On what ground is it contended that a worker has a right to a decent livelihood, as thus defined, rather than to a bare subsistence? On the same ground that validates his right to life, marriage, or any of the other fundamental goods of human existence. On the dignity of personality. Why is it wrong and unjust to kill or maim an innocent man? Because human life and the human person possess intrinsic worth; because personality is sacred. But the intrinsic worth and sacredness of personality imply something more than security of life and limb, and the material means of bare existence. The man who is not provided with the requisites of normal health, efficiency, and contentment lives a maimed life, not a reasonable life. His physical condition is not worthy of a human being. Furthermore, man's personal dignity demands not merely the conditions of reasonable physical existence, but the opportunity of pursuing self perfection through the harmonious development of all his faculties. Unlike the brutes, he is endowed with a rational soul, and the capacity of indefinite self improvement. A due regard to these endowments requires that man shall have the opportunity of becoming not only physically stronger, but intellectually wiser, morally better, and spiritually nearer to God. If he is deprived of these opportunities he cannot realise the potentialities of his nature nor attain the divinely appointed end of his nature. He remains on the plane of the lower animals. His personality is violated quite as fundamentally as when his body is injured or his life destroyed.
While it is impossible to define with mathematical precision the degree of personal development that is necessary to satisfy the claims of personal dignity, it is entirely practicable to state with sufficient definiteness the minimum conditions of such development. They are that quantity of goods and opportunities which fair-minded men would regard as indispensable to humane, efficient, and reasonable life. The summary description of a decent livelihood at the end of the second last paragraph, would probably be accepted by all men who really believe in the intrinsic worth of personality.
The Claim to a Decent Livelihood from a Present Occupation
The claim of a worker to a decent livelihood from the goods of the earth does not always imply a strict right to a livelihood from one's present occupation. To demand this would in some circumstances be to demand a livelihood not on reasonable but on unreasonable terms; for the persons in control of the sources could not reasonably be required to provide a decent livelihood. Their failure to do so would not constitute an unreasonable hindrance to the worker's access to the earth in such circumstances. In chapter xvi we saw that not all business men have a strict right to that minimum of profits which is required to yield them a decent livelihood: first, because the direction of industry is not generally the business man's only means of getting a living; second, because the community, the consumers, do not regard the presence and activity of all existing business men as indispensable. Of course, the community is morally bound to pay such prices for goods as will enable all the necessary business men, whether manufacturers or traders, to obtain a decent livelihood in return for their directive functions; but it is not obliged to provide a livelihood for those business men whose presence is not required, who could vanish from the field of industrial direction without affecting either the supply or the price of goods, and whose superfluous character is proved by the fact that they cannot make a livelihood at the prevailing prices. They are in the position of persons whom the community does not desire to employ as business men. In refusing to pay prices sufficiently high to provide these inefficient business men with a decent livelihood, the community is not unreasonably hindering their access to the common goods of the earth. Such men are really demanding a livelihood on unreasonable terms.
The Labourer's Right to a Living Wage
On the other hand, the wage earner's claim to a decent livelihood is valid, generally speaking, in his present occupation. In other words, his right to a decent livelihood in the abstract means in the concrete a right to a living wage. To present the matter in its simplest terms, let us consider first the adult male labourer of average physical and mental ability who is charged with the support of no one but himself, and let us assume that the industrial resources are adequate to such a wage for all the members of his class. Those who are in control of the resources of the community are morally bound to give such a labourer a living wage. If they fail to do so they are unreasonably hindering his access to a livelihood on reasonable terms; and his right to a livelihood on reasonable terms is violated. The central consideration here is evidently the reasonableness of the process. Unlike the business man, the rent receiver, and the interest receiver, the labourer has ordinarily no other means of livelihood than his wages. If these do not furnish him with a decent subsistence he is deprived of a decent subsistence. When he has performed an average day's work, he has done all that is within his power to make good his claim to a decent livelihood. On the other hand, the community is the beneficiary of his labour, and desires his services. If, indeed, the community would rather do without the services of an individual labourer than pay him a living wage, it is morally free to choose the former alternative, precisely as it is justified in refusing to pay a price for groceries that will enable an inefficient grocer to obtain living profits. Whatever concrete form the right of such persons to a decent livelihood may take, it is not the right to living wages or living profits from the occupations in question. Here, however, we are discussing the labourer to whom the community would rather pay a living wage than not employ him at all. To refuse such a one a living wage merely because he can be constrained by economic pressure to work for less, is to treat him unreasonably, is to deprive him of access to a livelihood on reasonable terms. Such treatment regards the labourer as inferior to his fellows in personal worth, as a mere instrument to their convenience. It is an unreasonable distribution of the goods and opportunities of the earth.
Obviously there is no formula by which such conduct can be mathematically demonstrated as unreasonable; but the proposition is as certain morally as any other proposition that is susceptible of rational defence in the field of distribution. No man who accepts the three fundamental principles stated some pages back, can deny the right of the labourer to a living wage. The man who does not accept them must hold that all property rights are the arbitrary creation of the State, or that there is no such thing as a moral right to material goods. In either supposition the distribution and possession of the earth's bounty are subject entirely to the arbitrament of might. There is nothing to be gained by a formal criticism of this assumption.
What persons, or group, or authority is charged with the obligation which corresponds to the right to a living wage? We have referred to "the community" in this connection, but we do not mean the community in its corporate capacity, i.e., the State. As regards private employments, the State is not obliged to pay a living wage, nor any other kind of wage, since it has not assumed the wage-paying function with respect to these labourers. As protector of natural rights, and as the fundamental determiner of industrial institutions, the State is obliged to enact laws which will enable the labourer to obtain a living wage; but the duty of actually providing this measure of remuneration rests upon that class which has assumed the wage-paying function. This is the employers. In our present industrial system, the employer is society's paymaster. He, not the State, receives the product out of which all the agents of production must be rewarded. Where the labourer is engaged in rendering personal services to his employer, the latter is the only beneficiary of the labourer's activity. In either case the employer is the only person upon whom the obligation of paying a living wage can primarily fall.
If the State were in receipt of the product of industry, the wage-paying fund, it would naturally be charged with the obligation that now rests immediately upon the employer. If any other class in the community were the owners of the product that class would be under this specific obligation. As things are, the employer is in possession of the product, and discharges the function of wage payer; consequently he is the person who is required to perform this function in a reasonable manner.