Chapter VI: Epilogue: 201 (3)

Of course it is right to arrange all one's business with reference to one's own interest; but what will the practical difference be ultimately between such arrangement and the old and simple conscientious one? In those bygone days, I remember, one endeavored, with such rough estimate as could be quickly made, to give one's Roland for one's Oliver; if a man did you a service, you tried in return to do as much for him; if he broke your head, you broke his, shook hands, and were both the better for it. Contrariwise, on this modern principle of self-interest, I understand very well that if a man does me a service, I am always to do the least I can in return for it; but I don't see how I am always to get more out of him than he gets out of me. I dislike any references to abstract justice as much as you do, but I cannot see my way to keeping this injustice always in my own favor; and if I cannot, it seems to me the matter may as well be settled at first, as it must come to be settled at last, in that disagreeably just way.

Thus, for instance, in producing a piece of iron for the market, one man digs it, another smelts it, another puddles it, and I sell it. We get so much between us four; and I suppose your conscientious people would say that the division of the pay should have some reference to the hardness of the work, and the time spent in it. It is true that by encouraging the diggers and puddlers to spend all they get in drink, and by turning them off as soon as I hear they are laying by money, it may yet be possible to get them for some time to take less than I suppose they should have; but I cannot hide from myself that the men are beginning to understand the game a little themselves; and if they should, with the help of those confounded--(I beg pardon! I forgot that one does not print such expressions in Pall Mall)--education-mongers, learn to be men, and to look after their own business as I do mine, what am I to do? Even at present I don't feel easy in telling them that I ought to have more money than they because I know better how to spend it, for even this involves a distant reference to notions of propriety and principle which I would gladly avoid. Will you kindly tell me what is best to be done (or said)?

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

_Easter Monday_, 1865.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] The articles alluded to were, one upon "Strikes and Arbitration Courts," in the _Gazette_ of Wednesday, the 12th, and the one on "The _Times_ on Trade Arbitration," in the _Gazette_ of Thursday, the 13th. The former dealt with the proposal to decide questions raised by strikes by reference to courts of arbitration. Amongst the sentences contained in it, and alluded to by Mr. Ruskin, were the following: "Phrases about the 'principles of right and justice' are always suspicious and generally fallacious." "The rate of wages is determined exclusively by self-interest." "There is no such thing as a 'fair' rate of wages or a 'just' rate of wages."

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 21, 1865.]

_WORK AND WAGES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I am not usually unready for controversy, but I dislike it in spring, as I do the east wind (_pace_ Mr. Kingsley), and I both regret having given occasion to the only dull leader which has yet[43] appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and the necessity I am involved in of dissecting the same, instead of a violet, on which I was about this morning to begin operations.

But I see, Sir, that you mean fairly, and that you have careful thinkers and writers on your staff. And I will accept your battle, if you will fight with short swords, which is clearly your interest, for such another article would sink the _Gazette_; and mine, for I have no time to answer speculations on what you writers suppose my opinions may be, "if we understand" them.

You shall understand them utterly, as I already understand yours. I will not call yours "fallacies" _à priori_; you shall not call mine so. I will not tell you of your "unconscious" meanings; you shall not tell me of mine.[44] But I will ask you the plainest questions, and make to you the plainest answers my English will admit of, on one point at a time only, expecting you also to ask or answer as briefly, without divergence or deprecation. And twenty lines will always contain all I would say, at any intervals of time you choose.

For example: I said I must "dissect" your leader, meaning that I should have to take a piece of it, as I would of my flower, and deal with that first; then with its sequences.

I take this sentence then: "He (Mr. R.) seems to think that apart from the question of the powers of the parties, there is some such thing as a just rate of wages. He seems to be under the impression that the wages ought to be proportioned, not to the supply and demand of labor and capital, but 'to the hardship of the work and the time spent in it.'"

Yes, Sir, I am decisively under that impression--as decisively as ever Greek coin was under _its_ impression. You will beat me out of all shape, if you can beat me out of this. Will you join issue on it, and are these following statements clear enough for you, either to accept or deny, in as positive terms?--

I. A man should in justice be paid for two hours' work twice as much as for one hour's work, and for _n_ hour's work _n_ times as much, if the effort be similar and continuous.

II. A man should in justice be paid for difficult or dangerous work proportionately more than for easy and safe work, supposing the other conditions of the work similar.

III. (And now look out, for this proposition involves the ultimate principle of all just wages.) If a man does a given quantity of work for me, I am bound in justice to do, or procure to be done, a precisely equal quantity of work for him; and just trade in labor is the exchange of equivalent quantities of labor of different kinds.

If you pause at this word "equivalent," you shall have definition of it in my next letter. I am sure you will in fairness insert this challenge, whether you accept it or decline.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.[45]

DENMARK HILL, _Thursday, April_ 20.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] The _Gazette_ was at this time of little more than eight weeks' standing. The dull leader was that in the _Gazette_ of April 19, entitled "Masters and Men," and dealt entirely with Mr. Ruskin's letter on strikes. The "_pace_ Mr. Kingsley" alludes, of course, to his "Ode to the North-East Wind."

[44] The leader had begun by speaking of Mr. Ruskin's previous letter as "embodying fallacies, pernicious in the highest degree," and concluded by remarking how "easily and unconsciously he glided into the true result of his principles."

[45] In reply, the _Gazette_ denied "each of the three propositions to be true," on grounds shown in the quotations given in the following letter.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 26, 1865.]

_WORK AND WAGES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I accept your terms, and reply in the fewest words I can.

I. You "see no injustice in hiring a fly for 2_s._ 6_d._ for the first hour and 1_s._ 6_d._ for each succeeding one." Nor I either; so far from it, that I never give a cabman less than a shilling; which I doubt not is your practice also, and a very proper one. The cabmen make no objection, and you could not have given a neater instance of the proportion of payment to labor which you deny. You pay in the first hour for the various trouble involved in taking the man off his stand, and for a proportion of the time during which he has waited for the chance of your custom. That paid, you hire him by the formula which I state, and you deny.

II. "Danger and difficulty have attractions for some men." They have, and if, under the influence of those attractions, they choose to make you a present of their labor, for love (in your own terms,[46] "as you give a penny to a beggar"), you may accept the gift as the beggar does, without question of justice. But if they do not choose to give it you, they have a right to higher payment. My guide may perhaps, for love, play at climbing Mont Blanc with me; if he will not, he has a right to be paid more than for climbing the Breven.

III. "Mr. Ruskin can define justice, or any other word, as he chooses."

It is a gracious permission; but suppose justice be something more than a word! When you derived it _jussum_[47] (falsely, for it is not derived from _jussum_, but from the root of _jungo_), you forgot, or ignored, that the Saxons had also a word for it, by which the English workman still pleads for it; that the Greeks had a word for it, by which Plato and St. Paul reasoned of it; and that the Powers of Heaven have, presumably, an idea of it with which it may be well for "our interests" that your definition, as well as mine, should ultimately correspond, since their "definitions" are commonly not by a word but a blow.

But accepting for the nonce your own conception of it as "the fulfilment of a compulsory agreement" ("the wages" you say "which you _force_ the men to take, and they can _force_ you to pay"), allow me to ask your definition of force, or compulsion. As thus: (_Case_ 1.) I agree with my friend that we will pay a visit to Mr. A. at two in the morning. My friend agrees with me that he will hold a pistol to Mr. A.'s head. Under those circumstances, I agree with Mr. A. that I shall remove his plate without expression of objection on his part. Is this agreement, in your sense, "_jussum_"? (_Case_ 2.) Mr. B. goes half through the ice into the canal on a frosty morning. I, on the shore, agree with Mr. B. that I shall have a hundred pounds for throwing him a rope. Is this agreement validly "_jussum_"?

The first of these cases expresses in small compass the general nature of arrangements under compulsory circumstances over which one of the parties has entire control. The second, that of arrangements made under circumstances accidentally compulsory, when the capital is in one party's hands exclusively. For you will observe Mr. B. has no right whatever to the use of my rope: and that capital (though it would probably have been only the final result of my operations with respect to Mr. A.) makes me completely master of the situation with reference to Mr. B.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
JOHN RUSKIN[48]

DENMARK HILL, _Saturday_, _April_ 22, 1865.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] These "terms" were simply that the _Gazette_ should have the right of determining how much of the proposed controversy was worth its space.

[47] In the article of April 12.

[48] For the _Gazette's_ reply to this, see the notes to the following letter.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 2, 1865.]

_WORK AND WAGES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I have not hastened my reply to your last letter, thinking that your space at present would be otherwise occupied; having also my own thoughts busied in various directions, such as you may fancy; yet busied chiefly in a sad wonder, which perhaps you would not fancy. I mourn for Mr. Lincoln,[49] as man should mourn the fate of man, when it is sudden and supreme. I hate regicide as I do populicide--deeply, if frenzied; more deeply, if deliberate. But my wonder is in remembering the tone of the English people and press respecting this man during his life; and in comparing it with their sayings of him in his death. They caricatured and reviled him when his cause was poised in deadly balance--when their praise would have been grateful to him, and their help priceless. They now declare his cause to have been just, when it needs no aid; and his purposes to have been noble, when all human thoughts of them have become vanity, and will never so much as mix their murmurs in his ears with the sentence of the Tribunal which has summoned him to receive a juster praise and tenderer blame than ours.

I have twice (I see) used the word "just" inadvertently, forgetting that it has no meaning, or may mean (you tell me) quite what we choose; and that so far as it has a meaning, "the important question is not whether the action is just." Indeed when I read this curious sentence in your reply on Tuesday last, "Justice, as we use it, implies merely the conformity of an action to any rules whatever, good or bad," I had nearly closed the discussion by telling you that there remained no ground on which we could meet, for the English workmen, in whose name I wrote to you, asked, not for conformity with bad rules, but enactment of good ones. But I will not pounce upon these careless sentences, which you are forced to write in all haste, and at all disadvantage, while I have the definitions and results determined through years of quiet labor, lying ready at my hand. You never meant what you wrote (when I said I would not tell you of unconscious meanings, I did not promise not to tell you of unconscious wants of meanings); but it is for you to tell _me_ what you mean by a bad rule, and what by a good one. Of the law of the Eternal Lawgiver, it is dictated that "the commandment is holy, and just, and good." Not merely that it is a law; but that it is such and such a law. Are these terms senseless to you? or do you understand by them only that the observance of that law is generally conducive to our interests? And if so, what _are_ our interests? Have we ever an interest in _being_ something, as well as in getting something; may not even all getting be at last summed in being? is it not the uttermost of interests to be just rather than unjust? Let us leave catching at phrases, and try to look in each other's faces and hearts; so define our thoughts; then reason from them. [See below.][50]

Yet, lest you say I evade you in generalities, here is present answer point by point.

I. "The fare has nothing to do with the labor in preparing the fly for being hired."--Nor, of course, the price of any article with the labor expended in preparing it for being sold? This will be a useful note to the next edition of "Ricardo." [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends on the labor expended. The price given by the buyer depends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing sold, which has nothing to do with the labor laid out on it.]

The answer to your instances[51] is that all just price involves an allowance for average necessary, not for unnecessary, labor. The just price of coals at Newcastle does not involve an allowance for their carriage to Newcastle. But the just price of a cab at a stand involves an allowance to the cabman for having stood there. [Why? who is to determine what is necessary?]

II. "This admits the principle of Bargaining." No, Sir; it only admits the principle of Begging. If you like to ask your guide to give you his legs for nothing, or your workman his arms for nothing, or your shopkeeper his goods for nothing, and they consent, for love, or for play--you are doubtless both dignified and fortunate; but there is no question of trade in the matters; only of Alms. [We mean by Alms money or goods given merely from motives of benevolence, and without return. In the case supposed the guide goes one mile to please himself, and ten more for hire, which satisfies him. How does he give Alms? He goes for less money than he otherwise would require, because _he_ likes the job, not because his employer likes it. The Alms are thus given by himself to himself.]

III. It is true that "every one can affix to words any sense he chooses." But if I pay for a yard of broadcloth, and the shopman cuts me three-quarters, I shall not put up with my loss more patiently on being informed that Bishop Butler meant by justice something quite different from what Bentham meant by it, or that to give for every yard three-quarters, is the rule of that establishment. [If the word "yard" were as ambiguous as the word "justice," Mr. Ruskin ought to be much obliged to the shopman for defining his sense of it, especially if he gave you full notice before he cut the cloth.]

Further, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best scholars--[Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke meant by an "idea," or Sir W. Hamilton by the word "inconceivable," is no easy task.]--and well to adopt them, because they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen.--[Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. Though we differ from Mr. Ruskin, we hope he will not deny this.] Thus, when Horace couples his _tenacem propositi_ with _justum_, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insuffer-ance of the _jussa_ "_prava jubentium_" And although Portia does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of Shylock, changing the divine, "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not" into the somewhat less divine "who sweareth to his neighbor's hurt and changeth not;" and though she carries out his and your conception of such justice to the uttermost, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, "for the interest of both parties."

IV. To your two final questions "exhausting" (by no means, my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue,"[52] I reply in both cases, "No." And to your plaintive "why should they do so?" while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice their own interests, I would for the present merely answer that I have never found my own interests seriously compromised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the fair price of a thing, not to buy it. The other day, a dealer in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave the dealer what he asked for the whole.

In the example you give, it is _not_ the interest of the guide to take his fifty francs rather than nothing; because all future travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then say, "You went for fifty; we will give you no more." [Does a man say to a broker, "You sold stock yesterday at 90; I will pay no more to-day"?] And for me, if I am not able to pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb alone; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a less service, some man who also would have got nothing otherwise, and who will be honestly paid by what I give him, for what I ask of him.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

SATURDAY, _29th April_, 1865.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] President Lincoln was shot while in his private box at Ford's Theatre, Washington, on the night of April 14, 1865, and died early the next morning. His assassin, J. Wilkes Booth, was pursued to Caroline County, Virginia, where he was fired on by the soldiery and killed. A letter was found upon him ascribing his conduct to his devotion to the Southern States.

[50] The bracketed [_sic_] interpolations are the remarks of the _Gazette_.

[51] One of the instances given by the _Gazette_ on this point was that a sovereign made of Californian gold will not buy more wool at Sydney than a sovereign made of Australian gold, although far more labor will have been expended in bringing it to Sydney.

[52] The _Gazette's_ criticism on the previous letter had concluded thus:

The following questions exhaust the points at issue between Mr. Ruskin and ourselves:

Is every man bound to purchase any service or any goods offered him at a "just" price, he having the money?

If yes, there is an end of private property.

If no, the purchaser must be at liberty to refuse to buy if it suits his interest to do so. Suppose he does refuse, and thereupon the seller offers to lower his price, it being his interest to do so, is the purchaser at liberty to accept that offer?

If yes, the whole principle of bargaining is admitted, and the "justice" of the price becomes immaterial.

If no, each party of the supposition is compelled by justice to sacrifice their interest. Why should they do so?

The following is an example: The "just" price of a guide up Mont Blanc is (suppose) 100 francs. I have only 50 francs to spare. May I without injustice offer the 50 francs to a guide, who would otherwise get nothing, and may he without injustice accept my offer? If not, I lose my excursion, and he loses his opportunity of earning 50 francs. Why should this be?

In addition to the above interpolations, the _Gazette_ appended a note to this letter, in which it declared its definition of justice to be a quotation from memory of Austin's definition adopted by him from Hobbes, and after referring Mr. Ruskin to Austin for the _moral_ bearings of the question, concluded by summing up its views, which it doubted if Mr. Ruskin understood, and insisting on the definition of "justice" as "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad," and on that of _good_ rules as "those which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." (See the next letter.)

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 9, 1865.]

_WORK AND WAGES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I am under the impression that we are both getting prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last letter, or your comments upon it, in the places in which you have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, and you, I imagine, are not.

It is true that differences of feeling may exist among gentlemen; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speaking; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an interjection; and a strong one can abide its time. I will therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, to practice towards them so much of old English manners as may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner-tables; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to turn the room into a greenhouse, and serve everything cold, the _pièces de résistance_ are still presented whole, and carved afterwards.

Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you are well breathed--_en garde_, if you please.

I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear _no_ relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the labor expended."

The price asked by the seller has, I believe, in respectable commercial houses, and respectable shops, very approximate relation to the price paid by the buyer. I do not know if you are in the habit of asking, from your wine-merchant or tailor, reduction of price on the ground that the sum remitted will be "alms to themselves;" but, having been myself in somewhat intimate connection with a house of business in the City,[53] not dishonorably accounted of during the last forty years, I know enough of their correspondents in every important town in the United Kingdom to be sure that they will bear me witness that the difference between the prices asked and the prices taken was always a very "imaginary" quantity.

But urging this no farther for the present, and marking, for gained ground, only your admission that "the price asked depends on the labor expended," will you farther tell me, whether that dependence is constant, or variable? If constant, under what law; if variable, within what limits?

II. "The alms are thus given by himself to himself." I never said they were not. I said it was a question of alms, not of trade. And if your original leader had only been an exhortation to English workmen to consider every diminution of their pay, in the picturesque though perhaps somewhat dim, religious light of alms paid by themselves to themselves, I never should have troubled you with a letter on the subject. For, singular enough, Sir, this is not one of the passages of your letters, however apparently indefensible, which I care to attack.

So far from it, in my own serious writings I have always maintained that the best work is done, and can only be done, for love.[54] But the point at issue between us is not whether there _should_ be charity, but whether there _can_ be trade; not whether men may give away their labor, but whether, if they do not choose to do so, there is such a thing as a price for it. And my statement, as opposed to yours, is briefly this--that for all labor, there is, under given circumstances, a just price approximately determinable; that every conscious deflection from this price towards zero is either gift on the part of the laborer, or theft on the part of the employer; and that all payment in conscious excess of this price is either theft on the part of the laborer, or gift on that of the employer.

III. If you wish to substitute the word "moral" for "just" in the above statement, I am prepared to allow the substitution; only, as you, not I, introduced this new word, I must pray for your definition of it first, whether remembered from Mr. Hobbes, or original.

IV. I am sorry you doubt my understanding your views; but, in that case, it may be well to ask for a word or two of farther elucidation.

"Justice," you say, is "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad." And "good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." And bad rules are (therefore) rules which promote the general misery of those whom they affect? Justice, therefore, may as often as not promote the general misery of those who practice it? Do you intend this?[55]

Again: "Good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." But "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured by laying down no rule at all" (as to the price of "labor").

Do you propose this as a sequitur? For if not, it is merely a _petitio principii_, and a somewhat wide one. Before, therefore, we branch into poetical questions concerning happiness, we will, with your permission, and according to my original stipulation, that we should dispute only of one point at a time, determine the matters already at issue. To which end, also, I leave without reply some parts of your last letter; not without a little strain on the ερκος ὀδοντων, for which I think, Sir, you may give me openly, credit, if not tacitly, thanks.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _May_ 4.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] That of Messrs. Ruskin, Telford Domecq, in which Mr. Ruskin's father, "who began life as a wine-merchant" ("Fors Clavigera," Letter 10, p. 5, 1871), had been a partner.

[54] See § 41 of "The Crown of Wild Olive," p. 50 of the 1873 edition. "None of the best head-work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for.... It is indeed very clear that God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be done for nothing."

[55] "Yes. But, generally speaking, rules are beneficial; hence, generally speaking, justice is a good thing in fact. A state of society might be imagined in which it would be a hideously bad thing."--(Foot-note answer of the _Gazette_.)

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 22, 1865.]

_WORK AND WAGES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I have long delayed my reply to your notes on my last letter; partly being otherwise busy--partly in a pause of surprise and doubt how low in the elements of ethics we were to descend.

Let me, however, first assure you that I heartily concur in your opening remarks, and shall be glad to spare useless and avoid discourteous words. When you said, in your first reply to me, that my letter embodied fallacies which appeared to you pernicious in the highest degree, _I_ also "could not consider this sort of language well judged." When you called one of your own questions an answer, and declared it to be "simple and perfectly conclusive," I thought the flourish might have been spared; and for having accused you of writing carelessly, I must hope your pardon; for the discourtesy, in my mind, would have been in imagining you to be writing with care.

For instance, I should hold it discourteous to suppose you unaware of the ordinary distinction between law and equity: yet no consciousness of such a distinction appears in your articles. I should hold it discourteous to doubt your acquaintance with the elementary principles laid down by the great jurists of all nations respecting Divine and Human law; yet such a doubt forces itself on me if I consider your replies as deliberate. And I should decline to continue the discussion with an opponent who could conceive of justice as (under any circumstances) "an hideously bad thing," if I did not suppose him to have mistaken the hideousness of justice, in certain phases, to certain persons, for its ultimate nature and power.

There may be question respecting these inaccuracies of thought; there can be none respecting the carelessness of expression which causes the phrases "are" and "ought to be" to alternate in your articles as if they were alike in meaning.

I have permitted this, that I might see the course of your argument in your own terms, but it is now needful that the confusion should cease. That wages _are_ determined by supply and demand is no proof that under any circumstances they must be--still less that under all circumstances they ought to be. Permit me, therefore, to know the sense in which you use the word "ought" in your paragraph lettered _b_, page 832[56] (second column), and to ask whether the words "due," "duty," "devoir," and other such, connected in idea with the first and third of the "præcepta juris" of Justinian, quoted by Blackstone as a summary of the whole doctrine of law (_honeste vivere,--alterum non lædere,--suumque cuique tribuere_), are without meaning to you except as conditions of agreement?[57] Whether, in fact, there be, in your view, any _honos_, absolutely; or whether we are to launch out into an historical investigation of the several kinds of happiness enjoyed in lives of rapine, of selfish trade, and of unselfish citizenship, and to decide only upon evidence whether we will live as pirates, as pedlers, or as gentlemen? If so, while I shall be glad to see you undertake, independently, so interesting an inquiry, I must reserve my comments on it until its close.

But if you admit an absolute idea of a "devoir" of one man to another, and of every honorable man to himself, tell me why you dissent from my statement of the terms of that debt in the opening of this discussion. Observe, I asked for no evangelical virtue of returning good for evil: I asked only for the Sinaitic equity of return in good for good, as for Sinaitic equity of return in evil for evil. "Eye for eye," "tooth for tooth"--be it so; but will you thus pray according to the _lex talionis_ and not according to the _lex gratiæ_? Your debt is on both sides. Does a man take of your life, you take also of his. Shall he give you of his life, and will you not give him also of yours? If this be not your law of duty to him, tell me what other there is, or if you verily believe there is none.

But you ask of such repayment, "Who shall determine how much?"[58] I took no notice of the question, irrelevant when you asked it; but in its broad bearing it is the one imperative question of national economy. Of old, as at bridge-foot of Florence, men regulated their revenge by the law of demand and supply, and asked in measureless anger, "Who shall determine how much?" with economy of blood, such as we know. That "much" is now, with some approximate equity, determined at the judgment-seat, but for the other debt, the debt of love, we have no law but that of the wolf, and the locust, and the "fishes of the sea, which have no ruler over them." The workmen of England--of the world, ask for the return--as of wrath, so of reward by law; and for blood resolutely spent, as for that recklessly shed; for life devoted through its duration, as for that untimely cast away; they require from you to determine, in judgment, the equities of "Human Retribution."

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.[59]

_May_ 20, 1865.

FOOTNOTES:

[56] Viz., "Wages ought to be proportioned to the supply and demand of labor and capital, and not to the hardship of the work and the time spent on it."

[57] "Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas suum cuique tribuendi ... Jurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia." The third precept is given above. Justinian, "Inst." i. 1-3; and see Blackstone, vol. i. section 2, "Of the Nature of Laws in General."

[58] See _ante_, second interpolation of the _Gazette_, on p. 54.

[59] The discussion was not continued beyond this letter, the _Gazette_ judging any continuance useless, the difference between Mr. Ruskin and themselves being "one of first principles."

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 1, 1867. Reprinted also, with slight alterations, in "Time and Tide," App. vii.]

_THE STANDARD OF WAGES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: In the course of your yesterday's article on strikes[60] you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy--to wit, that the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined; and that "all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it for a certain sum."

Now, Sir, the "value" of any piece of labor (_I_ should have written "price," not "value," but it is no matter)--that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to perform it without eventually losing any of his flesh or nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five years ago, and--under pardon of your politico-economical contributor, it is not a sentimental, but a chemical, fact. Let any half-dozen London physicians of recognized standing state in precise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a laborer in any given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without shortening his life, work at such business daily, if in such manner he be sustained. Let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between an order for that quantity of food and space of lodging, or the market wages for that specified number of hours of work. Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further concession; but in the outset, let but this law of wages be established, and if then we have more strikes, you may denounce them without one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility.

I am, Sir, with sentiments of great respect,
Your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _April_ 30, 1867.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] As regards "strikes," it is of interest to note the following amendment proposed by Mr. Ruskin at a special meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science on the subject, held in 1868: "That, in the opinion of this meeting, the interests of workmen and their employers are at present opposed, and can only become identical when all are equally employed in defined labor and recognized duty, and all, from the highest to the lowest, are paid fixed salaries, proportioned to the value of their services and sufficient for their honorable maintenance in the situations of life properly occupied by them."--_Daily Telegraph_, July 16, 1868.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 24, 1873.]

_HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: Here among the hills, I read little, and withstand, sometimes for a fortnight together, even the attractions of my _Pall Mall Gazette_. A friend, however, sent me, two days ago, your article signed W. R. G. on spending of money (January 13),[61] which, as I happened to have over-eaten myself the day before, and taken perhaps a glass too much besides of quite priceless port (Quarles Harris, twenty years in bottle), would have been a great comfort to my mind, showing me that if I had done some harm to myself, I had at least conferred benefit upon the poor by these excesses, had I not been left in some painful doubt, even at the end of W. R. G.'s most intelligent illustrations, whether I ought not to have exerted myself further in the cause of humanity, and by the use of some cathartic process, such as appears to have been without inconvenience practised by the ancients, enabled myself to eat two dinners instead of one. But I write to you to-day, because if I were a poor man, instead of a (moderately) rich one, I am nearly certain that W. R. G.'s paper would suggest to me a question, which I am sure he will kindly answer in your columns, namely, "These means of living, which this generous and useful gentleman is so fortunately disposed to bestow on me--where does he get them himself?"

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, _Jan._ 23.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] The article, or rather letter, dealt with a paper on "The Labor Movement" by Mr. Goldwin Smith in the _Contemporary Review_ of December, 1872, and especially with the following sentences in it: "When did wealth rear such enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present day? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous object for miles round. Its lord was, I dare say, consuming the income of some hundreds of the poor laboring families around him. The thought that you are spending on yourself annually the income of six hundred laboring families seems to me as much as a man with a heart and a brain can bear." W. R. G.'s letter argued that this "heartless expenditure all goes into the pockets" of the poor families, who are thus benefited by the selfish luxuries of the lord in his palace.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 29, 1873.]

_HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I am disappointed of my _Gazette_ to-day, and shall be grievously busy to morrow. I think it better, therefore, to follow up my own letter, if you will permit me, with a simple and brief statement of the facts, than to wait till I see your correspondent W. R. G.'s reply, if he has vouchsafed me one.

These are the facts. The laborious poor produce "the means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these "means of life," and keeping as much means as they want of it for themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest, usually only in return for more labor from the poor, expended in producing various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life" they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than that of other people. There is something to be said, nevertheless, in favor of the present arrangement, but it cannot be defended in disguise; and it is impossible to do more harm to the cause of order, or the rights of property, than by endeavors, such as that of your correspondent, to revive the absurd and, among all vigorous thinkers, long since exploded notion of the dependence of the poor upon the rich.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

_January_ 28.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1873.]

_HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I have my _Pall Mall Gazette_ of the 28th to-day, and must at once, with your permission, solemnly deny the insidiosity of my question, "Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself see how a more straightforward question could be put! So straightforward indeed that I particularly dislike making a martyr of myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day--a martyr, at least, in the way of witness; for if we rich people don't begin to speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some day soon, lose them and our heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the point in question then, as to means of living: the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. He and his partners entered into what your correspondent mellifluously styles "a mutually beneficent partnership,"[62] with certain laborers in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth annually a certain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In which state of mutual beneficence my father and his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my dinner), and so far from finding his money "grow" in my hands, I never try to buy anything with it; but people tell me "money isn't what it was in your father's time, everything is so much dearer." I should be heartily glad to learn from your correspondent as much pecuniary botany as will enable me to set my money a-growing; and in the mean time, as I have thus given a quite indubitable instance of my notions of the way money is made, will he be so kind as to give us, not an heraldic example in the dark ages (though I suspect I know more of the pedigree of money, if he comes to that, than he does),[63] but a living example of a rich gentleman who _has_ made his money by saving an _equal_ portion of profit in some mutually beneficent partnership with his laborers?

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON,
King Charles the Martyr, 1873.

P.S.--I see by Christie & Manson's advertisement that some of the best bits of work of a good laborer I once knew, J. M. W. Turner (the original plates namely of the "Liber Studiorum"), are just going to be destroyed by some of his affectionate relations. May I beg your correspondent to explain, for your readers' benefit, this charming case of hereditary accumulation?

FOOTNOTES:

[62] W. R. G. had declared that the rich man (or his ancestors) got the money "by co-operation with the poor ... by, in fact, entering into a mutually beneficent partnership with them, and advancing them their share of the joint profits ... paying them beforehand, in a word."

[63] W. R. G. had written: "In nine cases out of ten, in the case of acquired wealth, we should probably find, were the pedigree traced fairly and far back enough, that the original difference between the now rich man and the now poor man was, that the latter habitually spent all his earnings, and the former habitually saved a portion of his in order that it might accumulate and fructify."

[Date and place of publication unknown.]

_COMMERCIAL MORALITY._[64]

MY DEAR SIR: Mr. Johnson's speech in the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which you favor me by sending, appears to me the most important event that has occurred in relation to the true interests of the country during my lifetime. It begins an era of true civilization. I shall allude to it in the "Fors" of March, and make it the chief subject of the one following (the matter of this being already prepared).[65] It goes far beyond what I had even hoped to hear admitted--how much less enforced so gravely and weightily in the commercial world.

Believe me, faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] This letter was received from Mr. Ruskin by a gentleman in Manchester, who had forwarded to him a copy of the speech made by Mr. Richard Johnson (President) at the fifty-fourth annual meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Feb. 1, 1875. Mr. Johnson's address dealt with the immorality of cheapness, the duties of merchants and manufacturers as public servants, and the nobility of trade as a profession which, when rightly and unselfishly conducted, would yield to no other "in the dignity of its nature and in the employment that it offers to the highest faculties of man."

[65] In "Fors Clavigera," March, 1875, Mr. Johnson's speech is named (p. 54) as "the first living words respecting commerce which I have ever known to be spoken in England, in my time," but the discussion of it is postponed.

[From "The Monetary and Mining Gazette," November 13, 1875.]

_THE DEFINITION OF WEALTH._

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_9th November_, 1875.

_To the Editor of "The Monetary Gazette."_

SIR: I congratulate you with all my mind on the sense, and with all my heart on the courage, of your last Saturday's leading article, which I have just seen.[66] You have asserted in it the two vital principles of economy, that society cannot exist by reciprocal pilfering, but must produce wealth if it would have it; and that money must not be lent, but administered by its masters.

You have not yet, however, defined wealth itself, or told the ingenuity of the public what it is to produce.

I have never been able to obtain this definition from economists;[67] perhaps, under the pressure of facts, they may at last discover some meaning in mine at the tenth and eleventh pages of "Munera Pulveris."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] The article was entitled, "What shall we do with it?"

[67] At the meeting of the Social Science Association already alluded to (p. 4, note), Mr. Ruskin said that in 1858 he had in vain challenged Mr. Mill to define wealth. The passages referred to in "Munera Pulveris" consist of the statement and explanation of the definition of Value. See _ante_, p. 63, note.

[From "The Socialist," an Advocate of Love, Truth, Justice, etc. etc. Printed and Published by the Proprietor, W. Freeland, 52 Scotland Street, Sheffield, November, 1877.]

_THE PRINCIPLES OF PROPERTY._

_10th Oct._, 1877.

_To the Editor of "The Socialist."_

SIR: Some Sheffield friend has sent me your fourth number, in the general teaching of which I am thankful to be able to concur without qualification: but let me earnestly beg of you not to confuse the discussion of the principles of Property in Earth, Air, or Water, with the discussion of principles of Property in general.[68] The things which, being our neighbor's, the Mosaic Law commands us not to covet, are by the most solemn Natural Laws indeed our neighbor's "property," and any attempts to communize these have always ended, and will always end, in ruin and shame.

Do not attempt to learn from America. An Englishman has brains enough to discover for himself what is good for England; and should learn, when he is to be taught anything, from his Fathers, not from his children.

I observe in the first column of your 15th page the assertion by your correspondent of his definition of money as if different from mine. He only weakens my definition with a "certificate of credit "instead of a "promise to pay." What is the use of giving a man "credit"--if you don't engage to pay him?

But I observe that nearly all my readers stop at this more or less metaphysical definition, which I give in "Unto this Last," instead of going on to the practical statement of immediate need made in "Munera Pulveris."[69]

The promise to find Labor is one which meets general demand; but the promise to find Bread is the answer needed to immediate demand; and the only sound bases of National Currency are shown both in "Munera Pulveris," and "Fors Clavigera," to be bread, fuel, and clothing material, of certified quality.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] The references in the letter are to an article on Property entitled "What should be done?"

[69] See "Unto this Last," p. 53, note. "The final and best definition of money is that it is a documentary promise ratified and guaranteed by the nation, to give or find a certain quantity of labor on demand." See also "Munera Pulveris," §§ 21-25.

[From "The Christian Life," December 20, 1879.]

_ON CO-OPERATION._[70]

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE.

DEAR MR. HOLYOAKE: I am not able to write you a pretty letter to-day, being sadly tired, but am very heartily glad to be remembered by you. But it utterly silences me that you should waste your time and energy in writing "Histories of Co-operation" anywhere as yet. My dear Sir, you might as well write the history of the yellow spot in an egg--in two volumes. Co-operation is as yet--in any true sense--as impossible as the crystallization of Thames mud.

Ever faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] This letter, which was reprinted in the _Coventry Co-operative Record_ of January, 1880, was written, some time in August, 1879, to Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, who had sent Mr. Ruskin his "History of Co-operation: its Literature and its Advocates," 2 vols. London and Manchester, 1875-7.

[From "The Daily News," June 19, 1880.]

_ON CO-OPERATION._

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE,
_April_ 12, 1880.

DEAR MR. HOLYOAKE: I am very glad that you are safe back in England, and am not a little grateful for your kind reference to me while in America, and for your letter about Sheffield Museum.[71] But let me pray for another interpretation of my former letter than mere Utopianism. The one calamity which I perceive or dread for an Englishman is his becoming a rascal, and co-operation among rascals--if it were possible--would bring a curse. Every year sees our workmen more eager to do bad work and rob their customers on the sly. All political movement among such animals I call essentially fermentation and putrefaction--not co-operation.

Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] The "kind reference to Mr. Ruskin while in America" alludes to a public speech made by Mr. Holyoake during his stay in that country. The "letter about Sheffield Museum," was one in high praise of it, written by Mr. Holyoake to the editor of the _Sheffield Independent_, in which paper it was printed (March 8, 1880).

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.