St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-10-12


not satisfactory, and further search is made
for cheap labor. Women are employed
without regard to bodily strength or maid
enly modesty, and children are doomed to
stunted growth and premature decay by
being forced into the darkness of mines and
the fetid air of factories wnen their little
forms should be baskng in sunshine or re-
ceiving love and direction from mother or
teacher.
Reckless Competition.
Nor are employers always in a position to
correct with safety to their ENTERPRISES the
evils of which we complain. and which often
their own conscienceS repudiate. The whole
system is wrongly constituted. Underneath
there lies fierce greed of gain. which the
mater1alistic spirit of the times, the pride of
life and the concupiscence of the senses are
constantly tanning into irresistible fire. The
opening up OF new continents before the
vision of speculation, and the amazing ia
ciltles for production. irritate covetousness
and add ferceness to it's ambitions. The !
natural result of all our discoveries and in
ventlons it would seem, should have been to
tighten the burden of labor, and to dissem-
mate through the whole population ease
and comfort; and this. we affirm, is the de-
sign of the Great Father who owns all
men as His children. That this
be the fact as well as the design
of Providence, we must strive to effect. For
the present, there is but slight repression OF
selishness and avarlce, and slight regulation
of ambitious racings for wealth. The laborer
is at the mercy of the employer, and the en-
ployer at the mercy OF his competitor There
is the so-called freedom of competition, as
well as sthat of labor. In this freedom
are ensconced all the promises of the pre-
vailng economic liberalism, and the halo
surrounding the word is supposed to cover
uD all deceits and miSeries. A producer finds |
his goods undersold in the public market:
the remedy he at once seeks in the reduction
of the salaries of his workmen. Sometimes
he may have no other remedy: and, often
he might without much harm TO himself
allow diminution of his own profits and
spare further oppression to his interiors.
Competition reaches cut across seas and
are, ruined by the more prosperous
and cheaper efforts of foreign |
lands along the same lines. Capital
combines TO be more powerful in crushing
out weak competitors; and with power
capital grows boider, and is farther removed
from the laborer, who is no longer known
except as cog in the wheels that move the
great machines in the factory. There is no
longer heart or soul. in
The Modern system
of industrialsm. The capitalist brought
face to face with the laborer should perforce
feel a stir of sympathy within him for fell
low-being. But we have neither capitalists
nor laborerS; we have purely and simply |
capital and labor, abstract entities, which
neither see nor pulsate, which are as cold
and heartleSS as the iron of their machines.
To place itself altogether out of reach OF
touch with the iaborer. capital has made it.
self nameless and inaccessible We have
nothing anymore but corporations and
syndicates; and they are proverbially and
in dead fact without souls. Meanwhile the
chief sufferer and victim is the laborer.
upon whose vital forces heavier
draughts are being made, and whose Decuui-
airy rewards are ever lessening The laborer
is piece of general machinery, tool of the
factory. neither more or less, to be employed
at as little expense as the market allows, and
to be cast away into the roadway or the ditch
when no longer serviceable. / should have
said he is considered less than the material
tool or machine for he can be replaced more
easily, and with less expense. The material
tool has to be purchased-human tools are
always OH hand for the asking, clamoring
even for permission to be employed. Beyond
all question. whatever be the cure there can
not be social peace among the nations of the
earth until change comes upon the econ
Omlcs OF the modern world. A great step
has been made toward the solution of the
difficulty when attention is called to il by |
the highest authorities of the state and
church, short while ago Germany's kaiser
conyoked representatives of Europen nations
to social congress, and now the head of the
church, Leo XIII, puts forth his great letter
on the Condition of Labor
The Minimum Wage.
What, then, should be the retribution for
labor? l will not this evening discuss this
question III its whole breadth. | will con-
slider labor's minimum retribution in a
healthf1l and normal social organization.
leaving, also out of present discussion the |
means OF assuring to labor this minimum
retrloutlon. There is a minimum wage. be-
low which the laborer himself is not free to
descend and is not justified in descending
unless under absolute pressure of want and
below which society should not permit him
to go or permit the employer TO force him.
The market does not regulate this wage, Tor
man is not marketable thing. The appar-
ent freedom of the contract on the part of
the laborer does not render it legitimate
There is no freedom when the alternative is
work at nominal price, or to be hungry and
listen b to the cries Of famishing lutte ones
the pale-faced girl singing the
Song of the Shirt?' The market
price of labor is paganism. or atheism; it is
not Chrlstlanlty. The pontif says: Let it
De granted then that as a rule, workman and
employer should make free agreements, and
in particular should freely agree as to wages;
nevertheless there is dictate of nature
more 1mperlOuS and more ancient than any
bargain between man and man, that the re- |
muneration must be enough to support the |
wage-earner i'll reasonable and frugal COM
fort. This is Immediately further explained |
as suticient to enable him to maintain him
self, his wife and his children" Man must |
live; he has God-given right to live. He is
to live by labor; if he does not work he |
should not eat But if he does work he must |
find, under the laws of the eternal God |
wherewith to eat. The laborer must live in |
manner not unworthy of human being
rational creature of God. 1 do not de- |
L
depart from the words of the eneyclical |
-'enough to support him in reasonable and |
frugal comfort" Capital depriving him of |
this much degrades him. Man cannot be re-
duced to the level of the animal, even of the |
sufficiently fed, and sufficiently housed AMI
NAL: Nor is the passing day in the life of the |
workman the sole measure of his needs |
Ihere are days 'and years before him when
work will not be posSible-days of sickness
years OF declining forces. Either the wage
must be Sufficient, so that prudent economy
may set aside portion to meet coming ne
cesslties, or provisions outside the wage must
be made by employer and encouraged and
insisted upon if there is need By the state.
This is his natural. inalienable right from
which no social or economic system may in
justice deprive him. Moreover, the state
owes II peremptOrly to itself to protect man
in this sacred right. For without homes with
out families with all safeguards cast around
the fecundity ana the virtue of parents
and the health and virtue of children there
is no public virtue. there is no social strength !
there is no living, strong, hopeful nation
And as look over the various industrial |
cover the worst blight which unrestrained |
industrial greed has put upon the children of
men. 1t has either made the family impossi- |
BILE, or has despoileG it of its sacredness and |
its bloom. The laborer is frightened away |
by poverty from marriage if he marries he
is unable to provide decently for his little
ones; the mother is forced to forget her
maternal responsibilities i'll order to add
loaf to the scanty provision made by the hus-
band; the children are dra. 4 ont to work
while yet immature and unprepared. There
fore, 1.-The reasonable and frugal com
fort which the minimum wage should give
to the laborer, must be, as the encyclical de-
clares, sufficient to enable him to maintain
himself, his wife and his children" The
maintaining of a family means an education
for the children proportional to their eondi-
ton of life, and provision for the old age
OF the wife, as well as that Of the laborer
human race, when it sets premium on the
absence of a family or in any manner leads
man and woman away from marriage We
NAV therefore take the maintenanea of |