liberty, and the social organization is quite as unwarranted in depriving him of the one as of the other. Both are necessary to life and welfare, and all that is implied in both, is fundamentally a free gift of God to all persons. It ought not be necessary to remark that the doctrine of man's equal rights to a decent livelihood does not imply rights to equal amounts of the earth's goods or products. In some respects men are equal; in others they are unequal. Justice demands that with regard to the former, they should be treated equally, but with regard to the latter, unequally. Since they are equal as persons, they have equal claims to the means of safeguarding personality; since they are unequal in the degrees of their capacities and needs, they have no claim to receive equal amount of opportunities and satisfactions. Whether equality of personal dignity requires that, in a civiliation as rich as ours, all men should have more than the minimum decent livelihood above described, is a question that does not call for discussion in this paper. Our present concern is merely with the minimum that is compatible with the dignity of personality. Deny to the laborer this minimum, and you treat him no longer as an end in himself, but as a mere means to the welfare of his fellows. You make an ureasonable and unjust distribution of the undivided gifts of God. The Religious Basis. The religious argument for a living wage rests upon Christ's precept of Brotherly Love and His Golden. Rule. "All things, therefore, whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them; for this is the Lay and the Prophets."-St. Matt. vii. 10. No interpretation of the former which does not assure the laborer at least a decent livelihood can be defended for a moment; while the Golden Rule,. implying as it does the essential sacredness and equality of men, contains the germ of the moral argument outlined in the preceding paragraphs. Historically, the concept of a living wage is ultimately traceable to these two Christian principles, while its formulation and development have been the work of the Catholic Church. Ever since the Middle Ages, the living-wage principle has been an implict element of the Catholic moral teaching. It was expressed in most definite and unconditional form in the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII. on the "Condition of Labor:"".... There is a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient than any bargain between man and man, that the remuneration must be enough to support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort. If, through necessity or fear of a worse evil, the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will give him no better, he is the victim of force and injustice." Within recent years, representative bodies of many of the Protestant denominations have given the living wage a prominent place in their programmes of social reform. The Social Basis. The social argument for a living wage is that the injury to society resulting from an underpaid laborer is not offset by the saving in the outlay for wages. In summary form the injury may be described thus: diminished power of production by the underpaid workers owing to lowered strength and vitality; abnormal sickness and unemployment and premature death; expenditures by society for the relief of all forms of unnecessary distress-for example, lack of the necessaries of life, sickness and funeral expenses; various forms of outlay in connection with such crime as is ultimately traceable ¶ Never present a bald-headed man with a comb and brush—Give him a Towel to inhumane conditions of living and low wages; and finally, the progressive degeneration of that large section of the population which is composed of the underpaid workers and their descendants a phenomenon which has become alarmingly prevalent and manifest in Great Britain. Owing to lack of detailed and comprehensive statistics, the foregoing statements are not susceptible of proof in term and mathematics, but the evidence is sufficiently clear and extensive to generate practical certainty in the mind of any honest and competent student. Indeed, there is good reason to think that the saving effected through the payment of less than living wages is all lost to the nation through the diminished productive efficiency of the underpaid work What I have called the popular argument consists in the fact that the vast majority of persons believe almost intuitively that the labor is unfairly treated unless he receives at least a living wage. During a large part of the last century this popular conviction was obscured and weaken ed, but only because public opinion was misled by the teaching of the "classical" economists and their followers concerning the power of unlimited competition to ensure every man a reasonable amount of economic opportunity. Now that this theory has been refuted by experience, the ethical doctrine based upon it, namely that "every free contract is also a fair con The Claim in the Concrete. HAT today is a living wage in terms of money? Obviously it differs in different places. Professor Chaplin places it at $900 per year for a man and wife and three children in New York City. Mr. Streightoff's estimate is $650.00 for smaller cities, without any provision for saving or insurance. Probably the majority of competent students would agree that for the head of a family the minimum adequate living wage today in the large cities of the North and East is $150.00 a year. In the case of women workers the living wage is not less than $8.00 a week in any large city. What proportion of the laboring population gets less than a living wage? Computations based upon the special investigation of manufacturing establishments made by the U. S. Census in 1904, show that 58 per cent of the adult men were receiving less than $600.00 per year, while 50 per cent. of the women were paid less that $6.00 per week. According to Professor Nearing, whose work, Wages in the United States, contains the latest statistics and the most recent estimates, three-fourths of the male adults in urban employments are getting less than $600,000 net income annually, and three-fifths of the women fail to reach as much as $6.50 per week. Making due allowance for all possible exaggeration in Professor Nearing's findings, we are justified in the state can ment that three-fourths of the Ameriwage-earning population, both men and women, are today receiving less than an adequate living wage, and that the number of persons who are in these conditions is somewhere between ten and fifteen millions. Prohibition is based on the abuses of liquor. The Remedy. It HE living wage problem is, therefore, sufficiently grave and sufficiently difficult. cannot be solved by any quick, easy or simple method, or by any method whatever. Its solution can be brought about only through the cooperation of many agencies, individual and social. In the first place, a large proportion of the underpaid laborers could materially raise their wages by the practice of greater industry, efficiency, thrift, sobriety and courage in their every day lives, but especially by becoming faithful and active members of labor organizations. The results have been on the whole, satisfactory. Against wise legislation on these lines, there can be no valid objection either from the side of morals, politics economics or business. For the State ought to protect the laborer's livelihood as well as his life, his limb or his pocket-book; raising wages by law will produce no economic effects different from those which result from an increase through the action of a trade union; and no decent employer will be injured by a law which compels all fellow-employers to conform to a certain minimum standard of wages. Only the sweater, the employer who succeeds because he reduces wages below his rivals, would have any reason to object, and his case calls for neither sympathy nor special consideration. Socialism, or in any other single and simple solution of the social question, ought to do our utmost to promote the movement for a universal living wage. On the other hand, probably a majority of those employers who now pay less than living wages could increase these rates of remuneration without Those of us who do not believe in being driven out of business, and without being compelled to reduce their own standards of living notably or unreasonably. After all, it is upon the employer that the moral responsibility of paying a living wage primarily falls. Only in case of his default does the obligation revert to society or the State. Nevertheless, it is improbable that the private efforts either of the laborers, or of their employers will raise to the plane of a living wage more than a minority of those who are now below the level. Hence the necessity and the duty of the State. to intervene through legislation discouraging any employer from paying any laborer less than the regularly determined minimum. At the outset the legal minimum may be lower than the measure of a living wage given in this paper, but it could be raised gradually, in accordance with the conditions of industry and the growth of favorable public opinion. In principle, legislation of this kind prevailed very widely in the Catholic Middle Ages. has recently begun to be revised in Australia and Great Britain through the device of Minimum Wage Boards. It If all workers who are now compelled to accept wages inadequate to a decent livelihood had their remuneration raised to that level, all the remaining particular industrial problems would be within measurable distance of solution and the menace of Socialism would be relatively negligible. With a living wage assured to all workers, even the weaker sections of the laboring classes would be able to organize and to contend effectively for further advantages: whilst the Socialist appeal would have lost ninety per cent, of its force. For we must remember that the practical strength of Socialism lies for the most part neither in its peculiar social philosophy nor in its specific economic proposals, but in its lurid description and denunciation of the evils of the present system-evils of which at least three-fourths are due directly or indirectly to insufficient rates of wages. ¶ How about that promise to Go To Church? Are you keeping it? As has been said, the securing of a living wage all round cannot be effected all at once, nor by any one method. Suggestions as to its gradual accomplishment have been given. Meanwhile, what of the conscientious employer who is anxious to do his duty, but who finds himself simply unable to pay the wages above indicated as the minimum for decent living? His rival employers, it may be, are keeping wages down; or the conditions of the industry are such that it cannot be carried on if a living wage is paid to the workers, at least during a certain period. Is our conscientious employer bound to pay a living wage when it involves carrying on his business at a loss? Two cases may be considered. The first is that of a man who manages his own business and employs (at least mainly) his own capital. The second is that of the responsible manager of a joint-stock company. In the first case he will have two kinds of claim upon the business: (a) to the wages of management; (b) to such interest upon capital as the proper conduct of the business will fairly allow. (a) His claim to wages of management is at least as valid as that of his employes to a living wage. Father Lehmkuhl, whom (together with many other leading authorities) we have consulted, writes: "The industrial labor of the employer himself has a claim to recompense. If, therefore, the total profits are not sufficent to give to the workman an ex se just wage, and to the employer a minimum wage of management, then justice only requires that the wages of both employer and workman be proportionately reduced below the figure which would normally constitute a just wage in each case. But charity may require the employer to waive his own. just claim in the case, when the workman is reduced to extreme poverty." As regards this point, Fr. Slater writes: "Occasionally in bad times the employ er may be bound, out of charity, to give employment without profit to himself or even at personal loss." (b) The employer's second claim, viz. that to the interest upon his capital, is valid, but of comparatively minor importance: it is inferior to that of the laborer to gain a laborer to gain a decent living by means of his toil. Our second case was that in which the employer was but the responsible manager of a company. In this case the responsibility for paying the workman a living wage, may rest upon the directors and shareholders. He himself, however, is bound to make every effort to secure the payment of such a wage. In particular cases, it is generally agreed, employers may pay something less than a living wage without violating justice. Whether they violate charity will depend upon further circumstances. Even when the employer who pays less than a living wage make no profit, he may still cause harm to others by the general depression of wages which his action tends to produce. But, one further point should be noted. Business that cannot afford to pay living wages are parasitic on the whole community. For it is impossible for the State to neglect the effects of insufficient wages-the halfstarved children. the premature old age, the destitution that necessarily ensues on sickness or old age, the immorality caused by overcrowding, the epidemics resulting from too cheap and insanitary dwellings, etc. All of these things are chiefly caused by the lack of a decent remunerration of labor, and all these things are a continual and heavy charge on the whole community. Therefore the community has a right to protect itself against the cause of these things (i. e. too low wages), by making and encouraging such social arrangements as shall ensure that every worker shall receive proper remuneration for his labor. ¶ Tell your friend that Business is Good and he will pass the word along. |