SECTION IV
THE MORAL ASPECT OF WAGES
CHAPTER XXII
SOME UNACCEPTABLE THEORIES OF WAGE-JUSTICE
"It may be that we are not merely chasing a will-o'-the-wisp when we are hunting for a reasonable wage, but we are at any rate seeking the unattainable."
Thus wrote Professor Frank Haight Dixon in a paper read at the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the American Economic Association, December, 1914. Whether he reflected the opinion of the majority of the economists, he at least gave expression to a thought that has frequently suggested itself to every one who has gone into the wage question free from prejudices and preconceived theories. One of the most palpable indications of the difficulty to which Professor Dixon refers is the number of doctrines concerning wage justice that have been laboriously built up during the Christian era, and that have failed to approve themselves to the majority of students and thinkers. In the present chapter the attempt is made to set forth some of the most important of these doctrines, and to show wherein they are defective. They can all be grouped under the following heads: The Prevailing-Rate Theory; Exchange-Equivalence Theories; and the Productivity Theories.