Tenant, not at will" (Sept. 21), for the apparent discourtesy of thought of which he accused me. He need not have done so: for although I said "a gentleman would hew for himself a log hut" rather than live in modern houses, I never said he would rather abandon his family and his business than live in them; and your correspondent himself, in his previously written letter, had used precisely the same words. And he must not suspect that I intend to be ironical in saying that the prolonged coincidence of thought and word in the two letters well deserves the notice of your readers, in the proof it gives of the strength and truth of the impression on both minds. "W. H. W.'s" graphic description of his house is also sorrowfully faithful to the facts of daily experience; and I doubt not that you will soon have other communications of the same tenor, and all too true.

I made no attempt to answer "A Tenant, not at will," because the subject is much too wide for any detailed treatment in a letter; and you do not care for generalisations of mine. But I am sure your two correspondents, and the large class of sufferers which they represent, would be very sincerely grateful for some generalisations of yours on this matter. For, Sir, surely of all questions for the political economist, this of putting good houses over people's heads is the closest and simplest. The first question in all economy, practically as well as etymologically, must be this, of lodging. The "Eco" must come before the "Nomy." You must have a house before you can put anything into it; and preparatorily to laying up treasure, at the least dig a hole for it. Well, Sir, here, as it seems to my poor thinking, is a beautiful and simple problem for you to illustrate the law of demand and supply upon. Here you have a considerable body of very deserving persons "demanding" a good and cheap article in the way of a house. Will you or any of your politico-economic correspondents explain to them and to me the Divinely Providential law by which, in due course, the supply of such cannot but be brought about for them?

There is another column in your impression of to-day to which, also, I would ask leave to direct your readers' attention the 4th of the 3rd page; and especially, at the bottom of it, Dr. Whitmore's account of Crawford Place,2 and his following statement that it is "a kind of

["A Tenant, not at will" had written to point out the coincidence that he had, before the publication of Ruskin's third letter, himself begun a letter to the Daily Telegraph on the subject of houses, in parts of which, strangely enough, he had used expressions very similar to those of Ruskin (see above, p. 524). He had described his modern suburban villa as "one of an ugly mass of blossoms lately burst forth from the parent trunk-a brickfield"; and declared that if it were not that people would think him mad, he "would infinitely rather live in a log hut of his own building" than in a builder's villa. He concluded by saying that all the houses were the same, and that therefore, until Ruskin could point out honest. built dwellings neglected while the "villas" were all let, it was not quite fair of him to assume that "suburban villains" utterly wanted the true instinct of gentlemen which would lead to the preference of log huts to plaster palaces.]

2[The account consisted of a report presented by Dr. Whitmore, as Metropolitan Officer of Health to the district, to the Marylebone Representative Council. Describing the miseries of Crawford Place, which was left in an untenantable condition, while the landlords still got high rents for it, he added that "property of this

1

property constituting a most profitable investment"; and I do so in the hope that you will expand your interpretation of the laws of political economy so far as to teach us how, by their beneficent and inevitable operation, good houses must finally be provided for the classes who live in Crawford Place, and such other places; and, without necessity of eviction, also for the colliers of Cramlington (vide 2nd column of the same 3rd page). I have, indeed, my own notions on the subject, but I do not trouble you with them, for they are unfortunately based on that wild notion of there being a "just" price for all things, which you say in your article of Oct. 10, on the Sheffield strikes, "has no existence but in the minds of theorists." The Pall Mall Gazette, with which journal I have already held some discussion on the subject, eagerly quoted your authority on its side, in its impression of the same evening; nor do I care to pursue the debate until I can inform you of the continuous result of some direct results which I am making on my Utopian principles. I have bought a little bit of property of the Crawford Place description, and mending it somewhat according to my notions, I make my tenants pay me what I hold to be a "just" price for the lodging provided. That lodging I partly look after, partly teach the tenants to look after for themselves; and I look a little after them, as well as after the rents. I do not mean to make a highly profitable investment of their poor little rooms; but I do mean to sell a good article, in the way of house room, at a fair price; and hitherto my customers are satisfied, and so am I.4

In the meantime, being entirely busy in other directions, I must leave the discussion, if it is to proceed at all, wholly between you and your readers. I will write no word more till I see what they all have got to say, and until you yourself have explained to me, in its anticipated results, the working-as regards the keeping out of winter and rough weather-of the principles of Non-iquity (I presume that is the proper politico-economic form for the old and exploded word Iniquity); and so I remain, Sir, yours, etc.,

DENMARK HILL, Oct. 16.

J. RUSKIN.

description, let out in separate rooms to weekly tenants, constitutes a most profitable investment," according to the degree of flinty determination exercised in collecting the rents.]

1 [This alludes to an account of the position of the Cramlington colliers after seventeen days of strike. The masters attempted to evict the pitmen from their houses, an attempt which the pitmen met partly by serious riot and resistance, and partly by destroying the houses they were forced to leave.]

["Such a thing as a 'just price,' either for labour or for any other commodity, has, with all submission to Mr. Ruskin, no existence save in the minds of theorists." (Daily Telegraph, Oct. 10, quoted by the Pall Mall in its "Epitome of the Morning Papers" on the same day).]

3 [The discussion with the Gazette consisted of the "Work and Wages" letters (see ante, pp. 506-517).]

4

[See Fors Clavigera, 1877, Letter 78 (Notes and Correspondence).]

VI

RAILWAYS AND THE STATE

(1865, 1868, 1870)

1

To the Editor of the "Daily Telegraph"1

SIR,-Will you allow me a few words with reference to your excellent article of to-day on railroads. All you say is true. But of what use is it to tell the public this? Of all the economical stupidities of the publicand they are many-the out-and-out stupidest is underpaying their pointsmen; but if the said public choose always to leave their lines in the hands of companies-that is to say, practically, of engineers and lawyers -the money they pay for fares will always go, most of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be spent in decorating railroad stations with black and blue bricks,3 and in fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are more bills for new lines to be brought forward this year than at any previous session. But, Sir, it might do some little good if you were to put it into the engineers' and lawyers' heads that they might for some time to come get as much money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public) by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as for ramifying them; and if you were also to explain to the shareholders that it would be wiser to spend their capital in preventing accidents attended by costly damages, than in running trains at a loss on opposition branches. It is little business of mine-for I am not a railroad traveller usually more than twice in the year; but I don't like to hear of people's being smashed, even when it is all their fault; so I will ask you merely to reprint this passage from my article on Political Economy in Fraser's Magazine for April 1863, and so leave the matter to your handling:

DENMARK HILL, Dec. 7.

am, Sir, your faithful servant,

J. RUSKIN.

[From the Daily Telegraph, December 8, 1865, where the letter appeared under the heading "Our Railway System." Reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol i pp. 129, 130.]

[An article which, dealing directly with some recent railway accidents, commented especially on the overcrowding of the lines.]

[On this form of "waste," see above, p. 390 and n.]

4 66 Essays on Political Economy (Fraser's Magazine, April 1863, p. 419); now Munera Pulveris, § 128; see above, p. 252. The passage is set out below, p. 535.]

2

To the Editor of the "Daily Telegraph "1

SIR, You terminate to-day a discussion which seems to have been greatly interesting to your readers, by telling them the "broad fact, that England is no longer big enough for her inhabitants."?

Might you not, in the leisure of the recess, open with advantage a discussion likely to be no less interesting, and much more useful-namely, how big England may be made for economical inhabitants, and how little she may be made for wasteful ones? Might you not invite letters on this quite radical and essential question-how money is truly made, and how it is truly lost, not by one person or another, but by the whole nation?

For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. They are always considering how to get it from somebody else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it. Also, they very naturally mourn over their loss of it to other people, without reflecting that, if not lost altogether, it may still be of some reflective advantage to them. Whereas, the real national question is not who is losing or gaining money, but who is making and who destroying it. I do not of course mean making money, in the sense of printing notes or finding gold. True money cannot be so made. When an island is too small for its inhabitants, it would not help them to one ounce of bread more to have the entire island turned into one nugget, or to find bank notes growing by its rivulets instead of fern leaves. Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the true money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners.

Surely this is a question which people would like to have clearly answered for them, and it might lead to some important results if the answer were acted upon. The riband-makers at Coventry, starving, invite the ladies of England to wear ribands. The compassionate ladies of England invest

[From the Daily Telegraph, July 31, 1868, where the letter appeared under the heading "Is England big enough?" Reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 115-118.]

2 [The discussion had been carried on in a series of letters from a great number of correspondents under the heading of "Marriage or Celibacy," its subject being the pecuniary difficulties in the way of early marriage. The Daily Telegraph of July 30 concluded the discussion with a leading article, in which it characterised the general nature of the correspondence, and of which the final words were those quoted by Ruskin.]

XVII.

2 L

themselves in rainbows,1 and admiring economists declare the nation to be benefited. No one asks where the ladies got the money to spend in rainbows (which is the first question in the business), nor whether the money so spent will ever return again, or has really faded with the faded ribands and disappeared for ever. Again, honest people every day lose quantities of money to dishonest people. But that is merely a change of hands much to be regretted; but the money is not therefore itself lost; the dishonest people must spend it at last somehow. A youth at college loses his year's income to a Jew. But the Jew must spend it instead of him. Miser or not, the day must come when his hands relax. A railroad shareholder loses his money to a director; but the director must some day spend it instead of him. That is not at least in the first fact of itnational loss. But what the public need to know is, how a final and perfect loss of money takes place, so that the whole nation, instead of being rich, shall be getting gradually poor. And then, indeed, if one man in spending his money destroys it, and another in spending it makes more of it, it becomes a grave question in whose hands it is, and whether honest or dishonest people are likely to spend it to the best purpose. Will you permit me, Sir, to lay this not unprofitable subject of inquiry before your readers, while, to the very best purpose, they are investing a little money in sea air?

Very sincerely yours,

DENMARK HILL, July 30.

3

J. RUSKIN.

2 To the Editor of the "Daily Telegraph'

SIR,-The ingenious British public seems to be discovering, to its cost, that the beautiful law of supply and demand does not apply in a pleasant manner to railroad transit.3 But if they are prepared to submit patiently to the "natural" laws of political economy, what right have they to complain? The railroad belongs to the shareholders; and has not everybody a right to ask the highest price he can get for his wares? The public have a perfect right to walk, or to make other opposition railroads for themselves, if they please, but not to abuse the shareholders for asking as much as they think they can get.

Will you allow me to put the real rights of the matter before them in a few words.

Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong to any private persons. All means of public transit should be provided at public

1 [Ribands shot with various colours, much in vogue at the date of Ruskin's letter.]

[From the Daily Telegraph, August 6, 1868, where the letter appeared under the heading "Increased Railway Fares. Reprinted (under the heading "The Ownership of Railways") in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 119-121.]

3 [In the Daily Telegraph of August 3 appeared eight letters, all of which, under the heading of "Increased Railway Fares," complained of the price of tickets on various lines having been suddenly raised. In the issue of August 4 eighteen letters appeared on the subject, whilst in that of the 5th there were again eight letters. Ruskin's letter was one of four in the issue of the 6th.]