But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a modern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will. Until recently, Spain was such a country. Now the people are turning against the clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to Rafael Shaw's "Spain From Within": On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church, interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life, ordering the conditions of employment, draining them of their hard-won livelihood by trusts and monopolies established and maintained in the interest of the Religious Orders, placing obstacles in the way of their children's education, hindering them in the exercise of their constitutional rights, and deliberately ruining those of them who are bold enough to run counter to priestly dictation. Riots suddenly break out in Barcelona; they are instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes to war in Morocco; it is dragged into it solely in defense of the mines owned, actually, if not ostensibly, by the Jesuits. The consumos cannot be abolished because the Jesuits are financially interested in their continuance.
We have read the statement of a Jesuit father, that "the state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even in case of utter illiteracy." How has that doctrine worked out in Spain? There was an official investigation of school conditions, the report appearing in the "Heraldo de Madrid" for November, 1909. In 1857 there had been passed a law requiring a certain number of schools in each of the 79 provinces: this requirement being below the very low standards prevailing at that time in other European countries. Yet in 1909 it was found that only four provinces had the required number of elementary schools, and at the rate of increase then prevailing it would have taken 150 years to catch up. Seventy-five per cent of the population were wholly illiterate, and 30,000 towns and villages had no government schools at all. The government owed nearly a million and a half dollars in unpaid salaries to the teachers. The private schools were nearly all "nuns' schools", which taught only needle-work and catechism; the punishments prevailing in them were "cruel and disgusting."
As to the location of the schools, a report of the Minister of Education to the Cort............