Just Price in An Unjust World

Abstract

I N SPITE of its wonder-working power, the radio has one serious shortcoming. However distressed he may be, the listener cannot challenge or heckle the speaker. He can only turn off an offending argument, even though he feels a strong moral duty to rebuke the pundit whose electrically magnified words spread abroad ambiguous doctrines based on careless reasoning. Particularly during the period preceding the national election-but actually for the last three or four yearsI have listened with enforced, although perhaps foolish patience, to a persuasive doctrine which has formed a very real part of the Rooseveltian political creed. That doctrine is one of just price, although it is designated more often as a "fair" price or "fair" wages. I propose to examine this doctrine in a general way and to raise questions about the possible meanings which this alluring doctrine can have in a political democracy using machine technology in the business of production and characterized by pluralistic interests which defy classification. Although I have been and still am extremely sympathetic toward the Roosevelt administration, I have not yet reached that state of hero worship which saps the critical faculties so completely that adoration replaces appraisal. Jove may be Jove, but even so he needs watching. The doctrine of a just price, which Mr. Roosevelt has chosen to enunciate, cherish, and promote, has a venerable past. In patristic literature it was given classic statement by Augustine "I know a man who, when a manuscript was offered him for purchase, and he saw that the seller was ignorant of its value, gave the man the just price though he did not expect it."'