The unsolved riddle of social justice / by Stephen Leacock.

  • Stephen Leacock
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The unsolved riddle of social justice / by Stephen Leacock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    145/168 page 133
    industrial life is set cannot be readily broken asunder. But we can to a great extent ease the rigidity of its outlines. A legislative code that starts from sounder principles than those which have obtained hitherto can do a great deal towards progressive betterment. Each decade can be an improvement upon the last. Hitherto we have been hampered at every turn by the supposed obstacle of immutable economic laws. The theory of natural ” wages and prices of a supposed economic order that could not be disturbed, set up a sort of legislative paralysis. The first thing needed is to get away entirely from all such pre- conceptions, to recognize that the natural ” order of society, based on the “ natural ” liberty, does not correspond with real justice and real liberty at all, but works injustice at every turn. And at every turn intrusive social legislation must seek to prevent such injustice. It is no part of the present essay to attempt to detail the particulars of a code of social legislation. That must depend in every case upon the particular circumstances of the community concerned. But some indication may be given here of the kind of legislation that may serve to render the conditions of industry more in conformity with social justice.
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