Social Justice Without Socialism

by John Bates Clark

There is a preliminary reform to be carried through as a condition of securing most of the others. Who can estimate the benefit which would come from merely making our Government what it purports to be—government by the people? The initiative, the referendum, the recall, the short ballot, direct primaries, and proportionate representation are all designed to transfer power from rings and bosses to the people themselves. If they actually do it, as sooner or later those or kindred measures probably will, they will so far restore the democracy of our earlier and simpler days as to make us look back on the rule of rings and bosses as on a nightmare of the past. When the Government is thus really controlled by the people we can count on having its full power exerted for them.

What are a few of the things that we shall then try to get?

The working day is too long. In some occupations it covers far too many hours, and in most occupations it covers more than it ideally should. There are doubtless some industries in which hours might be reduced with no lessening of wages, because profits are large enough to bear some reduction. In these cases a strong union might get either more pay for a day of the present length or the present rate for a shorter day. A universal reduction of the period of labor would have to mean a reduction of the product of industry, and without immediate improvements in method of production it would entail smaller wages. Improvements, however, might soon obviate that necessity. With machinery growing more and more efficient, the day may be shortened with no diminution of wages; and the natural effect of increasing power to produce has always been some shortening of labor-time coupled with some enlargement of pay. Within the last one hundred years the period of daily labor in some types of manufacturing has come to cover only a little over one third of the twenty-four hours, instead of more nearly two thirds; while the earnings have become much larger than they were at the beginning of the period. Normally this progress should continue, and long before the dawn of the twenty-first century we should see work still less severe, less prolonged, and better paid. Where, as in some departments of steel-making, labor in two shifts continues through the twenty-four hours, there is a chance to make this gain without appreciable waiting; and elsewhere it should be possible to make it without waiting for the twenty-first century to come much nearer than it is.

Dangerous and injurious occupations still continue; and our country is slower than others in remedying this trouble. Many safeguards that are easily obtainable are neglected. Protection for the workers and indemnities for injuries when they occur can be insured by well-made laws, properly enforced. Sanitary regulations and pure-food laws need to be strengthened and more fully enforced.

Our protective tariff bears heavily on the poor man. His wardrobe contains little or nothing that is made of wool, and he may well sigh for the mixed cotton and shoddy of earlier days. Our import duties, which do, indeed, try to spare his dinner-pail, should be made to spare his wardrobe and the modest comforts of his life.

Commercial crises still occur and are followed by hard times; and while a really wise reform of money and banking would not wholly prevent them, it would greatly mitigate their severity.[¹ ]

Emergency employment is desperately needed when hard times come. European Governments excel our own in providing it, but it is entirely possible to adopt their methods and improve on them.

Our natural resources have been wasted in a prodigal way. Forests have been recklessly cut, fires been invited and the soil itself has been sacrificed. Natural gas and oil have been burned with no regard for the future. Coal and other minerals have not been husbanded. It should be possible for us to cease to play the spendthrift with the patrimony that nature has given to us.

We have the beginnings of a parcel post, but we need a more highly developed one that will come nearer to the standards maintained in other countries. With it we need telephone and telegraph systems that can be universally used.

In our larger cities, we are struggling to get rapid transit and shall have to continue the struggle; but we ought to have, with urban railroads, subways, and the like, measures that would reduce the amount of traveling that has to be done between homes and places of labor. A free use of the principle of "eminent domain" would make it possible to acquire land for carrying out any policy of general beneficence, and that, too, without robbing the owners of it. By resorting to this measure much of the manufacturing which exposes great cities to imminent danger of conflagration might and should be moved bodily to outlying districts.