John A. Ryan 1906-A LIVING WAGE 1st Ed. Catholic Moral Economics

Description: NY. 1906. MacMillan. Octavo, red boards. xvi, 346pp. Table of Contents, Index, 3pp. advertisements. 1st Edition A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects John A. Ryan, S.T.L [John Augustus Ryan] Important and scarce early book on the U.S. movement toward a minimum wage. From the preface: "Upon one principle of partial justice UNPREJUDICED MEN are in substantial agreement... They hold that WAGES should be sufficiently high to enable the LABORER to live in a manner consistent with the DIGNITY of a HUMAN BEING. To DEFEND this general conviction by setting forth the BASIS of INDUSTRIAL, RELIGIOUS and MORAL FACT upon which it rests, is the AIM of the present volume." The ongoing effort to establish a legal living wage in the U.S. has origins in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Catholic social teaching and activism. The priest-economist John A. Ryan presented a moral argument for a living wage, grounded in Catholic anti-individualism and natural rights traditions, which helped to fuel early minimum wage campaigns. Ryan was one of the chief advocates for minimum wage legislation in the U.S. His influential 1906 book A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects brought together Catholic social teaching with American republican ideals to argue that everyone has an “indestructible” God-given right to a “decent livelihood.” Ryan collaborated with activists from varied religious and secular backgrounds to draft, lobby for, and implement several of the first minimum wage laws in the country—state laws which covered only women and children. These living wage advocates continued their work throughout the 1920s, when the Supreme Court declared the District of Columbia's minimum wage unconstitutional, and in the 1930s, when the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 built upon the foundations of the state laws to establish a federal minimum wage. (see footnote) Condition: Please see the photos. The book is in very good condition. Just a little wear at the extremities. Sturdy, solid, clean and tight. Spine/binding A1. Text clean. Not an ex-library book. Former owner's name and address on a sticker on front paste-down. See the photos. Footnote:Murphy, Laura. An “Indestructible Right”: John Ryan and the Catholic Origins of the U.S. Living Wage Movement, 1906–1938. Duke University Press. Labor (2009) 6 (1): 57–86.

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