Moreover, the habit of looking at the wage contract as a matter of commutative justice in the mere sense of contractual justice, is radically defective. The transaction between employé and employer involves other questions of justice than that which arises immediately out of the relation between the things exchanged. When a borrower repays a loan of ten dollars, he fulfils the obligation of justice because he returns the full equivalent of the article that he received. Nothing else is pertinent to the question of justice in this transaction. Neither the wealth nor the poverty, the goodness nor the badness, nor any other quality of either lender or borrower, has a bearing on the justice of the act of repayment. In the wage contract, and in every other contract that involves the distribution of the common bounty of nature, or of the social product, the juridical situation is vitally different from the transaction that we have just considered. The employer has obligations of justice, not merely as the receiver of a valuable thing through an onerous contract, but as the distributor of the common heritage of nature. His duty is not merely contractual, but social. He fulfils not only an individual contract, but a social function. Unless he performs this social and distributive function in accordance with justice, he does not adequately discharge the obligation of the wage contract. For the product out of which he pays wages is not his in the same sense as the personal income out of which he repays a loan. His claim upon the product is subject to the obligation of just distribution; the obligation of so distributing the product that the labourers who have contributed to the product shall not be denied their right to a decent livelihood on reasonable terms from the bounty of the earth. On the other hand, the activity of the labourer is not a mere commodity, as money or pork; it is the output of a person, and a person who has no other means of realising his inherent right to a livelihood. Consequently, both terms of the contract, the labour and the compensation, involve other elements of justice than that which arises out of their assumed mutual equivalence.
In a word, justice requires the employer not merely to give an equivalent for labour (an equivalent which is determined by some arbitrary, conventional, fantastic, or impossible attempt to compare work and pay) but to fulfil his obligation of justly distributing that part of the common bounty of the earth which comes into his hands by virtue of his social function in the industrial process. How futile, then, to endeavour by word juggling to describe the employer's obligation in terms of mere equivalence and contractual justice!
Some difficulties occur in connection with the wage rights of adult males whose ability is below the average, and female and child workers. Since the dignity and the needs of personality constitute the moral basis of the claim to a decent livelihood, it would seem that the inefficient worker who does his best is entitled to a living wage. Undoubtedly he has such a right if it can be effectuated in the existing industrial organisation. As already noted, the right of the workman of average ability to a living wage does not become actual until he finds an employer who would rather give him that much pay than do without his services. Since the obligation of paying a living wage is not an obligation to employ any particular worker, an employer may refrain from hiring or may discharge any labourer who does not add to the product sufficient value to provide his wages. For the employer cannot reasonably be expected to employ any one at a positive loss to himself. Whence it follows that he may pay less than living wages to any worker whose services he would rather dispense with than remunerate at that figure.[245]
Women and young persons who regularly perform a full day's work, have a right to compensation adequate to a decent livelihood. In the case of minors, this means living at home, since this is the normal condition of all, and the actual condition of almost all. Adult females have a right to a wage sufficient to maintain them away from home, because a considerable proportion of them live in this condition. If employers were morally free to pay home-dwelling women less than those adrift, they would endeavour to employ only the former. This would create a very undesirable social situation. The number of women away from home who are forced to earn their own living is sufficiently large (20 to 25 per cent. of the whole) to make it reasonable that for their sakes the wage of all working women should be determined by the cost of living outside the parental precincts. This is one of the social obligations that reasonably falls upon the employer on account of his function in the present industrial system. In all the American minimum wage laws, the standard of payment is determined by the cost of living away from home. Besides, the difference between the living costs of women in the two conditions is not nearly as great as is commonly assumed. Probably it never amounts to a dollar a week.
The Family Living Wage
Up to the present we have been considering the right of the labourer to a wage adequate to a decent livelihood for himself as an individual. In the case of an adult male, however, this is not sufficient for normal life, nor for the reasonable development of personality. The great majority of men cannot live well balanced lives, cannot attain a reasonable degree of self development outside the married state. Therefore, family life is among the essential needs of a normal and reasonable existence. It is not, indeed, so vitally necessary as the primary requisites of individual life, such as food, clothing, and shelter, but it is second only to these. Outside the family man cannot, as a rule, command that degree of contentment, moral strength, and moral safety which are necessary for reasonable and efficient living. It is unnecessary to labour this point further, as very few would assert that the average man can live a normal and complete human life without marriage.
Now, the support of the family falls properly upon the husband and father, not upon the wife and mother. The obligation of the father to provide a livelihood for the wife and young children is quite as definite as his obligation to maintain himself. If he has not the means to discharge this obligation he is not justified in getting married. Yet, as we have just seen, marriage is essential to normal life for the great majority of men. Therefore, the material requisites of normal life for the average adult male, include provision for his family. In other words, his decent livelihood means a family livelihood. Consequently, he has a right to obtain such a livelihood on reasonable terms from the bounty of the earth. In the case of the wage earner, this right can be effectuated only through wages; therefore, the adult male labourer has a right to a family living wage. If he does not get this measure of remuneration his personal dignity is violated, and he is deprived of access to the goods of the earth, quite as certainly as when his wage is inadequate to personal maintenance. The difference between family needs and personal needs is a difference only of degree. The satisfaction of both is indispensable to his reasonable life.
Just as the woman worker who lives with her parents has a right to a wage sufficient to maintain her away from home, so the unmarried adult male has a right to a family living wage. If only married men get the latter wage they will be discriminated against in the matter of employment. To prevent this obviously undesirable condition, it is necessary that a family living wage be recognised as the right of all adult male workers. No other arrangement is reasonable in our present industrial system. In a competitive régime the standard wage for both the married and the unmarried men is necessarily the same. It will be determined by the living costs of either the one class or the other. At present the wage of the unskilled is unfortunately adjusted to the subsistence cost of the man who is not married. Since two prevailing scales of wages are impossible, the remuneration of the unmarried must in the interests of justice to the married be raised to the living costs of the latter. Moreover, the unmarried labourer needs more than an individual living wage in order to save sufficient money to enter upon the responsibilities of matrimony.
Only two objections of any importance can be brought against the male labourer's claim to a family living wage. The first is that just wages are to be measured by the value of the labour performed, and not by such an extrinsic consideration as the needs of a family. It has already been answered in this and the preceding chapters. Not the economic but the ethical value of the service rendered, is the proper determinant of justice in the matter of wages; and this ethical value is always the equivalent of at least a decent livelihood for the labourer and his family. According to the second objection, the members of the labourer's family have no claim upon the employer, since they do not participate in the work that is remunerated. This contention is valid, but it is also irrelevant. The claim of the labourer's family to sustenance is directly upon him, not upon his employer; but the labourer has a just claim upon the employer for the means of meeting the claims of his family. His right to this amount of remuneration is directly based neither upon the needs nor the rights of his family, but upon his own needs, upon the fact that family conditions are indispensable to his own normal life. If the wife and young children were self supporting, or were maintained by the State, the wage rights of the father would not include provision for the family. Since, however, family life involves support by the father, the labourer's right to such a life necessarily includes the right to a wage adequate to family support.