Definitely sounds like Locke for most of this. In fact, the paragraph in front of it is directly concerned with the issues of Locke's original treatise--how to argue against the idea that God gave us all the land in common. Argument made by pro-Patriarchy, aka absolutist monarchy, writer Filmer which Locke had to argue against without giving weight to the proto-commune-ist arguments of other social movements at the time. Labor argument worked, but only because he made it possible to get anything your servants did for you, i.e. only worked as ideological cover because presumed at the outset a class divide.
The pope swallows this whole, but he seems to be taking a position on greater debates of the day. Note this section:
<BLOCKQUOTE> 45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection. <END QUOTE>
I don't know about the global context, but I'm reading on the early twentieth century and the way progressives--and even J. S. Mill--were advocating a use of Locke for socialist purposes. But the issue then was less about owning property than about pointing out the that the contracts for labor weren't free, but coerced. I don't know how popular this was--looking at Robert Hale who was writing in the 1920s and 30s. But there must have been a lot of popular pressure in the decades before this--like about the time this piece above appears--because there were a good deal of state laws that were being made to protect workers. Enough so the Lochner era courts--which basically hinged on the "liberty" of the wage contract--spent the early part of the twentieth century striking them down.
In this sense, I would say, as odious as this text is, it was actually something like a compromise. He's positioning himself as anti-socialist to make some sort of neo-classical appeal--following this, lots of pablum similar to Protestant Ethic--notion of "natural justice." All in all a pie in the sky idea the way he has it, and as Yates points out in his article, none of the change that did happen in the direction of that "natural justice" happened without a lot of movements.
Anyone know any other contextual info about this quote. Was it in response to any particular event or just a general statement on the times? Also, how big of a deal would this have been at the time? was it translated & distributed in the same way that it would be today, or just sent around as talking points/instructions to would be liberation theologists to keep them in line?
I ask because I'm working on a chapter for my dissertation where I am looking at the revival of these kinds of Lockean notions of property--and the early 20th c. debates about them. The endpoint is the more contemporary Law and Economics movement--especially people on the most radical edge of this like Richard Epstein. He, for instance, in his recent book "How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution" contends that none of the state action was necessary, that, "as Adam Smith predicted" the free market was creating a better wage labor environement before the courts got involved. Of course, he ignores completely all social agitation except in its relation to legal change; since he contends the latter was unnecessary, the former is moot. It's an elegant argument in its simplicity. But so are all Natural Law theories.
s