The communism of John Ruskin; or, "Unto this last"; two lectures from "The crown of wild olive"; and selections from "Fors clavigera."

Cornell University Library

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The communism of John Ruskin; or, "Unto t

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THE COMMUNISM

OF

JOHN RUSKIN

"UNTO THIS LAST"; TWO LECTURES FROM

"THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE";

AND SELECTIONS FROM

"FORS CLAVIGERA."

EDITED BY

W. D. P. BLISS.

"For indeed I am myself a Commvnist of the old school—reddest also of the
red." — "Foes Clavigeea."

NEW YORK

THE HUMBOLDT PUBLISHING CO.

Clinton Hall, Astor Place.

Copyright 1891,

BY

The Humboldt Publishing Co.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR, - - - vii

BOOK I.— UNTO THIS LAST, - - - i

Preface, ... 2

Essay I.— The Roots of Honor, - - n

II. — The Veins of Wealth, - - 31

III. — Qui Judicatis Terram, - 46

IV. — Ad Valorem, - 66

BOOK II.— TWO LECTURES FROM THE CROWN

OF WILD OLIVE, - 103

Preface, 105

Lecture I. — ^Work, - 119

II — Traffic, - - - 151

BOOK III.— SELECTIONS FROM FORS CLAVI-

GERA, - - - - 177

Preface bv the Editor, - - 179

I. — Communism, - - - 183

II. — Freedom and Slavery, - 188

III. — Machinery, ... 189

IV. — Taxes, - - 191

v.— Clergymen, .... 195

VI. — Carlyle, - - - 197

VII. — Expectants of Turnips, - 198

VIII.— Rich? - - 199

IX. — Interest, - 201

X.— St. George's Company, - 213

XI.— The End of the Whole Matter, - 225

INTRODUCTION.

''1~\0 you read Ruskin's Fors Clavigeraf" Carlyle
L/ asked of Emerson, "there is nothing going on
among us so notable to me." "I venerate him
as one of the greatest teachers of the age ; ... he teaches
with the inspiration of a Hebrew Prophet" — such was
George Eliot's estimate of Ruskin. Surely Ruskin needs
no introduction to the world. The verdict of these two
grand-jurymen in the court of letters is borne out by the
testimony of witnesses from every portion of the globe.
But of Ruskin's social teaching, of his message to society,
of his gospel of the life in common, — of this we would say
a word — not that he needs this either, but that we need it,
— we need it to rightly appreciate and take home his
message to our hearts.

The production of a true social form has been the
supreme task given to the nineteenth century. What is
Ruskin's place ; what his message ; what his contribution
to the century?

Ar Ruskin is first and foremost a Teacher. He has not
originated. He is not the originator of a new system, of a
new order, even of a new philosophy. He says somewhere

viii INTRODUCTION.

of himself : " I have never applied myself to discover any-
thing, being content to praise what had already been
discovered, so that no true disciple of mine will ever be a
Ruskinian." He will be something better, his disciples
add; he will be one of God's men, with truer, deeper., joy,
seeing higher, diviner beauty in the world because Ruskin
has shown it to him. Ruskin' s Gospel, says one of those
whom Ruskin has clung to, is a gospel not of a "news"
but "like that of Jesus, a gospel of glad tidings."

And let us not think it a disparagement to Ruskin that
he was not an originator. Was Jesus Christ an originator?
Did Christ establish a new order? Was Christianity aught
but the simple flowering of old Jewish faith ? Did Christ
come to destroy or to fulfill ? Fulfillment is the higher task.
M any a man ran spe a t-rii|;h^ who cannot live i t. Jesus
Christ lived the truth. His new commandment was more
literally a new command, the reissuing of old orders. Before
Christ came men knew that they should love one another.
The secret of Jesus was that he led men in the loving of
thei* neighbors. Is not this the secret too of John Ruskin,
not so much that he created Beauty, but that he leads men
to love it, helps them to live it — true life, the beauty of
Truth, the grace of Sincerity, the Gospel of Noble Things?
In this high function of the Teacher, Ruskin, in his line,
stands unapproached.

But how does he do this? "There are diversities of gifts,
but the same spirit To one is given by th^

INTRODUCTION. Jx

spirit the word of wisdom ; to another the word of know-
ledge by the same spirit ; to another faith by the same
spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another
prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another
divers kinds of tongues ; to another the interpretation of
tongues:" is not this last best gift, Ruskin's gift? could any
man ever interpret as does John Ruskin ? And is it not
the best gift? Can anything be better than to take the
truth of God and bring it home to the hearts and lives of
men? Was not this His gift who was "The Word" made
manifest?

Here is Ruskin's power, Interpretation. Whether it be
a Vision of St. Ursula, by Carpaccio, "A Bible of Amiens,"
or a bit of lapis-lazuli from "St. Mark's Rest," who can
ever read it and find in it anything that John Ruskin has
not found? Who after Ruskin's reading of it, can ever
read it differently?

And yet Ruskin is a true teacher. He teaches you to
read. He refuses to be systematic. He reads a word here,
a line there, but he bids you to do your own reading. He
simply shows you how. This is Ruskin's gift, in all his
writing.

Now how does he apply this to Social Problems ?

Is he not here too a teacher, — a teacher, not an

' originator, -^and as a teacher, above all else an interpreter?

He certainly is not an originator in Soaal Ethics. There

is no social gospel according to Ruskin, in the sense of a

INTRODUCTION.

Gospel according to Jean Jacques Rousseau. Ruskin is no
Robert Owen, no Fourier, no Henry George, no Edward
Bellamy. He is even different from William Morris ; he
has created no Utopia. God's world is good enough for
John Ruskin. His is the. diviner task of interpreting
God's laws for the world that is. He has chosen that
better part of sitting at the feet of Truth and showing what
it is to be true in social life, and that part shall not be taken
from him.

This means no disparagement to Utopia dreamers.
They have their place. Do not you dare to despise them :
child of the present, satisfied with the present, you who are
doing nothing, not even dreaming, lying drunken with
selfishness ; when you wake, only waking to speak frothy
words of idle gossip. Utopias have their place, only it is
not the highest place. As Mrs. Besant tells us: "There
are two ways in which the scheme for future organization
of industry may be constructed. Of these, by far the
easier and less useful is the sketching of Utopia, an
intellectual gymnastic in which a power of coherent and

vivid imagination is the one desideratum

The second way is less attractive, less easy, but more useful.
Starting from the present state of society, it seeks to
discover the tendencies underlying it, to trace those
tendencies to their natural out-working in institutions."

This was Ruskin's way. He reads not dreams; he
reads the eternal in the present.

INTRODUCTION. xi

But see how he reads — how differently from Carlyle.
Both are seers ; both read the eternal in the present ; both
find God everywhere. But Carlyle sees things as they are ;
Ruskin sees things as they are and as they ought to be.
Carlyle dwells in the eternal verities ; Ruskin shows how
to transform negations into verities.- Carlyle drives the
plowshare of exposure through the hard crusts of society
and social order. Into the yawning furrows, Ruskin drops
the quickening seeds of truth. Where Carlyle is destruct-
ive, Ruskin is constructive; Carlyle burns to free man
from the yoke of circumstance ; Ruskin leads man to truer
life in serving the beautiful and true ; Carlyle dwells amid
the smoke and thunders of Sinai's law ; Ruskin bids us live
and love as children of the Father, full of grace and
truth.

Such is Ruskin' s place in the development of the
Social form, a teacher, teaching not by law, but by sug-
gestion, by quickening, by fertilizing, by example, not
with system, but with lightning flash, radiating upon
mind far vistas of the truth. To-day among the Socialists
of the world not many will be found who in the views
they now hold call Ruskin Master, but many and many
a thoughtful one will tell you that they were led to
Socialism by John Ruskin.

Second, his teaching. What does Ruskin teach? What
is his Gospel? Like every true Gospel, it is a simple one
and yet capable of infinite expansion, and of glorious

xii INTRODUCTION.

statement. The essence of his social teaching may perhaps
be put in a single phrase, one of his own phrases: "There is
no wealth but life, life including all its powers of love, of
joy, and of admiration."

From this simple teaching spring as from a corner stone
all the noble pillars and portions of his structure. Because
noble life is wealth, it follows with Ruskin, that that coun-
try is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of
noble and happy human beings ; that that man is wealth-
iest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to
the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both
personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives
of others.

Moreover because life is wealth, it follows that only
that which contributes life has a right to return in wealth,
hence that interest, the return of money for the use of dead
money is wrong, — ^that only those have a right to share in
the products of industry who have put into' the operation
some industry themselves, some outgo of their own life.

These two conceptions, the law of wealth and the law
of service, run through all of Ruskin' s works, and from
them what mighty truths he teaches! The one thought
flashes out for example such a crystal phrase as that where
he defines wealth as " the possession of the valuable by the
valiant;" the other gives us his exhortation to English
men and English women to become workers — "Soldiers
of the Plowshare as well as Soldiers of the Sword."

INTRODUCTION. xiii

It will be at once seen whither such principles must
lead.

Ruskin taught from them,y?rj/, the great law of "Prop-
erty to whom proper" — or that land .and tools belong to
those who can use them ; Secondly, that he who can should
use his tools— rUse his tools to develop life, the highest life
in himself and in others; Thirdly, that this highest life can'
only be by cooperation instead of competition, the thought
of what we can give rather than of what we can get, the
thought of what we are rather than of what we have. This
added to Ruskin' s teaching as regards art constitutes
Ruskin' s social system. His theory of art and his theory
j of society he never divorces because they were both part
I of his one theory of life. Of art he taught — he himself
'i tells us — first, that the life of art is in religion ; secondly,
'that its food is in the ocular and passionate love of nature ;
thirdly, that its health is in the humility of the artists.
Applying this to his social teaching, his outcome was that
Society should be a cooperation or communism of artists,
submitting themselves humbly to the law of love, and in the
joy of beauty working to produce the highest and the
noblest that is in them.

How near this is to Socialism is at once apparent — to
Socialism, we say, not Communism or Nationalism.

Ruskin, it is true, calls himself a Communist — in his^
own strong phrase, "the reddest of the red;" but we
believe that he was really much nearer to Socialism. In

xiv INTRODUCTION.

equality of property he did not believe. In creating his
St. George's Guild he distinctly says that there should be
' ' no equality upon it, but recognition of every betterness
and reprobation of every worseness." This certainly is
opposed to both Communism and Nationalism, but it is in
exact accord with the great Socialist and Christian princi-
ple of "every man according to hisjvork." In almost all
things Ruskin is in accord with Socialism. He beheves in
government, in the State ; he believes in the cooperation of
workers in the State ; he believes in award for worth ; he
does not beUeve in interest; he does not believe in the
capitalist ; he is the bitterest foe of the Wage System and
of the Laissezfaire political economy,
ip Ruskin is not, hciwever, ai Socialist in all things. He
is politically (in his writings) a Conservative, not a Radical.
His Socialism is in form paternal, not fraternal. He would
not seek for reform through political action. In all this
he appears to be the very opposite of a Socialist. Socialism
is essentially fraternal, not paternal. It is radical, not
conservative ; it believes in political action ; it is democratic
both in politics and in trade. Ruskin fails in this in part
because of his education and environment, but even more
because of his artistic temperament, which shrinks from the
rough-and-tumble and often prosaic machinery of political
life. The Gospel of Art has rarely been married to the
Gospel of the Ballot Box. Hence politically Ruskin
becomes reactionary, yet he is not truly reactionary. His

INTRODUCTION.

teachings are so radical, so incisive, so inspired with the
true spirit of the noblest Socialism, that it must lead and
already has led many of his disciples to strive for Socialism
in the very political fields against which Ruskin spoke.
In his exaltation of work, in his teaching thfit work is holy,
that work for money is not true work, that every man
should be an artist and work in cooperation for the good
of all, Ruskin teaches such essential Socialism as to condone
all failure to see the necessity of political activity.

Thirdly. His achievement. Ruskin is a successful r
teacher. His work has been to lead. Those misunderstand
life who say that he has failed, because he has not developed
a concrete community living according to his ideas. He
has in truth been vastly more successful than if he had
attempted to do this. He has breathed his spirit into men
of all classes everywhere. Yet Ruskin attempted the
concrete, although this not so much for the value of the
concrete itself, as because, in trying to carry out his ideas,
he could alone be consistent and, therefore, be a true teacher
to the world. His St. George's Guild was an inevitable
consequence of his teaching. "No great arts are practi-
cable," he had taught, "by any people unless they are
living contented lives, in pure air, out of the way of unsightly
objects and emancipated from unnecessary mechanical
occupations. It is simply one part of the practical work
I have to do in art teaching, to bring, somewhere, such
conditions into existence and to show the working of

xvi ' INTRODUCTION.

them." He saw too that teaching by example was the
best teaching. "The more I see of writing," he says,
"the less I care for it; one may do more with a man by
getting ten words spoken to him face to face than by the
black-lettering of a whole life's thought." This from the
writer of TTie Stones of Venice is testimony indeed. No
wonder he strove to carry out his ideas. It is in this light
and this light only that his industrial experiments must be
viewed, simply as object lessons of his teaching. For this
purpose, even at Oxford, he took the little company of
students who would follow him and went out pick in hand
to try and dig a road. What matter that the result was,
according to his own half humorous confession, ' ' about the
worst road in the three kingdoms ; " that was not the real
result ; the real result was in teaching the nobility of manual
labor, and that ' ' food can only be got out of the ground,
and enjoyment out of honesty."

Ruskin's great experiment, however, was his St.
George's Guild. There is no need here of lengthy
description. In our selections from Fors Clavigera we
have placed some of Ruskin's own statements of the objects
and principles of the Guild. We give here but a few
quotations from the valuable account of the Guild, found
in Edward Cook's Studies in Ruskin. "It was in May,
1 87 1," says Mr. Cook, "that the scheme "was first made
public. In the Fors for that month Mr. Ruskin called on
any landlords to come and help him who would like

INTRODUCTION. xvii

better to be served by men than by iron devils, and any
tenants and any workmen who could vow to work and live
laithMly for the sake of the joy of their home. All who
joined St. George's standard were to do as Mr. Ruskin
undertook to do, to give the tenth of what they had and
what they earned, not to emigrate with, but to stay in
England with and make a happy England of her once
more."

The Guild had an agricultural, an industrial and an
artistic character. On land bought by the Guild, to
which Ruskin himself largely contributed, an attempt was
made to carry on an agricultural community according to
Ruskin' s ' ' Laws of Life. " Mr. Cook says of this :

' ' The agricultural experiments of the St. George's Guild
have not been a brilliant success. Perhaps they have not
been given a fair chance. Perhaps the times and seasons
have been unpropitious. But whatever explanations or
excuses there may be, the fact remains that the St. George's
farms have produced very little except a plentiful crop of
disappointments. Mr. Ruskin has drawn many charming
pictures of his ideal settlements ; but the realities have for
the most part been either grim or grotesque, or (more
often) both. The Guild is, however, the owner of several
acres of land in different parts of the country, and there is
some reason to hope that past failures will lead to future
successes. If there are any disciples of Count Tolstoi who,
having decided 'what to do,' are casting about for plots

xviii INTRODUCTION.

of ground on which to do it, they should communicate with
the Trustees of St. George's Guild."

The industrial experiments of Mr. Ruskin have been in
the way of fostering village industries. Wrote Mr. Ruskin :
"Whatever may be the destiny of London, or Paris, or
Rome in the future, I have always taught that the problem
of right organization of country life was wholly independent
of them."

Mr. Ruskin' s aim was not to organize industrial villages,
but to revive, in existing villages, village industry.

Foremost in work in this direction stands Mr. Albert
Flemming's attempt, under Ruskin' s influence, to bring
back the old industry of the spinning wheel to the homes
and villages in Westmoreland. In a measure it has suc-
ceeded, as one can see by reading Mr. Flemming's own
account of it, printed in Studies in Ruskin.

Another experiment was the making of "St. George's
cloth" in the Isle of Man, undertaken with Ruskin's help,
by Mr. Egbert Rydings. A mill was built in romantic
architecture by the St. George's Guild, the motive power
being of course, in a Ruskinian mill, water and not steam.
This too still exists, though it has passed into other
hands than those of the Guild.

The main concrete result of the St. George's Guild, has,
however, not unnaturally, been artistic, in the creation and
maintenance of the unique and beautiful Ruskin Museum
at Meresbrook Hall, Sheffield. Of this, the other day, a

INTRODUCTION. xix

friend, once himself a devout Ruskinian and a member
of St. George's Company, said to us, "The only outcome
of Ruskin's Guild is a Peep Show." It was a shallow
judgment. Undoubtedly Mr. Ruskin's teachings are of
infinitely greater value than the Museum, but would the
teachings be complete without their illustration in this
characteristic shrine?

So much of John Ruskin. Of this little collection of a
small portion of his teachings we need say but little. In
the limited space at our disposal we have placed first,
Unto This Last, as the best presentation, in brief space, of
Ruskin's Political Economy, and as that, of all his writings
which he himself calls "best," that is, the truest and most
serviceable. Secondly, we have placed two wonderful
essays on Work and on Traffic, from The Crown of Wild
Olive, as essays most needed to-day. Lastly, we have
added what selections we could from Fors Clavigera, as
containing some of Ruskin's noblest and most characteristic
utterances on social themes. To these last we have prefixed
a special preface. To the other books Ruskin himself has
already furnished his readers with a preface.

W. D. P. BLISS.

Linden, May, 1891.

( (

BOOK 1.

UNTO THIS LAST."

FOUR ESSAYS ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.

PREFACE

THE four following essays were published eighteen
months ago in the Cornhill Magazine, and were
reprobated in a violent manner, as far as I could hear,
by most of the readers they met with.

Not a whit the less, I believe them to be the best, that
is to say, the truest, rightest-worded, and most serviceable
things I have ever written ; and the last of them, having
had especial pains spent on it, is probably the best I shall
ever write.

."This," the reader may reply, "it might be, yet not
therefore well written." Which, in no mock humility,
admitting, I yet rest satisfied with the work, though with
nothing else that I have done ; and purposing shortly to
follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I may
find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to be within
the reach of any one who may care to refer to them. So I
republish the essays as they appeared. One word only is
changed, correcting the estimate of a weight ; and no word
is added.

Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these
papers, it is matter of regret to me that the most startling
of all the statements in them, — that respecting the necessity
of the organization of labor, with fixed wages, — should
have found its way into the first essay ; it being quite one
of the least important, though by no means the least certain.

PREFACE.

of the positions to be defended. The real gist of these
papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give, as I
believe for the first time in plam English, — it has often been
incidentally given in good Greek by Plato and Xenophon,
and good Latin by Cicero and Horace, — a logical defini-
tion of WEALTH : such definition being absolutely needed
for a basis of economical science. The most reputed essay
on that subject which has appeared in modern times, after
opening with the statement that "writers on political
economy profess to teach, or to investigate,* the nature
of wealth," thus follows up the declaration of its thesis —
"Everyone has a notion,, sufficiently correct for common
purposes, of what is meant by wealth. ... It is no
part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical
nicety of definition, f ' '

Metaphysical nicety, we assuredly do not need; but
physical nicety, and logical accuracy, with respect to a
physical subject, we as assuredly do.

Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House
law (^Oikonomid), had been Star-law {Astronmid), and that,
ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wandering, as
here between wealth radiant and wealth reflective, the writer
had begun thus: "Every one has a notion, sufficiently
correct for common purposes, of what is meant by stars.
Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a star is not the
object of this treatise;" — the essay so opened might yet
have been far more true in its final statements, and a
thousand-fold more serviceable to the navigator, than any
treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusions on the

* Which? for where investigation is necessary, teaching is
impossible.

^ Principles of Political Economy. By J. S. Mill. Preliminary
remarks, p. 2.

PREFACE. 5

popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the
economist.

It was, therefore, the first object of these following
papers to give an accurate and stable definition of wealth.
Their second object was to show that the acquisition of
wealth was finally possible only under certain moral condi-
tions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the
existence and even, for practical purposes, in the attainability
of honesty.

Without venturing to pronounce — since on such a
matter human judgment is by no means conclusive^-what
is, or is not, the noblest of God's works, we may yet admit
so much of Pope's assertion as that an honest man is
among His best works presently visible, and, as things
stand, a somewhat rare one; but not an incredible or
miraculous work ; still less an abnormal one. Honesty is
not a disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of economy ;
but a consistent and commanding force, by obedience to
which — ^and by no other obedience-^those orbits can
continue clear of chaos.

It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned
for the lowness instead of the hight, of his standard : —
"Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue; but how much
higher may men attain ! Shall nothing more be asked of
us than that we be honest?"

For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that
in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some
extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that.
What else we may have lost faith in, there shall be here no
question ; but assuredly we have lost faith in common
honesty, and in the working power of it. And this faith,
with the facts on which it may rest, it is quite our first

6 PREFACE.

business "to recover and keep : not only believing, but even
by experience assuring ourselves, that there are yet in the
world men who can be restrained from fraud otherwise than
by the fear of losing employment ; * nay, that it is even
accurately in proportion to the number of such men in any
State, that the said State does or can prolong its existence.

To these two points, then, the following essays are
mainly directed. The subject of the organization of labor
is only casually touched upon ; because, if we once can get
a sufficient quantity of honesty in our captains, the organiza-
tion of labor is easy, and will develop itself without quarrel
or difficulty ; but if we cannot get honesty in our captains,
the organization of labor is for evermore impossible.

The several conditions of its possibility I purpose to
examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader
should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the
following investigation of first principles, as if they were
leading him into unexpectedly dangerous ground, I will,
for his better assurance, state at once the worst of the
political creed at which I wish him to arrive.

r. First, — ^that there should be training schools for
youth established, at Government cost,t and under Govern-
ment discipline, over the whole country ; that every child

* "The effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman
is not that of his corporation, but of his customers. It is the fear
of losing their employment which restrains his frauds, and corrects
his negligence." (Wealth of Nations, Book I., chap. lo.)

t It will probably be inquired by near-sighted persons, out of
what funds such schools could be supported. The expedient modes
of direct provision for them I will examine hereafter ; indirectly,
they would be far more than self-supporting. The economy in
crime alone, (quite one of the most costly articles of luxury in the
modem European market,) which such schools would induce,
would suffice to support them ten times over. Their economy of
labor would be pure gain, and that too large to be presently
calculable.

PREFACE. y

born in the country should, at the parent's wish, be per-
mitted (and, in certain cases, be under penalty required)
to pass through them ; and that, in these schools, the child
should (with other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to
be considered) imperatively be taught, with the best skill
of teaching that the country could produce, the following
three things : —

(a) the laws of health, and the exercises enjoined by
them ;

(V) habits of gentleness and justice; and

(c) the calling by which he is to live.

2. Secondly, — that, in connection with these training
schools, there should be established, also entirely under
Government regulation, manufactories and workshops, for
the production and sale of every necessary of life, and for
the exercise of every useful art. And that, interfering no
whit with private enterprise, nor setting any restraints or
tax on pi;ivate trade, but leaving both to do their best, and
beat the Government if they could, — there should, at these
Government manufactories and shops, be authoritatively
good and exemplary work done, and pure and true sub-
stance sold ; so that a man could be sure, if he chose to
pay the Government price, that he got for his money bread
that was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was work.

3. Thirdly, — that any man, or woman, or boy, or girl,
out of employment, should be at once received at the nearest
Government school, and set to such work as it appeared,
on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determ-
inable every year: — ^that, being found incapable of work
through ignorance, they should be taught, or being found
incapable of work through sickness, should be tended ; but
that being found objecting to work, they should be set,
under compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more painful

8 PREFACE.

and degrading forms of necessary toil, especially to that in
mines and other places of danger (such danger being,
however, diminished to the utmost by carefiil regulation
and discipline) and the due wages of such work be retained —
cost of compulsion first abstracted — to be at the workman's
command, so soon as he has come to sounder mind
respecting the laws of employment.

4. Lastly, — that for the old and destitute, comfort and
home should be provided ; which provision, when misfortune
had been by the working of such a system sifted from guilt,
would be honorable instead of disgraceful to the receiver.
For (I repeat this passage out of my Political Economy of
Art, to which the reader is referred for further detail*) "a
laborer serves his country with his spade, just as a man in
the middle ranks of life serves it with sword, pen, or lancet.
If the service be less, and, therefore, the wages during
health less, then the reward when health is broken may be
less, but not less honorable ; and it ought to be quite as
natural and straightforward a matter for a laborer to take
his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well
of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension
from his country, because he has deserved well of his
country."

To which statement, I will only add, for conclusion,
respecting the discipline and pay of life and death, that, for
both high and low, Livy's last words touching Valerius
Publicola, "afe publico est ^/w/mj, " f ought not to be a
dishonorable close of epitaph.

These things, then, I believe, and am about, as I find

* Addenda, p. 102.

t " P. Valerius, omnium consensu princeps belli pacisque artibus,
anno post moritur ; gloria ingenti, copiis familiaribus adeo exiguis]
ut funeri sumtus deesset : de publico est elatus. Lux^re matrons
ut Brutum." — Lib. II., c. xvi.

PREFACE.

J)ower, to explain and illustrate in their various bearings ;
following out also what belongs to them of collateral inquiry.
Here I state them only in brief, to prevent the reader
casting about in alarm for my ultimate meaning ; yet
requesting him, for the present, to remember, that in a
science dealing with so subtle elements as those of human
nature, it is only possible to answer for the final truth of
principles, not for the direct success of plans : and that in
the best of these last, what can be immediately accomplished
is always questionable, and what can be finally accomplished,
inconceivable.

JOHN RUSKIN.
Denmark Hill, loth May, 1862.

( (

UNTO THIS LAST."

ESSAY I.
THE ROOTS OF HONOR.

AMONG the delusions which at difTerent periods have
possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of
the human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly
the least creditable — is the modern soi-disant science of
political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous
code of social action may be determined irrespectively of
the influence of social affection.

Of course, as in the instances of alchemy, astrology,
witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy
has a plausible idea at the root of it. "The social
affections," says the economist, "are accidental and dis-
turbing elements in human nature; but avarice and the
desire of progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate
the inconstants, and, considering the human being merely
as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of labor,
purchase, and sale, the greatest accumulative result in
wealth is attainable. Those laws once determined, it will
be for each individual afterward to introduce as much of
the disturbing affectionate element as he chooses, and to
determine for himself the result on the new conditions
supposed."

12 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

This would be a perfectly logical and successful method
of analysis, if the accidentals afterward to be introduced
were of the same nature as the powers first examined.
Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant
and inconstant forces, it is usually the simplest way of
examining its course to trace it first under the persistent
conditions, and afterward introduce the causes of variation.
But the disturbing elements in the social problem are not
of the same nature as the constant ones ; they alter the
essence of the creature under examination the moment they
are added ; they operate, not mathematically, but chemi-
cally, introducing conditions which render all our previous
knowledge unavailable. We made learned experiments
upon pure nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves that it
is a very manageable gas : but behold ! the thing which we
have practically to deal with is its chloride ; and this, the
moment we touch it on our established principles, sends us
and our apparatus through the ceiling.

Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusions
of the science, if its terms are accepted. I am simply
uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science
of gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons.
It might be shown, on that supposition, that it would be
advantageous to roll the students up into pellets, flatten
them into cakes, or stretch them into cables ; and that
when these results were effected, the re-insertion of the
skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to
their constitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the
conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applica-
bility. Modern political economy stands on a precisely
similar basis. Assuming^not that the human being has no
skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant
theory of progress on this negation of a soul ; and having

'UNTO THIS LAST" 13

shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and con-
structed a number of interesting geometrical figures with
death' s-Tieads and humeri, successfully proves the incon-
venience of the reappearance of a soul among these
corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this
theory : I simply deny its applicability to the present phase
of the world.

This inapplicability has been curiously manifested during
the embarrassment caused by the late strikes of our work-
men. Here occurs one of the simplest cases, in a pertinent
and positive form, of the first vital problem which political
economy has to deal with (the relation between employer
and employed) ; and at a severe crisis, when lives in
multitudes, and wealth in masses, are at stake, the pohtical
economists are helpless — practically mute ; no demonstrable
solution of the difficulty can be given by them, such as may
convince or calm the opposing parties. Obstinately the
masters take one view of the matter; obstinately the
operatives another ; and no political science can set them
at one.

It would be strange if it could, it being not by ' ' science ' '
of any kind that men were ever intended to be set at one.
Disputant after disputant vainly strives to show that the
interests of the masters are, or are not, antagonistic to those
of the men ; none of the pleaders ever seeming to
remember that it does not absolutely or always follow that
the persons must be antagonistic because their interests are.
If there is only a crust of bread in the house, and mother
and children are starving, their interests are not the same.
If the mother eats it, the children want it ; if the children
eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it
does not necessarily follow that there will be "antagonism"
between them, that they will fight for the crust, and that

14 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

the mother, being strongest, will get it, and eat it. Neither,
in any other case, whatever the relations of the persons
may be, can it be assumed for certain that, because their
interests are diverse, they must necessarily regard each
other with hostiUty, and use violence or cunning to obtain
the advantage.

Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is con-
venient to consider men as actuated by no other moral
influences than those which affect rats or swine, the logical
conditions of the question are still indeterminable. It can
never be "shown generally either that the interests of
master and laborer are alike, or that they are opposed ; for,
according to circumstances, they may be either. It is,
indeed, always the interest of both that the work should
be rightly done, and a just price obtained for it ; but, in the
division of profits, the gain of the one may or may not be
the loss of the other. It is not the master's interest to pay
wages so low as to leave the men sickly and depressed, nor
the workman's interest to be paid high wages if the small-
ness of the master's profit hinders him from enlarging his
business, or conducting it in a safe and liberal way. A
stoker ought not to desire high pay if the company is too
poor to keep the engine-wheels in repair.

And the varieties of circumstances which influence these—
reciprocal interests are so endless, that all endeavor to
deduce rules of action from balance of expediency is in
vain. And it is meant to be in vain. For no human
actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be
guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of
justice. He has, therefore, rendered all endeavors to
determine expediency futile for evermore. No man ever
knew, or can know, what will be the ultimate result to him-
self, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every

"UNTO THIS LAST." ^.

man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just
and unjust act. And all of us- may know also, that the
consequences of justice will be ultimately the best possible,
both to others and ourselves, though we can neither say
what is best, now how it is likely to come to pass.

I have said balances of justice, meaning, in the term
justice, to include affection, — such affection as one man owes
to another. All right relations between master and opera-
tive, and all their best interests, ultimately depend on these.

We shall find the best and simplest illustration of the
relations of master and operative in the position of domestic
servants.

We will suppose that the master of a household desires
only to get as much work out of his servants as he can, at
the rate of wages he gives. He never allows them to be
idle ; feeds them as poorly and lodges them as ill as they
will endure, and in all things pushes his requirements to
the exact point beyond which he cannot go without forcing
the servant to leave him. In doing this, there is no viola-
tion on his part of what is commonly called "justice." He
agrees with the domestic for his whole time and service,
and takes them ; the limits of hardship in treatment being
fixed by the practice of other masters in his neighborhood ;
that is to say, by the current rate of wages for domestic
labor. If the servant can get a better place, he is free to take
one, and the master can only tell what is the real market
value of his labor, by requiring as much as he will give.

This is the politico-economical view of the case, accord-
ing to the doctors of that science ; who assert that by this
procedure the greatest average of work will be obtained
from the servant, and, therefore, the greatest benefit to the
community, and through the community, by reversion, to
the servant himself.

1 6 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSK IN.

That, however, is not so. It would be so if the servant
were an engine of which the motive power was steam,
magnetism, gravitation, or any other agent of calculable
force. But he being, on the contrary, an engine whose
motive power is a Soul, the force of this very peculiar
agent, as an unknown quantity, enters into all the political
economist's equations, without his knowledge, and falsifies
every one of their results. The largest quantity of work
will not be done by this curious engine for pay, or under
pressure, or by help of any kind of fuel which may be
applied by the chaldron. It will be done only when the
motive force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the creature,
is brought to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel ;E
namely, by the affections.

It may indeed happen, and does happen often, that if
the master is a man of sense and energy, a large quantity
of material work may be done under mechanical pressure,
enforced by strong will and guided by wise method ; also
it may happen, and does happen often, that if the master is
indolent and weak (however good-natured), a very small
quantity of work, and that bad, may be produced by the
servant's undirected strength, and contemptuous gratitude.
But the universal law of the matter is that, assuming any
given quantity of energy and sense in master and servant,
the greatest material result obtainable by them will be, not
through antagonism to each other, but through- affection
for each other ; and that if the master, instead of endeavor-
ing to get as much work as possible from the servant,
seeks rather to render his appointed and necessary work
beneficial to him, and to forward his interests in all just and
wholesome ways, the real amount of work ultimately done
or of good rendered, by the person so cared for, will indeed
be the greatest possible.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 17

Observe, I say, "of good rendered," for a servant's
work is not necessarily or always the best thing he can give
his master. But good of all kinds, whether in material
service, in protective watchfulness of his master's interest
and credit, or in joyful readiness to seize unexpected and
irregular occasions of help.

Nor is this one whit less generally true because indul-
gence will be frequently abused, and kindness met with
ingratitude. For the servant who, gently treated, is
ungrateful, treated ungently, will be revengeful ; and the
man who is dishonest to a liberal master will be injurious to
an unjust one.

In any case, and with any person, this unselfish treat-
ment will produce the most effective return. Observe, I
am here considering the affections wholly as a motive
power ; not at all as things in themselves desirable or
noble, or in any other way abstractedly good. I look at
them simply as an anomalous force, rendering every one of
the ordinary political economist's calculations nugatory;
while, even if he desired to introduce this new element into
his estimates, he has no power of dealing with it ; for the
affections only become a true motive power when they
ignore every other motive and condition of political
economy. Treat the servant kindly, with the idea of turn-
ing his gratitude to account, and you will get, as you
deserve, no gratitude, nor any value for your kindness ; but
treat him kindly without any economical purpose, and all
economical purposes will be answered ; in this, as in all
other matters, whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and
whoso loses it shall find it.*

*The difference between the two modes of treatment, and
between their effective material results, may be seen very accurately
by a comparison of the relations of Esther and Charlie in Bleak

1 8 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

The next clearest and simplest example of relation
between master and operative is that which exists between
the commander of a regiment and his men.

Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of
discipline so as, with least trouble to himself, to make the
regiment most effective, he will not be able, by any rules,
or administration of rules, on this selfish principle, to
develop the full strength of his subordinates. If a man of
sense and firmness, he may, as in the former instance, pro-
duce a better result than would be obtained by the irregular
kindness of a weak officer ; but let the sense and firmness
be the same in both cases, and assuredly the officer who
has the most direct personal relations with his men, the
most care for their interests, and the most value for their
lives, will develop their effective strength, through their

House, with those of Miss Brass and the Marchioness in Master
Humphrey's Clock.

The essential value and truth of Dickens's writings have been
unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because
he presents his truth with some color of caricature. Unwisely,
because Dickens's caricature, though often gross, is never mistaken.
Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are
always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant
exaggeration to works written only for public amusement; and
when he takes up a subject of high national importance, such as
that which he handled in Hard Times, that he would use severer
and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my
mind, in several respects, the greatest he has written) is with many
persons seriously diminished because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic
monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master ;
and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a char-
acteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the
use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a
circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose
in every book he has written ; and all of them, but especially Hard
Times, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons
interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial,
and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the
evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it
will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally right
one, grossly and sharply told.

'UNTO THIS LAST." jg

affection for his own person, and trust in his character, to a
degree wholly unattainable by other means. The law
applies still more stringently as the numbers concerned are
larger ; a charge may often be successful, though the men
dislike their officers ; a battle has rarely been won, unless
they loved their general.

Passing from these simple examples to the more com-
plicated relations existing between a manufacturer and his
workmen, we are met first by certain curious difficulties,
resulting, apparently, from a harder and colder state of
moral elements. It is easy to imagine an enthusiastic
affection existing among soldiers for the colonel. Not so
easy to imagine an enthusiastic affection among cotton-
spinners for the proprietor of the mill. A body of men
associated for purposes of robbery (as a Highland clan in
ancient times) shall be animated by perfect affection, and
every member of it be ready to lay down his life for the life
of his chief. But a band of men associated for purposes of
legal production and accumulation is usually animated, it
appears, by no such emotions, and none of them is in
anywise willing to give his life for the life of his chief Not
only are we met by this apparent anomaly, in moral
matters, but by others connected with it, in administration
of system. For a servant or a soldier is engaged at a
definite rate of wages, for a definite period ; but a workman
at a rate of wages variable according to the demand for
labor, and with the risk of being at any time thrown out of
his situation by chances of trade. Now, as, under these
contingencies, no action of the affections can take place,
but only an explosive action of ^fzjaffections, two points
offer themselves for consideration in the matter.

The first — How far the rate of wages may be so
regulated as not to vary with the demand for labor.

20 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

The second— How far it is possible that bodies of
workmen may be engaged and maintained at such fixed
rate of wages (whatever the state of trade may be), without
enlarging or diminishing their number, so as to give them
permanent interest in the establishment with which they
are connected, like that of the domestic servants in an old
family, or an esprit de corps, like that of the soldiei-s in a
crack regiment.

The first question is, I say, how far it may be possible
to fix the rate of wages irrespectively of the demand for
labor.

Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the history of
human error is the denial by the common political econo-
mist of the possibility of thus regulating wages ; while for
all the important, and much of the unimportant, labor on
the earth, wages are already so regulated.

We do not sell our prime-ministership by Dutch
auction; nor, on the decease of a bishop, whatever may be
the general advantages of simony, do we (yet) offer his
diocese to the clergyman who will take the episcopacy at
the lowest contract. We (with exquisite sagacity of polit-
ical economy!) do indeed sell commissions, but not openly,
generalships : sick, we do not inquire for a physician who
takes less than a guinea ; litigious, we never think of
reducing six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence : caught
in a shower, we do not canvass the cabmen, to find out
who values his driving at less than sixpence a mile.

It is true that in all these cases there is, and in every
conceivable case there must be, ultimate reference to the
presumed difficulty of the work, or number of candidates
for the office. If it were thought that the labor necessary
to make a good physician would be gone through by a
sufficient number of students with the prospect of only

"UNTO THIS LAST." 21

half-guinea fees, public consent would soon withdraw the
unnecessary half-guinea. In this ultimate sense, the price
of labor is indeed always regulated by the demand for it ;
but so far as the practical and immediate administration
of the matter is regarded, the best labor always has been,
and is, as all labor ought to be, paid by an invariable
standard.

' ' What ! " the reader, perhaps, answers amazedly : ' ' pay
good and bad workmen alike?"

Certainly. The difference between one prelate's sermons
and his successor's, — or between one physician's opinion
and another's, — is far greater, as respects the qualities of
mind involved, and far more important in result to you
personally, than the difference between good and bad laying
of bricks (though that is "greater than most people suppose).
Yet you pay with equal fee, contentedly, the good and bad
wbrkmen upon your soul, and the good and bad workmen
upon your body ; much more may you pay, contentedly,
with equal fees, the good and bad workmen upon your
house.

"Nay, but I choose my physician and (?) my clergy-
man, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work."
By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the
proper reward of the good workman, to be "chosen."
The natural and right system respecting all labor is, that it
should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman
employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false,
unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad work-
man is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either
take the place of the good, or force him by his competition
to work for an inadequate sum.

This equality of wages, then, being the first object
toward which we have to discover the directest available

22 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

road ; the second is, as above stated, that of maintaining
constant numbers of workmen in employment, whatever
may be the accidental demand for the article they produce.

I believe the sudden and extensive inequalities of
demand which necessarily arise in the mercantile operations
of an active nation, constitute the only essential difficulty
which has to be overcome in a just organization of labor.
The subject opens into too many branches to admit of
being investigated in a paper of this kind ; but the following
general facts bearing on it may be noted.

The wages which enable any workman to live are
necessarily higher, if his work is liable to intermission, than
if it is assured and continuous ; and however severe the
struggle for work may become, the general law will always
hold, that men must get more daily pay if, on the average,
they can only calculate on work three days a week, than
they would require if they were sure of work six days a
week. Supposing that a man cannot live on less than a
shilling a day, his seven shillings he must get, either for
three days' violent work, or six days' deliberate work.
The tendency of all modern mercantile operations is to
throw both wages and trade into the form of a lottery, and
to make the workman's pay depend on intermittent
exertion, and the principal's profit on dexterously used
chance.

In what partial degree, I repeat, this may be r.e-essary,
in consequence of the activities of modern trade, I do not
here investigate ; contenting myself with the fact that iu its
fatalest aspects it is assuredly unnecessary, and results
merely from love of gambling on the part of the masters,
and from ignorance and sensuality in the men. The
masters cannot bear to let any opportunity of gain escape
them, and frantically rush at every gap and breach in the

"UNTO THIS LAST."

23

walls of Fortune, raging to be rich, and affronting, with
impatient covetousness, every risk of ruin ; while the men
prefer three days of violent labor, and three days of drunk-
enness, to six days of moderate work and wise rest. There
is no way in which a principal, who really desires to help
his workmen, may do it more effectually than by checking
these disorderly habits both in himself and them ; keeping
his own business operations on a scale which will enable
him to pursue them securely, not yielding to temptations
of precarious gain;- and, at the same time, leading his
workmen into regular habits of labor and life, either by
inducing them rather to take low wages in the form of a
fixed salary, than high wages, subject to the chance of
their being thrown out of work ; or, if this be impossible,
by discouraging the system of violent exertion for nomin-
ally high day wages, and leading the men to take lower pay
for more regular labor.

In effecting any radical changes of this kind, doubtless
there would be great inconvenience and loss incurred by
all the originators of movement. That which can be done
with perfect convenience and without loss, is not always
the thing that most needs to be done, or which we are
most imperatively required to do.

I have already alluded to the difference hitherto exist-
ing between regiments of men associated for purposes of
violence, and for purposes of manufacture; in that the
former appear capable of self-sacrifice — the latter, not;
which singular fact is the real reason of the general lowness
of estimate in which the profession of commerce is held, as
compared with that of arms. Philosophically, it does not,
at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endeav-
ored to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational
person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held

24 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

in less honor than an unpeaceable and often irrational
person, whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent
of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers, given
precedence to the soldier.

And this is right.

For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not
slaying, but being slain. This, without well knowing its
own meaning, the world honors it for, A bravo' s trade is
slaying ; but the world has never respected bravos more
than merchants ; the reason it honors the soldier is, because
he holds his life at the service of the State. Reckless he
may be — fond of pleasure or of adventure — all kinds of
bye-motives and mean impulses may have determined the
choice of his profession, and may affect (to all appearance
exclusively) his daily conduct in it ; but our estimate of
him is based on this ultimate fact — of which we are well
assured — that, put him in a fortress breach, with all the
pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his
duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front ; and
he knows that this choice may be put to him at any
moment, and has beforehand taken his part — virtually takes
such part continually — does, in reality, die daily.

Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer and physi-
cian, founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. • Whatever
the learning or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief
respect for him depends on our belief that, set in a judge's
seat, he will strive to judge justly, come of it what may.
Could we suppose that he would take bribes, and use his
acuteness and legal knowledge to give plausibility to
iniquitous decisions, no degree of intellect would win for
him our respect. Nothing will win it, short of our tacit
conviction, that in all important acts of his life justice is first
with him ; his own interest, second, ■.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 35

In the case of a physician, the ground of the honor we
render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we should
shrink from him in horror if we found him regard his
patients merely as subjects to experiment upon ; much
more, if we found that, receiving bribes from persons
interested in their deaths, he was using his best skill to
give poison in the mask of medicine.

Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it
respects clergymen. No goodness of disposition will excuse
want of science in a physician or of shrewdness in an advo-
cate ; but a clergyman, even though his power of intellect
be small, is respected on the presumed ground of his
unselfishness and serviceableness.

Now there can be no question but that the tact, fore-
sight, decision, and other mental powers, required for the
successful management of a large mercantile concern, if not
such as could be compared with those of a great lawyer,
general, or divine, would at least match the general condi-
tions of mind required in the subordinate officers of a ship,
or of a regiment, or in the curate of a country parish. If,
therefore, all the efficient members of the so-called liberal
professions are still, somehow, in public estimate of honor,
preferred before the head of a commercial firm, the reason
must lie deeper than in the measurement of their several
powers of mind.

And the essential reason for such preference will be
found to lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to
act always selfishly. His work may be very necessary to
the community ; but the motive of it is understood to be
wholly personal. The merchant's first object in all his
dealings must be (the public believe) to get as much for
himself, and leave as little to his neighbor (or customer) as
possible. Enforcing this upon him, by political statute, as

26 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

the necessary principle of his action ; recommending it to
him on all occasions; and themselves reciprocally adopting
it ; proclaiming vociferously, for law of the universe, that a
buyer's function is to cheapen, and a seller's to cheat, —
the public, nevertheless, involuntarily condemn the man of
commerce for his compliance with their own statement, and
stamp him forever as belonging to an inferior grade of
human personality.

This they will find, eventually, they must give up doing.
They must not cease to condemn selfishness ; but they will
have to discover a kind of commerce which is not exclu-
sively selfish. Or, rather, they will have to discover that
there never was, or can be, any other kind of commerce ;
that . this which they have called commerce was not com-
merce at all, but cozening ; and that a true merchant differs
as much from a merchant according to laws of modern
political economy, as the hero of the Excursion from
Autolycus. They will find that commerce is an occupation
which gentlemen will every day see more need to engage
in, rather than in the businesses of talking to men, or
slaying them ; that, in true commerce, as in true preaching,
or true fighting, it is necessary to admit the idea of
occasional voluntary loss ; — that sixpences have to be lost,
as well as lives, under a sense of duty ; that the market
may have its martyrdoms as well as the pulpit ; and trade
its heroisms, as well as war.

May have — in the final issue, must have — and only has
not had yet, because men of heroic temper liave always -
been misguided in their youth into other fields, not recog-
nizing what is in our days, perhaps, the most important of
all fields ; so that, while many a zealous person loses his
life in trying to teach the form of a gospel, very few will
lose a hundred pounds in showing the practice of one.

"UNTO THIS LAST."

27

The fact is, that people never have had clearly, explained
to them the true functions of a merchant with' respect to
other people. I should like the reader to be -very clear
about this.

Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily
necessities of life, have hitherto existed — three exist neces-
sarily, in every civilized nation :

The Soldier's profession is to defend it.

The Pastor's, to teach it.

The Physician's, to keep it in health.

The Lawyer's, to enforce justice.

The Merchant's, to provide for it.

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to
die for it.

"On due occasion," namely : —

The Soldier/ rather than leave his {)ost in battle.

The Physician, rather than Ifeve his post in plague.

Th^ Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood.
'i, ' The .Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice.
fe- TheM'erchant— What \s his "due occasion" of death?

Jt is the main question for the merchant, as for all of
lis. 'For, truly,. the man who does not know wliien to die,
'; does npt know how to live.

'; .Observe, the merchant's function (or manufacturer's,

for»in the broad sense in which it is here ' used^the word

^ must be understood to include both) is to provide for the

nation. It is no more his function to get profit for himself

.; out of that provision than it is': a clergyman's function; to

get his stipend. The stipend is a due and necessary

> adjunct, but not the object,' of Ms life, if he be a true

ckrgyman, any more than his fee- (or honorarium) is the

object of life to a true physician. ' Neither i§ his fee the

object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true men,

28 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

have a work to be done irrespective of fee — to be done
even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee; the
pastor's function being to teach, the physician's to heal,
and the merchant's, as I have said, to provide. That is to
say, he has to understand to their very root the qualities of
the thing he deals in, and the means of obtaining or pro-
ducing it ; and he has to apply all his sagacity and energy
to the producing or obtaining it in perfect state, and
distributing it at the cheapest possible price where it is
most needed.

And because the production or obtaining of any com-
modity involves necessarily the agency of many lives and
hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business
the master and governor of large masses of men in a more
direct, though less confessed way, than a military officer or
pastor ; so that on him falls, in great part, the responsibility
for the kind of life they lead : and it becomes his duty, not
only to be always considering how to produce what he
sells in the purest and cheapest forms, but how to make
the various employments involved in the production, or
transference of it, most beneficial to the men employed.

And as- into these two functions, requiring for their
right exercise the highest intelligence, as well as patience,
kindness, and tact, the merchant is bound to put all his
energy, so for their just discharge he is bound, as soldier
or physician is bound, to give up, if need be, his life, in
such way as may be demanded of him*' Two main points
he has in his providing function to maintain : first, his
engagements (faithfulness to engagements being the real
root of all possibilities in commerce) ; and, secondly, the
perfectness and purity of the thing provided ; so that, rather
than fail in any engagement, or consent to any deterio-
ration, adulteration, or unjust and exorbitant price of that

"UNTO THIS last:

29

which he provides, he is bound to meet fearlessly any form of
distress, poverty, or labor, which may, through maintenance
of these points, come upon him.

Again : in his office as governor of the men employed
by him, the merchant or manufacturer is invested with a
distinctly paternal authority and responsibility. In most
cases, a youth entering a commercial establishment is with-
drawn altogether from home influence; his master must
become his father, else he has, for practical and constant
help, no father at hand : in all cases the master's authority,
together with the general tone and atmosphere of his
business, and the character of the men with whom the
youth is compelled in the course of it to associate, have
more immediate and pressing weight than the home influ-
ence, and will usually neutralize it either for good or evil-;
so that the only means which the master has of doing
justice to the men employed by him is to ask himself
sternly whether he is dealing with such subordinate as he
would with his own son, if compelled by circumstances to
take such a position.

Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or were
by any chance obliged, to place his own son in the position
of a common sailor ; as he would then treat his son, he is
bound always to treat every one of the men under him.
So, also, supposing the master of a manufactory saw it
right, or were by any chance obliged, to place his own son
in the position of an ordinary workman ; as he would then
treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of his
men. This is the only effective, true, or practical Rule
which can be given on this point of political economy.

And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man
to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share his last
crust with the sailors in case of famine, so the manufacturer,

30 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

in any commercial crisis or distress, is bound to take the
suffering of it with his men, and even to take more of it
for himself than he allows his men to feel; as a father would
in a famine, shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice himself for his
son.

All which sounds very strange ; the only real strange-
ness in the matter being, nevertheless, that it should so
sound. For all this is true, and that not partially nor
theoretically, but everlastingly and practically : all other
doctrine than this respecting matters political being false
in premises, absurd in deduction, and impossible in practice,
consistently with any progressive state of national life ; all
the life which we now possess as a nation showing itself in
the resolute denial and scorn, by a few strong minds and
faithful hearts, of the economic principles taught to our
multitudes, which principles, so far as accepted, lead straight
to national destruction. Respecting the modes and forms
of destruction to which they lead, and, on the other hand,
respecting the further practical working of true polity, I
hope to reason further in a following paper.

" UNTO THIS LAST." 31

ESSAY II.
THE VEINS OF WEALTH.

THE answer which would be made by any ordinary
political economist to the statements contained in the
preceding paper, is in few words as follows : —
"It is indeed true that certain advantages of a general
nature may be obtained by the development of social
affections. But political economists never professed, nor
profess, to take advantages of a general nature into consid-
eration. Our science is simply the science of getting rich.
So far from being a fallacious or visionary one, it is found
by experience to be practically effective. Persons who
follow its precepts do actually become rich, and persons
who disobey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe
has acquired his fortune by following the known laws of our '
science, and increases his capital daily by an adherence to
them. It is vain to bring forward tricks of logic, against
the force of accomplished facts. Every man of business
knows by experience how money is made, and how it is
lost."

Pardon me. Men of business do indeed know how
they themselves made their money, or how, on occasion,
they lost it. Playing a long-practiced game, they are
familiar with the chances of its cards, and can righdy
explain their losses and gains. But they neither know
who keeps the bank of the gambling-house, nor what other
games may be played with the same cards, nor what other
losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are

32 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

essentially, though invisibly, dependent on theirs in the
lighted rooms. They have learned a few, and only a few,
of the laws of mercantile economy ; but not one of those
of political economy.

Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe
that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word
"rich." At least if they know, they do not in their rea-
sonings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, imply-
ing its opposite "poor" as positively as the word "north"
implies its opposite "south." Men nearly always speak
and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by
following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be
rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity,
acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The
force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly
on the default of a guinea in your neighbor's pocket. If
he did not want it, it would be of no use to you ; the degree
of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or
desire he has for it, — and the art of making yourself rich,
in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore
equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor
poor.

r would not contend in this matter (and rarely in any
matter), for the acceptance of terms. But I wish the reader
clearly and deeply to understand the difference between
the two economies, to which the terms "Political" and
"Mercantile" might not unadvisably be attached.

Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citi-
zens) consists simply in the production, preservation, and
distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable
things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time ;
the shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound
wood ; the builder who lays good bricks in well-tempereJI

"UNTO THIS LAST."

33i

mortar ; the housewife who takes care of her furniture in
the parlor, and guards against all waste in her kitchen ; and
the singer who rightly disciplines, and never overstrains
her voice : are all political economists in the true and final
sense ; adding continually to the riches and well-being of
the nation to which they belong.

But mercantile economy, the economy of "merces" or
of ' ' pay, ' ' signifies the accumulation, in the hands of indi-
viduals, of legal or moral claim upon, or power over, the
labor of others ; every such claim implying precisely as
much poverty or debt on one side, as it implies riches or
right on the other.

It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addition to
the actual property, or well-being, of the State in which it
exists. But since this commercial wealth, or power over
labor, is nearly always convertible at once into real prop-
erty, while real property is not always convertible at once
into power over labor, the idea of riches among active men
in civilized nations, generally refers to commercial wealth ;
and in estimating their possessions, they rather calculate
the value of their horses and fields by the number of guineas
they could get for them, than the value of their guineas by
the number of horses and fields they could buy with them.
There is, however, another reason for this habit of mind ;
namely, that_ an^^accumulation of real property is of litde
use to its owner, unless, together with it, he has commerci al
power over jabpr. Thus, suppose any person to be put in
possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds
of gold in its gravel, countless herds of cattle in its pastures ;
houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores,
but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In
order that he may be able to have servants, some one in
his neighborhood must be poor, and in want of his gold—

34 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and
that no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake
his own bread, make his own clothes, plow his own
ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as
useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate.
His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can
eat no more than another man could eat, and wear no more
than another man could wear. He must lead a life of
severe and common labor to procure even ordinary com-
forts ; he TVill be ultimately unable to keep either houses
in repair, or fields in cultivation ; and forced to content
himself with a poor man's portion of cottage and garden,
in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild
cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will
hardly mock at himself by calling "his own."

The most covetous of mankind, wo uld withs^mall exulta-

^i£B!-i-PI?.^H!^?L_^f'=5;P^ "'^'^?L?f *^'® kind on these terms.
What is really desired, under the name of riches, is, essen-
tially, power over men ;^ in its simplest sense, the power of
oBtaining1or~our own advantage the labor of servant,
tradesman, and artist ; in wider sense, authority of directing
large masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial, or
hurtfiil, according to the mind of the rich person). And
this power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct
proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is
exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of
persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready
to give the same price for an article of which the supply
is limited. If the musician is poor, he will sing for small
pay, as long as there is only one person who can pay him ;
but if there be two or three, he will sing for the one who
offers him most. And thus the power of the riches of the
patron (always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see

"UNTO THIS LAST" 35

presently, even when most authoritative) depends first on
the poverty of the artist, and then on the limitation of
the number of equally wealthy persons, who also want seats
at the concert. So that, as above stated, the art of becom-
ing "rich," in the common sense, is not absolutely nor
finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves,
but also of contriving that our neighbors shall have less.
In accu rate terms, it is "the art of establishing the maximum
inequality in our own feyor."

"" Now the establishment of such inequality cannot be
shown in the abstract to be either advantageous or disad-
vantageous to the body of the nation. The rash and absurd
assumption that such inequalities are necessarily advan-
tageous, lies at the root of most of the popular fallacies on
the subject of political economy. For the eternal and
inevitable law in this matter is, that the beneficialness of the
inequality depends, first, on the methods by which it was
accomplished, and, secondly, on the purposes to which it is
applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have
assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during
their establishment; and, unjustly directed, injure it yet
niore during their existence. But inequalities of wealth
justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their
establishment; and nobly used, aid it yet more by their
existence. That is to say, among every active and well-
governed people, the various strength of individuals, tested
by full exertion and specially applied to various needs,
issues in unequal, but harmonious results, receiving reward
or authority according to its class and service ; * while in

* I have been naturally asked several times, 'vith respect to the
sentence in the first of these papers, "the bad workmen unem-
ployed," " But what are you to do with your bad unemployed work-
men ? ' ' Well, it seems to me the question might have occurred to you

36 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

the inactive or ill-governed nation, the gradations of decay
and the victories of treason work out also their own rugged,
system of subjection and success ; and substitute, for the
melodious inequalities of concurrent power, the iniquitous
dominances and depressions of guilt and misfortune.

Thus the circulation of wealth in a nation resembles that
of the blood in the natural body. There is one quickness
of the current which comes of cheerful emotion or whole-
some exercise ; and another which comes of shame or of
fever. There is a flush of the body which is full of warmth
and life ; and another which will pass into putrefaction.

The analogy will hold, down even to minute particulars.
For as diseased local determination of the blood involves
depression of the general health of the system, all morbid

before. Your housemaid's place is vacant — you give twenty pounds
a year — two girls come for it, one neatly dressed, the other dirtily ;
One with good recommendations, the other with none. You do not,
under these circumstances, usually ask the dirty one if she will come
for fifteen pounds, or twelve ; and, on her consenting, take her
instead of the well-recommended one. Still less do you try to beat
both down by making them bid against each other, till you can hire
both, one at twelve pounds a year, and the other at eight. You
simply take the one fittest for the place, and send away the other,
not perhaps concerning yourself quite as much as you should with
the question which you now impatiently put to me, "What is to
become of her?" For all that I advise you to do, is to deal with
workmen as with servants : and verily the question is of weight :
"Your bad workman, idler, and rogue — what are you to do witii
him?"

We will consider of this presently : remember that the adminis-
tration of a complete system of national commerce and industry
cannot be explained in full detail within the space of twelve pages.
Meantime, consider whether, there being confessedly some diffi-
culty in dealing with rogues and idlers, it may not be advisable to
produce as few of them as possible. If you examine into the history
of rogues, you will find they are as truly manufactured articles as
anything else, and it is just because our present system of political
economy gives so large a stimulus to that manufacture that you may
know it to be a false one. We had better seek for a system which
will develop honest men, than for one which will deal cunningly
with vagabonds. Let us reform our schools, and we shall find
little reform, needed in our prisons.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 37

local action of riches will be found ultimately to involve a
weakening of the resources of the body politic.

The mode in which this is produced may be at once
understood by examining one or two instances of the
development of wealth in the simplest possible circumstances.

Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast,
and obliged to maintain themselves there by their own
labor for a series of years.

If they both kept their health, and worked steadily, and
in amity with each other, they might build themselves a
convenient house, and in time come to possess a certain
quantity of cultivated land, together with various stores
laid up for future use. All these things would be real
riches or property ; and supposing the men both to have
worked equally hard, they would each have right to equal
share or use of it. Their political economy would consist
merely in careful preservation and just division of these
possessions. Perhaps, however, after some time one or
other might be dissatisfied with the results of their common
farming ; and they might in consequence agree to divide
the land they had brought under the spade into equal
shares, so that each might thenceforward work in his own
field and hve by it. Suppose that after this arrangement
had been made, one of them were to fall ill, and be unable
to work on his land at a critical time — say of sowing or
harvest.

He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap for
him.

Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, "I
will do this additional work for you ; but if I do it, you
must promise to do as much for me at another time. I
will count how many hours I spend on your ground, and
you shall give me a written promise to work for the same

38 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

number of hours on mine, whenever I need your help, and
you are able to give it."

Suppose the disabled man's sickness to continue, and
that under various circumstances, for several years, requir-
ing the help of the other, he on each occasion gave a
written pledge to work, as soon as he was able, at his com-
panion's orders, for the same number of Jiours which the
other had given up to him. What will the positions of the
two men be when the invalid is able to resume work?

Consider as a "Polis," or state, they will be poorer
than they would have been otherwise : poorer by the with-
drawal of what the sick man's labor would have produced
in the interval. His friend may perhaps have toiled with
an energy quickened by the enlarged need, but in the end
his own land and property must have suffered by the with-
drawal of so much of his time and thought from them ; and
the united property of the two men will be certainly less
than it would have been if both had remained in health and
activity.

But the relations in which they stand to each other are
also widely altered. The sick man has not only pledged
his labor for some years, but will probably have exhausted
his own share of the accumulated stores, and will be in
consequence for some time dependent on the other for food,
which he can only "pay" or reward him for by yet more
deeply pledging his own labor.

Supposing the written promises to be held entirely valid
(among civilized nations their validity is secured by legal
measures *); the person who had hitherto worked for both

* The disputes which exist respecting the real nature of money
arise more from the disputants examining its functions on different
sides, than frowi any real dissent in their opinions. All money,
properly so called, is an acknowledgment of debt ; but as such, it
may either be considered to represent the labor and property of the

" UNTO THIS LAST." 3^

might now, if he chose, rest altogether, and pass his time
in idleness, not only forcing his companion to redeem all
the engagements he had already entered into, but exacting
from him pledges for further labor, to an arbitrary amount,
for what food he had to advance to him.

There might not, from first to last, be the least illegality
(in the ordinary sense of the word) in the arrangement ;
but if a stranger arrived on the coast at this advanced
epoch of their political economy, he would find one man
commercially Rich; the other commercially Poor. He
would see, perhaps with no small surprise, one passing his
days in idleness; the other laboring for both, and living
sparely, in the hope of recovering his independence, at
some distant period.

This is, of course, an example of one only out of n\any
ways in which inequality of possession may be established
between different persons, giving rise to the mercantile
forms of Riches and Poverty. In the instance before us,
one of the men might from the first have deliberately
chosen to be idle, and to put his life in pawn for present
ease ; or he might have mismanaged his land, and been
compelled to have recourse to his neighbor for food and
help, pledging his future labor for it. But what I want the
reader to note especially is the fact, common to a large
number of typical cases of this kind, that the establishme nt
of t he mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon /

creditor, or the idleness and penury of the debtor. The intricacy
of the question has been much increased by the (hitherto necessary)
use of marketable commodities, such as gold, silver, salt, shells, &c.,
to give intrinsic value or security to currency; but the final and
best definition of money is that it is a documentary promise ratified
and guaranteed by the nation to_give-fitiind_AjCfirtaJa.quantitejC)f
ljiaLi}Ii,..<teHandL_ A man's labor for a day is a better standardi
of value than a measure of any produce, because no produce everl
maintains a consistent rate of productibility.

40 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

labQC-SigJOifies ajjoliticai-jdiminution of the reaL wealth
which c onsists in subsitantial possessions.

Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary
course of affairs of trade. Suppose that three men, instead
of two, formed the little isolated republic, and found them-
selves obliged to separate in order to farm different pieces
of land at some distance from each other along the coast ;
each estate furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each
more or less in need of the material raised on the other.
Suppose that the third man, in order to save the time of all
three, undertakes simply to superintend the transference
of commodities from one farm to -the other ; on condition
of receiving some sufficiently remunerative share of every
parcel of goods conveyed, or of some other parcel received
in exchange for it.

If this carrier or messenger always brings to each estate,
from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at the right time,
the operations of the two farmers will go on prosperously,
and the largest possible result in produce, or wealth, will
be attained by the little community. But suppose no
intercourse between the land owners is possible, except
through the traveling agent; and that, after a time, this
agent, watching the course of each man's agriculture, keeps
back the articles with which he has been entrusted, until
there comes a period of extreme necessity for them, on one
side or other, and then exacts in exchange for them all
that the distressed farmer can spare of other kinds of pro-
duce ; it is easy to see that by ingeniously watching his
opportunities, he might possess himself regularly of the
greater part of the superfluous produce of the two estates,
and at last, in some year of severest trial or scarcity, pur-
chase both for himself, and maintain the former proprietors
thenceforward as his laborers or his servants.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 41

This would be a case of commercial wealth acquired on
the exactest principles of modern political economy. But
more distinctly even than in the former instance, it is
manifest in this that the wealth of the State, or of the three
men considered as a society, is collectively less than it would
have been had the merchant been content with juster profit.
The operations of the two agriculturists have been cramped
to the utmost ; and the continual limitations of the supply
of things they wanted at critical times, together with the
failure of courage consequent on the prolongation of a
struggle for mere existence, without any sense of permanent
gain, must have seriously diminished the effective results
of their labor ; and the stores finally accumulated in the
merchant's hands will not in anywise be of equivalent value
to those which, had his dealings been honest, would have
filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his own.

The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the
advantage, but even the quantity, of national wealth,
resolves itself finally into one of abstract justice. It is
impossible to conclude, of any given mass of acquired
wealth, merely by the fact of its existence, whether it signifies
good or evil to the nation in the midst of which it exists.
Its real value depends on the moral sign attached to it,
just as sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends
on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumula-
tion of commercial wealth may be indicative, on the one
hand, of faithful industries, progressive energies, and pro-
ductive ingenuities ; or, on the other, it may be indicative
of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some
treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored
harvest with untimely rain ; and some gold is brighter in
sunshine than it is in substance.

And these are not, observe, merely moral or pathetic

42 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

attributes of riches, which the seeker of riches may, if he
chooses, despise; they are literally and sternly, material
attributes of riches, depreciating or exalting, incalculably,
the monetary signification of the sum in question. One
mass of money is the outcome of action which has created, —
another, of action which has annihilated, — ten times as much
in the gathering of it ; such and such strong hands have
been paralyzed, as if they had been numbed by nightshade :
so many strong men's courage broken, so many productive
operations hindered ; this and the other false direction
given to labor, and lying image of prosperity set up, on
Dura plains dug into seven-times-heated -furnaces. That
which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded
index of far-reaching ruin ; a wrecker's handful of coin
gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an
argosy ; a camp-follower's bundle of rags unwrapped firom
the breasts of goodly soldiers dead ; the purchase-pieces
of potter's fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen
and the stranger.

And therefore, the idea that directions can be given for
the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of
its moral sources, or that any general and technical law of
purchase and gain can be set down for national practice,
is perhaps the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled
men through their vices. So far as I know, there is not in
history record of anything so disgraceful to the human
intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text, "Buy
in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," represents,
or under any circumstances could represent, an available
principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest
market?— yes ; but what made your market cheap? Char-
coal may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire,
and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earth-

"UNTO THIS LAST." 43

quake; but fire and earthquake may not, therefore, be
national benefits. Sell in the dearest? — yes, truly; but
what made your market dear? You sold your bread well
to-day ; was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for
it, and will never need bread more, or to a rich man who
to-morrow will buy your farm over your head; or to a
soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you have
put your fortune?

None of these things you can know. One thing only
you can know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is a
just and faithful one, which is all you need concern your-
self about respecting it ; sure thus to have done your own
part in bringing about ultimately- in the world a state of
things which will not issue in pillage or in death. And
thus every question concerning these things merges itself
ultimately in the great question of justice, which, the ground
being thus far cleared for it, I will enter upon in the next
paper, leaving only, in this, three final points for the reader's
consideration.

It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of
money consists in its having power over human beings ;
that, without this power, large material possessions are
useless, and to any person possessing such power, compar-
atively unnecessary. But power over human beings is
attainable by other means than by money. As I said a
few pages back, the money power is always imperfect and
doubtful ; there are many things which cannot be retained
by it. Many joys may be given to men which cannot be
bought for gold, and many fidelities found in them which
cannot be rewarded with it.

Trite enough, — the reader thinks. Yes : but it is not
so trite, — I wish it were, — ^that in this moral power, quite
inscrutable and immeasurable though it be, there is a mone-

44 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

tary value just as real as that represented by more ponder-
ous currencies. A man's hand may be full of invisible
gold, and the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than
another's with a shower of bullion. This invisible gold,
also, does not necessarily diminish in spending. Political
economists will do well some day to take heed of it, though
they cannot take measure.

But further. Since the essence of wealth consists in its
authority over men, if the apparent or nominal wealth fail
in this power, it fails in essence ; in fact, ceases to be wealth
at all. It does not appear lately in England, that our
authority over men is absolute. The servants show some
disposition to rush riotously upstairs, under an impression
that their wages are not regularly paid. We should augur
ill of any gentleman's property to whom this happened
every other day in his drawing-room.

So also, the power of our wealth seems limited as respects
the comfcrt of the servants, no less than their quietude.
The persons in the kitchen appear to be ill-dressed, squalid,
half-starved. One cannot help imagining that the riches
of the establishment must be of a very theoretical and
documentary character.

Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power
over men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more
in number the persons are over whom it has power, the
greater the wealth? Perhaps it may even appear after
some consideration, that the persons themselves are the
wealth — that these pieces of gold with which we are in the
habit of guiding them, are, in fact, nothing more than a
kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering
and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the
creatures ; but that if these same living creatures could be
guided without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in

"UNTO THIS LAST." 45

their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more
valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered
that the true veins of wealth are purple — and not in Rock,
but in Flesh — perhaps even that the final outcome and
consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many
as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted
human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has rather
a tendency the other way ; — most political economists
appearing to consider multitudes of human creatures not
conducive to wealth, or at best conducive to it only by
remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested state of being.
Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question,
which I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among
national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may
not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay,
in some far away and yet undreamed-of hour, I can even
imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive
wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first
arose ; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant
of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger,
and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian
mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures
of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons,
saying,—

"These are my Jewels."

46 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSK IN.

ESSAY III.
QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.

SOME centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant
largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and
reported to have made one of the largest fortunes of
his time (held also in repute for much practical sagacity),
left among his ledgers some general maxims concerning
wealth, which have bfeen preserved, strangely enough, even
to our own days. They were held in considerable respect
by the most active traders of the middle ages, especially by
the Venetians, who even went so far in their admiration as
to place a statue of the old Jew on the angle of one of their
principal public buildings. Of late years these writings
have fallen into disrepute, being opposed in every particular
to the spirit of modern commerce. Nevertheless I shall
reproduce a passage or two from them here, partly because
they may interest the reader by their novelty ; and chiefly
because they will show him that it is possible for a very
practical and acquisitive tradesman to hold, through a not
unsuccessful career, that principle of distinction between
well-gotten and ill-gotten wealth, which, partially insisted
on in my last paper, it must be our work more completely
to examine in this.

He says, for instance, in one place : ' ' The getting of
treasure by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of
them that seek death : ' ' adding in another, with the same
meaning (he has a curious way of doubling his sayings):
"Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but justice

"UNTO THIS last:

47

delivers from death." Both these passages are notable for
their assertion of death as the only real issue and sum of
attainment by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we read,
instead of "lying tongue," "lying label, title, pretense, or
advertisement," we shall more clearly perceive the bearing
of the words on modern business. The seeking of death is
a grand expression of the true course of men's toil in such
business. We usually speak as if death pursued us, and we
fled from him ; but that is only so in rare instances.
Ordinarily, he masks himself — makes himself beautiful —
all-glorious; not like the King's daughter, all-glorious
within, but outwardly : his clothing of wrought gold. We
pursue him frantically all our days, he flying or hiding from
us. Our crowning success at threescore and ten is utterly
and perfectly to seize, and hold him in his eternal integrity
— robeS) ashes, and sting.

Again: the merchant says, "He that oppresseth the
poor to increase his riches, shall surely come to want."
And again, more strongly : ' ' Rob not the poor because he
is poor; neither oppress the afflicted in the place of
business. For God shall spoil the soul of those' that spoiled
them."

This "robbing the poor because he is poor," is
especially the mercantile form of theft, consisting in taking
advantage of a man's necessities in order to obtain his
labor or property at a reduced price. The ordinary high-
wayman's opposite form of robbery — of the rich, because
he is rich — does not appear to occur so often to the old
merchant's mind; probably because, being less profitable
and more dangerous than the robbery of the poor, it is
rarely practiced by persons of discretion.

But the two most remarkable passages in their deep
general significance are the following: —

48 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

"The rich and the poor have met. God is their maker.
' ' The rich and the poor have met. God is their light."
They "have met:" more literally, have stood in each
other's way (obviaverunf). That is to say, as long as the
world lasts, the action and counteraction of wealth and
poverty, the meeting, face to face, of rich and poor, is just
as appointed and necessary a law of that world as the flow
of stream to sea, or the interchange of power among the
electric clouds: — "God is their maker." But, also, this
action may be either gentle and just, or convulsive and
destructive : it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by
lapse of serviceable wave ; — in blackness of thunderstroke,
or continual force of vital fire, soft, and shapeable into love-
syllables from far away. And which of these it shall be
depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is their
light ; that in the mystery of human life there is no other
light than this by which they can see each other's faces, ''
and live ; — ^light, which is called in another of the books
among which the merchant's maxims have been preserved,
the "sun of justice,"* of which it is promised that it shall
rise at last with "healing" (health -giving or helping,
making whole or setting at one) in its wings. For truly

*More accurately, Sun of Justness; but instead of the harsh
word "Justness," the old English "Righteousness" being com-
monly employed, has, by gethng confused with "godliness;" or
attracting about it various vague and broken meanings, prevented
most persons from receiving the force of the passages in which it
occurs. The word " righteousness " properly refers to the justice
of rule, or right, as distinguished from " equity," which refers to the
justice of balance. More broadly. Righteousness is King's justice ;
and Equity, Judge's justice ; the King guiding or ruling all, the
Judge dividing or discerning between opposites (therefore, the
double question, "Man, who made me a ruler — *«a<rT^r — or a
divider— ^woT^f— over you?") Thus, with respect to the Justice of
Choice (selection, the feebler -andjjassive justice), we have from
lego,— lex, legalJlS,- and loyal ;-anffiw!tfr reject to the Justice of
Rule (direction, the stronger and active justice), we have from rego,
— rex, regal, ror,'M!d'royal. .'•'.■

"UNTO THIS LAST." ^g

this healing is only possible by means of justice ; no love,
no faith, no hope will do it ; men will be unwisely fond —
vainly faithful, unless primarily they are just; and the
mistake of the best men through generation after genera-
tion, has been that great one of thinking to help the poor
by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope,
and by every other means, emollient or consolatory, except
the one thing which God orders for them, justice. But this
justice, with its accompanying holiness or helpfulness,
being even by the best men denied in its trial time, is by
the mass of men hated wherever it appears : so that, when
the choice was one day fairly put to them, they denied the
Helpfiil One and the Just;* and desired a murderer,
sedition-raiser, and robber, to be granted to them ; — the
murderer instead of the Lord of Life, the sedition-raiser
instead of the Prince of Peace, and the robber instead of the
Just Judge of all the world.

I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea
as a partial image of the action of wealth. In one respect
it is not a partial, but a perfect image. The popular
economist thinks himself wise in having discovered that
wealth, or the forms of property in general, must go where
they are required; that where demand is, supply must
follow. He further declares that this course of demand and
supply cannot be forbidden by human laws. Precisely in
the same sense, and with the same certainty, the waters of
the world go where they are required. Where the land
falls, the water flows. The course neither of clouds nor
rivers can be forbidden by human will. But the disposition
and administration of them can be altered by human fore-
thought. Whether the stream shall be a curse or a blessing,

* In, another" place written, with the same meaning, "Just, and
having salvation."

50 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

depends upon man's labor, and administrating intelligence.
For centuries after centuries, great districts of the world,
rich in soil, and fevored in climate, have lain desert under
the rage of their own rivers ; not only desert, but plague-
struck. The stream which, rightly directed, would have
flowed in soft irrigation from field to field — would have
purified the air, given food to man and beast, and carried
their burdens for them on its bosom — now overwhelms the
plain, and poisons the wind ; its breath pestilence, and its
work famine. In like manner this wealth "goes where it
is required." No human laws can withstand its flow. They
can only guide it : but this, the leading trench and limiting
mound can do so thoroughly, that it shall become water of
life — the riches of the hand of wisdom ; * or, on the con-
trary, by leaving it to its own lawless flow, they may make
it, what it has been too often, the last and deadliest of
national plagues : water of Marah — the water which feeds
the roots of all evil.

The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint is
curiously overlooked in the ordinary political economist's
definition of his own "science." He calls it, shortly, the
"science of getting rich." But there are many sciences, as
well as many arts, of getting rich. Poisoning people of
large estates, was one employed largely in the middle
ages; adulteration of food of people of small estates,
is one employed largely now. The ancient and honorable
Highland method of blackmail ; the more modern and
less honorable system of obtaining goods on credit, and
the other variously improved methods of appropriation —
which, in major and minor scales of industry, down to
the most artistic pocket-picking, we owe to recent genius,

* " Length of days in her right hand ; in her left, riches and
honor."

'UNTO THIS LAST:^

51

— ^all come under the general head of sciences, or arts, of
getting rich.

So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling his
science the science par excellence of getting rich, must
attach some pecuUar ideas of limitation to its character. I
hope I do not misrepresent him, by assuming that he
means his science to be the science of ' ' getting rich by
legal or just means." In this definition, is the word "just,"
or "legal," finally to stand? For it is possible among
certain nations, or under certain rulers, or by help of
certain advocates, that proceedings may be legal which are
by no means just. If, therefore, we leave at last only the
word "just" in that place of our definition, the insertion
of this solitary and small word will make a notable differ-
ence in the grammar of our science. For then it will follow
that, in order to grow rich scientifically, we must grow
rich justly ; and, therefore, know what is just ; so that our
economy will no longer depend merely on prudence, but
on jurisprudence — and that of divine, not human law.
Which prudence is indeed of no mean order, holding itself,
as it were, high in the air of heaven, and gazing forever on
the light of the sun of justice ; hence the souls which have
excelled in it are represented by Dante as stars forming in
heaven forever the figure of the eye of an eagle : they hav-
ing been in life the discerners of light from darkness ; or to
the whole human race, as the light of the body, which 13
the eye ; while those souls which form the wings of the bird
(giving power and dominion to justice, "healing in its
wings") trace also in light the inscription in heaven:

"DILIGITE JUSTITIAM QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM." "Ye who

judge the earth, give" (not, observe, merely love, but)
"diligent love to justice : " the love which seeks diligently,
that is to say, choosingly, and by preference to all things

52 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

else. Which judging or doing judgment in the earth is,
according to their capacity and position, required, not of
judges only, nor of rulers only, but of all men : * a truth
sorrowfully lost sight of even by those who are ready
enough to apply to themselves passages in which Christian
men are spoken of as called to be " saints ' ' {i. e. to helpful
or healing functions); and "chosen to be kings" {i.e. to
knowing or directing functions); the true meaning of these
titles having been long lost through the pretences of
unhelpful and unable persons to saintly and kingly char-
acter; also through the once popular idea that both the
sanctity and royalty are to consist in wearing long robes
and high crowns, instead of in mercy and judgment;
whereas all true sanctity is saving power, as all true royalty
is ruling power ; and injustice is part and parcel of the
denial of such power, which "makes men as the creeping
things, as the fishes of the sea, that have no ruler over
them."t

Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable than
absolute truth ; but the righteous man is distinguished from
the unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the
true man from the false by his desire and hope of truth.
And though absolute justice be unattainable, as much

* I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly amused
by the statement in the first of these papers that a lawyer's function
was to do justice. I do not intend it for a jest ; nevertheless it will
be seen that in the above passage neither the determination nor
doing of justice are contemplated as functions wholly peculiar to
the lawyer. Possibly, the more our standing armies, whether of
soldiers, pastors, or legislators (the generic term "pastor" includ-
ing all teachers, and the generic term "lawyer" including makers
as well as interpreters of law), can be superseded by the force of
national -heroism, wisdom, and honesty, the better it may be for
the nation.

t It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and wolves,
to live by the laws of demand and supply ; but the distinction of
humanity, to live by those of right.

' UNTO THIS LAST." 53

justice as we need for all practical use is attainable by all
those who make it their aim.

We have to examine, then, in the subject before us,
what are the laws of justice respecting payment of labor —
no small part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence.

I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment
to its simplest or radical terms. In those terms its nature,
and the conditions of justice respecting it, can be best
ascertained.

Money payment, as there stated, consists radically in a
promise to some person working for us, that for the time
and labor he spends in our service to-day we will give or
procure equivalent time and labor in his service at any
fiiture time when he may demand it.*

If we promise to give him less labor than he has given
us, we under-pay him. If we promise to give him more
labor than he has given us, we over-pay him. In practice,
according to the laws of demand and supply, when two
men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants to
have it done, the two men underbid each other for it ; and
the one who gets it to do, is under-paid. But when two
men want the work done, and there is only one man ready
to do it, the two men who want it done over-bid each
other, and the workman is over-paid.

I will examine these two points of injustice in succes-

* It might appear at first thatthemarket price of labor expressed
such an exchange : but this is a fallacy, for the market price is the
momentary price of the kind of labor required, but the just price is
its equivalent of the productive labor of mankind. This difference
will be analyzed in its place. It must be noted also that I speak
here only of the {exchangeable value of labor, not of that of com-
modities. The exchangeable value of a commodity is that of the
labor required to produce it, multiplied into the force of the
demand for it. If the value of the labor =;r and the force of the
demand =j', the exchangeable value of the commodity is xy, in
which if either «'=o, or^=o, xy^^o.

54 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

sion ; but first I wish the reader clearly to understand the
central principle, lying between the two, of right or just
payment.

When we ask a service of any man, he may either give
it us freely, or demand payment for it. Respecting free
gift of service, there is no question at present, that being a
matter of affection — not of traffic. But if he demand pay-
ment for it, and we wish to treat him with absolute equity,
it is evident that this equity can only consist in giving time
for time, strength for strength, and skill for skill. If a
man works an hour for us, and we only promise to work
half-ap-hour for him in return, we obtain an unjust advan-
tage. If, on the contrary, we promise to work an hour
and a half for him in return, he has an unjust advantage.
The justice consists in absolute exchange ; or, if there be
any respect to the stations of the parties, it will not be in
favor of the employer; there is certainly no equitable reason
in a man's being poor, that if he give me a pound of bread
to-day, I should return him less than a pound of bread to-
morrow ; or any equitable reason in a man's being unedu-
cated, that if he uses a certain quantity of skill and
knowledge in my service, I should use a less quantity of
skill and knowledge in his. Perhaps, ultimately, it may
appear desirable, or, to say the least, gracious, that I should
give in return somewhat more than I received. But at
present, we are concerned on the law of justice only, which
is that of perfect and accurate exchange; — one circumstance
only interfering with the simplicity of this radical idea of
just payment — that inasmuch as labor (rightly directed) is
fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or "interest," as it is
called) of the labor first given, or "advanced," ought to
be taken into account, and balanced by an additional
quantity of labor in the subsequent repayment. Supposing

' UNTO THIS LAST."

55

the repayment to take place at the end of a year, or of any
other given time, 'this calculation could be approximately
made ; but as money (that is to say, cash) payment involves
no reference to time (it being optional with the person
paid to spend what he receives at once or after any number
of years), we can only assume, generally, that some slight
advantage must in equity be allowed to the person who
advances the labor, so that the typical form of bargain will
be : If you give me an hour to-day, I will give you an hour
and five minutes on demand. If you give me a pound of
bread to-day, I will give you seventeen ounces on demand,
and so on. All that it is necessary for the reader to note
is, that the amount returned is at least in equity not to be
less than the amount given.

The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects
the laborer, is that they will consist in a sum of money
which will at any time procure for him at least as much
labor as he has given, rather more than less. And this
equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent
of any reference to the number of men who are willing to
do the work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty
smiths, or twenty thousand smiths, may be ready to forge
it ; their number does not in one atom's weight affect the
question of the equitable payment of the one who does
forge it. It costs him a quarter of an hour of his life, and
so much skill and strength of arm to make that horseshoe
for me. Then at some future time I am bound in equity
to give a quarter of an hour, and some minutes more, of
my life (or of some other person's at my disposal), and
also as much strength of arm and skill, and a litde more,
in making or doing what the smith may have need of.

Such being the abstract theory of just remunerative
payment, its application is practically modified by the fact

56 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

that the order for labor, given in payment, is general, while
labor received is special. The current coin or document is
practically an order on the nation for so much work of any
kind; and this universal applicability to immediate need
renders it so much more valuable than special labor can be,
that an order for a less quantity of this general toil will
always be accepted as a just equivalent for a greater
quantity of special toil. Any given craftsman will always
be willing to give an hour of his own work in order to
receive command over half-an-hour, or even much less, of
national work. This source of uncertainty, together with
the difficulty of determining the monetary value of skill,*

* Under the term "skill " I mean to include the united force of
experience, intellect, and passion in their operation on manual labor :
and under the teriti " passion," to include the entire range and
agency of the moral feelings ; from the simple' patience and gentle-
ness of mind which will give continuity and fineness to the touch,
or enable one person to work without fatigue, and with good effect,
twice as long as another, up-to the qualities of character which
render science possible — (the retardation of science bv envy is one
of the most tremendous losses in the economy of iJie present
century)— and to the incommunicable emotion* and imagination
which are the first and mightiest sources of all value in art.

It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have
perceived, if not the moral, at least the passionate element, to be an
inextricable quantity in every calculation. I cannot conceive, for
instance, how it was possible that Mr. Mill should have followed the
true clue so far as to write, — "No limit can be set to the import-
ance— even, in a purely productive and material point of view— of
mere thought," without seeing that' it was logically nfecessary to add
also, "and of mere feeling." And this the more, because in his
first definition of labor he mcludes in the idea of it " all feelings of
a disagreeable kind connected with the employment of one's
thoughts in a particnlar occupation." True; but why^ not also,
" feelings of an agreeable kind ? " It can hardly be supposed that
the feehngs which retard labor are more essentially a part of the
labor than those which accelerate it. The first are paid for as pain,
the second as power. The workman is merely indemnified for the
first ; but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable value
of the work, and materially increase its actual quantity.

" Fritz is with us. He is worth fifty thousand men." Truly, a
large addition to the material force ;— consisting, however, be it

"UNTO THIS LAST." 57

renders the ascertainment (even approximate) of the proper
wages of any given labor in terms of a currency, matter of
considerable complexity. But they do not affect the
principle of exchange. The worth of the work may not
be easily known ; but it has a worth, just as fixed and real
as the specific gravity of a substance, though such specific
gravity may not be easily ascertainable when the substance
is united with many others. Nor is there any difficulty or
chance in determining it as in determining the ordinary
maxima and minima of vulgar political economy. There
are few bargains in which the buyer can ascertain with
anything like precision that the seller would have taken no
less ; — or the seller acquire more than a comfortable faith
that the purchaser would have given no more. This impos-
sibility of precise knowledge prevents neither from striving
to attain the desired point of greatest vexation and injury
to the other, nor from accepting it for a scientific principle
that he is to buy for the least and sell for the most possible,
though what the real least or most may be he cannot tell.
In like manner, a just person lays it down for a scientific
principle that he is to pay a just price, and, without being
able precisely to ascertain the limits of such a price, will
nevertheless strive to attain the closest possible approxima-
tion to them. A practically serviceable approximation he
can obtain. It is easier to determine scientifically what a
man ought to have for his work, than what his necessities
will compel him to take for it. His necessities can only be
ascertained by empirical, but his due by analytical investiga-

observed, not more in operations carried on in Fritz's head, than
in operations carried on m his armies' heart. " No limit can be set
to the importance of >wfr^ thought." Perhaps not! Nay, suppose
some day it should turn out that "mere" thought was in itself a
recommendable object of production, and that all Material production
was only a step toward -this more precious Immaterial one?

58 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

tion. In the one case, you try your answer to the sum Hke
a puzzled schoolboy — till you find one that fits; in the
other, you bring out your result within certain limits, by
process of calculation.

Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given
labor to have been ascertained, let us examine the first
results of just and unjust payment, when in favor of the
purchaser or employer ; i. e. when two men are ready to
do the work, and only one wants to have it done.

The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each
other till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms.
Let us assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work
at half its just price.

The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the
other. The first or apparent result is, therefore, that one
of the two men is left out of employ, or to starvation, just
as definitely as by the just procedure of giving fair price' to
the best workman. The various writers who endeavored
to invalidate the positions of my first paper never saw this,
and assumed that the unjust hirer employed both. He
employs both no more than the just hirer. The only differ-
ence (in the outset) is that the just man pays sufficiently, the
unjust man insufficiently, for the labor of the single person
employed.

I say, "in the outset;" for this first or apparent differ-
ence is not the actual difference. By the unjust procedure,
half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of the
employer. This enables him to hire another man at the
same unjust rate, on some other kind of work ; and the
final result is that he has two men working for him at half
price, and two are out of employ.

By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece
of work goes in the hands of the man who does it. No

"UNTO THIS last:

59

surplus being left in the employer's hands, he cannot hire
another man for another piece of labor. But by precisely
so much as his power is diminished, the hired workman's
power is increased ; that is to say, by the additional half
of the price he has received ; which additional half he has
the power of using to employ another man in his service.
I will suppose, for the moment, the least favorable, though
quite probable, case — that, though justly treated himself, he
yet will act unjustly to his subordinate ; and hire at half-price,
if he can. The final result will then be, that one man
works for the employer, at just price ; one for the work-
man, at half-price ; and two, as in the first case, are still out
of employ. These two, as I said before, are out of employ
in both cases. The difference between the just and unjust
procedure does not lie in the number of men hired, but in
the price paid to them, and the persons by whom it is paid.
The essential difference, that which I want the reader to
see clearly, is, that in the unjust case, two men work for
one, the first hirer. In the just case, one man works for
the first hirer, one for the person hired, and so on, down
or up through the various grades of service ; the influence
being carried forward by justice, and arrested by injustice.
The universal and constant action of justice in this matter
is, therefore, to diminish the power of wealth, in the hands
of one individual, over masses of men, and to distribute it
through a chain of men. The actual power exerted by the
wealth is the same in both cases ; but by injustice it is put
all in one man's hands, so that he directs at once and with
equal force the labor of a circle of men about him ; by the
just procedure, he is permitted to touch the nearest only,
through whom, with diminished force, modified by new
minds, the energy of the wealth passes on to others, and so
till it exhausts itself.

6o THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

The immediate operation of justice in this respect is,
therefore, to diminish the power of wealth, first in acqui-
sition of luxury, and, secondly, in exercise of moral influence.
The employer cannot concentrate so multitudinous labor
on his own interests, nor can he subdue so multitudinous
mind to his own will. But the secondary operation of
justice is not less important. The insufficient payment of
the group of men working for one, places each under a
maximum of difficulty in rising above his position. The
tendency of the system is to check advancement. But the
sufficient or just payment, distributed through a descending
series of offices or grades of labor,* gives each subordinated
person fair and sufficient means of rising in the social scale,
if he chooses to use them ; and thus not only diminishes
the immediate power of wealth, but removes the worst
disabilities of poverty.

*I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the
equivocations of the writers, who sought to obscure the instances

fiven of regelated labor in the first of these papers, by confusing
inds, ranks, and quantities of labor with its qualities. I never said
that a colonel should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop
the same pay as a curate. Neither did I say that more work ought
to be paid as less work (so that the curate of a parish of two thou-
sand souls should have no more than the curate of a parisli of five
hundred). But I said that, so far as you employ it at all, bad work
should be paid no less than good work ; as a bad clergyman yet
takes his tithes, a bad physician takes his fee, and a bad lawyer his
costs. And this, as will be further shown in the conclusion, \ said,
and say, partly because the best work never was nor ever will be,
done , for money at all; but chiefly because,,the moment people
know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to
discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious
writer in, the Scotsman asks me if I should like any common scrib-
bler to be paid by Messrs. Smith, Elder and ,Co. as their good
authors are. I should, if they employed him — but would seriously
•necommend them, for the scnbbler's sake, as well as their own, «o/
to employ him. The quantity of its money which the country at
present invests in scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, econom-
ically spent ; and eve|i the highly ingenious person to whom this
question occurred, might perhaps have been more beneficially
employed than in printmg it.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 6i

It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny of the
laborer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests
may sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch
from it. For instance, considerable agitation is often caused
in the minds of the lower classes when they discover the
share which they nominally, and, to all appearance, actually,
pay out of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or
forty per cent.). This sounds very grievous ; but in reality
the laborer does not pay it, but his employer. If the work-
man had not to pay it, his wages would be less by just that
sum : competition would still reduce them to the lowest
rate at which life was possible; Similarly the lower orders
agitated for the repeal of the corn laws,* thinking they

* I have to acknowledge an interesting communication on the
subject of free-trade from Paisley (for a short letter from "A Well-
wisher" at , my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish

writer will, I fear, be disagreeably surprised to hear, that^ am, and
always have been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free-trader.
Seven years ago, speaking of the various signs of infancy in the
European mma {Stones of Fenice, vol. iii., p. i68), I wrote : "The
first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English
parliament only a few months ago, and in its free-trade measures,
and are still so little understood by the million, that no nation dares
to abolish its custom-houses."

It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reci-
procity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut;
every wise nation will throw its own open. It is not the opening
them, but a sudden, inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental
manner of opening them, which does the harm. If you have been
protecting a manufacture for long series of years, you must not
take protection off in a moment, so as to throw every one of its
operatives at once out of employ, any more than you must take all
its wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold weather, though the
cumber of uiem may have been radically injuring its health. Little
by little, you must restore it to freedom and to air.

Most people's minds are in curious confusion on the subject of
free trade, because they suppose it to imply enlarged competition.
" Protection " (among various other mischievous functions) endeav-
ors to enable one country to compete with another in the produc-
tion of an article at a disadvantage. When trade is entirely free,
no country can be competed with in the articles for the production
of which it is naturally calculated ; nor can it compete with any

62 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

would be better off if bread were cheaper ; never perceiving
that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper, wages
would permanently fall in precisely that proportion. The
corn laws were rightly repealed; not, however, because
they directly oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly
oppressed them in causing a large quantity of their labor
to be consumed unproductively. So also unnecessary
taxation oppresses them, through destruction of capital,
but the destiny of the poor depends primarily always on
this one question of dueness of wages. Their distress
(irrespectively of that caused by sloth, minor error, or
crime) arises on the grand scale from the two reacting
forces of competition and oppression. There is not yet,
nor will yet for ages be, any real over-population in the
world; but a local over-population, or, more accurately,
a degree of population locally unmanageable under existing
circumstances for want of forethought and sufficient machin-
ery, necessarily shows itself by pressure of competition;
and the taking advantage of this competition by the pur-
chaser to obtain their labor unjustly cheap, consummates
at once their suffering and his own ; for in this (as I believe
in every other kind of slavery) the oppressor suffers at last
more than the oppressed, and those magnificent lines of
Pope, even in all their force, fall short of the truth —

" Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,
Each does but hate his neighbor as himself :
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides
The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides."

other in the production of articles for which it is not naturally cal-
culated. Tuscany, for instance, cannot compete with England in
steel, nor England with Tuscany in oil. They must exchange
their steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank and free
as honesty and the sea-winds can make it. Competition, indeed,
arises at first, and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in
any given manufacture possible to both; this point once ascertained,
competition is at an end.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 63

, The collateral and reversionary operations of justice in
this matter I shall examine hereafter (it being needful first
to define the nature of value) ; proceeding then to consider
within what practical terms a juster system may be estab-
lished ; and ultimately the vexed question of the destinies
of the unemployed workmen.* Lest, however, the reader
should be alarmed at some of the issues to which our inves-
tigations seem to be tending, as if in their bearing against
the power of wealth they had something in common with
those of Socialism, I wish him to know, in accurate terms,
one or two of the main points which I have in view.

Whether Socialism has made more progress among the
army and navy (where payment is made on my principles),
or among the manufacturing operatives (who are paid on
my opponents' principles), I leave it to those opponents to

* I should be glad if the reader would first clear the ground for
himself so far as to determine whether the difficulty lies in getting
tlie work or getting the pay for it. Does he consider occupation
itself to be an expensive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which
too little is to be found in the world? or is it rather that, while in
the enjoyment even of the most athletic delight, men must never-
theless be maintaihed, and this maintenance is not always forth-
coming? We must be clear on this head before going further, as
most people are loosely in the habit of talking of the difficulty of
" finding employment." Is it employment that we want to find, or
support during employment? Is it idleness we wish to put an end
to, or hunger? We have to take up both questions in succession,
only not both at the same time. ■ No doubt that work is a luxury,
and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a neces-
sity ; no man can retain either health of mind or body without it.
So profoundly do I feel this, that, as will be seen in the sequel, one
of the principal objects I would recommend to benevolent and
practical persons, is to induce rich people to seek for a larger
quantity of this luxury than they at present possess. Nevertheless,
it appears by experience that even this healthiest of pleasures may
be indulged in to excess, and that human beings are just as liable
to surfeit of labor as to surfeit of meat ; so that, as on the one hand,
it may be charitable to provide, for some people, lighter dinner,
and more work,- -for others it may be equally expedient to provide
lighter work, and more dinner.

64 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

ascertain and declare. Whatever their conclusion may be,
I think it necessary to answer for myself only this : that if
there be any one point insisted on throughout my works
more frequently than another, that one point is the impos-
sibility of Equality. My continual aim has been to show
the eternal superiority of some men to others, sometimes
even of one man to all others ; and to show also the advis-
ability of appointing more such persons or person to guide,
to lead, or on occasion even to compel and subdue, their
inferiors, according to their own better knowledge and
wiser will. My principles of Political Economy were all
involved in a single phrase spoken three years ago at
Manchester : "Soldiers of the Plowshare as well as soldiers,
of the Sword:" and they were all summed in a single
sentence in the last volume of Modern Painters — "Govern-
ment and cooperation are in all things the Laws of Life ;
Anarchy and competition the Laws of Death."

And with respect to the mode in which these general
principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am
I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of
these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension
in its range ; and whereas it has long been known and
declared that the poor have no right to the property of the'
rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich
have no right to the property of the poor.

But that the working of the system which I have
undertaken to develop would jn many ways shorten the
apparent and direct, though not the unseen and collateral,
power, both of wealth, as the Lady of Pleasure, and of
capital as the Lord of Toil, I do not deny : on the contrary,
I affirm it in all joyfulness ; knowing that the attraction of
riches is already too strong, as their authority is already
too weighty, for the reason of mankind. I said in my last

" UNTO THIS LAST." 65

paper that nothing in history had ever been so disgraceful
to human intellect as the acceptance among us of the
common doctrines of political economy as a science. I
have many grounds for saying this, but one of the chief
may be given in few words! I know no previous instance
in history of a nation's establishing a systematic disobe-
dience to the first principles of its professed religion. The
writings which we (verbally) esteem as divine, not only
denounce the love of money as the source of all. evil, and
as an idolatry abhorred of the Deity, but declare mammon
service to be the accurate and irreconcilable opposite of
God's, service : and, whenever they speak of riches absolute,
and poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich, and blessing
to the poor. Whereupon we forthwith investigate a science
of becoming rich, as the shortest road to national prosperity.

"Tai Cristian danner^ I'Etiope,
Quando si partiranno i due coUegi,

L'UNO IN ETERNO RICCO, E l'ALTRO INOPE."

66 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

ESSAY IV.
AD VALOREM.

IN the last paper we saw that just payment of labor con-
sisted in a sum of money which would approximately

obtain equivalent labor at a future time : we have now
to examine the means of obtaining such equivalence. Which
question involves the definition of Value, Wealth, Price,
and Produce.

None of these terms are yet defirted so as to be
understood by the public. But the last, Produce, which
one might have thought the clearest of all, is, in use, the
most ambiguous ; and the examination of the kind of
ambiguity attendant on its present employment will best
open the way to our work.

In his chapter on Capital,* Mr. J. S. Mill instances, as a
capitalist, a hardware manufacturer, who, having intended
to spend a certain portion of the proceeds of his business
in buying plate and jewels, changes his mind, and "pays it
as wages to additional workpeople." The effect is stated
by Mr. Mill to be, that "more food is appropriated to the
consumption of productive laborers."

Now, I do not ask, though, had I written this paragraph,
it would surely have been asked of me. What is to become
of the silversmiths? If they are truly unproductive persons,
we will acquiesce in their extinction. And though in

,r, m^Sv'JmJ-' '^''^iP- iy,-',.^- 1: To save space, my future references
to Mr. Mill s work will be by numerals only, as in this instance, I.
IV. I. Ed. m 2 vols. 8vo. Parker, 1848.

"UNTO rms LAST." 67

another part of the same passage, the hardware merchant is
supposed also to dispense with a number of servants, whose
"food is thus set free for productive purposes," I do not
inquire what will be the eifect, painful or otherwise, upon
the servants, of this emmacipation of their food. But I
very seriously inquire why ironware is produce, and silver-
ware is not ? That the merchant consumes the one, and
sells the other, certainly does not constitute the difference,
unless it can be shown (which, indeed, I perceive it to be
becoming daily more and more the aim of tradesmen to
show) that commodities are made to be sold, and not to be
consumed. The merchant is an agent of conveyance to the
consumer in one case, and is himself the consumer in the
other : * but the laborers are in either case equally pro-
ductive, since they have produced goods to the same value,
if the hardware and the plate are both goods.

And what distinction separates them? It is indeed
possible that in the "comparative estimate of the moralist,"
with which Mr. Mill says -political economy has nothing to
do (III. i. 2) a steel fork might appear a more substantial
production than a silver one : we may grant also that
knives, no less than forks, are good produce ; and scythes
and plowshares serviceable articles. But, how of bayonets?
Supposing the hardware merchant to effect large sales of

• If Mr. Mill had wished to show the difference in result between
consumption and sale, he should have represented the hardware
merchant as consuming his own goods instead of selling them ;
similarly, the silver merchant as consuming his own goods instead
of selling them. Had he done this, he would have made his
position clearer, though less tenable ; and perhaps this was the
position he really intended to take, tacitly involving his theory,
elsewhere stated, and shown in the sequel of this paper to be false,
that demand for commodities is not demand for labor. But by the
most diligent scrutiny of the {jarag^aph now under examination, I
cannot determine whether it is a fallacy pure and simple, or the
half of one fallacy supported by the whole of a greater one ; so that
I treat it here on the kinder assumption that it is one fallacy only.

68 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

these, by help of the "setting free" of the food of his
servants and his silversmith,— is he still employing produc-
tive laborers, or, in Mr. Mill's words, laborers who increase
"the stock of permanent means of enjoyment" (I. iii. 4).
Or if, instead of bayonets, he supply bombs, will not the
absolute and final "enjoyment" of even these energetically
productive articles (each of which costs ten pounds)* be
dependent on a proper choice of time and place for their
enfantement; choice, that is to say, depending on those
philosophical considerations with which political economy
has nothing to do?t

I should have regretted the need of pointing out
inconsistency in any portion of Mr. Mill's work, had not
the value of his work proceeded from its inconsistencies.
He deserves honor among economists by inadvertently
disclaiming the principles which he states, and tacitly
introducing the moral considerations with which he declares
his science has no connection. Many of his chapters are,
therefore, true and valuable ; and the only conclusions of
his which I have to dispute are those which follow from his
premises.

Thus, the idea which lies at the root of the passage we
have just been examining, namely, that labor applied to
produce luxuries will not support so many persons as labor
applied to produce useful articles, is entirely true ; but the
instance given fails — and in four directions of failure at

* I take Mr. Helps' estimate in his essay on War.

t Also when the wrought silver vases of Spain were dashed to
fragments by our custom-house officers, because bullion might be
imported free of duty, but not brains, was the axe that broke them
productive ? — the arhst who wrought them unproductive ? Or again.
If the woodman's axe is productive, is the executioner's? as also,
if the hemp of a cable be productive, does not the productiveness
of hemp in a halter depend on its moral more than on its material
application?

"UNTO THIS LAST." 69

once — because Mr. Mill has not defined the real meaning
of usefulness. The definition which he has given — ' ' capac-
ity to satisfy a desire, or serve a purpose" (III. i. 2) —
applies equally to the iron and silver; while the true
definition— which he has not given, but which nevertheless
underlies the false verbal definition in his mind, and comes
out once or twice by accident (as in the words ' ' any
support to life or strength " in I. i. -5) — applies to some
articles of iron, but not to others, and. to some articles of
silver, but not to others. It applies to plows, but not to
bayonets ; and to forks, but not to filigree. *

The eliciting of the true definition will give us the reply
to our first question, "What is value?" respecting which,
however, we must first hear the popular statements.

"The word 'value,' when used without adjunct, always
means, in political economy, value in exchange" (Mill, III.
i. 3). So that, if two ships cannot exchange their rudders,
their rudders are, in politico-economic language, of no
value to either.

But "the subject of political economy is wealth." —
(Preliminary remarks, page i.)

And wealth ' ' consists of all useful and agreeable objects
which possess exchangeable value."- — (Preliminary remarks,
page 10.)

It appears, then, according to Mr. Mill, that usefulness
and agreeableness underlie the exchange value, and must
be ascertained to exist in the thing, before we can esteem
it an object of wealth.

Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends not
merely on its own nature, but on the number of people who
can and will use it. A horse is useless, and therefore

* Filigree : that is to say, generally, ornament dependent on
complexity, not oh arti

70 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

unsaleable, if no one can ride, — a sword if no one can
strike, and meat, if no one can eat. Thus every material
utility depends on its relative human capacity.

Similarly : The agreeableness of a thing depends not
merely on its own likeableness, but on the number of
people who can be got to like it. The relative agreeable-
ness, and therefore saleableness, of "a pot of the smallest
ale," and of "Adonis painted by a running brook," depends
virtually on the opinion of Demos, in the shape of Chris-
topher Sly. That is to say, the agreeableness of a thing
depends on its relative human disposition.* Therefore,
political economy, being a science of wealth, must be a
science respecting human capacities and dispositions. But
moral considerations have nothing to do with political
economy (III. i. 2). Therefore, moral considerations have
nothing to do with human capacities and dispositions.

I do not wholly like the look of this conclusion from
Mr. Mill's statements : — ^let us try Mr. Ricardo's.

"Utility is not the measure of exchangeable value,
though it is absolutely essential to it." — (Chap. I. sect, i.)

•These statements sound crude in their brevity; but will be
found of the utmost importance when they are developed. Thus,
in the above instance, economists have never perceived that disposi-
tion to buy is a. wholly moral element in demand : that is to say,
when you give a man half-a-crown, it depends on his disposition
whether he is rich or poor with it — whether he will buy disease,
ruin, and hatred, or buy health, advancement, and domestic love.
And thus the agreeableness or exchange value of every offered
commodity depends on production, not merely of the commodity,
but of buyers of it ; therefore on the education of buyers and on all
the moral elements by which their disposition to buy this, or that,
is formed. I will illustrate and expand into final consequencfes
every one of these definitions in its place : at present they can only
be given with extremest brevity ; for in order to put the subject at
once in a connected form before the reader, I have thrown into

"UNTO THIS LAST."

71

Essential in what degree, Mr. Ricardo? There may be
greater and less degrees of utility. Meat, for instance, may
be so good as to be fit for any one to eat, or so bad as to
be fit for no one to eat. What is the exact degree of good-
ness which is "essential" to its exchangeable value, but
not "the measure" of it? How good must the meat be,
in order 'to possess any exchangeable value ; and how bad
must it be — (I wish this were a settled question in London
markets) — in order to possess none?

There appears to be some hitch, I think, in the working
even of Mr. Ricardo' s principles; but let him take his own
example. " Suppose that in the early stages of society the
bows and arrows of the hunter were of equal value with the
implements of the fisherman. Under such circumstances
the value of the deer, the produce of the hunter's day's
labor, would be exactly'" (italics mine) "equal to the value
of the fish, the product of the fisherman's day's labor.
The comparative value of the fish and game would be
entirely regulated by the quantity of labor realized in each."
(Ricardo, chap. iii. On Value).

Indeed ! Therefore, if the fisherman catches one sprat,
and the huntsman one deer, one sprat will be equal in value
to one deer ; but if the fisherman catches no sprat, and the
huntsman two deer, no spfat will be equal in value to two
deer?

Nay ; but — Mr. Ricardo's supporters may say — he
means, on an average ; — if the average product of a day's
work of fisher and hunter, be one fish and one deer, the one
fish will always be equal in value to the one deer.

Might I inquire the species of fish. Whale? or
whitebait ? *

* Perhaps it may be said, in further support of Mr. Ricardo, that
he meant, ' ' when the utility is constant or given, the price varies as

72 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

It would be waste of time to pursue these fallacies
further ; we will seek for a true definition.

Much store has been set for centuries upon the use of
our English classical education. It were to be wished that
our well-educated merchants recalled to mind always this
much of their Latin schooling, — that the nominative of
valorem (a word already sufficiently familiar to them) is

the quantity of labor." If he meant this, he should have said it ;
but, had he meant it, he could have hardly missed the necessary
result, that utility would be one measure of price (which he expressly
denies it to be) ; and that, to prove saleableness, he had to prove a
given quantity of utility, as well as a given quantity of labor ; to wit,
in his own instance, that the deer and fish would each feed the same
number of men, for the same number of days, with equal pleasure
to their palates. The fact is, he did not know what he meant him-
self. The general idea which he had derived from commercial
experience, without being' able to analyze it, was, that when the
demand is constant, the price varies as the quantity of labor
required for production; or,— using the formula I gave in last
paper— when J/ is constant, x y varies as x. But demand never is,
nor can be, ultimately constant, if x varies distinctly ; for, as price
. rises, consumers fall away ; and as soon as there is a monopoly (and
air scarcity is a form of monopoly; so that every commodity is
affected occasionally by some color of monopoly), j/ becomes the
most influential condition of the price. Thus the price of a painting
depends less on its merits than on the interest taken in it by the
public ; the price of singing less on the labor of the singer than the
number of persons who desire to hear him ; and the price of gold
less on the scarcity which affects it in common with cerium or
iridium, than on the sunlight color and unalterable purity by which
it attracts the admiration and answers the trusts of mankind.

It must be kept in mind, however, that I use the word ' ' demand ' '
in a somewhat different sense from economists usually. They mean
by it "the quantity of a thing sold." I mean by it "the force of
the buyer's capable intiention to buy." In good English, a person's
" demand " sonifies, not what he gets, but what he asks for.

Economists also do not notice that objects are not valued by
absolute bulk or weight, but by such bulk and weight as is neces-
sary to bring them into use. They say, for instance, that water
bears no price in the market. It is true that a cupflil does not, but a
lake does : just as a handful of dust does not, but an acre does.
And were it possible to make even the possession of the cupfiil or
handful permanent («. e. to find a place for them,) the earth and sea
would be bought u]i by handfols and cupfiiis,

"UNTO THIS LAST." 73

valor; a word which, therefore, ought to be familiar to
them. Valor, from valere, to be well, or strong (yyiaivui) ; —
strong, in life (if a man), or valiant; strong, for life (if a
thing), or valuable. To be "valuable," therefore, is to
"avail toward life." A truly valuable or availing thing is
that which leads to life with its whole strength. In propor-
tion as it does not lead to life, or as its strength is broken,
it is less valuable ; in proportion as it leads away from life,
it is unvaluable or malignant.

The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opinion,
and of quantity. Think what you will of it, gain how much
you may of it, the value of the thing itself is neither greater
nor less. Forever it avails, or avails not ; no estimate can
raise, no disdain depress, the power which it holds from the
Maker of things and of men.

The real science of political economy, which has yet to
be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from
witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which
teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that lead
to life ; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the
things that lead to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy,
they suppose indifferent things, such as excrescences of
shell-fish, and pieces of blue and red stone, to be valuable,
and spend large measure of the labor which ought to be
employed for the extension and ennobling of life, in diving
or digging for them, and cutting them into various shapes, —
or if, in the same state of infancy, they imagine precious
and beneficent things, such as air, light, and cleanliness, to
be valueless, — or if, finally, they imagine the conditions of
their own existence, by which alone they can truly possess
or use anything, such, for instance, as peace, trust, and love,
to be prudently exchangeable, when the market offers, for
gold, iron, or excrescences of shells — the great and only

74 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

science of Political Economy teaches them, in all these cases,
what is vanity, and what substance ; and how the service
of Death, the Lord of Waste, and of eternal emptiness,
differs from the service of Wisdom, the Lady of Saving,
and of eternal fullness ; she who has said, ' ' I will cause
those that love me to inherit Substance ; and I will Fill
their treasures."

The "Lady of Saving," in a profounder sense than
that of the savings' bank, though that is a good one:
Madonna della Salute, — Lady of Health — ^which, though
commonly spoken of as if separate from wealth, is indeed a
part of wealth. This word, ' ' wealth, ' ' it will be remembered,
is the next we have tp define.

"To be wealthy," says Mr. Mill, is "to have a large
stock of useful articles."

I accept this definition. Only let us perfectly understand
it. My opponents often lament my not giving them enough
logic : I fear I must at present use a little more than they
will like ; but this business of Political Economy is no light
one, and we must allow no loose terms in it.

We have, therefore, to ascertain in the above definition,
first, what is the meaning of ' ' having, ' ' or the nature of
Possession. Then what is the meaning of "useful," or the
nature of Utility.

And first of possession. At the crossing of the transepts
of Milan Cathedral has lain, for three hundred years, the
embalmed body of St. Carlo Borromeo. It holds a golden
crosier, and has a cross of emeralds on its breast. Admit-
ting the crosier and emeralds to be useful articles, is the
body to be considered as "having" them? Do they, in
the politico-economical sense of property, belong to it? If
notj and if we may, therefore, conclude generally that a
dead body cannot possess property, what ' degree and

'UNTO THIS LAST."

75

period of animation in the body will render possession
possible ?

As thus : lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of
the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred
pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterward at
the bottom. Now, as he was sinking — had he the gold?
or had the gold him?*

And if, instead of sinking him in the sea by its weight,
the gold had struck him on the forehead, and thereby
caused incurable disease — suppose palsy or insanity, —
would the gold in that case have been more a " possession "
than in the first? Without pressing the inquiry up through
instances of gradual increasing vital power over the gold
(which I will, however, give, if they are asked for), I pre-
sume the reader will see that possession, or "having," is
not an absolute, but a gradated, power ; and consists not
only in the quantity or nature of the thing possessed, but
also (and in a greater degree) in its suitableness to the
person possessing it, and in his vital power to use it.

And our definition of Wealth, expanded, becomes :
"The possession of useful articles, which we can use.''
This is a very serious change. For wealth, instead of
depending merely on a "have," is thus seen to depend on
a "can." Gladiator's death, on a "habet;" but soldier's
victory, and state's salvation, on a "quo plurimum posset."
(Liv. VII. 6.) And what we reasoned of only as accumu-
lation of material, is seen to demand also accumulation of
capacity.

So much for our verb. Next for our adjective. What
is the meaning of "useful?"

The inquiry is closely connected with the last. For

* Compare George Herbert, The Church Porch, Stanza 28.

76 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

what is capable of use in the hands of some persons, is
capable, in the hands of others, of the opposite of use,
called commonly, ^'from-use or ab-use." And it depends
on the person, much more than on the article, whether- its
usefulness or ab-usefulness will be the quality developed in
it. Thus, wine, which the Greeks, in their Bacchus, made,
rightly, the type of all passion, and which, when used,
"cheereth god and man" (that is to say, strengthens both
the divine life, or reasoning power, and the earthly, or
carnal power, of man); yet, when abused, becomes " Dionu-
sos," hurtful especially to the divine part of man, or reason.
And again, the body itself, being equally liable to use and
to abuse, and, when rightly disciplined, serviceable to the
State, both for war and labor ; — but when not disciplined,
or abused, valueless to the State, and capable only of
continuing the private or single existence of the individual
(and that but feebly) — the Greeks called such a body an
"idiotic" or "private" body, from their word signifying a
person employed in no way directly useful to the State ;
whence, finally, our "idiot," meaning a person entirely
occupied with his own concerns.

Hence, it follows, that if a thing is to be useful, it must
be not only of an availing nature, but in availing hands.
Or, in accurate terms, usefulness is value in the hands of
the valiant ; so that this science of wealth being, as we have
just seen, when regarded as the science of Accumulation,
accumulative of capacity as well as of material, — ^when
regarded as the Science of Distribution, is distribution not
absolute, but discriminate ; not of every thing to every man,
but of the right thing to the right man. A difficult science,
dependent on more than arithmetic.

Wealth, therefore, is "tHE possession of the valua-
ble BY THE VALIANT;" and in considering it as a power

"UNTO THIS LAST." 77

existing in a nation, the two elements, the value of the
thing, and the valor of its possessor, must be estimated
together. Whence it appears that many of the persons
commonly considered wealthy, are in reality no more
wealthy than the locks of their own strong boxes are ; they
being inherently and eternally incapable of wealth ; and
operating for the nation, in an economical point of viewj
either as pools of dead water, and eddies in a stream
(which, so long as the stream flows, are useless, or serve
only to drown people, but may become of importance in a
state of stagnation, should the stream dry); or else, as
dams in a river, of which the ultimate service depends not
on the dam, but the miller; or else, as mere accidental
stays and impediments, acting, not as wealth, but (for we
ought to have a correspondent term) as "illth," causing
various devastation and trouble around them in all direc-
tions; or lastly, act not at all, but are merely animated
conditions of delay, (no use being possible of anything they
have until they are dead,) in which last condition they are
nevertheless often useful as delays, and "impedimenta," if
a nation is apt to move too fast.

This being so, the difficulty of the true science of
Political Economy lies not merely in the need of developing
manly character to deal with material value, but in the fact,
that while the manly character and material value only
form wealth by their conjunction, they have nevertheless a
mutually destructive operation on each other. For the
manly character is apt to ignore, or even cast away, the
material value : — whence that of Pope : —
" Sure, of qualities demanding praise
More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise."

And on the other hand, the material value is apt to under-
mine the manly character ; so that it must be our work, in

78 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN

the issue, to examine what evidence there is of the effect of
weahh on the minds of its possessors ; also, what kind of
person it is who usually sets himself to obtain wealth, and
succeeds in doing so ; and whether the world owes more
gratitude to rich or to poor men, either for their moral
influence upon it, or for chief goods, discoveries, and
practical advancements. I may, however, anticipate future
conclusion so far as to state that in a community regulated
only by laws of demand and supply, and protected from
open violence, the persons who become rich are, generally
speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt,
methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and igno-
rant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish,
the entirely wise,* the idle, the reckless, the humble, the
thoughtiul, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-
informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively
wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely
merciful, just, and godly person.

Thus far then of wealth. Next, we have to ascertain
the nature of Price ; that is to say, of exchange value, and
its expression by currencies.

Note first, of exchange, there can be no profit in it. It
is only in labor there can be profit — that is to say a "mak-
ing in advance," or "making in favor of" (from proficio).
In exchange, there is only advantage, i. e. a bringing of
vantage or power to the exchanging persons. Thus, one
man, by sowing and reaping, turns one measure of corn
into two measures. That is Profit. Another by digging
and forging, turns one spade into two spades. That is
Profit. But the man who has two measures of corn wants

* "(5 ZeiDr d^TTOD nlverai." — Aris. Plut, 582. It would but weaken
the grand words to lean on the preceding ones:-T"8n toU WvmTmi
napexo jSeAriovaf, avSpa^, nal rijv yvo/tiiv, xal rilv Ucav,"

" UNTO THIS last:

79

sometimes to dig ; and the man who has two spades wants
sometimes to eat : — They exchange the gained grain for
the gained tool ; and both are the better for the exchange ;
but though there is much advantage in the transaction,
there is no profit. Nothing is constructed or produced.
Only that which had been before constructed is given to
the person by whom it can be used. If labor is necessary
to effect the exchange, that labor is in reality involved in
the production, and, like all other labor, bears profit.
Whatever number of men are concerned in the manufac-
ture, or in the conveyance, have share in the profit ; but
neither the manufacture nor the conveyance are the
exchange, and in the exchange itself there is no profit.

There may, however, be acquisition, which is a very
different thing. If, in the exchange, one man is able to
give what cost him little labor for what has cost the other
much, he "acquires" a certain quantity of the produce of
the other's labor. And precisely what he acquires, the
other loses. In mercantile language, the person who thus
acquires is commonly said to have "made a profit;" and
I believe that many of our merchants are seriously under
the impression that it is possible for everybody, somehow,
to make a profit in this manner. Whereas, by the unfor^
tunate constitution of the world we live in, the laws both
of matter and motion have quite rigorously forbidden
universal acquisition of this kind. Profit, or material gain,
is attainable only by construction or by discovery ; not by
exchange. Whenever material gain follows exchange, for
every plus there is precisely equal minus.

Unhappily for the progress of the science of Political
Economy, the plus quantities, or, — if I may be allowed to
coin an awkward plural — the pluses, make a very positive
and venerable appearance in the world, so that every one

8o THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSK IN.

is eager to learn the science which produces results so
magnificent ; whereas the minuses have, on the other hand,
a tendency to retire into back streets, and other places of
shade, — or even to get themselves wholly and finally put
out of sight in graves : which renders the algebra of this
science peculiar, and difficultly legible : a large number of
its negative signs being written by the account-keeper in a
kind of red ink, which starvation thins, and makes strangely
pale, or even quite invisible ink, for the present.

The Science of Exchange, or, as I hear it has been
proposed to call it, of "Catallactics," considered as one of
gain, is, therefore, simply nugatory ; but considered as one
of acquisition, it is a very curious science, differing in its
data and basis from every other science known. Thus : —
If I can exchange a needle with a savage for a diamond,
my power of doing so depends either on the savage's
ignorance of social arrangements in Europe, or on his want
of power to take advantage of them, by selling the diamond
to any one else for more needles. If, further, I make the
bargain as completely advantageous to myself as possible,
by giving to the savage a needle with no eye in it (reaching,
thus, a sufficiently satisfactory type of the perfect operation
of catallactic science), the advantage to me in the entire
transaction depends wholly upon the ignorance, power-
lessness, or heedlessness of the person dealt with. Do
away with these, and catallactic advantage becomes impos-
sible. So far, therefore, as the science of exchange relates
to the advantage of one of the exchanging persons only,
it is founded on the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite
person. Where these vanish, it also vanishes. It is, there-
fore, a science founded on nescience, and an art founded on
artlessness. But all other sciences and arts, except this,
have for their object the doing away with their opposite

"UNTO THIS LAST." 8i

nescience and artlessness. This science, alone of sciences,
must, by all available means, promulgate and prolong its
opposite nescience ; otherwise the science itself is impossible.
It is, therefore, peculiarly and alone, the science of dark-
ness ; probably a bastard science — not by any means a
divina scientia, but one begotten of another father, that
&ther who, advising his children to turn stones into bread,
is himself employed in turning bread into stones, and who,
if you ask a fish of him (fish not being producible on his
estate), can but give you a serpent.

The general law, then, respecting just or economical
exchange, is simply this: — There must be advantage on
both sides (or if only advantage on one, at least no disad-
vantage on the other) to the persons exchanging; and
just payment for his time, intelligence, and labor, to any
intermediate person effecting the transaction (commonly
called a merchant) : and whatever advantage there is on
either side, and whatever pay is given to the intermediate
person, should be thoroughly known to all concerned.
All attempt at concealment implies some practice of the
opposite, or undivine science, founded on nescience.
Whence another saying of the Jew merchant's — "As a
nail between the stone joints, so doth sin stick fest between
buying and selling," Which peculiar riveting of stone
and timber, in men's dealings with each other, is again
set forth in the house which was to be destroyed — timber
and stones together — ^when Zechariah's roll (more probably
"curved sword") flew over it: "the curse that goeth
forth over all the earth upon every one that stealeth and
holdeth himself guiltless," instantly followed by the vision
of the Great Measure; — the measure "of the injustice of
them in all the earth" (avrr^ fi ddiKia avrtiv iv nda^ t$ y^),
with the weight of lead for its lid, and the woman, the

82 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

spirit of wickedness, within it ; — that is to say, Wickedness
hidden by Dullness, and formalized, outwardly, into ponder-
ously established cruelty. "It shall be set upon its own
base in the land of Babel." *

I have hitherto carefully restricted myself, in speaking
of exchange, to the use of the term ' ' advantage ; ' ' but that
term includes two ideas ; the advantage, namely, of getting
what we need, and that of getting what we wish for. Three-
fourths of the demands existing in the world are romantic;
founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, and affections; and
the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, regulation of
the imagination and the heart. Hence, the right discussion
of the nature of price is a very high metaphysical and
physical problem ; sometimes to be solved only in a pas-
sionate manner, as by David in his counting the price of
the water of the well by the gate of Bethlehem ; but its
first conditions are the following : — The price of anything
is the quantity of labor given by the person desiring it, in
order to obtain possession of it. This price depends on
four variable quantities. A. The quantity of wish the
purchaser has for the thing ; opposed to a, the quantity
of wish the seller has to keep it. B. The quantity of
labor the purchaser can afford, to obtain the thing ; opposed
to /3, the quantity of labor the seller can afford, to keep it.
These quantities are operative only in excess ; i. e. the
quantity of wish {A) means the quantity of wish for this
thing, above wish for other things ; and the quantity of
work (^) means the quantity which can be spared to get
this thing from the quantity needed to get other things.

Phenomena of price, therefore, are intensely complex|
curious, and interesting — 'too complex, however, to be

*Zech. V. II. See note on the passage, at page 120.

"UNTO rms LAST:' 83

examined yet ; every one of them, when traced far enough,
showing itself at last as a part of the bargain of the Poor
of the Flock (or "flock of slaughter"), "If ye think good
give ME my price, and if not, forbear" — Zech. xi. 12 ; but
as the price of everything is to be calculated finally in labor,
it is necessary to define the nature of that standard.

Labor is the contest of the life of man with an opposite ;
— the term "life" including his intellect, soul, and physical
power, contending with question, difficulty, trial, or material
force.

Labor is of a higher or lower order, as it includes more
or fewer of the elements of life : and labor of good quality,
in any kind, includes always as much intellect and feeling
as will fully and harmoniously regulate the physical force.

In speaking of the value and price of labor, it is
necessary always to understand labor of a given rank and
quality, as we should speak of gold or silver of a given
standard. Bad (that is, heartless, inexperienced, or sense-
less) labor cannot be valued ; it is like gold of uncertain
alloy, or flawed iron.*

The quality and kind of labor being given, its value,
like that of all other valuable things, is invariable. But the
quantity of it which must be given for other things is
variable; and in estimating this variation, the price of

* Labor which is entirely good of its kind, that is to say,
eflfective, or efficient, the Greeks called "weighable," or uftor,
translated usually "worthy,'* and because thus substantial and
true, they called its price niiv, the "honorable estimate," of it
(honorarium): this word being founded on their conception of true
labor as a divine thing, to be honored with the kind of honor given
to the gods ; whereas the price of false labor, or of that which led
away from life, was to be, not honor, but vengeance ; for which
they reserved another word, attributing the exaction of such price
to a peculiar goddess, called Tisiphone, the " re^uiter (or quittance-
taker) of death ; " a person versed in the highest branches of
arithmetic, and punctuail in her habits ; with whom accounts current
have been opened also in modem days.

84 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

Other things must alwa3rs be counted by the quantity of
labor; not the price of labor by the quantity of other
things.

Thus, if we want to plant an apple sapling in rocky
ground, it may take two hours' work ; in soft ground,
perhaps only half an hour. Grant the soil equally good
for the tree in each case. Then the value of the sapling
planted by two hours' work is nowise greater than that of
the sapling planted in half an hour. One will bear no more
fruit than the other. Also, one half-hour of work is as
valuable as another half-hour ; nevertheless the one sapling
has cost four such pieces of work, the other only one. Now
the proper statement of this fact is, not that the labor on
the hard ground is cheaper than on the soft ; but that the
tree is dearer. The exchange value may, or may not,
afterward depend on this fact. If other people have
plenty of soft ground to plant in, they will take no
cognizance of our two hours' labor, in the price they will
offer for the plant on the rock. And if, through want of
sufficient botanical science, we have planted an upas-tree
instead of an apple, the ex change- value will be a negative
quantity ; still less proportionate to the labor expended.

What is commonly called cheapness of labor, signifies,
therefore, in reality, that many obstacles have to be over-
come by it ; so that much labor is required to produce a
small result. But this should never be spoken of as cheap-
ness of labor, but as dearness of the object wrought for.
It would be just as rational to say that walking was cheap,
because we had ten miles to walk home to our dinner, as
that labor was cheap, because we had to work ten hours to
earn it.

The last word which we have to define is " Production."

I have hitherto spoken of all labor as profitable ;
because it is impossible to consider under one head the

"UNTO rniS LAST." 85

quality or value of labor, and its aim. But labor of the
best quality may be various in aim. It may be either
constructive ("gathering," from con and struo), as agri-
culture; nugatory, as jewel-cutting; or destructive ("scatter-
ing," from de and struo), as war. It is not, however,
always easy to prove labor, apparently nugatory, to be
actually so ;* generally, the formula holds good : "he that
gathereth not, scattereth;" thus, the jeweler's art is
probably very harmful in its ministering to a clumsy and
inelegant pride. So that, finally, I believe nearly all labor
may be shortly divided into positive and negative labor :
positive, that which produces life; negative, that which
produces death; the most directly negative labor being
murder, and the most directly positive, the bearing and
rearing of children ; so that in the precise degree which
murder is hateful, on the negative side of idleness, in that
exact degree child-rearing is admirable, on the positive side
of idleness. For which reason, and because of the honor
that there is in rearingf children, while the wife is said to

* The most accurately nugatory labor is, perhaps, that of which
not enough is given to answer a purpose effectually, and which,
therefore, has all to be done over again. Also, labor which fails of
effect tiirough non-cooperation. The cur6 of a little village near
Bellinzona, to whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants
allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that they would not
join to build an effectual embankment high up the valley, because
everybody said "that would help his neighbors as much as him-
self." So every proprietor built a bit of low embankment about his
own field ; and the Ticino, as soon as it had a mind, swept away
and swallowed all up together.

tObserve, I say, "rearing," not "begetting." The praise is in
the seventh season, not in avofniToq, nor in ^tXojh, but in bvupa.
It is strange that men always praise enthusiastically any person
who, by a momentary exertion, saves a life; but praise very
hesitatingly a person who, by exertion and self-denial prolonged
through years, creates one. We give the crown "ob civem
servatum ; "— why not "ob civem natum?" Bom, I mean, to the
full, in soul as well as body. England has oak enough, I think, for
both chaplets.

86 THE COMMUNISM OP JOHN RUSKIN.

be as the vine (for cheering), the children are as the oHve-
branch, for praise; nor for praise only, but for peace
(because large families can only be reared in times of
peace) : though since, in their spreading and voyaging in
various directions, they distribute strength, they are, to the
home strength, as arrows in the hand of a giant — striking
here and there, far away.

Labor being thus various in its result, the prosperity of
any nation is in exact proportion to the quantity of labor
which it spends in obtaining and employing means of life.
Observe, — I say, obtaining and employing ; that is to say,
not merely wisely producing, but wisely distributing and
consuming. Economists usually speak as if there were no
good in consumption absolute.* So far from this being so,
consumption absolute is the end, crown, and perfection of
production; ancj wise consumption is a far more difficult
art than wise production. Twenty people can gain money
for one who can use it ; and the vital question, for individ-
ual and for nation, is, never "how much do they make?"
but "to what purpose do they spend?"

The reader may, perhaps, have been surprised at the
slight reference I have hitherto made to "capital," and its
functions. It is here the place to define them.

Capital signifies "head, or source, or root material" —
it is material by which some derivative or secondary good,
is produced. ' It is only capital proper (caput vivum, not
caput mortuum) when it is thus producing something
different from itself. It is a root, which does not enter into
vital function till it produces something else than a root ;
namely, fruit. That fruit will in time again produce roots ;

*When Mr. Mill speaks of productive consumption, he only
means consumption which results in increase of capital, or material
wealth. See I. iii. 4, and I. iii. 5.

" UNTO THIS LAST." 87

and so all living capital issues in reproduction of capital ;
but capital which produces nothing but capital is only root
producing root ; bulb issuing in bulb, never in tulip ; seed
issuing in seed, never in bread. The Political Economy of
Europe has hitherto devoted itself wholly to the multiplica-
tion, or (less even) the; aggregation, of bulbs. It never saw
nor conceived such a thing as a tulip. Nay, boiled bulbs
they might have been — glass bulbs — Prince Rupert's drops,
consummated in powder (well, if it were glass-powder and
not gunpowder), for any end or meaning the economists
had in defining the laws of aggregation. We will try and
get a clearer notion of them.

The best and simplest general type of capital is a well-
made plowshare. Now, if that plowshare did nothing but
beget other plowshares, in a polypous manner, — however
the great cluster of polypous plow might glitter in the sun,
it would have lost its function of capital. It becomes true
capital only by another kind of splendor, — when it is seen,
" splendescere sulco," to grow bright in the furrow ; rather
with diminution of its substance, than addition, by the
noble friction. And the true home question, to every
capitalist and to every nation, is not, "how many plows
have you?" — but, "where are your furrows?" not — "how
quickly will this capital reproduce itself?" — but, "what will
it do during reproduction?" What substance will it
furnish, good for life? what work construct, protective of
life? if none, its own reproduction is useless — if worse than
none, — (for capital may destroy life as well as support it),
its own reproduction is worse than useless ; it is merely an
advance from Tisiphone, on mortgage — not a profit by any
means.

Not a profit, as the ancients truly saw, and showed in
the type of Ixion ; for capital is the head, or fountain head,

88 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

of wealth — the "well-head" of wealth, as the clouds are
the well-heads of rain : but when clouds are without water,
and only beget clouds, they issue in wrath at last, instead
of rain, and in lightning instead of harvest; whence Ixion is
said first to have invited his guests to a banquet, and then
made them fall into a pit filled with fire ; which is the type
of the temptation of riches issuing in imprisoned torment,
— torment in a pit, (as also Demas's silver mine), after
which, to show the rage of riches passing from lust of
pleasure to lust of power, yet power not truly understood,
Ixion is said to have desired Juno, and instead, embracing
a cloud (or phantasm), to have begotten the Centaurs ; the
power of mere wealth being, in itself, as the embrace of a
shadow, — comfortless (so also "Ephraim feedeth on wind
and foUoweth after the east wind ;" or "that which is not"
— Prov. xxiii. 5 ; and again Dante's Geryon, the type of
avaricious fraud, as he flies, gathers the air up with
retractile daws, — "I'aer a se raccolse,"*) but in its off-
spring, a mingling of the brutal with the human nature :
human in sagacity — ^using both intellect and arrow; but
brutal in its body and hoof, for consuming and trampling
down. For which sin Ixion is at last bound upon a wheel

* So also in the vision of the woman bearing the ephah, before
quoted, " the wind was in their wings," not wing^ " of a stork," as
in our version ; but " milm," of a kite, in the Vulgate, or perhaps
more accurately still in the Septuagint, "hoopoe," a bird connected
typically with the power of riches by many traditions, of which that
of its petition for a crest of gold is perhaps the most interesting.
The " Birds " of Aristophanes, in which its part is principal, is fiill
of them ; note espedaUy the " fortification of the air with baked
bricks, like Babylon," i. 550 ; and, again, compare the Plutus of
Dante, who (to show the influence of riches in destroying the
reason) is the only one of the powers of the Inferno who cannot
speak intelligibly; and also the cowardliest; he is not merely
quelled or restraned, but literally "collapses" at a word; the
sudden and helpless operation of mercantile panic being all told in
the brief metaphor, " as the s^ls, swollen with the wind, fall, when
the mast breaks."

"UNTO THIS LAST." 89

—fiery and toothed, and rolling perpetually in the air ; —
the type of human labor when selfish and fruitless (kept far
into the middle ages in their wheel of fortune) ; the wheel
which has in it no breath or spirit, but is whirled by chance
only ; whereas of all true work the Ezekiel vision is true,
that the spirit of the living creature is in the wheels, and
where the angels go, the wheels go by them ; but move no
otherwise.

This being the real nature of capital, it follows that there
are two kinds of true production, always going on in an
active State ; one of seed, and one of food, or production
for the Ground and for the Mouth ; both of which are by
covetous persons thought to be production only for the
granary ; whereas the function of the granary is but inter-
mediate and conservative, fulfilled in distribution ; else it
ends in nothing but mildew, and nourishment of rats and
worms. And since production for the Ground is only
useful with future hope of harvest, all essential production
is for the Mouth ; and is finally measured by the mouth ;
hence, as I said above, consumption is the crown of
production; and the wealth of a nation is only to be
estimated by what it consumes.

The want of any clear sight of this fact is the capital
error, issuing in rich interest and revenue of error, among
the political economists. Their minds are continually set
on money-gain, not on mouth gain ; and they fall into every
sort of net and snare, dazzled by the coin-glitter as birds
by the fowler's glass ; or rather (for there is not much else
like birds in them) they are like children trying to jump
on the heads of their own shadows ; the money-gain being
only the shadow of the true gain, which is humanity.

The final object of political economy, therefore, is to get
good method of consumption, and great quantity of con-

go THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

sumption : in other words, to use everything, and to use it
nobly ; whether it be substance, service, or service perfect-
ing substance. The most curious error in Mr. Mill's entire
work (provided for him originally by Ricardo), is his
endeavor to distinguish between direct and indirect service,
and consequent assertion that a demand for commodities
is not demand for labor (I. v. 9, et seq.). He distinguishes
between laborers employed to lay out pleasure grounds,
and to manufacture velvet ; declaring that it makes material
difference to the laboring classes in which of these two ways
a capitalist spends his money ; because the employment of
the gardeners is a deman^ for labor, but the purchase of
velvet is not.* Error colossal as well as strange. It will,
indeed, make a difference to the laborer whether he bid
him swing his scythe in the spring winds, or drive the loom
in pestilential air ; but, so far as his pocket is concerned, it
makes to him absolutely no difference whether we order
him to make green velvet, with seed and a scythe, or red
velvet, with silk and scissors. Neither does it anywise
concern him whether, when the velvet is made, we consume

* The value of raw material, which has, indeed, to be deducted
.from the price of the labor, is not contemplated in the passages
referred to, Mr. Mill having fallen into the mistake solely by pursu-
ing the collateral results of the payment of wages to. middlemen.
He says — "The consumer does not, with his own funds, pay the
weaver for his day's work." Pardon me ; the consumer of the
velvet pays the weaver with his own funds as much as he pays the
gardener. He pays, probably, an intermediate shipowner, velvet-
merchant, and shopman ; pays carriage money, shop rent, damage
money, time money, and care money ; all these are above and
beside the velvet pnce (just as the wages of a head gardener would
be above the grass price) \ but the velvet is as much produced by
the consumer's capital, though he does not pay for it till six months
after production, as the grass is produced by his capital, though he
does not pay the man who mowed and rolled it on Monday, till
Saturday afternoon. I do not know if Mr. Mill's conclusion, — " the
capital cannot be dispensed with, the purchasers can " (p. 98), has
yet been reduced to practice in the City on any large scale.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 91

it by walking on it, or wearing it, so Jong as our consump-
tion of it is wholly selfish. But if our consumption is to
be in anywise unselfish, not only our mode of consuming
the articles we require interests him, but also the kind of
article we require with a view to consumption. As thus
(returning for a moment to Mr. Mill's great hardware
theory*) : it matters, so far as the laborer's immediate
profit is concerned, not an iron filing whether I employ him
in growing a peach, or forging a bombshell; but my
probable mode of consumption of those articles matters
seriously. Admit that it is to be in both cases " unselfish,"
and the difference, to him, is final, whether when his child
is ill, I walk into his cottage and give it the peach, or
drop the shell down his chimney, and blow his roof off;

The worst of it, for the peasant, is, that the capitalist's
consumption of the peach is apt to be selfish, and of the
shell, distributive ;t but, in all cases, that is the broad and

•Which, observe, is the precise opposite of the> one under
examination. The hardware theory required us to discharge our
gardeners and engage manufacturers ; the velvet theory requires
us to discharge our manufacturers and engage gardeners.

t It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe
that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports unjust wars.
Just wars do not need so much money to support them ; for most
of the men who wage such, wage them gratis ; but for an unjust
war, men's bodies and souls have both to be bought ; and the best
tools of war for them besides ; which makes such war costly to the
maximum ; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion,
between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough in all
their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with : as, at present,
France and England, purchasing of each other ten millions steriing
worth of consternation annually, (a remarkably light crop, half
thorns and half aspen leaves,— sown, reaped, and granaried by the
"science "of the modem political economist, teaching covetous-
ness instead of truth.) And all unjust war being supportable, if not
by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans
are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to
have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root
of the war ; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation,
rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing
fibout, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment
to each person,

92 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

general fact, that on due catallactic commercial principles,
somebody s roof must go off in fulfillment of the bomb's
destiny. You may grow for your neighbor, at your liking,
grapes or grapeshot; he will also, catallactically, grow
grapes or grapeshot for you, and you will each reap what
you have sown.

It is, therefore, the manner and issue of consumption
which are the real tests of production. Production does
not consist in things laboriously made, but in things
serviceably consumable ; and the question for the nation is
not how much labor it employs, but how much life it pro-
duces. For as consumption is the end and aim of production,
so life is the end and aim of consumption.

I left this question to the reader's thought two months
ago, choosing rather that he should work it out for himself
than have it sharply stated to him. But now, the ground
being sufficiently broken (and the details into which the
several questions, here opened, must lead us, being too com-
plex for discussion in the pages of a periodical, so that I
must pursue them elsewhere), I desire, in closing the series
of introductory papers, to leave this one great fact clearly
» stated. There is no Wealth but Life. Life, including
all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That
country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number
of noble and happy human beings ; that man is richest who,
having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost,
has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by
means of his possessions, over the lives of others.

A strange political economy ; the only one, nevertheless,
that ever was or can be : all political economy founded on
self-interest* being but the fulfillment of that which once

* " In all reasoning about prices, the proviso must be under-
stood, ' supposing all parlies to take care of their own interest.' " —
Mill, III. i. 5.

"UNTO THIS LAST."

93

brought schism into the Policy of angels, and ruin into the
Economy of Heaven.

"The greatest number of human beings noble and
happy." But is the nobleness consistent with the number?
Yes, not only cohsistent with it, but essential to it. The
maximum of life can only be reached by the maximum of
virtue. In this respect the law of human population differs
wholly from that of animal life. The multiplication of
animals is checked only by want of food, and by the hostility
of races ; the population of the gnat is restrained by the
hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow by the
scarcity of gnats. Man, considered as an animal, is indeed
limited by the same laws ; hunger, or plague, or war, are
the necessary and only restraints upon his increase, —
effectual restraints hitherto, — his principal study having
been how most swiftly to destroy himself, or ravage his
dwelling-places, and his highest skill directed to give range
to the famine, seed to the plague, and sway to the sword.
But, considered as other than an animal, his increase is not
limited by these laws. It is limited only by the limits of
his courage and his love. Both of these have their bounds ;
and ought to have : his race has its bounds also ; but these
have not yet been reached, nor will be reached for ages.

In all the ranges of human thought I know none so
melancholy as the speculations of political economists on
the population question. It is proposed to better the
condition of the laborer by giving him higher wages.
"Nay," says the economist, "if you raise his wages, he
will either people down to the same point of misery at
which you found him, or drink your wages away." He
will. I know it. Who gave him this will? Suppose it
were your own son of whom you spoke, declaring to me
that you dared not take him into your firm, nor even give
him his just laborer's wages, because if you did, he would

94 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

die of drunkenness, and leave half a score of children t6
the parish. "Who gave your son these dispositions?" — I
should inquire. Has he them by inheritance or by educa-
tion? By one or other they must come ; and as in him, so
also in the poor. Either these poor are of a race essentially
different from ours, and unredeemable (which, however
often implied, I have heard none yet openly say), or else
by such care as we have ourselves received, we may make
them continent and sober as ourselves — wise and dis-
passionate as we are — models arduous of imitation. ' ' But, ' '
it is answered, "they cannot receive education." Why
not? That is precisely the point at issue. Charitable
persons suppose the worst fault of the rich is to refuse the
people meat ; and the people cry for their meat, kept back
by fraud, to the Lord of Multitudes.* Alas ! it is not meat

* James v. 4. Observej in these statements I am not taking up,
nor countenancing one whit, the common socialist idea of division
of property ; division of property is its destruction j and with it the
destruction of all hope, all industry, and all justice : it is simply
chaos — a chaos toward which the believers in modem political
economy are fast tending, and from which I am striving to save
them. The rich man does not keep back meat from the poor by
retaining his riches ; but by basely using them. Riches are a form
of strength ; and a strong man does not injure others by keeping
Ills strength, but by using it injuriously. The socialist, seeing a
strong man oppress a weak one, cries out — "Break the strong
man's arms;" but I say, "Teach him to use them to better pur-
pose." The fortitude and intelligence which acquire riches are
intended, by the Giver of both, not to scatter, nor to give away,
but to employ those riches in the service of mankind ; in other
words, in the redemption of the erring and aid of the weak— that is
to say, there is first to be the work to gain money ; then the Sabbath
of use for it— the Sabbath, whose law is, not to lose life, but to
save. It is continually the fault or the folly of the poor that they
are poor, as it is usually a child's fault if it falls into a pond, and a
cripple's weakness that slips at a crossing; nevertheless, most
passers by would pull the child out, or help up the cripple. Put it
at the worst, that all the poor of the world are but disobedient
children, or careless cripples, and that all rich people are wise and
strong, and you will see at once that neither is the socialist right in
desiring to make everybody poor, powerless, and foolish as he is
himself nor the rich man right in leaving the children in the mire.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 95

of which the refusal is crudest, or to which the claim is
validest. The life is more than the meat. The rich not
only refuse food to the poor; they refuse wisdom; they
refuse virtue; they refuse salvation. Ye sheep without
shepherd, it is not the pasture that has been shut from you,
but the presence. Meat ! perhaps your right to that may
be pleadable; but other rights have to be pleaded first.
Claim your crumbs from the table, if you will ; but claim
them as children, not as dogs ; claim your right to be fed,
but claim more loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and
pure.

Strange words to be used of working people : "What !
holy; without any long robes nor anointing oils; these
rough-jacketed, rough-worded persons ; set to nameless
and dishonored service? Perfect! — these, with dim eyes
and cramped limbs, and slowly wakening minds? Pure —
these, with sensual desire and groveling thought ; foul of
body, and coarse of soul?" It may be so; nevertheless,
such as they are, they are the holiest, perfectest, purest
persons the earth can at present show. They may be what
you have said ; but if so, they yet are holier than we, who
have left them thus.

But what can be done for them? Who can clothe —
who teach — ^who restrain their multitudes? What end can
there be for them at last, but to consume one another?

I hope for another end, though not, indeed, flrom
any of the three remedies for over-population commonly
suggested by economists.

These three are, in brief— Colonization ; Bringing in of
waste lands ; or Discouragement of Marriage.

The first and second of these expedients merely evade
or delay the question. It will, indeed, be long before the
world has been all colonized, and its deserts all brought

96 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN:

under cultivation. But the radical question is not how
much habitable land is in the world, but how many human
beings ought to be maintained on a given space of habitable
land.

Observe, I say, ought to be, not how many can be.
Ricardo, with his usual inaccuracy, defines what he calls
the "natural rate of wages" as "that which will maintain
the laborer. " Maintain him ! yes ; but how ? — the question
was instantly thus asked of me by a working girl, to whom
I read the passage. I will amplify her question for her.
"Maintain him, how?" As first, to what length of life?
Out of a given number of fed persons how many are to be
old — how many young ; that is to say, will you arrange
their maintenance so as to kill them early — say at thirty or
thirty-five on the average, including deaths of weakly or
ill-fed children? — or so as to enable them to live out a
natural life? You will feed a greater number, in the first
case,* by rapidity of succession ; probably a happier number
in the second: which does Mr. Ricardo mean to be their
natural state, and to which state belongs the natural rate
of wages?

Again : A piece of land which will only support ten idle,
ignorant, and improvident persons, will support thirty or
forty intelligent and industrious ones. Which of these is
their natural state, and to which of them belongs the
natural rate of wages?

Again : If a piece of land support forty persons in
industrious ignorance ; and if, tired of this ignorance, they
set apart ten of their number to study the properties of
cones, and the sizes of stars ; the labor of these ten, being
withdrawn from the ground, must either tend to the increase

* The quantity of life is the same in both cases ; but it is differ-
ently allotted.

"UNTO THIS LAST." 97

of food in some transitional manner, or the persons set
apart for siderial and conic purposes must starve, or some
one else starve instead of them. What is, therefore, the
rate natural of wages of the scientific persons, and how
does this relate to, or measure, their reverted or transitional
productiveness ?

Again : If the ground maintains, at first, forty laborers
in a peaceable and pious state of mind, but they become in
a few years so quarrelsome and impious that they have to
set apart five, to meditate upon and settle their disputes ; —
ten, armed to the teeth with costly instruments, to enforce
the decisions ; and five to remind everybody in an eloquent
manner of the existence of a God ; — what will be the result
upon the general power of production, and what is the
"natural rate of wages" of the meditative, muscular, and
oracular laborers ?

Leaving these questions to be discussed, or waived, at
their pleasure, by Mr. Ricardo's followers, I proceed to
state the main facts bearing on that probable future of the
laboring classes which has been partially glanced at by Mr.
Mill. That chapter and the preceding one differ from the
common writing of political economists in admitting some
value in the aspect of nature, and expressing regret at the
probability of the destruction of natural scenery. But we
may spare our anxieties on this head. Men can neither
drink steam, nor eat stone. The maximum Of population
on a given space of land implies also the relative maximum
of edible vegetable, whether for men dt cattle ; it implies
a maximum of pure air ; and of pure water. Therefore : a
maximum of wood, to transmute the air, and of sloping
ground, protected by herbage from the extreme heat of the
sun, to feed the streams. All England may, if it so chooses,
become one manufeicturing town ; and Englishmen, sacri-

98 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

firing themselves to the good of general humanity, may
live diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and
of deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a
factory, nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever
make iron digestible by the milUon, nor substitute hydrogen
for wine. Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever
feed them, and however the apple of Sodom and the grape
of Gomorrah may spread their table for a time with dainties
of ashes, and nectar of asps — so long as men live by bread,
the far away valleys must laugh as they are covered with
the gold of God, and the shouts of His happy multitudes
ring round the wine-press and the well.

Nor need our more sentimental economists fear the too
wide spread of the formalities of a mechanical agriculture.
The presence of a wise population implies the search for
felicity as well as for food ; nor can any population reach
its maximum but through that wisdom which "rejoices"
in the habitable parts of the earth. The desert has its
appointed place and work ; the eternal engine, whose beam
is the earth's axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath
is its ocean, will still divide imperiously to their desert
kingdoms, bound with unfiirrowable rock, and swept by
unarrested sand, their powers of frost and fire : but the
zones and lands between, habitable, will be loveliest in
habitation. The desire of the heart is also the light of the
eyes. No scene is continually and untiringly loved, but
one rich by joyfid human labor ; smooth in field ; fair in
garden ; fiill in orchard ; trim, sweet, and frequent in home-
stead; ringing with voices of vivid existence. No air is
sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet when full of low currents
of under sound — triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp
of insects, and deep-toned words of men, and wayward
trebles of childhood. As the art of life is learned, it will

"UNTO THIS LAST." 99

be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary : —
the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn ;
and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the
tended cattle ; because man doth not live by bread only,
but also by the desert manna ; by every wondrous word
and unknowable work of God. Happy, in that he knew
them not, nor did his fathers know ; and that round about
him reaches yet into the infinite, the amazement of his
existence.

Note, finally, that all effectual advancement toward this
true felicity of the human race must be by individual, not
pubUc eflfort. Certain general measures may aid, certain
revised laws guide, such advancement ; but the measure
and law which have first to be determined are those of
each man's home. We continually hear it recommended
by sagacious people to complaining neighbors (usually less
well placed in the world than themselves), that they should
"remain content in the station in which Providence has
placed them." There are perhaps some circumstances of
life in which Providence has no intention that people should
be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a
good one ; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your
neighbor should, or should not, remain content with his
position, is not your business ; but it is very much your
business to remain content with your own. What is chiefly
needed in England at the present day is to show the quan-
tity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-
administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious.
We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide
whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves
that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek —
not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure ; not higher fortune,
but deeper felicity ; making the first of possessions, self-

loo THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

possession ; and honoring themselves in the harmless pride
and calm pursuits of peace.

Of which lowly peace it is written that "justice and
peace have kissed each other ; " and that the fruit of justice
is "sown in peace of them that make peace;" not "peace-
makers" in the common understanding-^reconcilers of
quarrels ; (though that function also follows on the greater
one;) but peace-Creators; Givers of Calm. Which you^
cannot give, unless you first gain; nor is this gain one
which will follow assuredly on any course of business,
commonly so called. No form of gain is less probable,
business being (as is shown in the language of all nations —
TTuAetv from itika, -rrpaai^ from nepdu, venire, vendre, and
venal, from venio, &c.) essentially restless — ^and probably
contentious ; — having a raven-like mind to the motion to
and fro, as to the carrion food ; whereas the olive-feeding
and bearing birds look for rest for their feet : thus it is said
of Wisdom that she "hath builded her house, and hewn
out her seven pillars;" and even when, though apt to
wait long at the doorposts, she has to leave her house and
go abroad, her paths are peace also.

For us, at all events, her work must begin at the entry
of the doors: all true economy is "Law of the house."
Strive to make that law strict, simple, generous: waste
nothing, and grudge nothing. Care in nowise to make
more of money, but care to make much of it ; remembering
always the great, palpable, inevitable fact — the rule and
root of all economy — that what one person has, another
cannot have ; and that every atom of substance, of what-
ever kind, used or consumed, is so much human life spent ;
which, if it issue in the saving present life, or gaining more,
is well spent, but if not, is either so much life prevented, or
so much slain. In all buying, consider, first, what condi-

"UNTO THIS LAST." loi

tion of existence you cause in the producers of what you
buy ; secondly, whether the sum you have paid is just to
the producer, and in due proportion, lodged in his hands ; *
thirdly, to how much clear use, for food, knowledge, or joy,
this that you have bought can be put; and fourthly, to
whom and in what way it can be most speedily and service-
ably distributed: in all dealings whatsoever insisting on
entire openness and stern fulfillment ; and in all doings, on
perfection and loveliness of accomplishment ; especially on
fineness and purity of all marketable commodity : watching
at the same time for all ways of gaining, or teaching, powers
of simple pleasure; and of showing "6(tov ev do^odEA^)
yey' oveiap" — the sum of enjoyment depending not on the
quantity of things tasted, but on the vivacity and patience
of taste.

And if, on due and honest thought over these things,
it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now
summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may,
for some time at least, not to be a luxurious one ;— consider
whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be
desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the
suffering which accompanies it in the world. Luxury is
indeed possible in the future — innocent and exquisite;
luxury for all, and by the help of all : but luxury at present
can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the crudest man
living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold.

*The proper offices of middle-men, namely, ovp.rseers (or
autlioritative workmen), conveyancers (merchants, sailors, retail
dealers, &c.), and ordertakers (persons employed to receive direc-
tions from the consumer), must, of course, be examined before I
can enter further into the question of just payment of the first
oroducer. But I have not spoken of them in these introductory
Daoers because the evils attendant on the abuse of such intemie-
diate functions resuh not from any alleged principle of modern
political economy, but from private carelessness or iniquity.

I02 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

Raise the veil boldly ; face the light ; and if, as yet, the
light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light
of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping,
bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the king-
dom, when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace shall
be Unto this last as unto thee; and when, for earth's
severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there
shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home,
and calm economy, where the Wicked cease — not from
trouble, but from troubling — and the Weary are at rest.

BOOK II.

TWO LECTURES ON WORK AND TRAFFIC
FROM

"THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. "

PREFACE

TWENTY YEARS ago, there was no lovelier piece of
lowland scenery in South England, nor any more
pathetic in the world, by its expression of sweet human
character and life, than that immediately bordering on the
sources of the Wandle, and including the lower moors of
Addington, and the villages of Beddington and Carshalton,
with all their pools and streams. No clearer or diviner
waters ever sang with constant lips of the hand which
"giveth rain from heaven;" no pastures ever lightened in
spring time with more passionate blossoming ; no sweeter
homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their
pride of peaceful gladness — fain-hidden — yet full-confessed.
The place remains, or, until a few months ago, remained,
nearly unchanged in its larger features ; but, with deliberate
mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in
its inner tragic meaning, — not in Pisan Maremma — not by
Campagna tomb, — not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan
shore, — as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent,
animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that English
scene : nor is any blasphemy or impiety — any frantic saying
or godless thought — more appalling to me, using the best
power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope,
than the insolent defilings of those springs by the human
herds that drink of them. Just where the welling of stain-
less water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters

Io6 PREFACE.

the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant chajinel down
to the gravel, through warp of feathery weeds, all waving,
which it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like
the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there with
white grenouillette ; just in the very rush and murmur of
the first spreading currents, the human wretches of the
place cast their street and house foulness ; heaps of dust
and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of
putrid clothes ; they having neither energy to cart it away,
nor decency enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed
into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and
melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters
to bring joy and health. And, in a little pool, behind some
houses further in the village, where another spring rises,
the shattered stones of the well, and of the little fretted
channel which was long ago built and traced for it by
gentler hands, lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged
bank of mortar, and scoria, and bricklayers' refiise, on one
side, which the clean water nevertheless chastises to purity ;
but it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond ; and there,
circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant edge
of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the
accumulation of indolent years. Half-a-dozen men, with
one day's work, could cleanse those pools, and trim the
flowers about their banks, and make every breath of summer
air above them rich with- cool balm ; and every glittering
wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from the
porch of Bethesda. But that day's work is never given,
nor will be ; nor will any joy be possible to heart of man,
for evermore, about those wells of English waters.

When I last left them, I walked up slowly through the
back streets of Croydon, from the old church to the hospital ;
and, just on the left, before coming up to the crossing of

PREFACE. loj

the High Street, there was a new public-house built. And
the front of it was built in so wise manner, that a recess of
two feet was left below its front windows, between them and
the street-pavement — a recess too narrow for any possible
use (for even if it had been occupied by a seat, as in old
time it might have been, everybody walking along the street
would have fallen over the legs of the reposing wayfarers).
But, by way of making this two feet depth of freehold land
more expressive of the dignity of an establishment for the
sale of spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the pavement
by an imposing iron railing, having four or five spearheads
to the yard of it, and six feet high ; containing as much
iron and iron-work, indeed, as could well be put into the
space ; and by this stately arrangement, the little piece of
dead ground within, between wall and street, became a
protective receptacle of refuse ; cigar ends, and oyster
shells, and the like, such as an open-handed English street-
populace habitually scatters from its presence, and was thus
left, unsweepable by any ordinary methods. Now the iron
bars which, uselessly (or in great degree worse than use-
lessly), enclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent,
represented a quantity of work which would have cleansed
the Carshalton pools three times over; — of work, partly
cramped and deadly, in the mine; partly fierce* and

*"A fearfiil occurrence took place a few days since, near
Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as
the 'keeper' (rf a blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John
Gardner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The
furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and an equal amount
of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 p.m. But Snape
and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neglected their
duty, and in the meantime, the iron rose in the furnace until it
reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just as the men had
■stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the water in the
pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front and let loose on
them the molten metal, which instantaneously consumed Gardner ;

io8 PREFACE.

exhaustive, at the furnace; partly foolish and sedentary,
of ill-taught students making bad designs : work from the
beginning to the last fruits of it, and in all the branches of
it, venomous, deathful, and miserable. Now, how did it
come to pass that this work was done instead of the other ;
that the strength and life of the English operative were
spent in defiling ground, instead of redeeming it ; and in
producing an entirely (in that place) valueless piece of
metal, which can neither be eaten nor breathed, instead
of medicinal fresh air, and pure water?

There is but one reason for it, and at present a conclu-
sive one, — ^that the capitalist can charge percentage on the
work in the one case, and cannot in the other. If, having
certain funds for supporting labor at my disposal, I pay
men merely to keep my ground in order, my money is, in
that function, spent once for all ; but if I pay them to dig
iron out of my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge
rent for the ground, and percentage both on the manu-
facture and the sale, and make my capital profitable in
these three bye-ways. The greater part of the profitable
investment of capital, in the present day, is in operations
of this kind, in which the public is persuaded to buy some-
thing of no use to it, on production, or sale, of which, the
capitalist may charge percentage ; the said public remain-
ing all the while under the persuasion that the percentages
thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they are
merely filchings out of partially light pockets, to swell
heavy ones.

Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal and
then ran home and fell dead on the threshold, Swift survived to
reacji the hospital, where he died too."

In further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at
the article on the " Decay of the English Race," in the Pall-Malt
Gazette of April 17, of this year ; and at the articles on the " Report
of the Thames Commission," in any journals of the same date.

PREFACE.

109

Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron railing, to
make himself more conspicuous to drunkards. The public-
housekeeper on the other side of the way presently buys
another railing, to out-rail him with. Both are, as to their
relative attractiveness to customers of taste, just where they
■were before ; but they have lost the price of the railings ;
which they must either themselves finally lose, or make
their aforesaid customers of taste pay, by raising the price
of their beer, or adulterating it. Either the publicans, or
their customers, are thus poorer by precisely what the
capitalist has gained; and the value of the work itself,
meantime, has been lost to the nation ; the iron bars in that
form and place being wholly useless. It is this mode of
taxation of the poor by the rich which is referred to in the
text (page 136), in comparing the modern acquisitive power
of capital with that of the lance and sword ; the only differ-
ence being that the levy of black-mail in old times was by
force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver
frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night ; the
modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and
persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open
robber, the other as a cheating pedlar ; but the result, to
the injured person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of
course many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the
useless ones ; and in the habits of energy aroused by the
struggle, there is a certain direct good. It is far better to
spend four thousand pounds in making a good gun, and
then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in idleness. Only
do not let it be called "political economy." There is also a
confused notion in the minds of many persons, that the
gathering of the property of the poor into the hands of the
rich does no ultimate harm ; since, in whosesoever hands it
may be, it must be spent at last, and thus, they think,

no PREFACE.

return to the poor again. This fellacy has been again and
again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the same
apcflogy may, of course, be made for black-mail, or any
other form of robbery. It might be (though practically it
never is) as advantageous for the nation that the robber
should have the spending of the money he extorts, as that
the person robbed should have spent it. But this is no
excuse for the theft. If I were to put a turnpike on the
road where it passes my own gate, and endeavor to exact
a shilling from every passenger, the pubhc would soon do
away with my gate, without listening to any plea on my
part that "it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that
I should spend their shillings, as that they themselves
should." But if, instead of out-facing them with a turnpike,
I can only persuade them to come in and buy stones, or
old iron, or any other useless thing, out of my ground, I
may rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked
as a public benefactor, and promoter of commercial pros-
perity. And this main question for the poor of England —
for the poor of all countries — is wholly omitted in every
common treatise on the subject of wealth. Even by the
laborers themselves, the operation of capital is regarded
only in its effect on their immediate interests ; never in the
far more terrific power of its appointment of the kind and
the object of labor. It matters little, ultimately, how much
a laborer is paid for making anything ; but it matters fear-
fiilly what the thing is, which he is compelled to make. If
his labor is so ordered as to produce food, and fresh air,
and fresh water,. no matter that his wages are low; — :the
food and fresh air and water will be at last there ; and he
will at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy food and
fresh air, or to produce iron bars instead of them, — the food
and air will finally not be there, and he will noi get them,

PREFACE. Ill

to his great and final inconvenience. So that, conclusively,
in political as in household economy, the great question is,
not so much what money you have in your pocket, as what
you will buy with it, and do with it.

I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in
work of investigation must be, to hear my statements
laughed at for years, before they are examined or believed ;
and I am generally content to wait the public's time. But
it has not been without displeased surprise that I have
found myself totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or
illustration, to force this plain thought into my readers'
heads, — that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in
substance, not in ciphers ; and that the real good of all
work, and of all commerce, depends on the final worth of
the thing you make, or get by it. This is a practical
enough statement, one would think : but the English public
has been so possessed by its modern school of economists
with the notion that Business is always good, whether it be
busy in mischief or in benefit ; and that buying and selling
are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of what
you buy or sell, — that it seems impossible to gain so much
as a patient hearing for any inquiry respecting the substan-
tial result of our eager modern labors. I have never felt
more checked by the sense of this impossibility than in
arranging the heads of the following three lectures,* which,
though delivered at considerable intervals of time, and in
different places, were not prepared without reference to
each other. Their connection would, however, have been
made far more distinct, if I had not been prevented, by
what I feel to be another great difficulty in addressing

*The Third Lecture in The Crown of Wild Olive, on War, we
do not print from lack of space as not bearing directly upon the
subject of this collection.— Ed.

112 PREFACE.

English audiences, from enforcing, with any decision, the
common, and to me the most important, part of their
subjects. I chiefly desired (as I have just said) to question
my hearers — operatives, merchants, and soldiers, as to the
ultimate meaning of the business they had in hand ; and to
know from them what they expected or intended their
manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their
killing to come to. That appeared the first point needing
determination before I could speak to them with any real
utility or effect. ' ' You craftsmen — salesmen — swordsmen, —
do but tell me clearly what you want, then, if I can say
anything to help you, I will ; and if not, I will account to
you as I best may for my inability." But in order to put
this question into any terms, one had first of all to lace the
difficulty just spoken of — to me for the present insuperable,
— the difficulty of knowing whether to address one's
audience as believing, or not believing, in any other world
than this. For if you address any average modem English
company as believing in an Eternal life, and endeavor to
draw any conclusions, from this assumed belief, as to their
present business, they will forthwith tell you that what you
say is very beautifiil, but it is not practical. If, on the
contrary, you frankly address them as unbelievers in Eternal
life, and try to draw any consequences from that unbelief, —
they iinmediately hold you for an accursed person, and
shake off the dust fi-om their feet at you. And the more I
thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I
could say it, without some reference to this intangible or
intractable part of the subject. It made all the difference,
in asserting any principle of war, whether one assumed that
a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a certain
quantity of red clay into a level line, as in a brick field ; or
whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion

PREFACE.

"3

of the ruinous heap, there went out, into the smoke and
dead-fallen air of battle, some astonished condition of soul,
unwillingly released. It made all the difference, in speak-
ing of the possible range of commerce, whether one asspmed
that all bargains related only to visible property — or
whether property, for the present invisible, but nevertheless
real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made
all the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to
considerable hardship, and having to find some way out of
it — whether one could confidentially say to them, "My
friends, — you have only to die, and all will be right;" or
whether one had any secret misgiving that such advice was
more blessed to him that gave, than to him that took it.
And therefore the deliberate reader will find, throughout
these lectures, a hesitation in driving points home, and a
pausing short of conclusions which he will feel I would fain
have come to; hesitation which arises wholly from this
uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not now
speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of my first
forward youth, in any proselyting temper, as desiring to
persuade any one of what, in such matters, I thought
myself; but, whomsoever I venture to address, I take for
the time his creed as I find it ; and endeavor to push it into
such vital fruit as it seems capable of Thus, it is a creed
with a great part of the existing English people, that they
are in possession of a book which tells them, straight from
the lips of God, all they ought to do, and need to know. I
have read that book, with. as much care as most of them,
for some forty years ; and am thankful that, on those who
trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavor has been
uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than they do ;
trust it, not in their own favorite verses only, but in the
sum of all ; trust it not as a fetich or talisman, which they

114 PREFACE.

are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as a Captain's
order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always
encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief.
To these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, with
acceptance, words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and
the futility of avarice; from these, if from any, I once
expected ratification of a political economy, which asserted
that the life was more than the meat, and the body than
raiment; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask
without accusation of fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of
the lips, but in the bestowal of their heart's treasure, to
separate themselves from the crowd of whom it is written,
"After all these things do the Gentiles seek."

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of
reason, that a general audience is now wholly, or even in
majorityj composed of these religious persons. A large
portion must always consist of men who admit no such
creed ; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded
on it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to
plead for honest declaration and fulfillment of his belief in
life, — with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead for an
honest declaration and fulfillment of his belief in death.
The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either hereailer live,
or hereafter die; fate may be bravely met, and conduct
wisely ordered, on either expectation ; but never in hesita-
tion between ungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We
usually believe in immortality, so far as to avoid preparation
for death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid preparation
for anything after death. Whereas, a wise man will at
least hold himself prepared for one or other of two events,
of which one or Other is inevitable ; and will have all things
in order, for his sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment,

PREFACE.

"5

if he determine to put them iiT order, as for sleep. A brave
belief in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far
as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so
convinced of the splendor of the rooms in their Father's
house, as to be happier when their friends are called to
those mansions, than they would have been if the Queen
had sent for them to live at Court : nor has the Church's
most ardent "desire to depart, and be with Christ," ever
cured it of the singular habit of putting on mourning for
every person summoned to such departure. On the con-
trary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly held by
many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last
depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a
belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, or
energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any rational
person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which
may be granted him ; nor does the anticipation of death
to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the
expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is
no device in the grave, may indeed make the deviceless
person more contented in his dullness ; but it will make the
deviser only more earnest in devising, nor is human
conduct likely, in every case, to be purer under the convic-
tion that all its evil may in a moment be pardoned, and all
its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed ; and that the sigh
of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will waft
the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain,— than it may
be under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more
probable, apprehension, that "what a man soweth that shall
he also reap"— or others reap,— when he, the living seed
of pestilence, walketh no more in darkness, but hes down
therein.

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of

ii6 PREFACE.

soul, or the offence given by the conduct of those who
claim higher hope, may have rendered this painful creed
the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, more
secure in its ground than any which can be addressed to
happier persons. I would fain, if I might offenselessly,
have spoken to them as if none others heard; and have
said thus : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be
deaf forever. For these others, at your right hand and
your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence,
in which all their errors will be overruled, and all their
faults forgiven ; for these, who, stained and blackened in
the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves
for an instant in the font of death, and to rise renewed of
plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and her
feathers like gold ; for these, indeed, it may be permissible
to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future
of innumerable hours ; to these, in their weakness, it may
be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can
only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the
iniquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In
them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the
poor, over whom they know their Master is watching ; and
to leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish
eternally. But, for you, there is no such hope, and there-
fore no such excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the
wretched, you believe to be all their inheritance ; you may
crush them, before the moth, and they will never rise to
rebuke you ; — their breath, which fails for lack of food,
once expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you
a word of accusing ; — they and you, as you think, shall lie
down together in the dust, and the worms cover you ; — and
for them there shall be no consolation, and on you no ven-
geance, — only the question murmured above your grave :

PREFACE. 117

"Who shall repay him what he hath done? " Is it therefore
easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which
there is no remedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all
of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours
long to him with pain? Will you be readier to the injustice
which can never be redressed; and niggardly of mercy
which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you
refuse forever? I think better of you, even of the most
selfish, than that you would do this, well understood. And
for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes not
less grave, in these curt limits. If your life were but a
fever fit, — the madness of a night, whose follies were all to
be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you
fretted away the sickly hours, — ^what toys you snatched at,
or let fall, — ^what visions you followed wistfiiUy with the
deceived eyes of sleepless phrenzy. Is the earth only an
hospital? Play, if you care to play, on the floor of the
hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please you ;
gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that,
clutching at the black motes in the air with your dying
hands ; — and yet, it may be well with you. But if this life
be no dream, and the world no hospital ; if all the peace
and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now ;
and all fi-uit of victory gathered here, or never ;— will you
still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary your-
selves in the fire for vanity? If there is no rest which
remaineth for you, is there none you might presendy take?
was this grass of the earth made green for your shroud
only, not for your bed? and can you never lie down up(m
it, but only under it? The heathen, to whose creed you
have returned, thought not so. They knew that life
brought its contest, but they expected from it also the
crown of all contest : No proud one ! no jeweled circlet

Il8 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

flaming through Heaven above the hight of the unmerited
throne ; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the
tired brow, through a few years of peace. It should have
been of gold, they thought ; but Jupiter was poor ; this was
the best the god could give them. Seeking a greater than
this, they had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in
wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found
for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The
wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you : — the tree that
grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no
verdure of branch ; only with soft snow of blossom, and
scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thornset
stem ; no fastening of diadem for you but with such
sharp embroidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win
while yet you live; type of grey honor and sweet rest.*
Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust,
and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others,
and the ministry to their pain ; — these, and the blue sky
above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth
beneath ; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of
living things, — these may yet be here your riches ; untor-
menting and divine : serviceable for the life that now is ;
nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE

LECTURE I.

WORK.

(Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at CaMerwell.)

MY FRIENDS, — I have not come among you to-night
to endeavor to give you an entertaining lecture;
but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you some
plain, but necessary questions. I have seen and known
too much of the struggle for life among our laboring popu-
lation, to feel at ease, even under any circumstances, in
inviting them to dwell on the trivialities of my own studies ;
but, much more, as I meet to-night, for the first time, the
members of a working Institute established in the district
in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I am
desirous that we should at once understand each other, on
graver matters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings,
and with what hope, I regard this Institution, as one of
many such, now happily established throughout England,
as well as in other countries ;— Institutions which are
preparing the way for a great change in all the circum-
stances of industrial life ; but of which the success must
wholly depend upon our clearly understanding the circum-
stances and necessary limits of this change. No teacher
can truly promote the cause of education, until he knows

I20 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

the conditions of the life for which that education is to
prepare his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to
address you nominally, as a "Working Class," must compel
him, if he is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire
in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose this class
distinction has been founded in the past, and must be
founded in the future. The manner of the amusement,
and the matter of the teaching, which any of us can offer
you, must depend wholly on our first understanding from
you, whether you think the distinction heretofore drawn
between working men and others, is truly or falsely founded.
Do you accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modi-
fied? or do you think the object of education is to efface
it, and make us forget it for ever?'

Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We
call this — ^you and I — & "Working Men's" Institute, and
our college in London, a ' ' Working Men's ' ' College. Now,
how do you consider that these several institutes differ, or
ought to differ, from "idle men's" institutes and "idle
men' s " colleges ? Or by what other word than " idle " shall
I distinguish those whom the happiest and wisest of working
men do not object to call the ' ' Upper Classes ? ' ' Are there
really upper classes, — are there lower? How much should
they always be elevated, how much always depressed?
And, gentlemen and ladies — I pray those of you who are
here to forgive me the offense there may be in what I am
going to say. It is not /who wish to say it. Bitter voices
say it; voices of battle and of famine through all the world,
which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence.
Neither is it to you specially that I say it. I am sure that
most now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfill
them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you
as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 121

by thoughtlessness, but not, therefore, the less terribly.
Willful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there
to that of which we are unconscious ?

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen,
and ask them, also as representing a great multitude, what
they think the "upper classes" are, and ought to be^ in
relation to them. Answer, you workmen who are here,
as you would among yourselves, frankly ; and tell me how
you would have me call those classes. Am I to call them
— ^would you think me right in calling them — the idle
classes? I think you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as
if I were not treating my subject honestly, or speaking
from my heart, if I went on under the supposition that all
rich people were idle. You would be both unjust and
unwise if you allowed me to say that ; — not less unjust than
the rich people who say that all the poor are idle, and will
never work if they can help it, or more than they can help.

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle
rich ; and there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a
beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year ; and
many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy,
and never would think of stopping in the street to play
marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between
workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men,
runs through the very heart and innermost economies of
men of all ranks and in all positions. There is a working
class — strong and happy — among both rich and poor;
there is an idle class — weak, wicked, and miserable —
among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misun-
derstandings arising between the two orders come of the
unlucky fact that' the wise of one class habitually contem-
plate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people
watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be

122 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

right ; and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked
the idle poor people, all would be right. But each class
has a tendency to look for the faults of the other. A hard-
working man of property is particularly offended by an
idle beggar ; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally
intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what
is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either
class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust — but among the
unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look
upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage
their houses and divide their property. None but the
dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of
the vices and follies of the poor.

There is, then, no class distinction between idle and
industrious people ; and I am going to-night to speak only
of the industrious. The idle people we will put out of our
thoughts at once — they are mere nuisances — what ought
to be done with them, we'll talk of at another time. But
there are class distinctions, among the industrious them-
selves; tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to
every degree in the infinite thermometer of human pain
and of human power — distinctions of high and low, of lost
and won, to the whole reach of man's soul and body.

These separations we will study, and the laws of them,
among energetic men only, who, whether they work or
whether they play, put their strength into the work, and
their strength into the game ; being in the full sense of the
word "industrious," one way or another — with a purpose,
or without. And these distinctions are mainly four :

I. Between those who work, and those who play.

II. Between those who produce the means of life, and
those who consume them.

III. Between those who work with the head, and those
who work with the hand.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 123

IV. Between those who work wisely, and who work
foolishly.

For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose,
in our examination. —

I. Work to play ;
II. Production to consumption ;

III. Head to Hand ; and,

IV. Sense to nonsense.

I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who
work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree
upon a definition of these terms, — work and play, — before
going further. Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of
definition, but for plain use of the words, "play" is an
exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and
with no determined end ; and work is a thing done because
it ought to be done, and with a determined end. You
play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. That is as
hard work as anything else ; but it amuses you, and it has
no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered
form of exercise, for health's sake, it would become work
directly. So, in like manner, whatever we do to please
ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an
ultimate object, is "play," the "pleasing thing," not the
useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary sense
(nothing is indeed more usefiil or necessary) ; but the use
of il depends on its being spontaneous.

Let us, then, inquire together what sort of games the
playing class in England spend their lives in playing at.

The first of all English games is making money. That
is an all-absorbing game ; and we knock each other down
oftener in playing at that than at foot-ball, or any other
roughest sport; and it is absolutely without purpose; no
pne who engages heartily in that game ever knows why.

124 ^^^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his
money — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do any-
thing with it. He gets it only that he /way get it. "What
will you make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well,
I'll get more," he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more
runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them
than other people is the game. And there's no use in the
money, but to have more of it than other people is the
game. So all that great foul city of London there, —
rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of
fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, —
you fancy it is a city of work ? Not a street of it ! It is a
great city of play ; very nasty play, and very hard play,
but still play. It is only Lord's cricket ground without the
turf, — ^a huge billiard table without the cloth, and with
pockets as deep as the bottomless pit ; but mainly a billiard
table, after all.

Well, the first great English game is this playing at
counters. It differs from the rest in that it appears always
to be producing money, while every other game is expen-
sive. But it does not always produce money. There's a
great difference between "winning" money and "making"
it; a great difference between getting it out of another
man's pocket into ours, or filling both. Collecting money
is by no means the same thing as making it; the tax-
gatherer's house is not the Mint ; and much of the apparent
gain (so called), in commerce, is only a form of taxation
on carriage or exchange.

Our next great English game, however, hunting and
shooting, is costly altogether ; and how much we are fined
for it annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game
laws, and all else that accompanies that beautiful and special
English game, I will not endeavor to count now : but note

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

125

only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a useless
game, but a deadly one, to all connected with it. For
through horse-racing, you get every form of what the
higher classes everywhere call "Play," in distinction from
all other plays ; that is — ^gambling ; by no means a beneficial
or recreative game : and, through game-preserving, you
get also some curious laying out of ground ; that beautiful
arrangement of dwelling-house for man and beast, by which
we have grouse and black-cock — so many brace to the
acre, and men and women — so many brace to the garret.
I often wonder what the angelic builders and surveyors —
the angelic builders who build the " many mansions " up
above there ; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that
four-square city with their measuring reeds — I wonder
what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying
out of ground by this nation, which has set itself, as it
seems, literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather
feet for word, in the persons of those poor whom its Master
left to represent him, what that Master said of himself—
that foxes and birds had homes, but He none.

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we
must put the ladies' game of dressing. It is not the
cheapest of games. I saw a brooch at a jeweler's in Bond
Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, and without any
singular jewel in it, yet worth ;^3,ooo. And I wish I could
tell you what this "play" costs, altogether, in England,
France, and Russia annually. But it is a pretty game, and
on certain terms, I like it; nay, I don't see it played quite
as much as I would fain have it. You ladies like to lead
the fashion : — by all means lead it — ^lead it thoroughly, lead
it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress every-
body else nicely. Lead the fashions for the poor first ;
make them look well, and you yourselves will look, in ways

126 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

of which you have now no conception, all the better. The
fashions you have set for some time among your peasantry
are not pretty ones; their doublets are too irregularly
slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through them.

Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could
show you if I had time.

There's playing at literature, and playing at art — ^very
diiferent, both, from working at literature, or working at
art, but I've no time to speak of these. I pass to the
greatest of all — the play of plays, the great gentleman's
game, which ladies like them best to play at, — the game of
War. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination ; the
facts of it, not always so pleasant. We dress for it, how-
ever, more finely than for any other sport ; and go out to
it, not merely, in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold,
and all manner of fine colors: of course we could fight
better in gray, and without feathers ; but all nations have
agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then
the bats and balls are very costly ; our English and French
bats, with the balls and wickets, even those which we don't
make any use of, costing, I suppose, now about fifteen
millions of money annually to each nation ; all of which,
you know is paid for by hard laborer's work in the fiirrow
and furnace. A costly game ! — not to speak of its conse-
quences ; I will say at present nothing of these. The mere
immediate cost of all these plays is what I want you to
consider ; they all cost deadly work somewhere, as many
of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, whose sight fails
over the diamonds ; the weaver, whose arm fails over the
web ; the iron-forger, whose breath fails before the furnace
— they know what work is — ^they, who have all the work,
and none of the play, except a kind they have named for
themselves down in the black north country, where "play"

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 127

means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example
for philologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense
of the word ' ' play, ' ' as used in the black country of Birming-
ham, and the red and black country of Baden Baden. Yes,
gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of England, who think ' ' one
moment unamused a misery, not made for feeble man," this
is what you have brought the word "play" to mean, in the
heart of merry England ! You may have your fluting and
piping ; but there are sad children sitting in the market-
place, who indeed cannot say to you, "We have piped unto
you, and ye have not danced;" but eternally shall say to
ypu, "We have mourned unto you, and ye have not
lamented."

This, then, is the first distinction between the ' ' upper
and lower" classes. And this is one which is by no means
necessary ; which indeed must, in process of good time, be
by all honest men's consent abolished. Men will be taught
that an existence of play, sustained by the blood of other
creatures, is a good existence for gnats and sucking fish ;
but not for men : that neither days, nor lives, can be made
holy by doing nothing in them : that the best prayer at the
beginning of a day is that we may not lose its moments ;
and the best grace before meat, the consciousness that we
have justly earned our dinner. And when we have this
much of plain Christianity preached to us again, and enough
respect for what we regard as inspiration, as not to think
that "Son, go work to-day in my vineyard," means "Fool,
go play to-day in my vineyard," we shall all be workers, in
one way or another ; and this much at least of the distinction
between "upper" and "lower" forgotten.

II. I pass then to our second distinction ; between the
rich and poor, between Dives and Lazarus, — distinction
which exists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, than ever

128 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

in the world, Pagan or Christian, till now. I will put it
sharply before you, to begin with, merely by reading two
paragraphs which I cut from two papers that lay on my
breakfast table on the same morning, the 25th of Novem-
ber, 1864. The piece about the rich Russian ^t Paris is
common-place enough, and stupid besides (for fifteen francs,
— 1 2 J. 6«?., — is nothing for a rich man to give for a couple
of peaches, out of season). Still, the two paragraphs printed
on the same day are worth putting side by side.

' ' Such a man is now here. He is a Russian, and, with
youV permission, we will call him Count Teufelskine. In
dress he is sublime; art is considered in that toilet, the
harmony of color respected, the chiar' oscuro evident in
well-selected contrast. In manners he is dignified — nay,
perhaps apathetic ; nothing disturbs the placid serenity of
that calm exterior. One day our friend breakfasted chez
Bignon. When the bill came he read, 'Two peaches, I5f.'
He paid. 'Peaches scarce, I presume?' was his sole
remark. 'No, sir,' replied the waiter, 'but Teufelskines
are.'" — Telegraph, November 25, 1864.

"Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a woman, passing
a dung heap in the stone yard near the recently- erected
almshouses in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called
the attention of a Thames police-constable to a man in a
sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid
he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched
creature appeared to have been dead several hours. He
had perished of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating
down on him all night. The deceased was a bone-picker.
He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and
half-starved. The police had frequently driven him away
from the stone yard, between sunset and sunrise, and told
him to go home. He selected a most desolate spot for his
wretched death. A penny and some bones were found in
his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and sixty
years of age. Inspector Roberts, of the K division, has
given directions for inquiries to be made at the lodging-

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 129

houses respecting the deceased, to ascertain his identity if
possible." — Morning Post, November 25, 1864.

You have the separation thus in brief compass ; and I
want you to take notice of the "a penny and some bones
were found in his pockets," and to compare it with this
third statement, from the Telegraph of January i6th of this
year : —

' ' Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers
was drawn up by the most conspicuous political economists
in England. It is low in quantity, but it is sufficient to
support nature ; yet within ten years of the passing of the
Poor Law Act, we heard of the paupers in the Andover
Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the
marrow from the bones of horses which they were employed
to crush."

You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of
Christianity has some advantage over the Jewish one.
Jewish Lazarus expected, or at least prayed, to be fed with
crumbs from the rich man's table; but our Lazarus is fed
with crumbs from the dog's table.

Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on two
bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful
and everlastingly necessary; beyond them, on a basis
unlawful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of
society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who
works should be paid the fair value of his work ; and that
if he does not choose to spend it to-day, he should have
free leave to keep it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an
industrious man working daily, and laying by daily, attains
at last the possession of an accumulated sum of wealth, to
which he has absolute right. The idle person who will not
work, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the
end of the same time will be doubly poor — poor in posses-
sion, and dissolute in moral habit; and he will then

I30 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

naturally covet the money which the other has saved. And
if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his
well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving,
or any reward for good conduct ; and all society is there-
upon dissolved, or exists only in systems of rapine. There-
fore the first necessity of social life is the clearness of
national conscience in enforcing the law — that he should
keep who has justly earned.

That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between
rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction ;
namely, the power held over those who earn wealth by
those who levy or exact it. There will be always a number
of men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation
of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that
class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect,
and more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for
a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money
the chief object of his thoughts ; as physically impossible
as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of
them. All healthy people like their dinners, but their dinner
is not the main object of their lives. So all healthily
minded people like making money — ought to like it, and
to enjoy the sensation of winning it ; but the main object
of their life is not money; it is something better than
money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do
his fighting well. He is glad of his pay — ^very properly so,
and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without
it — still, his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be
paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They like pew-
rents, and baptismal fees, of course ; but yet, if they are
brave and well educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object
of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose
of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially to

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

131

baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of
doctors. They Uke fees no doubt, — ought to hke them ;
yet if they are brave and well educated, the entire object of
their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure
the sick ; and, — if they are good doctors, and the choice
were fairly put to them, — ^would rather cure their patient,
and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with
all other brave and rightly trained men ; their work is first,
their fee second — very important always, but still second.
But in every nation, as I said, there are a vast class who
are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. And
with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and the
work second, as with brave people the work is first and the
fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is the
whole distinction in a man ; distinction between life and
death in him, between heaven and hell for him. You
cannot serve two masters ; — ^you must serve one or other.
If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is
your master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if
your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your
master, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil ; and not only
the Devil, but the lowest of devils — the "least erected fiend
that fell." So there you have it in brief terms ; Work first
— you are God's servants; Fee first — you are the Fiend's.
And it makes a diiference, now and ever, believe me,
whether you serve Him who has on His vesture and thigh
written, "King of Kings," and whose service is perfect
freedom ; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name is
written, "Slave of Slaves," and whose service is perfect
slavery.

However, in every nation there are, and must always
be, a certain number of these Fiend's servants, who have it
principally for the object of their lives to make money.

132 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

They are always, as I said, more or less stupid, and cannot
conceive of anything else so nice as money. Stupidity is
always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injus-
tice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all common
wickedness. He was only a common money-lover, and,
like all money-lovers, didn't understand Christ ; — couldn't
make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He didn't
want Him to be killed. He was horror-struck when he
found that Christ would be killed ; threw his money away
instantly, and hanged himself. How many of our present
money-seekers, think you, would have the grace to hang
themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a common,
-selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow ; his hand always in
the bag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't
understand Christ ; — yet believed in Him, much more than
most of us do ; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was
quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas,
might as well make his own little bye-perquisites out of the
affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, and he
have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's
idea, all over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't
understand Him — doesn't care for him — sees no good in
that benevolent business ; makes his own little job out of it
at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass
of men, you have a certain number of bag-men — your "fee-
first" men, whose main object is to make money. And
they do make it — make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly
by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called
the power of capital ; that is to say, the power which
money, once obtained, has over the labor of the poor, so
that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, except
the laborer's food. That is the modern Judas' s way of
"carrying the bag," and "bearing what is put therein."

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 133

Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage?
Has not the man who has worked for the money a right to
use it as he best can? No; in this respect, money is now
exactly what mountain promontories over pubhc roads
were in old times. The barons fought for them fairly : —
the strongest and cunningest got them ; then fortified them,
and made everyone who passed below pay toll. Well,
capital now is exactly what crags were then. Men fight
fairly (we will, at least, grant so much, though it is more
than we ought) for their money ; but, once having got it,
the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes
below pay toll to his million, and build another tower of his
money castle. And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by
the roadside suffer now quite as much from the bag-baron,
as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and crags
have just the same result on rags. I have not time, how-
ever, to-night to show you in how many ways the power of
capital is unjust; but this one great principle I have to
assert-^you will find it quite indisputably true — that when-
ever money is the principal object of life with either man or
nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill ; and does harm both
in the getting and spending ; but when it is not the prin-
cipal object, it and all other things will be well got, and well
spent. And here is the test, with every man, of whether
money is the principal object with him, or not. If in mid-
life he could pause and say, "Now I have enough to live
upon, I'll live upon it; and having well earned it, I will
also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came
into it," then money is not principal with him ; but if,
having enough to live upon in the manner befitting his
character and rank, he still wants to make more, and to
die rich, then money is the principal object with him, and
it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who

134 ^^^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

spend it after him. For you know it must be spent some
day ; the only question is whether the man who makes it
shall spend it, or some one else. And generally it is better
for the maker to spend it, for he will know best its value
and use. This is the true law of life. And if a man does
not choose thus to spend his money, he must either hoard
it or lend it, and the worst thing he can generally do is to
lend it; for borrowers are nearly always ill- spenders, and
it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done, and all
unjust war protracted.

For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to
foreign military governments, and how strange it is. If
your little boy came to you to ask for money to spend in
squibs and crackers, you would think twice before you gave
it him ; and you would have some idea that it was wasted,
when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did
no mischief with it. But the Russian children, and Austrian
children, come to you, borrowing money, not to spend in
innocent squibs, but in cartridges and bayonets to attack
you in India with, and to keep down all noble life in Italy
with, and to murder Polish women and children with ; and
that you will give at once, because they pay you interest
for it. Now, in order to pay you that interest, they must
tax every working peasant in their dominions ; and on that
work you live. You, therefore, at once rob the Austrian
peasant, assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, and you
live on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the
assassination ! That is the broad fact — that is the practical
meaning of your foreign loans, and of most large interest
of money; and then you quarrel with Bishop Colenso,
forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, and you believed it!
though, wretches as you are, every deliberate act of your
lives is a new defiance of its primary orders ; and as if, for

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 135

most of the rich men of England at this moment, it were
not indeed to be desired, as the best thing at least for them,
that the Bible should not be true, since against them these
words are written in it : " The rust of your gold and silver
shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as
it were fire."

III. I pass now to our third condition of separation,
between the men who work with the hand, -and those who
work with the head.

And here we have at last an inevi^ble distinction.
There must be work done by the arms, or none of us could
live. There must be work done by the brains, or the life
we get would not be worth having. And the same men
cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and
rough men must do it ; there is gentle work to be done,
and gentlemen must do it ; and it is physically impossible
that one class should do, or divide, the work of the other.
And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact by
fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honor-
ableness of manual labor, and the dignity of humanity.
That is a grand old proverb of Sancho Panza's, "Fine words
butter no parsnips;" and I can tell you that, all over
England just now, you workmen are buying a great deal
too much butter at that dairy. Rough work, honorable or
not, takes the life out of us ; and the man who has been
heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an express
train against the north wind all night, or holding a collier's
helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white hot iron at
a fiirnace mouth, that man is not the same at the end of
his day, or night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet
room, with everything comfortable about him, reading
books, or classing butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is
any comfort to you to be told that the rough work is the

136 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSK IN.

more honorable of the two, I should be sorry to take that
much of consolation from you ; and in some sense I need
not. The rough work is at all events real, honest, and,
generally, though not always, useful ; while the fine work
is, a great deal of it, foolish and false as well as fine, and
therefore dishonorable; but when both kinds are equally
well and worthily done, the head's is the noble work, and
the hand's the ignoble ; and of all hand work whatsoever,
necessary for the maintenance of life, those old words, "In
the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," indicate that the
inherent nature of it is one of calamity ; and that the ground,
cursed for our sake, casts also some shadow of degradation
into our contest with its thorn and its thistle ; so that all
nations have held their days honorable, or "holy," and
constituted them "holydays" or "holidays," by making
them days of rest ; and the promise, which, among all our
distant hopes, seems to cast the chief brightness over death,
is that blessing of the dead who die in the Lord, that "they
rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."

And thus the perpetual question and contest must arise,
who is to do this rough work ? and how is the worker of it
to be comforted, redeemed, and rewarded? and what kind
of play should he have, and what rest, in this world, some-
times, as well as in the next? Well, my good working
friends, these questions will take a little time to answer yet.
They must be answered : all good men are occupied with
them, and all honest thinkers. There's grand head work
doing about them ; but much must be discovered, and
much attempted in vain, before anything decisive can be
told you. Only note these few particulars, which are
already sure.

As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us,'
or very few of us, do either hard or soft work because we

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 137

think we ought ; but because we have chanced to fall into
the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody
does anything well that they cannot help doing : work is
only done well when it is done with a will ; and no man
has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is doing
what he should, and is in his place. And, depend upon it,
all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly, scram-
bling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human
way — a lawful way. Men are enlisted for the labor that
kills — the labor of war: they are counted, trained, fed,
dressed, and praised for that. Let them be enlisted also
for the labor that feeds : let them be counted, trained, fed,
dressed, praised for that. Teach the plow exercise as
carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers
of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the officers
of troops of death ; and all is done : but neither this, nor
any other right thing, can be accomplished' — you can't
even see your way to it — unless, first of all, both servant
and master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will
do each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling
about what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or advise-
ablest to do, or profitablest to do ; but they never, so far
as I hear them talk, ever ask what it is just to do. And
it is the law of heaven that you shall not be able to judge
what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge
what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly
reiterated by our Master — the order of all others that is
given oftenest — ' ' Do justice and judgment." That's your
Bible order; that's the "Service of God," not praying nor
psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms when
you are merry, and to pray when you need anything ; and,
by the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that
praying and psalm-singing are "service." If a child finds

138 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

itself in want of anything, it runs in and asks its father for
it — does it call that, doing its father a service? If it begs
for a toy or a piece of cake — does it call that serving its
father? That, with God, is prayer, and He likes to hear it :
He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want it ; but
He doesn't call that "serving Him." Begging is not
serving : God likes mere beggars as little as you do — He
likes honest servants, not beggars. So when a child loves
its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing little
songs about him ; but it doesn't call that serving its father ;
neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is
enjoying ourselves, if it's anything; most probably it is
nothing; but if it's an3rthing, it is serving ourselves, not
God. And yet we are impudent enough to call our beggings
and chantings " Divine Service : " we say "Divine service
will be 'performed' " (that's our word — the form of it gone
through) "at eleven o'clock." Alas! — unless we perform
Divine service in every willing act of our life, we never
perform it at all. The one Divine work — the one ordered
sacrifice — is to do justice; and it is the last we are ever
inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As much
charity as you choose, but no justice. "Nay," you will
say, ' ' charity is greater than justice. ' ' Yes, it is greater ; it
is the summit of justice — it is the temple of which justice is
the foundation. But you can't have the top without the
bottom ; you cannot build upon charity. You must build
upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, at first,
charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work.
Do justice to your brother (you can do that, whether you
love him or not), and you will come to love him. But do
injustice to him, because you don't love him ; and you will
come to hate him. It is all very fine to think you can build
upon charity to begin with; but you will find all you have

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 139

got to begin with, begins at home, and is essentially love
of yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are
here to-night, will go to "Divine service" next Sunday, all
nice and tidy, and your little children will have their tight
little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in
their hats ; and you'll think, complacently and piously, how
lovely they look ! So they do : and you love them heartily,
and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all
right : that is charity ; but it is charity beginning at home.
Then you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got
up also, — it, in its Sunday dress, — the dirtiest rags it has, —
that it may beg the better : we shall give it a penny, and
think how good we are. That's charity going abroad.
But what does Justice say, walking and watching near us ?
Christian Justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly
blind ; and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a day : she
keeps her accounts still, however — quite steadily — doing
them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through
acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she
cares about). You must put your ear down ever so close
to her lips to hear her speak ; and then you will start at
what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, "Why
shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather on its
head, as well as your own child?" Then you may ask
Justice, in an amazed manner, "How she can possibly be so
foolish as to think children could sweep crossings with
feathers on their heads?" Then you stoop again, and
Justice says — still in her dull, stupid way — "Then, why
don't you, every oth^r Sunday, leave your child to sweep
the crossing, and take the litde sweeper to church in a hat
and feather?" Mercy on us (you think), what will she say
next? And you answer, of course, that "you don't, because
every body ought to remain content in the position in

I40 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSK IN

which Providence has placed them. " Ah, my friends, that' s
the gist of the whole question. Did Providence put them
in that position, or did you? You knock a man into a
ditch, and then you tell him to remain pontent in the ' ' posi-
tion in which Providence has placed him." That's modern
Christianity. You say — " We did not knock him into the
ditch." How do you know what you have done, or are
doing? That's just what we have all got to know, and
what we shall never know, until the question with us every
morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do
the just thing ; nor until we are at least so far on the way
to being Christian, as to have understood that maxim of the
poor half-way Mahometan, ' ' One hour in the execution of
justice is worth seventy years of prayer."

Supposing, then, we have it determined with appropriate
justice, who is to do the hand work, the next questions
must be how the hand-workers are to be paid, and how
they are to be refreshed, and what play they are to have.
Now, the possible quantity of play depends on the possible
quantity of pay ; and the quantity of pay is not a matter
for consideration to hand-workers only, but to all workers.
Generally, good, useful work, whether of the hand or head,
is either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don't say it should
be so, but it always is so. People, as a rule, only pay for
being amused or being cheated, not for being served. Five
thousand a year to your talker, and a shilling a day to your
fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best
head work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for.
How much do you think Homer got for his Iliad? or
Dante for his Paradise? only bitter bread and salt, and
going up and down other people's stairs. In science, the
man who discovered the telescope, and first saw heaven,
was paid with a dungeon ; the man who invented the micro-

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

141

scope, and first saw earth, died of starvation, driven from
his home : it is indeed very clear that God means all thor-
oughly good work and talk to be done for nothing.
Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a line for writing
Jeremiah's second roll for him, I fancy; and St. Stephen
did not get Bishop's pay for that long sermon of his to the
Pharisees; nothing but stones. For indeed that is the
world-father's proper payment. So surely as any of the
world's children work for the world's good, honestly, with
head and heart; and come to it, saying, "Give us a little
bread, just to keep the life in us," the world-father answers
them, "No, my children, not bread; a stone, if you like,
or as many as you need, to keep you quiet." But the
hand-workers are not so ill off as all this comes to. The
worst that can happen to you is to break stones ; not be
broken by them. And for you there will come a time for
better payment ; some day, assuredly, more pence will be
paid to Peter the Fisherman, and fewer to Peter the Pope ;
we shall pay people not quite so much for talking in Parlia-
ment and doing nothing, as for holding their tongues out of
it and doing something ; we shall pay our plowman a little
more and our lawyer a little less, and so on : but, at least,
we may even now take care that whatever work is done
shall be fully paid for ; and the man who does it paid for
it, not somebody else ; and that it shall be done in an
orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome way, under good
captains and lieutenants of labor ; and that it shall have its
appointed times of rest, and enough of them ; and that in
those times the play shall be wholesome play, not in theat-
rical gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, and girls
dancing because of their misery ; but in true gardens, with
real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing because
of their gladness ; so that truly the streets shall be full (the

142 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

"streets" mind you, not the gutters) of children, playing in
the midst thereof. We may take care that working-men
shall have at least as good books to read as anybody else,
whto they've time to read them ; and as comfortable fire-
sides to sit at as anybody else, when they've time to sit at
them. This, I think, can be managed for you, my working
friends, in the good time.

IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, concerning
ourselves all, as workers. What is wise work, and what is
foolish work? What the difference between sense and
nonsense, in daily occupation ?

Well, wise work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish
work is work against God. And work done with God,
which He will help, may be briefly described as ' ' Putting
in Order" — that is, enforcing God's law of order, spiritual
and material, over men and things. The first thing you
have to do, essentially, the real "good work," is, with
respect to men, to enforce justice, and with respect to
things, to enforce tidiness, and fruitfulness. And againat
these two great human deeds, justice and order, there are
perpetually two great demons contending, — the devil of
iniquity, or inequity, and the devil of disorder, or of death ;
for death is only consummation of disorder. You have to
fight these two fiends daily. So far as you don't fight
against the fiend of iniquity, you work for him. You
"work iniquity," and the judgment upon you, for all your-
"Lord, Lord's," will be "Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity." And so far as you do not resist the fiend of
disorder, you work disorder, and you yourself do the
work of Death, which is sin, and has for its wages, Death
himself.

Observe then, all wise work is mainly threefold in
character. It is honest, useful, and cheerful.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 143

I. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything more strange
than that you recognize honesty in play, and you do not
in work. In your lightest games, you have always some
one to see what you call "fair play." In boxing, you must
hit fair ; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword is
fair-play, your English hatred, foul-play. Did it ever
strike you that you wanted another watchword also, fair-
work, and another hatred also, foul- work? Your prize-
fighter has some honor in him yet ; and so have the men
in the ring round him : they will judge him to lose the
match, by foul hitting. But your prize-merchant gains his
match by foul selling, and no one cries out against that.
You drive a gambler out of the gambling-room who loads
dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourishing business,
who loads scales ! For observe, all dishonest dealing is
loading scales. What does it matter whether I get short
weight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric? The
fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two.
Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you ;
but give me adulterate food, and I die by you. Here,
then, is your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen —
to be true to yourselves, and to us who would help you.
We can do nothing for you, nor you for yourselves,
without honesty. Get that, you get all ; without that, your
suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade measures, your
institutions of science, are all in vain. It is useless to put
your heads together, if you can't put your hearts together.
Shoulder to shoulder, right .hand to right hand, among
yourselves, and no wrong hand to anybody else, and you'll
win the world yet.

II. Then, secondly, wise work is useful. No man
minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes
to something ; but when it is hard, and comes to nothing ;

144 ^^^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

when all our bees' business turns to spiders' ; and for
honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away
by the next breeze — that is the cruel thing for the worker.
Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, or even nationally,
whether our work is coming to anything or not? We
don't care to keep what has been nobly done ; still less do
we care to do nobly what others would keep ; and, least
of all, to make the work itself useful instead of deadly to
the doer, so as to use his life indeed, but not to waste it.
Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is
the waste of labor. If you went down in the morning into
your dairy, and you found that your youngest child had
got down before you ; and that he and the cat were at play
together, and that he had poured out all the cream on the
floor for the cat to lap up, you would scold the child, and
be sorry the milk was wasted. But if, instead of wooden
bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with
human life in them, and instead of the cat to play with —
the devil to play with ; and you yourself the player ; and
instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God
at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour
the human blood out on the ground for the fiend to lick
ujj — that is no waste ! What ! you perhaps think, ' ' to
waste the labor of men is not to kill them." Is it not? I
should like to know how you could kill them more utterly
— kill them with second deaths, seventh deaths, hundred-
fold deaths? It is the slightest way of killing to stop a
man's breath. Nay, the hupger, and the cold, and the
little whistling bullets — our love-messengers between nation
and nation — have brought pleasant messages from us to
many a man before now ; orders of sweet release, and leave
at last to go where he will be most welcome and most
happy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, you do

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 145

not corrupt his life. But if you put him to base labor, if
you bind his thoughts,, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt
his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, and
blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much as to reap
the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for your-
self, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done
with him, having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of
that grave everlasting (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly
bricks of some of our family vaults will hold closer in the
resurrection day than the sod over the laborer's head), this
you think is no waste, and no sin !

III. Then, lastly, wise work is cheerful, as a child's
work is. And now I want you to take one thought home
with you, and let it stay with you.

Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily,
"Thy kingdom come." Now, if we hear a man swear in
the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he "takes
God's name in vain." But there's a twenty times worse
way of taking His name in vain, than that. It is to ask
God for what we don't want. He doesn't like that sort of
prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it : such
asking is the worst mockery of your King you can mock
Him with ; the soldiers striking Him on the head with the
reed was nothing to that. If you do not wish for His
kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do
more than pray for it ; you must work for it. And, to
work for it, you must know what it is : we have all prayed
for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a king-
dom that is to come to us ; we are not to go to it. Also, it
is not to be a kingdom of the dead, bub of the living. Also,
it is not to come all at once, but quietly ; nobody knows
how. ' ' The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. ' '
Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in the hearts pf

146 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RVSKIN.

us :" the kingdom of God is within you." And, being
within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be felt ; and
though it brings all substance of good with it, it does not
consist in that: "the kingdom of God is not meat and
drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy
Ghost:" joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and
helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work for this kingdom,
and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one condi-
tion to be first accepted. You must enter it as children,
or not at all; "Whosoever will not receive it as a little
child shall not enter therein." And again, "Suffer little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of
such is the kingdom of heaven."

0/ such, observe. Not of children themselves, but of
such as children. I believe most mothers who read that
text think that all heaven is to be fiiU of babies. But that's
not so. There will be children there, but the hoary head
is the crown. "Length of days, and long life and peace,"
that is the blessing, not to die in babyhood. Children die
but for their parents' sins ; God means them to live, but
He can't let them always.; then they have their earlier
place in heaven : and the little child of David, vainly
prayed for ; — the little child of Jeroboam, killed by its
mother's step on its own threshold, — they will be there.
But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, having
learned children's lessons at last, will be there too ; and the
one question for us all, young or old, is, have we learned
our child's lesson? it is the character of children we want,
and must gain at our peril ; let us see, briefly, in what it
consists.

The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest.
A well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents,
or that it knows everything. It may think its father and

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 147

mother know everything, — perhaps that all grown-up
people know everything; very certainly it is sure that it
does not. And it is always asking questions, and wanting
to know more. Well, that is the first character of a good
and wise man at his work. To know that he knows very
little ; — to perceive that there are many above him wiser
than he ; and to be always asking questions, wanting to
learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well who wants
to teach, or governs well who wants to govern ; it is an
old saying (Plato's, but I know not if his, first), and as
wise as old.

Then, the second character of right childhood is to be
Faithful. Perceiving that its father knows best what is
good for it, and having found always, when it has tried its
own way against his, that he was right and it was wrong, a
noble child trusts him at last wholly, gives him its hand,
and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And that is
the true character of all good men also, as obedient "
workers, or soldiers under captains. They must trust
their captains ; — they are bound for their lives to choose
none but those whom they can trust. Then, they are not
always to be thinking that what seems strange to them, or
wrong in what they are desired to do, is strange or wrong.
They know their captain : where he leads they must follow,
what he bids, they must do ; and without this trust and
faith, without this captainship and soldiership, no great
need, no great salvation, is possible to man. Among all
the nations it is only when this faith is attained by them
that they become great: the Jew, the Greek, and the
Mahometan, agree at least in testifying to this. It was a
deed of this absolute trust which made Abraham the father
of the faithful ; it was the declaration of the power of God
as captain over all men, and the acceptance of a leader

148 . THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

appointed by Him as commander of the faithful, which laid
the foundation of whatever national power yet exists in the
East ; and the deed of the Greeks, which has become the
type of unselfish and noble soldiership to all lands, and to
all times, was commemorated, on the tomb of those who
gave their lives to do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I
know, or can feel, of all human utterances : "Oh, stranger,
go and tell our people that we are lying here, having obeyed
their words."

Then the third character of right childhood is to be
Loving and Generous. Give a little love to a child, and
you get a great deal back. It loves everything near it,
when it is a right kind of child — would hurt nothing, would
give the best it has away, always, if you need it — does
not lay plans for getting everything in the house for itself,
and delights in helping people ; you cannot please it so
much as by giving it a chance of being useful, in ever so
little a way.

And because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful.
Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing —
being full of love to every creature, it is happy always,
whether in its play or in its duty. Well, that's the great
worker's character also. Taking no thought for the
morrow ; taking thought only for the duty of the day ;
trusting somebody else to take care of to-morrow ; know-
ing indeed what labor is, but not what sorrow is; and
always ready for play — beautiful play, — for lovely human
play is like the play of the Sun. There's a worker for you.
He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his
course, but also, he rejaiceth as a strong man to run
his course. See how he plays in the morning, with the
mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and a
flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere ; that's the

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

149

Sun's play; and great human play is like his — all various
— all full of light and life, and tender, as the dew of the
morning.

So then, you have the child's character in these four
things — Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's
what you have got to be converted to. "Except ye be
converted and become as little children" — You hear much
of conversion now-a-days ; but people always seem to think
they have got to be made wretched by conversion, — to be
converted to long faces. No, friends, you have got to be
converted to short ones ; you have to repent into childhood,
to repent into delight, and delightsomeness. You can't
go into a conventicle but you'll hear plenty of talk of
backsliding. Backsliding, indeed ! I can tell you, on the
ways most of us go, the faster we slide back the better.
Slide back into the cradle, if going on is into the grave —
back, I tell you ; back — out of your long faces, and into
your long clothes. It is among children only, and as
children only, that you will find medicine for your healing
and true wisdom for your teaching. There is poison in
the counsels of the rnen of this world ; the words they speak
are all bitterness, "the poison of asps is under their lips,"
but, "the sucking child shall play by the hole of the asp."
There is death in the looks of men. "Their eyes are
privily set against the poor ; ' ' they are as the uncharmable
serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But "the
weaned child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den."
There is death in the steps of men : "their feet are swift to
shed blood ; they have compassed us in our steps like the
lion that is greedy of his prey, and the young lion lurking
in secret places," but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie
down with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and "a
little child shall lead them." There is death in the thoughts

150 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUStClN.

of men : the world is one wide riddle to them, darker and
darker as it draws to a close ; but the secret of it is known
to the child, and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to
be thanked in that "He has hidden these things from the
wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes."
Yes, and there is death — infinitude of death in the princi-
palities and powers of men. As far as the east is from the
west, so far our sins are — not set from us, but multipUed
around us : the Sun himself, think you he now "rejoices" to
run his course, when he plunges westward to the horizon,
so widely red, not with clouds, but blood ? And it will be
red more widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and
latter rain may be, there will be none of that red rain. You
fortify yourselves, you arm yourselves against it in vain;
the enemy and avenger will be upon you also, unless you
learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knitted gun, or
the smoothed rifle, but "out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings" that the strength is ordained, which shall "still
the enemy and avenger."

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 151

LECTURE II.

TRAFFIC.

{Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford^

MY good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here
among your hills that I might talk to you about this
Exchange you are going to build : but earnestly
and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do
nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very
little, about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite
other things, though not willingly ; — I could not deserve
your pardon, if when you invited me to speak on one
subject, I willfully spoke on another. But I cannot speak,
to purpose, of anything about which I do not care ; and
most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the
outset, that I do not care about this Exchange of yours.

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had
answered, "I won't come, I don't care about the Exchange
of Bradford," you would have been justly offended with me,
not knowing the reasons of so blunt a carelessness. So I
have come down, hoping that you will patiently let me tell
you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now
remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the
opportunity of speaking to a gracious audience.

In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange, —
because _y<7« don't; and because you know perfectly well I
cannot make you. Look at the essential circumstances of
the case, which you, as business men, know perfectly well,

152 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

though perhaps you think I forget them. You are going
to spend ;^30,ooo, which to you, collectively, is nothing ;
the buying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more
important matter of consideration to me than building a
new Exchange is to you. But you think you may as well
have the right thing for your money. You know there are
a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't
want to do anything ridiculous ; you hear of me, among
others, as a respectable architectural man-milliner: and
you send for me, that I may tell you the leading fashion ;
and what is, in our shops, for the moment, the newest and
sweetest thing in pinnacles.

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot
have good architecture merely by asking people's advice
on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of
national life and character ; and it is produced by a prev-
alent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. And
I want you to think a little of the deep significance of this
word "taste;" for no statement of mine. has been more
earnestly or oftener controverted than that good taste is
essentially a moral quality. "No," say many of my antag-
onists, "taste is one thing, morality is another. Tell us
what is pretty ; we shall be glad to know that ; but preach
no sermons to us."

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine
somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index of
morality — ^it is the only morality. The first, and last, and
closest trial question to any living creature is, "What do
you like?" Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what
you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first man or
woman you meet, what their ' ' taste ' ' is, and if they answer
candidly, you know them, body iand soul. "You, my friend
in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what Aoyou like?" "A

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

153

pipe and a quartern of gin." I know you. "You, good
woman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you
like?" "A swept hearth and a clean tea-table, and my
husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I
know you also. ' ' You, little girl with the golden hair and
the soft eyes, what do you like?" "My canary, and a run
among the wood hyacinths." "You, little boy with the
dirty hands and the low forehead, what do you like? " "A
shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch-farthing." Good ;
we know them all now. What more need we ask?

"Nay," perhaps you answer: " we need rather to ask
what these people and children do, than what they like. If
they do right, it is no matter that they like what is wrong ;
and if they do wrong, it is no matter that they like what is
right. Doing is the great thing ; and it does not matter
that the man likes drinking, so that he does not drink ; nor
that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will
not learn her lessons ; nor that the little boy likes throwing
stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school."
Indeed, for a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is
true. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time
they come to like doing it. But they only are in a right
moral state when they have come to like doing it ; and as
long as they don't like it, they arfe still in a vicious state.
The man is not in health of body who is always thirsting
for the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his
thirst; but the man who heartily enjoys water in the
morning and wine in the evening, each in its proper
quantity and time. And the entire object of true education
is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy
the right things — not merely industrious, but to love
industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not
merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to
hunger and thirst after justice.

154 ^-^^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

But you may answer or think; ' ' Is the liking for outside
ornaments, — ^for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or archi-
tecture, — a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly
set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues is not a moral
quality, but taste for good ones is- Only here again we
have to define the word ' ' good. ' ' I don' t mean by " good, "
dever — or learned — or difficult in the doing. Take a
picture by Teniers, of sots quarreling over their dice : it is
an entirely clever picture ; so clever that nothing in its kind
has ever been done equal to it ; but it is also an entirely
base and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the
prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that
is an "unmannered," or "immoral" quality. It is "bad
taste" in the profoundest sense — it is the taste of the devils.
On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue,
or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses delight
in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing.
That is an entirely moral quality — it is the taste of the
angels. And all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve
themselves into simple love of that which deserves love.
That deserving is the quality which we call "loveliness" —
(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, to be said
of the things which deserve to be hated) ; and it is not an
indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that ;
but it is just the vital function of all our being. What we
like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we
are ; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character. As
I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the
other day, my eye caught the title of a book standing open
in a bookseller's window. It was — "On the necessity of
the diffusion of taste among all classes." "Ah," I thought
to myself, "my classifying friend, when you have diffused
your taste, where will your classes be? The man who likes

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

155

what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think.
Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you
choose ; but, by the condition you have brought him into,
he will dishke the other work as much as you would your-
self. You get hold of a scavenger, or a costermonger, who
enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and 'Pop
goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make him
like Dante and Beethoven ? I wish you joy of your lessons ;
but if you do, you have made a gentleman of him : — he
won't like to go back to his costermongering."

And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that,
if I had time to-night, I could show you that a nation
cannot be affected by any vice, or weakness, without
expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in bad art, or by
want of art ; and that there is no national virtue, small or
great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the art which
circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to
produce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of
enduring and patient courage. You have at present in
England only one art of any consequence — that is, iron-
working. You know thoroughly well how to cast and
hammer iron. Now, do you think in those masses of
lava which you build volcanic cones to melt, and which
you forge at the mouths of the Infernos you have created ;
do you think, on those iron plates, your courage and
endurance are not written for ever — not merely with an
iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your
great English vice — European vice — vice of all the world
— vice of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven,
bearing with them yet the atmosphere of hell — the vice of
jealousy, which brings competition into your commerce,
treachery into your councils, and dishonor into your wars
— that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next

156 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

neighboring nation, the daily occupations of existence no
longer possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and
the sword loose in its sheath ; so that, at last, you have
realized for all the multitudes of the two great peoples who
lead the so-called civilization of the earth, — ^you have
realized for them all, I say, in person and in policy, what
was once true only of the rough Border riders of your
Cheviot hills —

" They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd ;—

do you think that this national shame and dastardliness of
heart are not written as legibly on every rivet of your iron
armor as the strength of the right hands that forged it?
Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludi-
crous or the more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably
both. Suppose, instead of being now sent for by you, I
had been sent for by some private gentleman, living in a
suburban house, with his garden separated only by a fruit-
wall from his next door neighbor's ; and he had called me
to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing room.
I begin looking about me, and find the walls rather bare ;
I think such and such a paper might be desirable — perhaps
a little fresco here and there on the ceiling — ^a damask
curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," says my employer,
"damask curtains indeed! That's all very fine, but you
know I can't afford that kind of thing just now !" "Yet
the world credits you with a splendid income ! " " Ah,
yes," says my friend, "but do you know, at present, I am
obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps ? " " Steel-traps !
for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on the other side the
wall, you know : we're very good friends, capital friends ;

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.,

157

but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of
the wall; we could not possibly keep on 'iriendly terms
without them, and our spring guns. The worst of it is,
we are both clever fellows enough; and there's never a
day passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a new
gun-barrel, or something ; we spend about fifteen millions
a year each in our traps, take it all together ; and I don't
see how we're to do with less." A highly comic state of
life for two private gentlemen ! but for two nations, it seems
to me, not wholly comic? Bedlam would be comic, per-
haps, if there were only one madman in it ; and your
Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one
clown in it ; but when the whole world turns clown, and
paints itself red with its own heart's blood instead of
vermilion, it is something else than comic, I think.

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly
allow for that. You don't know what to do with yourselves
for a sensation : fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry
you through the whole of this unendurably long mortal
life : you liked pop-guns when you were schoolboys, and
rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better
made : but then the worst of it is, that what was play to
you when boys, was not play to the sparrows ; and what
is play to you now, is not play to the small birds of State
neither ; and for the black eagles, you are somewhat shy
of taking shots at them, if I mistake not.

I must get back to the matter in hand, however.
Believe me, without further instance, I could show you, in
all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, was written in
its art: the soldiership of early Greece; the sensuality of
late Italy ; the visionary religion of Tuscany ; the splendid
human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no time to
do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now) ;

158 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN

but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more
searching manner.

I notice that among all the new buildings that cover
your once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed in
due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills and
mansions ; and I notice also that the churches and schools
are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are
never Gothic. Will you allow , me to ask precisely the
meaning of this ? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern
phenomenon. When Gothic was invented, houses were
Gothic as well as churches; and when the Italian style
superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well as
houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of
Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the H6tel de Ville at
Brussels ; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir
Chistopher Wren builds an Italian St. Paul's. But now
you live under one school of architecture, and worship
under another. What do you mean by doing this? Am
I to understand that you are thinking of changing your
architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your
churches experimentally, because it does not matter what
mistakes you make in a church ? Or am I to understand
that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and
beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine
frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and
reserved for your religious services? For if this be the
feeling, though it may seem at first as if it were graceful
and reverent, you will find that, at the root of the matter,
it signifies neither more nor less than that you have
separated your religion from your life.

For consider what a wide significance this fact has ; and
remember that it is not you only, but all the people of
England, who are behaving thus just now.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

159

You have all got into the habit of calling the church
' ' the house of God. ' ' I have seen, over the doors of many
churches, the legend actually carved, " This is the house
of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Now, note where
that legend comes from, and of what place it was first spoken.
A boy leaves his father's house to go on a long journey on
foot, to visit his uncle ; he has to cross a wild hill-desert ;
just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds of
Westmoreland, to visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second
or third day your boy finds himself somewhere between
Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, at sunset.
It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot
further that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside,
where best he may, gathering a few of the stones together
to put under his head ; — so wild the place is, he cannot get
anything but stones. And there, lying under the broad
night, he has a dream ; and he sees a ladder set up on the
earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels
of God are ascending and descending upon it. And when
he wakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this
place ; surely, this is none other than the house of God,
and this is the gate of heaven." This place, observe ; not
this church ; not this city ; not this stone, even, which he
puts up for a memorial — the piece of flint on which his
head has lain. But this ^/act/ this windy slope of Wharn-
side ; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted ;
this any place where God lets down the ladder. And how
are you to know where that will be? or how are you to
determine where it may be, but by being ready for it
always? Do you know where the lightning is to fall next?
You do know that, partly; you can guide the lightning;
but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which
is that lightning when it shines from the east to the west.

l6o THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong
verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose, is only one
of the thousand instances in which we sink back into gross
Judaism. We call our churches "temples." Now, you
know, or ought to know, they are not temples. They have
never had, never can have, anything whatever to do with
temples. They are ' ' synagogues " — " gathering places ' ' —
where you gather yourselves together as an assembly ; and
by not calling them so, you again miss the force of another
mighty text — "Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as
the hypocrites are ; for they love to pray standing in the
churches^' [we should translate it], "that they may be seen
of men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father," —
which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "in secret."

Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I know you feel —
as if I were trying to take away the honor of your churches.
Not so ; I am trying to prove to you the honor of your houses
and your hills ; I am trying to show you — not that the Church
is not sacred — but that the whole Earth is. I would have you
feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there
is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches
only "holy," you call your hearths and homes profane ; and
have separated yourselves from the heathen by casting all
your household gods to the ground, instead of recognizing,
in the place of their many and feeble Lares, the presence
of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar.

"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you
ask me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just every-
thing to do with it ; on these inner and great questions
depend all the outer and little ones ; and if you have asked
me down here to speak to you, because you had before
been interested in anything I have written, you must know

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. i6i

that all I have yet said about architecture was to show this.
The book I called "The Seven Lamps" was to show that
certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the
magic powers by which all good architecture, without
exception, had been produced. "The Stones of Venice,"
had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that
the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and
indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith,
and of domestic virtue ; and that its Renaissance architect-
ure had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a
state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic cor-
ruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to build
in; and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the
two styles, but by another question — do you mean to build
as Christians or as Infidels ? And still more — do you mean
to build as honest Christians or as honest Infidels? as
thoroughly and confessedly either one or the other? You
don't like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help
it ; they are of much more importance than this Exchange
business ; and if they can be at once answered, the Exchange
business settles itself in a moment. But, before I press them
further, I must ask leave to explain one point clearly. In all
my past work, my endeavor has been to show that good
architecture is essentially religious — ^the production of a
faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people.
But in the course of doing this, I have had also to show that
good architecture is not ecclesiastical. People are so apt to
look upon religion as the business of the clergy, not their
own, that the moment they hear of anything depending on
"religion," they think it must also have depended on the
priesthood ; and I have had to take what place was to be
occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often
with seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work

1 62 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKJN.

of good and believing men ; therefore, you say, at least
some people say, "Good architecture must essentially have
been the work of the clergy, not of the laity." No — a
thousand times no ; good architecture has always been the
work of the commonalty, not of the clergy. What, you
say, those glorious cathedrals — the pride of Europe — did
their builders not form Gothic architecture? No; they
corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the
baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It was formed by
the thoughts, and hands, and powers of free citizens and
soldier kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument
for the aid of his superstition ; when that superstition
became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe
vainly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly raged
and perished in the crusade — through that fiiry of perverted
laith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its loveliest,
most fantastic, and, finally, most foolish dreams; and, in
those dreams, was lost.

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunder-
standing me when I come to the gist of what I want to say
to-night — ^when I repeat, that every great national architect-
ure has been the result and exponent of a great national
religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits there — you
must have it everywhere, or nowhere. It is not the
monopoly of a clerical company — it is not the exponent of
a theological dogma — it is not the hieroglyphic writing of
an initiated priesthood ; it is the manly language of a people
inspired by resolute and common purpose, and rendering
resolute and common fidelity to the legible laws of an
undoubted God.

Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of
European architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic
and African architectures belong so entirely to other races

THE CROWN OF WILD OUVE. 163

and climates, that there is no question of them here ; only,
in passing, I will simply assure you that whatever is good
or great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is just good or
great for the same reasons as the buildings on our side of
the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three
great religions : the Greek, which was the worship of the
God of Wisdom and Power ; the Mediaeval, which was the
Worship of the God of Judgment and Consolation ; the
Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of Pride
and Beauty ; these three we have had — they are past, — and
now, at last, we EngUsh have got a fourth religion, and a
God of our own, about which I want to ask you. But I
must explain these three old ones first.

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshiped the
God of Wisdom ; so that whatever contended against their
religion, — to the Jews a stumbling block, — ^was, to the
Greeks — Foolishness.

The first Greek idea of Deity was that expressed in the
word, of which we keep the remnant in our words ' 'Z>/-urnal ' '
and "Z>/-vine" — the god of Day, Jupiter the revealer.
Athena is his daughter, but especially daughter of the
Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only
with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate
the depth of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols :
but I may note rapidly, that her aegis, the mantle with the
serpent fringes, in which she often, in the best statues, is
represented as folding up her left hand for better guard,
and the Gorgon on her shield, are both representative
mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to
stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres
of knowledge— that knowledge which separates, in bitter-
ness, hardness, and sorrow the heart of the full-grown man
from the heart of the child. For out of imperfect knowl-

I64 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

edge spring terror, dissension, danger, and disdain; but
from perfect knowledge, given by the full-revealed Athena,
strength and peace, in sign of which she is crowned with
the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.

This, then, was the Greek's conception of purest Deity,
and every habit of life, and every form of his art developed
themselves from the seeking this bright, serene, resistless
wisdom ; and setting himself, as a man, to do things ever-
more rightly and strongly ; * not with any ardent affection
or ultimate hope ; but with a resolute and continent energy
of will, as knowing that for failure there was no consolation,
and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek
architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and
self-contained.

Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which
was essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine
is the remission of sins ; for which cause it happens, too
often, in certain phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness
themselves are partly glorified, as if, the more you had to
be healed of, the more divine was the healing. The prac-
tical result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual contem-
plation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of
purification from them ; thus we have an architecture con-
ceived in a mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration,
partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend itself to

* It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking,
was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and Strength,
founded on Forethought : the principal character of Gr^ek art is
not Beauty, but Design : and the Dorian Apollo-worship and
Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of
divine Wisdom and Purity. Next to these great deities rank, in
power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers' of
human strength and life : then, for heroic example, Hercules.
There is no Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times ':
and the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its har-
monies.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 165

every one of our needs, and every one of our fancies, and
be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or weak
ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base
people build it — of all, the noblest, when built by the noble.

And now note that both these religions — Greek and
Mediaeval — perished by falsehood in their own main pur-
pose. The Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a false
philosophy — "Oppositions of science, falsely so called." The
Mediaeval religion of Consolation perished in false comfort ;
in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of
absolution that ended the Mediaeval faith ; and I can tell
you more, it is the selling of absolution which, to the end
of time, will mark false Christianity. Pure Christianity
gives her remission of sins only by ending them ; but false
Christianity gets her remission of sins by compounding for
them. And there are many ways of compounding for
them. We English have beautiful litde quiet ways of buy-
ing absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more
cunning than any of Tetzel's trading.

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in
which all Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death.
First, beds masquh in every saloon, and then guillotines in
every square. And all these three worships issue in vast
temple building. Your Greek worshiped Wisdom, and
built you the Parthenon — the Virgin's temple. The Mediae-
val worshiped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples
also — but to our Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist
worshiped beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles, and
the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell me what we worship,
and what we build ?

You know we are speaking always of the real, active,
continual, national worship ; that by which men act while
they live ; not that which they talk of when they die. Now,

l66 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RVSKIN.

we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to which we pay tithes
of property, and sevenths of time; but we have also a
practical and earnest religion, to which we devote nine-
tenths of our property and six-sevenths of our time. And
we dispute a great deal about the nominal religion ; but we
are all unanimous about this practical one, of which I think
you will admit that the ruling goddess may be best generally
described as the " Goddess of Getting-on," or " Britannia of
the Market." The Athenians had an "Athena Agoraia,"
or Minerva of the Market ; but she was a subordinate type
of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal
type of ours. And all your great architectural works are,
of course, built to her. It is long since you built a great
cathedral ; and how you would laugh at me, if I proposed
building a cathedral on the top of one of these hills of
yours, taking it for an Acropolis! But your railroad
mounds, prolonged masses of Acropolis; your railroad
stations, vaster than the Parthenon, and innumerable ; your
chimn^s, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral
spires ! your harbor-piers ; your warehouses ; your ex-
changes ! — all these are built to your great Goddess of
"Getting-on;" and she has formed, and will continue to
form, your architecture, as long as you worship her ; and
it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to her;
you know far better than I.

There might indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably
good architecture for Exchanges — ^that is to say if there
were any heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, which
might be typically carved on the outside of your building.
For, you know, all beautiful architecture must be adorned
with sculpture or painting ; and for sculpture or painting,
you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a
received opinion among the nations of the world that the

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 167

only right subjects for either, were heroisms of some sort.
Even on his pots and his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules
slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus
slaying melancholy giants, and earth-born despondencies.
On his temples, the Greek put contests of great warriors in
founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his houses
and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels
conquering devils ; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this
world for another; subject inappropriate, I think, to our
manner of exchange here. And the Master of Christians
not only left his followers without any orders as to the
sculpture of affairs of exdiange on the outside of buildings,
but gave some strong evidence of his dislike of affairs of
exchange within them. And yet there might surely be a
heroism in such afi&irs ; and all commerce become a kind
of selling of doves, not impious. The wonder has always
been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed to
be in anywise consistent with the practice of supplying
people with food, or clothes ; but rather with that of
quartering oneself upon them for food, and stripping them
of their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an heroic deed in all
ages ; but the selling of clothes, old, or new, has never
taken any color of magnanimity. Yet one does not see
why feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should
ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on a
large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of
conquest to them anyhow? so that, supposing there were
anywhere an obstinate race, who refused to be comforted,
one might take some pride in giving them compulsory
comfort ; and as it were, "occupying a country" with one's
gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider
it as much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get
an eared field stripped; and contend who should build

1 68 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN, RUSKIN.

villages, instead of who should "carry" them. Are not all
forms of heroism conceivable in doing these serviceable
deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascer-
tained by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who
is wisest? There are witty things to be thought of in
planning other business than campaigns. Who is bravest?
There are always the elements to fight with, stronger than
men ; and nearly as merciless. The only absolutely and
unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's work seems
to be — that he is paid little for it — and regularly : while
you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in
presumably benevolent business, like to be paid much for
it — and by chance. I never can make out how it is that a
knight- errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble,
but a pedlar-errant always does ; — that people are willing
to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribbons
cheap ; — that they are ready to go on fervent crusades to
recover the tomb of a buried God, never on any travels to
fulfill the orders of a living God ; — that they will go any-
>vhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well
bribed to practice it, and are perfectly ready to give the
Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes. If you
chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle,
to do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed
salaries ; and to be as particular about giving people the
best food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are about giving
them the best gunpowder, I could carve something for you
on your exchange worth looking at. But I can only at
present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses ;
and making its pillars broad at the base for the sticking of
bills. And in the innermost chambers of it there might be
a statue of Britannia of the Market, who may have, perhaps
advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical at once of her

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 169

courage in fighting for noble ideas ; and of her interest in
game ; and round its neck the inscription in golden letters,
" Perdix fovit quae non peperit." * Then, for her spear, she
might have a weaver's beam ; and on her shield, instead of
her Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town
of Gennesaret proper in the field, and the legend "In the
best market," and her corslet, of leather, folded over her
heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it for a
piece of money to go in at, on each day of the month.
And I doubt not but that people would come to see your
exchange, and its goddess, with applause.

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange
characters in this goddess of yours. She differs from the
great Greek and Mediaeval deities essentially in two things
— first, as to the continuance of her presumed power;
secondly, as to the extent of it.

First, as to the Continuance.

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase
of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter)
continual increase of comfort. There was no question,
with these, of any limit or cessation of function. But with
your Agora Goddess, that is just the most important
question. Getting on — but where to? Gathering together
— but how much? Do you mean to gather always — never
to spend? If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, for I ani
just as well off" as you, -Without the trouble of worshiping
her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody else will —
somebody else must. And it is because of this (among
many other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared
your so-called science of Political Economy to be no

*Jerem. xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the
partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth
riches, not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days,: and
at his end shall be a fool."

I70 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

science; because, namely, it has omitted the study of
exactly the most important branch of the business — ^the
study of spending. For spend you must, and as much as
you make, ultimately, You gather corn : — ^will you bury
England under a heap of grain ; or will you, when you
have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold: — ^will you
make your house- roofs of it, or pave your streets with it?
That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep it,
that you may get more, I'll give you more ; I'll give you
all the gold you want — ^all you can imagine — ^if you can tell
me what you'll do with it. You shall have thousands of
gold pieces; — thousands of thousands — millions- — moun-
tains, of gold : where will you keep them ? Will you put
an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion-^make Ossa
like a wart? Do you think the rain and dew would then
come down to you, in the streams from such mountains,
more blessedly than they will down the mountains which
God has made for you, of moss and whinstone? But it is
not gold that you want to gather ! What is it? greenbacks?
No ; not those neither. What is it then^s it ciphers after
a capital I ? Cannot you practice writing ciphers, and write
as many as you want? Write ciphers for an hour every
morning, in a big book, and say every evening, I am worth
all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won't that
do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not
gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I ? You
will have to answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or
other, money's worth:' Well, what is that? Let your
Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and let her learn to stay
therein.

II. But there is yet another question to be asked
respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of
the continuance of her power; the second is of its extent.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

171

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the
world's Pallas, and all the world's Madonna. They could
teach all men, and they could comfort all men. But, look
strictly into the nature of the power of your Goddess of
Getting-on ; and you will find she is the Goddess — ^not of
everybody's getting on — but only of somebody's getting
on. This is a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine
it in your own ideal of the state of national life which this
'Goddess is to evoke and maintain. I asked you what it
was, when I was last here ; * — you have never told me.
Now, shall I try to tell you?

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should
be passed in a pleasant undulating world, "with iron and
coal ever)nvhere underneath it. On each pleasant bank, of
this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two wings ;
and stables, and coach-houses ; a moderately sized park ; a
large garden and hot houses ; and pleasant carriage drives
through the shrubberies. In this mansion are to live the
favored votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman,
with his gracious wife, and his beautiful family ; always able
to have the boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the
beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the
sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the
bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less than a
quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end,
and two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet
high. In this mill are to be in constant employment from
eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never drink,
never strike, always go to church on Sunday, and always
express themselves in respectful language.

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind
of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed

* Two Paths.

172 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

seen from above; not at all so pretty, seen from below.
For, observe, while to one family this deity is indeed the
Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families she is the
Goddess of not Getting-on. ' ' Nay, ' ' you say, ' ' they have all
their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there
must always be the same number of blanks. "Ah ! but in
a lottery it is not skill and intelligence which take the lead^
but blind chance." What then! do you think the old
practice, that ' ' they should take who have the power, and
they should keep who can," is less iniquitous, when the
power has become power of brains instead of fist? and
that, though we may not take advantage of a child's or a
woman's weakness, we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay,
but finally, work must be done, and some one must be at
the top, some one at the bottom." Granted, my friends.
Work must always be, and captains of .work must always
be ; and if you in the least remember the tone of any of
my writings, you must know that they are thought unfit
for this age, because they are always insisting on need of
government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I beg
you to observe that there is a wide difference between
being captains or governors of work, and taking the
profits of it. It does not follow, because you are general of
an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it
wins (if it fight for treasure or land) ; neither, because you
are king of a nation, that you are to consume all the profits
of the nation's work. Real kings, on the contrary, are
known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of this, —
by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's
work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so
infallible as that. Does the crowned creature live simply,
bravely, unostentatiously? probably he is a King. Does
he cover his body with jewels, and his table with deUcates?

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 173

in all probability he is not a King. It is possible he may be,
as Solomon was ; but that is when the nation shares his
splendor with him. Solomon made gold, not only to be in
his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.
But even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods
expire in ruin, and only the true kinghoods live, which are
of royal laborers governing loyal laborers; who, both
leading rough lives, establish the true dynasties. Con-
clusively you will find that because you are king of a nation,
it does not follow that you are to gather for yourself all the
wealth of that nation ; neither, because you are king of a
small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its
maintenance — over field, or mill, or mine, are you to take
all the produce of that piece of the foundation of national
existence for yourself.

You will tell me I need not preach against these things,
for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot ; but
you can, and you will ; or something else can and will.
Do you think these phenomena are to stay always in their
present power or aspect? All history shows, on the con-
trary, that to be the exact thing they never can do. Change
must come ; but it is ours to determine whether change of
growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in
ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory in its meadow, but
these mills of yours be the consummation of the buildings
of the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity?
Think you that "men may come, and men may go," but
— mills — go on forever? Not so; out of these better or
worse shall come ; and it is for you to choose which.

I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate
purpose. I know, on the contrary, that you wish your
workmen well ; that you do much for them, and that you
desire to do more for them, if you saw your way to it

174 ^^-^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

safely. I know that many of you have done, and are
every day doing, whatever you feel to be in your power ;
and that even all this wrong and misery are brought about
by a warped sense of duty, each of you striving to do his
best, without noticing that this best is essentially and cen-
trally the best for himself, not for others. And all this has
come of the spreading of that thrice accursed, thrice impious
doctrine of the modern economist, that " To do the best for
yourself, is finally to do the best for others." Friends, our
great Master said not so ; and most absolutely we shall
find this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for
others, is finally to do the best for ourselves ; but it will
not do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans
had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this
matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words
of Plato, — if not the last actually written (for this we cannot
know), yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words —
in which, endeavoring to give full crowning and harmonious
close to all his thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by
the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, his strength and
his heart fail him, and the words cease, broken off for ever.
It is the close of the dialogue called "Critias," in which he
describes, partly from real tradition, partly in ideal dream,
the early state of Athens ; and the genesis, and order, and
religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis ; in which genesis he
conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of
man, which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by
saying that the Sons of God intermarried with the daughters
of men, for he supposes the earliest race to have been
indeed the children of God ; and to have corrupted them-
selves, until "their spot was not the spot of his children."
And this, he says, was the end ; that indeed "through many
generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

175

full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried
themselves lovingly to all that had kindred with them in
divineness ; for their uttermost spirit was faithful and true,
and in every wise great ; so that, in all meakness of wisdom,
they dealt with each other, and took all the chances of life ;
and despising all things except virtue, they cared little what
happened day by day, and bore lightly the burden of gold
and of possessions ; for they saw that, if only their common
love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased
together with them; but to set their esteem and ardent
pursuit upon iriaterial possession would be to lose that
first, and their virtue and affection together with it. And
by such reasoning, and what of the divine nature remained
in them, they gained all this greatness of which we have
already told ; but when the God's part of them faded and
became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced
by the prevalent mortality ; and the human nature at last
exceeded, they then became unable to endure the courses
of fortune ; and fell into shapelessness of life, and baseness
in the sight of him who could see, having lost everything
that was fairest of their honor ; while to the blind hearts
which could not discern the true life, tending to happiness,
it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy,
being filled with all iniquity of inordinate possession and
power. Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood
is in laws, beholding a once just nation thus cast into misery,
and desiring to lay such punishment upon them as might
make them repent into restraining, gathered together all
the gods into his dwelling-place, which from heaven's
center overlooks whatever has part in creation ; and having

assembled them he said"

The rest is silence. So ended are the last words of the
chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches ;

176 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

this idol of yours ; this golden image high by measureless
cubits, set up where your green fields of England are fur-
nace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura : this
idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master
and faith ; forbidden to us also by every human lip that
has ever, in any age or people, been accounted of as able
to speak according to the purposes of God. Continue to
make that forbidden deity your principal one, and soon no
more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible.
Catastrophe will come; or worse than catastrophe, slow
moldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix
some conception of a true human state of life to be striven
for — life for all men as for yourselves — if you can determine
some honest and simple order of existence ; following those
trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seek-
ing her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace ; —
then, and so sanctifying wealth into "commonwealth," all
your art, your literature, your daily labors, your domestic
affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one
magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build,
well enough ; you will build with stone well, but with flesh
better ; temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts ;
and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.

BOOK III.

SELECTIONS FROM

"FORS CLAVIGERA."

OR

LETTERS TO THE WORKINGMEN AND LABORERS
OF GREAT BRITAIN.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

FORS CLAVIGERA contains at once the wittiest, the
most characteristic, the most radical, and also some
of the most exalted and religious writings of John
Ruskin. The book, be it remembered, is not an essay,
but a collection of letters written at stated times by their
author to the workingmen of Great Britain. They are,
therefore, what all letters ought to be, unfettered expressions
of the writer's feelings, and thoughts, and mood at the time
of writing. They show John Ruskin as he is or at least
as he was when he wrote them. They give his passing
thoughts, speaking now of a Yorkshire pudding, now of a
Venetian ferry, now of a reading from Scott, now of a
picture by Carpaccio, now of a newspaper clipping, now of
a bit of Plato, now of a Hebrew Psalm, now of Tinteretto ;
yet through it all runs deepest thought and most earnest
spirit as to the true conception of society and the duty of
living men and women in this actual modern world. No
one can read these letters without having many and many
a new thought suggested, many and many a new purpose
conceived in his heart. No one knows John Ruskin who
has not read these letters.

The meaning of the name no one but the author himself
can explain. We quote his own words from the second
letter, "You may like to know, and ought to know, what I
mean by the title of these Letters ; and why it is in Latin. I

i8o PREFACE.

can only tell you in part, for the letters will be on many
things, if I am able to carry out my plan in them ; and that
title means many things, and is in Latin, because I could
not have given an English one that meant so many. We,
indeed, were not till lately a loquacious people, nor a useless
one; but the Romans did more, and said less, than any
other nation that ever lived ; and their language is the most
heroic ever spoken by men.

"Therefore I wish you to know, at least, some words of
it, and to recognize what thoughts they stand for.

"Some day, I hope you may know — and that European
workmen may know — many words of it ; but even a few
will be usefiil. .

" Do not smile at my saying so. Of Arithmetic, Geome-
try, and Chemistry, you can know but little, at the utmost ;
but that little, well learned, serves you well. And a little
Latin, well learned, will serve you also, and in a higher way
than any of these.

" 'Fors' is the best part of three good English words.
Force, Fortitude, and Fortune. I wish you to know the
meaning of those three words accurately.

" 'Force,' (in humanity), means power of doing good
work. A fool, or a corpse, can do any quantity of mischief;
but only a wise and strong man, or, with what true vital
force there is in him, a weak one, can do good.

"'Fortitude' means the power of bearing necessary
pain, or trial of patience, whether by time, or temptation.

'" Fortune ' means the necessary fate of a man: the
ordinance of his life which cannot be changed. To ' make
your Fortune' is to rule that appointed fate to the best
ends of which it is capable.

"Fors is a feminine word; and Clavigera is, therefore,
the feminine of ' Claviger.'

PREFACE. i8i

"Clava means a dub. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or .
a rudder.

"Gero means 'I carry.' It is the root of our word
'gesture' (the way you carry yourself); and, in a curious
by-way, of 'jest'

"Clavigera may mean, therefore, either Club-bearer,
Key-bearer, or Nail-bearer.

"Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera
corresponds to one of the three meanings of Fors.

"Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules
or of Deed.

"Fors, the Key-bearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or
of Patience.

"Fors, the Nail-bearer, means the strength of Lycurgus,
or of Law.

"I will tell you what you may usefully know of those
three Greek persons in a little time. At present, note only
of the three powers : i. That the strength of Hercules is
for deed, not misdeed; and that his club — the favorite
weapon, also, of the Athenian hero Theseus, whose form is
the best inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek
sculptors, (it is in the Elgin room of the British Museum,
and I shall have much to tell you of him — especially how
he helped Hercules in his utmost need, and how he invented
mixed vegetable soup) — was for subduing monsters and
cruel persons, and was of olive-wood. 2. That the Second
Fors Clavigera is portress at a gate which she cannot open
till you have waited long ; and that her robe is of the color
of ashes, or dry earth. 3. That the Third Fors Clavigera,
the power of Lycurgus, is Royal as well as Legal ; and that
the notablest crown yet existing in Europe of any that have
been worn by Christian kings, was— people say — made of
a Nail.

1 82 PREFACE.

"That is enough about my title, for this time; now to
our work."

We are able in this little volume only to quote a few of
the more striking and suggestive passages. We have done
so, placing the subject at the head of each selection. On
three subjects only we have made selections of some little
length : Interest, The St. George's Company, and the
Summary of the Teachings of the whole book. The first is
important because it strikes the key-note to all of Ruskin's
social views, the substitution of a life of honest work, for a
life of dishonest income from investment; the second
shows how Ruskin thinks it best and most practical to
carry out this view of life ; the third gives us the whole
oi Fors Clavigera in a nutshell, a most fitting ending to
our collection of Ruskin's thoughts on Social Problems.

—Ed.

SELECTIONS FROM

FORS CLAVIGERA.

I.— COMMUNISM.

FOR, indeed, I am myself a Communist of the old
school — reddest also of the red ; and was on the very
point of saying so at the end of my last letter ; only
the telegram about the Louvre's being on fire stopped me,
because I thought the Communists of the new school, as I
could not at all understand them, might not quite under-
stand me. For we Communists of the old school think
that our property belongs to everybody ; and everybody's
property to us ; so of course I thought the Louvre belonged
to me as much as to the Parisians, and expected they
would have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor,
to ask whether I wanted it burnt down. But no message
or intimation to that effect ever reached me

And this is the last I will tell you for the present, of my
new ideas, but a troublesome one: namely, that we are
henceforward to have a duplicate power of poHtical economy;
and that the new Parisian expression for its first principle
is not to be "laissez faire," but "laissez r^-faire."

I cannot, however, make anything of these new French
fashions of thought till I have looked at them quietly a
little.

i84 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

So to-day I will content myself with telling you what
we Communists of the old school meant by Communism ;
and it will be worth your hearing, for — I tell you simply in
my "arrogant" way — ^we know, and have known, what
Communism is — ^for our fathers knew it and told us, three
thousand years ago ; while you baby Communists do not
so much as know what the name means, in your own
EngUsh or French — no, not so much as whether a House
of Commons implies, or does not imply, also a House of
Uncommons ; nor whether the Holiness of the Commune,
which Garibaldi came to fight for, had any relation to the
Holiness of the "Communion" which he came to fight
against.

Will you be at the pains, now, however, to learn rightly,
and once for all, what Communism is? First, it means
that everybody must work in common, and do common or
simple work for his dinner ; and that if any man will not do
it, he must not have his dinner. That much, perhaps,
you thought you knew ? — ^but you did not think we Com-
munists of the old school knew it also? You shall have it,
then, in the words of the Chelsea farmer and stout Catholic^
I was telling you of in our last number. He was bom in
Milk Street, London, three hundred and ninety-one years
ago, and he planned a Commune flowing with milk and
honey, and otherwise Elysian ; and he called it the ' ' Place
of Wellbeing," or Utopia; which is a word you perhaps
have occasionally used before now, like others, without
understanding it ; — (in the article of the Liverpool Daily
Post before referred to, it occurs felicitously seven times).
You shall use it in that stupid way no more, if I can help
it Listen how matters really are managed there.

The chief, and almost the only business of the govern-
ment, is to take care that no man may live idle, but that

FORS CLAVIGERA. 185

every one may follow his trade diligently : yet they do not
wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning to
night, as if they were beasts of burden, which, as it is indeed
a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common course of
life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians : but they,
dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint
six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and
three after; they then sup, and, at eight o'clock, counting
from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours ; the rest of
their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and
sleeping, is left to every man's discretion ; yet they are not
to abuse that interval of luxury and idleness, but must
employ it in some proper exercise, according to their
various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading.

"But the time appointed for labor is to be narrowly
examined, otherwise, you may imagine that, since there
are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under
a scarcity of necessary provisions : but it is so far from
being true that this time is not sufficient for supplying them
with plenty of all things, either necessary or convenient,
that it is rather too much ; and this you will easily appre-
hend if you consider how great a part of all other nations
is quite idle."

"First, women generally do little, who are the half of
mankind; and, if some few women are diligent, their
husbands are idle: then," —

We will stop a minute, friends, if you please, for I want
you, before you read further, to be once more made fully
aware that this former who is speaking to you is one of the
sternest Roman Catholics of his stern time ; and, at the fell
of -Cardinal Wolsey, became Lord High Chancellor of
England in his stead.
" — then, consider the great company of idle priests, and

186 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

of those that are called religious men ; add to these, all
rich men, chiefly those who have estates in land, who are
called noblemen and gentlemen, together with their families,
made up of idle persons, that are kept more for show than
use : add to these, all those strong and lusty beggars that
go about, pretending some disease in excuse for their
begging ; and, upon the whole account, you will find, that
the number of those by whose labors mankind is supplied
is much less than you, perhaps, imagined : then, consider
how few of those that work are employed in labors that are
of real service ! for we, who measure all things by money,
give rise to many trades that are both vain and superfluous,
and serve only to support riot and luxury : for if those who
work were employed only in such things as the conveniences
of life require, there would be such an abundance of them,
that the prices of them would so sink that tradesmen could
not be maintained by their gains ;'' — (italics mine — Fair
and softly. Sir Thomas ! we must have a shop round the
corner, and a pedlar or two on fair-days, yet) — "if all those
who labor about useless things were set to more profitable
employments, and if all that languish out their lives in sloth
and idleness (every one of whom consumes as much as any
two of the men that are at work) were forced to labor, you
may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would
serve for doing all that is either necessary, profitable or
pleasant to mankind, especially while pleasure is kept
within its due bounds."

So much for the first law of old Communism, respecting
work. Then the second respects property, and it is that
the public, or common, wealth, shall be more and statelier
in all its substance than private or singular wealth ; that is
to say (to come to my own special business for a moment)
that there shall be only cheap and few pictures if any, in

FORS CLAVIGERA. 187

the insides of houses, where nobody but the owner can see
them ; but costly pictures, and many, on the outsides of
houses, where the people can see them : also that the Hotel-
de-Ville, or Hotel of the whole Town, for the transaction
of its common business, shall be a magnificent building,
much rejoiced in by the people, and with its tower seen far
away through the clear air ; but that the hotels for private
business or pleasure, caffe, taverns, and the like shall be
low, few, plain, and in back streets ; more especially such
as furnish singular and uncommon drinks and refreshments ;
but that the fountains that furnish the people's common
drink should be very lovely and stately, and adorned with
precious marbles, and the like. Then further, according
to old Communism, the private dwellings of uncommon
persons — dukes and lords — are to be very simple, and
roughly put together — such persons being supposed to be
above all care for things that please the commonalty ; but
the buildings for public or common service, more especially
schools, almshouses and workhouses, are to be externally
of a majestic character, as being for noble purposes and
charities; and in their interiors furnished with many
luxuries for the poor and sick. And finally and chiefly,
it is an absolute law of old Communism that the fortunes of
private persons should be small, and of litde account in the
State ; but the common treasure of the whole nation should
be of superb and precious things in redundant quantity, as
pictures, statues, precious books ; gold and silver vessels,
preserved from ancient times ; gold and silver bulUon laid
up for use, in case of any chance need of buying anything
suddenly from foreign nations; noble horses, cattle and
sheep, on the public lands; and vast spaces of land for
culture, exercise, and garden, round the cities, full of
flowers, which, being everybody's property, nobody could

1 88 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

gather ; and of birds, which, being everybody's property,
nobody could shoot. And, in a word, that instead of a
common poverty, or national debt, which every poor
person in the nation is taxed annually to fulfill his part of,
there should be a common wealth, or national reverse of
debt, consisting of pleasant things, which every poor person
in the nation should be summoned to receive his dole of,
annually ; and of pretty things, which every person capable
of admiration, foreigners as well as natives, should unfeign-
edly admire, in an aesthetic, and not a covetous, manner
(though for my own part, I can't understand what it is that
I am taxed now to defend, or what foreign nations are
supposed to covet, here). But truly, a nation that has
got anything to defend of real public interest, can usually
hold it ; and a fat Latin communist gave for sign of the
strength of his commonalty, in its strongest time, —

, " Privatus illis census erat brevis,

Commune magnum."

II.— FREEDOM OR SLAVERY.

FREEMEN, indeed ! You are slaves, not to masters
of any strength or honor ; but to the idlest talkers
at that floral end of Westminster bridge. Nay, to
countless meaner masters than they. For though, indeed,
as early as the year 1 102, it was decreed in a council at
St. Peter's, Westminster, "that no man for the future
should presume to carry on the wicked trade of selling
men in the markets, like brute beasts, which hitherto had
been the common custom of England," the no less wicked

PORS CLAVIGERA. 189

trade of under-s^va.% men in markets has lasted to this
day ; producing conditions of slavery differing from the
ancient ones only in being starved instead of full-fed : and
besides this, a state of slavery unheard of among the nations
till now, has arisen with us. In all former slaveries, Egyp-
tian, Algerine, Saxon, and American, the slave's complaint
has been of compulsory work. But the modern Politico-
Economic slave is a new and far more injured species,
condemned to Compulsory Idleness, for fear he should
spoil other people's trade ; the beautifully logical condition
of the national Theory of Economy in this matter being
that, if you are a shoemaker, it is a law of Heaven that
you must sell your goods under their price, in order to
destroy the trade of other shoemakers ; but if you are not
a shoemaker, and are going shoeless and lame, it is a law
of Heaven that you must not cut yourself a bit of cowhide,
to put between your foot and the stones, because that would
interfere with the total trade of shoemaking.
Which theory, of all the wonderful — !

**1^ ^^ ^t *1*

T* "V* I* 1^

HI.— MACHINERY.

YOU think it a great triumph to make the sun draw
brown landscapes for you. That was also a discovery
and some day may be useful. But the sun had drawn
landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and
blue, and all imaginable colors, here in England. Not one
of you ever looked at them then ; not one of you cares for
the loss of them now, when you have shut the sun out with

igo THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown
blots through a hole in a box. There was a rocky valley
between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as
the Vale of Tempe ; you might have seen the Gods there
morning and evening — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of
the Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and
to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You cared
neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did
not know the way to get) ; you thought you could get it
by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You
Enterprised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted its
rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely
stream. The valley is gone, and the Gods with it ; and
now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an
hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton ; which you
think a lucrative process of exchange — you Fools Every-
where.

Observe. A. man and a woman, with their children,
properly trained, are able easily to cultivate as much
ground as will feed them ; to build as /much wall and roof
as will lodge them, and to spin and weave as much cloth as
will clothe them. They can all be perfectly happy and
healthy in doing this. Supposing that they invent machin-
ery which will build, plow, thresh, cook, and weave, and
that they have none of these things any more to do, but
may read, or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that
they will neither be so good nor so happy as without the
machines. But I waive my belief in this matter for the
time. I will assume that they become more refined and
moral persons, and that idleness is in future to be the mother
of all good. But observe, I repeat, the power of your
machine is only in enabling them to be idle. It will not
enable them to live better than they did before, nor to live

FORS CLAVIGERA. 191

in greater numbers. Get your heads quite clear on this
matter. Out of so much ground, only so much living is
to be got, with or without machinery. You may set a
million of steam-plows to work on an acre, if you Uke —
out of that acre only a given number of grains of corn will
grow, scratch or scorch it as you will. So that the question
is not at all whether, by having more machines, more of
you can live. No machines will increase the possibilities
of life. They only increase the possibilities of idleness.
Suppose, for instance, you could get the oxen in your
plow driven by a goblin, who would ask for no pay, not
even a cream bowl, — (you have nearly managed to get it
driven by an iron goblin, as ibis ;) — Well, your furrow will
take no, more seeds than if you had held the stilts yourself.
But, instead of holding them, you sit, I presume, on a bank
beside the field, under an eglantine ; — watch fhe goblin at
its work, and read poetry. Meantime, your wife in the
house has also got a goblin to weave and wash for her.
And she is lying on the sofa, reading poetry.

IV.— TAXES.

DO you see, in The Times of yesterday and the day
before, 22nd and 23rd June, that the Minister of
France dares not, even in this her utmost need, put
on an income tax ; and do you see why he dares not ?

Observe, such a tax is the only honest and just one ;
because it tells on the rich in true proportion to the poor,
and because it meets necessity in the shortest and bravest
way, and without interfering with any commercial operation.

192 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

All rich people object to income tax, of course ; — they
like to pay as much as a poor man pays on their tea, sugar,
and tobacco — nothing on their incomes.

Whereas, in true justice, the only honest and wholly
right tax is one not merely on income, but property;
increasing in percentage as the property is greater. And
the main virtue of such a tax is that it makes publicly known
what every man has, and how he gets it.

For every kind of Vagabonds, high and low, agree in
their disHke to give an account of the way they get their
living, still less, of how much they have got sewn up in
their breeches. It does not, however, matter much to a
country that it should know how its poor Vagabonds live ;
but it is of vital moment that it should know how its rich
Vagabonds live ; and that much of knowledge, it seems to
me, in the present state of our education, is quite attainable.
But that, when you have attained it, you may act on it
wisely, the first need is that you should be sure you are
living honestly yourselves. That is why I told you in
my second letter, you must learn to obey good laws before
you seek to alter bad ones : — I will ampliiy now a little
the three promises I want you to make. Look back at
them.

I. You are to do good work, whether you live or die.
It may be you will have to die ; — well, men have died for
their country often, yet doing her no good ; be ready to
die for her in doing her assured good : her, and all other
countries with her. Mind your own business with your
absolute heart and soul ; but see that it is a good business
first. That it is corn and sweet peas you are producing,
— not gunpowder and arsenic. And be sure of this, liter-
ally : — -you must simply rather die than make any destroying
mechanism or compound. You are to be literally employed

FORS CLAVIGERA. 193

in cultivating the ground, or making useful things, and
carrying them where they are wanted. Stand in the
streets, and say to all who pass by : — Have you any vine-
yard we can work in, — not Naboth's? In your powder
and petroleum manufactory we work no more.

I have said little to you yet of any of the pictures
engraved — you perhaps think, not to the ornament of my
book.

Be it so. You will find them better than ornaments in
time. Notice, however, in the one I give you with this
letter — the "Charity" of Giotto — the Red Queen of Dante,
and ours also, — how different his thought of her is from the
common one.

Usually she is nursing children, or giving money.
Giotto thinks there is little charity in nursing children ; — '
bears and wolves do that for their little ones ; and less still
in giving money.

His Charity tramples upon bags of Gold — has no use
for them. She gives only corn and flowers; and God's
angel gives her, not even these — but a Heart.

Giotto is quite literal in his meaning, as well as figura-
tive. Your love is to give food and flowers, and to labor
for them only.

But what are we to do against powder and petroleum,
then? What men may do; not what poisonous beasts
may. If a wretch spits in your face, will you answer by
spitting in his? if he throw vitriol at you, will you go to
the apothecary for a bigger bottle?

There is no physical crime, at this day, so far beyond
pardon,— so without parallel in its untempted guilt, as the
making of war-machinery, and invention of mischievous
substance. Two nations may go mad, and fight like harlots
God have mercy on them ; — you, who hand them carving-

194 ^^^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSK IN.

knives off the table, for leave to pick up a dropped sixpence,
what mercy is there ioryeu? We are so humane, forsooth,
and so wise ; and our ancestors had tar-barrels for witches ;
we will have them for everybody else, and drive the witches'
trade ourselves, by daylight ; we will have our cauldrons,
please Hecate, cooled (according to the Darwinian theory),
with baboons' blood, and enough of it, and sell hell-fire in
the open streets.

II. Seek to revenge no injury. You see now — do not
you — a little more clearly why I wrote that? what strain
there is on the untaught masses of you to revenge themselves,
even with insane fire?

Alas, the Taught masses are strained enough also; —
have you not just seen a great religious and reformed nation,
with its goodly Captains — philosophical, — sentimental, —
domestic, — evangelical-angelical-minded altogether, and
with its Lord's Prayer really quite vital to it, — come and
take its neighbor nation by the throat, saying, "Pay me
ths^t thou owest."

Seek to revenge no injury : I do not say, seek to punish
no crime : look what I hinted about failed bankers. Of
that hereafter.

III. Learn to obey good laws ; and in a little while, you
will reach the better learning — how to obey good Men, who
are living, breathing, unblinded law; and to subdue base
and disloyal ones, recognizing in those the light, and ruling
over these the power, of the Lord of Light and Peace,
whose Dominion is an everlasting Dominion, and his
Kingdom from generation to generation.

FOJ?S CLAVIGERA.

195

v.— CLERGYMEN.

I HAD an impatient remonstrance sent me the other day,
by a country clergyman's wife, against that saying in

my former letter, ' ' Dying has been more expensive to
you than living." Did I know, she asked, what a country
clergyman's life was, and that he was the poor man's only
friend.

Alas, I know it, and too well. What can be said of
more deadly and ghastly blame against the clergy of
England, or any other country, than that they are the poor
man's only friends?

Have they, then, so betrayed their Master's charge and
mind, in their preaching to the rich; — ^so smoothed their
words, and so sold their authority, — that, after twelve hun-
dred years entrusting of the gospel to them, there is no man
in England (this is their chief plea for themselves forsooth)
who will have mercy on the poor, but they ; and so they
must leave the word of God, and serve tables?

I would not myself have said so much against English
clergymen, whether of country or town. Three — and one
dead makes four — of my dear friends (and I have not many
dear friends) are country clergymen ; and I know the ways
of every sort of them ; my architectural tastes necessarily
bringing me into near relations with the sort who like
pointed arches and painted glaSs ; and my old religious
breeding having given me an unconquerable habit of taking
up with any traveling tinker of evangelical principles I may

196 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

come across ; and even of reading, not without awe, the
prophetic warnings of any persons belonging to that
peculiarly well-informed "persuasion," such, for instance,
as those of Mr. Zion Ward "Concerning the fall of Lucifer,
in a letter to a friend, Mr. William Dick, of Glasgow, price
twopence," in which I read (as aforesaid, with unfeigned
feelings of concern), that "the slain of the Lord shall be
MAN-Y ; that is, man, in whom death is, with all the works
of carnality, shall be burned up !"

But I was not thinking either of English clergy, or of
any other group of clergy, specially, when I wrote that
sentence ; but of the entire Clerkly or Learned Company,
from the first priest of Egypt to the last ordained Belgravian
curate, and of all the talk they have talked, and all the
quarreling they have caused, and all the gold they have
had given them, to this day, when still, "they are the poor
man's only friends" — and by no means all of them that,
heartily! though I see the Bishop of Manchester has of
late been superintending — I beg his pardon. Bishops don't
superintend — ^looking on, or over, I should have said, — the
recreations of his flock at the seaside; and "the thought
struck him" that railroads were an advantage to them in
taking them for their holiday out of Manchester. The
thought may, perhaps, strike him, next, that a working
man ought to be able to find " holy days" in his home, as
well as out of it.*

A year or two ago, a man who had at the time, and has
still, important official authority over much of the business
of the country, was speaking anxiously to me of the misery
increasing in the suburbs and back streets of London, and
debating, with the good help of the Oxford Regius Pro-
fessor of Medicine — ^who was second in council — ^what

*See g 159, (written seven years ago), in Munera Pulveris.

FORS CLAVIGERA.

197

sanitary or moral remedy could be found. The debate
languished, however, because of the strong conviction in
the minds of all three of us that the misery was inevitable
in the suburbs of so vast a city. At last, either the minister
or physician, I forget which, expressed the conviction.
"Well," I answered, "then you must not have large
cities," "That," answered the minister, "is an unpractical
saying — you know we must have them, under existing
circumstances."

I made no reply, feeling that it was vain to assure any
man actively concerned in modern parliamentary business,
that no measures were "practical" except those which
touched the source of the evil opposed.

VI.— CARLYLE.

READ your Carlyle, then, with all your heart, and
with the best of brain you can give ; and you will
learn from him first, the eternity of good law, and the
need of obedience to it : then, concerning your own iinme-
diate business, you will learn further this, that the beginning
of all good law, and nearly the end of it, is in these two
ordinances, — That every man shall do good work for his
bread ; and secondly, That every man shall have good
bread for his work. But the first of these is the only one
you have to think o£ If you are resolved that the work
shall be good, the bread will be sure ; if not, — believe me,
there is neither steam plow nor steam mill, go they never
so glibly, that will win it from the earth long, either for you,
or the Ideal Landed Proprietor.

igS THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

VII.— EXPECTANTS OF TURNIPS.

VIRTUALLY, the entire business of the world turns
on the clear necessity of getting on table, hot or cold,
if possible, meat — but, at least, vegetables, — at some
hour of the day, for all of us : for you laborers, we will say
at noon ; for us sesthetical persons, we will say at eight in
the evening; for we like to have done our eight hours'
work of admiring abbeys before we dine. But, at some
time of day, the mutton and turnips, or, since mutton itself
is only a transformed state of turnips, we may say, as suffi-
ciently typical of everything, turnips only, must absolutely
be got for us both. And nearly every problem of State
policy and economy, as at present understood, and practiced,
consists in some device for persuading you laborers to go
and dig up dinner for us reflective and sesthetical persons,
who like to sit still, and think, or admire. So that when
we get to the bottom of the matter, we find the inhabitants
of this earth broadly divided into two great masses ; — the
peasant paymasters — spade in hand, original and imperial
producers of turnips ; and, waiting on them all round, a
crowd of polite persons, modestly expectant of turnips, for
some — too often theoretical — service.

FOUS CLAVIGERA. 199

VIII.— RICH ?

I HAD to go to Verona by the afternoon train. In the
carriage with me were two American girls with their

father and mother, people of the class which has lately
made so much money suddenly, and does not know what
to do with it: and these two girls, of about fifteen and
eighteen, had evidently been indulged in everything, (since
they had had the means,) which western civilization could
imagine. And here they were, specimens of the utmost
which the money and invention of the nineteenth century
could produce in maidenhood, — children of its most pro-
gressive race, — enjoying the full advantages of political
liberty, of enlightened philosophical education, of cheap
pilfered literature, and of luxury at any cost. Whatever
money, machinery, or freedom of thought, could do for
these two children, had been done. No superstition had
deceived, no restraint degraded them : — types, they could
not but be, of maidenly wisdom and felicity, as conceived
by the forwardest intellects of our time.

And they were traveling through a district which, if
any in the world, should touch the hearts and delight the
eyes of young girls. Between Venice and Verona ! Portia's
villa perhaps in sight upon the Brenta, — Juliet's tomb to
be visited in the evening, — ^blue against the southern sky,
the hills of Petrarch's home. Exquisite midsummer sun-
shine, with low rays, glanced through the vine-leaves ; all
the Alps were clear, from the lake of Garda to Cadore, and
to furthest Tyrol. What a princess's chamber, this, if

200 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

these are princesses, and what dreams might they not
dream, therein !

But the two American girls were neither princesses, nor
seers, nor dreamers. By infinite self-indulgence, they had
reduced themselves simply to two pieces of white putty
that could feel pain. The flies and dust stuck to them as
to clay, and they perceived, between Venice and Verona,
nothing but the flies and the dust. They pulled down the
blinds the moment they entered the carriage, and then
sprawled, and writhed, and tossed among the cushions of
it, in vain contest, during the whole fifty miles, with every
miserable sensation of bodily affliction that could make
time intolerable. They were dressed in thin white frocks,
coming vaguely open at the backs as they stretched or
wriggled ; they had French novels, lemons, and lumps of
sugar, to beguile their state with; the novels hanging
together by the ends of string that had once stitched them,
or adhering at the corners in densely bruised dog's-ears,
out of which the girls, wetting their fingers, occasionally
extricated a gluey leaf From time to time they cut a
lemon open, ground a lump of sugar backward and for-
ward over it till every fiber was in a treacly pulp; then
sucked the pulp, and gnawed the white skin into leathery
strings, for the sake of its bitter. Only one sentence was
exchanged, in the fifty miles, on the subject of things out-
side the carriage (the Alps being once visible from a station
where they had drawn up the blinds).

"Don't those snow-caps make you cool?"

"No— I wish they did."

And so they went their way, with sealed eyes and
tormented limbs, their numbered miles of pain.

FORS CLAVIGERA. 201

IX.— INTEREST.

NOW then for Mr. Fawcett : — At the 146th page of the
edition of his Manual previously quoted, you will
find it stated that the interest of money consists of
three distinct parts :

1. Reward for abstinence.

2. Compensation for the risk of loss.

3. Wages for the labor of superintendence.

I will reverse this order in examining the statements ;
for the only real question is as to the first, and we had
better at once clear the other two away from it.

3. Wages for the labor of superintendence.

By giving the capitalist wages at all, we put him at
once into the class of laborers, which in my November
letter I showed you is partly right ; but, by Mr. Fawcett' s
definition, and in the broad results of business, he is not a
laborer. So far as he is one, of course, like any other, he
is to be paid for his work. There is no question but that
the partner who superintends any business should be paid
for superintendence ; but the .question before us is only
respecting payment for doing nothing. I have, for instance,
at this moment /i 5,000 of bank stock, and receive ;^i,2oo
odd, a year, from the Bank, but I have never received the
slightest intimation from the directors that they wished for
my assistance in the superintendence of that establishment ;
— (more shame for them). But even in cases where the
partners are active, it does not follow that the one who has
most money in the business is either fittest to superintend
it, or likely to do so ; it is indeed probable that a man who

202 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

has made money already will know how to make more ;
and it is necessary to attach some importance to property
as the sign of sense : but your business is to choose and
pay your superintendent for his sense, and not for his
money. Which is exactly what Mr. Carlyle has been
telling you for some time ; and both he and all his disciples
entirely approve of interest, if you are indeed prepared to
define that term as payment for the exercise of common
sense spent in the service of the person who pays for it. I
reserve yet awhile, however, what is to be said, as hinted
in my first letter, about the sale of ideas.

2. Compensation for risk.

Does Mr. Fawcett mean by compensation for risk, pro-
tection from it, or reward for running it? Every business
involves a certain quantity of risk, which is properly covered
by every prudent merchant, but he does not expect to make
a profit out of his risks, nor calculate on a percentage on
his insurance. If he prefer not to insure, does Professor
Fawcett mean that his customers ought to compensate him
for his anxiety ; and that while the definition of the first
part of interest is extra payment for prudence, the definition
of the second part of interest is extra payment for mpru-
dence? Or, does Professor Fawcett mean, what is indeed
often the fact, that interest for money represents such
reward for risk as people may get across the green cloth at
Homburg or Monaco? Because so far as what used to be
business is, in modern political economy, gambling. Pro-
fessor. Fawcett will please to observe that what one gamester
gains another loses. You cannot get anything out of
Nature, or from God, by gamblii^ ;— =-only out of your
neighbor : and to the quantity of interest of money thus
gained, you are mathematically to oppose a precisely equal
<ft!finterest of somebody else's money.

FOUS CLAVIGERA. 203

These second and third reasons for interest then, assigned
by Professor Fawcett, have evidently nothing whatever to
do with the question. What I want to know is, why the
Bank of England is paying me £1 , 200 a year. It certainly
does not pay me for superintendence. And so far from'
receiving my dividend as compensation for risk, I put my
money into the bank because I thought it exactly the safest
place to put it in. But nobody can be more anxious than
I to find it proper that I should have ;^i,2oo a year.
Finding two of Mr. Fawcett' s reasons fail me Utterly, I
cling with tenacity to the third, and hope the best from it.

The third, or first, — ^and now too sorrowfully the last —
of the Professor's reasons, is this, that my ;^ 1,200 are
given me as ' ' the reward of abstinence. ' ' It strikes me,
upon this that if I had not my ;^i5,ooo of Bank Stock I
should be a good deal more abstinent than I am, and that
nobody would then talk of rewarding me for it. It might
be possible to find even cases of very prolonged and painful
abstinence, for which no reward has yet been adjudged by
less abstinent England. Abstinence may, indeed, have its
reward, nevertheless ; but not by increase of what we abstain
from, unless there be a law of growth for it, unconnected
with our abstinence. "You cannot have your cake and
eat it." Of course not ; and if you don't eat it, you have
your cake ; but not a cake and a half! Imagine the com-
plex trial of schoolboy minds, if the law of nature about
cakes were, that if you ate none of your cake to-day, you
would have ever so much bigger a cake to-morrow ! — which
is Mr. Fawcett' s notion of the law of nature about money ;
and, alas, many a man's beside, — it being no law of nature
whatever, but absolutely contrary to all her laws, and not
to be enacted by the whole force of .united mankind.

Noi a cake and a quarter to-morrow, dunce, however

204 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

abstinent you are — only the cake you have, — if the mice
don't get at it in the night.

Interest, then, is not, it appears, payment for labor ; it
is not reward for risk ; it is not reward for abstinence.

What is it?

One of two things it is ; — taxation, or usury. Of which
in my next letter.

An impatient correspondent of mine, Mr. W. C. Sillar,
who has long been hotly engaged in testifying publicly
against the wickedness of taking interest, writes to me that
all I say is mysterious, that I am bound to speak plainly,
and above everything, if I think taking interest sinful, not
to hold bank stock.

Once for all, then, Mr. Sillar is wholly right as to the
abstract fact that lending for gain is sinful ; and he has in
various pamphlets, shown unanswerably that whatever is
said either in the Bible, or in any other good and ancient
book, respecting usury, is intended by the writers to apply
to the receiving of interest, be ' it ever so little. But Mr.
Sillar has allowed this idea to take possession of him, body
and soul ; and is just as fondly enthusiastic about abolition
of usury as some other people are about the liquor laws.
Now of course drunkenness is mischievous, and usury is
mischievous, and whoredom is mischievous, and idleness is
mischievous. But we cannot reform the world by preach-
ing temperance only, nor refusal of interest only, nor
chastity only, nor industry only. I am myself more set on
teaching healthful industry than anything else, as the
beginning of all redemption ; then, purity of heart and
body ; if I can get these taught, I know that nobody so
taught will either get drunk, or, in any unjust manner,
"either a borrower or a lender be." But I expect also far
higher results than either of these, on which, being utterly

FORS CLAVIGERA. 205

bent, I am very careless about such minor matters as the
present conditions either of English brewing or banking.
I hold bank stock simply because I suppose it to be safer
than any other stock, and I take the interest of it, because
though taking interest is, in the abstract, as wrong as war,
the entire fabric of society is at present so connected with
both usury and war, that it is not possible violently to
withdraw, nor wisely to set example of withdrawing, from
either evil. I entirely, in the abstract, disapprove of war ;
yet have the profoundest sympathy with Colonel Yea and
his fusiliers at Alma, and only wish I had been there with
them. I have by no means equal sympathy either with
bankers or landlords ; but am certain that for the present
it is better that I receive my dividends as usual, and that
Miss Hill should continue to collect my rents in Marylebone.
"Ananias over again, or worse," Mr. Sillar will probably
exclaim, when he reads this, and invoke lightning against
me. I will abide the issue of his invocation, and only beg
him to observe respecting either ancient or modern denuncia-
tions of interest, that they are much beside the mark unless
they are accompanied with some explanation of the manner
in which borrowing and lending, when necessary, can be
carried on without it. Neither are often necessary in
healthy states of society ; but they always must remain so
to some extent; and the name "Mount of Pity," * given

*The " Mount " is the heap of money in store for lending with-
out interest. You shall have a picture of it in next number, as
drawn by a brave landscape painter four hundred years ago; and
it will ultimately be one of the crags of our own Mont Rose ; and
well should be, for it was first raised among the rocks of Italy by
a Franciscan monk, for refuge to the poor against the usury of the
Lombard merchants who gave name to our Lombard Street, and
perished by their usury, as their successors are like enough to do
also. But the story goes back to Friedricb II, of Germany again,
and is too long for this letter.

2o6 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

still in French and Italian to the pawnbroker's shop,
descends from a time when lending to the poor was as
much a work of mercy as giving to them. And both lend-
ing and borrowing are virtuous, when the borrowing is
prudent, and the lending kind ; how much otherwise than
kind lending at interest usually is, you, I suppose, do not
need to be told; but how much otherwise than prudent
nearly all borrowing is, and above everything, trade on a
large scale on borrowed capital, it is very necessary for us
all to be told. And for a beginning of other people's
words, here are some quoted by Mr. Sillar from a work on
the Labor question recently published in Canada, which,
though common-place, and evidently the expressions of a
person imperfectly educated, are true, earnest, and worth
your reading : —

"These Scripture usury laws, then, are for no particular
race and for no particular time. They lie at the very
foundations of national progress and wealth. They form
the only great safeguards of labor, and are the security of
civil society, and the strength and protection of commerce
itself Let us beware, for our own sakes, how we lay our
hand upon the barriers which God has reared around the
humble dwelling of the laboring man

"Business itself is a pleasure, but it is the anxieties and
burdens of business arising all out of this debt system,
which have caused so many aching pillows and so many
broken hearts. What countless multitudes, during the last
three hundred years, have gone down to bankruptcy and
shame — ^what fair prospects have been forever blighted —
what happy homes desolated — what peace destroyed — ^what
ruin and destruction have ever marched hand in hand with
this system of debt, paper, and usury ! Verily its sins have
reached unto heaven, and its iniquities are very great.

"What shall the end of these things be? God only
knoweth. I fear the system is beyond a cure. All thg

FORS CLAVIGERA.

207

great interests of humanity are overborne by it, and nothing
can flourish as it ought till it is taken out of the way. It
contains within itself, as we have at times witnessed, most
potent elements of destruction which in one hour may
bring all its riches to nought."

.... It may be, that as we fix our laws in further
detail, we may add some of the heavier yokes of Lycurgus,
or Numa, or John the Baptist: and, though the Son of
Man came eating and drinking, and turning water into
wine, we may think it needful to try how some of us like
living on locusts, or wild honey, or Spartan broth. But at
least, I repeat, we are here, in England, to obey the law of
Christ, if nothing more.

Now the law of Christ about money and other forms
of personal wealth, is taught, first in parables, in which He
likens himself to the masters of this world, and explains the
conduct which Christians should hold to Him, their heavenly
Master, by that which they hold on earth, to earthly ones.

He likens himself, in these stories, several times, to
unkind or unjust masters, and especially to hard and
usurious ones. And the gist of the parables in each case
is, "If ye do so, and are thus faithful to hard and cruel
masters, in earthly things, how much more should ye be
faithful to a merciful Master, in heavenly things?"

Which argument, evil-minded men wrest, as they do
also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. And
instead of reading, for instance, in the parable of the Usurer,
the intended lesson of industry in the employment of God's
gifts, they read in it a justification of the crime which, in
other parts of the same scripture, is directly forbidden.
And there is indeed no doubt that, if the other prophetic
parts of the Bible be true, these stories are so worded that
they may be touchstones ol the heart. They are nets.

2o8 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

which sift the kindly reader from the selfish. The parable
of the Usurer is like a mill sieve: — the fine flour falls
through it, bolted finer ; the chaff sticks in it.

Therefore, the only way to understand these difficult
parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is
first to read and obey the easy ones. Then the difiicult
ones all become beautiful and clear : — otherwise they remain
venomous enigmas, with a Sphinx of destruction provoking
false souls to read them, and ruining them in their own
replies.

Now the orders, "not to lay up treasure for ourselves
on earth," and to "sell that we have, and give alms," and
to "provide ourselves bags which wax not old," are per-
fectly direct, unmistakable, — universal; and while we are
not at all likely to be blamed by God for not imitating Him
as a Judge, we shall assuredly be condemned by Him for
not, under Judgment, doing as we were bid. But even if
we do not feel able to obey these orders, if we must and
will lay up treasures on earth, and provide ourselves bags
with holes in them, — God may perhaps still, with scorn,
permit us in our weakness, provided we are content with
our earthly treasures, when we have got them, and don't
oppress our brethren, and grind down their souls with
them. We may have our old bag about our neck, if we
will, and go to heaven like beggars; — ^but if we sell our
brother also, and put the price of his life in the bag, we
need not think to enter the kingdom of God so loaded. A
rich man may, though hardly, enter the kingdom of heaven
without repenting him of his riches; but not the thief,
without repenting his theft ; nor the adulterer, without
repenting his adultery ; nor the usurer, without repenting
his usury.

The nature of which last sin, let us now clearly
understand, once for all.

FORS CLAVIGERA. 209

Mr. Harrison's letter, published in the Fors for June,
is perhaps no less valuable as an evidence of the subtlety
with which this sin has seized upon and paralyzed the
public mind (so that even a man of Mr. Harrison's general
intelligence has no idea why I ask a question about it),
than as a clear statement of the present condition of the
law, produced by the usurers who are "law- makers" for
England, though lawyers are not.

Usury is properly the taking of money for the loan or
use of anything (over and above what pays for wear and
tear), such use involving no care or labor on the part of
the lender. It includes all investments of capital whatso-
ever, returning "dividends," as distinguished from labor
wages, or profits. Thus anybody who works on a railroad
as plate-layer, or stoker, has a right to wages for his
work ; and any inspector of wheels or rails has a right to
payment for such inspection; but idle persons who have
only paid a hundred pounds toward the road-making, have
a right to the return of the hundred pounds, — and no more.
If they take a farthing more, they are usurers. They may
take fifty pounds for two years, twenty-five for four, five for
twenty, or one for a hundred. But the first farthing they
take more than their hundred, be it sooner or later, is usury.

Again, when we build a house, and let it, we have a
right to as much rent as will return us the wages of our
labor, and the sum of our outlay. If, as in ordinary cases,
not laboring with our hands or head, we have simply paid
say — ;^i,ooo — to get the house built, we have a right to
the ;^i,ooo back again at once, if we sell it ; or, if we let
it, to ;^500 rent during two years, or ;^ioo rent during ten
years, or ;^io rent during a hundred years. But if, sooner
or later, we take a pound more than the thousand, we are
usurers.

2IO THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

And thus in all other possible or conceivable cases, the
moment our capital is "increased" by having lent it, be it
but in the estimation of a hair, that hair's-breadth of
increase is usury, just as much as stealing a farthing is
theft, no less than stealing a million.

But usury is worse than theft, in so fer as it is obtained
either by deceiving people, or distressing them ; generally
by both : and finally by deceiving the usurer himself, who
comes to think that usury is a real increase, and that money
can grow of money,; whereas all usury is increase to one
person only by decrease to another ; and every grain of
calculated Increment to the Rich, is balanced by its math-
ematical equivalent of Decrement to the Poor. The Rich
have hitherto only counted their gain; but the day is
coming, when the Poor will also count their loss — with
political results hitherto unparalleled.

For instance, my good old hairdresser at Cambenvell
came to me the other day, very uncomfortable about his
rent. He wanted a pound or two to make it up; and
none of his customers wanted their hair cut. I gave him
the pound or two, — ^with the result, I hope my readers
have sagacity enough to observe, of distinct decrement to
me, as increment to the landlord; and then inquired of
him, how much he had paid for rent, during his life. On
rough calculation, the total sum proved to be between 1,500
and 1,700 pounds. And after paying this sum, — earned,
shilling by shilling, with careful snippings, and studiously
skillful manipulation of tongs, — here is my poor old fi-iend,
now past sixty, practically without a roof over his head-; —
just as roofless in his old age as he was in the first days of
life, — and nervously wandering about Peckham Rye and
East Norwood, in the east winter winds, to see if, perchance,
any old customers will buy some balm for their thinning

FORS CLAVIGERA. 2ii

locks — and give him the blessed balm laf an odd half-crown
or two, to rent shelter for his own, for three months more.

Now, supposing that ;^i,5o6 of his had been properly
laid out, on the edification of lodgings for him, ;^50o should
have built him a serviceable tenement and shop ; another
;^5oo have met the necessary repairing expenses for forty
years; and at this moment he ought to have had his effi-
cient freehold cottage, with tile and wall right weather-
proof, and a nice little nest-egg of five hundred pounds in
the Bank, besides. But instead of this, the thousand pounds
has gone in payment to slovenly builders, each getting their
own percentage, and doing as bad work as possible, under
the direction of landlords paying for as little as possible of
any sort of work. And the odd five hundred has gone into
the landlord's pocket. Pure increment to him ; pure
decrement to my decoratively laborious friend. No gain
"begotten" of money; but simple subtraction from the
pocket of the laboring person, and simple addition to the
pocket of the idle one.

I have no mind to waste the space of Fors in giving
variety of instances. Any honest and sensible reader, if
he chooses, can think out the truth in such matters for
himself. If he be dishonest, or foolish, no one can teach
him. If he is resolved to find reason or excuse for things
as they are, he may find refuge in one lie after another ;
and, dislodged from each in turn, fly from the last back to
the one he began with. But there will not long be need
for debate-^nor time for it. Not all the lying lips of com-
mercial Europe can much longer deceive the people in
their rapidly increasing distress, nor arrest their straight
battle with the cause of it. Through what confused noise
and garments rolled in blood, — through what burning and
fuel of fire, they will work out their victory, — God only

212 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

knows, nor what they will do to Barabbas, when they have
found out that he if a Robber, and not a King. But that
discovery of his character and capacity draws very near :
and no less change in the world's ways than the former
fall of Feudalism itself

In the meantime, for those of us who are Christians, our
own way is plain. We can with perfect ease ascertain
what usury is ; and in what express terms forbidden

"And if thy brother be poor, and powerless with his
hands, at thy side, thou shalt take his part upon thee, to
help him,* as thy proselyte and thy neighbor; and thy
brother shall live with thee. Thou shalt take no usury of
him, nor anything over and above, and thou shalt fear thy
God. I am the Lord, and thy brother shall live with thee.
Thou shalt not give him thy money, for usury ; and thou
shalt not give him thy food, for increase."

There is the simple law for all of us •,' — one of those
which Christ assuredly came not to destroy, but to fulfill :
and there is no national prosperity to be had but in
obedience to it.

How we usurers are to live, with the hope of our gains
gone, is precisely the old temple of Diana question. How
Robin Hood or Cceur de Lion were to live without arrow
or axe, would have been as strange a question to them, in
their day. And there are many amiable persons who will
not directly see their way, any more than I do myself, to
an honest life ; only, let us be sure that this we are leading
now is a dishonest one; and worse (if Dante and Shak-
speare's mind on the matter are worth any heed, of which
more in due time), being neither more nor less than a

•Meaning, to do his work instead of him. Compare Acts xx.
35. ~ "I have showed you all things, how that, so laboring, ye
ought to support the weak."

FORS CLAVIGERA.

213

spiritual manner of cannibalism, which so long as we
persist in, every word spoken in Scripture of those who
"eat my people as they eat bread," is spoken directly of
us.* It may be an encouragement to some of us — especially
those evangelically bred — in weaning ourselves slowly from
such habits.

X.— ST. GEORGE'S COMPANY.

AS I am now often asked, in private letters, the consti-
tution of St. George's Company, and cannot, hith-
erto, refer, in answer, to any clear summary of it, I
will try to write such a summary in this number of Fors;
that it may henceforward be sent to inquirers as alone
sufficiently explanatory.

The St. George's Company is a society established to
carry out certain charitable objects, toward which it invites,
and thankfully will receive, help from any persons caring
to give it, either in money, labor, or any kind of gift. But

* Dear Mr. Ruskin, %th July, 1876.

I see that you intend to speak on the question of usury
in next Fors. Would it not be well, since the Bishops of the
Established Church have not a word to offer in defense of their
conduct, to appeal to some of the other sects that profess to take
the teaching of the Bible and of Christ for their guidance? The
Wesleyans, for instance, teach that the Bible was given almost
verbally by the Spirit of God ; and John Wesley says his followers
are "to die sooner than put anything in pawn, or borrow and lend
on usury." Perhaps if you were to challenge the President and
Conference, and call on them either to state that they dp not
accept the teaching of Moses, David, and Christ on this matter, or
to bring the sin clearly before the minds of the members of their
body, you might force the question on the attention of the profess-
edly religious persons in the country.

A Reader of Eors.

214 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

the Company itself consists of persons who agree in certain
general principles of action, and objects of pursuit, and who
can, therefore, act together in effective and constant unison.

These objects of pursuit are, in brief terms, the health,
wealth, and long life of the British nation : the Company
having thus devoted itself, in the conviction that the British
nation is at present unhealthy, poor, and likely to perish,
as a power, from the face of the earth. They accordingly
propose to themselves the general medicining, enriching,
and preserving in political strength, of the population of
these islands; they themselves numbering at present, in
their ranks, about thirty persons, — ^none of them rich,
several of them sick, and the leader of them, at all events,
not likely to live long.

Whether the nation be healthy, or in unwholesome
degradation of body and mind; wealthy, or in continual
and shameful distress ; strong, or in rapid decline of political
power and authority, — the reader will find debated through-
out the various contents of the preceding volumes oi Fors.
But there is one public fact, which cannot be debated — that
the nation is in debt. And the St. George's Company do
practically make it their first, though not their principal^
object, to bring that state of things to an end ; and to estab-
lish, instead of a National Debt, a National Store. (See
the last line of the fifth page of the first letter of the series,
published ist January, 1871, and the eleventh, and twenty-
seventh, letters, throughout.)

That very few readers of this page have any notion, at
this moment, what a National Debt is, or can conceive what
a National Store should be, is one of many evil conse-
quences of the lies which, under the title of "Political
Economy," have been taught by the ill-educated, and
mostly dishonest, commercial men, who at present govern
the press of the country.

FORS CLAVIGERA.

215

I have again and again stated the truth in both these
matters, but must try once more to do it, emphaticalty, and
intelligibly.

A "civilized nation" in modem Europe consists, in
broad terms, of (A) a mass of half-taught, discontented, and
mostly penniless populace, calling itself the people ; of (B) a
thing which it calls a government — meaning an apparatus
for collecting and spending money ; and (C) a small number
of capitalists, many of them rogues, and most of them
stupid persons, who have no idea of any object of human
existence other than money-making, gambling, or cham-
pagne-bibbing. A certain quantity of literary men, saying
anything they can get paid to say, — of clergymen, saying
anything they have been taught to say, — of natural philos-
ophers, saying anything that comes into their heads, — and
of nobility, saying nothing at all, combine in disguising the
action, and perfecting the disorganization, of the mass;
but with respect to practical business, the civilized nation
consists broadly of mob, money-collecting machine, and
capitalist.

Now when this civilized mob wants to spend money for
any profitless or mischievous purposes, — fireworks, illumin-
ations, battles, driving about from place to place, or what
not, — being itself penniless, it sets its money-collecting
machine to borrow the sum needful for these amusements
from the civilized capitalist.

The civilized capitalist lends the money, on condition
that through the money-collecting machine, he may tax
the civilized mob thenceforward forever. The civilized
mob spends the money forthwith, in gunpowder, infernal
inachines, masquerade dresses, new boulevards, or anything
else it has set its idiotic mind on for the moment; and
appoints its money collecting machine to collect a daily tax

2i6 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

from its children, and children's children, to be paid to the
capitalists from whom it had received the accommodation,
thenceforward forever.

That is the nature of a National Debt.

In order to understand that of a National Store, my
readers must first consider what any store whatever, ser-
viceable to human beings, consists of. A store properly
means a collection of useful things. Literally, it signifies
only a quantity, or much of anything. But the heap of
broken bottles which, I hear, is accumulating under the
principal cliff of Snowdon, through the contributions of
tourists from the summit, is not properly to be called a
store ; though a binfull of old wine is. Neither is a heap
of cannon-balls a store ; * though a heap of potatoes is.
Neither is a cellar full of gunpowder a store ; though a
cellar full of coals is. A store is, for squirrels, of nuts ; for
bees, of honey ; for men, of food, clothes, fuel, or pretty
things, such as toys or jewels, — and, for educated persons,
of books and pictures.

And the possession of such a store by the nation would
signify, that there were no taxes to pay ; that everybody
had clothes enough, and some stuff laid by for next year ;
that everybody had food enough, and plenty of salted pork,
pickled walnuts, potted shrimps,, or other conserves, in the
cupboard; that everybody had jewels enough, and some
of the biggest laid by, in treasuries and museums ; and, of
persons caring for such things, that everybody had as many
books and pictures as they could read or look at; with
quantities of the highest quality besides, in easily accessible
public libraries and galleries.

* They may serve for the defense of the store, of course ; — so
may the broken bottles, stuck on the top of a wall. But the lock
of your cupboard is not the contents of it.

FORS CLAVIGERA. 217

Now the wretches who have, at present, the teaching
of the people in their hands, through the public press, tell
them that it is not "practical" to attempt to bring about
this state of things ; — and that their government, or money-
collecting machine, must not buy wine, potatoes, jewels,
or pictures for them ; but must buy iron plates two feet
thick, gunpowder and red tape. And this popular instruc-
tion is given, you will find, in the end, by persons who
know that they could not get a percentage themselves,
(without the public's coming to know it,) on buying
potatoes or pictures ; but can get it, and a large one, on
manufacturing iron, on committing wholesale murder, or on
tying up papers with red tape.

Now the St. George's Company propose to themselves,,
— and, if the God they believe in, lives, will assuredly
succeed in their proposition, — ^to put an end to this rascally
and inhuman state of things, and bring about an honest
and human state of them, instead. And they have already
actually begun the accumulation of a National Store of
good and useful things ; by the collection and administration
of which, they are not themselves to derive any gain
whatsoever, but the Nation only.

We are, therefore, at present, as I said at first, a com-
pany established for a charitable purpose; the object of
charity being the entire body of -the British nation, now
paying taxes to cheating capitalists. But we hope to
include, finally, in our ranks a large number of the people
themselves, and to make quite a different sort of people of
them, carrying out our company's laws, to the abolition of
many existing interests and in abrogation of many existing
arrangements.

And the laws which we hope thus to see accepted are
none of them new ; but have been already recommended

21 8 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

by all wise men, and practiced by all truly prosperous
states ; nor is there anything whatever new in the modes of
administration proposed ; — and especially be it noted, there
is nothing of the present leader's fancies, in any part or
character of the scheme — ^which is merely the application,
to our nationally diseased thoughts and practices, of the
direct precepts of the true sages of past time, who are every
one of them in harmony concerning all that is necessary
for men to do, feel, and know.

And we hope to establish these laws, not by violence,
but by obeying them ourselves, to the extent of which
existing circumstances admit.; and so gradually showing
the advantage of them, and making them acceptable to
others.' Not that, for the enforcement of some of them
(the abolition of all manufactures that make the air unwhole-
some, for instance), we shall hesitate to use the strong
hand, when once our hands are strong. But we shall not
begin by street riots to throw down our neighbor's chim-
neys, or break his machinery ; — though what we shall end
in doing — God knows, not I, — but I have my own thoughts
concerning it ; not at present needing exposition.

The Companions, for the most part, will remain exactly
in the condition of life they held before entering the Society;
but they will direct all their powers, and some part of their
revenues, in that condition, to the advance of its interests.
We hold it shortsighted and ruinous policy to form separate
institutions, or attempt the sudden establishment of new
systems of labor. Every one of us must use the advantages
he now possesses, whatever they may be, and contend with
the difficulties arising out of his present position, gradually
modifying it, as he can, into conformity with the laws
which the Society desires may be ultimately observed by
all its members.

FORS CLAVIGERA. 219

The first of our conditions of Companionship is Honesty.
We are a company of honest persons, vowing to have no
fellowship with dishonest ones. Persons who do not know
the meaning of the word " Honesty," or who would in any-
wise, for selfish convenience, tolerate any manner of
cheating or lying, either in others or themselves, we class
indiscriminately with the self-conscious rogues, for whom
we have more respect ; and our separation from all such is
to be quite manifest and unmistakable. We do not go
into monasteries, — we seek no freedom of conscience in
foreign lands, — we profess no severities of asceticism at
home. We simply refuse to have any dealings with rogues,
whether at home or abroad.

I repeat, for this must be strictly understood ; we are a
company of honest persons ; and will add to ourselves none
but persons of that quality. We, for our own part, entirely
decline to live by passing bad half-crowns, by selling bad
goods, or by lying as to their relative quality. And we
hold only such communication with persons guilty of such
practices, as we should with any other manner of thieves or
liars.

It will follow that anything gravely said by a Companion
of St. George may be, without investigation, believed ; and
anything sold by one, without scrutiny, bought for what it
is said to be, — of which recovery of old principles of human
speech and commerce, no words can set forth the infinitude
of beneficial consequences, when it is once brought about
among a discernible and every day increasing body of
persons.

The second condition of Companionship is the resolu-
tion, so far as we have ability, to earn our own living with
our own hands, and not to allow, much less compel, other
people to work for us : this duty being of double force, —

220 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

first, as necessary to our own health and honor ; but much
more, as striking home at the ghastly universal crime of
modern society, — stealing the laborer's bread from him
(making him work, that is to say, for ours, as well as his
own), and then abusing and despising him for the degrada-
tion of characta* which his perpetual toil involves;*
deliberately, in many cases, refusing to encourage him in
economy, that we may have him at our mercy to grind in
the mill ; always selling as much gin and beer to him as we
can persuade him to swill, at the rate of twenty-pence for
twopence' worth, (see Letter XXVII.,) to fill our own
pockets ; and teaching him pious catechisms, that we may
keep him our quiet slave.

We cannot, at present, all obey this great law concern-
ing labor, however willing we may be ; for we may not, in
the condition of life in which we have been brought up,
have been taught any manual labor by which we now could
make a living. I myself, the present Master of the Society,
cannot obey this, its second main law ; but then I am only
a makeshift Master, taking the place till somebody more fit
for it be found. Sir Walter Scott's life, in the full strength
of it at Ashestiel, and early at Abbotsford, with his literary
work done by ten, or at latest twelve, in the morning ; and
the rest of the day spent in useful work with Tom Purdie
in his woods, is a model of wise moral management of
mind and body, for men of true literary power ; but I had
neither the country training of body, nor have the natural
strength of brain, which can reach this ideal in anywise.
Sir Walter wrote as a stream flows ; but I do all my brain-

* See Letter XI. (November, '71,) pages 142 to 145, the most
pregnant four pages in the entire series of these letters ; and com-
pare that for January of this year, pp. 100— loi, and for April,
p. 170.

FORS CLAVIGERA. 221

work like a wrung sponge, and am tired out, and good for
nothing, after it. Sir Walter was in the open air, ferm-
bred, and playing with lambs, while I was a poor little
Cockney wretch, playing, in a dark London nursery, with
a bunch of keys. I do the best I can, and know what
ought to be ; and that is all the Company really need of me.
I would fain, at this moment, both for pleasure and duty's
sake, be cutting the dead stems out of my wood, or learn-
ing to build a dry stone wall under my good mason, Mr.
Usher, than writing these institutes of St. George ; but the
institutes are needed, and must be written by me, since
there is nobody else to write them.

Any one, therefore, may be a Companion of St. George
who sincerely does what they can, to make themselves
useful, and earn their daily bread by their own labor : and
some forms of intellectual or artistic labor, inconsistent (as
a musician's) with other manual labor, are accepted by the
Society as useful ; provided they be truly undertaken for
the good and help of all ; and that the intellectual laborer
ask no more pay than any other workman. A scholar can
generally live on less food than a plowman and there is
no conceivable reason why he should have more.* And
if he be a false-hearted scholar, or a bad painter or fiddler,
there is infinite reason why he should have less. My
readers may have been surprised at the instant and eager
assertion, as of a leading principle, in the first of these
letters, (January, '71,) that people cannot live by art. But

* Again, I have more myself— but tha! is because I have been
' ill-bred; and I shall be most thankful to take less, as soon as other
people cease to be paid for doing nothing. People cry out upon
me for asking ten shillings for a year's Fors ; but never oWect to
Mr. Barber's paying his clerk a guinea for opening his study door
to me five times, charging the same to St. George's account. (See
Fors of April, pp. 186, 187, 188).

222 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

I spoke swiftly, because the attempt so to live is among the
worst possible ways they can take of injurious begging.
There are a few, a very few persons born in each genera-
tion, whose words are worth hearing ; whose art is worth
seeing. These born few will preach, or sing, or paint, in
spite of you ; they will starve like grasshoppers, rather' than
stop singing ; and even if you don't choose to listen, it is
charitable to throw them some crumbs to keep them alive.
But the people who take to writing or painting as a means
of livelihood, because they think it genteel, are just by so
much more contemptible than common beggars, in that
they are noisy and offensive beggars. I am quite willing
to pay for keeping our poor vagabonds in the workhouse ;
but not to pay them for grinding organs outside my door,
defacing the streets with bills and caricatures, tempting
young girls to read rubbishy novels, or deceiving the whole
nation to its ruin, in a thousand leagues square of dirtily
printed falsehood, every morning at breakfast. Whatever
in literature, art, or religion, is done for money, is poisonous
itself; and doubly deadly, in preventing the hearing or
seeing of the noble literature and art which have been done
for love and truth. If people cannot make their bread
by honest labor, let them at least make no noise about the
streets; but hold their tongues, and hold out their idle
hands humbly ; and they shall be fed kindly.

Then the third condition of Companionship is, that, after
we have done as much manual work as will earn our food
we all of us discipline ourselves, our children, and any one
else willing to be taught, in all the branches of honorable
knowledge and graceful art attainable by us. Having
honestly obtained our meat and drink, and having suffi-
ciently eaten and drunken, we proceed, during the rest of
the day, to seek after things better than meat, and drink ;

FORS CLAVIGERA. 223

and to provide for the nobler necessities of what, in ancient
days, Englishmen used to call their souls.

To this end, we shall, as we increase in numbers, establish
such churches and schools as may best guide religious
feeling, and diffuse the love of sound learning and prudent
art. And when I set myself first to the work of forming
the Society, I was induced to do so chiefly by the con-
sciousness that the balanced unison of artistic sensibility
with scientific faculty, which enabled me at once to love
Giotto, and learn from Galileo, gave me singular advantages
for a work of this kind. More particularly, the course of
study through which, after being trained in the severest
schools of Protestant divinity, I became acquainted with
the mythology of Greece, and legends of Rome, in thsir
most vivid power over the believing minds of both nations,
permits me now to accept with freedom and respect the
concurrence of a wider range of persons holding different
views on religious subjects, than any other scholar I know,
at the present day, in England, would feel himself secure
in the hope of reconciling to a common duty, and in
uncontested elements of faith.

The scheme, and elementary means, of this common
education, I am now occupied in arranging and choosing
as Ibest may.* In especial, I have set myself to write
three grammars— of geology, botany, and zoology, which
will contain nothing but indisputable facts in those three
branches of proper human learning ; and which, if I live a
little longer, will embrace as many facts as any ordinary
schoolboy or schoolgirl need be taught. In these three
grammars, (^Deucalion, Proserpina and Love's Meinie,X) I

*See Fcfrs for January of this year, pp. 109, no.
t This book I shall extend, if time be given me, from its first
proposed form into a parallel one with the two others.

224 "^^^ COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

shall accept every aid that sensible and earnest men of
science can spare me, toward the task of popular education :
and I hope to keep thankful records of the names of the
persons who are making true discoveries in any of these
sciences, and of the dates of such discovery, which shall be
unassailably trustworthy as far as they extend. I hope also
to be able to choose, and in some degree provide, a body
of popular literature of entirely serviceable quality. Of
some of the most precious books needed, I am preparing,
with the help of my friends, new editions, for a common
possession in all our school Ubraries.

If I have powers fitted for this task (and I should not
have attempted it but in conviction that I have), they are
owing mainly to this one condition of my life, that, from
my youth up, I have been seeking the fame, and honoring
the work, of others ; — ^never my own. I first was driven
into literature that I might defend the fame of Turner;
since that day I have been explaining the power, or pro-
claiming the praise, of Tintoret, — of Luini, — of Carpaccio,—
of Botticelli, — of Carlyle ; — never thinking for an instant of
myself: and sacrificing what little faculty, and large pleas-
ure, I had in painting, either from nature or noble art, that,
if possible, I might bring others to see what I rejoiced in,
and understand what I had deciphered. There has been
no heroism in this, nor virtue ; — ^but only, as far as I am
myself concerned, quaint ordering of Fate ; but the result
is, that I have at last obtained an instinct of impartial and
reverent judgment, which sternly fits me for this final work,
to which, if to anything, I was appointed.

And for the right doing of it, and for all future work
of the same kind, requiring to be done for the Society by
other persons, it is absolutely needful that the person
charged with it should be implicitly trusted, and accurately

FORS CLAVIGERA. 225

obeyed by the Companions, in all matters necessary to the
working of the Society. He cannot lose his time in conten-
tion or persuasion ; he must act undisturbedly, or his mind
will not suffice for its toil ; and with concurrence of all the
Society's power, or half their power will be wasted, and the
whole perverted, by hesitation and opposition. His authority
over them must correspond precisely, in the war against
the poverty and vice of the State, to that of a Roman
Dictator, in his war against its external enemies.

Of a Roman "Dictator," I say, observe : not a Roman
' ' Emperor. " It is not the command of private will, but the
dictation of necessary law, which the Society obeys :— only,
the obedience must be absolute, and without question;
faithful to the uttermost,^ — that is to say, trusting to the
uttermost. The practice of faith and obedience to some
of our fellow-creatures is the alphabet by which we learn
the higher obedience to heaven ; and it is not only needful
to the prosperity of all noble united action, but essential to
the happiness of all noble living spirits.

XI.— THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER.

THE following series of aphorisms contain the gist
of Fors Clavigera, and may serve to facilitate the
arrangement of its incidental matter.
I. Any form of government will work, provided the
governors are real, and the people obey them ; and none
will work, if the governors are unreal, or the people dis-
obedient. If you mean to have logs for kings, no quantity
of liberty in choice of the wood will be of any profit to

226 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

you : — nor will the wisest or best governor be able to serve
you, if you mean to discuss his orders instead of obeying
them. Read carefully on this matter Letter XIII., pp.
176 and 177.

2. The first duty of government is to see that the
people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they
have means of moral and intellectual education.

3. Food, fuel, and clothes can only be got out of the
ground, or sea, by muscular labor ; and no man has any
business to have any, unless he has done, if able, the
muscular work necessary to produce his portion, or to
render (as the labor of a surgeon or physician renders),
equivalent benefit to life. It indeed saves both toil and
time that one man should dig, another bake, and another
tan ; but the digger, baker, and tanner are alike bound to
do their equal day's duty ; and the business of the govern-
ment is to see that they have done it, before it gives any
one of them their dinner.

4. While the daily teaching of God's truth, doing of
His justice, and heroic bearing of His sword, are to be
required of every human soul according to its ability, the
mercenary professionsof preaching, law-giving, and fighting
must be entirely abolished.

5. Scholars, painters, and musicians, may be advisedly
kept, on due pittance, to instruct or amuse the laborer
after, or at, his work; provided the duty be severely
restricted to those who have high special gifts of voice,
touch, and imagination ; * and that the possessors of these
melodious lips, light-fingered hands, and lively brains, do

* Such limitation being secured by the severity of the required
education in the public schools of art, and thought; and by the
high standard of examination fixed, before granting license of
eidiibition, in tiie public theaters, or picture gaUeries.

FORS CLAVIGERA.

227

resolutely undergo the normal discipline necessary to
insure their skill; the people whom they are to please,
understanding, always, that they cannot employ these
tricksy artists without working double-tides themselves, to
provide them with beef and ale.

6. The duty of the government, as regards the distribu-
tion of its work, is to attend first to the wants of the most
necessitous; therefore, to take particular charge of the
back streets of every town ; leaving the fine ones, more or
less, according to their finery, to take care of themselves.
And it is the duty of magistrates, and other persons in
authority, but especially of all bishops, to know thoroughly
the numbers, means of subsistence, and modes of life of the
poorest persons in the community, and to be sure that they
at least are virtuous and comfortable ; for if poor persons
be not virtuous, after all the wholesome discipline of povery,
what must be the state of the rich, under their perilous
trials and temptations?* — but, on the other hand, if the
poor are made comfortable and good, the rich have a fair
chance of entering the kingdom of heaven also, if they
choose to live honorably and decently.

7. Since all are to be made to labor for their living, and
it is not possible to labor without materials and tools, these
must be provided by the government, for all persons, in the

* Here is just an instance of what might at first seem to be a
jest; but is a serious and straightforward corollary from the
eternally true fact stated by St. Timothy : " They that will be rich
fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish lusts, which
drown men in destruction and perdition ; " and by Horace :
" Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit
Ab Dis plura feret."
The passage might at first be thought inconsistent with what is
said above of the "degradation" which perpetual toil involves.
But toil and poverty are two different things. Poverty ennobles,
and secures ; toil degrades, and endangers. We are all bound to
fulfill our task: but happy only if we can also enter into our rest.

228 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

necessary quantities. If bricks are to be made, clay and
straw must be provided ; if sheep are to be kept, grass ; if
coats are to be made, cloth; if oakum to be picked,
oakum. All these raw materials, with the tools for work-
ing them, must be provided by the government, at first,
free of cost to the laborer, the value of them being returned
to them as the first-fruits of his toil ; and no pawnbrokers
or usurers may be allowed to live by lending sea to fisher-
men, air to fowlers, land to fermers, crooks to shepherds, or
bellows to smiths.

8. When the lands and seas belonging to any nation are
all properly divided, cultivated, and fished, its population
cannot be increased, except by importing food in exchange
for useless articles, — ^that is to say, by living as the toy-
manufacturers of some independent nation, which can both
feed itself, and afford to buy toys besides. But no nation
can long exist in this servile state. It must either
emigrate, and form colonies to assist in cultivating the land
which feeds it, or become entirely slavish and debased.
The moment any nation begins to import food,* its
political power and moral worth are ended.

9. All the food, clothing, and fuel required by men can
be produced by the labor of their own arms on the earth
and sea ; all food is appointed to be so produced, and must
be so produced at their peril. If instead of taking the
quantity of exercise made necessary to their bodies by
God, in the work appointed by God, they take it in hunt-
ing or shooting, they become ignorant, irreligious, and

* It may always import such food as its climate cannot produce,
in exchai^e for such food as it can j it may buy oranges with com,
or pepper with cheese. But not with, articles that do not support
life. Separate dHes may honorably produce saleable art ; Limoges
its enamel, Sheffield its whittles ; but a nation must not live on
enamel or whittles.

FORS CLAVIGERA.

229

finally insane, and seek to live by fighting as well as by
hunting ; whence the type of Nimrod in the circle of the
Hell-towers, which I desired you to study in Dante. If
they do not take exercise at all, they become sensual, and
insane in worse ways. And it is physically impossible that
true religious knowledge, or pure morality, should exist
among any classes of a nation who do not work with their
hands for their bread. Read Letter XI. carefully.

ID. The use of machinery* in agriculture throws a
certain number of persons out of wholesome employment,
who must thenceforward either do nothing or mischief.
The use of machinery in art destroys the national intellect ;
and, finally, renders all luxury impossible. All machinery
needful in ordinary Hfe to supplement human or animal
labor may be moved by wind or water ; while steam, or
any mode of heat-power, may only be employed justifiably
under extreme or special conditions of need ; as for speed
on main lines of communication, and for raising water fi-om
great depths, or other such work beyond human strength.

II. No true luxury, wealth, or religion is possible to
dirty persons; nor is it decent or human to attempt to
compass any temporal prosperity whatever by the sacrifice
of cleanliness. The speedy abolition of all aboHshable
filth is the first process of education ;f the principles of
which I state in the second group of aphorisms following.

* Foolish people are continually quibbling and stupefying them-
selves about the word "machine."' Briefly, any instrument is a
machine so far as its action is, in any particular, or moment, beyond
the control of the human hand. A violin, a pencil, and plow, are
tools, not machines. A grinding organ, or a windmill, is a machine,
not a tool ; often the two are combined ; thus a lathe is a machine,
and the workman's chisel, used at it, a tool.

fThe ghastly squalor of the once lovely fields of Dulwich,
trampled into mud, and strewn with rags and paper by the filthy
London population, bred in cigar smoke, which is attracted by the
Crystal Palace, would alone neutralize all possible gentlemanly
education in the district.

230 THE COMMUNISM OF JOHN RUSKIN.

12. All education must be moral first ; intellectual
secondarily. Intellectual, before — (much more without) —
moral education, is, in completeness, impossible; and in
incompleteness, a calamity.

13. Moral education begins in making the creature to
be educated, clean, and obedient. This must be done
thoroughly, and at any cost, and with any kind of compul-
sion rendered necessary by the nature of the animal, be it
dog, child, or man.

14. Moral education consists next in making the
creature practically serviceable to other creatures, accord-
ing to the nature and extent of its own capacities ; taking
care that these be healthily developed in such service. It
may be a question how long, and to what extent, boys and
girls of fine race may be allowed to run in the paddock
before they are broken ; but assuredly the sooner they are put
to such work as they are able for, the better. Moral educa-
tion is summed when the creature has been made to do its
work with delight, and thoroughly ; but this cannot be until
some degree of intellectual education has been given also.

15. Intellectual education consists in giving the creature
the faculties of admiration, hope, and love.

These are to be taught by the study of beautiful
Nature ; the sight and history of noble persons ; and the
setting forth of noble objects of action.

16. Since all noble persons hitherto existent in the
world have trusted in the government of it by a supreme
Spirit, and in that trust, or faith, have performed all their
great actions, the history of these persons will finally mean
the history of their faith; and the sum of intellectual
education will be the separation of what is inhuman, in
such faiths, and therefore perishing, from what is human,
and, for human creatures, eternally true.

FORS CLAVIGERA. 231

These sixteen aphorisms contain, as plainly as I can
speak it, the substance of what I have hitherto taught, and
am now purposed to enforce practice of, as far as I am able.
It is no business of mine to think about possibilities ; — any
day, any moment, may raise up some one to take the
carrying forward of the plan out of my hands, or to furnish
me with larger means of prosecuting it ; meantime, neither
hastening nor slackening, I shall go on doing what I can,
with the people, few or many, who are ready to help me.

THE END.

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