The Church and Social Justice

I

POPE PIUS XI, in his recent encyclical on labor, stresses particularly the importance of justice in social and industrial relations. This is not, indeed, a new note in such papal documents. Nor does it mean that charity and the other virtues are in any sense minimized. The venerable Pontiff professes merely to elaborate the social philosophy of his illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, whom he quotes freely throughout the document.

Leo had defined the ‘just wage’ in the light of Christian teaching. The worker is entitled to a fair return for his labor. It should be sufficient to support him and his family in decency. Employers are urged to consider the human dignity of the workers when determining the wage they are to pay.

Pius XI develops the theme. Young children and ailing women should not be forced to do public work. Mothers should not be taken from the home circle to help earn a livelihood. ‘Every effort, therefore, must be made that fathers of families receive a wage sufficient to meet adequately ordinary domestic needs.’ Is this but a reiteration of the exhortation that has become proverbial in every pulpit and trite in every volume on Christian sociology? From time immemorial employers have been exhorted, in the name of Christ, to pay a just wage, a living wage. It is their Christian duty. It is the law of the Gospel. It is humane.

But what has the modern mill owner, or manufacturer, or mine operator to do with the ‘domestic needs’ of his employees? Neither he nor his executives know, save by chance, which workmen have families and which are single. On the other hand, should he learn that some of his employees are not earning enough to support their families, what can he do about it? He must meet competition in his business. He must produce his commodities so as to be able to sell at a profit. This profit is necessary to pay dividends on the capital invested in his enterprise. This is a condition generally conceded.

Ask the modern business man to regulate his wage scale on the basis of Christian ideals and he will probably tell you that he is not running a charitable institution. For the most part he does not allow his religion to interfere with his business. He may be the most religious, the most charitable, the most philanthropic of men; yet, if his business is to succeed, he must meet competition. He must consider carefully the labor cost of his product if he is to survive among his competitors and show a profit on his operations.

To all this Pope Pius replies, ‘If in the present state of society this [a wage sufficient to meet adequately ordinary domestic needs] is not always feasible, social justice demands that reforms be immediately introduced which will guarantee every adult workman just such a wage.’ This is a new approach to the wage problem. By one noble gesture the Pontiff transfers it from the economic to the social sphere. The question of wages is, indeed, a social problem.

II

It has been taken for granted in modern industrial countries that society rests upon an economic basis; the economic status of a nation largely reflects its social condition. We calculate backward. Markets and market values reflect wages and profits. When business prospers, the worker has more work and perhaps better wages; his social condition rises to higher standards. In the lean years of depression, the worker’s social condition sinks with the decline of business.

Take a specific example. In a certain coal field, five or six years ago, coal was selling for approximately $2.50 a ton. The labor cost was then about $1.25 a ton. Since then the selling price of coal has gradually declined until it is as low as seventy-five or eighty cents a ton. With the fall of market prices, wages have been reduced apace. Then, to aggravate conditions further, the men have work but two or three days a week. The result is that many American workmen (employed, be it understood), with all the toil and drudgery of their lives, are unable to provide the bare necessities of life for their wives and children.

Nor are the operators, therefore, to be considered unjust or unfair. They too are victims of the economic law under which they serve. The law that brings hunger and destitution to their workers often brings bankruptcy to them. Business is poor, wages are low, work is scarce, many families are destitute, dividends are not declared. Such is the fate of a society that rests upon a purely economic basis.

But perhaps social justice demands a reversal of the equation. Man is more important than business, at least theoretically. Human values are above market values. In all reason, then, we should begin our calculations with human values, thence pass to market values. In short, our economic system should be governed by the rule of social justice.

Under this system the market value of coal, for instance, would be subservient to the human value of the miner. We might begin our calculation in this wise: Any miner, in these times, requires at least fifteen dollars a week to provide for the daily needs of his family. We will suppose that this represents about seventy-five cents labor cost per ton of coal produced. Naturally the operator can no longer sell his coal at the present low figure. When he counts his total production cost he may say to the buyer, ‘ I must have at least $1.50 a ton. You see, Mr. Purchasing Agent, we are now bound by the law of social justice. Formerly we reduced wages when it was necessary to meet a low market price. Now the market price must conform to a decent wage for our workmen.’

No doubt there are hard-headed business men who will consider this theory of social justice an economic heresy. Nevertheless, social justice is the only basis upon which civilization can survive, upon which the human race can develop and work out its destiny. The struggle for social justice is as old as history. It has resulted in the overthrow of tyranny in many lands; it has wiped the shameful blot of slavery from the Christian nations; it first transformed the workman from chattel-slave to serf, then from serf to citizen. Now workingmen are granted equality of political rights with others in most of our modern democracies. Our American Constitution is idealistic in proclaiming the equality and freedom of all our citizens; it professes to offer equal opportunity to all for the pursuit of happiness and well-being. We are proud of our Constitution and the idealism with which it estimates human worth.

We are also proud of our preëminence in the sphere of economics. It is our boast that we are the richest nation on the face of the earth to-day. Our financial and industrial achievements beggar the best that has been done in all other countries; our granaries are bursting with an excess of foodstuffs; our warehouses are packed to overflowing with unconsumed goods; our banks are glutted, as never before, with money, water-logged with an overabundance of non-circulating currency.

Withal, millions of hungry men are footsore, vainly and hopelessly and despairingly seeking bread for hungry wives and babes. Yet it is impossible to place the blame for their plight. Their only solace is to participate in some pale-faced form of relief. They may enter a bread line; they may be doled out a ladle of thin soup; they may receive a basket from a religious organization. And for these pitiful crumbs they must pay the price of self-respect. Those who have toiled to overfill the world with food and clothing and all the commodities which bring comfort and luxury are now objects of charity. The ox that treads the corn is muzzled.

What price liberty! Slaves, in other days, did the drudgery performed by our workingmen to-day, but they did not have to face the dread of recurrent destitution. They were fed by their masters — fed like the ox and the ass, indeed, to make strength for work. But to-day the unemployed workman is in a more pitiable plight. He must struggle on, haunted by the shadow of pauperism. In these times of economic depression strength, character, industriousness, are of no avail, if overproduction has made his services unnecessary. Ask such men what they think of social justice.

It is a pity that the Holy Father could not have walked through any of a thousand mining camps during the last winter. Would to God that by some supernatural vision he had been able to gaze into thousands of miners’ hovels and see everywhere pale, weak mothers with undernourished babes struggling at unsatisfying breasts. Here he would have found evidence in bold relief of that sin which cries out to Heaven for vengeance. It is the scandal of the ages.

III

There is no sentimentalism in these facts; it is grim tragedy. This inhumanity is permitted to exist among us because its realism is unbelievable. Even those who live just across the hill among the conveniences of the city have no adequate comprehension of the situation. Our hearts are encrusted with our national vanity. We cannot admit that there are abject poverty and shameful destitution among those who are performing the drudgery that makes the rest of us comfortable. For generations we have been guided by a sort of economic justice.

We assume that all their ills are healed when they have a job. If they have a job and are in need, they must have wasted their money, presumably on illicit liquor. If they are too old or infirm, let them go to the poorhouse. Let their children go to the orphan asylum.

Most men are inclined to believe only what is agreeable; hence there are no beggars, there is no destitution in this glorious land of liberty and plenty. But, alas, too little distinction is made, in this economic paradise, between men and machines. Men are worn out more ruthlessly than the machine beside which they toil. If they labor not, neither shall they eat. They must be producers; production is the watchword of American greatness. Life is an industrial treadmill. The laborer is but a tool in the hands of his economic operators.

His worth is estimated by the standard of his economic productivity; his human dignity counts for little. There are upwards of forty million workers in America, who toil eight or ten hours a day. In this present depression it is said that there are as many as five or six millions of unemployed. Business is poor, and there are no markets for our products. Quite naturally the employers drop those millions from their pay roll. It is economic justice; it is good business. But it is not social justice; it is an inhuman system.

It is incredible that in a modern democracy there exists no official responsibility for forty million workmen as a class; their lot is left to the fortuitous need or whim of the individual employer. Neither the government nor the individual employer has any responsibility to provide work for all. If there is work for but thirty millions, the remaining ten millions are left without the vaunted opportunity to pursue happiness, without even the opportunity to make a living. Of course you cannot ask employers to hire men for whom they have no work. Such practice would wreck our industries. Nor can you expect the government to pay unemployment doles. That would degrade our men and make taxes unbearable.

How, then, apply social justice in this instance? Undoubtedly it demands that we recognize the worker’s right to work. This follows because his right to live depends upon his right to work. Furthermore, all workers have the right to work at all times, since all have the right to live at all times. This is the application of social justice.

IV

From this point of view the workers of the country, be they forty millions or a hundred millions, have the right to the work of the country. The work which they as a class perform produces the means of livelihood for themselves and for the whole people, and every workman has a right to a just share in these products, provided he performs a due portion of the work. This might mean eight hours a day; it might mean four, or five, or six hours a day when the work has been distributed among all the workers. In every case each worker’s share should afford a decent living for himself and his family. In modern industrial countries the products are always ample; we usually suffer from overproduction. No one need be reduced to beggary or destitution.

Under our present system the manufacturer pays the same amount of taxes on his property and continues to pay interest on his borrowed capital whether business is good or dull; it is only human values that are reduced or wiped out in times of depression. Captains of industry do not have such responsibility for the livelihood of their employees as they have for the payment of taxes and interest. If they fail in these payments, they are subject to legal prosecution. If the workers and their families are destitute, there are no laws to safeguard their right to live — to live in the decency of human beings.

Under our present system the custom is to work eight or ten hours a day. But why do some work eight or ten hours while other workers are idle? If 10 per cent are idle, reduce the working time 10 per cent, and lo, all are employed. If 25 per cent are idle, reduce the working time to suit the case. But what of the wages? Are workers to receive the same wage for five or six hours as for eight or ten hours? By the economic rule, no; under no consideration. By the rule of social justice, they must receive under all conditions sufficient to live decently. Does not the farmer feed his idle horses? Can a modern democracy be less humane to its free-born citizens?

Of course this theorizing is stark madness when viewed from the purely economic point of view. It is false reasoning, indeed, unless we rate humanity higher than dollars. It is piffle and prattle if our present social system is sound. But it is not offered as a solution; it is merely put forward to illustrate an attitude of mind.

The encyclical which suggests these musings stresses the danger of too much concentrated wealth. The suggested flexible working day might indeed change some figures in the last three or four columns of some billionaires — this in their annual income. Yet some such measures might help to restore self-respect to our beloved country. Any serious movement of the kind might help save the world for democracy as against much-dreaded communism. Any honest attempt to establish our government on the basis of social justice would certainly make our people feel that modern civilization is at heart humane.

If social justice were introduced into our national life, if it were to supplant our economic standards, there would surely be less crime, better morality, and more religion among us. After all, crime, rampant as it is, is almost a necessary consequence of our commercialism. Religion thrives ill in a nation that does not respect human life. ‘If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar,’ says Saint John. Had even the vestige of social justice prevailed through the thousand years of tsarism, the Russians would not now be tearing down the temples of religion and driving its priests across the borders.

But the crimes of all the tsars of all the Russias are scarcely more heinous than the crime of social injustice that is being committed against American workmen to-day. It is a crime similar to those so often reported from coroners’ inquests: ‘Committed by the hands of persons unknown.’