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prayers for the restoration of peace, and dedicate their factory-chapel to her honor. Their prayers were heard; strife was stopped, and the first blessed result of its cessation was the provision of enough money to purchase the factory out and out and transform it into a church and a convent, both named after St. Philomena. The Redemptorists took charge of both; and this was the first house of their community in the Union. Wonderful were the results which grew from that beginning, seemingly so doubtful, having regard to the bitterness out of which it grew. It was not long after until, in that same convent sprung from a workshop, the Rev. John Nepomucene Neumann began his novitiate and donned the habit of the congregation, to become in time Bishop of Philadelphia and earn a place among those whom the Church venerates as of saintly rank. The settlement of this dispute at Pittsburg was one of the happiest, if one of the most difficult, achievements of Bishop Kenrick's many visitations.

CHAPTER VIII.

BEGINNINGS OF THE CYCLONE OF BIGOtry—The BIBLE IN THE SCHOOLS.

It was the habit in those days to have portions of the Bible read in the public schools, and Catholic children must perforce listen to the exercises. The version used being the Protestant one, the practice was felt as a grievous injustice by the shepherds of the Catholic fold, amounting to an infringement of the law and the Federal Constitution. Hymns and prayers were also used in the schools that were objectionable, and besides these grievances gross misstatements about the Catholic religion were embodied in the historical text-books and in the literature of the public libraries. Against these wrongs Bishop Kenrick at last felt it incumbent on him, as guardian of his flock, to issue a public remonstrance. Therefore we find him, in the winter of 1842, addressing a letter of remonstrance to the Controllers of the Public Schools in Philadelphia, temperately stating the grounds of objection which the Catholics of the city entertained. to the existing regulations in the schools. It was then a provision of the State law on education that "the religious predilections of the parents of pupils shall be respected," and this excellent rule, Bishop Kenrick pointed out, was being ignored and violated in the practice of the school principals. The letter closed with an appeal to the sense of justice of the Controllers to put a stop to the grievance; and the appeal was successful, so far at least as the Bible-reading was concerned, but no notice seems to have been taken of the other grievances pointed out in the Bishop's remonstrance.

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So far the episode seemed fruitful of nothing but good. But this was only a surface calm. There were jealous eyes observing, and the action of the Bishop was being noted to be treasured up for a day of reckoning. From this incident sprang the bitter anti-Catholic movement which continued intermittently almost down to our own day and which found crystallized expression in the device of "the little red schoolhouse."

It is customary for apologists of the present condition of public education to lay the blame for the banishment of religious education from the public schools of the United States on the attitude of Catholic prelates like Bishop Kenrick and Bishop Hughes. Such trouble, say the apologists, was given by objectors that there was no alternative left the public school managers but to exclude religion altogether and thus get rid of the responsibility once for all. Other countries which have had to deal with populations of different religious beliefs have endeavored to solve their educational problems in a more rational and less puerile way-Germany, for instance, The value of religion, even from the point of view of mere scientific statesmanship, is appreciated by all wise governments. Here it is rejected, in accordance with the genius of American ideals: there is no time to waste on anything but the practical problems of the material life. The earlier school of educators, of whom Horace Mann may be accepted as a good type, did not contemplate an educational process independent of religion. Even the trustees of Girard College, in their instructions to Professor Bache when sending him abroad to study educational methods as a foundation for the system they were empowered to establish, did not omit a direction on the subject of the religious element: he was to report on it as upon every other branch of training. The ideals of those earlier days were broader than those of the next

generation, seemingly. They accepted the mandate, and in their report favored the admission of the religious principles in the early training of the child.

And now came rushing on that whirlwind of rage and hate of which the anti-convent crusade in Massachusetts and other places, in 1833-34, was the ominous harbinger. The noble services of the Catholic Sisterhoods in New Orleans and Philadelphia-their heroic help on the battlefield and in the cholera ward, whence all others had fled in panic terror-the public thanks rendered them by Mayors and municipalities and influential public bodiesall these thrilling facts were forgotten, and only the livery they wore and the shrine at which they knelt, so abominable in their foes' poisoned mental vision, remembered. Political bias added fuel to the flame, once the match had been applied. In the false and narrow theories of economy of that day, it was the belief that the influx of immigrants then beginning was a deadly danger to the industrial class in the States, and to obviate it an association was organized, under the name of the Native American party, for the double purpose of keeping out foreigners and stamping out "Popery."

It began with an anti-convent crusade, and reached its climax in 1834. It found one pretext for active mischief in the local application to the Charleston (Massachusetts) convent of the indestructible fiction that nuns are detained in such institutions against their will. The convent in question was conducted by Ursuline nuns. On a peaceful Sunday night-August 11, 1834-it was attacked by a ferocious mob. According to the report of a committee of Protestant gentlemen, the rioters plundered everything they could conveniently carry away, desecrated the altar and symbols of Catholic worship, and then reduced the beautiful pile to a mass of smoking ruins. They next burned down the Bishop's residence,

THE MARCH OF RAPINE.

123 his library, farm house and barns. "And not content with this," said the committee, "they burst open the tomb of the establishment, rifled it of the sacred vessels. there deposited, wrested the plates from the coffins, and exposed to view the mouldering remains of their tenants." There followed the mockery of a "trial." But the jury being of "the right color," only one of the guilty parties was brought to justice. The rest were acquitted in the face of direct and overwhelming evidence of their guilt.

"From Charleston, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina," says Maguire (in "The Irish in America"), "the malignant influence was borne. But at the first hint of danger a gallant band of Irishmen rallied in defense of the menaced convent of Charleston, and its Irish Bishop coolly examined the flints of their rifles to satisfy himself that there should be no missing fire-no failure of summary justice. The Buzzells are brave against women; but they care less to see a man's eye gleaming along a musket barrel, if the ominouslooking tube be pointed at their precious persons. So in South Carolina and in other States the resolute attitude of those who would have willingly died in defense of the best and noblest of humanity saved the country at that time from still deeper disgrace."

An attempt was likewise made to destroy St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. The rioters advanced upon it, only to find the streets leading to it torn up, every window around occupied by determined defenders, and over the low churchyard wall a little forest of musket barrels in the hands of men who knew how to use them. The unexpected news came upon them like a thunderclap, when their van had nearly reached the street leading to the Cathedral, and they fled in all directions in dismay.

And now, after ten years, the same red terror awakes