A political economy without ethics, without a rule of right except as set down in man-made law, can have none of the elements of justice save, possibly, through sheer accident. Legal morality and the morality for which Christianity has always stood are as opposed as the two poles in many particulars. Where the principles of true morality are recognized, there is no inherent antagonism between capital and labor. They have interests that are mutual, and there is no excuse for turning the industrial world into a battleground upon which strength and cunning usurp the place of love and justice. The moment that the higher ideals of life are subordinated to the passion of greed, the degradation of the weaker and less cunning becomes inevitable.
History shows us that this is precisely what has happened. Instead of becoming a means to progress, the competitive system, through lack of control, has resulted in a form of unlicensed competition which, as J. J. Welsh asserts (“Socialism, Individualism and Catholicism,” p. 19), may be “rightly described as commercial cannibalism.... It delivers up weak, unorganized labor into the hands of organized and omnipotent capital.... Without regard for the skill of the worker, the value of his labor, or the requirements of a decent human life, the competitive principle justifies the capitalist in paying the workman the least, which, in the circumstances, he can compel him to accept. The employer shelters himself under the law of supply and demand, as though that were the supreme regulator of the remuneration and conditions of labor. There is no savor of morality in such a principle. It gives an unfair advantage to the few rich, who control the instruments of production, over the defenceless masses, and it makes a question of strict justice—the remuneration and the actual subsistence of the toiler and his family—depend upon a trial of strength between two contending parties.”
There is no right-minded man who is not ready to join the Socialists in their condemnation of the effects of the operations of this principle of unrestrained competition. Were we compelled to believe that there was no way by which this system could be changed, but that the human sorrow and merciless injustice resulting from the exploitation of the weak by the strong must continue unchecked until our system of production and distribution has been completely overthrown, there are comparatively few of us who would not go still further and urge the adoption of the collective methods of industry. It is because we believe that it is our unregulated competition, and not the principle of individual ownership itself, which is destructive of right and justice, that we do not and cannot join hands with the Socialists. As we shall see, it is possible to bring about a correction of the abuses from which countless thousands have suffered and are still suffering. As we shall see, there are instruments within our reach with which we may check the unbounded lust of greed which has made this generous earth a vale of woe and mourning for the poor.
While we do not agree with socialistic principles, therefore, we recognize the justice embodied in the Socialist protest; and, much as we deplore the spirit which has exaggerated our evils with a view to inciting class hatred and a revolution that can result only in violence and bloodshed, we should be blind if we did not appreciate the fact that it is this protesting sentiment that has been to a marked degree responsible for the moral awakening that will eventually set things right.
For example, there can be no doubt that there is justification for the Socialist declaration regarding the unequal distribution of wealth. The facts in the case are too notorious to permit of denial, when multitudes are suffering all the woes of destitution, when many are starving for lack of life’s bare necessities, and while the few are able to waste in extravagance the means which would relieve the sufferings of countless thousands if properly applied. “The pestilential principle that each man has the right to dispose of his wealth without regard to the common good is the cause of the widespread mischief,” says Welsh.
This unjust principle is also responsible for the inadequate rate of wage and the horrible conditions which exist so generally among the miserable multitude. There are those who may deny that such conditions prevail; but our own eyes and ears, to say nothing of the great mass of statistical information which is within our reach, prove conclusively that there are untold thousands of children who are born into the world without a chance of life or happiness; that vast multitudes of young women, unable to sustain life in the unequal struggle for existence, are driven to the streets for the sustenance which they find it impossible to earn by honest toil; that men and women, who are entitled in strict justice to a wage that will support them and those dependent on them, are deprived of all their natural rights through no fault of their own. For them there is no such thing as decent food, clothing and shelter possible, to say nothing of the hope of ever being able to meet the higher but no less natural requirements of life.
Christianity has always held that it is the duty of each and all to preserve life decently and that anything that tends to make this impossible is a crime. “This idea of class duties and class comforts is either explicitly or implicitly referred to as the final test in every question of distribution or exchange,” says Ashley, who quoted Langenstein in evidence of the fact that these principles of industrial justice were recognized prior to the fourteenth century. “Everyone,” says the latter, “can determine for himself the just price of the wares he has to sell by simply reckoning what he needs in order to support himself in his rank of life”; and those who have read the writings of the Church Fathers do not need to be told that Christianity has ever maintained the necessity of recognizing the right of the worker to a living wage. These traditional teachings are embodied in the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, who repudiates the principle that competition alone determines the morality of the so-called free contract.
“There is a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient than any bargain between man and man, that the remuneration must be enough to support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comforts,” says the Pope. “If, through necessity or fear of a worse evil, the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will give him no better, he is the victim of force and injustice.”
The Socialists claim that the Marxian gospel affords the only possible relief for the victims of this force and injustice. As I have already asserted, if this were true, a great many more of us would be Marxists. As it is, however, there is a remedy which we may adopt with safety, and with every assurance that it may be applied successfully if we but get together and work together in the right way.