Page:Can a man be a Christian on a pound a week? - Hardie.djvu/16

This page has been validated.

14

teachings contained in the Sermon on the Mount, the entire nation, every individual that is, will be interested in promoting true economy, and he who wastes any portion of what will be the common store will be accounted an enemy of society. Then, too, things will begin to be seen in their true proportions. With the power which the possession of wealth gives one man over his fellows, and the fear which the prospect of poverty brings with it, alike taken away, men will be valued in proportion to what they are and not what they have, and a moral standard of excellence will again be raised for the guidance of the race. Concerning the poor despised tramp, I am prepared to stake my own chances of a seat on the banks of the Jordan that a bigger percentage of these will find entrance to the Kingdom than will be found from the anointed ones who look down so unctuously upon him from the superior height of a classical education and an assured income.

5. THE CHRISTIAN EMPLOYER SHOULD PAY GOOD WAGES.

That Christian employers should pay their workfolks good wages. (Anon.)

Those who reason after this fashion must surely have forgotten their studies in political economy. In a system of industry where prices for the products of labour are fixed by competition, it is the hard skin-flint employer who decides the rate of pay for the trade. Let me illustrate this. A is a good employer, albeit a roystering, swearing fellow, who believes in the maxim of live and let live; B is a church-goer, and a close-fisted preacher of thrift. Both are engaged in the same trade and have to compete for orders in the same market. Each is paying