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]