Giants in CST: Msgr. Ryan on the Minimum Wage

“A Living Wage by Law”  

The remuneration of the laborer is the most important single question in any scheme of social reform.  Bernard Shaw declared a few years ago that the trouble with the poor was their poverty.  Similarly, we may say that the industrial question in so far as it relates to the less prosperous classes, is a question of wages almost entirely.  If the working people have a sufficient income, they will be able themselves to meet many of the problems for which reformers are trying to find remedies, such as insurance against sickness and accidents and old age.  The objection might arise that the question of a living wage is not very pertinent at this particular time; that wages are now so high as to make irrelevant the question how a living wage shall be established, whether by law or by any other method; but I think that one or two statistical statements will indicate that the question is not altogether an antiquated one.  Some of you will recall, perhaps, that in those twenty-eight industries in which a survey was made by the Bureau of Labor last year (1919), about 48% of the male workers were getting less than fifty cents an hour, or less than five dollars per day on a ten hour basis, and less than four dollars on an eight hour basis; whereas, in cities at any rate, five dollars per day is not more than a living wage.  So, the question is still pertinent, and may be more pertinent later on than it is now….

The most famous and influential declaration concerning a living wage was that made by Leo XIII in his encyclical on the Condition of Labor, some thirty years ago.  The substance of that statement was that, while it is proper for employer and employee to make free agreements concerning wages, still there is “a dictate of nature more ancient and more imperative than any bargain between man and man, namely, that the remuneration of the worker should be sufficient to enable him to live in reasonable and frugal comfort.”  A few lines further on in that document the Pope says, “if, through necessity or fear of a worse evil the worker accepts less than this measure of remuneration, he is the victim of force and injustice.”  That, I say, is the most famous and the most influential statement that has been made on this subject.  It clearly places the laborer’s claim for remuneration in the class of rights.  The prevailing economic doctrine up to a few years ago was that a free contract is always a fair contract; that no matter how low a wage a worker agrees to accept, or how high a price the consumer agrees to pay, both are fair as long as the contract is free.  In this theory free contract was made the determinant of justice.  Now the statement of the Pope directly contradicts this.  It asserts that, generally speaking, a free contract ought to govern, determine and fix wages, but that there is a limit to the moral lawfulness of a free contract in this matter; that the contract must not be of such a nature that it will deprive the worker of at least that amount of wages which will enable him to live in reasonable and frugal comfort.  So, the Pope places the conception of a right over against the conception of a free contract.  I shall return to this point presently.

Last week somebody asked the question:  “What is a living wage?’ particularly as regards women workers.  The lady wanted to know whether it meant a fair wage or a mere subsistence wage.  I answered that it was a compromise of some sort between the two.  The living wage for male workers is generally understood to be a wage that will enable him and his family to have a decent livelihood.  Well, what is a decent livelihood?  We speak now of the minimum amount, the least amount of goods which will satisfy the demands of a decent livelihood.  It means something more than mere existence; it means something more than the necessaries which will enable a worker to function effectively as an instrument of production; it means something more than merely keeping him and his family in health.  It means, in general, that amount of goods which will enable a human being to live as a human being rather than as an animal, even a well fed animal.  It supposes that he shall have food, clothing, and shelter sufficient to maintain him and his family in health, and that they shall have the means of some recreation, at least sufficient recreation to enable them to be healthy and enjoy an elementary degree of contentment.  It means some opportunity for social intercourse, the possibility of meeting their fellows, those of their class, in a social way without loss of self-respect.  It means the requisites of a religious and moral life; therefore, the opportunities and conditions of being a member of a church, of living in a neighborhood in which the dangers to morals will not be unreasonably great.  It means also some opportunities for intellectual development, some reading matter, and at least an elementary education for the children.  In general, therefore, it comprises an elementary degree of physical, mental, religious, social, and recreational welfare.  That is about as clearly, I think, as the concept can be defined in general terms.

When men attempt to put the conception into terms of money, they naturally differ considerably one from the other, and yet whenever the thing has been systematically undertaken men have been able to come to an agreement.  It is probably more easy for a group of fair-minded men, even drawn from different classes, to agree as to what constitutes the minimum requirements or minimum cost of a decent livelihood for a man and his family than it is for employer and employees to make a bargain that will be mutually satisfactory.  Probably the amount now required is 1,400 to 1,500 dollars a year.

Pope Leo XIII says the worker has a right to a living wage; that it is not merely desirable that he should have this reasonable minimum of the good things of life, but that he has a moral right to this much, - a thing having the same moral force as the right which we assert to our money if somebody attempts to take it away from us.  Why does a laborer have such a right – why do we say that he has a right to at least that much remuneration?  In order to answer that in the shortest possible form, and to make it as clear as possible in a brief form, we have to keep in mind three important facts or factors.  There is, first, the fact that this earth of ours, the nursing mother of us all, was created by God for all human beings.  He did not pick out any certain class and hand it over to them.  The second fact is that the goods of this earth become available, as a rule, only at the cost of labor.  The command in the book of Genesis, “In the sweat of thy brow, thou shalt eat thy bread” announces not merely a law, but a fact, that men do not get a livelihood from the earth unless they work for it.  And the third important fact to consider is that the earth does not, even for those who work, produce its fruits in unlimited abundance.  Therefore, it is possible for a group of persons, large or small, to be in control in any given time and country of all the natural resources, and that group may be less than the whole number of the country’s inhabitants.

As a result of these three factors:  first, that God made the earth for all human beings; second, that men must get their livelihood from the earth by labor; and, third, that it is possible for a part of the people of any country to get possession of the earth, - it follows that the laborer has a right against the masters of the earth to a decent livelihood.

Every person has a right of access to the earth, an equal right with everybody else.  There is nobody living – I do not care what his condition is – whether he be a multi-millionaire or whether he has any money at all, who can say to his fellow, “I have a better right to get my livelihood from the earth than you have.”  Men are equal in that respect.  Of course, if one wants to say that there is no such thing as rights in this matter, that the man who gets possession of the earth first may properly exclude all others from any share in it, there is no possibility of answering such a person by reason, because he denies the existence of rights.  He asserts, in effect, that he is of a superior nature to the rest of men, that he has all the right in this case, and that other men have no rights.

When a man has performed a reasonable amount of useful labor, his right of access to the earth becomes a right to a livelihood from the earth against the persons who have control of it.  To put it in other terms, the persons who have control of the resources of the earth are bound so to exercise that control that the man who performs a reasonable amount of labor will be able to obtain at least a decent livelihood.  Or, to put it still in another way, the persons who are in control of the earth are obliged to permit all persons to get a decent livelihood from it on reasonable terms, and the main element in “reasonable terms” is the performance of a reasonable amount of labor.  Such is the ethical basis of the right of a living wage, or the right to a decent livelihood.

Suppose it be objected that the worker who performs a reasonable amount of labor has a right to a living or an existence from the earth, but not a right to so much of the earth’s goods as are equivalent to a decent livelihood.  The answer is that the human being is a person, not an animal; that he has intrinsic worth and sacredness; that he has faculties to be developed which are above his physical faculties; and that he has a free will and a rational soul.  Since God has imposed upon him the obligation of attaining his eternal end, his eternal salvation, God wishes him to have the means which are adequate for that purpose.  Now, a human being will not have the means to attain his salvation, will not have the means to live a reasonable life, unless he has the minimum amount of the material things and opportunities which is equivalent to a decent livelihood.

Therefore, the persons in control of the goods of the earth have no more right to exclude the man who performs a reasonable amount of labor from this measure of the good things of life than they have to deprive him of his liberty, or to compel him to work as a slave.  Suppose they say, “yes, we will give him a decent livelihood, but we will make a slave of him; we will give him a living just as a father gives a living to a child who is not able to care for himself.”  Everyone would say, “that is wrong; that is a violation of man’s right to freedom”; yet it is no more of a violation of his rights than is this other action of conceding to him only the means of subsistence.  His rights are violated in the latter case quite as certainly as in the former; it is a different kind of right, but it is a right that is essential to a reasonable life, and that is the end and purpose of all rights.  Through all this conception of a living wage, a decent wage, a decent livelihood, we have the idea of man as a person of intrinsic worth, with faculties which he has a right to develop and which God wishes him to develop, which he must develop if he is to have the opportunity of working out his salvation and living his life as a person made in the image and likeness of God.

Now this language may seem elusive and vague, and yet it is not possible to justify human rights by anything like a mathematical argument.  If the proposition that a man has a right to a better living than a well fed horse does not appeal to us as persuasive, there is no way of proving it that I know.  Either the principle is self-evident or it is nothing.  As a matter of fact, it is self-evident to most persons when they examine its elements and it is more or less self-evident to all persons instinctively.  I think the best proof that the proposition is self-evident is the fact that hardly any person any longer will publicly assert that a laborer ought to be paid less than a living wage.

It was not because some men were morally blind that they once denied the laborer’s right to a living wage, but because they thought they had moral sanction for different kind of conception, namely, the conception that in the wage agreement, as in every other bargain, a free contract is always a fair contract.  Of course, there is no sacredness whatever about a free contract in itself; it may be unfair, brought about by economic force.  There is no more sacredness in economic force as a determinant of a fair contract than there is in physical force.  When a highwayman points a pistol at the wayfarer and says to him, “give me your money or I will shoot you,” and the wayfarer hands over his money, no one pretends that the highwayman thereby gets title to this money, and yet it has been a free contract.  The highwayman agrees not to shoot the traveler if the traveler hands over his money.  The contract is free in a sense; for the traveler need not surrender the money; - he could wait and be shot.  All admit that such a contract is not a determinant of justice.  Neither is the contract which compels the worker to accept less than a living wage, because of the fear of starvation for himself or for his family.  In this case it is an economic force that prevents the convalidity, no more moral worth as a determinant of justice or as a basis of a free contract than physical force, physical pressure and threats, as in the case of the highwayman with the pistol.

A right to a decent livelihood means a right to a living wage in the case of the laborer.  Why?  Because that is the kind of industrial system in which we live.  The goods and products of the earth are controlled in our industrial system by the employer.  If it were the State that managed and operated industry, the right of the laborer would be against the State, because the State would then have control of the means out of which wages must come.  As a matter of fact, it is not the State that controls in our system; it is the employer.  Therefore, the laborer’s right to a decent livelihood from the fruits of the earth becomes a right against the employer for a living wage.  The employer is bound to pay that because he has the product, and he is the paymaster of society.  There is no other reasonable way to determine rights and obligations in our system of production and distribution.  Who else could be reasonably expected charged with the obligation of paying living wages except the man who has the product?

Suppose the employer says, “but this product is mine.  I think that the laborer should have only this much of it, less than a living wage.  Since the product is mine, why may I not keep it all except the equivalent of a starvation wage?”  Perhaps the most effective reply to that question is another question:  “Whence did you get ownership of this product?  Who made it yours?  You have the power over it, yes; so has the highwayman the power over my purse – if he thrusts a gun against me he compels me to hand it over to him.  Physical power, economic power, legal power, does not necessarily give you a moral right.  The laborers have co-operated with you in producing the product.  Why should you say that it is all yours except this amount you give to them which is less than a living wage?”  It is impossible to prove that the product is the employer’s, in the sense that he may agree to give less of it to his employees than will enable them to live decently.  His control of that part of the earth’s resources does not free him from the obligation of distributing it in such a way that the getting of a decent livelihood by those who work for him will not be unreasonably difficult.  Otherwise he is setting himself up as having a superior claim to the goods of the earth as compared to those who work for him.

How shall the living wage be brought about universally?  There was a time when economists thought that the laborers would get not only living wages but something more through the operation of competition and the free play of economic forces.  The general theory was that capital is increasing so much faster than labor that labor will be able through competition to get an ever increasing share of the product, while capital will get a relatively decreasing share.  I do not think that many economists hold that opinion now.  Greater experience has shown that economic forces and the free play of competition do not of themselves increase wages.  The period of the war is almost the first time since the industrial revolution that the theory of the economists in regard to the laborer’s share increasing through the free play of economic forces has been verified; but we all realize that this is a temporary condition, that the normal situation is rather that which prevailed for twenty-five or thirty years before the war, when wages were not rising except very slightly.  It is probable that there was no rise in real wages, wages measured by purchasing power, between 1900 and 1915.

So, we cannot look to economic forces to provide the laborers with living wages.  We cannot rely upon the benevolence of the employers either, because the majority of employers in competitive industries cannot pay much more wages than they are paying, and the few who could pay more unfortunately will not do so.  They will pay the same wages as their least efficient competitor.  The labor unions will not be able to provide a guarantee of living wages to all the workers, because those groups of the laboring class that need living wages most are the ones that are least able to organize.  As a matter of fact, the persons in the labor unions of this country, men and women, are not more than 15% of the wage-earners.

The only method of bringing about living wages universally is that of legislation.  That is to say, the State should make it illegal for anyone to pay less than what competent authorities will determine to be a living wage.  That means in the case of a man a wage sufficient for decent support of himself and family, and in the case of a woman, remuneration sufficient for decent individual support.  In times past there have been a few Catholics who have declared that this was socialistic, or that it was not in accordance with Catholic doctrine.  I do not know now of any Catholic of importance who is making such an assertion.  It seems to me as clear as any proposition can be that this device of a legal minimum wage is a proper intervention by the State, according to the Catholic principles of political ethics.  The Catholic theory of the State is not the laissez faire theory; it is not the theory that the State should keep its hands off industry, allowing individuals to have free play to compete with one another by cut-throat competition, and to pay men starvation wages if they can get them to work so cheaply.  The Catholic doctrine is that the function of the State in this matter is two-fold:  it must protect all natural rights, not merely the right of a free contract, not merely the right of physical integrity, of protection against the thief and the burglar, but all natural rights; and the right to a living wage is one of the natural rights.  Secondly, the State is obliged to do more, or at least may properly do more, than to protect rights; it may go further and promote the general welfare of the community or of a particular section of the community.

The general principle is expressed by Pope Leo XIII in the general encyclical on “The Condition of Labor” in very definite, clear and brief terms:  “When the general interest or any particular class suffers or is threatened with mischief which can in no other way be met or prevented, the public authority must step in and deal with it.”  Now, that is about as sweeping general pronouncement of the propriety of the State interfering in industrial matters as anyone could desire.  The only thing necessary to prove, according to this doctrine, that the State has a right to enact minimum living wages is to supply the minor proposition; “but a large class of the workers are threatened with, or rather are suffering grievous economic evils which cannot be met except through State intervention.  Therefore, it is proper for the State to intervene and establish legal minimum wages.”

The legal minimum wage is no longer among the novelties.  It has existed in the State of Victoria, Australia, since 1896.  It was applied in the beginning to only three trades; but it was extended gradually to trade after trade, and then from Victoria to the neighboring States in Australia, then to New Zealand and Tasmania, so that today they have the legal minimum wage throughout the whole of Australia.  Legal minimum wage laws were introduced into England in 1910 and now apply to a large proportion of the working population.  Manitoba, and I think two or three other provinces in Canada, have minimum wage laws.

Fourteen states of the United States and the District of Columbia have such legislation; but in the United States the law applies to women and minors only, not to men.  There are two or three reasons for that; the first is that the people are more willing to pass radical legislation where women and minors are concerned than where only men are concerned.  The second is that the law compelling women to be paid living wages will more probably stand the test of constitutionality in the courts than would such a law applied to men.  But when we who believe in a legal minimum wage speak of the desirability of its extension, we mean that it should be applied to men as well as to women.  There is no fundamental reason why it should be confined to women and minors.  For a good while it was feared that the minimum wage law for women and minors would be declared unconstitutional; but finally the United States Supreme Court refused to nullify the Oregon law.  When that law came before the United States Supreme Court on appeal, four justices voted in favor of it and four against it.  Since the Oregon Supreme Court had declared the law constitutional this equal division of the Federal Court had the effect of sustaining the law.

There is the greatest irony in the constitutional jeopardy to which legislation of this kind is subject.  It is attacked under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The Fourteenth Amendment declares that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.  Those who oppose minimum wage legislation say that it deprives the citizen of the liberty of hiring persons for less than living wages, or less than a legally fixed wage, and also of his property, inasmuch as it makes his business less profitable by compelling him to pay a higher wage than he would be obliged to pay in the absence of the law.  I say there is the greatest irony in that, because this amendment was adopted, put into the Constitution, for the protection of the Negroes of the South, for the protection of an oppressed class that would otherwise have been deprived of these rights by the States.  Now we have this amendment which was adopted for the protection of the oppressed black race, turned against legislation for the protection of an oppressed section of the white race.  It is one of the curiosities of the Constitution.  The clause itself is all right, but it is perverted to uphold a liberty which is unreasonable, the liberty to use economic force in order to get men and women to work for less than decent wages.

There are many objections against the legal minimum wage which I do not intend to go into at any length, but I shall state the substance of most of them.  It runs thus:  if you raise the wages of any class artificially, as by legislation, you will compel the product which they make to be sold at a higher price in order to provide the additional wages.  It if it sold at a higher price, the consumption of it will fall off, the demand will be less.  If the demand for the product is less, the demand for the workers to make the product will correspondingly decline; therefore, some of the workers will be thrown out of employment.  You will have a smaller number of workers employed at a higher wage, instead of having a larger number of persons employed at a lower wage.  The second evil is worse than the first.

Such is the substance of most of the economic objections.  The main defect of the argument is that it proves too much.  If that reasoning were correct, it would be folly for any group of workers to try and get their wages raised by any method whatever, because they would forge the same fatal chain of events:  a raise in wages and an increased cost of production which would be passed to the consumer in the form of higher prices, which higher prices will cause a falling off in demand, which lessened demand will reduce the demand for labor.  The argument applies against every increase in wages, even that due to the benevolence of the employer.  So, I say, it proves too much.  The answer to it in brief is simply this:  There are four sources from which the additional wages can come:  first, from greater efficiency on the part of the workers.  I do not say this will always be forthcoming; but the general experience is that when persons who have been underpaid, getting less than living wages, are enabled to rise to that level, their productivity does increase somewhat.  The second source is more efficient methods of production.  Very often men employ cheap labor in place of machinery.  It is cheaper to hire human beings than to put in a machine.  It is easier to get on with antiquated methods of production, or with poor organization of productive processes so long as labor is cheap; but if more wages have to be paid, it becomes to the interest of the employer to improve the whole organization of his business and plant.  There was a distinct manifestation of that in England in the tailoring trade after the legal minimum wages was established.  The employing tailors put in improved machinery and improved the processes of production generally, which they had not thought worthwhile before.  In the third place, some of the increased wages came from profits, and from the elimination of the least efficient employees.  Finally, a part of the increased wages will have to come out of prices.  Will these increased prices, in so far as they are necessary to provide additional wages, cause a falling off in demand?  Not at all.  Demands will be increased instead of diminished, owing to the greater purchasing power of these workers whose remuneration has been increased.  Why is it that there is such great demand for everything now?  That there is under-production in everything?  One of the main reasons is that a larger proportion of the working population has now a greater purchasing power than ever before.  The workers are keeping industry going by providing a large and steady demand for goods in spite of the enormously high prices.  It is probable that prices have increased since the beginning of the war three or four times as much as they would have to be increased if we had a legal minimum wage throughout the whole of this country for men, women and children.

• Msgr. John Ryan, 1920, Social Reconstruction, pp. 62-80, as in J.F. Leibell, Readings in Ethics, 1926, p. 687-699.
   

Giants in CST: Msgr. Ryan on Property

“The Doctrine of Property”

All the great radical movements for industrial reform involve the institution of private property.  Socialism would abolish private ownership of the instruments of production; the Single Tax system would substantially abolish private ownership of land.  Public ownership of such things as railroads, telegraphs, and municipal utilities would restrict very considerably the scope of private ownership, and even such milder proposals as profit-sharing and labor participation in management would cause a redistribution of the existing powers and functions of ownership.

The relations between capital and labor and the manner in which the product is distributed are what we find them today mainly because our industrial system is based upon a certain form of private property.  The instruments of production are owned and managed by private individuals and organizations.  The conditions and terms of employment and the distribution of the industrial product, are likewise determined by the fact that capital is private property, not the property of the State.  Both these matters are arranged by agreement between the workers on the one hand, and the owners of capital on the other.  Hence, both capitalist and laborer are vitally interested in the institution of private property.  The former prizes the institution as a means of livelihood and a source of social and industrial power; the latter is no less keenly interested, although in a somewhat different way, and for somewhat different reasons.  The worker wishes to own his wages and the things that his wages will buy, and he frequently desires to restrict the social and industrial power which ownership confers upon the capitalist.

All the efforts of revolutionists and reformers for the abolition or for a reorganization of the system of private property, and all the disputes between labor and capital concerning employment conditions and the distribution of the product, assume that there is involved an ethical principle, a principle of justice.  To the supreme principle all make their final appeal.  Inasmuch as the Church is the teacher and interpreter of morals, in economic no less than in the other relations of life, her doctrine of property is of the highest importance.

The founder of Christianity is sometimes represented as a revolutionist, a communist, or at least as one who did not believe in private property.  No such claim can be substantiated by any fair study of the Gospels.  Christ nowhere condemned the private ownership of goods as unjust or unlawful.  Probably the nearest approach to such a declaration is found in His reply to the rich young man who asked what he should do in order to have life everlasting.  When Christ enumerated the principal commandments, the young man replied:  “All these have I kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me?”  The answer of Jesus was:  “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast and give to the poor….”  In these statements Our Lord drew quite clearly the distinction between what is necessary and what is of counsel.  The young man was not required to divest himself of his goods unless he wished to be perfect, but he was not commanded to be perfect.  Moreover, the fact that Christ counseled the young man to “sell” his goods, shows that He did not regard private ownership as unlawful in itself.  Had He meant to teach such a doctrine, He would have required the young man to give away his goods, not to convey the title of ownership to another by a sale.  The young man could not have sold what was not his.  Again, Christ became a guest in the house of the rich man Zacheus, and assured him, “this day is salvation come to this house.”  Zacheus had said, “Behold, Lord, the half of all my goods I give to the poor.”  Christ did not command him to give away the other half as a condition of salvation.

Our Divine Lord, did, indeed, emphasize the dangers of riches and denounce the rich in severe terms.  “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Nevertheless, He immediately added:  “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  The rich man who had rejected the plea of the beggar Lazarus is pictured in hell.  The poor widow who contributed two brass mites to the treasury is praised above the rich men who had given of their abundance.

What Christ required was not that men should refrain from calling external goods their own, but that they should make a right use of such goods.  He declared that salvation was to come to the house of Zacheus when He heard that the latter was in the habit of giving half of his wealth to the poor.  In His description of the last judgment He promised heaven to those who would feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked.  These are only a few of the Gospel indications that Christ made the right use and distribution of private property one of the most binding and important of his commandments.

There is another element of Christ’s teaching which has a very important bearing upon the doctrine of property.  That is His insistence upon the intrinsic worth and sacredness of the human individual, and the essential equality of all human persons.  From the fact that every human being has intrinsic worth, it follows that he has a moral claim upon the common means of life and of livelihood; from the fact that all persons are equal in the eyes of God and equally destined for eternal life, it follows that they have equal claims upon God’s earthly bounty for at least the essentials of right and Christian living.  It is true, indeed, that Christ nowhere formulated these propositions in the terms just used; nevertheless, they are a correct rendering of his teaching on these subjects.  Because of this teaching, St. Paul could adjure Philemon to take back his runaway slave, Onesimus, “not now as a servant, but instead of a servant a dear brother.”  Christ’s teaching concerning the intrinsic worth and the essential equality of all human beings has important implications, not only with regard to spiritual goods and welfare, but also with respect to all things necessary for Christian living, including access to material goods.  These implications have been recognized and applied by the authorities of the Church from the beginning until the present hour.

The most radical application of the doctrine of equality was made by the first Christians of Jerusalem who sold their individual possessions and “had all things in common, …and divided them to all, according as everyone had need.”  This was the Christian Communism which Socialists and other extremists sometimes point to as exemplifying the normal and necessary Christian attitude toward property.  However, this contention is unsound, for two very good reasons.  First, the arrangement was entirely voluntary, as we see from the words of St. Peter to Ananais:  “Whilst it remained, did it not remain to thee?  And after it was sold, was it not in thy power?”  Here is a clear indication that none of the early Christians was morally bound to contribute his private property to the common store.  In the second place, there is no evidence that community of goods was continued more than a few years among the early Christians.  Apparently, it was due to the peculiar condition of the faithful in Jerusalem, and possibly to the first fervor of new converts.

It is in the writings of some of the great Fathers of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries that we find the most striking recognition of the claims of all men upon to bounty of the earth, and of the obligations of proprietors to make a right and social use of their goods.  St. John Chrysostom exclaimed:  “Are not the earth and the fullness thereof the Lord’s?  If, therefore, our possessions are the common gift of the Lord, they belong also to our fellows; for all the things of the Lord are common.”  Speaking to the rich of his day, St. Basil declared:  “That bread which you keep belongs to the hungry; that coat which you preserve in your wardrobe, to the naked; those shoes which are rotting in your possession, to the barefooted; that gold which you have hidden in the ground, to the needy.”  According to St. Augustine:  “The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor.  They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others.”  St. Ambrose declared that God intended the earth to be “the common possession of all,” and that “the earth belongs to all, not to the rich.”  In the words of St. Gregory the Great:  “When we give necessaries to the needy, we do not bestow upon them our goods; we return to them their own; we pay a debt of justice, rather than fulfill a work of mercy.”  St. Jerome quoted with approval a saying that was common in his time:  “All riches come from iniquity, and unless one has lost, another cannot gain.”

While very few subsequent writers or teachers of the Church used quite such strong language as that just quoted, they all taught the same doctrine in substance.  According to St. Thomas Aquinas, it is right that property should be private with respect to the power of acquisition and disposal, but that it should be common as regards its use; the abundance of the rich belongs by natural right to the poor; the order of reason requires that a man should possess justly what he owns, and use it in a proper manner for himself and others; and finally the man who takes the goods of another to save himself from starvation is not guilty of theft.  When Cardinal Manning, some thirty-five years ago, reiterated this doctrine of the right of the starving man to appropriate alien goods to save himself from starvation, he was denounced as an anarchist by some of the newspapers of that day.  These journals showed that they were ignorant of the traditional Christian teaching of property rights; they knew only a false ethics of property.

According to the Christian conception, and according to the law of nature and reason, the primary right of property is not the right of exclusive control, but the right of use.  In other words, the common right of use is superior to the private right of ownership.  God created the goods of the earth for the sustenance of all the people of the earth; consequently, the common right of all to enjoy these goods takes precedence of the particular right of any individual to hold them as his exclusive possession.  To deny this subordination of the private to the common right, is to assert in effect that nature and nature’s God have discriminated against some individuals, and in favor of others.  Obviously, this assertion cannot be proved by any evidence drawn either from revelation or from reason.  The fact that the State sometimes violates this order, exaggerating the privileges of private owners to such an extent as to deny the common right of all the general heritage, merely shows that the State can sometimes do wrong.

Nevertheless, this common right of property, the right of use, is not a sufficient provision for human welfare.  Men need not only the general opportunity to use goods, the general right of access to the bounty of nature, but also the power of holding some goods as their own continuously.  They require the power of excluding others from interference with those goods that they call their own.  Without such a right and such powers, personal development, personal security, and adequate provision for family life are impossible.  All this is evident with regard to those things which economists call “consumptive goods;” that is, those goods which are necessary for the direct and immediate satisfaction of human wants; such as food, clothing, shelter, household furniture, and some means of amusement, recreation, and moral, religious, and intellectual activities.  The necessity of private ownership in these articles is not denied by anyone today, not even by Socialists.

As the term is ordinarily understood, private ownership means more than ownership of consumptive goods.  It embraces more particularly productive goods, the natural and artificial means of production; such as lands, mines, railroads, factories, stores and banks.  Today, all these are owned by private individuals or by corporations.  With regard to this kind of private property, the Catholic Church, especially through Pope Leo XIII and his successors, has laid down positive and specific doctrine.  Socialism, that is, State ownership of all the means of production, was condemned by Pope Leo XIII as detrimental to the working people and to society, and as contrary to the natural rights of the individual.  According to the Catholic doctrine, therefore, the right of the individuals to acquire and hold in private ownership some of the means of production is in harmony with, and required by, the moral law of nature.  The institution of private ownership, even in the means of production, is declared to be necessary for human welfare.  Therefore, the State would injure human welfare and violate the moral law if it were to abolish all private property in the instruments of production.

However, care must be taken not to exaggerate the implications of this doctrine.  All that it asserts is that the institution of private property in some of the means of production is morally lawful and morally necessary; all that it condemns is the contradictory system which would put the state in the position of ownership and manager of all, or practically all, natural and artificial capital.

Therefore, the Catholic teaching does not condemn public ownership of what are called public utilities, such as railroads, telegraphs, street railways, and lighting concerns.  It does not even condemn public ownership of one or more of the great instruments of production which hare not included in the field of public utilities.  For example, it has nothing to say against State ownership of mines, or State ownership of any other particular industry if this were a necessary means of preventing monopolistic extortion to the great detriment of the public welfare.  Where the line should be drawn between State ownership of industries which is morally lawful and State ownership which encroaches upon the right of private property, cannot be exactly described beforehand.  The question is entirely one of expediency and human welfare.  In any case, the State is obliged to respect the right of the private owner to compensation for any of his goods that may be appropriated to the uses of the public.

Another caution concerns the actual distribution and the actual enjoyment of private property.  While the Church opposes Socialism, it does not look with favor upon the restriction of capital ownership to a small minority of the population.  Indeed, the considerations which move the Church to oppose the Socialist concentration of ownership, are an argument against a concentration in the hands of individuals and corporations.  Every argument which Pope Leo XIII used against Socialism is virtually a plea for a wide diffusion of capital ownership.  The individual security and the provision for one’s family which a man derives from private property, are obviously benefits which it is desirable to extend to the great majority of the citizens.  It is not enough that private ownership should be maintained as a social institution.  The institution should be so managed and regulated that its benefits will be directly shared by the largest possible number of individuals.  Therefore, Pope Leo XIII declared explicitly that it is the duty of the State “to multiply property owners.”

Therefore, those ultra conservative beneficiaries of the present order who see in the Church’s condemnation of Socialism approval of the existing system with all its inequities, are utterly mistaken.  They have missed the fundamental principles and aims of the Church’s teaching.  The Church advocates private ownership indeed, but she does not defend the present unnatural and anti-social concentration of ownership.  She is interested in the welfare of all the people, and wishes that all should share directly in the benefits which private property provides. 

So much for the right of private ownership.  The duties of the proprietor occupy a no less important place in the Christian teaching.  In general, they are a limitation upon the right of property.  The right is exclusive as regards other individuals; that is to say, it excludes others than the proprietor from exercising the essential control which is conferred upon the proprietor.  As regards God, the right of the proprietor is limited.  Neither Christian teaching nor sound philosophy regards this right as absolute.  The private owner is a steward of his goods rather than an irresponsible master.  It is from the pagan code of Roman law, from the virtually pagan Code Napoleon, and from the unmoral and immoral principles of economic liberalism that has arisen the pernicious doctrine that “one may do what one pleases with one’s own.”  The so-called “right of use and abuse” which has obtained such wide currency in industrial thought and practice, is in fundamental opposition to the Christian teaching.

The limitations set by that teaching to the powers and rights of the private owner follow logically from the Christian doctrine concerning the common bounty of nature, the common right of access to that bounty, and the recognition of the right of use as the primary right of property.  Some of the duties of the private owner have already been pointed out by implication in our discussion of the teaching of the Fathers of the Church.  In a general way, the obligations of the proprietor with regard to the right use of his goods may be thus formulated:  He must so use and administer his property that other men shall enjoy the benefit of it on just terms and conditions.  Only thus can the private right of property be reconciled with the superior common right of access to the bounty of the earth.  One inference from the general principle was drawn by St. Thomas Aquinas, when he declared that a man’s superfluous goods belong by natural right to the poor.  For the time and society in which St. Thomas wrote, this was probably the most important particular application of the principle.  In the present social and industrial system, with its immense aggregations of capital and its enormous numbers of people whose livelihood depends upon their relation and access to these industrial enterprises, right use of property and the sharing of its benefits “on just terms and conditions,” have different and far wider applications.  Chief among these applications is the right of a worker to a living wage, and the right of the consumer to just prices.  So much is certain.  Right use, reasonable access to the common bounty, and participation in the benefits of property on just and reasonable conditions, may also require, and sometimes they do require, the recognition of labor unions, sharing by the workers in industrial management and in profits, and the limitation of rates of industrial interest by the State.

In any case, the general principles are clear:  The earth is intended by God for the children of men; individuals or corporations that have appropriated any portion of the common bounty to their exclusive control and disposition hold it subject to this primary and fundamental social purpose; therefore, they are morally obliged to administer it in such a way that all who live by it, or depend upon it, shall enjoy the economic opportunity of a reasonable and normal life.

Although Pope Leo XIII condemns State ownership and management of all the instruments of production, he did not reject State regulation of private property.  On the contrary, he laid down a principle which would give to the State all the power and authority which any reasonably person could desire over industrial relations, and for enforcing the limitations of ownership:  “Whenever the general interest or any particular class suffers or is threatened with injury which can in no other way be met or prevented, it is the duty of the public authority to intervene.”  This principle would justify legislation of many kinds for a better use of private property and for a wider distribution of its benefits.

The Christian doctrine of property is sufficient, on the one hand, to protect the common interest and claims of all human beings, and on the other hand, to safeguard all the reasonable rights of individual proprietors.  The evils which have existed and still exist in connection with private property are not inherent in the institution, as that institution is understood and defended by the Christian teaching.  The most dangerous enemies of the institution are neither the exponents of the Christian teaching nor the social reformers generally, but those extreme upholders of the present day system who cling to an autocratic and irresponsible theory of ownership which is as inconsistent with human welfare as it is contrary to the ideals of democracy.

• Msgr. John Ryan, The Quarterly Bulletin of the Meadville Theological School, April, 1922.  As in J.F. Leibell, Readings in Ethics, p. 583-592.