Economic justice

“ This could only be effected if the present owners were expropriated, or paid less than the market value, or given a mere life-interest as compensation. When full value is given, economic justice is not advanced in any degree. ”

“ A community is forming, with its natural demand for revenue for common purposes. Here is the natural revenue. Here lies the fundamental principle which political economists call the Law of Rent. Here reposes the very essence of the law of compensation. Here also is found the basis principle of economic justice, which, traced to its last analysis, as civilization advances, [263] is capable of developing the highest expression of human society. Here is the answer to your question,
“Will universal happiness be the result of putting an end to private ownership of land?” ”

“ Yet we must remember that the idea of leaving the wages of each individual to be determined by the blind play of economic forces was foreign to all the civilisations that preceded our own. They always sought to correct the principles of business in order to keep them in accord with the principles of charity and justice. To carry out this policy, they did not even hesitate to limit the development of industry and business, for example, by forbidding interest on money. ”

“ No gigantic system of beggar my neighbour had then come to be considered as a shorthand mode of gaining wealth. The nation had not then embraced the doctrine, that to buy cheap and sell dear constituted the sum total of political science. On the contrary, protection to industry in all its branches was considered as the great principle of policy, the undisputed dictate of wisdom, the obvious rule of justice. ”

“ It must be admitted that, with all of our wealth, we continue to face serious charges of poverty and industrial maladjustment. These charges are of great importance, but it should be remembered that no problem can be solved, or even intelligently attacked, until the essential facts are well in hand. We have briefly described the nature of American industry. What we have now to do, as a preliminary to considering the problem of poverty and industrial reform, is to analyze the economic laws in accordance with which American industry has developed. ”

“ In carrying out this policy of government regulation and supervision of corporations he became involved in a great struggle with the powerful financial interests whose profits were threatened, and with those legislators who sincerely believed that government should solely concern itself with protecting life and property, and should leave questions of individual and social relations in trade and finance to be settled by the operation of so-called natural economic laws. ”

“ Fair exchange above laws.—Under perfect freedom of exchange, the general law of supply and demand already illustrated is more effective than any laws can be in adjusting wages or profit to efforts in production, and in adjusting interest or rent or both to the capital employed or to other means of production controlled. ”

“ This general tendency of present day capitalist policies determines the policies of the individual states as their supreme blindly operating law, just as the laws of economic competition determine the conditions under which the individual manufacturer shall produce. ”

“ People who opposed some long-overdue measure of State regulation believed themselves to be justified by the eternal verities of economic law, and this claim even the advocates of the measure seldom ventured to dispute. They took refuge rather in a conception of economic law as a dangerous monster, whose claws must be clipped in the interests of the higher good. ”

“ Presidents of the United States and Committees of Congress invite views of labor on matters not immediately concerned with wages, hours, and conditions of employment. [47] And this Court accepts briefs as amici from the AFL-CIO on issues that cannot be called industrial, in any circumscribed sense. It is not true in life that political protection is irrelevant to, and insulated from, economic interests. It is not true for industry of finance. [48] Neither is it true for labor. ”

“ Economic conditions require readjustment, important matters of trade must be regulated, vital questions of finance and taxation must be handled, in fact, the whole country must settle down to production, manufacture, distribution of merchandise, and the transaction of the nation’s regular business. ”

“ It is not for courts to determine the course of the Nation's economic development. Economists may recommend, the legislative and executive branches may chart legal courses by which the competitive forces of business can seek to reduce costs ad increase production so that a higher standard of living may be available to all. ”

“ Justice and fairness dictate that in any modification of our present laws relating to revenue the industries and interests which have been encouraged by such laws, and in which our citizens have large investments, should not be ruthlessly injured or destroyed. We should also deal with the subject in such manner as to protect the interests of American labor, which is the capital of our workingmen. ”

“ If Capital obtains this right, in addition to financial reward for the use of capital for the time for which it is invested, is Labor not in justice equally entitled, in addition to its monetary reward, to a voice in the control of industry in which, for the time being, its life and skill are likewise invested? ”

“ I wish commerce to be fully protected and encouraged, that the people may have an opportunity of disposing of their crops at market, and of procuring such supplies as they may be in want of. I presume that there can be no political happiness, unless industry be cherished and protected, and property secured. Suppose a poor man becomes rich by honest labor, and increases the public stock of wealth: shall his reward be the loss of that liberty he set out with? Will you take away every stimulus to industry, by declaring that he shall not retain the fruits of it? ”

“ Only after we have mastered the principles upon which American industry is based, shall we be in a position to solve the problems which arise directly from the nature of our economic organization.
46. INDUSTRIAL REFORM.—Our industrial life is so clearly based upon certain fundamental institutions, such as private property, free contract, and free competition, that an industrial "system" is said to exist. Certain great evils, notably poverty, have accompanied the development of this system. ”

“ There is a decided tendency at present to a strengthening of the regulative power of the state for the protection of the weaker classes of society. And yet on the whole the institution of private property, free competition, and a maximum of individual liberty remain the fundamental conditions of our economic life.
But while under the system of individualism, industrial activities have been multiplied, wealth has been enormously increased, and human progress has been greatly advanced, many abuses and evils still remain. Many practical economic problems still await solution. ”

“ That she would diminish her own prosperity, is an insufficient security against the abuse of such a monopoly. The landed interest diminished its own prosperity, by the oppression of commerce and labour. By justice, as to all three, a nation will prosper; by enabling either to draw wealth from the otiier two, by law, without industry, the common good or general interest is invariably wounded. ”

“ The common run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes ”

“ In the opening section of this text attention was called to the fact that economic freedom or liberty was one of the corner stones of our modern industrial society. But freedom can best be secured by securing equality and responsibility. Factory legislation and labor laws are designed to correct the inequalities imposed by nature or involved in the very nature of capitalistic production. ”

“ If in any case they are not, it is because of government monopoly cornering the market, or because of unnatural conditions of government production undermining the market. In general, government is simply expending for the common welfare a part of the wealth produced by individual effort. ”

“ The function of economic values is to guide and control the economic activities of men, to send labor from one industry to another, to cause one sort of thing to be produced or another, to supply the motive force which impels industry. Legal and moral values also directly affect industry, often working to check the results which the economic values alone would lead to—as when the law forbids the production and sale of liquor, or checks child labor, etc. ”

“ Likewise, the importance to industry of active and enterprising leadership. Thirdly: the social and economic evil effects of great inequality of wealth. Fourthly: the fact that the health, energy, spirit, and intelligence of the wage earners are 243 factors of high importance in the creation of a stable and effective industrial régime, and that the development and display of these qualities by individuals are affected by their economic conditions and surroundings, here and now. Likewise, the importance of giving the best possible opportunity to all to develop their natural ability. ”

“ The question of the play of economic forces thus generally reduces itself to a problem which may be thus stated: What are the conditions of industrial equilibrium? How must prices, rates of wages, and profit be related in order that the various classes concerned may receive such proportions of produce as are compatible with the maintenance of the existing system of organisation? If any specified change occurs, if production becomes easier or more difficult, if a tax be imposed, or a regulation of any kind affects previous conditions, what changes will be necessary to restore the equilibrium? ”

“ The Economic Function.—The nation has an economic function. It is its business to encourage trade by means that seem most likely to help, whether by subsidies, tariffs, or expert advice; to protect all producers, distributers, and consumers by just laws and tribunals, so that unfair privileges shall not be enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many, and to provide in every legitimate way for the spread of information and for experimentation that agriculture, mining, and manufacturing may be improved. ”

“ Is the rule hereafter to be that human characteristics and methods, universally existing and applied, are all to become the basis for a charge of crime, and that the law, in attempting to reach that equality and fairness which constitute justice, is going to allow those wishing to buy commodities produced by others to beat down the prices, whilst those who have added to the world's supply are to defend their rights in bargaining by a threatened intervention by the State that may end in their ruin as well as their loss of liberty? ”

“ Has political economy nothing to do with the legal and artificial causes which have conspired with unavoidable but temporary circumstances, to produce our distresses? Can it discover no difference between the payment of five or an hundred millions annually; taking into the account the fall in the price of products; by productive to unproductive labour? Is it unable to discern, that if money appreciates and prices fall, the distresses of productive labour must be correspondently increased by legal or artificial transfers of property, remaining, as measured by money, numerically the same? ”

“ But they have a vital bearing on the modus operandi of economic laws. These laws do not work in vacuo. They work through the medium of the acts of men. The acts of men are greatly influenced by their institutions, and by their ideas of right and wrong. Both institutions and ideas may serve to smooth rather than obstruct the path of economic laws ”

“ Let it practice true and conscientious economy, not only in the expenditure and application of public moneys, but also in the method of levying them, so as to be equally just to all classes and all economical interests. ”

“ As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions which abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State which should abolish capitalism. ”

“ The object of each exchanger was, that labour should be exchanged with capital. That object could not have been accomplished, or it would have been accomplished slowly, imperfectly, and therefore unprofitably, unless there had been interchangeable freedom and security for both exchangers,—for the exchanger of capital, and the exchanger of labour. The first right of the labourer was, that his labour should be free;—the first right of the capitalist was, that his capital should be free. The rights of each were built upon the security of property. ”

“ Values to-day permit their holders either to purchase means of production and of profit or their products. In the transformed society, when the private capital of production and exploitation shall have been made social, when the social community shall have placed the means of production at the disposition of associated laborers, the indemnity values which shall have been given the capitalists of yesterday will permit them no longer to buy the means of production, of rent, and of profit: they will permit them to buy only the products of the transformed social activity. ”

“ Would it be a loss of wealth to the community to have the goods formerly bought abroad now produced at home? The answer is, certainly it would. But here it has been ably urged by intelligent writers that a state [pg 622] has other ends to gain than the accumulation of mere riches; that it must aim to secure the greatest moral, social, and elevating influences possible for the working-classes; and that while free exchange of goods may add to wealth, it may injure the social and political well-being of a nation. ”