THE WAGE-CONTRACT AND STRICT JUSTICE.

1

The fair and able review of "A Living Wage" which appeared in the July number of the BULLETIN 1 touched upon some fundamental principles of justice in the matter of wages. To bring, if possible, these principles into clearer light, the following observations are submitted:

1. The reviewer declares (p. 472) that wages have two ethical regulating factors, namely, the decent support of the laborer as ultimate, and the economic value of the work as proximate factor. Now, "the economic value of the work" means either the market rate of wages, or the market price of the finished product of the work. I have admitted that the price of the product is the proximate determinant of wages, inasmuch as I have contended that when it is insufficient to furnish the employer with a decent livelihood and also with the means of paying a Living Wage, he is not obliged to give such a wage. Moreover, in the final chapter of the book it is asserted that remuneration in excess of a Living Wage, must be determined by many elements, among which is the value and amount of the product. Hence the difficulties which the reviewer proposes at the top of page 473 do not affect my position at all. If, however, by "economic value" he means the market rate of wages, I do not admit that it of itself is an ethical determinant of wages, either ultimate or proximate. In this view I believe I am at one with Doctor Sauvage. For he would hold, I think, that the market rate has ethical significance only inasmuch as it expresses the "communis aestimatio" of what is just; or in so far as it indicates the selling price of the product: in either case he would not regard it as a complete measure of justice if it were less than a personal Living Wage.

2. On page 474 we read: "It seems, however, that strict commutative justice is respected when the wage paid is proportionate to the economic value of the work done, and this

1See Catholic University Bulletin, July, 1907, pp. 470 ff.

economic value is adequate to the personal efforts and needs of the laborer." This statement is based on the theory that strict justice requires and is satisfied by an equivalence between work and pay. According to the reviewer, the wage ought to be equivalent not merely to the work taken objectively, apart from the personal efforts and needs of the laborer, but also to "the preservation and development of his personality." For his work is "a human effort in which his personality has a share. With his work the laborer gives, so to speak, his whole life, his intellectual and moral as well as his physical forces to the service of his employer." But the development of personality includes the means of living as the head of a family: how then can it be maintained that the wage need not be equivalent to this demand of personality? The moral and intellectual forces which the laborer expends in his work require for their proper support, comfort, and development the state of marriage. Does not strict justice demand that the wage should supply these normal needs? No, answers Dr. Sauvage; for "his work as the immediate object of the wage-contract, is in no way affected by that circumstance." Nor, I would reply, by the circumstance that he ought to contribute to the support of his church, to possess books and other means of mental nourishment, to lay by a sum for the time of sickness and old age. Yet Dr. Sauvage would admit, I am sure, that all these needs come within the scope of a decent personal livelihood, and ought as a matter of strict justice to be met by the remuneration. If strict justice binds the employer to take account of these conditions, which are "of no advantage to him," why does it not oblige him to give a wage adequate to those needs of personality which are satisfied only in the family life? The difference between the two classes of needs is of degree only.

As was pointed out in Chapter VI of "A Living Wage," the equivalence theory" compels an arbitrary interpretation of the term "work," or "value of work." "value of work." In the purely objective sense of a certain amount of utility created by the laborer, work finds its equivalent compensation in the market rate; but this is often less than a personal Living Wage. If by work we mean the created utility, plus the human energy expended

in creating it, the equivalent wage would be that rate which would enable the worker to replace this energy; that is to say, any sum by which he could continue to perform the usual amount of work, and live out a normal span of life. Dr. Sauvage's principles and reasoning seem at one point to force upon him this conclusion, for he says that the contract considers the laborer "primarily as a person able to furnish a certain amount of work for which he will receive a wage adequate to its value and to his needs as a laborer" (p. 474; the italics are mine). Of course, he would repudiate this interpretation and this doctrine, and insist that the remuneration must be equivalent to the maintenance of the laborer not merely as a working machine, but as person having moral, religious, intellectual, and social needs. Finally, if the term work be made to include created utility, plus expended energy, plus the claims of a personality which is so involved in the work that it cannot obtain adequate development except through the wages received for the work, then the right to a personal living wage is shifted from the principle of equivalence between the things exchanged, to the principle of the dignity of personality. Any reasonable interpretation of the former principle is satisfied when the pay is proportioned to the utility produced and to the inconvenience and waste incurred in producing it. If the claims of personality are introduced into the equation their presence there cannot be justified by the nature and terms of the contract alone; recourse must be had to the principle of personal dignity, and to the fact that the contract renders the maintenance of personal dignity impossible except through the medium of wages. Moreover, it has been already pointed out that the claims of personality which have to do with the family life are essentially as urgent as those which refer to purely individual development.

The reviewer maintains that, since the laborer's duty of developing his personal life rests directly upon him as an individual, while the duty of rearing a family falls directly upon the race and only indirectly upon the individual, the right to a family Living Wage is less valid than the right to a personal Living Wage. According to my view, however, these rights

are based, not on corresponding duties, but on the rights respectively, of becoming the head of a family, and of developing the individual life.

3. Nevertheless Dr. Sauvage admits that the laborer has a natural right to a decent family wage, but denies that this right is based on the work-contract between the laborer as such and the employer as such. It is based on the relations which exist between the laborer as a member of society, as a member who fulfils the duty of head of a family, on the one side; and on the other side, the employer, as another member of the same society, . . . is the chief agent relatively to his employes of the support that society is bound to procure to each one of its members" (p. 475).

Taking "society" to mean the community as an economic social group rather than as a political society, or the State, I can accept the preceding paragraph in its entirety. More than once in "A Living Wage" the assertion is made that the right to a Living Wage, both personal and family, holds against the members of the industrial community in which the laborer lives; and that the obligation of the employer to pay this wage is a reasonable outcome of his position in the economic organism, as owner and distributor of the social product. With the reviewer I admit that the right to a family Living Wage is not wholly based on the work-contract directly. The claims of justice springing directly out of the contract are satisfied when the wage is in proportion to the utility created (as measured, if you will, by the market rate) and the vital force expended. Here we have an equivalence between the things exchanged, a rough fulfilment of the condition that the gains should be equal on both sides. When this wage is less than the amount required to maintain a family, the laborer's right to the difference arises out of the contract indirectly. Through the contract the laborer complies in a reasonable degree with Nature's universal law of work; through the contract likewise, the employer gets possession of a product from which a family Living Wage can be paid. Therefore, the laborer's right to this wage springs partly from the contract, partly from his personal dignity, partly from his compliance with the law of

the work, and partly from the employer's resources as possessor of the social product.

Hence the employer's obligation (both in regard to a personal Living Wage and one adequate to the maintenance of a family) derives partly from his function as a distributor. On account of this function, his general obligation of so using the resources of the earth that his neighbors will find no unreasonable difficulty in obtaining a decent livelihood therefrom, is converted into the particular obligation of giving a family Living Wage to those of his neighbors who stand to him in the relation of employees. From this point of view, the employer's obligation and the laborer's right may appear in the category of social justice, or even of distributive justice. As the distributor of social products and opportunities, the employer is bound to apportion them between himself and his employees in such a way that the shares obtained by the latter will be in accordance with their natural rights to the common bounty of nature, and with the requirements of reasonable life and development.

Since this distributive function of the employer is not formally civil or political, since it would attach to him in the absence of civil government, its inclusion under the head of social, or distributive, justice is chiefly a question of language. I see no objection to this manner of speaking, provided that the right to a family Living Wage and the corresponding obligation on the part of the employer be placed in the category of strict justice also. A right or a transaction may be the object of both kinds of justice, as, for example, in the matter of public taxes. When a relatively excessive amount is imposed upon any citizen, not only distributive but strict justice is violated. Although the right to a family Living Wage is not based entirely upon the contract as such, it is nevertheless a strict right and involves the obligation of restitution. Contracts are not the only source of strict rights. The right to liberty, to marriage, to a portion of another man's goods in time of extreme need, even the right to fair treatment in the making of contracts, all have their basis not on contracts but on the dignity, worth, independence, sacredness, of personality.