People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1897 — A LIVING TRUTH. [ARTICLE]

A LIVING TRUTH.

MAN IS THE TRUE STANDARD OF VALUE. | “The Social and Industrial System Is to lie Measured, Not by the Wealth It l’roduces But by the Men It Produces.” I Dr. Lyman Abbott has long been an advanced leader of thought in many lines. Whatever subject he touches he illumines, for his mind is clear and free and his purpose is ever inspired by loftiest intent. That he has of late turned his attention to socio-economic problems is a promise that these pressing questions will be presented in such form-as to command the respectful attention of-all; that others, groping toward the light, will by him be pointed out the safe and sure way. “Christianity and Social Problems” is the suggestive title of a new book just from his pen, and the noble character of the work and the high humanitarianism which runs through it all is seen in the extracts which appear below, to which we are indebted to the Literary Digest: “ ‘The social and industrial system is to be measured, not by the wealth it produces, but by the men it produces; not by the abundance of the material things, but by the kind of men developed in the process. Man is the standard of value, not things. An industrial system, then, must produce good men and good women or tend to produce them. If it does not. it fails, measured by Christ’s standard.’ Thus Dr. Abbott takes issue with the old political economy which declared itself concerned simply with wealth and with men ply as wealth-producers. That is to say, he holds, with a number of moderns, that economics, of necessity dealing with man as an intelligent and moral being, must be ethical.- He asserts that the question whether' the wage system is better than feudalism or slavery has been settled, but against the present industrial system as either final or true he makes these counts: (1) That it is not giving steady and permanent employment to all willing laborers. (2) That it also fails to give all those who are employed under it wages adequate for true livelihood. (3) That, it is insufficiently educative in itself and fails to allow adequate leisure for educative processes. (4) That pure, good homes are in many instances impossible under present conditions. “‘I believe,’ he declares, ‘that the system which divides society into two classes, capitalists and laborers, is but a temporary one, and that the industrial unrest of our time is the result of a blind struggle toward a democracy, of wealth, in which the tool-users will also be the tool-owners; in which labor will hire capital, not capital labor; in which men, not money, will control in industry, as they now control in government. But the doctrines that labor is a commodity, and that capital is to buy in the cheapest market, is not even temporarily sound; it is economically false as it is ethically unjust.

“ ‘There is no such commodity as labor; it does not exist. When a workingman comes to the factory on a Monday morning he has nothing to sell; he is empty-handed; he has come in order to produce something by his exertion, and that something, when it is produced, is to be sold, and part of the proceeds of that sale will of right belong to him, because he has helped to produce it. And as there is no labor commodity to be sold, so there is no labor market in which to sell it. * * * Both are fictions of political economy. The actual facts are as follows: “ ‘Most commodities in our time — even agricultural commodities are gradually coming under these conditions—are produced by an organized body of workingmen, carrying on their work under the superintendence of a “captain of industry,” and by the use of costly tools. This requires the cooperation of three classes—the toolowner or capitalist, tho superintendent or manager, and the tool-user or laborer. The result is the joint product of their industry—for the tool itself is only a reservoired product of industry —and therefore belongs to them jointly. It is the business of political economy to ascertain how values can be equitably divided between these partners in a common enterprise. This is the labor question in a sentence.’ ”