§ I. On The Obligations Of Masters

446. • Masters are bound toward their servants: 1° to treat them kindly; 2° to instruct and correct them; 3° to pay them a just price.

I. To treat kindly, that is, by addressing them and prescribing to them decently and humanely; by furnishing good and sufficient food; by not burdening them with excessive works; by suitably caring for the sick. This is established from natural law and from Sacred Scripture: If thou have a faithful servant, let him be to thee as thy own soul; treat him as a brother.² And you, masters, do the same things to them (servants), forbearing threatenings, knowing that the Lord both of them and of you is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with Him.¹

II. To instruct and correct: for the master is the head of the servant, as of the whole family; but it belongs to the head to direct where there is need. It seems also to be established from the words of Paul:² But if any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. But servants are reckoned among domestics. - Elbel,³ and others commonly.

III. To pay a just price: for there is question of an obligation of justice and natural equity; hence fraud of such wage is numbered among sins crying to heaven.

447. You will resolve. - Masters can sin, and indeed even gravely:

1° If they do not concede time to servants for learning the rudiments of the Christian Faith, or do not send them to catechism and sermon; - if they do not take care that at the time of the precept they confess and communicate.

2° If they hire or retain in the house servants who are irreligious, impious, blaspheming, speaking filthy things; - if they do not admonish and correct those sinning gravely; - or do not dismiss those unwilling to promise amendment, unless perhaps they have very great need of their work and cannot find others.

3° If they do not take care, as much as in them lies, that servants abstain from sins; - if they permit to them an occasion of sinning; - if by depraved example or solicitations they induce or allure them into sin.

4° If they do not pay the promised or just stipend, or delay too much; - if they do not care for a sick servant, immediately expel him, or dismiss him without a just cause before the fixed time. - But if a servant hired for a year is sick for some months, suppose for a quarter of a year, according to the truer opinion a salary is not owed to him for service not furnished; nor probably is the master obligated to the expenses of sickness, provided charity does not demand aid because of grave necessity. Except, for each case, if and insofar as custom bears otherwise, especially in brief sickness.⁴ Yet in these matters let equity prevail over strict right! - Similarly neither is the servant bound in such a case to supply his services. - To a servant departing before the fixed time by his own fault, according to the more common opinion, half the stipend owed for the time in which he served, or a little less, is owed, unless grave damage comes to the master from this, or mutual agreement or custom establishes otherwise.¹