Leo XIII. and Wages.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 10 July 1902, Page 2

Leo XIII. and Wages.

Mr. C. S. Devas , the well-known political economist, in a recent issue of the Dublin Review, commences a series of articles on the economic teaching of Leo XIII. as laid down in his Encyclicals. The Pope's attitude on the important question of wages is very clearly and definitely stated. Wages, the Holy Father holds, to be just, must be sufficient, all contracts notwithstanding, for the support of a frugal and steady workman. If the workman is compelled by fear of worse evils to take less, being all that the master or contractor will give him, he suffers violent injustice. And such an evil, if it can be stopped m no other way, needs the intervention of tne Commonwealth. Perfect justice requires wages to be in the proper correspondence with work. The Commonwealth should favor the acquisition of property by work people ; and this is only possible if a man's wages are sufficient to maintain in comfort his wife and children as well as himself. It is, therefore, a mistake to suppose that wages are a mere matter of contract. No contract can set aside the dictates of natural justice bidding wages be fair, and neither master nor man must be a party to a bargain inconsistent with the decent living of work people.

The foregoing is a good illustration of the clarifying effect of a clear statement ot elementary principles, and it has a direct bearing on some of the questions that crop up from time to time in the working of our own labor legislation. It is often urged, for example, that our Conciliation and Arbitration Courts have no right whatever to say what wages an employer shall pay his men. Yet it is clear that if, as the Holy Father puts it, ' a workman is compelled by fear of worse evils to take less (than is sufficient) ... he suffers violent injustice,' and if the evil can be stopped in no other way it ' needs the intervention of the Commonwealth.' It is obvious, therefore, that as a matter of principle the State, acting through appropriate organisations, is fully justified in intervening to prevent injustice, and to secure that so far as the wages of labor are concerned, a fair and reasonable minimum shall be observed.