In the Encyclical however you commend the application
to the ordinary relations of life, under normal
conditions, of principles that in ethics are only to be
tolerated under extraordinary conditions. You are driven
to this assertion of false rights by your denial of true
rights. The natural right which each man has is
not that of demanding employment or wages from another
man; but that of employing himself — that of
applying by his own labor to the inexhaustible storehouse
which the Creator has in the land provided for all
men. Were that storehouse open, as by the single
tax we would open it, the natural demand for labor would
keep pace with the supply, the man who sold labor and the
man who bought it would become free exchangers for mutual
advantage, and all cause for dispute between workman and
employer would be gone. For then, all being free
to employ themselves, the mere opportunity to labor would
cease to seem a boon; and since no one would work for
another for less, all things considered, than he could
earn by working for himself, wages would necessarily rise
to their full value, and the relations of workman and
employer be regulated by mutual interest and
convenience.
This is the only way in which they can be
satisfactorily regulated.
Your Holiness seems to assume that there is some just
rate of wages that employers ought to be willing to pay
and that laborers should be content to receive, and to
imagine that if this were secured there would be an end
of strife. This rate you evidently think of as that which
will give working-men a frugal living, and perhaps enable
them by hard work and strict economy to lay by a little
something.
But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without the
“higgling of the market” any more than the
just price of corn or pigs or ships or paintings can be
so fixed? And would not arbitrary regulation in the one
case as in the other check that interplay that most
effectively promotes the economical adjustment of
productive forces? Why should buyers of labor, any more
than buyers of commodities, be called on to pay higher
prices than in a free market they are compelled to pay?
Why should the sellers of labor be content with anything
less than in a free market they can obtain? Why should
working-men be content with frugal fare when the world is
so rich? Why should they be satisfied with a lifetime of
toil and stinting, when the world is so beautiful? Why
should not they also desire to gratify the higher
instincts, the finer tastes? Why should they be forever
content to travel in the steerage when others find the
cabin more enjoyable?
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