Consumers and Wage-Earners: The Ethics of Buying CheapRoss, J. Elliot (John Elliot)
Philosophy
Consumers and Wage-Earners: The Ethics of Buying Cheap
Ross, J. Elliot (John Elliot)
Consumers -- United States; Wages; Wages -- United States
We have now considered the arguments advanced to prove that justice
binds the Consuming Class to see to it that goods are made under fair
terms. These arguments may be summarized as follows:
I. Because as indirect employers the Consuming Class are bound to
maintain just conditions for those whom they indirectly employ.
II. Because as buyers the Consuming Class are first bound to pay the
full value of the article, which must include sufficient to give the
persons employed in its manufacture and distribution a living wage,
etc.; and secondly, because the Consuming Class are bound not to buy an
article to which the seller has not a just title, the seller of an
article made under unjust conditions not having a just title since there
is work in the object for which he has not paid.
III. Because the Consuming Class would co-operate in an injustice in
three ways: (A) by receiving the goods made under unjust conditions; (B)
by furnishing the means for committing the injustice; (C) by urging such
production by this practical financial support.
IV. Because the Consuming Class are bound to seek the social good, and
that demands the payment of fair wages.
II
So far we have considered only the arguments for an obligation of
justice on the part of the Consuming Class. But may there not also be a
duty of charity?
Certain general considerations relating to this second of the two
greatest commandments, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," must
be referred to before answering that question.
The precept of charity requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
And by the term neighbor we mean everyone. No religion, "race, color,
or previous condition of servitude" removes a man from the category of
our neighbor. A Christian's love must be all embracing. T. H. Green has
well said that progress in civilization has been an enlargement of the
meaning of neighbor and neighborliness. The meaning of these terms, once
confined to one's relatives, then extended to one's city, tribe, nation,
has now widened out until it embraces the world.
But while we must look upon everyone as our neighbor, and love him as
ourselves, this does not mean that we must love each one in the same
degree. We must love him as ourselves, but not necessarily _as much as_
ourselves. We must have a universal internal love by which we wish our
neighbor well in his spiritual, corporal, and material goods and succor
him in necessity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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