Article II. Supplements to the Doctrine

460. The permanence of the duties of quasi-piety and observance. Equality will never legitimately be reached to such a degree that, apart from a certain obedience, workers no longer owe any signs of honor to those who conduct the business. Nor will nature permit the duties of quasi-piety in the master of the business to perish altogether. Yet it can happen that these come down to very few things; and because both of these duties regard each other mutually, it is necessary that as much as you take away from one, so much you remit from the other.

Indeed, the matter is not substantially changed even if the business should belong to an association of workers. For then they bear, as it were, a double person: in the assembly itself, by common vote, they decree concerning the things to be done; but outside those gatherings they have no power; and, as workers, they are governed by others to whom they have committed the business to be procured, almost as in a democracy the people are subject to magistrates, deputies to ministers, and so forth. The arts and snares which, as long as the just contract remains in force and is rightly observed, prohibit the master from ordering the business in this or that manner are also to be reproved. And neither can those work stoppages which are lightly decreed be justified in any way; for example, as soon as a worker has been fined or dismissed, and so forth.

461. Because in the letting of a work the workman himself directs his efforts in the operation and furnishes to the one letting nothing but the work as an effect, no peculiar relation of persons arises per se from that contract.

462. Because the hired workman is constituted in a humbler place only after the agreement has been made, the efforts of workers who join their powers with this counsel—that they may be able in reality to deliberate as though equals of the master concerning the various conditions of the contract, for example, concerning the wage, and so forth—cannot per se be disapproved. Nor is it of itself repugnant to justice that in the contract itself they stipulate certain things concerning the very manner of administering the business, which they judge will redound to their own good. But it belongs to experts in the matter to investigate what participation of the workers conceded by contract, or what diminution of the master's discretion, ought to be recommended and will not too greatly impede the good administration of the undertaking.

462 bis. To this belongs the question of the internal government of the factory (règlement d’atelier [factory regulations]).

1. Once the labors have been hired, there must necessarily follow a definite rule according to which the whole affair is conducted in the factory itself; that is, according to which both the operation of the workmen and the administration of the employer are ordered.

Therefore, it is customary to ask to whom it belongs per se to establish the government of the factory in this or that manner.

Some, indeed, considering possession of the place, assign this province to the master of the business alone; for, just as he could prohibit all others from every access, so too he can establish these or those laws under which he is willing to receive workers into his factory.

Others, on the contrary, considering rather that by these ordinances the prior agreement is, as it were, continued and perfected, and that it was bilateral, judge that what was begun by mutual consent must be completed by the same.

2. Before we pronounce our view concerning this matter, it seems that the following must be distinguished:

a) Certain immutable parts which have already been sanctioned by a higher law, whether divine or human. Of this kind are the various duties of justice, humanity, quasi-piety, and observance which, in the proof itself, we saw to follow the common rationale of the hiring of labors; and likewise any things prescribed by positive law, as, for example, in Belgium after the laws concerning this kind of agreement were enacted in 1896 and 1900.¹

¹ Law of June 15, 1896, concerning Factory Regulations; and of March 10, 1900, concerning the Labor Contract.

b) Other parts which are defined by received customs. These seem already to have been admitted by tacit stipulation and cannot be varied except by mutual consent.

c) The remaining parts which, after regard has been had to higher laws and customs, remain uncertain. The question is therefore properly confined to these.

3. Now, the reciprocal rights of the workers and employers concerning these matters can be conceived as settled in three ways.

Either every determination is permitted to the free discretion of the master;

Or nothing is done except by common consent;

Or rather the workers themselves lay down the conditions upon which they are willing to hand over their powers to be used in a given establishment.

These three modes can also be understood in two ways: that is, either so that, once a determination has been made, it binds both parties; or so that the one establishing it may depart from the prior determination at his discretion, almost as a law is abrogated and changed by the legislator.

Come then: by what means can it be proved that anything is found in the natural law which is repugnant to one of these modes?

Nor—and this must be carefully observed—is that power entrusted to the master always to be judged burdensome to the workers.

For it can easily happen that the workmen are altogether unfit prudently to decide or advise anything concerning these matters; and it also happens that, being agitated by contrary wishes, they fall into perpetual disagreements unless the matter is determined by the master's authority.

4. Yet, in general, the following things must be observed concerning these modes and the matters to be ordered.

a) As regards the modes, the first mode described by us better protects the authority of the employer, and it has fewer disadvantages the more he himself is worthy of esteem and trust.

The second is more congruous with parties who are perfectly equal to each other.

The third seems difficult to reconcile with due observance, insofar as it provides an easy occasion for violating it. Therefore, one may say that it is less consonant with the desires of nature.

b) But the matters which must be settled are to be referred to a twofold genus:

For some pertain more to the actual exercise of the craft than to the person; they are an ordering of the work rather than of the labors. Thus, for example, if it is asked with what instruments the work is to be done, what material is to be fashioned, and so forth.

Concerning these, it is better that the master of the business exercise discretion. And it is also expedient that, on account of an extraordinary circumstance of the business, he be able to extend or reduce the period of labor.

In other matters the hiring of labors itself is more directly concerned: what the beginning, duration, and interruption of the work are to be; and in what manner the assessment and payment of the wage are to be made.

If, unless something stands in the way, it is per se better to foster equality among men, we can honorably desire such a culture among citizens that these things can be governed by mutual consent without disadvantage.

Yet concerning certain matters it will easily be doubted whether consideration of the person hired or of the undertaking should prevail. Thus, for example, it is of great interest to the workers who, besides the director of the factory, are appointed over them as supervisors of intermediate rank. Yet the prudent selection of these men can also contribute not a little to the good outcome of the business. Therefore, one can scarcely judge universally whether the employer's absolute power is to be preferred in appointing them or is to be moderated by certain safeguards in the agreement.

Our conclusion, finally, will be this:

I. As a matter of right.

a) No mode established in custom for determining the government of the factory is per se contrary to justice.

b) Either contracting party is free to stipulate for himself either some or the principal parts in establishing the government of the factory.

Nevertheless, if there is a departure from received customs, this agreement can easily contain a certain new burden which must be compensated, by some variation of the price, to the one upon whom it is imposed. For the ordinary price is judged to be adjusted to received customs. Moreover, this burden or loss of advantage will never be absent, unless perhaps the workers' lack of skill alone appears to have been the reason why the determination of the matter was permitted to the employer, so that he exercised merely a kind of guardianship.

II. Concerning the present state of affairs.

In present circumstances, we do not think that the order of workers has advanced so far in the cultivation of morals and intelligence that it could usefully claim for itself certain parts in ordering the factory. And designs for revolution and the diminished religion of many stand rather in the way of their peaceful participation.

Therefore, in our opinion, it was prudently enacted in the Belgian Parliament that the determination of the government was assigned to the masters of the factories, while various safeguards were adopted at the same time concerning the posting in the factory of placards containing the regulations, concerning the regulations' observance and their not being changed before a definite day, lest the workmen be commanded or vexed according to caprice.²

² We set forth these laws briefly in the Manuel social [Social Manual], 2nd ed., 1904, pp. 279 and 291.

463. The duties of the hired worker, if we wish to embrace them universally in words, contain:

1. The observance of justice both in making and in executing the agreement. To this heading must be referred the secret concerning the practice of the craft, which, either formally or tacitly, is not rarely a part of the fidelity promised. For the proper method of practicing the craft is among the goods of the master which justice wills to be guarded diligently by the worker. Nevertheless, unless—as will easily happen—it is morally nothing, that burden of keeping the secret, when it is added to the customary manner of the prestation, seems per se to require compensation by some increase of the wage.

2. A closer charity.

3. The duties of observance: honor, reverence, a grateful mind, and obedience in those things which are promised by contract.

464. The duties of the master toward an adult worker. Something of principal importance in this matter, besides knowledge of the duties, is their very distribution, so that it may be clearly known to which virtue each must be assigned.

Therefore, we shall now endeavor suitably to gather them into their genera.

1. CONCERNING THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE. a) The rules by which one may judge concerning these seem capable of being proposed as follows:

α) An injury is committed if some burden is imposed which is compensated by no advantage or greater remuneration; for it is scarcely probable that such things are undertaken gratuitously, by spontaneous will.

β) Every burden by which a worker suffers damage in the goods of soul or body is to be regarded as unjust if, apart from a formal stipulation,³ it is virtually imposed by the will of the master, or if the worker is ignorant of the future damage. For he is judged unwilling that these things should be added to the obligations undertaken; and ignorance removes the voluntary no less than fear itself.

³ Therefore, those things which are proposed for execution before the agreement is made and those which are added to the agreement already made must be carefully distinguished.

γ) The stipulation even of an illicit thing, although base and deprived of the effect of a moral obligation, is nevertheless not unjust, provided that an equitable price is promised for the whole burden. For here that saying avails: No injury is done to one who consents.

b) Therefore, concerning the various cases we shall speak as follows:

Insults of which either the employer himself or his ministers, with his permission, have been guilty are opposed to justice. For, on the one hand, these are outside the agreement and are not compensated by a price; on the other, he who assigns to the worker a place in which to exercise his craft at the same time pledges moral diligence in averting these injuries.

For a similar reason, the employer is bound in justice to take care that, from the arrangement of the factory or the ordering of the labor, no danger impend over the health, life, or limbs of the worker which can be removed by moral diligence, according to the nature of the work to be done and the inventions of the arts. For although the precept do no harm is negative, it nevertheless contains an obligation of moral diligence lest damage be inflicted by your deed. Moral diligence, moreover, is that which, according to the importance of the matter, can be furnished by a prudent man without excessive difficulty. But those detriments which cannot morally be removed must at least be repaid by a greater wage.

He is also bound in justice to take care that, from the manner in which matters are arranged or from the license permitted to others, the workers are not placed in a proximate occasion of sinning. For the workman is not to be judged to approach this voluntarily, nor does he have a choice of the associates and circumstances among which he exercises his powers.

Labor to be undertaken on a feast day: α) It must be compensated by a greater price; β) after the agreement has been made and while it remains in force, it cannot be imposed without necessity; γ) if an agreement is made concerning it, this agreement, although often to be disapproved, is nevertheless not repugnant to justice itself.

These things, a fortiori, must be transferred to the burden of omitting Mass.

Concerning nocturnal labor, or labor that is excessively prolonged or in some manner consumes one's strength, the same must be said as concerning the burden of furnishing labor on a feast day.

2. CONCERNING THE DUTIES OF CHARITY. From the common rationale by which we are bound by a debt to provide first for those nearer to us, and by which also, the greater authority anyone possesses, the more gravely he gives scandal by his bad example, there arises in the master both a stricter negative duty, that he himself not give scandal, and a positive duty of fraternal correction and assistance; these are according to his means and the worker's need. Masters will be excused from the duty of correction if it is foreseen to be fruitless or produces a grave disadvantage, especially one joined with slight hope of fruit: as when the workers must be changed frequently and do not seem likely to restrain themselves from lust except for the hour and under your eyes.

3. CONCERNING THE DUTIES OF QUASI-PIETY. To this pertains positive care concerning the religion, morals, health, and strength of the worker, so that nothing excessive is imposed; and so that, after regard has been had to the circumstances and necessity, matters are ordered as a prudent workman ought to have done in his own case, lest he fail in the duty of loving himself in an ordered manner.

465. Concerning duties toward adult women. “What an adult and robust man can do and strive to do, it is not just to demand from a woman or a child.... Thus certain trades are less suitably fitting for women, who were born for domestic work; and this work greatly safeguards the dignity of the female sex and by nature accords with the instruction of children and the prosperity of the family.”

Thus, most wisely, spoke the Pontiff in the Encyclical Rerum novarum. Nevertheless, if a woman is her own mistress, the things said concerning an adult workman generally avail here, so that an injustice is then committed only when she is made to bear inequitable burdens beyond the agreement or without compensation. Except, however, if a certain kind of labor appears likely to bring harm to offspring soon to be born. For the rights of the offspring cannot be taken away by any consent of the parents.

From quasi-piety, however, the master of the business is charged with the care that women be kept from improper labor and that, according to the teachings of the Supreme Pontiff, the entire ordering of the business in which they take part be adapted at once to the weakness and to the honor of their sex.

466. Concerning duties toward children. The case of children is far different, for their very levity and imprudence render them incapable of validly consenting to burdens excessively contrary to their soul or body. Nor does the assent of the parents make the right of children less inviolable or excuse the employer. Therefore, one sins against commutative justice who demands from youths labors that are excessively heavy, excessively long, or excessively dulling to the mind, so that their strength is diminished or their intelligence is rendered incapable of a becoming cultivation.⁴ What shall I say concerning the corruption of morals, which imposes a care all the more solicitous and intent the more easily it finds an occasion to infect youth?

⁴ Leo XIII warns that great care must be taken concerning children, lest the factory receive them before age has sufficiently strengthened body, intelligence, and soul. For premature exertion crushes the powers bursting forth in childhood, as though growing verdure; and from this the whole education of the child will perish.

It will not be enough for piety to remove the proximate occasions of bodily or spiritual ruin. It will move the employer, during the time in which the youths are entrusted to him to be governed, to supply the providence of a diligent parent.

But those are especially to be praised who devote labor to the education of children itself; who, while using the powers of the youths moderately, endeavor at the same time to form them in virtue, a craft, and letters.

467. The imitation of master-servant society regards a more intimate conjunction, by which, beyond the services owed, the workers regard almost as their own good and gain whatever advantage befalls the master, and desire his very person and whole household to be safe and honored; and the master in his turn fosters his subordinates and their wives and children with an almost paternal affection.

To this would pertain mixed associations of masters and workers, unless civil hatreds and the very disparity of conditions now made this other arrangement more desirable: that from separate associations of masters and workers a few of each order be selected to communicate mutual counsels.⁵

⁵ Cf. what was said in our Manuel social [Social Manual], in the chapters Les Influences sociales [Social Influences] and Les Institutions patronales [Employer Institutions]. The Most Illustrious Lord Doutreloux treated associations excellently in the pastoral letter cited.

To this pertain certain common solemnities, both sacred and profane, and various institutions by which agreement of minds is induced.

To this pertain counsels and methods by which are removed the dangers which are threatened either by depraved associates or newspaper writers, or by usurers and unjust merchants who derive profit from the simplicity of the poor, or which arise from their own negligence or passions.

To this, finally, contribute every kind of assistance and the various teachings and customs which, received from their forefathers, truly Christian masters endeavor to preserve even today. Several works treat these matters more fully; for example, the cited works of Messrs. Harmel and Dehon, or R. P. Castelein, Le Socialisme et le Droit de propriété [Socialism and the Right of Property], p. 289 ff.: Les traditions du bon patronat [The Traditions of Good Employers].

468. Concerning the intervention of public power. I. BEGINNINGS OF THE DISCUSSION. That the various matters which we have touched upon thus far are of a kind for which public care must be taken is plainly taught by the Encyclical Rerum novarum, and cannot of itself be doubted if for a little while you hold to the right definition of perfect society.

For whether you consider that what is at issue here is the physical as well as the moral good of the order which is numerically the greatest in the state, or direct your mind to how much it is immediately in the interest of the commonwealth that “affairs be peaceful and ordered; likewise, that they be directed according to the commands of God and the principles of nature; that the whole discipline of domestic life be observed and religion cultivated; that upright morals flourish privately and publicly; that justice be held sacred and that some not violate others with impunity; that robust citizens grow up, capable, if the matter should require it, of assisting and defending the state” (Encyclical Rerum novarum), you cannot doubt that you should assign solicitude of this kind to the proper province of rulers.

Yet one should not therefore immediately appeal to laws by which all these things are to be defined. For there can be three reasons on account of which one must abstain from legal sanctions: a) Because a legal remedy may be foreseen to be ineffective, since precepts which are not observed or are frustrated of their effect are accustomed to contain more impediment than protection; b) because it may not be necessary, since “no more is to be undertaken by laws, nor is one to proceed farther, than the cure of disadvantages or the repulsion of danger requires” (Encyclical Rerum novarum). Therefore, if either from culture and customs matters are of themselves arranged suitably enough, or it appears that the evils can be met by private efforts, it is better that the ruler add his protection to these undertakings than recall the entire matter to himself; c) because it may appear too difficult to define the matter by laws, so that it must be feared that something worse may follow from public sanctions.

2. The conclusions seem capable of being proposed briefly as follows.

a) When it is a question of those who are weaker by age or sex, sanctions are opportune which permit only that manner of labor, establish those intervals and rest, and prescribe those safeguards which are universally required in view of the conditions of childhood and adolescence or of the female sex.⁶

⁶ One must prudently tend to this: that women no longer have any other parts in the exercise of industries except those which plainly accord with domestic cares and the dignity of their sex. Thus it can truly be said that woman must be restored to her home.

For in the present corruption of faith and morals, what hope is there that those defenseless and weaker persons will be protected sufficiently by custom and usage?

b) More mature consideration is needed before times and rules are prescribed for the labor of adults itself. For the wretched conditions in which certain trades are practiced, if they have as their cause a necessity to which the employers themselves are subject on account of excessive competition and more universal usages, can scarcely be removed by law unless the matter has first been agreed upon among various nations; but if they proceed from the humbler place in which the workers are situated, the workers themselves, through powers joined in associations, will not rarely be able to reject harsher stipulations, so that a law lacks necessity.

Therefore, it seems that there is less to prevent decrees from being enacted concerning those things whose measure is more stable and the same for all, especially if a certain higher rationale is added, as in the observance of feast days. For many other things, which must be accommodated to circumstances that are variable and in motion, will per se be more safely left to the judgment of those whose interests are concerned; and the useful intervention of public power will rather look to this: that it receive under its protection the associations and institutions by which workers are placed in a more equal position in deliberating upon the agreement.

To this pertains the following from the Encyclical: “Nevertheless, in these and similar cases—such as how many hours are to be worked in each kind of trade, by what safeguards health is especially to be protected in factories—lest the magistrate intrude himself too importunately, especially since the circumstances of things, times, and places are so various, it will be better to reserve these matters to the judgment of the associations of which we shall speak below, or to enter upon some other way by which the interests of wage-earners may, as is fitting, remain safe, with the protection and aid of the commonwealth being added if the matter should require it.”

Nevertheless, when another way is excluded, the ruler is not prohibited from directly remedying evils that threaten: “If at any time it should happen,” Leo XIII had observed previously, “that religion be violated among the workers by insufficient opportunity being granted for the duties of piety; if danger threaten the integrity of morals in factories from the mingling of the sexes or from other pernicious inducements to sin; or if the order of masters oppress the order of workmen with inequitable burdens, or afflict it with conditions alien to the human person and dignity; if health be harmed by excessive work not adapted to sex or age—in these cases the force and authority of the laws must plainly be applied, within definite limits.”

N.B. 1. It was wisely provided by the recent laws of Belgium, lately enacted concerning the labor of children and women and concerning the safeguarding of the welfare of workers in general,⁷ that the more particular determinations should be entrusted to the King, with a certain faculty of dispensing being granted at the same time.

⁷ Principally, these are the laws of December 13, 1889; June 15, 1896; July 2, 1899; and March 10, 1900, concerning which consult our Manuel social [Social Manual], pt. 1.

2. For some years efforts have begun to be made to bring about treaties among nations concerning the prudent protection of workers. The matter has not yet reached any outcome. Mr. Brants discusses where it presently stands in an article inserted in the Revue Sociale Catholique [Catholic Social Review], January 1900.⁸ Recently, however, at the Paris Congress of 1900, an association was formed to advance these matters further.⁹ Cf. Musée Social [Social Museum], 1900, no. 8, where its statutes and various documents are reported.

⁸ Où en est la législation internationale du Travail [Where International Labor Legislation Stands].

⁹ Association internationale pour la protection légale des travailleurs [International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers]. Its seat was established at Basel in Switzerland; but in the various nations particular groups (comités [committees]) were formed to procure this matter.

469. Comparison of Catholic, Liberal, and Socialist doctrine.

1. THE SOCIALISTS deny and condemn the variety of orders; they proclaim the rights of the proletarians while remaining silent concerning their duties; and, while interpreting all present things for the worse, they at the same time imagine in their minds a golden age in which, equality having been introduced, it will come to pass that without external coercion, without personal self-denial or care for an unpleasant duty, all things will be reduced to perfect concord by the natural inclination of the mind. These vain dreams have already been refuted by us above.

2. THE LIBERALS, on the contrary, retain the variety of orders, but direct their unequal rights too greatly toward their own good and have no positive solicitude for mutual charity. They teach the richer and more powerful to enjoy their rights; they do not teach them to turn those same rights to the good of others. And, dragging all things too greatly toward the better interpretation, they judge that matters are brought, as it were, of themselves into the best state if free choice to provide for himself is given to each. But if they devote themselves to certain advantages of men of slender means, these are generally contained in money or temporal goods; and not rarely these things are weapons—for example, a knowledge of letters—whose prudent use they at the same time omit to teach, although they can be most ruinous to one who uses them incautiously.

3. Finally, CATHOLIC DOCTRINE:

a) Omits neither the rights nor the duties of either order.

b) It refers the rights themselves, in the individuals who possess them, to an end nobler than temporal advantage—I mean, to the ultimate end of the human person. Thus festive rest is no longer a mere vacancy from labor; rather, Catholic doctrine teaches a holy use of the leisure itself, one alien to evil lust.

“Let no one understand this—that is, the necessary rest from works and labors on feast days,” says Leo XIII, “as a certain greater enjoyment of idle leisure, and much less as that cessation which many desire, the favorer of vices and the assistant of lavish expenditures; but altogether as rest from works consecrated by religion. Rest joined with religion calls man away from the labors and business of daily life so that it may call him back to contemplate heavenly goods and to render to the eternal God the just and due worship.” Encyclical Rerum novarum.

c) Indeed, it shows that these same rights, and every endowment or riches, are to be directed not to the advantage of the possessor alone but to the common good of others and of the state.

Therefore, the variety of orders—which the Socialists hold in hatred and fruitlessly attack, and which, as it is understood by the Liberals, appears to be without a cause and a source of hateful pride—according to the tenets of Catholics binds peace together, becomes pleasing to the humbler themselves, and is no slight promoter of common happiness.

Already above, nos. 180 and 238, we gave the passages in which, in the Encyclical Rerum novarum, all who excel in some thing are said to be ministers of divine Providence for procuring the advantage of others also, and the error concerning the natural conflict of the orders is denounced as a capital evil: “This is so abhorrent to reason and truth that the exact contrary is most true: just as in the body the diverse members agree with one another, whence there exists that tempering of disposition which one may rightly call symmetry, so in the same manner nature has commanded in the state that those twin classes agree harmoniously with each other and respond fittingly to each other in equilibrium. Each altogether needs the other: capital cannot subsist without labor, nor labor without capital. Concord begets the beauty and order of things.”

d) Nor is Catholic doctrine content that hatreds be absent; rather, it wills a perfect friendship of men, of which justice is the beginning—a friendship, I say, which resolves into fraternal love.

“Yet if they—the fortunate and the lowly—obey Christian precepts, friendship is too little: fraternal love will also join them to each other.” (Encyclical Rerum novarum.)

In sum, Christian doctrine builds upon the order of justice the more exalted order of universal charity, in which it places its principal hope: “For the desired salvation is to be expected principally from a great outpouring of charity.” Encyclical Rerum novarum, at the end.