An Allocution to Business Men

Extract

It is with equal solicitude, with equal interest, that We receive in audience both workers and industrialists as they come to Us in turn and, with a confidence which touches Us deeply, explain to Us their respective difficulties. In bidding you welcome with all Our heart, very dear sons, We also gladly seize the opportunity that you offer to Us to express Our paternal goodwill and to praise your zeal in bringing Christian social teaching into the world of economics.

We have referred to the difficulties of those who take part in industrial production. Erroneous and baneful in its consequences is the misconception, unfortunately very widespread, which sees in them an irreducible opposition of divergent interests. The opposition is only apparent. In the economic domain there is common activity and interest between the employers and the workers. Not to perceive this reciprocal bond, to attempt to break it, cannot but be the result of blind and unreasonable despotism. Employers and workers are not irreconcilable antagonists. They are collaborators in a common task. They eat, so to speak, at the same table, since they live, in the last resort, from the net global profit of the national economy.

Each one draws his pay, and from this point of view their mutual relationship should not put either of them at the service of the other. To draw one’s pay is a tribute to one’s personal dignity in one form or another, the proprietor and the worker each making his own production contribute to the yield of the national economy.