“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.
No comments:
Post a Comment