The fixing of an abstract, hypothetical obligation for a whole class, rather than a concrete duty for a particular individual, is not useless. If it is proved, that, provided employers neglect their duties and the Consuming Class can do anything to fulfill them, there is an obligation upon the Consuming Class to carry out these duties—if this is established, it is only necessary when a particular case presents itself to ask: Have the men through whose labor this Consumer is benefiting been unjustly treated by their employers, and can this Consumer, without a disproportionately grave inconvenience, do anything to help them?
Unless both questions are answered in the affirmative, this particular individual Consumer can have no duty of fulfilling the abstract obligation. This is much easier than working out the principle anew for each case. It is the difference between blowing bottles and molding them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Women and the Trades," The Pittsburgh Surrey, by Elizabeth Beardsley Butler: N. Y., 1909: p. 47.
[CHAPTER TWO]
OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS
Practically all are agreed on the fundamental point that laborers have a right to a fair wage for a fair day's work. Leo XIII has said, that though contracts between laborers and employers are free, "nevertheless, there is a dictate of natural justice underlying them more imperious than any bargain between man and man, that remuneration ought to be sufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner."[2] Later in the same encyclical, he indicates that this wage should be large enough to enable a workman to "maintain himself, his wife and his children in reasonable comfort" (p. 237), and allow a margin for saving against a rainy day.
The present Pope, Pius X, has quoted these words of his predecessor and agreed that workmen have a strict right in justice to a fair wage, time to fulfill their religious duties, and freedom from work unsuited to their age, strength, or sex.[3] The Rev. J. Kelleher, one of the most recent and respected writers on the question, goes even further. "The right to work," he says, "or some other right that will secure an opportunity of providing for reasonable living to the less fortunate members of the social body who do not happen to be possessed of property, is an essential condition of any equitable economic system."[4]