A ‘nation’ of hirelings

Two friends, both of whom have worked as self-employed builders for years, are now working in a bread factory on day-to-day contracts for an employment agency.

“The Hireling flieth, because he is a Hireling.” (St. John x:13.)

Those eight words are themselves a complete condemnation of a system in which the Hireling is normal. Our Lord does not condemn the Hireling. He flies, not because he is a coward or a villain, but because he is a Hireling, and clearly no state in which the bulk of the people are of this category can attain either a real organic order, or a true civilisation. The point need not be elaborated.

Distributist Harold Robbins in an essay entitled ‘The Buttress of Freedom’ from Distributist Perspectives Volume 1.