Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
(1) The first duty of employers is to give to all employees a fair
wage. If the business does not pay enough to allow this, it has no
right to exist; if the owners are pocketing large salaries, or giving
dividends to stockholders, this money should be used first for a proper
payment of the workers. So many laborers are at the mercy of the
employing class, because of their ignorance, their lack of capital
and necessity of work at any wage, and often their unfamiliarity with
the language and customs of the country, that it has become possible
in many cases to treat them like animals and give them less than enough
to sustain life in decency, not to say in comfort. Such a case as that
of our benevolent Mr. Carnegie, who million dollars in one year's
earnings of his steel trust, while many hundreds of his employees were
getting but a miserable pittance and living in vile surroundings, is
exceptionally glaring; but in lesser degree the same injustice is being
wrought in many industries. Wages have, indeed, been raised gradually,
here and there; but not usually by the free will of employers. The
callousness of some of the privileged classes toward the underpayment
of the lower classes is almost on a par with the attitude of the
nobility before the French Revolution.[Footnote: See, for example,
Outlook, vol. 101, p. 345.] Fortunately, the public is coming to see
not only the wrong done to the helpless poor, but the cost to the
community in breeding underfed, ill- housed, criminally tempted
classes, and the danger that lies ahead if these classes realize their
power before amelioration is effected from above. As a recent writer
has put it, Addition Division=Revolution. [Footnote: S. Hearing,
Wages in the United States; Social Adjustment, chap. IV. Ryan,
A Living Wage.]
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