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Many often identified the Catholic Church with the cause of labor and worker's rights in the United States. However that was not the common situation encountered by laborers throughout most of the nineteenth century. The proclamation of the social encyclicals: Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno (1931) elevated the status of the worker, endorsed worker associations and placed the Catholic Church as an advocate of worker's rights. But for the worker to clearly understand this change as well as his rights and duties education was vital. For workers in Pennsylvania, especially in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the formation of Catholic labor schools was the catalysis for education and guidance in labor-management issues. Eventually their programs expanded to include anti-communist instruction. This article examines the historical narrative of the Catholic labor schools in Pennsylvania and the curricula and policies developed mutually by the laity and clergy to educate workers (both Catholic and non-Catholic) about their rights and duties and how to apply Christian social teachings in the workplace. These schools became a fundamental part of the labor movement where Catholic labor education endeavored to build a Christian partnership of labor and management to ensure industrial democracy.

At the fin de siècle the Industrial Revolution created egregious physical, emotional and spiritual conditions for American society and especially for the worker but who would come forward to alleviate those conditions? Protestants implemented their Social Gospel Movement as a proposed cure to these problems. Secular Progressives engaged in a more activist role both materially and through legislation. Both of these groups had limited successes with disappointing outcomes. America's Catholics, more accustomed to living and working in industrialized neighborhoods, eventually developed their own programs and agenda to address social and labor concerns. However some scholars believed that Catholic efforts merely replicated what others had achieved. It was the actions of America's Catholics in answer to these issues that propelled them onto the national scene with a sense of purpose, inclusion and equality. This paper examines each group to ascertain their programs, relevant accomplishments and demonstrate how resolutions to solve social and labor problems proceeded yet stagnated for some. For America's Catholics their agenda for social reconstruction empowered them to assert themselves as equals with a long lasting viable program of future corrective action.

This article analyzes the effect of the American Catholic Church, through its program of specialized labor education, on the growth and development of organized labor in the twentieth century. With the proclamation of Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931), he requested that the Church complete the work began by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 with his landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum. However, the American interpretation and utilization of the social encyclicals varied from their intended European meaning. The cumulative effect of these two encyclicals was support for the workers' rights to organize and create Christian labor associations. From these papal social encyclicals evolved the diocesan labor schools that existed in many Catholic dioceses in America from the early 1930s until the 1970s. Their purpose was to assist workers through education in the basics of labor organizing and management and to provide philosophical and religious instruction. The ultimate purpose was to Christianize the workplace to ensure industrial democracy through education.