Again, if the baker is thought of as a mere convenience for baking bread, all demands he may make beyond those which will enable him to produce good bread, will be fiercely contested. The conditions under which the bread is baked are a paltry incident, provided they do not in any way discommode the consumer, and the claim made by the journeyman baker for opportunity and means to realize the God-given ambitions of his manhood, ambitions which perchance have nothing to do with baking bread, is scouted in much the same way that a request to decorate a machine with gold trimmings would be scouted. Of course it is as wrong to ignore the former's claim, as it would be right to ignore the demand for expensive and useless embellishments for a piece of machinery; for one is a person and the other is a thing.
It is because men have been thought of as things, that there are such plague-spots on the social body as sweatshops. All movements that compel the attention of the consumer to a recognition of his relation to the producer as a person, are worthy of the most careful study and the highest commendation. Preferential dealing, that is to say, dealing preferably with such merchants as we know to have humane regard for those who produce and handle the goods offered for sale, is merely a passing phase of the attempt to recognize as persons those who, though far removed from us, yet touch our lives and minister to our necessities; and the movement deserves support and encouragement because of the principle which actuates it. When life was less complex than at present, and the entrepreneur and middleman did not exist to obscure the relationship between consumer and producer, it was easier to realize the responsibility of the one toward the other than it is now. However, it is of elementary necessity that men should learn that the accident which hides one section of society from the easy observation of another, does not lessen one whit the mutual responsibility which each bears towards the other. Nor does the difficulty of gathering information afford an excuse. In these days of pertinacious investigation and organized experience, there is no set of conditions so complex as to baffle ultimately the determined investigator of social phenomena, or to escape satisfactory adjustment.
Once again, the cry of the workman for a living wage, is but an indication that the labourer is coming to a realization of the dignity and fullness of manhood, and is inviting others to share in this discovery of himself. Who can turn a deaf ear to his appeal, excepting those who deny a man's right to realize himself? The doctrine of the average wage, that is, the wage which is determined by a "brazen law" of one kind or another, whether that to which the name of Ricardo is attached or some other, equally unmanageable, is fast giving place to that of the living wage. The living wage is the evolution of the average wage; the former phrase declares that men are requiring official dealings to be more humane than of yore, as well as that the law of wages is not an almighty tyrant to which society must bow, but a law which is more or less obedient to the dictates of man's will. There are those among political economists who now maintain it to be more reasonable to claim, that prices must conform to wages, than wages to prices. It is worth while adding in this connection that the living wage is bound to be progressive, as the duty of treating men as persons and not as things, comes to be more firmly imbedded in the public conscience. Some persons are ready to admit the justice of the theory of Christian democracy, though unwilling to accept many of its logical conclusions. The promulgation of the principle of democracy in its mildest form, creates new desires or awakens dormant ones in the undermost men, and of course provision must be made for satisfying these, else the doctrine which gave the desires birth is hideously cruel. A living wage some years since, had the phrase obtained in the language, would have signified for the most part a wage sufficient to sustain animal life. That is, the wage-earning man would have been recognized as an animal but not a person. Or perhaps it would have meant a wage capable of creating economic efficiency, in which case it would have indicated that the wage-earner was viewed as a thing. Now the idea underlying a living wage is a wage sufficient for the sustenance of human life, of life in which there is room for freedom of choice, and where the whole man is taken into consideration.
It is to the credit of society, that so much earnestness is being expended to-day in the effort to humanize the various official relationships of life. But it is a cause for shame, on the other hand, that among Christian men there should have been so deplorable a falling away from elementary Christian principle, as to make this effort necessary. Let it suffice for the present to insist that until men more generally recognize their fellows, whatever be their position in life, to be persons and not things, wide fellowship at any rate is an utter impossibility. And it is from this point that all attempts to solve social problems must take their beginning. It might prove a useful experiment if occasionally, for a short period, we were to test our love for others by loving ourselves as we love them, treating ourselves as we treat them. If it so happened that we were living reasonably near to the Golden Rule, our conduct would not have to be materially, if at all, changed to do this; but if we happened, on the other hand, to be treating our neighbour as a thing when the experiment took place, there is no doubt that we should immediately become so unhappy and full of pain, as to be incapable of prolonging the experience.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] That is called a thing to which no event can be imputed as an action. Hence every object devoid of freedom is regarded as a thing.—Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics.