Dowling v. Livingstone

• Decision Date: 18 February 1896
• Citation: 108 Mich. 321,66 N.W. 225
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: DOWLING v. LIVINGSTONE ET AL.

66 N.W. 225

108 Mich. 321

DOWLING v. LIVINGSTONE ET AL.

Supreme Court of Michigan

February 18, 1896

Error to circuit court, Wayne county; William L. Carpenter, Judge.

Action by Morgan E. Dowling against William Livingstone, Jr., and others, for publishing an alleged libelous review of plaintiff's book. From a judgment in favor of plaintiff defendants bring error. Reversed.

In an action for an alleged libelous review of plaintiff's book, it is error to charge that defendant had the right to ridicule the book if, in the candid judgment of any fair man the book deserved ridicule, since the critic himself is the judge of the language of his criticism.

Plaintiff published a book entitled "The Wage Worker's Remedy," which was offered for sale to the public generally. The defendants are the publishers and owners of the Detroit Journal, a newspaper printed and published in the city of Detroit. Plaintiff took this book to the editorial room of the Journal, and requested that it be reviewed. The book was handed by the managing editor to an employ� for that purpose. A review was written and published May 15, 1894, and is as follows: "Mr. Dowling's Book,-The Wage Worker's Remedy. Morgan E. Dowling's little book, The Wage-Worker's Remedy, is a well-meant but rather hysterical, attempt to solve the labor question. Although utterly lacking scientific value, it is interesting to most Journal readers, because the author is a Detroit man, and because it reveals how the average mind is groping and floundering in the midst of a forest of contradictions and in swamps of bad logic to the discovery of the truth. We do not claim to know beyond question the right path, but feel sure that Mr. Dowling has hopelessly lost his way. In the first place, Mr. Dowling's view is entirely confined to this country. His wage worker is the American wage worker. This is mainly why his effort has no value as a contribution to economic science. What would be thought of a writer who tried to explain the law of the correlation of forces wholly from the American or French standpoint? The truths of political economy are, of course, world-wide, like all truth. Rent and interest and wages must rise and fall in the United States in obedience to the same eternal laws that govern them elsewhere. To think otherwise is to doubt the harmony and simplicity of God's rule. Bearing this in mind, one of the author's nine remedies for low wages and lack of employment is seen to be inadequate. For instance, he would suspend immigration to this country; yet Italy Germany, and Poland, all having emigration instead of immigration, and enjoying to a small degree some of his other remedies, are suffering from low wages. Ireland still seems to be too crowded, although, from famine and immigration, her population has been reduced one-half in less than a century. Surely, France's low wages have not been caused in any way by immigration, and war and starvation and a low birth rate have kept her population within reasonable limits almost at a standstill. Another of Mr. Dowling's remedies for low wages is government ownership of railways, street railways, telegraph lines, and telephones. This is funny. He doesn't stop to think, but disposes of the whole subject almost with one flourish. If he had stopped for even a moment, it might have occurred to him that wages were low before the telegraph and locomotive were known. In his hasty opinion, governmental operation of street cars would realize Mayor Pingree's dream of a three-cent fare, and that would lead to more travel, and hence to the employment of more men. There you are. The whole question of labor is solved! But electricity has displaced horses (outside Detroit); travel on street cars has doubled; and yet wages have fallen. We, of course, are using the word 'wages' in its strict economical sense, whereas Mr. Dowling for the moment has in mind only the wages of one set of men. The reduction of street-car fares, he says, would be equivalent to raising the wages of those wage workers who used the cars. Has he never thought of the influence of street-car improvements on rent? May it not be possible that the landowner, not the wage earner, would absorb the benefits of such improvements? We are not arguing against the restriction of immigration and governmental ownership and management of these natural monopolies. They may be desirable in themselves, but as a solution of the labor problem they are ridiculous. Mr. Dowling disclaims being a paternalist; yet he advocates the most astounding piece of socialistic policy. He inveighs against class legislation, and then proposes some legislation of that kind. He would have the government forbid a higher rate of interest than 4 per cent. and a lower rate of wages than $2 a day. Such childish suggestions were bad enough in the Middle Ages, when the laws of political economy were unknown. An old king commanded the tide to recede, and an English parliament undertook to fix a maximum wage. Both were excusable, for they were ignorant. We know better to-day. Like the tide, wages follow certain unchangeable laws. The old king might have erected a stone wall against the tide, but the tide would have gone on working just the same, until it overflowed the obstruction or undermined it or pushed it over. So the law of wages does not cease to operate when artifcial obstructions are placed in the way of its sweep. Something may fall and smash, but it will not be the fault of the economic law. The law itself is all right, being the will of the Creator, and any patchwork by the finite mind cannot but lead to bad results. Mr. Dowling simply does not understand what 'wages' are, in the meaning given to the word by political economy. He has constantly in mind the meaning of the word as applied to 'wage earners.' In political economy, however, the meaning of the word 'wages' is broader. It is the return for any service or for any productive labor. Thus, many are their own employers, and receive as wages what they themselves produce. How could the legislature compel an express-wagon driver or a small market gardener or a small shopkeeper to pay himself at least $2 a day? The merchant is both a capitalist and a wage earner, as political economy regards him. His profits are made up of interest on his capital, and of wages of superintendence. He may have, let us say, 50 clerks employed, at an average rate of $1.50 a day. The law suddenly compels him, according to Mr. Dowling's scheme, to pay them not less than $2 a day, increasing his expenses $25 a day. He is himself a laborer, a wage worker, as truly as are his clerks, and nine times out of ten a harder and more anxious worker, for upon him rests responsibility, and the shame should failure come. His own wages may already be cut down fearfully by high rent and competition; yet Mr. Dowling would arbitrarily make him pay higher wages to his clerks than the labor market required. Of course,

like all quack remedies, it would intensify the trouble if it had any effect at all. Besides trickery and lying, it would cause business failures and the employment relatively of less clerks. The tide might be damned up for a moment, but its strength would be felt. About one-third of Mr. Dowling's book is devoted to praising Henry George; and to refuting his ideas. In the opening chapter he quotes from George without giving him credit, and outdoes him in raising alarm over present social conditions, even saying that revolution is at hand unless something is quickly done to appease the wrathful and wronged masses. In the last chapter he has apparently cooled off, forgotten his alarm, and believes that material progress tends to benefit all. One wonders what he made such a fuss for first, especially when it is found that he believes that some poverty is bound to exist anyway. He says Henry George's scheme is socialistic, and then he proposed an extension of governmental powers which would...