Chapter VI: Literary Criticism (1)

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

I.

THE MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS.

IS ENGLAND BIG ENOUGH? 1868.

THE OWNERSHIP OF RAILWAYS. 1868.

RAILWAY ECONOMY. 1868.

OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM. 1865.

RAILWAY SAFETY. 1870.

I.

THE MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," July 31, 1868.]

_IS ENGLAND BIG ENOUGH?_

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: You terminate to-day a discussion which seems to have been greatly interesting to your readers, by telling them the "broad fact, that England is no longer big enough for her inhabitants."[72]

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

For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. They are always considering how to get it from somebody else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it.

Also, they very naturally mourn over their loss of it to other people, without reflecting that, if not lost altogether, it may still be of some reflective advantage to them. Whereas, the real national question is not who is losing or gaining money, but who is making and who destroying it. I do not of course mean making money, in the sense of printing notes or finding gold. True money cannot be so made. When an island is too small for its inhabitants, it would not help them to one ounce of bread more to have the entire island turned into one nugget, or to find bank notes growing by its rivulets instead of fern leaves. Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the _true_ money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners.

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

Very sincerely yours,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _July_ 30.

FOOTNOTES:

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

[From "The Daily Telegraph," August 6, 1868.]

_THE OWNERSHIP OF RAILWAYS._[73]

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

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

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

Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong to any private persons. All means of public transit should be provided at public expense, by public determination where such means are needed, and the public should be its own "shareholder."

Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay dividends to anybody. They should pay their working expenses, and no more. All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller and the goods, levied by the person to whom the road or canal belongs, for the right of passing over his property. And this right should at once be purchased by the nation, and the original cost of the roadway--be it of gravel, iron, or adamant--at once defrayed by the nation, and then the whole work of the carriage of persons or goods done for ascertained prices, by salaried officers, as the carriage of letters is done now.

I believe, if the votes of the proprietors of all the railroads in the kingdom were taken _en masse_, it would be found that the majority would gladly receive back their original capital, and cede their right of "revising" prices of railway tickets. And if railway property _is_ a good and wise investment of capital, the public need not shrink from taking the whole off their hands. Let the public take it. (I, for one, who never held a rag of railroad scrip in my life, nor ever willingly travelled behind an engine where a horse could pull me, will most gladly subscribe my proper share for such purchase according to my income.) Then let them examine what lines pay their working expenses and what lines do not, and boldly leave the un-paying embankments to be white over with sheep, like Roman camps, take up the working lines on sound principles, pay their drivers and pointsmen well, keep their carriages clean and in good repair, and make it as wonderful a thing for a train, as for an old mail-coach, to be behind its time; and the sagacious British public will very soon find its pocket heavier, its heart lighter, and its "passages" pleasanter, than any of the three have been, for many a day.

I am, Sir, always faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Aug._ 5.

FOOTNOTES:

[73] In the _Daily Telegraph_ of August 3 appeared eight letters, all of which, under the heading of "Increased Railway Fares," complained of the price of tickets on various lines having been suddenly raised. In the issue of August 4 eighteen letters appeared on the subject, whilst in that of the 5th there were again eight letters. Mr. Ruskin's letter was one of four in the issue of the 6th. It has, it will be seen, no direct connection with that one entitled, "Is England Big Enough?" which precedes it in these volumes owing to the allusions to it in one of these railway letters (p. 86).

[From "The Daily Telegraph," August 10, 1868.]

_RAILWAY ECONOMY._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I had not intended again to trespass on your space until I could obtain a general idea of the views of your correspondents on the questions you permitted me to lay before them in my letters of the 31st July and 5th inst.; but I must ask you to allow me to correct an impression likely to be created by your reference to that second letter in your interesting article on the Great Eastern Railway, and to reply briefly to the question of your correspondent "S." on the same subject.[74]

You say that I mistook the charge against the railway companies in taunting my unfortunate neighbors at Sydenham[75] with their complaints against the operation of the law of supply and demand, and that it was because the companies neglected that law that they suffered.

But, Sir, the law of supply and demand, as believed in by the British public under the guidance of their economists, is a natural law regulating prices, which it is not at all in their option to "neglect." And it is precisely because I have always declared that there is no such natural law, but that prices can be, and ought to be, regulated by laws of expediency and justice, that political economists have thought I did not understand their science, and you now say I laugh at it. No, Sir, I laughed only at what was clearly no science, but vain endeavor to allege as irresistible natural law, what is indeed a too easily resisted prudential law, rewarding and chastising us according to our obedience. So far from despising true political economy, based on such prudential law, I have for years been chiefly occupied in defending its conclusions, having given this definition of it in 1862. "Political Economy is neither an art nor a science; but a system of conduct and legislature founded on the sciences, including the arts, and impossible except under certain conditions of moral culture."[76]

And, Sir, nothing could better show the evil of competition as opposed to the equitable regulation of prices than the instance to which you refer your correspondent "Fair Play"--the agitation in Brighton for a second railway. True prudential law would make one railway serve it thoroughly, and fix the fares necessary to pay for thorough service. Competition will make two railways (sinking twice the capital really required); then, if the two companies combine, they can oppress the public as effectively as one could; if they do not, they will keep the said public in dirty carriages and in danger of its life, by lowering the working expenses to a minimum in their antagonism.

Next, to the question of your correspondent "S.," "what I expect the capitalist to do with his money," so far as it is asked in good faith I gladly reply, that no one's "expectations" are in this matter of the slightest consequence; but that the moral laws which properly regulate the disposition of revenue, and the physical laws which determine returns proportioned to the wisdom of its employment, are of the greatest consequence; and these may be briefly stated as follows:

1. All capital is justly and rationally invested which supports productive labor (that is to say, labor directly producing or distributing good food, clothes, lodging, or fuel); so long as it renders to the possessor of the capital, and to those whom he employs, only such gain as shall justly remunerate the superintendence and labor given to the business, and maintain both master and operative happily in the positions of life involved by their several functions. And it is highly advantageous for the nation that wise superintendence and honest labor should both be highly rewarded. But all rates of interest or modes of profit on capital, which render possible the rapid accumulation of fortunes, are simply forms of taxation, by individuals, on labor, purchase, or transport; and are highly detrimental to the national interests, being, indeed, no means of national gain, but only the abstraction of small gains from many to form the large gain of one. For, though inequality of fortune is not in itself an evil, but in many respects desirable, it is always an evil when unjustly or stealthily obtained, since the men who desire to make fortunes by large interest are precisely those who will make the worst use of their wealth.

2. Capital sunk in the production of objects which do not immediately support life (as statues, pictures, architecture, books, garden-flowers, and the like) is beneficially sunk if the things thus produced are good of their kind, and honestly desired by the nation for their own sake; but it is sunk ruinously if they are bad of their kind, or desired only for pride or gain. Neither can good art be produced as an "investment." You cannot build a good cathedral if you only build it that you may charge sixpence for entrance.

3. "Private enterprise" should never be interfered with, but, on the contrary, much encouraged, so long as it is indeed "enterprise" (the exercise of individual ingenuity and audacity in new fields of true labor), and so long as it is indeed "private," paying its way at its own cost, and in no wise harmfully affecting public comforts or interests. But "private enterprise" which poisons its neighborhood, or speculates for individual gain at common risk, is very sharply to be interfered with.

4. All enterprise, constantly and demonstrably profitable on ascertained conditions, should be made public enterprise, under Government administration and security; and the funds now innocently contributed, and too often far from innocently absorbed, in vain speculation, as noted in your correspondent "Fair Play's" excellent letter,[77] ought to be received by Government, employed by it, not in casting guns, but in growing corn and feeding cattle, and the largest possible legitimate interest returned without risk to these small and variously occupied capitalists who cannot look after their own money. We should need another kind of Government to do this for us, it is true; also it is true that we can get it, if we choose; but we must recognize the duties of governors before we can elect the men fit to perform them.

The benefit of these several modes of right investment of capital would be quickly felt by the nation, not in the increase of isolated or nominal wealth, but in steady lowering of the prices of all the necessaries and innocent luxuries of life, and in the disciplined, orderly, and in that degree educational employment of every able-bodied person. For, Sir (again with your pardon), my question "Is England big enough?" was not answered by the sad experience of the artisans of Poplar. Had they been employed in earth-building instead of in shipbuilding, and heaped the Isle of Dogs itself into half as much space of good land, capable of growing corn instead of mosquitoes, they would actually have made habitable England a little bigger by this time;[78] and if the first principle of economy in employment were understood among us--namely, always to use whatever vital power of breath and muscle you have got in the country before you use the artificial power of steam and iron for what living arms can do, and never plough by steam while you forward your ploughmen to Quebec--those old familiar faces need not yet have looked their last at each other from the deck of the St. Lawrence. But on this subject I will ask your permission to write you in a few days some further words.[79]

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

DENMARK HILL, _Aug._ 9.

FOOTNOTES:

[74] The _Daily Telegraph_ of Saturday, August 8, contained an article on the "Increased Railway Fares," in which, commenting on Mr. Ruskin's statement that, given the law of political economy, the railways might ask as much as they could get, it is said that Mr. Ruskin mistook "the charge against the companies. While they neglected the 'law of supply and demand,' they suffered: now that they obey that law, they prosper." The latter part of the article dealt with a long letter signed "Fair Play," which was printed in the _Daily Telegraph_ of the same day. "To Mr. Ruskin, who laughs at Political Economy," concluded the article; "and to 'Fair Play,' who thinks that Parliament is at the bottom of all the mischief, we commend a significant fact. An agitation is now on foot in Brighton to have a second railway direct to London. What is the cause of this? Not the Legislature, but the conduct of the Brighton company in raising its fares. That board, by acting in the spirit of a monopoly, has provoked retaliation, and the public now seeks to protect itself by the aid of a competing line."

The letter of the correspondent "S." (also in the _Daily Telegraph_ of August 8) began by asking "what the capitalist is to do with his money, if the Government works the railways on the principle of the Post Office."

[75] Several of the letters had been written by residents in the neighborhood of Sydenham.

[76] B "Essays on Political Economy" (_Fraser's Magazine_, June, 1862, p. 784), now reprinted in "Munera Pulveris," p. 1, § 1.

[77] "Fair Play's" letter noted the result of investments made in bubble railways, generally by "honest country folks" or "poor clergymen and widows."

[78] A Alluding to an article in the _Daily Telegraph_ of August 8, headed "East-End Emigrants," which, after remarking that "Mr. Ruskin's question, Is England big enough?" had been just answered rather sadly by a number of Poplar artisans, described the emigration to Quebec on board the St. Lawrence of these inhabitants of the Isle of Dogs, and how, as the ship left the dock, "there were many tears shed, as old, familiar faces looked on each other for the last time."

[79] Never, it seems, written.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 8, 1865.]

_OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: Will you allow me a few words with reference to your excellent article of to-day on railroads.[80] All you say is true. But of what use is it to tell the public this? Of all the economical stupidities of the public--and they are many--the out-and-out stupidest is underpaying their pointsmen; but if the said public choose always to leave their lines in the hands of companies--that is to say, practically, of engineers and lawyers--the money they pay for fares will always go, most of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be spent in decorating railroad stations with black and blue bricks, and in fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are more bills for new lines to be brought forward this year than at any previous session. But, Sir, it might do some little good if you were to put it into the engineers' and lawyers' heads that they might for some time to come get as much money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public) by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as for ramifying them; and if you were also to explain to the shareholders that it would be wiser to spend their capital in preventing accidents attended by costly damages, than in running trains at a loss on opposition branches. It is little business of mine--for I am not a railroad traveller usually more than twice in the year; but I don't like to hear of people's being smashed, even when it is all their fault; so I will ask you merely to reprint this passage from my article on Political Economy in _Fraser's Magazine_ for April, 1863, and so leave the matter to your handling:

"Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigation on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had--what ultimately it will be found we must have--quadruple rails, two for passengers and two for traffic, on every great line, and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares."[81]

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

DENMARK HILL, _Dec._ 7.

FOOTNOTES:

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

[81] "Essays on Political Economy" (_Fraser's Magazine_, April, 1863, p. 449); "Munera Pulveris," p. 137, § 128.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," November 30, 1870.]

_RAILWAY SAFETY._[82]

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I am very busy, and have not time to write new phrases. Would you mind again reprinting (as you were good enough to do a few days ago[83]) a sentence from one of the books of mine which everybody said were frantic when I wrote them? You see the date--1863.

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

DENMARK HILL, _Nov._ 29, 1870.

I have underlined the words I want to be noticed, but, as you see, made no change in a syllable.

Already the Government, not unapproved, carries letters and parcels for us. Larger packages may in time follow--even general merchandise; why not, at last, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigations on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, _and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations_, we might already have had--what ultimately it will be found we MUST have--_quadruple rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on every great line_; and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] This letter was elicited by a leading article in the _Daily Telegraph_ of November 29, 1870, upon railway accidents, and the means of their prevention, _à propos_ of two recent accidents which had occurred, both on the same day (November 26, 1870) on the London and North-Western Railway.

[83] In the first letter on the Franco-Prussian War, _ante_, p. 34. (_Daily Telegraph_, Oct. 7, 1870.)

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

II.

SERVANTS AND HOUSES.

MASTERSHIP. 1865.

EXPERIENCE. 1865.

SONSHIP AND SLAVERY. 1865.

MODERN HOUSES. 1865.

II.

SERVANTS AND HOUSES.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 5, 1865.]

_DOMESTIC SERVANTS--MASTERSHIP._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: You so seldom write nonsense, that you will, I am sure, pardon your friends for telling you when you do. Your article on servants to-day is nonsense. It is just as easy and as difficult now to get good servants as it ever was.[84] You may have them, as you may have pines and peaches, for the growing, or you may even buy them good, if you can persuade the good growers to spare you them off their walls; but you cannot get them by political economy and the law of supply and demand.

There are broadly two ways of making good servants; the first, a sound, wholesome, thoroughgoing slavery--which was the heathen way, and no bad one neither, provided you understand that to make real "slaves" you must make yourself a real "master" (which is not easy). The second is the Christian's way: "whoso delicately bringeth up his servant from a child, shall have him become his son at the last."[85] And as few people want their servants to become their sons, this is not a way to their liking. So that, neither having courage or self-discipline enough on the one hand to make themselves nobly dominant after the heathen fashion, nor tenderness or justice enough to make themselves nobly protective after the Christian, the present public thinks to manufacture servants bodily out of powder and hay-stuffing--mentally by early instillation of Catechism and other mechanico-religious appliances--and economically, as you helplessly suggest, by the law of supply and demand,[86] with such results as we all see, and most of us more or less feel, and shall feel daily more and more to our cost and selfish sorrow.

Sir, there is only one way to have good servants; that is, to be worthy of being well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master, and rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters' shadows, and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants' hall; a knavish nation will have knaves there; and a kindly nation will have friends there. Only let it be remembered that "kindness" means, as with your child, so with your servant, not indulgence, but care.--I am, Sir, seeing that you usually write good sense, and "serve" good causes, your servant to command.

J. RUSKIN.[87]

DENMARK HILL, _Sept._ 2.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] The article, after commenting on "the good old times," remarked that it is now "a social fact, that the hardest thing in the world to find is a good servant."

[85] "He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child, shall have him become his son at the length."--Proverbs xxix. 21.

[86] "We have really," ran the article, "no remedy to suggest: the evil seems to be curable only by some general distress which will drive more people into seeking service, and so give employers a greater choice. At present the demand appears to exceed the supply, and servants are careless about losing their places through bad behavior."

[87] To this letter the _Daily Telegraph_ of September 6 replied by a leader, in which, whilst expressing itself alive to "the sympathy for humanity and appreciation of the dignity which may be made to underlie all human relations," displayed by Mr. Ruskin, it complained that he had only shown "how to cook the cook when we catch her," and not how to catch her. After some detailed remarks on the servants of the day, which seemed "to be more _ad rem_ than Mr. Ruskin's eloquent axioms," it concluded by expressing a hope "that he would come down from the clouds of theory, and give to a perplexed public a few plain, workable instructions how to get hold of good cooks and maids, coachmen and footmen."--Mr. Ruskin replies to it, and to a large amount of further correspondence on the subject, in the next two letters in the _Daily Telegraph_.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1865.]

_DOMESTIC SERVANTS--EXPERIENCE._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I thank you much for your kind insertion of my letter, and your courteous and graceful answer to it. Others will thank you also; for your suggestions are indeed much more _ad rem_ than my mere assertions of principle; but both are necessary. Statements of practical difficulty, and the immediate means of conquering it, are precisely what the editor of a powerful daily journal is able to give; but he cannot give them justly if he ever allow himself to lose sight of the eternal laws which in their imperative bearings manifest themselves more clearly to the retired student of human life in the phases of its history. My own personal experience--if worth anything--has been simply that wherever I myself knew how a thing should be done, and was resolved to have it done, I could always get subordinates, if made of average good human material, to do it, and that, on the whole, cheerfully, thoroughly, and even affectionately; and my wonder is usually rather at the quantity of service they are willing to do for me, than at their occasional indolences, or fallings below the standard of seraphic wisdom and conscientiousness. That they _shall_ be of average human material, it is, as you wisely point out, every householder's business to make sure. We cannot choose our relations, but we can our servants; and what sagacity we have and knowledge of human nature cannot be better employed. If your house is to be comfortable, your servants' hearts must be sound, as the timber and stones of its walls; and there must be discretion in the choice, and time allowed for the "settling" of both. The luxury of having pretty servants must be paid for, like all luxuries, in the penalty of their occasional loss; but I fancy the best sort of female servant is generally in aspect and general qualities like Sydney Smith's "Bunch,"[88] and a very retainable creature. And for the rest, the dearth of good service, if such there be, may perhaps wholesomely teach us that, if we were all a little more in the habit of serving ourselves in many matters, we should be none the worse or the less happy.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Sept._ 6.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] "A man-servant was too expensive; so I caught up a little garden-girl, made like a milestone, put a napkin in her hand, christened her Bunch, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals; Bunch became the best butler in the county."--Sydney Smith's Memoirs (vol. i. p. 207), where several other anecdotes of Bunch are given.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 18, 1865.]

_DOMESTIC SERVANTS: SONSHIP AND SLAVERY._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I have been watching the domestic correspondence in your columns with much interest, and thought of offering you a short analysis of it when you saw good to bring it to a close,[89] and perhaps a note or two of my own experience, being somewhat conceited on the subject just now, because I have a gardener who lets me keep old-fashioned plants in the greenhouse, understands that my cherries are grown for the blackbirds, and sees me gather a bunch of my own grapes without making a wry face. But your admirable article of yesterday causes me to abandon my purpose; the more willingly, because among all the letters you have hitherto published there is not one from any head of a household which contains a complaint worth notice. All the masters or mistresses whose letters are thoughtful or well written say they get on well enough with their servants; no part has yet been taken in the discussion by the heads of old families. The servants' letters, hitherto, furnish the best data; but the better class of servants are also silent, and must remain so. Launce, Grumio, or Fairservice[90] may have something to say for themselves; but you will hear nothing from Old Adam nor from carefu' Mattie. One proverb from Sancho, if we could get it, would settle the whole business for us; but his master and he are indeed "no more." I would have walked down to Dulwich to hear what Sam Weller had to say; but the high-level railway went through Mr. Pickwick's parlor two months ago, and it is of no use writing to Sam, for, as you are well aware, he is no penman. And, indeed, Sir, little good will come of any writing on the matter. "The cat will mew, the dog will have his day." You yourself, excellent as is the greater part of what you have said, and to the point, speak but vainly when you talk of "probing the evil to the bottom." This is no sore that can be probed, no sword nor bullet wound. This is a plague spot. Small or great, it is in the significance of it, not in the depth, that you have to measure it. It is essentially bottomless, cancerous; a putrescence through the constitution of the people is indicated by this galled place. Because I know this thoroughly, I say so little, and that little, as your correspondents think, who know nothing of me, and as you say, who might have known more of me, unpractically. Pardon me, I am no seller of plasters, nor of ounces of civet. The patient's sickness is his own fault, and only years of discipline will work it out of him. That is the only really "practical" saying that can be uttered to him. The relation of master and servant involves every other--touches every condition of moral health through the State. Put that right, and you put all right; but you will find it can only come ultimately, not primarily, right; you cannot begin with it. Some of the evidence you have got together is valuable, many pieces of partial advice very good. You need hardly, I think, unless you wanted a type of British logic, have printed a letter in which the writer accused (or would have accused, if he had possessed Latinity enough) all London servants of being thieves because he had known one robbery to have been committed by a nice-looking girl.[91] But on the whole there is much common-sense in the letters; the singular point in them all, to my mind, being the in-apprehension of the breadth and connection of the question, and the general resistance to, and stubborn rejection of, the abstract ideas of sonship and slavery, which include whatever is possible in wise treatment of servants. It is very strange to see that, while everybody shrinks at abstract suggestions of there being possible error in a book of Scripture,[92] your sensible English housewife fearlessly rejects Solomon's opinion when it runs slightly counter to her own, and that not one of your many correspondents seems ever to have read the Epistle to Philemon. It is no less strange that while most English boys of ordinary position hammer through their Horace at one or other time of their school life, no word of his wit or his teaching seems to remain by them: for all the good they get out of them, the Satires need never have been written. The Roman gentleman's account of his childhood and of his domestic life possesses no charm for them: and even men of education would sometimes start to be reminded that his "_noctes cænæque Deum_!" meant supping with his merry slaves on beans and bacon. Will you allow me, on this general question of liberty and slavery, to refer your correspondents to a paper of mine touching closely upon it, the leader in the _Art-Journal_ for July last? and to ask them also to meditate a little over the two beautiful epitaphs on Epictetus and Zosima, quoted in the last paper of the _Idler_?[93]

"I, Epictetus, was a slave; and sick in body, and wretched in
poverty; and beloved by the gods."

"Zosima, who while she lived was a slave only in her body, has
now found deliverance for that also."

How might we, over many an "independent" Englishman, reverse this last legend, and write--

"This man, who while he lived was free only in his body, has
now found captivity for that also."

I will not pass without notice--for it bears also on wide interests--your correspondent's question, how my principles differ from the ordinary economist's view of supply and demand.[94] Simply in that the economy I have taught, in opposition to the popular view, is the science which not merely ascertains the relations of existing demand and supply, but determines what _ought_ to be demanded and what _can_ be supplied. A child demands the moon, and, the supply not being in this case equal to the demand, is wisely accommodated with a rattle; a footpad demands your purse, and is supplied according to the less or more rational economy of the State, with that or a halter; a foolish nation, not able to get into its head that free trade does indeed mean the removal of taxation from its imports, but not of supervision from them, demands unlimited foreign beef, and is supplied with the cattle murrain and the like. There may be all manner of demands, all manner of supplies. The true political economist regulates these; the false political economist leaves them to be regulated by (not Divine) Providence. For, indeed, the largest final demand anywhere reported of, is that of hell; and the supply of it (by the broad-gauge line) would be very nearly equal to the demand at this day, unless there were here and there a swineherd or two who could keep his pigs out of sight of the lake.

Thus in this business of servants everything depends on what sort of servant you at heart wish for or "demand." If for nurses you want Charlotte Winsors, they are to be had for money; but by no means for money, such as that German girl who, the other day, on her own scarce-floating fragment of wreck, saved the abandoned child of another woman, keeping it alive by the moisture from her lips.[95] What kind of servant do you want? It is a momentous question for you yourself--for the nation itself. Are we to be a nation of shopkeepers, wanting only shop-boys; or of manufacturers, wanting only hands; or are there to be knights among us, who will need squires--captains among us, needing crews? Will you have clansmen for your candlesticks, or silver plate? Myrmidons at your tents, ant-born, or only a mob on the Gillies Hill? Are you resolved that you will never have any but your inferiors to serve you, or shall Enid ever lay your trencher with tender little thumb, and Cinderella sweep your hearth, and be cherished there? It _might_ come to that in time, and plate and hearth be the brighter; but if your servants are to be held your inferiors, at least be sure they _are_ so, and that you are indeed wiser, and better-tempered, and more useful than they. Determine what their education ought to be, and organize proper servants' schools, and there give it them. So they will be fit for their position, and will do honor to it, and stay in it: let the masters be as sure they do honor to theirs, and are as willing to stay in that. Remember that every people which gives itself to the pursuit of riches, invariably, and of necessity, gets the scum uppermost in time, and is set by the genii, like the ugly bridegroom in the Arabian Nights, at its own door with its heels in the air, showing its shoe-soles instead of a Face. And the reversal is a serious matter, if reversal be even possible, and it comes right end uppermost again, instead of to conclusive Wrong end.

I suppose I am getting unpractical again. Well, here is one practical morsel, and I have done. One or two of your correspondents have spoken of the facilities of servants for leaving their places. Drive that nail home, Sir. A large stray branch of the difficulty lies there. Many and many a time I have heard Mr. Carlyle speak of this, and too often I have felt it myself as one of the evils closely accompanying the fever of modern change in the habits and hopes of life. My own architectural work drives me to think of it continually. Round every railroad station, out of the once quiet fields, there bursts up first a blotch of brick-fields, and then of ghastly houses, washed over with slime into miserable fineries of cornice and portico. A gentleman would hew for himself a log hut, and thresh for himself a straw bed, before he would live in such; but the builders count safely on tenants--people who know no quietness nor simplicity of pleasure, who care only for the stucco, and lodge only in the portico, of human life--understanding not so much as the name of House or House-_Hold_. They and their servants are always "bettering themselves" divergently.

You will do good service at least in teaching any of these who will listen to you, that if they can once make up their minds to a fixed state of life, and a fixed income, and a fixed expenditure--if they can by any means get their servants to stay long enough with them to fit into their places and know the run of the furrows--then something like service and mastership, and fulfilment of understood and reciprocal duty, may become possible; no otherwise. I leave this matter to your better handling, and will trespass on your patience no more. Only, as I think you will get into some disgrace with your lady correspondents for your ungallant conclusions respecting them[96]--which I confess surprised me a little, though I might have been prepared for it if I had remembered what order the husband even of so good a housewife as Penelope was obliged to take with some of her female servants after prolonged absence,--I have translated a short passage of Xenophon's Economics[97] for you, which may make your peace if you will print it. I wish the whole book were well translated; meantime, your lady readers must be told that this is part of a Greek country gentleman's account of the conversation he had with his young wife (a girl of fifteen only), a little while after their marriage, when "she had got used to him," and was not frightened at being spoken gravely to. First they pray together; and then they have a long happy talk, of which this is the close:

"But there is one of the duties belonging to you," I said, "which, perhaps will be more painful to you than any other, namely, the care of your servants when they are ill." "Nay," answered my wife, "that will be the most pleasing of all my duties to me, if only my servants will be grateful when I minister rightly to them, and will love me better." And I, pleased with her answer, said, "Indeed, lady, it is in some such way as this that the queen of the hive is so regarded by her bees, that, if she leave the hive, none will quit her, but all will follow her." Then she answered, "I should wonder if this office of leader were not yours rather than mine, for truly my care and distribution of things would be but a jest were it not for your inbringing." "Yes," I said, "but what a jest would my inbringing be if there were no one to take care of what I brought. Do not you know how those are pitied of whom it is fabled that they have always to pour water into a pierced vessel?" "Yes; and they _are_ unhappy, if in truth they do it," said she. "Then also," I said, "remember your other personal cares. Will all be sweet to you when, taking one of your maidens who knows not how to spin, you teach her, and make her twice the girl she was; or one who has no method nor habit of direction, and you teach her how to manage a house, and make her faithful and mistress-like and every way worthy, and when you have the power of benefiting those who are orderly and useful in the house, and of punishing any one who is manifestly disposed to evil? But what will be sweetest of all, if it may come to pass, will be that you should show yourself better even than _me_, and so make me your servant also: so that you need not fear in advancing age to be less honored in my house; but may have sure hope that in becoming old, by how much more you have become also a noble fellow-worker with me, and joint guardian of our children's possessions, by so much shall you be more honored in my household. For what is lovely and good increases for all men--not through fairness of the body, but through strength and virtue in things pertaining to life." And this is what I remember chiefly of what we said in our first talk together.

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

DENMARK HILL, _Sept._ 16.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] In the "admirable article" of September 15, in which the main features of the voluminous correspondence received by the _Daily Telegraph_ on the subject were shortly summed up.

[90] A: Fairservice is mentioned in Mr. Ruskin's discussion of parts of the "Antiquary" in "Fiction, Fair and Foul" (_Nineteenth Century_, June, 1880) as an "example of innate evil unaffected by external influences."

[91] This refers to a letter in which the writer gave an account of a robbery by a housemaid, and, drawing from her conduct the moral "put not your trust in London servants," concluded by signing his letter, "Ab _hoc_ disce omnes."

[92] The last volume of Bishop Colenso's work on "The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined" was published in the April of the year in which these letters were written, and his deposition by the Bishop of Capetown had but recently been reversed by the Privy Council. It is to the discussion aroused by his book that Mr. Ruskin indirectly refers.

[93] The leader in the _Art-Journal_ is Chapter vi. of "The Cestus of Aglaia," where "the infinite follies of modern thought, centred in the notion that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is likely to make of it," are discussed at some length. The epitaphs quoted are not in the _Idler_ itself, but in the "Essay on Epitaphs" printed at the end of some editions of it.

[94] This refers to a letter signed "W. B." in the _Daily Telegraph_ of September 12.

[95] Charlotte Winsor was at this time under sentence of death for the murder of a child, which had been entrusted to her charge. I have been unable to verify the anecdote of her heroic anti-type.

[96] The "admirable article" which had closed the discussion advised mistresses to resemble those of the good old days, and to deserve good servants, if they wished to secure them. It, somewhat inconsistently with the previous articles, declared that the days of good service would not be found altogether past, if it was remembered that by derivation "domestic" meant "homelike," and "family" one's servants, not one's children.

[97] See "The Economist of Xenophon," since (1875) translated and published in the "Bibliotheca Pastorum," edited by Mr. Ruskin (vol. i. p. 50, chap. vii. §§ 37-43). Mr. Ruskin in his preface to the volume speaks of the book as containing "first, a faultless definition of wealth" ... "secondly, the most perfect ideal of kingly character and kingly government given in literature" ... and "thirdly, the ideal of domestic life." It may be interesting to note an earlier and quaint estimate of the work, given in "Xenophon's Treatise of Housholde--imprinted at London, in Fleet Street, by T. Berthelet, 1534," where the dialogue is described as "ryght counnyngly translated out of the Greke tongue into Englysshe by Gentian Hervet at the desyre of Mayster Geffrey Pole, whiche boke for the welthe of this realme I deme very profitable to be red."

[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 17, 1865.]

_MODERN HOUSES._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I trust you will hold the very able and interesting letter from "W. H. W.,"[98] which you publish to-day, excuse enough for my briefly trespassing on your space once more. Indeed, it has been a discomfort to me that I have not yet asked the pardon of your correspondent, "A Tenant, not at will" (Sept. 21),[99] for the apparent discourtesy of thought of which he accused me. He need not have done so: for although I said "a gentleman would hew for himself a log hut" rather than live in modern houses, I never said he would rather abandon his family and his business than live in them; and your correspondent himself, in his previously written letter, had used precisely the same words. And he must not suspect that I intend to be ironical in saying that the prolonged coincidence of thought and word in the two letters well deserves the notice of your readers, in the proof it gives of the strength and truth of the impression on both minds. "W. H. W.'s" graphic description of his house is also sorrowfully faithful to the facts of daily experience; and I doubt not that you will soon have other communications of the same tenor, and all too true.

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

There is another column in your impression of to-day to which, also, I would ask leave to direct your readers' attention--the 4th of the 3d page; and especially, at the bottom of it, Dr. Whitmore's account of Crawford Place,[100] and his following statement that it is "a kind of property constituting a most profitable investment;" and I do so in the hope that you will expand your interpretation of the laws of political economy so far as to teach us how, by their beneficent and inevitable operation, good houses must finally be provided for the classes who live in Crawford Place, and such other places; and, without necessity of eviction, also for the colliers of Cramlington (_vide_ 2d column of the same 3d page).[101] I have, indeed, my own notions on the subject, but I do not trouble you with them, for they are unfortunately based an that wild notion of there being a "just" price for all things, which you say in your article of Oct. 10, on the Sheffield strikes, "has no existence but in the minds of theorists."[102] The _Pall Mall Gazette_, with which journal I have already held some discussion on the subject, eagerly quoted your authority on its side, in its impression of the same evening; nor do I care to pursue the debate until I can inform you of the continuous result of some direct results which I am making on my Utopian principles. I have bought a little bit of property of the Crawford Place description, and mending it somewhat according to my notions, I make my tenants pay me what I hold to be a "just" price for the lodging provided. That lodging I partly look after, partly teach the tenants to look after for themselves; and I look a little after them, as well as after the rents. I do not mean to make a highly profitable investment of their poor little rooms; but I do mean to sell a good article, in the way of house room, at a fair price; and hitherto my customers are satisfied, and so am I.[103]

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

J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Oct._ 16.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] The letter of "W. H. W." commenced by stating that the writer had "waited till the discussion ... about domestic servants was brought to a close to make a few remarks on a subject touched on in Mr. Ruskin's last letter--domestic architecture." It then gave a "graphic description" of "W. H. W.'s" own modern villa and its miseries, and concluded by asking Mr. Ruskin if nothing could be done!