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Fabian Tract No. 179. 


JOHN RUSKIN AND 
SOCIAL ETHICS --


By EDITH J. MORLEY. 

Biographical Series No.6. 

Published and sold by 
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jOHN RusKIN AND SociAL ETHICS. 

(1819-1900.) 

Introductory. 

R
R
USKIN not only denied that he was a Socialist : he asserted 
that the Socialistic ideal of human equality was unattainable 
and undesirable. He even wrote of "liberty and equality," that he 
detested the one, and denied the possibility of the other ("Time 
and Tide," chap. xxii, § 141). He proclaimed himself a ''violent 
Tory of the old school," and an "Illiberal," and it is certain that, for 
a clear exposition of Socialistic doctrine, we must look elsewhere 
than in the volumes of Ruskin.* Moreover, economists tell us that 
many of his theories are unsound. and that his attempts to work 
them out in detail are as unpractical as the ill-starred Guild of St. 
George. . 
It is probably true that any movement to remodel society 
precisely on the lines he laid down would be foredoomed to failure. 
It is at least equally true that to ignore his teaching becomes every 
day more impossible and disastrous. For Ruskin, who is accepted 
neither by Socialist nor by practical political economist; nevertheless 
strikes at the very root-disease of modern "civilisation" when he 
condemns commercialism and the struggle for mere material possessions, 
showing that life is the only true wealth, and that the richest 
man is he whose existence is the most useful, many-sided and 
helpful. 
Ruskin himself says "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 alwaysquestionable, and what can be finally accomplished inconceivable." 
("Unto this Last," Preface). Though we may frequently refuse to 
accept the special application of Ruskin's principles; though in a 
good many instances we are forced to regret that those applications 
were ever made, yet concerning the principles themselves there can 
be but one opinion. They may be summed up in his own statement 
that " Life without Industry is Guilt; Industry without Art is 
Brutality" ("Lectures on Art," III). 
Whatever the particular phase of human activity which he mightbe considering, Ruskin revealed its relation to the ultimate truth and 
meaning of life. He showed, and in no narrow didactic spirit, the 
necessary connection between art and ethics ; he traced the links 
between morals and sociology, and pointed out that scientific economics 

• See, on the other hand, Collingwood's ·• Life of Ruskin," Book III, chap. iv. 
"For when, long after 'Fors' had been written, Ruskin found other writers advocatingtbe same principles and calling themselves Socialists, he said that he too was a 
Socialist" (and a•tte, p. 242. I/-edition). 

3 

are inevitably bound up with the reform of the individual. Above 
all, he proved incontrovertibly that increased prosperity, whether 
national or individual, industrial or social, must go hand in hand 
with increased capacity and with a desire for a prosperity and advance 
which are above and beyond all these. "It is open, I repeat, to 
serious question .... whether, among national manufactures, that 
of Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadinglylucrative one." In all the many forms of teaching which he undertook, 
this manufacture of souls, this awakening of the spiritual in the 
material, was John Ruskin's chief end and aim. In art and in 
economics he applied the same touchstone, for it was his distinction to 
see life always as a whole and to refuse to divide it into the watertight 
compartments beloved of specialists. 

Childhood and Early Life. 

Ruskin was of opinion that the study of a man's work should 
begin with an attempt to become familiar with his life and 
character, more especially as these were shaped and developed in his 
childhood. Thus, in his autobiography, "Prreterita," he dwells in 
great and loving detail on his early life and upbringing, but discontinues 
the story soon after the completion of "Stones of Venice," 
and before the beginning of his campaign of social reform. A similar 
disproportion may, therefore, be excused in a tract which essaysonly to give a brief account of his aims in that campaign. But 
these cannot justly be appraised unless we understand something of 
the man who devoted the best of himself to their achievement, and 
realise something of his passionate concentration, his intense emotional 
nature, and of his '' unusual moral principle and self-
command." 

John Ruskin was born, of Scottish parentage, at 54 Hunter 
Street, Brunswick Square, W.C., on February 8th, 1819. His 
father was a well-to-do wine-merchant, hard-working, energetic 
and successful in business, and "entirely honest," as his son later 
on described him, in words of praise which meant much comingfrom that source. He was also cultured and intelligent, with a 
real appreciation of scenery and travel, and a lover of art and 
literature. His wife, who was some years older than her husband, 
held a more puritanical view of life, and it was she·who took 
the lead in the early upbringing of their precocious and not 
very robust little son. Her methods were as stern as they were 
affectionate and careful ; he was allowed no toys but a cart and a 
ball and two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks ; he had few or no 
playmates, and he was taught to rely on himself for amusement and 
occupation. " I ... could pass my days contentedly in tracing the 
squares and comparing the colours of my carpet.... The carpet,
and what patterns I could find in bed-covers, dresses, or wall-papers 
to be examined, were my chief resources." It sounds a lonely and 
self-centred life for a small boy, though doubtless it resulted in the 
powers of concentration and accurate observation which were tc 
distinguish him later on. 


4 

Ruskin, in his own summary of the " blessings " of his childhood, 
puts first the fact that he had never heard his parents' voices raised 
in anger, nor seen any disorder in any household matter. Thus, he 
early learned ''the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and 
word." On the other hand, he complains that he had no one to 
love or assist or thank, and nothing to endure. "My strength was 
never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage never 
fortified." 

In 1823, his parents moved to Herne Hill, and, from this time 
onwards, his outdoor recollections were of the garden where he 
played and of the surrounding country in which he delighted. It 
is tempting to linger over these early days, and to trace in the child 
the father of the man. Narrow and conventional as was his home in 
many ways, it was in other respects unusually cultured and intellectual. 
From his babyhood, long before he was supposed to care to 
listen, he heard great books read aloud by his parents for their own 
amusement-the eighteenth-century novelists and Byron, as well as 
the authors usually considered more suited to the family circle. 
Above all, his imagination was awakened by the yearly journeys all 
over Great Britain, and, later, on the Continent, which gave him his 
first introduction to the beauties of nature. His father "travelled" 
for his own orders, and wife and child accompanied him on the pilgrimages, 
which combined pleasure and sight-seeing with business. 
The happy weeks spent on these driving tours gave Ruskin just the 
education he needed. Old buildings stirred his interest in the past;
beautiful scenery and, above all, mountains, stimulated the love of 
nature which, at the age of three and a half, already led him to ask 
for a background of " blue hills '' when his portrait was painted byNorthcote. A little later he was enquiring of what the mountains 
were ·made, and soon he was poring over minerals, beginning his 
study of geology, and pulling to pieces every flower he could pluck,
until he knew " all that could be seen of it with child's eyes." 

Very early in life he learned, after his own fashion, to read and 
write, and he soon began to imitate his father by keeping a journal,
in which every detail of his travels was set down. Thus, naturally,
the habit of descriptive writing was acquired. Doubtless, Ruskin 
was right in supposing that his extraordinary command of rhythmand language was largely due to his mother's training. From the 
time he could read, until he was fourte.en, and about to start on his 
first continental journey (1833), morning after morning, year by 
year, they read together two or three chapters of the Bible, completing 
the whole, from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of 
the Apocalypse, only to begin once more at the beginning. Everyday, too, the child committed to memory some verses of the Bible 
and of the Scottish paraphrases, and was compelled to repeat them 
over and over again until not a syllable was missed or misplaced, not 
a sentence wrongly accented. To this daily discipline he rightlyattributed "the best part of his taste in literature," his appreciation 
of the music of words, and also his capacity for taking pains. 

Pope's Homer, Walter Scott's poems and novels, "Robinson 


5 

Crusoe," "Don Quixote" and "Pilgrim's Progress," were his other 
"text-books" of literature, but these from choice, not compulsion.

Human companions he had few: his Scotch cousins, one of whom 
became his adopted sister, his cousins at Croydon and a boy friend 
at Herne Hill, are all that he mentions, and we know that he was 
not allowed out except under supervision, that he was not sent to 
school until he was fourteen, and then only to a small private class to 
which every day he was personally conducted by his father, and 
where he remained less than two years. There is no doubt that he 
suffered from this mode of upbringing in so self-contained a household. 
He was over-fostered and over-cared for, "safe against ridicule 
in his conceit," his "father and mother in their hearts caring for 
nobody in the world but me." He developed prematurely in manydirections; he wrote too much, both of prose and verse; he exerted 
his mind more than was wholesome, and he became too self-
opinionated. 

The first disturbance in his sheltered life came when, somewhere 
about the age of seventeen, he fell in love with the young daughterof his father's French partner, Mr. Domecq. The passion was not 
requited, and four years later, in 1840, the girl married Baron 
Duquesne. The effect of the disappointment on a lad of Ruskin's 
temperament was great. ''Men capable of the highest imaginative 
passion are always tossed on fiery waves by it," he writes; and 
again, in referring to the evil consequences of his isolated childhood, 
"when affection did come, it came with violence utterly rampantand unmanageable, at least by me, who never before had anything 
to manage." We know that the young man broke down in health 
and spirit as a result of this unfortunate experience, which darkened 
several years of his life. 

Meanwhile he had been prepared for Oxford at King's College,
London, and, in 1836, he matriculated as a gentleman-commoner at 
Christ Church, going into residence in the following January.
Already he had made his appearance as the defender of Turner in 
Blackwood's Magaz£ne (1836), and earlier than this he had seen his 
verses in print in Fr£endsh£p's O.ffer£ng. But his regular academic 
studies were less advanced, and his lack of accurate scholarship was a 
drawback to him at college, and a hindrance all his life. Yet he did 
well at Oxford, not only taking the Newdigate Prize for English Verse 
as he had intended, but winning a reputation as a writer and student, 
and raising hopes that he would secure a first class. Then at the 
cntical point, when all seemed going well, and in spite of the care of 
his mother, who had followed him up to Oxford in order to watch 
over him, the crash came and his health broke down. For two years 
he was more or less an invalid, threatened with permanent lungtrouble. Foreign travel restored his health, but all idea of an honours 
degree had to be abandoned. In 1841 he went up for the pass examination 
and did so well that he was granted the highest distinction 
possible-an honorary double fourth class in honours-always a most 
unusual, and nowadays an impossible, reward of merit. 


6 

Ruskin as Art Critic. 


By this time (1841-2) his ill-health, combined with his interest in 
art, changed his plans for the future, and Ruskin finally abandoned 
the idea of taking Holy Orders. He settled down to serious art 
study, and it was in this same year that an attempt to sketch a tree-
stem with ivy upon it, forced upon him the consciousness of his 
vocation. Suddenly he realized that it was his mission to preach the 
gospel of sincerity in art, "to tell the world," in the words of Mr. 
Collingwood's '' Life," "that Art, no less than other spheres of life, 
had its Heroes ; that the mainspring of their energy was Sincerity,
and the burden of their utterance, Truth." 

It was many years before Ruskin passed from the role of art-critic 
to that of social reformer and preacher, and there is no room in the 
limits of this tract to trace in detail the process of the evolution. 
But a cursory investigation is enough to show that it was by a 
natural course of development, and not by any sudden change of idea, 
that the author of the first volume of "Modern Painters" (1843)
became the inspired prophet of "Unto this Last" (186o) and 
"Munera Pulveris " (1862). Because, not in spite of, his study of art, 
Ruskin was bound to grow into a student of sociology. The underlying 
principles of his teaching develop, but fundamentally theyremain the same. The foundations of his creed, whether in art, in 
thought, in morals, or in sociology may be expressed in his own 
words: "Nothing can be beautiful which is not true." Sincerityis the foundation of all true art ; honesty of purpose in the artist, 
truth and beauty in the thing portrayed; and to Ruskin, art, religionand morality are different only in so far as they reveal different 
aspects ot the same thing. Hence "all great art is praise," that is to 
say, it is the result of the artist's instinctive reverence and delight in 
the beauty, which it is given him to see more truly and accuratelythan other men, and which it is his supreme mission to reveal to 
others. He sees more truly and must make others see too; he must 
be faithful to nature, representing with exactitude that which he 
perceives. But there is a spiritual as well as a physical perception,the 
insight which pierces through externals to the essential truth 
that is beyond, and is the result of intuition, inspiration, enthusiasm 
and of all that is implied by the word "imagination." To Ruskin, as 
to other great critics of the nineteenth century, imagination is the 
interpreter, the power which transforms or transfigures reality, but 
without destroying the basis of ordinary perception. It does not 
change facts, but, by rendering them imaginatively, it forces them to 
yield something beyond themselves. It is this" putting the infinite 
within the finite" that differentiates art from "imitation," which can 
be only of the material. 

Essential truth is, then, for ever inconsistent with imitation. 
" Ideas of truth are the foundation, and ideas of imitation the 
destruction of all art " ; for, in the words of Goethe, "The spin"! 
of the real is the true ideal." This being so, it is not difficult to 
understand how Ruskin came to connect morality with art : he 


7 


shows us the links between the two when he writes that art is 

an inspiration, u not a teachable or gainable thing, but the expres


sion of the mind of a God-made great man" ; and again, from a 

somewhat different angle, art " declares the perfectness and eternal 

beauty of the work of God, and tests all work of men by concurrence 

with or subjection to that." Art unites the real, the ideal, the moral 

and spiritual, and by this union it is serviceable to man. ''All art 

which involves no reference to man is inferior or nugatory. And all 

art which involves misconception of man, or base thought of him, is 

in that degree false and base." In other words, art must be brought 

to the test of life, and is worthy, as all other work is worthy, when it 

is of use, though the kind of usefulness is of course quite different 

from that of the things which, as Ruskin says disdainfully, "only help 

us to exist." It is by presenting noble ideas nobly that art fulfils its 

function of service. 

By criticism on these lines he justly claims that the distinctive 
character of his "essays on art is their bringing everything 
to a root in human passion and human hope." He holds 
that art exists for the service of man, and is greatest when its 
service is greatest; without this motive no true art can come into. 
being. 

A study of "Modern Painters," shows that Ruskin was early led 
to the belief that the nature of the work of art depends primarily 
on the character of the artist. Later, he came to the conviction 
that a nation's art is the expression of its life and character, the 
individual artist being moulded by his surroundings and by the agein which he lives, so that, if these be unclean, the resulting art will 
be, like Renaissance architecture, decadent and unpure. Thus, he 
writes in "On the Old Road" (§ 276) : "Let a nation be healthy,
happy, pure in its enjoyments, brave in its acts and broad in its 
affections, and its art will spring round and within it as freely as the 
foam from a fountain; but let the springs of its life be impure and 
its course polluted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises 
on the mathematical structure of bubbles." And again, in "Lectures 
on Art" (§ 27) : "The art of any country £s the exponent of £ts soc£al 
aud polz'tz'cal v£rtues. . . . The art or general productive and 
formative energy of any country is an exact exponent of its ethical 
life.'' From this position there was no very startling transition to 
the famous chapter "On the Nature of Gothic" in "Stones of 
Venice" (I851-3), which contains in embryo all his later sociolog~cal 
and economic teaching. From teaching art and from the promotiOnof culture, both ethical and intellectual, Ruskin passed to the final 
phase of his life-work, and that which he considered by far the most 
vital. 

Ruskin's Later Life and Work as Practical Reformer. 

In the years which had elapsed since his graduation as M.A., and 
his subsequent settlement with his parents at Denmark Hill in I 843~ 
Ruskin had succeeded, in spite of violent opposition, in establishing 
himself as the leading critic and exponent of painting and architecture. 


8 


A series of provocative and brilliant volumes* had gained him this 
position ; his defence of the Pre-Raphaelites had won for him the 
.affection of Rossetti (whom he helped in a characteristically quixotic 
fashion), Millais, and their circle, while of the older men, Turner, 
Carlyle, and Browning were among his friends. Lastly, he had 
secured devoted adherents among his pupils and fellow-teachers at 
theWorking Men's College; while his own old College had recognized 
his achievements by the award of an honorary studentship of Christ 
Church in 1858. Thus, though his marriage had been brief and 
unhappy (1848-I854), and his private disappointments many; thoughhis violent assertion of his opinions had aroused enmity and detraction, 
it nevertheless seemed by this time that he had outlived the 
period of storm and stress, and might look forward to a future of 
happy and successful work as an art-critic. But from 186o onwards, 
that is, from the time when the last volume of " Modern Painters" 
was published, he no longer made art his main theme. Art he 
believed to be the outcome of a true and elevated national life, and 
he had been forced to realise that English national life was neither 
pure nor elevated. Social evils went too deep for philanthropictinkering, and he therefore set himself to plan a complete scheme 
for social reorganisation. This scheme, unfortunately never systematically 
developed, has as its leading feature the banishment of 
utilitarianism and materialism, for which it substitutes the beautywhich is also justice and truth: It insists that there is no necessaryantagonism between industry and art ; that, on the contrary,
both are indispensable elements of the social organism, thoughthey can be combined in various ways in order to fulfil various 
functions. But unless work is beautiful, it is not true work, and 
unless the life, even of the humblest worker, is beautiful, it is not a 
true life. 

It is difficult to speak quite dispassionately and temperatelyabout this last development of Ruskin's teaching ; difficult, too, to 
realise what was entailed by his change of plan. For years, he had 
struggled single-handed, against enormous odds, in his endeavour to 
revivify English thought about art, and to overcome its insincerity 
and conventionality. Now, when any success he could desire seemed 
within his grasp, he came to realise that his most important work 
was still before him, and the battle still to wage. Never for a 
moment did he flinch or hesitate. He allowed his books on art to 
run out of print, that attention might be concentrated on the new 
message he had to deliver; while he withdrew into the solitude of 
the seer and prophet, upon whom are laid the burden and the consciousness 
of a great mission. " The loneliness is very great," he 
cried ; " I am ... tormented between the longing for rest and 
lovely life, and the sense of this terrific call of human crime for 
resistance and of human misery for help, though it seems to me as 

• or these, the chief are : "Modern Painters," five vols., I843·I86o; "Seven 
Lamps of Architecture," 1848-9; "Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds," 1851 ; 
"Stones of Venice," 1851-3; "Lectures on Architecture and Painting," 1853-4; 
"The Political Economy of Art," 1857; "The Two Paths," 1859. 


9 

the voice of a river of blood which can but sweep me down in the 
midst of its black clots, helpless." 

It is not necessary to dwell in much detail on the outward 
circumstances of the remaining years of Ruskin's life. His father, 
who had loyally endeavoured to understand his vagaries in art, was 
bitterly distressed by his heresy in economics, while his mother was 
wholly out of sympathy with his falling away from religious orthodoxy. 
At home, as abroad, he had to submit to misunderstanding. 

From his parents, Ruskin inherited £I57,ooo in money, as well 
as houses and land. The whole of this property he expended during 
his life-time upon the promotion of reforms in which he was 
interested, while he lived for many years solely upon the proceeds of 
his books. Much of his money went to the foundation of the St. 
George's Guild, which was intended to prove the possibility of 
uncommercial prosperity in a society contented to get its "food 
. . . out of the ground and happiness out of honesty." (See 
"Fors," Letter LVIII, for the creed of the Guild). What it did prove 
was Ruskin's lack of success ia the management of men and of 
detailed and complicated business affairs. 

Again, he gave liberally to many individuals, educating promising 
young artists, or subsidising craftsmen and their crafts ; he founded 
and arranged a model museum at Sheffield ; gave pictures to the 
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; established a drawing-school 
at Oxford ; and bestowed collections of drawings and of minerals 
on museums, colleges, and schools. 

His belief that all children should be taught to draw, as a means 
of training eye and hand and mind ; his pioneer work in founding 
the Art for Schools Association ; and his sympathy with the education 
of women, are other instances of his practical wisdom. Similarly, 
his suggested reforms in education, which are founded on the 
assumption that every child has the right to be properly housed, 
clothed, fed, trained, and taught until it reaches years of discretion, 
are for the most part now generally accepted, at any rate in theory. 
Ruskin was, for example, the pioneer of technical education in 
England ; and even his road-making experiment with the Oxford 
undergraduates, which brought him so much ridicule, was the result 
of a sound educational ideal. 

Ruskin also spent much time and money on sociological innovations, 
which have since been generally approved and imitated. For 
instance, he gave Miss Octavia Hill the means to manage house-
property by a system of helping the tenants to help themselves. In 
pursuit of this aim he himself became a slum-landlord. Moreover, 
he never ceased his demand for the provision of decent accommodation 
for the working classes, though his agitation for housing reform 
made him many enemies. Another of his enterprises was the establishment 
of a model tea-shop ; yet another, a scheme for the 
organised relief of unemployment and for the training of the 
unemployable.

Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that almost everymodern measure of social improvement may, either directly or 


TO 

indirectly, trace its ongm to the precepts and example of John 
Ruskin.* Thus, nothing can be more fallacious than to regard him 
as merely capricious and fanciful in matters of practice, or to forgethis proposals for definite schemes of social regeneration, because he 
blinds us with the lightning of his zeal, or deafens us with his moral 
fulminations. 

"He was like the living conscience of the modern world," says 
Sir E. T. Cook, his editor ; and his health, never robust, was eventually 
undermined by the strain of his exertions and disappointments.
The last twenty-five years of his life were clouded by frequently 
recurring attacks of illness, which sapped his powers and added to 
the misery of private grief and mental overstrain. The first gravecollapse occurred in 1878, and soon afterwards he resigned his Oxford 
professorship (I 870-I 879) and retired to the peace of Brantwood ou 
Lake Coniston. The retirement was not absolute : he wrote much 
and gave many lectures during the ensuing ten years, and from 18831884 
he was even well enough to return to Oxford; while as late as 
1888 he went once more abroad-his farewell journey to France 
and Switzerland and Italy. But from that date onwards until the 
end he was in a state of mental decay, when "his best hours were 
hours of feebleness and depression." Death released him on January22nd, 1900, and he lies buried, as he wished, in Coniston churchyard.

When, in 186o, Ruskin ceased to devote himself to pure art, and 
turned instead to the problems of sociology, when he abandoned the 
search for abstract beauty, in order that a little more beauty mightbe brought into unlovely human lives, then by that sacrifice of inclination 
and of popularity he enrolled himself among the lonelythinkers whose message is not accepted by their own generation, and 
whose lot in this world is aching disappointment. Ruskin had 
tasted the joys of popularily and friendship ; he had known the 
smoothness ot a life of wealth and ease ; above all, he possessed the 
artistic and poetic gifts which made the strife of the arena particularly 
hateful to him, and rendered him peculiarly sensitive to harsh 
criticism. These facts give the measure of his sacrifice and of his 
faith. They explain, too, the emotional strength of his social criticism, 
and of his demand for social regeneration. It was no Utopiandreamer, no armchair-philosopher, who proclaimed insistently the 
old truth that whosoever will save his life shall lose it. This man 
had made the supreme offering, and he· spoke from the certainty of 
his experience. 

The Meaning of "Wealth." 

The warmth of Ruskin's pleading misled the so-called practical 
men of his generation, who accused him of unlawfully confusing 
sentiment with business. But passionate earnestness is not necess


* "National Education, National Hygiene, National Dealing with the Housing of the 
Poor, even National Succour for those who fall by the way in the toilsome march of the 
Army of Labour, National Dealing with Land, National Dealing with Trade, with 
Colonisation, with all the real National Interests-all these measures, so longdenounced without distinction by the old sham political economy of the past, he 
advocated, and now they are within or a~ our doors,"-YO!l.K POWELL, 

11 

arily fanaticism, nor does burning hatred of wrong inevitably lead to 
distortion or even exaggeration of fact. To apply everywhere and 
always the test of humanity and of life, rather than the test of 
money-gain, may, even from the commercial standpoint, in the long-
run be the most profitable course. Certainly, if Ruskin's standard 
be the right one, if ''the essence of wealth is in its power over man, 
and the grandeur of wealth is to make men better and happier,"
then it may reasonably be accepted "that the final outcome and consummation 
of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-
breathed, bright-eyed aP.d happy-hearted human creatures." The 
most hard-headed business man cannot, at any rate, controvert the 
next statement: "Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendencythe other way; most political economists appearing to consider 
multitudes of human creatures not conducive to wealth, or at least 
conducive to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested 
state of being." 

It is not easy to formulate a systematic body of sociological teaching 
from Ruskin's writings, for he never arranged his doctrines with 
scientific clearness and logical consistency. Yet the underlyingprinciples are, as we have st::en, laid down with perfect simplicity. 
His political economy is founded on the conviction that "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 greatestnumber of noble and happy human beings." Those who deal with 
the science of mere getting and spending, who conceive of" wealth" 
as mere material possession, have no just claim to be called 
political economists. At best, they are interested only in a science 
of avarice, a mercantile economy, which ignores human welfare and 
has no right to arrogate to itself the title "political," i.e., belonging 
to the citizens who form the State. At worst, their teaching is 
wrong, even in so far as it deals with buying and selling, since it 
deliberately starts from the false premise that men are moved, permanently 
and essentially, by nothing but their desire for material 
gain.

Now Ruskin interprets life always in terms of humanity, and is 
consequently impervious to arguments which postulate an 
" economic man," "a covetous machine," in whom "the social 
affections are accidental and disturbing elements." On the contrary,
he proclaims, in the words of Wordsworth, that "We live by admiration, 
hope and love," and that it is for ever unsound and unscientific 
to ignore these permanent attributes of human nature. The individual 
cannot separate his work from his human feelings on the one 
hand, or from his physical capacities and desires on the other. What 
is true of the individual is true also of society, which is made up of 
individuals, and cannot, therefore, satisfactorily be regarded as an 
abstract theoretical entity. Any competition or money-grabbing that 
injures the individual, at the same time reacts against the State and 
is opposed to civic and social welfare. 

Again, things which cannot be bought and sold in the marketplace-
e.g., love, friendship, self-sacrifice, capacity, truth-do never



12 

theless, and must inevitably, have a very real influence even on 
supply and demand. Ruskin shows for instance, in an unforgettable 
paragraph in the first chapter of "Unto this Last," that "all 
right relations between master and operative and all their best 
interests ultimately depend" on the "balances of justice, meanmg 
in the term justice to include affection-such affection as one man 
owes another." Since a workman is not a machine who is moved by 
steam " or any other agent of calculable force," but "an engine 
whose motive power is a Soul," it is obviously impossible to deal 
with him as if the so-called economic man were separable from the 
emotional man. Even from the lowest point of view, the greatest 
material result of his work will be obtained if he serves his master 
gladly, i.e., if his "soul'! enters into his work. To treat him as a 
machine, as something less than a man, is to lower the economic 
worth of his work, which is best done when, valued and valuable for 
its own sake, a blessing and not a curse, it calls into activity all the 
noblest human energies and emotions. (This argument does not 
apply to purely mechanical operations. But these, Ruskin would, 
precisely on this ground, reduce to a minimum, as tending to the 
destruction of the real wealth, which is life and has no relation to 
market-value.) It must be admitted that, if this be sentiment, it is 
sentiment of a very practical, reasonable kind. Similarly, it is 
illogical and misleading to make a science of industrial wealth 
and to ignore "real wealth," i.e., human welfare in the widest and 
deepest interpretation. Thus the statement that "There is no 
wealth but life" is again a literal statement of fact, a common-sense 
doctrine which is intended for the plain business-man and not for the 
idealist. Wealth, according to Ruskin, does not depend on market-
value; the worth of any object cannot be determined by the price 
that may be obtained for it; and on the other hand, as we have seen, 
many inestimably valuable things can neither be bought nor sold. 
"A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what youchoose to pay for it.. ·.. The thing is worth what it can do for you, 
not what you think it can." ("Queen of the Air," § 125.) Thus 
a miser, with hoards of money and jewels, is not really wealthy in any 
accurate sense of the term. His store benefits no one, himself least 
of all. Again, there is all the difference in the world between the 
value of a field of corn, and of a factory full of costly and death-
dealing implements of war, or between a cheap edition of Shakespeare's 
works and an edition de luxe of the latest fashionable small 
poet : the corn is worth its weight in gold, Shakespeare's plays are 
priceless wealth -and the other things are not really valuable at all. 
For "there is no wealth but life" ; wealth-giving things are those 
which "avail towards life." Whether we do or do not desire them, 
whether there is "demand" for them, does not affect their worth. 
A picture by VVhistler is no more valuable now, when it fetches 
thousands in the auction-room, than when it first left the unknown 
artist's brush to be reviled by Ruskin. The worth, as distinct from 
the exchange-value, is not to be estimated by passing whims on the 
subject, nor by the price paid, but by the intrinsic power to be of 


J3 

service if rightly used. So that the wealthy man is he who possessesuseful things and also the power and capacity to use them : wealth 
is the "possession of the valuable by the valiant": '' usefulness is 
value in the hands of the valiant" (or availing). Things which are 
desire~ for base purposes and w~ich pander only to the lower nature, 
are "!lith," not wealth, "causmg devastation and trouble around 
them in all direction," having no use at all, since they avail not for 
life, but for death. Wealth promotes life and all the life-giving, 
wholesome desires which are natural to healthy men and women. 
"Perhaps it may even appear after some consideration that the 
persons themselves are the wealth." 

The above argument ot Ruskin is open to certain objections 
which have tended to obscure the essential truth of his contention. 
In the first place, as he says himself, though he does not alwaysremember it, the potentiality for good, i.e., the "value" of anything 
depends invariably on the owner's capacity to use it. Certain things 
have no life-giving power, except under certain conditions of culture. 
For instance, the beads given to savages by travellers are, both 
actually and potentially, valueless; but Shakespeare's plays or 
Whistler's pictures would not give so much pleasure or produceequal effect. The actual worth does not vary, but the ejfectzve worth 
does. To that extent it is untrue that "evil and good are fixed ... 
inherent, not dependent on opinion or choice.'' ("Modern Painters," 
§ 33.) Ruskin states the case better when he writes that "a horse 
is no wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we cannot see, 
nor can any noble thing be wealth, except to a noble person" 
("Modern Painters," § 14, and if. "Munera Pulveris," § 35.)
Secondly, though Ruskin ignores the fact, even the potential value of 
things varies in inverse ratio to their quantity. Thus, in spite of its 
intrinsic, life-giving quality, corn becomes potentially useless ifthere is 
a glut of it, and already more bread available than can be consumed. 

Even more misleading, though this is not altogether the fault of 
Ruskin, is the fact that, as we have seen, he refuses to use the term 
"value" in any current economic sense. Thus he implies by it, 
neither market-value, nor worth to an individual, but, almost invariably, 
"life-giving quality." Now the ordinary science of political 
economy is concerned very little with "wealth " as measured by 
any life-giving properties. It deals simply with demand and supply, 
that is, with what men actually want at any given moment, and the 
means of satisfying their desires. Ruskin, on the contrary, insists 
that every demand for commodities is, of necessity, a demand for 
life or for death-a demand, that is, for things both in themselves 
and in the nature of their production, either good or evil, promotinghuman welfare or human misery. Thus it makes a very real difference 
whether money is exchanged for shoddy cloth or for handwoven 
material; for penny-dreadfuls or for the romances of Scott. 

The Meaning of " Political Economy." .f) 

Thus, Ruskin substitutes a human life-standard for a money-
standard. Political economy, since it has to do with living men and 


14 

women, must treat them as such, and not as money-producing and 
money-spending and calculating machines. Here, as everywhereelse, he bases his deductions on an ethical foundation-refusing to 
discuss theories which leave out of sight the fundamental factors of 
right human nature. What £s, cannot be made a satisfactory starting-
point for the determination of what ought to be : men do not 
always want what is best and most desirable, but a true scientific 
political economy must raise them up to worthy desires, not pander 
to their most degraded instincts and the brute desire to over-reach 
one another. It must, therefore, insist that "In true commerce, as 
in true preaching or true fighting, it is necessary to admit the idea 
of occasional loss ... sixpences have to be lost as well as lives, 
under a sense of duty; ... the market may have its martyrdoms 
as well as the pulpit, and trade its heroisms as well as war." The 
merchant's business is to provide for life, and if necessary, like the 
members of the other great intellectual professions, to d£e for it ; his 
function is to provide for the nation, not merely to get profit for 
himself. "This stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the 
object of his life," if he be a true merchant. That object is, to 
produce the best commodity at the lowest possible price compatiblewith making himself responsible for the kind of life led by the 
numerous agents who necessarily work under his direction. For 
cheapness must not be obtained at the fatal cost of human lives or 
human character: the work required must be beneficial to the 
worker as to the consumer. In any commercial crisis, the merchant, 
like the captain of a ship, is bound to share the suffering with his 
men. Thus must he prove that he cares most for the state or 
commonwealth, and that he understands the real meaning of 
political economy, the economy of the "polis," which, if it be true 
to its name, is a social and not an individual science. 

The Cost of Production and of Consumption. 

Such being the case, Ruskin is careful to point out that " production 
does not consist in things laboriously made, but in thingsserviceably consumable : and the question for the nation is not how 
much labour it employs, but how much life it produces "-and life 
includes more than meat ; it includes wisdom, virtue, salvation, the 
right and opportunity to be "holy, perfect, and pure." "The 
presence of a wise population implies the search for felicity as well 
as for food." Hence the authoritative.command : " In all buying, 
consider, first, what condition of existence you cause in the producersof 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 youhave bought can be put ; and fourthly, to whom and in what way it 
can be most speedily and serviceably distributed." 

If production consists in things serviceably consumable-tending 

to obtain and employ means of life-then, naturally, the use of the 

things produced is at least as important as their actual production. 

Thi leads Ruskin to a statement which is startlingly unlike that of 


IS 


most political economists, viz., that " consumption is a far more 
difficult art than wise production. Twenty people can gain moneyfor one who can use it; and the vital question, for individual and for 
nation, is never 'how much do they make ? but to what purposedo they spend ? ' " What has been done with the potential wealth 
that has been produced? If it has been hoarded up, not used, it 
has been wasted, and has never really become wealth at all. "The 
true home-question to every capitalist and to every nation is not, 
'How many ploughs have you? ' but ' Where are your furrows ? '" 
Thus, "to use everything and to use it nobly" is the final object of 
political economy. ''The essential work of the political economist is 
to determine what are in reality useful or life-giving things, and bywhat degrees and kinds of labour they are attainable and distributable." 
Wealth can be estimated only by discovering the remainmg 
amount of utility and enjoyment-the life-giving properties-afterthe cost of production has been deducted. "Cost" is "the quantityof labour required " for production, and in so far as this implies loss 
of life to the worker, the worth of the work is diminished. When 
the cost includes the physical or spiritual degradation of the worker, 
then it can never be worth while to produce such goods, for no function 
of use or enjoyment which they fulfil suffices as a set-off to the 
harm committed in their manufacture. To produce such goods can 
never be " profitable." "Labour is the suffering in effort. ... It is 
that quantity of our toil which we die in." 

If, in such production, suffering outweighs the desirableness of 
the thing produced, then such labour is death-bringing-and "there 
is no wealth but life." It is wholly and eternally different from 
work and effort, the application of power (opera) ; that, in its 
noblest form, whether in physical action or mental, intellectual 
striving, is pleasurable and recreative. "It does not matter how 
much wo1'k a thing needs to produce it ; it matters only how much 
distress. Generally, the more the power it requires, the less the 
distress ; so that the noblest works of man cost less than the 
meanest." Thus interpreted, work, as distinct from labour and 
suffering, is salutary and beneficial to the worker. Ruskin realises 
the impossibility of doing away with all unpleasurable labour, but at 
the same time he points out that its amount may be decreased m 
various ways. 

The Mechanisation and Division of Labour. 
For instance, he shows that in manufacture the interest is diminished 
and the monotony, i.e., suffering, increased, when the worker 
continually carries out the same process without seeing any visible 
result of his labour. It is true that division of labour lowers the money-
cost of many manufactured articles, but it is often soul-destroying 
to the producer. Less wages are obtained by the tailor who spends 
his life in stitching button-holes, than by the skilled workman who 
is capable of making the whole garment or any part of it. But to 
counterbalance the reduction of wages, it is necessary to remember 
the lowered standard of workmanship, and also the lessening of 


power, efficiency, and well-being of the workman. It does not really 
"pay," even in the lowest sense, to degrade human skill and taste, 
and to decrease healthy interest in the work done. This fact, 
almost unrealised either by economists or employers when Ruskin 
first stated it, led him to condemn both machine-made goods and 
also that over-specialisation which is the tendency of modern life. 
Just as the artist's personal touch differentiates a picture from the 
best photograph ever taken, so, in lower kinds of creative work, the 
maker's individuality must be expresse.d if the thing made is to be, 
in the best sense, valuable. There is an eloquent passage in one of 
Ruskin's books, in which he explains that no two specimens of great 
Venetian glass ever were, or could be, exactly similar, thoughmodern Venetians turn out vase after vase exactly to pattern. The 
moral he deduces is universally applicable-namely, that the human 
standard alone is the true test of efficiency. Machine-made things 
are inferior in quality, whatever the ease with which they can be 
produced ; purely mechanical labour is inferior, though the wages 
required to command it be never so low. 

Hence, Ruskin's reintroduction of hand-loom weaving and handicrafts 
of every kind ; hence, too, his tirades against steam power and 
steam engines. He hated them, because they necessitate all sorts of 
degrading labour in .mines and in factories, and because, at the same 
time, they destroy the beauties of nature. For he believed " that a 
nation is only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, 
when by all its acts and arts it is making them more lovely for its 
children."* Moreover, since beautiful work can be produced only by 
people who have beautiful things about them, if the workers are 
surrounded by chimney-pots and smoke, their ears deafened by 
steam whistles, and their hearts saddened by a grey and dismal life 
of toil, they will create nothing which contains even the elements of 
beauty.t

In spite of the common belief, Ruskin did not wish indiscriminately 
to destroy all railways and all factories, and very often his 
complaints against them were eminently reasonable and right, as 
wheu he objected to spoiling beautiful Swiss valleys by running 
trains through them for excursionists who were too lazy or too 
hurried to enjoy them wisely. He would have allowed railways 
only where their presence tended definitely to broaden men's minds 
and to facilitate the production of ideas;.he would have subordinated 
them everywhere and always to the real " wealth" and " utility,"
which no money advantages can outweigh. Here, as everywhere, he 
applied the human instead of the commercial standard. This does 
not imply that he never exaggerated his complaints or went wrongin his condemnations. Much of what he said, for example, of hand


• Cf. " Lectures on Art," § 123: " Find places elsewhere than in England, or at 
least in otherwise unserviceable parts of England, for the establishment of manufactories 
needing the help of fire . .. reduce such manufactures to their lowest limit." And 
see " The Two Paths," §§ 8g, go. 
t Love of beauty " is an essential part of all healthy human nature and . . .. is 
itself wholly good-the di rect adversary of envy, avarice, mean worldly care, and 
especially of cruelty."-" Lectures on Art," 111 ; and see i•ljra §§ 25, 26. 


17 


weaving, was the result of imperfect knowledge. No life could well 
be more brutalising than that of an eighteenth century loom-worker; 
and in the same way, the lot of an agricultural labourer was not, from 
any point of view, more attractive in the days when the whole of 
his labour had to be accomplished by hand. But mistakes of this 
kind do not in reality detract from the truth of Ruskin's main contention, 
that the mechanisation of labour and oflife is an evil which 
needs remedy, in so far as it destroys individuality and wholesome 
enjoyment in men's work and in their surroundings. As long as 
human skill and understanding are necessary in order to guide the 
machine, as long as man is its master, not its servant, so long may its 
use be justifiable. As soon as it is possible to put in raw material at 
one end to come out manufactured goods at the other, without anyfurther attention than that which is purely a matter of routine, such 
as stoking or turning a handle, the workman deteriorates and the 
kind of labour is harmful. It cannot be right, for it is degrading to 
press a button and let the machine do the rest.* The tests of wise 
work are, that "it must be honest, useful, and cheerful'' : work that 
ruins the worker can be none of these things. To be occupied 
solely with mechanical work is necessarily and inevitably to lose in 
individuality and in humanity-to sacrifice soul, the development of 
which is the most "leadingly lucrative" of national manufactures. 
When such labour is unavoidable, the hours of toil should be correspondingly 
short, in order that the workers may have ample time for 
recreation and for the development of their powers and sympathies. 

The Morality of Taste. 

Moreover, from another point of view, mechanical work produces 
mechanical results which, as Ruskin has shown in much detail and in 
various places, are almost, if not quite, as bad for the consumer as for 
the producer, since they destroy taste. This brings us to one of 
Ruskin's most startling assertions, which is also one of the most vital 
elements in his teaching. He insists upon the morah"ty of taste. 
" Good taste is essentially a moral quality ... not only a part and 
an index of morality ; it is the only morality.... Tell me what youlike and I'll tell you what you are" ("Crown of Wild Olive," § 54);
and again, "Good taste is the instantaneous preference of the noble 
thing to the ignoble." Happily, it may be acquired and developed,
and not least by the influence of our surroundings, natural. and 
artificial. But since the converse is equally true, a smoke-begnmed 
or ugly environment has a far-reaching influence for ill. For, 

* Cj'. "Crown of Wild Olive," § 45: "What! you perhaps think, 'to waste 
the labour of men is not to kill them.' Is it not? .. . It is the slightest way of killing 
to stop a man's breath. Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the whistling bullets-
our love-messengers between nation and nation-have brought pleasant messages to 
many a man before now : orders of sweet release ... . At the worst, you do but 
shorten his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if you put him t_o base labour1 if_youbind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, •_f you steal h1s Joys,
if you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave h1m not so much as 
strength to reap the poor fruit of his degradati?n, b':lt gather th:~t for yo~rsel~, and 
dismiss him to the grave, when you have done w1th h1m .... th1s you thmk 1s no 
waste, and no sin ! " 

18 

"what we like " (or endure) "determines what we are and is the signof what we are ; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character." 

If Ruskin was right, it is small wonder that he protested againstshoddy and machine-made goods, and against the ugliness of the 
modern industrial system and its productions. For to be satisfied 
with quantity instead of quality is a sign and precursor of worse evils 
which lurk behind. Ifwe suppose, as he contended, that national taste 
be indeed the expression of national character, severe judgment must 
be passed not only on the Venetians, but on all nations who are 
content to exist without art or with inferior art. For they are 
proved incapable of delight, that is, in the true sense, uneducated, 
unable to be'' glad justly." Yet enjoyment is a right which belongs 
to all in a well-ordered society,-a right sadly curtailed for most 
people under present economic conditions, when they are taughtneither what to like nor how to like it. 

Lack of taste results, too, in the wrong use of labour and the substitution 
of commercialism and competition for honest work. 

Competition and the Problem of Right Payment. 

It is not too much to say that for commercial competition of all 
kinds Ruskin had an utter loathing. Thus his treatment of the 
wages-problem is unusually enlightened. At the beginning of" Unto 
this Last," he insists that the question of supply and demand ought 
not to affect the wages paid in one sort of work more than another. 
A doctor's fees, quite rightly, do not vary in accordance with the 
amount of illness at a given time. A cabman is not allowed to ask 
higher, fares because it is raining and his services are much in demand. 
Nor, in a dry season, is he expected to accept less. All work is worth 
a certain wage and should, in Ruskin's opinion, be paid at a fixed 
rate, irrespective of other factors. Bad and good workmen, who are 
entrusted with the same task, should receive equal pay: in this 
respect Ruskin is entirely in accord with modern trade-unionism. A 
bad workman should not be allowed to undercut prices "and either 
take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to work 
for an inadequate sum." "The natural and right system respectingall labour is that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman 
employed and the bad workman unemployed." We do not 
choose our doctor because he is cheap-provided, that is, that we 
have money-but because we think hit? efficient. The same principle 
should be applied in choosing a bricklayer or any other worker. 
No other form of wage-competition is justifiable.

Again, it is infamous that a man's necessities should determine 
the amount he is paid for his work: he should be paid what it is 
worth-that amount, neither more nor less, he ought to have. 
Moreover, to cheapen labour is in every sense bad economy, since it 
results in bad workmanship and inferior workers. From the lowest 
point of view, it does not pay to keep men down to a barely living 
wage ; it is wise policy, even from a selfish standpoint, to let good 
workmen benefit from the increased goodness of their work. 

When Ruskin advanced this theory it was laughed at, like so 


19 

much else which he stated almost for the first time. Nowadays

practical business men are coming more and more to adopt what 
'their predecessors termed a "sentimental" doctrine, which after all 
amounts to little more than that it is in the long-run more profitable 
to pay a higher wage to an efficient, than a lower wage to an inefficient 
workman. In this instance, as in many others, Ruskin's 
prophetic insight helps him to the vision of a very practical and far-
reaching reform. 

In spite of this, Ruskin later, in "Arrows of the Chace," II, 97, 
makes a claim which might lead to dangerous results. He is far 
ahead of his time in his demand that salaries shall be determined by 
a standard of life instead of by competition. He asks for a definitely 
prescribed, uniform income or wage for each type of worker, that is, 
as he defines it, "the quantity and kind of food and space of lodging 
... approximately necessary for the healthy life of a labourer in 
any given manufacture." Doubtless this is a better method of payment 
than that resulting from blind obedience to "supply and 
demand," since at least it secures a minimum of comfort to all 
workers, irrespective of competition. But Ruskin does not appear 
to recognise that this definitely prescribed, uniform wage might be a 
maximum as well as a minimum. It is not enough, as he himself 
implies in "Unto this Last," "Munera Pulveris" and elsewhere, 
that the workman shall be paid at a fixed wage. He has the right 
to raise his standard of life as the average product of his communityincreases in value ; and he, as well as the capitalist-employer, ought 
to profit by industrial improvements.*

Competitive industry is not merely bad policy in so far as the 
workers are concerned. Its ill effects are felt in every direction, and 
perhaps chiefly in that it lays the main stress on "profit" rather 
than on utility and good workmanship. For it is simply untrue that 
rivalry promotes excellence of manufacture. On the contrary, it 
causes that mechanisation of labour which results in the evils to which 
we have already referred,-the deterioration of the worker and the 
degradation of work by the production of cheap and nasty goods 
which are palmed off on the consumer, whenever he can be deceived, 
as equivalent to something better. Advertisements tell their own tale, 
and are a sure indication of the dangers of trade competition. 
Ruskin may overstate his case and ignore everything that can be 
said in favour of modern commerce. Certainly he makes no reference 
to the social qualities sometimes developed in the struggle for life-
enterprise, industry and self-sacrifice for example, all of which qualify 
a man for service as well as for the attainment of personal ends. 
But he is right in recognising the moral and material waste which 
normally results from the system of fraud upon which trade, to a 
lamentable extent, depends· and in anathematising the selfishness of 
the struggle and the loss of'power which result from individualism. 

* Compare his own assertion (" Time and Tide,"§ 8): " It is the merest insolence 
of selfishness to preach contentment to a labourer who gets thirty shillings a 
week, while we suppose an active and plotting covetousness to be meritorious in a. 
man who has three thousand a. year." 

20 

Ruskin's Views about Interest. 


He is not equally incontrovertible in his attack on interest, 
which, in the latter part of his life, he denounces as indefensible. In 
his earlier writings he is content to condemn usury : in "Fors," and 
especially in Letter xvrn, he makes no distinction between this, 
which is rightly called extortion, and the interest on commercial 
capital. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Socialists 
accept his position, since they detest the capitalist system, which 
allows wealth to accumulate in the hands of the few and to be used 
for their personal advantage. For Socialists hold that all wealth 
should be created and expended for the common good, and that the 
-conduct of the community's business for private profit is prejudicial 
to the body politic. But Ruskin never goes so far as this, though he 
advocates the increased ownership and control of industry by the State 
("Time and Tide,"§ 81 ), and its organisation for social service. Consequently, 
his condemnation of reasonable interest on capital cannot 
be substantiated. He argues that interest is a forcible taxation or 
exaction of usury, adding that, since money cannot produce money,
there is no sense in the claim that savings ought to be increased byinterest. "Abstinence may, indeed, have its reward nevertheless ; 
but not by increase of what we abstain from, unless there be a law 
ofgrowth for it unconnected with our abstinence." This is plausible,
but unsound reasoning. It is easy enough to see the evil of usury, of 
profiting by the need of an individual, and losing all charity in the 
process. But if, as Ruskin rightly maintains, money consists merelyof counters symbolising command ofcommodities and of labour, then 
the use of capital in production does result in an increase of the 
product, and investment of money in enterprises needing capital is a 
social service, for which (so long as there is not enough capital for 
its unlimited use) the consumer of the product may fairly be 
charged. So long as society relies, for obtaining capital, on its accumulation 
by individual owners, there is reason in this charge for its 
use, which is included in the price of the commodity.

Consequently there is an essential difference, in a capitalisticcommunity, between reasonable interest on capital and the exaction of 
usury. A labour-basis of exchange and social service, instead of profit, 
are not feasible ideals until society has been reconstructed on a more 
satisfactory basis. And of this reconstruction, Ruskin refused to 
hear. He believed in a capitalistic society, and did not altogethercondemn the private control of industry for individual profit ; as a 
result, his attacks on interest are unreasonably ferocious. Until 
industry is deliberately organised by the State for the common good,
social saving is desirable, and, until borrowed capital is no longerneeded for commercial enterprises, interest is both permissible and 
inevitable. 

Society is an Organic Whole. 

While Ruskin refused to go the whole way towards the nationalisation 
of capital and of the means of production, yet the reforms 
he advocated tended always towards the promotion of economic 


21 

equality; and he had a real horror of the unlawful accumulation of 
personal possessions. No one has ever more clearly recognised the 
fact that society is an organic whole, and that injury to an individual 
is therefore injury to the State. But he believed that industrycould be saved from the slough of commercialism only by reforming 
individual capitalists and members of the ruling classes. He had a 
touching faith in the doctrine of noblesse obl£ge, but no hope of anyreform that could come from the people and from democratic rule. 
In this we hold that he was doubly mistaken. However enlightenedand virtuous the individual capitalist or manufacturer, it is, in the 
nature of things, impossible for him to revolutionise commercial 
conditions. Ruskin himself was forced to defend his own possession 
of money and acceptance of interest, by pointing out the indubitable 
fact that an individual can do no good, and probably will do much 
harm, by tilting, as an isolated Don Quixote, at the windmill of 
commercialism. Similarly, though Ruskin did not recognise the 
truth, an individual manufacturer or merchant would simply land 
himself in the bankruptcy-court, while benefiting nobody, were he, 
as an individual, to refuse to conform with the conventional conditions 
of trade. Individual efforts must be supplemented by social 
co-operation and State action; similarly, the progress of all must 
come through all, that is, " the State" should be the expression of 
the whole of society, and not of any one section thereof. 

It is strange that Ruskin failed to recognise this fact. He was 
hindered, as Carlyle had been hindered, by his acute realisation of 
the natural inequalities of men, both mental and moral. These convinced 
him that it was the duty of the strong man to govern, and of 
the ordinary man to reverence and obey his superiors. On the· 
whole, it seemed to him that the existence of a powerful aristocracy 
was the safest form of government, since all social order must be built 
on authority. But the aristocracy he upheld was to be "the assured 
measure of some kind of worth (either strength of hand, or true 
wisdom of conduct, or imaginative gift)." Position was in no way to 
be purchasable with money, but to be obtainable only by superiorintellect and energy. Hence he was conscious that, if ruin were to 
be arrested, there must be " repentance of that old aristocracy(hardly to be hoped), or the stern substitution of other aristocracyworthier than it." Yet in the very next sentence comes the startling 
and short-sighted admission : "Corrupt as it may be, it and its 
laws together, I would at this moment, if I could, fasten everyone of 
its institutions down with bands of iron, and trust for all progres~ 
and help against its tyranny simply to the patience and strength of 
private conduct." 

Obedience may be, as he held, "an inherent, natural, and eternal 
inheritance of a large portion of the human race," but there is no 
duty of obedience to the laws of primogeniture, nor to mere wealth 
and social advantages. It is true, and no modern Socialist will denythe fact, that men's capacities differ along with their functions, and 
that equality among millions of individually developing units is as 
inconceivable as identity. There are, as Ruskin says, '' unconquer



22 

able differences in the clay of the human creature." But this does 
not warrant any individual in using his unequal powers as a means 
of injuring or oppressing those who are inferior to him. Nor oughtthe State to permit him to use his superior capacity in such a way 
as to build up either riches or dominion. Moreover, equality of 
opportunity ought to be secured for each individual, and for this 
no man has more earnestly pleaded than Ruskin himself, who 
even stated, in so many words, that "this enormous difference in 
bodily and mental capacity has been mainly brought about bydifference in occupation, and by direct maltreatment." Let every.child have his chance, and the right spirit of reverence for superioritywill not disappear: rather will it grow and develop in those who 
have no cause for envy or hatred, but only for the "admiration, hopeand love" by which we live. 

And, indeed, in "Time and Tide," Ruskin propounds a theory of 
government by co-operation and fellowship among nations, as among 
separate peoples, which is conceivable only in a world from which 
the evils of commercialism and tyranny have disappeared, and in 
which all men have been protected both from the unnatural inequalities 
born of oppression and from any misuse of the natural superiorities 
of others. 

The N ationalisation of Land. 
Ruskin's opinions about the possession of land are in some 
·respects remarkably modern, and although not identical with the 
latest Socialist doctrine on this question, they come surprisingly 
·near to the view that land held by occupying owners for agricultural 
1purposes belongs to the category of tools, and is therefore quiteproperly in individual ownership.
Ruskin is clear that land and water and air, "being the necessary 
-sustenance of men's bodies and souls," must not be bought or sold. 
Yet he believes, up to a certain point, in the hereditary private possession 
of land by occupying owners, superintended by State overseers 
and paying a tax to the State as State tenants-the amount of 
.land thus owned being strictly limited by the capacity to make good.use of it. Apparently he has in mind a sort of peasant-proprietorship; 
-in cases where larger tracts of land are granted in perpetuity to 
·" great old families," "their income must in no wise be derived from 

•the rent of it." Land must never become a source of income to 
-such owners ; its possession is a trust and " should be, on the whole, 
.costly to them ... made ... exemplary in perfection of such agriculture 
as develops the happiest peasant-life." (See e.g. "Time and 
Tide." Letter XXIII.) 
The Organisation of Labour. 

Perhaps he is most a pioneer in his demand for the completeorganisation of labour and his belief in the right to work and to the 
best possible training and education for its accomplishment. His 
system of selecting the suitable worker for a particular j~b, and of 
.utilising every potential labourer, is complete and satisfactory. Al1 


23 


children are to be taught the laws of health, habits of gentleness and 
justice, and the calling by which they are to live. All those who are 
out of employment are to be received at once in government-schools 
or labour-colonies and set to such work as they can do, or trained for 
such work as they are fit. For the old and destitute, comfort and 
home are be provided. "A labourer 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, al\d, therefore, the wages during health 
less, then the reward when health is broken may be less, but not less 
honourable; and it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a 
matter for a labourer 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." (Preface to "Unto this Last.") The case for old-age 
pensions has never been more trenchantly stated. 

Lastly, he demands either government-workshops ur trade guildswhich shall set the standard of price and of workmanship for every 
commodity, "interfering no whit with private enterprise,"* exceptin so far as their productions are "authoritatively good and exemplary." 
Ruskin's desire for some such guild system, self-governing 
in its constitution but vocational and voluntary in its composition, 
brings him nearer to the aspirations of Guild Socialism than 
to the achievements of Collectivism, but in any case, and in spiteof his denials, his ideal is definitely Socialistic in its trend. 

The Results of Ruskin's Economic Teaching. 

Omitting, as we must, within the limits of a tract, a more detailed 
description of Ruskin's actual plans, and ignoring his somewhat 
perverse attitude on the subject of a fully democratic suffrage, we 
are now in a position to summarise something of what Ruskin 
effected by his economic teaching, and to estimate his influence on 
the nascent Socialist movement of the second half of the nineteenth 
century. 

In the first place, he justifies his claim that "honest production, 
just distribution, wise consumption" are the reforms that it is 
most necessary to enforce. For these reforms, radically instituted, 
would go far towards the establishment of what to-day still beckons 
to us as a far-off Utopia.

But more important than any particular means that he advocates, 
is his whole attitude towards social problems, and, indeed, 
towards life itself. Above all else, he acts as a stimulating power, a 
disturber of the vulgar modern complacency which he hated, an 
awakener of ideals, of higher motives and more generous resolves. 
Everywhere and always he applies the test of humanity; he breaks 
down the barriers which divide one human activity or instinct from 
another, and insists on the interrelation of all social and individual 

• It is interesting to note that the establishment of such government-workshops, 
as a means to secure a high standard of workmanship and to prevent or reduce adulteration, 
is an" original" panacea recently proposed by Mr. Emil Davies, who would, 
however, also use them as a method of obtaining additional revenue for the State. 

interests. The supreme moral and spiritual teacher of his age, he 
penetrates everywhere to first principles and ultimate truths ; and 
whether his ostensible subject be art or economics, he attempts to 
alter men's aim and motive in life, to uproot evil however manifested, 
and to bring a little nearer "the true felicity of the human 
race,'' by showing wherein nobility, wealth, and beauty consist. 

Thus, while errors and extravagance are to be found in his 
teaching, and while he may justly be accused of lack of system in 
the presentation of his ideas about social reform, yet the abidingimpression left by his work is not of these. It is rather a conviction 
of the breadth and vividness of his sympathies, and of his clear 
vision of essentials. His belief that no system of economics can be of 
permanent value, if it fails to develop "souls of a good quality,"
the insight which enables him to recognise the ultimate connection 
between economics and morals-these are perhaps his most important 
contribution to social science. But, greater even than the greatlessons which he taught, the man's own nobility of purpose shines 
forth in all his writings-a beacon-light for future ages. 

AUTHORITIES. 

THOMAS BARCLAY (arranged by). "The Rights of Labour according to John 
Ruskin." W. Reeves. rd. 

W. 
G. COLLINGWOOD. " The Life of Ruskin." Methuen. Is. 
FREDERIC 
HARRISON, "John Ruskin." English Men of Letters Series. Macmillan. 
Is. 

J. 
A. HOBSON. "John Ruskin; Social Reformer." Nisbet and Co. (This is the 
standard work on this aspect of Ruskin's teaching. The tract here presented is 
deeply indebted to it.)
P. GEDDES. "John Ruskin: Economist." 
F. YORK POWELL. "John Ruskin." 
J. M. ROBERTSON. "Modern Humanists." 
The works of Ruskin, which are mainly relevant, are:"
Stones of Venice," The chapter" On the Nature of Gothic." I8SI. 
" Unto this Last." I86I. 
"Munera Pulveris." I862. 
"The Crown of Wild Olive." I866. 
"Time and Tide." I867. 
"Fors Clavigera." I87I-8I. 

The standard library edition of Ruskin is that by Cook and Wedderburn. (Thirtynine 
vols. I903·I2.) There are various cheaper editions, one at Is. the volume, which 
includes all the above-mentioned works, except the last. This is obtainable in The 
Pocket Ruskin, in four volumes at Is. 6d. each. The publishers are, in every case, 
Messrs. Allen & Unwin, Limited. 


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