Excerpt from The Catholic University Bulletin, Vol. 8<br><br>Within the limitations suggested, the consuming public controls what is produced. This is an economic relation. The further question now forces itself upon us, can the public control as well the conditions in which production takes place? The question is one for economic science. Ought the public to control the conditions of production? This question is one for ethics. If the public should control these conditions and does not, is it not morally responsible for the existence of the labor question? Are we not wrong and unscientific in blaming employers indis criminately? The labor question, as a practical problem, reduces itself to the matter of wages, of hours and conditions of work. The conditions concern chiefly, life, health and morals. In the present order of society, employers regard themselves, not as servants of the public but as individuals seeking profit and individual power. When employers com pete, there results a downward tendency in wages, a desire to lengthen the hours of labor and a reluctance to expend money for any purposes which are not immediately productive, hence the neglect of the demands of decency, justice, humanity and health. There are, of course, forces at work in the contrary direction. Factory laws and trade unions have that effect. The extremes to which the tendency may develop are seen in the great evils of our sweating system, which escapes factory inspection and labor organization.'<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.