Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005 | 8:16 a.m.
Don't believe all of that bah-humbug that Ebenezer Scrooge was an unfair and uncaring employer.
It can be argued, a UNLV professor says, that the Charles Dickens' character from the Yuletide classic "A Christmas Carol" paid a fair wage and provided decent benefits, at least for the era when the story takes place -- the early 19th century.
"Scrooge cannot be redeemed if from the start he had nothing good in him," said Mark Weinstein, UNLV's distinguished professor of literature who specializes in Dickens' works.
"Scrooge was not a bad employer, he just lacked the human connection," Weinstein said. "Dickens believed the cash nexus was destroying human relationships. It interfered with family relationships, friends' relationships and boss-employee relationships."
Weinstein, 68, who is in his 36th year of teaching at UNLV, says "A Christmas Carol" is typical of Dickens' work: It showed how the author did not like the direction in which the modern world was headed.
"Dickens believed love was the basis of everything and that people were redeemable," he said. "Not all of his characters are. Uriah Heep (in 'David Copperfield') is irredeemable. But Pip (in 'Great Expectations') and Scrooge are redeemable."
The arguments supporting that Scrooge was a fair employer, Weinstein says, include:
* He paid his accountant Bob Cratchit 15 shillings, six pence, a week -- a prevailing wage of the early 1800s for a small business such as Scrooge & Marley.
* Although Scrooge complained about it, he gave Cratchit Christmas Day off with pay at a time long before most employers gave their workers holidays off.
* Although Scrooge was concerned that he was wasting a lump of coal by allowing Cratchit to put it in the office furnace to keep warm, many businesses at that time, "especially the factories where children were forced to work," did not even have furnaces.
* Although readers might feel sorry that Cratchit had to work by candlelight, there was little Scrooge could do about that because Thomas Edison's lightbulb was still about 75 years away from being invented. Candlelight was the only way to work after it got dark in the days long before the 40-hour workweek became the norm in the workplace.
Weinstein also noted that while readers are saddened that Cratchit's son, Tiny Tim, is dying and his father cannot afford health care for him, "health insurance was an alien concept in those days."
While Weinstein contends it is unfair to judge Scrooge as an employer using early 21st century labor standards, others say Scrooge carries the banner for today's conservative philosophy toward business.
Author and talk show host Thom Hartmann wrote in a Dec. 9 story, "Scrooge & Marley, Inc. -- The True Conservative Agenda" on CommonDreams.org Web site:
"Cratchit lived the typical life of that day's English working poor. He could not afford medical care for Tim, dooming his son to death or a lifetime of deformity ... He was so desperately anxious to keep his job that he worked weekends and evenings and put up with years of daily abuse from his employer.
"This demonstrates the true liberal/conservative divide. Conservatives believe what business does is business' business and government should keep its nose out of it, even when it leads to centuries of Tiny Tims and terrified-of-job-loss employees."
Still others defend the curmudgeonly Scrooge as a misunderstood figure.
Michael Levin, a City University of New York philosophy professor, in his article "Scrooge Defended" for the Mises.org Web site, supports several of Weinstein's assertions that Scrooge is a good boss.
Like Weinstein, Levin notes that the furnace is quite a perk: "As for the one lump of coal Scrooge allows him, it bears emphasis that Cratchit has not been chained to his chilly desk ... He prefers his wages-plus-comfort package."
Levin adds that Scrooge also was a good businessman -- a moneylender -- who had satisfied customers, noting "there must have been plenty of them for Scrooge to have gotten so rich."
"There can be no arguing with Dickens4 wish to show the spiritual advantages of love," Levin wrote. "But there was no need to make the object of his lesson an entrepreneur whose ideas and practices benefit his employees, society at large and himself."
As for what became of Scrooge after that fateful Christmas Eve when he was visited by the ghosts of Marley and Christmas Past, Present and Future, we'll never know because Dickens did not write a sequel.
"Dickens leaves it up to our imagination,( Weinstein said. "I believe Scrooge kept that newfound feeling of love -- that he paid for Tiny Tim's operation and he remained close with the Cratchit family.
"And I believe he became an even better boss."
Ed Koch can be reached at 259-4090 or at [email protected].
archive
