§ 3. Supplements to the Doctrine

411. There is no privilege either of capital or of labor by which justice commands that first place be accorded to either in making an agreement or in the effect of an agreement made. With equal right, if a partnership is entered into, each class of contracting parties demands that the profit be divided according to merit; with equal right also,

“But, you will tell me, with the just wage one dies of hunger; that is possible.” if the ownership of the business belongs wholly to either party, or if there is question of a nonprofitable use, the other will demand a just compensation according to value for the labor or money hired. Nor do we approve the opinion of some who, from a certain right not indeed of necessity but of decent sustenance and culture, adjudge to a poor workman a privilege by which, even contrary to the terms agreed upon, it is licit for him to demand that satisfaction be made to him before others, or even that he himself may retain by occult compensation that which seems an equitable price for the labor.

412. Just causes for increasing or diminishing a wage defined by the common estimation of labor of that kind—causes which we deny to be per se inherent in the fortune of the business itself—will certainly be those which can be derived from the preceding thesis. For the doctrine of extrinsic titles will obtain here. Therefore, the hired worker will also be able to seek the price of the special profit of which he suffers loss, or of the special damage which he sustains in order to let his labor for such a use. The hirer of the labor, however, can value less highly labor which is less useful to him and to which, from a certain humanity, he obliges wage-earners lest they grow dull in sorrowful idleness.

413. On contracting for a work at a lower price. If we excuse the agreement for a lower wage from the necessity to which the employer himself is compelled to yield, this rationale shows that one must judge otherwise when he himself is the voluntary author of a necessity of this kind. For it has happened not so rarely that those who are accustomed to contract for works, in order that these works may more certainly be awarded to them, voluntarily promise inequitable conditions which would be harmful to themselves unless they should profit from the workers’ wages.

These arts must be convicted of injustice unless it is evident that, on account of established practices, no probable hope is available of hiring labor more equitably.

For those who publicly let works can honestly intend this one thing, and must be judged to have intended it: that they obtain favorable conditions within the limits of a just price. Therefore, they tacitly ask the contractors for the works, as it were, at what lowest price they can honestly execute the work. Honestly, I say, and consequently while paying the workers a just wage. But contractors who, while promising the conditions, think of deducting something from this wage dispose of a thing which is not their own and prepare to gratify the employers at another’s expense. Therefore, if promises of this kind are brought into effect, they will convict the contractors themselves of formal injury; but the employers who profited from them will retain another’s thing—I mean the part of the wage which was to be supplied. Although the latter will generally be excused by good faith and ignorance.

It was indeed to be desired per se that customs of their own accord be composed according to the rules of right and equity, especially since a just exception can be taken into account where things are done well voluntarily. For the very weakness and lack of skill of the worker are most equitable causes for paying a lower wage; and it is expedient that even the less capable be able to be hired so that they may acquire some gain for themselves. Therefore, it does not seem strange to us that there were some who objected at first lest provision be made for a definite wage for workers in public lettings of works.¹ But in this heat of competitions, we judge it to have been better that provision be made for the more general good of the workers who possess strength than for the special utility of some. Therefore, we add our vote to the practice which became common in Belgium some years ago of requiring contractors for municipal works to indicate the minimum wage at which they themselves would hire workers.

¹ Concerning this matter, which is called in French inscription d’un minimum de salaire dans les cahiers des charges [insertion of a minimum wage in specifications], cf. the discussions in the Belgian body called the Conseil supérieur du travail [Superior Council of Labor], 2nd session, pt. 1.

414. The rationales by which the innate dignity of human labor is depressed are approximately these:

1. If, as Varro, De re rustica [On Agriculture], bk. 1, chap. 17, relates was customary among many in his age, you distinguish among the things by which fields are cultivated “three parts: the vocal, semivocal, and mute kind of instrument—slaves, oxen, carts”;

2. If you deny that masters or employers must devote care to the health and morals of workers or servants, as though even positive harm to body or soul, received through the fault of the employers, were not opposed to commutative justice itself;²

² Cf. Gayraud, Science Catholique, 1894, pp. 992–993.

3. If you regard the worker’s food as an expense by which labor is obtained (coût de production du travail [cost of production of labor]), almost as a definite power of steam is obtained by a definite quantity of coal,³ whereas food is referred to the nobler end of preserving the human person with all his faculties. Cauwès, no. 801, and Pesch, place cited, p. 393, wrote elegantly concerning this matter.

³ “From the economic point of view, workers must be considered as true machines. They are machines which furnish a certain quantity of productive powers and which require in return certain costs of maintenance and renewal in order to be able to function in a regular and continuous manner. These costs of maintenance and renewal which the worker requires constitute the costs of production of labor....” De Molinari, Cours d’économie politique [Course of Political Economy], vol. 1, p. 203.

4. If, as though workers were to be compared with beasts of burden which do not know how to make advances toward greater culture, you seem to separate their class from the rest of the human race and imagine it to be consigned to mechanical services as to perpetual servitude, so that you call natural that wage by which they are able strictly to be nourished and to beget offspring.⁴

⁴ “The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.” Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, chap. V, “On Wages.”

It is scarcely necessary to say how foreign we are to tenets and manners of speaking of this kind among many economists, and it will appear more fully hereafter.

415. Concerning the foundation of the common estimation by which a just wage becomes known, this further doubt can arise. For we have seen that just interest “in the abstract” corresponds approximately to the mean measure of the common hope of profit which the citizens of a definite region can receive at a definite time by themselves using their own money. Cf. no. 380. Therefore, it can be asked whether a just wage “in the abstract” also corresponds to the common hope of profit which, in such a place and time, a certain skill and faculty of laboring furnishes to a worker who employs it for himself or as a partner in businesses.

That consideration would be imperfect. For the difference between money and the labor or service of men is that money generally has no fruitful use unless it is converted into things economically profitable, while, on the contrary, the service of men has in itself a weight worthy of a price even when profit strictly so called is set aside. It is a mark of honor, for example, as it were to have command over several servants; it is advantageous to have several at hand who serve the body or the soul.

Therefore, these and not a few other things are elements of common estimation. Indeed, according as the human person is valued more or less highly, and workmen are led into that greater confidence in themselves which Leo XIII recalls at the beginning of the encyclical Rerum novarum, the economic value of labor to be hired will vary.

416. The scholastic doctors did not fail to recognize that there are other rationales of injustice besides the agreement for an inequitable wage. Therefore, they mention excessive delay in payment, which even today can be objected against many rich men; and, what could perhaps seem more astonishing, they condemn in forceful words those arts of giving merchandise in place of money, against which, designated in modern speech by the name truck system, modern laws had to take action. Concerning these things, so that the debt of justice may be discharged, these two points must be maintained:

a) Things or merchandise delivered in place of money cannot be valued except at the price which they possess in themselves and in comparison with the workers. Therefore, if, as used to happen, the workers must sell those things in order to acquire money for themselves, account must be taken of the price at which the workers themselves can easily exchange them;

b) The time to be expended in selling and any attached burden must be compensated by a greater wage. For as soon as a burden is imposed, the equality of justice forbids that it be exacted gratuitously.

Cf. St. Antoninus, Summa, pt. 2, tit. 1, chap. 17, §§ 7–8; Lessius, chap. 20, dub. 8; C. de Lugo, vol. 2, disp. 26, no. 180.