Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

My dear John,

As we have seen, it is not necessary that we should study life through the smoked glasses of Socialism to realize that all is not well with the world. Indeed, we have no need to look further than our own everyday experiences to witness misery that is heart-rending, to see evils that imperatively demand relief. That such conditions exist, nobody can deny; and the Socialists have made good use of this fact in shaping their appeal for “universal justice.” Certainly, it is an argument that cannot fail to touch the human heart that is at all moved to sympathy.

If such evil conditions exist, it is our duty to remedy them, and with as little delay as possible. Sympathy is not enough. We must act and act at once—but how? It is a question that we who are not Socialists are frequently asked. “If the Socialists are wrong,” our friends inquire, “what have you to offer as a substitute?”

One of the greatest weaknesses in the Socialist position is due to the fact that it persists in looking at life from the wrong perspective. Instead of finding the right point of view, it examines life’s canvas from so close a range that it loses all sense of proportion. Assuming this attitude toward current events, the abuses apparent are magnified to such a degree as to make it appear that Marx was correct in asserting that the capitalist system is rotten to the core, and that the only hope for relief lies in collective ownership.

Are the Socialist contentions true? Is everything in this country tending towards hopeless bankruptcy?

Fortunately there are facts in plenty which answer these questions. There never was a period in the world’s history in which greater progress was made toward modifying—if not actually eliminating—the burdens that have caused so much misery to the poor. You must remember, John, that the evils against which Socialists inveigh so bitterly are not new evils. They had their origin generations ago; they have been promoted by the sophistical theories of Economic Liberalism; and, if they now seem more indefensible than they did to our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, it is because our intenser conceptions of the ideals of human brotherhood compel us to view life with closer scrutiny.

In truth, while the indictment of Socialism is warranted in one sense of the word, it is by no means entirely justified. If we were doing nothing to improve conditions for the workers and for the relief of the poor, the outlook would be a hopeless one; but, when we realize that, while Socialism itself is doing practically nothing but denouncing and slandering society (where it does not actually oppose our reform measures), we are working steadily toward the solution of our social problems, we can see good reason to believe that our civilization is far from being the failure it has been pictured.

No better evidence of the extent of the world’s material progress can be found than in labor’s advancement during the past century. To-day, there is still much to be done before we can attain the ideal embodied in the expression, “a fair day’s pay”; yet it is interesting to note that we should have to go back no further than the first quarter of the eighteenth century to find an Act of the Court of Massachusetts under which employers could adopt a maximum wage schedule. In a word, this law prevented an employer from giving more than the specified sum per day; yet no effort was made to prevent him from paying the lowest wages for which a laborer could be induced to work. Between this condition and the minimum wage agitation with which we are now familiar, there is a contrast that speaks eloquently in evidence of our social progress.

In England, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the situation of labor was worse than it has ever been in this country. Forbidden by law to establish any safeguard in the form of organization for his own protection, the employe was absolutely at the mercy of his employer. The result was a condition of affairs that was barbaric. If the employer paid the rate of wage agreed in money, or even in “truck,” he was under no further legal responsibility; and, as the introduction of improved machinery in many trades was beginning to make it possible for women and children to perform the duties which hitherto had fallen only upon men, an employer was able to make the worker accept terms that made proper sustenance impossible.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, this was the condition of things: the laborer was (1) prohibited from forming protective combinations or unions; (2) compelled to work sixteen hours out of each twenty-four; (3) forced to accept as recompense wages which were wholly inadequate to provide the most vital necessities of life; and, as though these conditions were not sufficiently oppressive, (4) employers were permitted to make payment at long intervals, or in “truck,” and could charge interest at the rate of 260 per cent per annum on all cash advances made to the needy worker. Apparently, this was the time when Marx ought to have appeared with his doctrine of wage slavery and his incitement to class hatred. But, when we compare these conditions with those which exist to-day, we can readily see that, while things are still far from being “ideal,” the worker assuredly is not sinking steadily into deeper depths of degradation.