CHAPTER THREE

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

The terms "fair wages," "reasonable comfort," "living wage" have often been used in the previous discussion. No attempt was made to make them more definite because it was not necessary at the time. Employers were simply assumed to violate the standard represented by these expressions. But if we are going to decide _de facto_ that employers are actually neglecting their duties, we must manifestly have some norm by which to judge them.

What is this standard?

At first sight, this may seem easy to define. But its apparent ease is an illusion. Even the simplest and least questionable standard, that of bare subsistence (and to simplify it still further, restrict the consideration entirely to the question of food), is extremely elusive. Of course a man needs some clothing, a certain amount of fresh air, and a shelter from the weather. But we shall have a sufficiently complicated problem without introducing these factors.

How much food, then, does a man need to repair the daily waste and keep him in good physical condition? This depends to some extent upon the character of the work he does. A stevedore needs more food than a clerk. It will depend, too, upon the climate. Those in northern latitudes require more food, and usually of a more expensive kind, than those living in the tropics, and they ought to have more in winter than in summer. Again, racial characteristics must be taken into account. A Chinese coolie may get fat on fish and rice, or an Italian may do well on cheese and macaroni, while an Anglo-Saxon would starve on such a diet.

In addition to all these points, there is an individuality about the digestive organs that must be weighed. With our exact chemical science it looks simple enough to calculate how much muscle and blood and nervous force are lost in doing a certain amount of work, and just how much food would be required in a given time to make good that loss. This would be easy if we could buy muscle and nervous force done up in neat packages and simply apply them where needed just as we apply a coat of paint to a weather-beaten house. But, unfortunately, we cannot do this. The brawn and nerve must be bought in entirely different forms, broken up by certain interior organs, and gradually sent by a long and complicated assimilating process to the point requiring them. And what becomes of the subsistence standard if the organs of some people refuse to assimilate what those of others heartily relish? or if at different periods, and for no apparent reason, the same man can get no strength or satisfaction from what he formerly craved?

But if we cannot tell what mere subsistence requires are we not getting even vaguer when we add an indefinite "more" to it? When people talk of "frugal comfort," "decent livelihood," "living wage," etc., what do they mean? Do these terms mean to-day just what they did fifty years ago or will mean half a century hence?

A little reflection will show us that they do not. They are largely relative. When the gentry scorned to read and write, farm hands could hardly consider it an injustice not to have instruction in the three Rs; and when everybody went barefoot, it would have been foolish to riot for shoes. As means of production are perfected, as we get away from the danger of starvation, always threatening primitive nomadic peoples, the standard of living of the more fortunate rises, as does that standard which they are willing to allow the lower classes, and which the lower classes demand.

As a consequence, what is looked upon in one age as just and generous, may in another be considered thoroughly unfair. Concrete standards of justice vary with the time and are soon superseded by others. This is an important fact, and it must be mastered before one can use the current standard with honesty or intelligence. The principle of justice upon which the changing concrete standard is based, the moral right of each individual as a human being to the fullest development of all his faculties consistent with such rights in others, is doubtless unchanging. But it is conditioned by the stage of production that society has reached, upon how much there is to go round; and the wage necessary to secure this standard is conditioned by governmental supplement such as free education, insurance, etc. It would seem impossible, therefore, to determine the exact wage that a particular individual is entitled to until we can determine the total net product and this individual's contribution to it as compared with other individuals. We are not aware that this has been done.

The attempt has been made, however, to establish both the absolute minimum standard and this relative standard. In the sixteenth volume of the report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," the former is fixed at $400.00. But have we an absolute minimum below which wages could not fall without endangering existence when a girl of ten and a boy of six are allowed more money for clothing than their mother?

Upon the relative living wage, whole volumes have been written. But they would seem either to deal with the concrete expression of the standard of a particular class, or, if they do attempt to establish the right of individuals here and now to a particular remuneration in money, they do not quite prove their contention.

But there are people who believe that the right of the laborer to a specific wage (and hence the employer's obligation of paying it) can be demonstrated. Dr. John A. Ryan, whose treatise on "The Living Wage" has attracted marked attention, has made such a claim for an estimate of $600.00 as a family living wage in cities of five hundred thousand or over in the United States.[33]

This was in 1906 and the cost of living has advanced considerably since then. Dr. Ryan would probably, therefore, not consider too high the estimate of the Bureau of Labor (l. c.) of $600.00 for cotton mill operatives in the South. Under this standard, the father supports the family, the mother stays at home looking after the house, and the children go to school. It includes insurance.

Now for the sake of argument let us assume that laborers have a strict right in justice to a standard represented by $600.00 a year in a Southern mill town. I must reluctantly admit that $600.00 cannot be proved conclusively to be the sum to which all laborers have a right. But for the time being we shall take it for granted, and from the standpoint of this assumption judge the justice or injustice of industrial conditions.

I have said that I do not think that this obligation can be _proved conclusively_, that is, as conclusively as a proposition in geometry. But I do think that it is capable of the same proof that we have for many other moral truths that pass unquestioned. We must beware of applying to new propositions that corrosive logic which, if impartially exercised on old and new alike, would destroy the very basis of morality.

This principle, that moral truths cannot be absolutely demonstrated, is generally admitted and many concrete examples could be given from prominent ethicists: thus De Lugo in speaking of so fundamental a question as the unlawfulness of suicide, does not hesitate to say: "The whole difficulty consists in assigning a reason for this truth: for though its [suicide's] turpitude is immediately apparent, it is not easy to find the foundation of this judgment: whence (_a thing that happens in many other questions_) the conclusion is more certain than the reason adduced by various authors for its proof."[34]

Again, Ballerini, in treating of the unlawfulness of one of the sins mentioned by St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, remarks that "it is most difficult to assign a reason for this." Then, after rejecting all the reasons usually brought forward, he adds: "It must be admitted that there are some practical truths necessary for the right association of men with each other, which men feel and perceive by a sort of rational instinct, whose reason, nevertheless (at least a demonstrative one), when these same men seek it analytically, they find it hard to discover. It would seem that nature, or the Author of our nature, wished to supply the defect of the exercise of reason by an instinct or rational sense of this kind: ... Among the truths of this nature, the one of which we treat happens to be found."[35]

If unquestioned authorities like Ballerini and De Lugo admit their inability to prove such fundamental and important obligations (it will be noted that De Lugo says there are _many_ such) as those of refraining from the above mentioned sins, it need not surprise us to find that the obligations of Consumers cannot be proved _apodictically_. It would be foolish, therefore, to claim absolutely to demonstrate this obligation. All that can be done is to adduce the same proofs that Aquinas, Suarez, and other master minds have used to fix other duties, and show that they have equal force in the present discussion. It is simply the familiar argument _a pari_, and the claim would seem reasonable, that any objectors meeting these arguments on purely rational grounds, must show that they do not equally apply to this obligation, or else deny their force as proof for the other duties.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Others have approximated this estimate, though possibly without giving it exactly the same ethical implications as Dr. Ryan. Thus Chapin, "Standard of Living in New York City," N. Y., p. 245, claims $800.00 as the minimum for New York City. Miss Butler, "Women and the Trades," N. Y., p. 346, says $7.00 a week for a single woman in Pittsburgh. The United States Bureau of Labor in the third volume of its report on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," p. 560, declares for $2.00 a week per capita.

[34] See Appendix, 9.

[35] See Appendix, 10.