motives. No complete survey of the work of those of the Catholic Faith in the building up of the material life and the professional and cultural ideals of this nation can be made. Obviously, the scantiness of records makes any approximation to completeness quite out of the question. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to present some notion of the significance of their contribution to the development of the civilization of this republic through the judicious selection of typical characters and events. Precisely this object appears to have guided the preparation of these volumes. The editors have not sought to give the work an encyclopedic scope, but they have aimed at bringing together a number of aspects of Catholic activity in the centuries before and after the Declaration of Independence with a view to showing how most situations in which human beings may find themselves, can be dealt with successfully only through the application of those |