might wish to exercise their industries here without liability to the surveillance of our trade guilds.1 80. Farther, while for all articles warranted by the guild (as above supposed) the prices should be annually fixed for the trade throughout the kingdom; and the producing workman's wages fixed, so as to define the master's profits within limits admitting only such variation as the nature of the given article of sale rendered inevitable;-yet, in the production of other classes of articles, whether by skill of applied handicraft, or fineness of material above the standard of the guild, attaining, necessarily, values above its assigned prices, every firm should be left free to make its own independent efforts and arrangements with its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if it could be proved to have consistently described, or offered, anything to the public for what it was not: and finally, the state of [Here the letter, as originally published, had an additional passage :— "(27th March).—I finished the last sentence this morning (as you may see by the change of pen) steadily; though I hardly feel able to go on to the next, because of the interest I take in the reports and various newspaper talk this morning about the strike of the engine-drivers. It is especially pleasurable to me to see one of the most intelligent classes of operatives in the kingdom strike for that equality of wages which I have had to stand so much rough handling for advocating in Unto this Last. I have just sent off the following note to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph; if he puts it in, to-morrow, don't print it here; but if he does not, please let it stand. To the Editor of the "Daily Telegraph" 27th March, 1867. "MY DEAR SIR,-I observe that in your article of to-day on the engine-drivers' strike, you advise the men, for the satisfaction of the public, to give way on the point of equality of wages. In case they should act upon this advice, might I be permitted to suggest, that for the further satisfaction of the public, it should always be marked on the time-tables, and by tickets affixed to the trains, which of the trains are to have six shilling drivers, and which are to have seven and sixpenny ones? "Yours, etc., J. R.” "This question about wages is not, however, irrelevant to what I was really going to say respecting the regulation of trade guilds, namely, that for all articles warranted. The strike in question was on the London and Brighton line. "The claim of the men," said the Telegraph, "is that all engine-drivers and firemen shall be advanced to the maximum scale of wages after a few months' service without reference to their ability." On the following day the Telegraph announced that the strike was at an end. This, no doubt, was the reason why Ruskin's letter was not inserted.] the affairs of every firm should be annually reported to the guild, and its books laid open to inspection, for guidance in the regulation of prices in the subsequent year; and any firm whose liabilities exceeded its assets by a hundred pounds should be forthwith declared bankrupt. And I will anticipate what I have to say in succeeding letters so far as to tell you that I would have this condition extend to every firm in the country, large or small, and of whatever rank in business. And thus you perceive, my friend, I shall not have to trouble you or myself much with deliberations respecting commercial "panics," nor to propose legislative cures for them, by any laxatives or purgatives of paper currency, or any other change of pecuniary diet. LETTER XV The Nature of Theft by Unjust Profits.-Crime can finally be arrested only by Education 29th March. 81. THE first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest manufacture and by debt, of which we have been hitherto speaking, are easily enough to be dealt with and ended, when once men have a mind to end them. But the third method of polite robbery, by dishonest acquisition, has many branches, and is involved among honest arts of acquisition, so that it is difficult to repress the one without restraining the other. Observe, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of any one man's hands or head.1 If his work benefits multitudes, and involves position of high trust, it may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to reward him with great wealth or estate; but fortune of this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment for labour. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, if the public can enjoy the product of their genius, may set it at almost any price they choose; but this, I will show you when I come to speak of art, is unlawful on their part, and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must not be sold; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but perfectly true, sense, the guilt both of simony and prostitution. Your labour only may be sold; your soul must not. 82. Now, by fair pay for fair labour, according to the rank of it, a man can obtain means of comfortable, or if he 1 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 139, above, p. 264; and Home, and its Economies, § 17, below, p. 564.] 2 [The subject, however, was not touched upon in Time and Tide. It had already been discussed in A Joy for Ever, §§ 66, 96, 102 n. (Vol. XVI. pp. 60, 82, 87 n.).] needs it, refined life. But he cannot obtain large fortune. Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce can be made only in one of three ways: (1.) By obtaining command over the labour of multitudes of other men, and taxing it for our own profit. (2.) By treasure-trove,-as of mines, useful vegetable products, and the like,-in circumstances putting them under our own exclusive control. (3.) By speculation, (commercial gambling). The first two of these means of obtaining riches are, in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, and advantageous to the State. The third is entirely detrimental to it; for in all cases of profit derived from speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses; and the net result to the State is zero, (pecuniarily,) with the loss of the time and ingenuity spent in the transaction; besides the disadvantage involved in the discouragement of the losing party, and the corrupted moral natures of both. This is the result of speculation at its best. At its worst, not only B loses what A gains (having taken his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance of gain), but C and D, who never had any chance at all, are drawn in by B's fall, and the final result is that A sets up his carriage on the collected sum which was once the means of living to a dozen families. 83. Nor is this all. For while real commerce is founded on real necessities or uses, and limited by these, speculation, of which the object is merely gain, seeks to excite imaginary necessities and popular desires, in order to gather its temporary profit from the supply of them. So that not only the persons who lend their money to it will be finally robbed, but the work done with their money will be, for the most part, useless, and thus the entire body of the public injured as well as the persons concerned in the transaction. Take, for instance, the architectural decorations of railways throughout the kingdom,-representing many millions of money for which no farthing of dividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to Rochester or Dover because the ironwork of the bridge which carries them over the Thames is covered with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with ornamental cornices.1 All that work is simply put there by the builders that they may put the percentage upon it into their own pockets; and, the rest of the money being thrown into that floral form, there is an end of it, as far as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon millions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, on ornamental arrangements of zigzag bricks, black and blue tiles, castiron foliage, and the like; of which millions, as I said, not a penny can ever return into the shareholders' pockets, nor contribute to public speed or safety on the line. It is all sunk for ever in ornamental architecture, and (trust me for this!) all that architecture is bad. As such, it had incomparably better not have been built. Its only result will be to corrupt what capacity of taste or right pleasure in such work we have yet left to us! And consider a little, what other kind of result than that might have been attained if all those millions had been spent usefully say, in buying land for the people, or building good houses for them, or (if it had been imperatively required to be spent decoratively) in laying out gardens and parks for them,-or buying noble works of art for their permanent possession,-or, best of all, establishing frequent public schools and libraries. Count what those lost millions would have so accomplished for you! But you left the affair to "supply and demand," and the British public had not brains enough to "demand” land, or lodging, or books. It "demanded" cast-iron cockades and zigzag cornices, and is "supplied" with them, to its beatitude for evermore. 84. Now, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of workmanship or material, is, indeed, so far worse than these thefts by dishonest acquisition, that there is no possible [On this form of misapplied "art," compare Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 160; Munera Pulveris, § 128 (above, p. 252); and the letter below, p. 528.] |