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Social duties from the Christian point of view
Social duties from the Christian point of view Author:Charles Richmond Henderson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III SOCIAL DUTIES RELATING TO MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF FAMILY LIFE In the first chapter we considered the objects of social life in general, and we h... more »ave seen that human beings cannot advance in culture without a sufficient supply of food, clothing, and other goods necessary to maintain the body. We are now to take up these material conditions of the higher life and discover how a community ought to act in relation to these facts. I. THE MINIMUM STANDARD OF SOCIAL DUTY There is a very common and traditional belief that the income of a family of a workingman should be measured by what its bread-winner can earn in the competitive labor market. The "law of supply and demand" which actually fixes wages like the price of wheat or meat, is treated as a part of the moral law, the will of God, or the decision of fate, and any attempt to seek any other basis is regarded as a foolish and futile struggle with dark destiny, or as an impious attempt to circumvent Providence. Stripped of all ornament, this theory means that whatever is, is right. This belief is rarely questioned among those who are successful, and the prosperous are inclined to seekin vice or idleness the only sources of failure to provide support. If a laborer cannot earn income enough to give his family decent means of subsistence, he is despised or pitied for his weakness, or coldly rebuked for his incompetence or wrongdoing. Job on his heap of ashes still finds himself surrounded with "comforters" who have a ready explanation of extreme poverty in sin. If the wages which are actually paid as a result of the competition of employers and employees with each other in the labor market are the proper measure of what ought to be paid, then we have no right to inquire further for social duty; the "going rate" is t...« less