1
10
4
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/cc6a58fab172aa4271d2bc2a982048bd.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=bq5avaippKI6WEgj%7EHidnZoTEbtVGe5K%7EYOxhAq5xSkJn-VFjSy7p9qnF5t7EVZJKXRIwZLrfYw-YxpKKIikZMJAZ4QaCsynjKhJloqKw9noWM2RHOFRMDjyp%7EmwsGnbAkkmFMNQAXTpzlKgk44AhxdUAT3SskWLmcT27LeKNJUmgUMp7CEQ5vIqaGfYCidoQk2ggfublql2EcRrEehZTPSLOIsMzcqoXnXsA-C%7EuzsFDY9IyswT3Dh0ZNy-DIolN4pyQX2HiVAR9MBokgLhgR5pt%7EWOrqJz1I1r76XE88ZPSTj8agOBrYQ%7E2C5RtkRi4Ntk0EOOH7QgmDg8zgcskQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
34d596f23a1319c1cad76f235cfe628b
PDF Text
Text
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES
FROM
THE TEACHER’S POINT OF VIEW.
BY
WILLIAM ELLIS.
^Reprinted from “ The Museum and English Journal of Education.”)
LONDON:
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW:
»
AND EDINBURGH.
MDCCCLXV.
�COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES FROM THE TEACHER’S POINT
OF VIEW.
N a journal not devoted to education,
some apology might be required for
introducing a subject so hackneyed
as “Combinations and Strikes.’’ This
subject, like that of education itself,
has become distasteful to the general reader, on ac
count of the flood of vague and irrelevant matter
with which our periodical literature has been
deluged, both directly from the pen, and indirectly
from speeches at public meetings, where these sub
jects have been treated of.
The subject of Combinations and Strikes can
not, however, have become distasteful to teachers
as teachers, because it has seldom found its way
into schools. And our purpose now is to invite
them to consider whether this subject do not de
serve some of their attention, and whether the
judicious treatment of it in schools will not shield
it from some of that ill-treatment outside which
it has met with so undeservedly.
If we can show teachers that correct views
upon the probable influence of Combinations and
Strikes will materially affect the future well-being
of their pupils, and also that it is quite within the
scope of school instruction that correct views shall
be formed by the pupils in their schools, we feel
quite sure of obtaining their attention; and if
we cannot do thus much, none of their atten
tion ought to be bestowed upon us, due as it may
be, nevertheless, to the matter which we shall
have failed in elucidating.
As for the importance to the young of correct
views upon the probable effect of Combinations
and Strikes, we need do little more than state
what that effect is expected to be, viz., increased
wages, or, which is the same thing, less work with
undiminished wages. Few teachers can contem
plate the present state and future prospects of
adults now at work, without desiring for their
pupils better prospective wages than those which j
widely prevail, however well they may be recon- I
efled to the modicum reasonably to be expected
at starting. Neither can teachers consider this
thought to be otherwise than a wholesome one for |
their pupils to carry into industrial life ;—w By 1
what means may we hope to become entitled to
and possessed of, such wages as will enable us, at
least, to live decently and comfortably?”
How far it is possible to qualify the young
while yet in our schools, to judge of the means
likely to be accessible to them for obtaining satis
factory wages, or for obtaining an increase of the
unsatisfactory wages which they may be com
pelled to put up with for a time, is a matter to
which a little space and attention must be de
voted before we can ask teachers to agree or to
discuss with us. We must bespeak, at the same
time, a certain amount of indulgence, if our at
tempted exposition should be more elementary
and elaborate than might appear called for be
tween teachers and teachers. They will kindly
bear in mind that we are addressing the parents
of the children in their schools as well as them
selves. We can hardly hope to escape mystifica
tion, confusion, and obscurity, except by avoiding
to use many of the general terms in common use,
or by deferring their use until we have established
the existence, and obtained a firm hold of the
ideas, for which those terms are the names. To
this precaution against admissions not warranted
by experience under cover of vague and ambigu
ous language, may be added another against the
unguarded introduction into schools of subjects
that are beyond the comprehension of the children
to be instructed in them. Such subjects might
be overlooked in a crowd. To secure inspection,
therefore, we will enumerate, one by one, some of
the subjects which, in our judgment, are at once
important to be known, and teachable to the
young. Attention will thus be fixed upon each
separately, and whatever is deemed inadmissible
can easily be objected to at once.
Assuming it to be desirable that all the young
should take from school as correct and vivid an
impression as is possible at their age, of the
nature of the life which awaits them, we will pro
ceed, briefly and succinctly, to place before our
readers some of the matters important to be under
stood, on which the young may be brought to ob
serve, and. jiudge correctly, and feel strongly, if
�COMB[XATIOWS AND STRIKES
thW’ be but under the direction of teachers cap
able qL supporting and guiding them.
1. They and all their fellow-creatures are subsisting upon the produce of past labour—partly
even of the labour of some of the men who lived
many ages ^go. If the produce of past labour
were suddenly destroyed, all men would perish,
with the exception of a few here and there in the
warmer climates, who might subsist upon the
spontaneous products of the earth.
2. They and their fellow-creatures are day by
day consuming the produce of past labour—some
things rapidly, as articles of food; others more
slowly, as articles of clothing, and furniture, and
dwellings. If, then, men are to continue to live
as comfortably, and in as large numbers, as at
present, the produce of past labour must be re
placed as fast as it is consumed. If they are to
live more comfortably, and in larger numbers, the
produce consumed must be more than replaced.
No portion of the labour, and of the knowledge
and skill to assist it, which were at work in the
past, can be spared in the present and future, if
society is not to deteriorate. More of each must
be brought to bear upon production, if society is
to be improved.
3. Maintenance of the stores of produce, and
encouragement of future production, are indis
pensable for the continued subsistence of society
as it is. Other efforts must be added to these, in
order to bring about an improved state of society.
Side by side with these truths, it has become
known to us that some men will not work to pro
duce, and will spoil and waste as well as consume.
Not only do they fail to replace what they con
sume, but they would, if not prevented, destroy
the produce of other men’s labour, and thereby
discourage their efforts to produce and save for
the future.
4. A consciousness of the existence of such illdisposed persons interspersed among the other
members of society, fear of their increase, and
alarm lest the industry, knowledge, skill, and
economy upon which the subsistence and improve
ment of society depend, should decline or perish
under their assaults, have led to efforts to resist,
and, if possible, to overcome them. Combinations
Mil. contrivances for these purposes fall within
the province of what goes by the name of government, and must ever be the work of those who
desire to defend the happiness and progress of
society against those who are indifferent or averse
to that which is indispensable for the general
welfare.
L, 5. The conclusion arniled at, and acted upon,
by those who have been accgpted_as most, com
3
petent to organize and administer the powers of
government, is, that their efforts must be directed,
First, To securing to each member of society the
undisturbed enjoyment of the produce of his
industry: implying liberty to exchan gejjEroWirei
and sell, to lend and borrow, to give£and ^.lso
to appoint, subject to some few restrictions, who,
at his death, shall succeed to his possessions. The
powers thus enjoyed under the protectiorg^of
government constitute the “rights of property.”
The declarations of these rights by government
are a portion of the laws under which we enffij
property. The products of industry being cfflMal
“wealth,” property consists of wealth, and those
titles to wealth recognised by law. The penaltrM
by which rights are protected against those who
would invade them, are another portion of laws.
Second, To securing, chiefly through the pro
motion of the teaching and training of the young,
that knowledge, skill, and good habits—the human
agents in the production, preservation, and enjoy
ment of wealth—shall as nearly as possible be co
extensive with life itself.
6. A very cursory survey of society enables us
to recognise who are the principal possessors O’m
wealth, as we see them around us, and as they have
grown up under the protection of our laws, and
also who are those that possess little or no wealth.
The former are the elders, the inheritors of wealth, I
and the more capable, that is, the more intelligent,
industrious, economical, and trustworthy. The
latter are the younger, and the less capable, that
is, the uninstructed, the indolent, the dissipated,
and the untrustworthy. It cannot be qnAstiane J
that the former are much better fitted than the
latter to hold and dispose of that wealth, the
replacement of which, as fast as it is consumed, is
so essential to the welfare of society. To entw^giM
it to the latter is impossible, and would be fatal
were it possible. Nevertheless, no human being,
whatever his disqualifications, can be entirely shnj
out from access to some portion of wealth. To
shut him out, would be to sentence him to death
by starvation. It remains to be shewn how the
“rights of property” maybe maintained while
the “ duties to humanity ” are performed
7. The difficulty in the way of performing each
of these duties, without neglecting the other, al
though by no means overcome, is seen to be
greatly diminished when once attention is directed
to the practice prevailing among a large portion
of the possessors of wealth, and a still larger por
tion of the wealthless ; the first, devoting some of
that wealth which they reserve as a provision
against future want, to the purchase of lalwnj
wherpwith to acquire more; the second, selling^
�4
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES.
their labour for some of that wealth, without
which they could neither work nor live. The
readiness, on one side, to part with present wealth
in order to obtain increased wealth in the future,
and on the other, to surrender the direction and
produce of one’s own labour to obtain the produce
of* past labour, has been accompanied and fol
lowed by a succession of contrivances, in the form
of machinery and other instruments of production,
by which the labour purchased is made to accom
plish results otherwise unattainable, and to bring
about the continually increasing accumulations of
wealth everywhere observable. It must be evi
dent that the duties to property and to humanity
will be performed together more and more in har
mony, progressively as the wealthy become less
wasteful, and the wealthless less incapable.
8. This practice of applying wealth to the pur
pose of procuring more wealth in the future, has
given rise to a number of arrangements and bar
gains to suit the convenience and ciroumstances
of the various persons disposed to apply a portion
of their wealth to this purpose.
AV hat these arrangements and bargains are,
ought to be understood ; but it would be tedious
to describe them without using the terms in general
use ; and it is dangerous to use these terms with
out making sure of the things which the terms are
the names of. Let us, therefore, rapidly run over
these things, and mention the names which have
been given to them.
a. Wealth applied to the purpose of obtaining
ncrease is called capital. Originally, capital can
have been little more than wealth, destined by its
owners for the purchase of labour. Progressively,
larger and larger portions of capital have assumed
the form of instruments of production, among the
latest developments of which may be named rail
ways and their appendages, agricultural, mining
and manufacturing machinery, ships, docks, har
bours, and canals.
b. Wealth obtained by sale of labour is called
wages. The portion of oapital set apart for this
purpose is spoken of as a wages-fund, to distin
guish it from other portions of capital evidently
no longer available for purchasing labour.
c. The increase of wealth, looked forward to
from the application of wealth as capital, is called
' profit.
d. Many owners of capital are not administra
tors of capital; some administer the capital of
others as well as their own. Where they are not,
as in the case of those who prefer to work for
wages, of professional men, and of men conscious
of incapacity for directing labour, they lend their
capitals, surrendering their title to the larger but
uncertain return called profit, and bargaining with
the borrower for a smaller but certain stipulated
return. This smaller and stipulated return, is
called interest.
e. Besides these arrangements for facilitating
the co-operation of capital and labour in the work
of production, there are various forms of partner
ship and joint-stock association, admitting, accord
ing to the tastes, capabilities, and means of each,
the separation, partial or complete, of the elements
of the total future profit expected ; these elements
being, remuneration for the superintendence, for
the risk, and for the use, without risk, of the
capital. The latter of these elements, as before
stated, is called interest.
f. Wealth, capital, wages, profit, and interest,
are more frequently than otherwise measured in
money, and distributed with the aid of money.
They are also, spoken of, and written about, as
money. But each of them is a thing of itself, inde
pendently of money. And money is another thing.
With the assistance of these terms, bearing in
mind that they are familiar to thousands who
attach no definite meanings to them, and keeping
on our guard, so as not to be entrapped into using
them, sometimes in one sense, sometimes in an
other, quite unconscious that the matters denoted
by them have been shifted, let us proceed further
to indicate what the pupils in our schools can be
led to deduce for themselves from what they have
already observed and thought over.
9. The tendency of administrators of capital or
employers, is for them to distribute the wagesfund at their command among the labourers whom
they employ, according to the estimate which they
form of the producing powers of each. Making
use of the term “labourers” in its widest signifi
cation, employers will give to some, £5000 a-year;
to some, £10 a-week; to some, 3s. a-day; and to
others they will refuse wages or employment
altogether.
10. The total capital, and hence the total wagesfund, is a limited quantity. If it were distributed
among labourers in equal portions to each, the
portion of each could not be more than the quo
tient of the whole wages-fund divided by the
number of labourers. If this portion or wage
were considered insufficient, its increase could
only be procured by increasing the total wagesfund, or hy diminishing the number of labourers.
The latter mode of increasing average wages does
not require to be considered, and the former can
only be brought about at some future time, near
or distant, rapidly or slowly, according to oppor
tunities and the means resorted to.
11. Increase of wages to all is no more possible
�FROM THE TEACHER'S POINT OF VTEW1
at once, because the wages-fund is distributed
among labourers according to their respective
producing powers, than if it were distributed
among them equally and irrespectively of their
comparative producing powers. If more than the
average share be given to some, there must re
main less than the average share for others. But
there are two compensating circumstances at
tached to the apportionment of wages according
to producing powers. Greater future wealth is
produced, and as the wages fall into the posses
sion of more capable men, they are more likely to
be well used, and to be partly added to capital
forthwith.
12, Employers and employed,—they who have
bought and they who have sold labour,—it will
be observed, are two classes much more distin
guishable than capitalists and labourers. In every
country where the industrial virtues flourish, and
in proportion as they flourish, labourers, except
ing the youngest, whose power of earning and
hence of saving is as yet undeveloped, are capi
talists. They lend their capitals because they
can earn more through wages and interest than
they see their way to earn by administering their
own capitals, either separately or in co-operation
with other capitalists. The savings banks alone,
with their deposits of more than £40,000,000, are
proofs apparent to everybody, and many more
might be produced, of the extent to which, in a
community still deplorably afflicted with ignor
ance and misconduct, labourers are capitalists.
The chart of life, and the sailing directions
which the young will take out of schools where
they receive this kind of instruction, points to
wealth as the reward of intelligence and good
conduct,—wages small at first, because producing
power is small, but growing with the growth of
the estimate formed of producing power. The
capable labourer does no damage to his less capa
ble fellow-labourer. He assists in the increase,
so urgently required, of future capital. If he
save, a portion of his wages becomes capital at
once, wherewith employers distribute more wages.
The incapable, he assists to support. Lessons
easy and pleasant to learn in schools become difficult and painful if deferred till those who never
learned such lessons begin to suffer from their
ignorance. To children who leave school with
correct chart and good sailing directions, with
capacity for using them and resolution to act
upon them, the world opens not as a scene of
storm and tempest,"in which shipwreck can with
difficulty be escaped, but as an arena for the exer
cise of industry, intelligence, and the other social
5
virtues, with probable success in the future, and
certain satisfaction from the performance of duty
in the present. Little comfort can be derived by
the victims of ignorance and vice from the know
ledge, if communicable to them, that their desti
tution and suffering are the consequences of
previous mistaken conduct. In the presence of
misery, it would be brutal, if possible, to trace to
the sufferers the causes, no longer removable, of
their sufferings.
Taking our leave of school days, we will accom
pany the young as they leave the schools in which
they had received instruction such as we have
faintly sketched. Four out of every five of them
will be more or less dependent for subsistence
upon the sale of their labour. They will rejoice
rather than complain that there are employers to
be found able and willing to buy their labour, and
able and willing to afford them opportunities of
increasing their powers of usefulness. They may
regret, if service satisfactory to themselves and
their friends is not easy to be found, that capital
and employers are not more abundant. They
will surely not murmur if employers, with capital
at command, are so much in want of labour that,
not waiting to be sought, they apply at the schools
to obtain recruits likely to be made efficient la
bourers and deserving of wages.
They have entered upon their industrial career
With the assistance of their friends they have
sought the best service accessible, in the estimate
of which neither prospective nor present advan
tages will have been overlooked. Some will be
less successful than others in the selection of the
employments offered to therm Employers also
will not always find the services which they have
hired worth the wages which they have bargained
to pay. Shiftings and re-engagements will be of
frequent occurrence. But in subsequent, as well
as in original engagements, there will be one
thought prevailing among employers and la
bourers. Each will wish to do the best for them
selves; and if their efforts in this direction are
made intelligently, they will also do the best for;
one another, the employers seeking labourers
whose labour will produce most in proportion to
the wages paid, and the labourers seeking em
ployers whose service is most likely to lead to
those industrial rewards of which immediate wages
are hut a part.
There is an incessant and, we may say, a
healthy activity of thought and effort for in
dividual and general advancement. It is felt
that there is room for improvement. Th era is
no denying that a very large number of people
are inadequately fed, clothed, and lodged; that
�6
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES.
they have no capital; and that, thrown entirely
upon the wages-fund for support, they obtain
wages insufficient for decent and wholesome liv
ing. It would be a sadder spectacle to see this
state of things contentedly and inertly put up
with, than even to be compelled to acknowledge
that efforts at amelioration were taking a wrong
^direction. In this country, happily, there is no
danger of such passive submission, on the part
either of the immediate sufferers, or of society in
general. But efforts at amelioration will probably
be not wholly either in the right or in the wrong
direction ; susceptible, therefore, of better direc
tion. And it is desirable that the young should
be prepared to form a correct judgment upon the
plans submitted to them for obtaining increase of
wages, and for bettering their condition in other
respects.
We may now ask the specific question whieh
we had in our thoughts at starting : How should
the young, instructed as we say they ought to be,
deal with proposals to them to unite in combina
tions and strikes ?
We mention combinations and strikes together
because they are so commonly brought to our
notice together. But we may dismiss “strikes”
in a few words, and without much ceremony.
Strikes are acknowledged by everybody to be
evils, and they are resorted to only, as many other
evils are, to avert greater—as the destruction of
buildings to check the spread of conflagration, as
a jettison to preserve from foundering, or as am
putation to save life. Because strikes bring to
our notice the existence of combinations, it must
not be forgotten that many combinations exist
keeping clear of strikes. And it is contended
that all might be so managed as to keep clear of
strikes.
We may be quite sure that when combinations
are formed, the prevailing wish must be to keep
clear of strikes. Strikes are no more intended by
labourers who combine, than indigestions by the
hungry who eat. Proposals, accordingly, will
be made to the young to unite in a combination
by itself, and not in conjunction with a strike in
vidiously tacked to it. But before they could
accede to any such proposal, they would wish to
understand what advantages might be reasonably
expected by them and their fellows, and what
ought not to be expected, if they would escape
disappointment.
They might begin by considering the probable
effect of a combination upon wages. It ’ would
not increase the wages-fund. It could not, there
fore, increase general wages. If it were to alter
the distribution of the wages-fund, it would only
do so by interfering with the efforts of employers
to distribute the wages-fund among labourers
according to their several producing powers.
But that would be to diminish future wealtre, and
hence to check the growth of the future wagesfund.
But might it not maintain a high level of wages
in particular branches of business, or raise the
level of wages previously felt to be too low? It
could only do this by excluding additional labourers from access to those branches, or by
bringing additional capital into them. But additional capital cannot be attracted into a business
except by the prospect of profit equal to or greater
than that seen to be obtainable elsewhere. And
with this prospect, capital would flow in, not in
consequence, but in spite of a combination which
prevents labourers from following or accompany
ing the capital to share in the advantages offered by
it. The forcible exclusion of labourers from par
ticular branches of business can only mean con
demnation of the labourers excluded, to lower
wages, in order to maintain or to raise the wages
of those in possession.
Combinations among labourers, so far as they
can influence wages, can only do so by preventing
that distribution of the wages-fund which would
be made by employers left uncontrolled in their
efforts to employ their capitals to the greatest ad
vantage. Combinations among labourers can
scarcely, then, be said to be so much against emplovers as against other labourers, since they
can only control employers by withholding from
labourers permission to be employed. If decrease
of production be the consequence, future wages
will decrease also.
It will not be lost sight of that employers strive
to distribute the wages-fund among labourers
according to their respective producing powers,
i. e. according to the estimate formed of their re
spective industrial virtues. If the authority of
employers be susperseded by that of a combina
tion of labourers, will they also wish to distribute
the wages-fund so as to reward and encourage
the industrial virtues ? If so, which of the two,
the employers or the labourers, are, from their
experience and position, more likely to form a
correct estimate of industrial merits ? If not, the
development of those qualities upon which the
happiness and progress of communities depend
would scarcely be promoted by combinations
among labourers.
One can conceive of a combination among
labourers in which attempts to encroach upon the
prerogative of employers should neither be made
nor contemplated. Its object might be to dis-
!j
t I
1
*
a
L
’I ■
W
I
j
11
',
.
I
j
I
i
g
jj
1
U
fI
|
i7
J1
j|
I
If
j>
s |l
1E
/I
�FROM THE TEACHER'S POINT OF VIEW.
countenance ill conduct, to contribute out of their
wages towards the maintenance of those tem
porarily incapacitated, to introduce promising
recruits, to find other employment for super
numeraries, to form their capitals into a joint
stock, or to add them to a joint stock already
formed. A combination of labourers thus directed
would be a co-operation of labourers with capi
talists, and also of capitalists with one another.
Combinations have been formed, we are not
sure that some are not in existence still, to ex
clude machinery, or new contrivances for making
labour more effective, from particular branches of
business. Our intelligent young people could not
possibly enter into a combination for such a purposa. They would not be misled by the com
plaint, that it was wished to supersede labour by
machinery. Their intellectual exerdises will have
brought to their notice, that language may be used
to conceal a fallacy, as well as to express a truth.
The spade, the plough, and the thrashing-machine
make labour more effective, they do not supersede
it. And the pumping-engine which drains a
mine, which, without it, must remain submerged,
makes labour possible where it was previously im
possible. To obstruct employers in their efforts
to make the labour which they purchase as re
munerative as possible, is to obstruct the growth
of the wages-fund, from which alone general im
provement in wages is to be expected.
There are, and will continue to be, epochs in
most branches of industry, when, from the flow of
capital faster than that of labourers into them,
wages will rise; and also when, from the flow of
capital faster than that of labourers out of them,
wages will fall. If combinations, by spreading
information and organising facilities, could expe
dite the influx and efflux of labourers, to make
them correspond with the movements of capital,
they would unquestionably be useful, by assisting
to diffuse the benefits anticipated from the altered
applications of capital, and to diminish the suffer
ing of those who were about to be abandoned by
the capital upon which they depend for wages.
But if combinations attempt to make labourers
refuse to accommodate themselves to the move
ments of capital, they can only succeed by exclud
ing some from opportunities for bettering their
(condition, and by condemning others to look on
and clamour for undiminished wages, and, per
haps, pine in want, while the tide of capital is
flowing towards other parts, to confer increased
wages upon those who choose to accompany it.
When the workmen of employers who remain to
the last in a declining branch of business, or who
persist in conducting it by means since surpassed
by others, are compelled to submit to lower wages,
can it be said with propriety that capital has
w triumphed” ?
If combinations be so much less capable than
they have been imagined to be, of improving the
condition of under-paid and over-worked labourers, \
is there, it may be asked, no escape for them from
their misery in the present, and no hope of re
dress in the future? Before attempting to an
swer that appeal, it may be observed that there
are few instances of misery so sad that they might
not be made much sadder, and few lots so dark
that they might not be made darker; and com
binations would rather work in those directions
or encourage hopes doomed to disappointment.
There are expressions familiar to us all, which,
whether manufactured on purpose, or diverted
from former uses, have helped to blind us to our
follies and mistakes.* Restrictions on trade were
recommended to us under the name of “protec
tion.” Persistence in error so long as our neigh
bours chose to go wrong, was advised under the
name of “reciprocity.” The free circulation of
capital between borrowers and lenders was long
prevented through fear of the “extortions of
usurers.” And now, combinations among work
men are recommended as bulwarks against the
“tyranny of capitalists.”
The young should leave our schools qualified
not only to use language to express their own
thoughts appropriately, but to detect the misuse
of language by which they might otherwise be
confounded and misled. A tyrant, they know, is
supposed to be an oppressor. When they make
* For specimens of this use of language see letters from Mr
Fawcett in the Times of 17th and 22d March 1865. Some mat
ters are referred to by Mr Fawcett upon which, although beyond
the scope of our text, we would gladly have a little more in
formation. Mr Fawcett, speaking of the labourer of the present
times, says:—
“ He hears our statesmen eloquently describing the vast in
crease in the nation’s wealth, and he does not find that his own
lot is perceptibly improved; mechanical inventions have caused
untold wealth to be created, and yet his hours of toil have not
been materially shortened ; he hears glowing descriptions of
the growth of this mighty metropolis, and at the same time he
knows that the home of the London working man is not more
comfortable, because, as new streets are opened and other im
provements are introduced, places where the labourers can
dwell are more and more restricted.”
Is it true that labourers have not been benefited by “ the vast
increase in the nation’s wealth,” and are less comfortably
lodged in this metropolis ? If these statements cannot be made
with truth of labourers in general, to which in particular will
they apply 1 and why have some been excluded from participa
tion in the blessings enjoyed by others ? If he will tell us what
becomes of the labourers who are refused admittance to, or dis
missed from, the establishments of such employers as Sir Fran
cis Crossley, and thriving co-operative societies, and why they,
in common with the crowds at our dock gates, are thus unfor
tunately situated, he will assist us, and perhaps himself also, to
the information of which we are in search.
�8
COMBINATIONS AND STRIKES
their first attempts to sellltheir^abour, they
scarcely believe themselves. ioB™n the look out
for tyrants. When they obtain an advance of
wages, they do not become conscious of any
tyranny. When some new employer, hearing of
their efficiency, offers them better wages than
their former employers [can afford to give, they do
not suspect the tyrant. W hen employers attract
labourers from districts where they are earning
ten jfflEnings a-weekf by the promise of twenty
shillings; or when enterprising labourers, unsoli
cited by others, quit places where they were
earning ten shillings and apply for employment
at twenty shillings, the acceptance of their ser
vices will not appear tyrannical to them, unwel
come and tyrannical as it may appear to other
labourers in the receipt of thirty shillings.
We have no thought of escaping criticism or
refutation by affirming, that the expositions which
we have attempted are consistent with “ the prin
ciples of political economy,” or are correct appli
cations of those principles. Principles of political
economy, in common with all other principles,
are liable to be misinterpreted and misapplied,
and we do not seek shelter, accordingly, behind
them. Nor shall we be greatly alarmed by those
who do no more than assert that we have sinned
against political economy. Calculations can be
verified, and the analysis of a compound can be
tested by experiment, without ostentatiously ap
pealing to “ the principles of arithmetic or che
mistry.” We beg that our estimate of the probable
influence of combinations upon wages and well
being may be examined by similar methods.
We doubt whether any political economist, master
of his subject, would find much to dissent from in
what we have written. If he would not, he
certainly ought to refrain from the use of such
expressions as “antagonism between capital and
labour,” the effect of which must be to make
truth and sound doctrine unpalatable.
We were told, on one occasion, when comment
ing, perhaps a little warmly, upon this mischievous
trifling with matters of life and death, that such
11 bosh" did ~ot deserve our attention. To this
we replied, it may be very well for you to despise
“ bosh,” but those who listen to bosh as if it were
sense may rush to their ruin, and those who talk
bosh will never know nor talk sense till they can
see through their own bosh.
.
The expression, “ antagonism between capital
and labour,” must have been invented to foster a
prejudice rather than to recommend a truth. We
might as well talk of the antagonism between
food and appetite, or between the shivering body
and clothes. Passing from capital and labour to
capitalists and labourers, they seem to us to be
more attracted towards, than repelled from, each
other. Their respective wants and means of sup
plying wants draw them together. Apart they
are powerless. Buyers and sellers, borrowers
and lenders, are similarly drawn towards each
other. The antagonism, if there be any, is be
tween capitalists and capitalists, labourers and
labourers, buyers and buyers, sellers and sellers,
borrowers and borrowers, lenders and lenders,
each contending for a common object, and appear
ing to frustrate those against whom they contend.
We will not close this paper without reminding
teachers, that the subjects which we have been
urging upon their attention cannot be left un
heeded by their pupils. They, at the close of
school-life, will be compelled to act. The alter
native before them is not action or inaction, but
judicious or injudicious action, the one leading
towards well-being, the other away from it.
Surely there is misery enough caused by wilful
misconduct, and by “ the ills which flesh is heir
to.” Its increase through ignorance is a reproach
to those by whom the ignorance might have been
prevented. It is more in sorrow than in anger
that we blame the courageous, enduring, and
energetic men, who are adding misery to misery
by their mistaken efforts to obtain relief. But
we cannot suppress our anger at the apathy of
those instructors of youth, who persist in a course
of instruction, the end of which is to leave their
pupils in ignorance upon matters, a knowledge of
which is indispensable to good self-guidance
well-being.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Combinations and strikes from the teacher's point of view
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ellis, William
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publiction: London and Edinburgh
Collation: 8 p. ; 23 p.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from 'The Museum and English Journal of Education'. Printed in double columns. Date in Roman numerals.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Thomas Nelson and Sons
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1865
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G5620
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education
Working conditions
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Combinations and strikes from the teacher's point of view), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Conway Tracts
Education
Political Economy
Strikes
Working Classes
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/3662d5d53410b5372489ea1206356a79.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=CCBdBlTUZMFWnqf-6u6ShIksK5igtrfHCxQGVxNtChkw9-dtN1LAB3Gn-6SQQc9GeJxmf1S9fnEHdUEVnQSt68Swm9sxBFw47k0ZnbDMzTrN2knrXyfAPRqzd1KaAPxu6idRC-nwh-NpTIgcnZclwem01-EsDkzTbdVXaN9P3H1GKNkympDY0My-nIeos8TlVhHBUIK3wz%7E24XwGretMDkbin7mNFVjiSlHUgzaOQhTgvm%7EJ2YTtkOc9oCp3Tu3pIOTbiBXHaMPcx0wj0J2eUJnWukmgoj5FKxg8dFe-kIZi3SFPrctnYP2QDOMenOSWyPiMQqVICgFkKjRhEhwR2g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
97d8705d23f6bd56ddb9acc914a49354
PDF Text
Text
B'ZrXS
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
POVERTY:
ITS EFFECTS ON THE .
POLITICAL CONDITION OF TEE PEOPLE.
BY
CHARLES BRADLAUGH.
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT
PUBLISHING
63 FLEET STREET, E.C.
1 8 9 0.
PRICE
ONE
PENNY.
COMPANY,
�Since this little pamphlet was first issued, nearly twentyfive years ago, there have been enormous changes. The
Reform Bills of 1867 and 1884 have placed the suffrage
in town and country in the hands of the very lowest. The
working of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, has
developed in the masses a higher and more acute sense of
suffering as well as capacity for happiness. The incite
ments to the poorest to require from the legislature and
the executive remedies for all wrongs are loud and
frequent. There are fairly good people, as well as very
wild ones, who seem to think that an Act of Parliament
or an Order in Council can provide food for the hungry
and work for the unemployed. In 1877, I was indicted
for trying to place within the reach of the very poor the
knowledge necessary to the application of the arguments
here outlined. From 1877 until now I have, on this
ground, been the object of coarsest assailment and grossest
misrepresentation. Yet, at least, I have the satisfaction
of knowing that the birth-rate in this country has sensibly
diminished; that an association of Church clergymen and
others in the East End of London has helped in this
direction; and that a respectable journal, the Weekly Times
and Echo, has boldly taken the very course for which I
was nearly sent to gaol. I have had, too, the advantage
of reading a judicial deliverance at the Antipodes, which
more than outweighs many of the hard things said of me
here. My co-defendant in 1877 has, in her “Law of
Population”, dealt with details necessary to be known
by the very poor. This pamphlet is, as it was at first
intended, only a finger-post to a possible road.
1890.
�POVERTY, AND ITS EFFECT ON THE POLITICAL
CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
‘'•'Political Economy does not itself instruct how to make a nation
rich, but whoever would be qualified to judge of the means of making
a nation rich must first be a political economist.”—John Stuart Mill.
“The object of political economy is to secure the means of sub
sistence of all the inhabitants, to obviate every circumstance which
might render this precarious, to provide everything necessary for
supplying the wants of society, and to employ the inhabitants so as to
make their several interests accord with then- supplying each other’s
wants.”—Sir James Stewart.
At the close of the eighteenth century, a people rose
searching for upright life, who had previously, for several
generations, depressed by poverty and its attendant hand
maidens of misery, prowled hunger-stricken and discon
solate, stooping and stumbling through the byways of
existence. A terrible revolution resulted in much rough
justice and some brutal vengeance, much rude right, and
some terrific wrong. Amongst the writers who have since
narrated the history of this people’s struggle, some penmen
have been assiduous and eager to search for, and chronicle
the errors, and have even not hesitated to magnify the
crimes, of the rebels; while they have been very slow to
recognise the previous demoralising and dehumanising
tendency of the system rebelled against. In very briefly
dealing with the state of the people in France immediately
prior to the grand convulsion which destroyed the Bastille
Monarchy, and set a glorious example of the vindication of
the rights of man against opposition the most formidable
that can be conceived; I hold that in this illustration of
the condition of the masses in France who sought to erect
on the ruins of arbitrary power the glorious edifice of civil
and religious liberty, an answer may be found to the
question—“What is the.effect of poverty on the political
condition of the people? ”
In taking the instance, of France, it is not that the writer
for one moment imagines that poverty is a word without
meaning in our own lands. In some of the huge aggre
gations making up our great cities there are extremes
of poverty and squalor difficult to equal in any part of the
�4
civilized world. But in England poverty is happily partial,
while in France in the eighteenth century outside the
palaces of the nobles and the mansions of the church,
where luxury, voluptuousness, and effeminacy were
supreme, poverty was universal. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries travellers in France could learn from
the sadness, the solitude, the miserable poverty, the
dismal nakedness of the empty cottages, and the starving,
ragged, population, how much men could endure without
dying . On the one side a discontented, wretched, hungry
mass of tax-providing slaves, and on the other a rapacious,
pampered, licentious, spendthrift monarchy. This culmi
nated in the refusal of the laborers to cultivate the fertile
soil, because the tax-gatherer’s rapacity left an insufficient
remnant to provide the cultivator with the merest necessaries
of life. Then followed “ uncultivated fields, unpeopled
villages, and houses dropping to decay; ” the great cities—
as Paris, Lyons, and Bordeaux—crowded with begging
skeletons, frightful in their squalid disease and loathsome
aspect. Even after the National Assembly had passed
some .measures of temporary alleviation, the distress in
Paris itself was so great that at the gratuitous distributions'
of bread ‘‘old people have been seen to expire with their
hands stretched out to receive the loaf, and women waiting
their turn in front of the baker’s shop were prematurely
delivered of dead children in the open street ”. The great
mass of the people were as ignorant as they were poor;
were ignorant indeed because they were poor. Ignorance
is the pauper’s inalienable heritage. Partial education to
a badly fed and worse housed population is only the stimulus
to the expression of discontent and disaffection. When
the struggle is for the means of subsistence, and these are
only partially obtained, there is little hope for the luxury
of a leisure hour in which other emotions can be cultivated
than those of the mere desires for food and rest—sole results
of the laborious monotonousness of machine work; a round
of toil and sleep closing in death—the only certain refuge
for the worn-out laborer. Without the opportunity
afforded by the possession of more than will satisfy the
immediate wants, there can be little or no culture of the
mental faculties. The toiler, when badly paid and ill-fed,
is separated from the thinker. Nobly-gifted, highlycultured though the poet may be, his poesy has no charms
for the father to whom one hour’s leisure means short
�5
food for his hungry children clamoring for bread. At
best the song like that of the Corn Law Rhymer, or the
Ca Ira of Paris, serves as a hymn of vengeance. The picture
gallery, replete with the finest works of our greatest
masters, is rarely trodden ground to the pitman, the
ploughman, the poor pariahs to whom the conceptions of
the highest art-treasures are impossible. The beauties of
nature are almost equally inaccessible to the dwellers in
the narrow lanes of great cities. Out of your narrow
wynds in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and on to the moor and
mountain side, ye poor, and breathe the pure life-renewing
breezes. Not so ; the moors are for the sportsmen and
peers, not for peasants ; and a Scotch Duke—emblem of
the worst vices of a selfish, but fast decaying House
of Lords—closes miles of heather against the pedestrian’s
foot. But even this paltry oppression is unheeded. Duke
Despicable is in unholy alliance with King Poverty, who
mocks at the poor mother and her wretched, ragged family,
when from the garret or cellar in a great Babylon wilder
ness they set out to find green fields and new life. Work
days are sacred to bread, and clothes, and rent; hunger, in
clement weather, and pressing landlord forbid the study
of nature ’twixt Monday morn and Saturday night, and on
Sunday God’s ministers require to teach a weary people
how to die, as if the lesson were not unceasingly inculcated
in their incessant toil. Oh! horrid mockery; men need
teaching how to live. According to religionists, this world’s
bitter misery is a dark and certain preface, “ just pub
lished,” to a volume of eternal happiness, which for 2,000
years has been advertised as in the press and ready for
publication, but which after all may never appear. And
notwithstanding that everyday misery is so very potent,
mankind seem to heed it but very little. The second
edition of a paper containing the account of a battle in
which some 5,000 were killed and wounded, is eagerly
perused, but the battle in which poverty kills and maims
hundreds of thousands, is allowed to rage with com
paratively small expression of concern.
“ If a war or a pestilence threatens us, every one is excited at
the prospect of the misery which may result; prayers are put
up, and every solemn and mournful feeling called forth; but
these evils are to poverty but as a grain of sand in the desert,
as the light waves that ruffle a dark sea of despair. Wars
come, and go, and perhaps their greatest evils consist in their
�6
aggravation of poverty by the high prices they cause ; pesti
lences last a season and then leave us; but poverty, the grim
tyrant of our race, abides with us through all ages and in
a 1 circumstances. For each victim that war and pestilence
have slain, for each, heart that they have racked with suffering,
poverty has slain its millions whom it has first condemned
to drag out wearily a life of bondage and degradation.”
The poor in France were awakened by Rousseau’s start
ling declaration that property was spoliation; they knew
they had been spoiled, the logic of the stomach was con
clusive ; empty bellies and aching brains were the pre
decessors of a revolution which sought vengeance when
justice was denied, but which full-stomached critics of
later days have calumniated and denounced.
Warned by. the past, ought we not to make some
endeavor to give battle to that curse of all old countries
-—poverty ? The fearful miseries of want of food and
leisure which the poor have to endure seriously hinder
their political enfranchisement. Those who desire that
men and women shall have the rights of citizens, should be
conscious how low the poor are trampled dowm, and how
incapable poverty renders them for the performance of the
duties of citizenship. The question of political freedom is
really determined by the wealth or poverty of the masses;
to this, extent, at any rate, that a poverty-stricken people
must, if that state of pauperism has long existed, neces
sarily be an ignorant and enslaved people.
The problem is, how to remove or at least to lessen
poverty,. as it is only by the diminution of poverty that
the political emancipation of the nation can be rendered
possible. Twenty years ago the average food of the
agricultural laborer in England was about half that
allotted by the gaol dietary to sustain criminal life. So
that the peasant who built and guarded his master’s hay
stack got worse fed and worse lodged than the incendiary
convicted for burning it down. An anonymous writer,
thirty years ago, said :—
The rural population of many parts of England are, as
a general rule, half-starved. They have to toil like bond
slaves, with no leisure for amusement, education, or any other
blessing which elevates or sweetens human life; and after all,
they have only half enough of the very first essential of life,
the working classes in the towns, are also miserably paid, often
half-starved ; and are sweated to death in unhealthy sedentary
diudgery, such as tailoring, cotton-spinning, weaving, etc.”
�4
How can suoli poverty bo removed and prevented?
“ Thero is but one possible mode of preventing any evil—
namely, to seek for and romovo its cause. The cause of low
wages, or in other words of Poverty, is over-population; that
is, the existence of too many people in proportion to the food,
of too many laborers in proportion to the capital. It is of the
very first importance, that the attention of all who seek to
remove poverty, should never be diverted from this great truth.
The disproportion between the numbers and the food is the
only real cause of social poverty. Individual cases of poverty
may be produced by individual misconduct, such as drunken
ness, ignorance, laziness, or disoaso ; but these of all other
accidental influences must bo wholly thrown out of the question
in considering the permanent cause, and aiming at the pre
vention of poverty. Drunkenness and ignorance, moreover,
a,re far more frequently tho effect than the cause of poverty.
Population and food, like two runners of unequal swiftness
chained together, advance sido by side; but tho ratio of
increase of tlio former is so immensely superior to that of tho
latter, that it is necessarily greatly cheeked ; and tho chocks are
of course either more deaths or fewer births—that is, either
positive or preventive.”
Unless the necessity of the preventive or positive chocks
to population bo perceived ; unless it be clearly seen, that
they must operate in one form, if not in another; and that
though individuals may escape them, the race cannot; human
society is a hopeless and insoluble riddle.
Quoting John Stuart Mill, the writor from whom the
foregoing extracts have been made, proceeds—
“The groat object of statesmanship should bo to raise tho
habitual standard of comfort among the working classes, and
to bring them into such a position as shows them most,
clearly that their welfare depends upon themselves. For
this purpose ho advises that there should bo, first, an ex
tended scheme of national emigration, so as to produce a,
striking and sudden improvement in the condition of the
laborers loft at home, and raise their standard of comfort;
also that tho population truths should bo disseminated as
widely as possible, so that a powerful public fooling should
bo a,wakened among tho working classes against undue pro
creation on tho part of any individual among them- a feel
ing which oould not fail greatly to influence individual conduct;
and also that we should use every endeavor to got rid of
tho present system of labor—-namely, that of employers
and employed, and adopt to a. great extent that of independent
or associated industry. His res,son for this is, that a, hired
laborer, who has no personal interest in tho work he is
�8
engaged in, is generally reckless and without foresight,
living from hand to mouth, and exerting little control over
his powers of procreation; whereas the laborer who has a
personal stake in his work, and the feeling of independence
and self-reliance which the possession of property gives, as,
for instance, the peasant proprietor, or member of a co
partnership, has far stronger motives for self-restraint, and
can see much more clearly the evil effects of having a large
family.”
The end in view in all this is the attainment of a greater
amount of happiness for humankind—the rendering life
more worth the living, by distributing more equally than
at present its love, its beauties, and its charms. In one of
his latest publications, John Stuart Mill wrote—
‘ ‘ In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to
enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who
has a moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is
capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and
unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the
will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happi
ness within his reach, he will not fail to find this enviable
existence, if he escape the possible evils of life, the great
sources of physical and mental suffering, such as indigence,
disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of
objects of affection. The main stress of the problem lies,
therefore, in the contest with these calamities, from which it is
a rare good fortune entirely to escape, which, as things now are,
cannot be obviated, and often cannot be in any material degree
mitigated. Yet no one whose opinion deserves a moment’s
consideration can doubt that most of the great positive evils of
the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human
affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within
narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying suffering,
may be completely extinguished by the wisdom of society,
combined with the good sense and providence of individuals.
Even that most intractable of enemies, disease, may be in
definitely reduced in dimensions by good physical and moral
education and proper control of noxious influences, while the
progress of science holds out a promise for the future of still
more direct conquests over this detestable foe.”
My desire is to provoke discussion of this subject
amongst all classes, and I affirm, therefore, as a proposi
tion which I am prepared to support—‘1 That the political
condition of the people can never be permanently reformed
until the cause of poverty has been discovered and the
evil itself prevented and removed.”
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Beadlaugh, 63 Fleet St., E.C.—1890.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Poverty : its effect on the political condition of the people
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bradlaugh, Charles [1833-1891]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: First published 30 May 1863 in the National Reformer. - 1890 ed. has a foreword, unsigned, by Bradlaugh. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Freethought Publishing Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1890
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N102
Subject
The topic of the resource
Social problems
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Poverty : its effect on the political condition of the people), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Political Economy
Poverty
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/1158e85b09dfca834c59418580ed93a7.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ahE3UBZ%7EidILQEiUlpzMN19RuSoaHJuXtdmVgXvaTucG6CwDICi3BFh-uR1fxfrX8AjNfrS-J3L841wSduRQ-WS3Br-bpJL60CDn0Dzo%7ERR3HGfaj30i2UCG%7EivAOiN6itvpZssGJybQbfkOP4PIfrH58978s3-6eBpNZY%7ECd6Iqf2acBp1t6pXTH4rMHJAS%7Enu1gWxybdnzx5lotyG%7EVjoVpExV%7E4-SxjLj4LdPxodS3UE1uYLVCl-3UamEaKNxZ4CsTubVR7oDb8XQQ347HVBxC%7EGvwfMFJvJGNmz7Rm%7EchTzMaxwLVcwH7n%7EpWYNH-dLGZDW%7EcRBOSv4NIKcB8A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
a24dfb5bb13874813cca8f04a22446a9
PDF Text
Text
OU
T2ETZE
Bights nf I’alunir
ACCORDING TO
JOHN RUSKIN.
ARRANGED BY
TLLOIVE^NS BARCLAY.
WITH-INTRODUCTION BY
JAMES HOLMES, Sec. Amalgamated Hosiery Union.
.
. .
“ I know no better definition of the rights of man
SHALT NOT STEAL I
THOU SHALT NOT BE STOLEN FROM:
Thou
what a Society
were that—Plato’s Republic.. More’s Utopia, mere emblems of it!
Give every man what is his—the accurate price of what he has done and
been—no more shall any complain, neither shall the earth suffer any
more.”—Carlyle.
Chas. D. Merrick, Printer, 34, Cank Street, Leicester.
�INTRODUCTION.
He that will not follow truth, is a slave to error, and he that shrinks
from the full examination of all opinions on vital questions, is either more in
love with his own opinions than with truth, which is egotism : or he is afraid
of truth, which is cowardice.
Equality of social condition should be the aim of all good men. The
basis of true worth is manhood and womanhood, touched into sweetness
by fraternity and justice.
Labour is the great equaliser—and all capable men and women in a happy
and progressive community must work either with head or hand or both.
What a revolution would be produced if the words attributed to St. Paul
were applied to Modem Society and enforced; “ If a man will not work
neither should he eat! ” What a driving out of Royal and Aristocratic drones
would take place ; and what a decrease of gout there would be I Then what
should the labourer get for his work ;—a mere pittance in the form of wages,
without any thought as to whether the wages are sufficient or not? No;
emphatically no ! He should have a full reward in the full produce of labour,
so that he might have in health more than enough, then he might provide for
sickness when it overtakes him, and a competence for old age, so that life may
be made worth living to the workers instead of millions of money accumulating
in the hands of a few,—like the Rothschilds—who are said to be worth
£200,000,000, not obtained by labour or honest exchange, but from the produce
of labour, of which the labourers have been spoiled.
These statements, by many, may be thought extreme, and contrary to our
best and greatest thinkers and teachers of Political Economy. Take these
words from one who has been called “ The Father of Political Economy”:—
“ The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompense or wages of labour.”
(Wealth of Nations, chap, 8). Thus we see that our statements are strictly in
accord with Adam Smith. Labour is the foundation of real dignity, for only
by it do we contribute to the well being of one another.
In the title of the pamphlet containing the teachings of the high-toned,
moral, and original teacher—John Ruskin-the same truth is implied. In his
words are couched some of the truest and noblest ideas. But very few working
men have either the time or means to get at the works of great minds like
Ruskin, so the arranger of the following extracts has culled from his book—
“ Unto this last,” some of the best teachings on the question of labour and
wages, which I think has been done wisely and well; and if working men will
only d'ink of the stream brought to their doors, they will be refreshed thereby,
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the great truths here set forth.
On the organization of labour I would specially call your attention to the
following points . “Training Schools for youth, in which there shall be taught:
(a) the laws of health; (b) habits of gentleness and justice ; and (c) the calling
by which he (the youth) is to live.” These kind of schools exist to day in
Sweden, Germany and Switzerlani ; and to the matter, under the headings
—“ His scheme,”—“ Riches and Wealth,”—“Proof/’—“The whole question
one of justice.”—-“Injustice of the present system,”—“Wages,”—“Cause of
Poverty,”—“The true function of the Capitalist,” and “Last Words.”
Let us all endeavour to become mire thoughtful, competent, intelligent as
workers, making the best we can of our time, money, and energy, for the im
provement of the great body of the world’s workers, and help to make it as
impossible for the idlers to thrive as it is for the drones to live among the bees.
JAMES HOLMES.
�THE
RIGHTS OF LABOUR
According to JOHN RUSKIN.
jlrHE object of this pamphlet is to place before the workers,
in a cheap form, the main views of one of the greatest
thinkers of any age, on a subject that ought to interest them more
than any other. The subject is Political Economy, in other
words, the relation of Capital and Labour. Until working men
understand thoroughly what this relation is, all hope is vain of
bettering their condition as a class.
“Unto this Last,” is the book from which the following extracts
are taken. It met with bitter opposition from all the usual
enemies of the working man—including Press, Priests, and Pro
fessors The author had great difficulty in getting it published ;
a fact not to be wondered at when we consider its revolutionary.
character, combined with the logic, grace, and vigour, of which
he is so capable. The Greeks fabled Plato as born with a nest
of bees in his mouth, emblematical of his future honeyed
words. They said, if the Gods came down to dwell among men,
they would speak the language of Plato. Mr. Ruskin has been
aptly termed “ The modern Platothere can be no doubt the
resemblance'is strong. Mazzini describes him as “The most
analytic mind in Europe.” His lofty morality is a reproach to
bishopdom. He lashes the hypocrite and scourges the oppressor;
Meanness and injustice fall back from his terrific onslaught.
Sweet to the innocent and good ; Gentle to the erring and unfor
tunate. True Philosopher; mighty Poet without the name,
Prophet too; not a visionary, but one who sees the very truth,—no will-o’-the-wisp, but a beacon-light to lighten men’s darkness,—
a great teacher, whose clear, brilliant, and powerful language, is but
the fitting conductor of original and valuable thought. Such
is Ruskin,
’ In order to estimate him the more accurately, we are going to
let him speak for himself, only occasionally making a note or
comment.
�4
Mr, Ruskin’s Objects.
He informs us in his preface, that his first object is to give an
accurate and stable definition of Wealth, and as he believes
“ for the first time in plain English.” His second object is to
show that “ the acquisition of wealth is finally possible only under
certain moral conditions of society—of which, quite the first, is a
belief in the existence, and, even for practical purposes, in the
attainability of honesty.” A third object is the organization of
labour ; but this he only casually touches upon, because he thinks
it simple “if we can once get a sufficient quantity of honesty,” and
impossible if we cannot.
His Scheme.
Mr. Ruskin has a scheme of organization of labour, and the
most extraordinary part, is that dealing with wages, which, it is
contended, should be fixed. “ Lest,” he says, “the reader should
be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the following investiga
tion of first principles, I will state at once the worst of the creed
at which I wish him to arrive :
Firstly—There should be training schools for youth, established
at government cost and under government discipline, over the
whole country; that every child born in the country should, at
the parents’ wish be permitted, and in certain cases be under
penalty required to pass through them ; and that in these schools
the child should, with other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter
to be considered, imperatively be taught, with the best skill of
teaching that the country could produce, the following three things:
(a) —The laws of health and the exercises enjoined by them ;
(b) —Habits of gentleness and justice ; and
(c) —The calling by which he is to live.
Secondly—That in connection with these training schools, there
should be established, also entirely under government regulation,
manufactories and workshops for the production and sale of every
necessary of life, and for the exercise of every useful art. And
that, interfering no whit with private enterprise, nor setting any
restraints or tax on private trade, but leaving both to do their best
and beat the government if they could—there should, at these
government manufactories and shops, be authoritatively good and
exemplary work done, and pure and true substance sold, so that a
man could be sure, if he chose to pay the government price, that
he got for his money bread that was bread, ale that was ale, and
work that was work.
�5
Thirdly.—That any man or woman, boy or girl, out of employ
ment, should be at once received at the nearest government school,
and set to such work as it appeared on trial they were fit for, at a
fixed rate of wages determined every year. That being found in
capable of work through ignorance, they should be taught, or being
found incapable of work through sickness should be tended ; but
that, being found objecting to work, they should be set under
compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more painful and degrad
ing forms of necessary toil, especially to that in mines and other
places of danger, (such danger being, however, diminished to the
utmost by careful regulation and discipline), and the due wages
of such work be retained—cost of compulsion first abstracted—
to be at the workman’s command so soon as he has come to
sounder mind respecting the laws of employment.
Lastly.—That for the old and destitute, comfort and home
should be provided; which provision, when misfortune had been,
by the working of such a system, sifted from guilt, would be
honourable instead of disgraceful to the receiver. For (I repeat
this passage out of my Political Economy of Art, to which the
reader is referred for further detail), ‘ a 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, and, 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.”
Principles first.
So far, Mr. Ruskin’s scheme of organization, as given in his
preface, and which, though apart from his main work, it was
thought worth giving. As regards the expense of carrying out his
scheme, he contends that the economy in crime alone resulting
from the adoption of it, would support it ten times over ; as for
the rest, he bids the reader remember that “ in a science dealing
with, so subtle elements as those of human nature, it is only
possible to answer for the final truth of principles, not for the
direct success of plans. What can be immediately accomplished
is always questionable; what can be finally accomplished, incon
ceivable,”
What Political Economy is.
We now proceed to Mr. Ruskin’s Political Economy proper.
Political Economy, he says, “ consists in the production, preser
vation, and distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or
�6
pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time ;
the shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood ; the
builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mortar■ the house
wife who guards against all waste in the kitchen ; and the singer
who rightly disciplines and never overstrains his voice; are all
Political Economists in the true and final sense. Political Economy
teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life,
and to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction. And
if, in a state of infancy, they suppose indifferent things, such as ex
crescences of shell fish, and pieces of blue and red stone * to be
valuable, and spend a large measure of labour which ought to be
employed in the extension and ennobling of life, in diving and
digging for them, and cutting them into various shapes,—or if in
the same state of infancy, they imagine precious and beneficent
things, such as air, light and cleanliness, to be valueless
and peace, trust, and love, by which alone they can possess or use
anything to be prudently exchangeable when the market offers, for
gold, iron, and excrescences,—the only science of Political Econo
my teaches them in all these cases, what is vanity and what
substance.”
“ Theiobject of Political Economy is to get good method of
consumption, to use everything and to use it nobly,—consumption
absolute is the end, crown and perfection of production. Twenty
people can gain money tor one who can use it. The question for
a nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it
produces.”
What Wealth Is.
Mr. Ruskin goes on to ask what Wealth is; he draws attention to
the definition of Mr. Mill, who, he thinks, has written the “ most
reputed essay of modern times ” on the subject.
Mr. Mill says,
“To be wealthy, is to have a large stock of useful articles.” “ I
accept this definition ” says our author, “ but let us understand it,
ist.—What does to have mean? and.—What is the meaning of
useful? We will first examine our verb. As thus: Lately in a
wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt
about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he
was found afterwards at the bottom of the sea. Now, as he was
sinking—had he the gold ? or had the gold him ? I presume the
reader will see that possession, or having., consists not only in the
quantity or nature of the thing possessed, but also, (and in a
greater degree) in its suitableness to the person possessing it.
Therefore we must make the have depend upon a can, and say
the possession of useful articles which we can use. Next for our
* Pearls, saphires, and rubies.
�7
adjective. What is the meaning of usefult” It depends on the
person much more than the article, whether its usefulness or
ab-usefulness will be the quality developed in it. When you give
a man half-a-crown, it depends on his disposition whether he is
rich or po.or with it—whether he will buy disease, ruin, and hatred,
or buy health, advancement and domestic love. Thus the moral
elements—human capacities and dispositions, must be taken into
consideration. But the Economists tell us (Mill’s Political
Economy, Book iii. Chap. i. Sec. 2) moral considerations have
nothing to do with Political Economy.” Our author, of course,
here speaks ironically, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions.
Wealth and value are with Mr. Ruskin synonymous terms. Value
he derives from Latin valere, to be well, or strong in life, (if a man)
or valiant; strong for life, (if a thing) or valuable. To be valuable
is to avail towards life ; to make it so avail is to be valiant; and
wealth therefore is “ The Possession of the Valuable by the
Valiant.”
Difference between Riches and Wealth.
Mr. Ruskin makes a distinction between Wealth and Riches.
“ Riches ” he says, “ is a relative word implying its opposite
‘ poverty ’ as positively as the word ‘ north ’ implies its opposite
‘south.’
The force ^of the,guinea you have in your pocket
depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour’s
pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you. The
degree of power it possesses, depends accurately upon the need or
desire he has for it; and the art of making yourself rich in the
ordinary mercantile sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the
art of keeping your neighbour poor. There is precisely as much
poverty or debt on one side, as riches on the other; therefore
riches do not necessarily involve an addition to the actual property,
or well-being of the state in which they exist. The power of
riches is in an inverse proportion to the number of persons who
are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same price
for an article of which the supply is limited. To become rich wre
must establish the maximum of inequality in our own favour.”
These statements Mr. Ruskin attempts to prove by examples.
Proof.
He supposes “Two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast
maintaining themselves by their own labour. Their Political Econ
omy would consist in careful preservation and just division of
their possessions. But suppose that one fell ill at a critical time_
�8
him. The companion might say with perfect justice ‘ I will do
this additional work for you, but you must do as much for me
another time. I will count the hours I spend on your ground,
and you will give me the same number whenever I need your
help, and you are able to give it.’ Suppose the disabled man’s
sickness to continue for several years, what will be the positions of
the two men when the invalid is able to resume work? As a
community they must be poorer than if no sickness had taken place.
The healthy man may have toiled with an energy quickened by
the enlarged need, but in the end, his own property must have
suffered by the withdrawal of his time and thought from it. This
is, of course, an example of one only out of many ways in which
inequality of possession may be established, giving rise to the mer
cantile forms of riches and poverty. In the instance before us,
one of the men might from the first have directly chosen to be
idle, and to put his life in pawn for present ease; or he might have
mismanaged his land, and been compelled to have recourse to his
neighbour for food ’and help, pledging his future labour for it.
But what I want the reader to note is the fact that the establish
ment of the mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon
labour, signifies a political diminution of the real wealth which
consists in substantial possessions.
Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary
course of affairs of trade. Suppose three men, instead of two, to
form a little isolated republic. Suppose the third man undertakes
to superintend the transference of commodities for the other two.
If this carrier, or messenger, always brings to each estate, from the
other what is chiefly wanted at the right time, the operations of
the two farmers will go on ’prosperously and the largest possible
result in produce be obtained. But suppose no intercourse
between the land-owners is possible, except through the travelling
agent, and that, after a time, this agent, watching the course of
each man’s agriculture, keeps back the articles entrusted, until
there comes a period of extreme necessity for them on one side or
the other, and then exacts in exchange for them, all that the dis
tressed farmers can spare of other kinds of produce. He might
eventually become possessed of the superfluous produce of the two
estates, and in some year of scarcity purchase them both for him
self, and maintain the former proprietors thence-forward as his
labourers or servants. This would be a case of commercial wealth
acquired on the exactest principles of modern Political Economy.
But more distinctly even than'in the former instance, it is manifest
that the wealth of the state, or three men considered as a society,
is less than jt would have been had the merchant been content
with juster profit. The operations of the two agriculturalists have
�9
been cramped to the utmost; the continual limitation of the things
they wanted at critical times, together with the failure of courage
consequent on the prolongation of a struggle for mere existence,
without any sense of permanent gain, will have diminished the
result of their labor ; and the stores finally accumulated by the
merchant (the carrier or messenger) will not in anywise be equi
valent to those which, had his dealings been honest, would have
filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his own.
The Whole Question one of Justice.
“ The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the ad
vantage but even the quantity of national wealth, resolves itself
finally into one of abstract justice. It is impossible to conclude
of any given mass of acquired wealth whether it signifies good or
evil, because it may be indicative on the one hand of faithful in
dustries, progressive energies, and productive ingenuities, or, on
the other, it may be indicative of ruinous chicane, mortal luxury,
merciless tyranny. One mass of money is the outcome of action
which has created,—another, of action which has annihilated,—ten
times as much in the gathering of it; such and such strong hands
have been paralysed as if they had been numbed by nightshade ; so
many strong men’s courage broken ; this and the other false direc
tion given to labour, and lying image of prosperity set up. That
which seems to be wealth, may in verity be only the gilded index
of far-reaching ruin—a wrecker’s handful of coin gleaned from the
beach to which he has beguiled an argosy.” Mr. Ruskin con
cludes this part of the subject with a classification of the people
who become rich, and the people who remain poor, respectively, in
a community regulated only by supply and demand. The persons
who became rich are, generally speaking, “industrious, resolute,
proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insen
sitive, and ignorant.” The persons who remain poor are, “ the
entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble,
the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the wellinformed, the improvident, the impulsively wicked, the clumsy
knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful and just person.”
Capital,
Mr. Ruskin next discourses of that kind of wealth known as
Capital. Capital signifies “ head, source, or root. It is a root
that does not enter into vital function until it produces something
else than a root—something different from itself. Capital that pro
duces nothing but capital is only root producing root, bulb issuing
in bulb ; seed issuing in seed—never in bread. “ The best and
�io
simplest type of capital is a well-made ploughshare, and the true
question for every capitalist is not ‘how many ploughs have
you ?’ but ‘ where are your furrows ?’ not, ‘ how quickly will this
capital reproduce itself?’ but ‘ what substance will it furnish good
for life ? What work construct protective of life ? if none, its own
reproduction is useless—if worse than none ffor capital may destroy
life as well as support it) its own reproduction is worse than
useless.” As might be expected from the foregoing, Mr. Ruskin’s
views on the employment of capital are utterly at variance with those
of current political economy
Injustice of the Present System.
“ There is not in history,” says he, “record of anything so dis
graceful to the human intellect as that the commercial text, “Buy
in the cheapest market, sell in the dearest,” could represent an
available principle of economy. Charcoal may be cheap among
your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap after an
earthquake................ There are few bargains in which the buyer
can ascertain with precision that the seller would have taken no
less—or the seller, that the purchaser would have given no more.
This prevents neither from striving to injure the other, nor from
accepting for a scientific principle that he is to buy for the least
and sell for the most, though what the real least or most may be,
he cannot tell. In like manner a just person lays it down for a
principle that he is to pay a just price without being able to ascer
tain precisely the limits of such price. Now it is easier to deter
mine what a man ought to have for his work, than what his
necessities will compel him to take for it. There is no equitable
reason in a man’s being poor, that if he give me a pound of bread
to-day I should return him less than a pound of bread to-morrow.
Again, I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, or
20,000 smiths, may be ready to forge it; their number does not in
one atom’s weight affect the question of the equitable payment of
the one who does forge it. The “robbery of the poor because
they are poor,” says our author elsewhere, “ is especially the mer
cantile form of theft. The ordinary highwayman’s opposite form
of robbery of the rich because they are rich, being less profitable
and more dangerous than the robbery of the poor, is rarely prac
tised by persons of discretion!'
Wages.
We must now consider Mr. Ruskin’s ideas on the recompense
of labour, and the method of the recompense. “Perhaps,” says
he, “ one of the most curious facts in the history of human error,
is the denial bv the political economist of the nosihilif-v r>f
�ri
lating wages so as to fix the rate ; while for all the important, and
most of the important labour on the earth, wages are already so
regulated. We do not sell our Prime-ministership by Dutch
auction; nor on the decease of a bishop, whatever may be the
advantages of simony, do we (yet) offer his diocese to the clergy
man who will take it at the lowest contract. Sick, we do not
inquire for a physician who takes less than a guinea : Litigious,
we never think of reducing six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence.
The best labour always has been, and is, as all labour ought to be,
paid by an invariable standard, ‘What,’the reader perhaps answers
amazedly, ‘ pay good and bad workmen alike ?”
Certainly ! You pay with equal fee your good and bad phy
sician and prime-minister, why not your bricklayer ? “ Nay, but
I choose my physician. By all means choose your bricklayer; that
is the proper reward of the good workman, to be “ chosen.” The
natural and right system respecting all labour is that it should be
paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the
bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural, and destructive
system is, when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at
half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by
his competition to work for an inadequate sum. So far as you
employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work ;
as a bad clergyman takes his tithes, a bad physician his fee, and a
bad lawyer his costs; this I say partly because the best work
never was nor ever will be done for money at all, but chiefly
because the moment the people know they have to pay the bad
and good alike, they will try to discern the one from the other,
and not use the bad. A sagacious writer in The Scotsman asks
me if I should like any common scribbler to be paid by Smith,
Elder & Co., as their good authors are ? I should if they em
ployed him; but would seriously recommend them, for the
scribbler’s sake, as well as their own, not to employ him. In
practice, according to the laws of demand and supply, when two
men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants to have
it done, the two men underbid each other for it, and the one who
gets it to do is underpaid. But when two men want the work
done, and there is only one man ready to do it, the two men who
want it done overbid each other, and the workman is overpaid.”
Mr, Ruskin goes in for just pay.
On this question of labour and its reward, we will quote one
more extract from him : “ I have been naturally asked several
times, ‘ But what are you to do with your bad unemployed
workmen ?’ Well, it seems to me the question might have
occurred to you before. Your housemaid’s place is vacant—vou
�12
give ^20 a-year. Two girls come for it—one neatly dressed, the
other dirtily; one with good recommendations, the other with
none. You do not, under these circumstances, usually ask the
dirty one if she will come for ^15 or ^12 , and on her consent
ing take her instead of the well-recommended one. Still less do
you try to beat both down by making them bid against each
other till you can hire both, one at ^£12 a-year, the other at ^8.
You simply take the one fittest for the place and send away the
other, not perhaps concerning yourself with the question you now
so impatiently put to me. ‘ What is to become of her ?’ Verily
it is a question of weight. ‘ Your bad workman, idler, and rogue,
what are you to do with him ? Meantime, consider whether it
may not be advisable to produce, as few as possible. If you
examine into the history of rogues you will find that they are as
truly manufactured articles as anything else, and it is just because
our present system of Political Economy gives so large a stimulus
to that manufacture, thafyou may know it to be a false one. We
had better seek for a system which will develope honest men, than
for one which will deal cunningly with vagabonds.
How to get the most Work out of a man.
The greatest average of work and greatest benefit to the com
munity would be obtained from a servant by our present pro
cedure, if he were an engine of which the motive power was
steam, magnetism, gravitation, or any other agent of calculable
force. But the largest quantity of work will be done by this
curious engine man, when the motive force—that is to say, the
will or spirit of the creature is brought to its greatest strength by
its own proper fuel; namely, by the affections.
Observe, I am here considering the affections wholly as a motive
power; not at all as things in themselves desirable or noble. I
look at them simply as an anomalous force, rendering every one
of the ordinary Political Economist’s calculations nugatory . . . .
If the master, instead of endeavouring to get as much work as
possible from the servant, seeks rather to render his appointed
and necessary work beneficial to him, and to forward his interests
in all just and wholesome ways, the real amount of work ultimately
done, or of good rendered by the person so cared for, will indeed
be the greatest possible. Nor is this one whit less true because
indulgence will be frequently abused and kindness met with in
gratitude. For the servant who, gently treated, is ungrateful,
treated ungently, will be revengeful; and the man who is dishonest
to a liberal master, will be injurious to an unjust one. And as
�i3
with servants, so with employees. The only means which the
master has of doing justice to the men employed by him, is to ask
himself sternly whether he is dealing with such as he would with
his own son, if compelled by circumstances his son had to take
such a position. As the captain of a ship is bound to be the last
man to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share his last crust
with the sailors in case of famine, so the manufacturer in any
commercial crisis or distress, is bound to take the suffering of it
with his men, and even to take more of it for himself than he
allows his men to feel—as a father would in a famine, shipwreck,
or battle, sacrifice himself for his son.
The true function of the Capitalist.
For the manufacturer’s or merchant’s function in a state is to
provide for it as the soldier’s is to defend it, the physician’s to keep
it in health, and the lawyer’s to enforce justice in it. It is no more
the function of the merchant to get profit, for himself, than it is a
teacher’s to get his stipend. The stipend is a due and necessary
adjunct, but not the object of his life, if he is a true teacher, any
more than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of life to a true
physician. Each has a work to do irrespective of fee—to be done
at any cost. All of which sounds very strange : the only real
strangeness in the matter being, nevertheless, that it should so
sound. For all this is true, and that not partially nor theoretically,
but everlastingly and practically; all other doctrine than this
respecting matters political being false in premises, absurd in
deduction, and impossible in practice, consistently with any pro
gressive state of national life.” It is impossible to do justice to
Mr. Ruskin in a short pamphlet like this. Those who are interested
in Political Economy (which is essentially the science of the
working-man), should co-operate to get his book and study for
themselves. One or two more extracts and we must draw to a
close.
The Cause of Poverty.
Speaking of the poor, our author says, “ Their distress (irres
pective of that caused by sloth, minor errors, or crime), arises on
the grand scale from the two reacting forces of competition and
oppression. In all the ranges of human thought, I know none so
melancholy as the speculations of Political Economists on the
population question. It is proposed to better the condition of the
labourer by giving him higher wages. ‘ Nay,’ says the economist,
‘ if you raise his wages, he will either people down to the same
point of misery at which you found him, or drink your wages away.
�14
He will, I know it ! ’ Who gave him this will ? Suppose it were
your own son of whom you spoke, declaring to me that you dared
not take him into your firm, nor even give him his just labourer’s
wages, because if you did, he would die of drunkenness, and leave
half a score of children to the parish. ‘Who gave your son these
dispositions?’ I should enquire, ‘ Has he them by inheritance or
by education ? By one or the other they must come ; and as in
him so also in the poor. Either these poor are of a race essentially
different from ours, and unredeemable, (which, however often
implied, I have heard none yet openly say,) or else by such care
as we have ourselves received, we may make them continent and
sober as ourselves—wise and dispassionate as we are—models
arduous of imitation.”
Are there too many of us ?
“ There is not yet, nor will yet for ages be, any real over popula
tion in the world ; but a local over-population, or more accurately,
a degree of population locally unmanageable under existing circum
stances, for want of forethought and sufficient machinery,
necessarily shows itself by pressure of competition; and the taking
advantage of this competition by the purchaser to obtain their
labour unjustly cheap, consumates at once their suffering and his
own. The multiplication of animals is checked only by want of
food, and by the hostility of races ; the population of the gnat is
restrained by the hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow
by the scarcity of gnats. Man, considered as an animal, is indeed
limited by the same laws : hunger or plague, or war, are the
necessary and only restraints upon his increase—effectual restraints
hitherto—his principal study having been how most swiftly to
destroy himself, or ravage his dwelling-place; and his highest
skill directed to give range to the famine, seed to the plague, and
sway to the sword. But, considered as other than an animal, his
increase is not limited by these laws, but by his courage and his
love. His race has its bounds, but these have not yet been
reached, nor will be reached for ages. The art of life has yet to
be learned. It is one very awful form of the operations of wealth
in Europe that it is entirely capitalists’ wealth which supports unjust
wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them. They
are waged gratis. Nations like France and England have not
grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an hour’s
piece of mind with—purchasing of each other ten millions sterling
worth of consternation annually : a remarkable crop—half thorns,
half aspen leaves—sown, reaped, and granaried by the ‘ science ’ of
the modern Polit:cal Economist teaching covetousness instead
of truth.............
�i5
Last Words.
“ Nevertheless, I desire to leave this one great fact clearly stated,
There, is no wealth but life, life including all its powers of love, of
joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which
nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings ;
that man is wealthiest who, having perfected the functions of his
own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both
personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.
Strive then to make Economy the law of the house ; strict, simple,
generous ; waste nothing and grudge nothing; care in no wise to
make more of money, but care to make much of it; remembering
always the great, palpable, inevitable fact—-the rule and root of all
economy—that what one person has, another cannot have ; and
that every atom of substance, of whatever kind, used or consumed,
is so much human life spent—so much life spent either in
preventing and slaying of life, or in gaining more. Consider
whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by
any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accom
panies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future—
innocent and exquisite ; luxury for all and by the help of all : but
luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant. The
cruelest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blind
fold. Raise the veil boldly—face the light. What is chiefly
needed to-day is the desire for a life rich by joyful human labour.
Scenes smooth in field, fair in garden, full in orchard; trim,
sweet, and frequent in homestead ; full of currents of undersound ;
triplets of birds, murmur and chirp of insects, deep-toned words
of men and wayward trebles of childhood. We need examples of
people who will show what the maximum quantity of pleasure is
that may be obtained by a consistent well-administered com
petence, modest, confessed, and laborious. Who will decide for
themselves that they will be happy in the world, and resolve
to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher
fortune, but deeper felicity : making the first of possession, self
possession and “ honouring themselves in the calm pursuits of
peace.”
What working man is there that will not reverence
these far-seeing and noble utterances of a great and good man,
devoted to the cause of the poor and down-trodden—showing the
truth and demanding justice.
At all events, reader, unless you have had a previous intro
duction, may we not count on having awakened an interest in you
to examine still further into the teachings of John Ruskin,
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The rights of labour : according to John Ruskin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ruskin, John [1819-1900]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Leicester
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: The binding process has trimmed the bottom edge too close to the text, taking away the last line on p. 7 and cutting through the last line on p. 10. Printed by Chas. D. Merrick, 34 Cane Street, Leicester.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
T400
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Barclay, Thomas (arr)
Holmes, James
Subject
The topic of the resource
Socialism
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The rights of labour : according to John Ruskin), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Political Economy
Social conditions
Social conditions;Socialism
Socialism
Working Classes
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/782bf9b98e3c67d9679c73ec5e5ce38b.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=hwAFiOzmq%7ENdnTzZdcjF3jxXMBeGOK3od23m9lY5E0byL1mS25Xpzz-oG--1vdwVaznVFUU64hJB7i0VGP-AyrY8lApbPLlW6RsqYxi%7E5znOfHUD5bDSapiclTNW6NV-%7EdYJnVypZt5zqP5VnkA3aTQDWzRJ193Lu1TbCTdsQRCzQyLszoRNda3kAIpDS4Knb9sACtymCbUVQ6xlTP2aCN-168-zge4R9FZ-Mr3ZUZ-DE6oNXShEFhzupou0YhP6gkSven-Mx3NN8kSUD2m0Dr%7EzI-HTQyloifYDDqzkBi5Qe6psNsqEot%7EhAhzJ7%7Ez%7ExhHlywFKjuEhAkl1Amq2Kw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
b4c78c31cbac3eea9198fdb2a3288acd
PDF Text
Text
CLOTH 6d. NETT
*
SB
�.A C. FIFIELD'S NEW LIST.
THE WOMAN’S
CALENDAR
By DORA B. MONTEFIORE. ■
“Women are beginning to take themselves seriously, whether
as wives, sweethearts, bridge-players, mothers, or politicians.®
It has occurred to me that a special Woman’s Calendar,^
containing selections of wise, witty, critical or hopeful quota-?
tions, from the writings of those who, through words, have;
been obliging enough to conceal or reveal their thoughts!
about women, might be of value to us in our efforts towards!
self-realization.”—From the Foreword.
I
“ Should go far and wide at this time of the awakening oft
women.”—Age. “A delightful little book.”—Aursw«
Times. “ Of extreme interest.”—The Lady.
Tastefully produced, oblong, is. nett. Cloth back, gilt
28« nett. Undated, and suitable for any period.
Postage id. and i^d.
|
THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN!
ON THE PROGRESS OF
1
KNOWLEDGE.
By Henry T. Buckle.
Demy 16mo, 64 pages, Cd. nett, i cloth,, gill top, is. ne/t. 3
A very valuable forgotten essay by the famous historian of |
“Civilization in Europe.”
RABBI BEN EZRA.
By Robert Browning.
THE EVERLASTING YEA.
By Thomas Carlyle.
Two classics, charmingly produced as separate booklets, ■
each. Post free 4^d. each.
LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD, 44, FLEET ST., E.CJl
�dj ß
41 NS67
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
UNTO THIS LAST.”
�“ Ruskin lived to see ‘ Unto this Last,’ the book which he pre
ferred to all the rest both for its substance and its style, attain a
great vogue, and to find many of his ideas and suggestions pass
into the accepted political currency.
In the main his strength as
an economic writer lies where also lies his strength as an (esthetic
writer—namely in his penetrative power of vision. To break
down the walls which in a competitive social system hide from
mens eyes the actual and ultimate facts was Ruskin’s mission.
Carlyle called Ruskin's economical essays 1 fierce lightning bolts'
and in very truth his impeachments (of the existing order) flash
on the perceptive sense as lightning on the eye.”—E. T. Cook in
Die. Nat. Biog.
John Ruskin was born 1819, died January 20, 1900. ‘ Unto
this Last' originally appeared serially in the ‘ Cornhill Maga
zine ’ in i860, and in book form in 1862,
�UNTO THIS LAST
(“I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.”—Matt. xx. 14.
FOUR
ON
THE
ESSAYS
FIRST
PRINCIPLES
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY
BY
JOHN
RUSKIN.
Popular Edition.
Unabridged.
LONDON :
A. C. FIFIELD, 44, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1907.
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface
........
5
ESSAY
I.
II.
The Roots
The Veins
of
of
Honour
....
9
Wealth
....
27
....
41
III.
Qui Judicatis Terram
IV.
Ad Valorem
60
�PREFACE.
The four following essays were published eighteen
months ago in the ‘ Cornhill Magazine,’ and were repro
bated in a violent manner, as far as I could hear, by most
of the readers they met with.
Not a whit the less., I believe them to be the best, that
is to say, the truest, nghtest-worded, and most serviceable
things I have ever written; and the last of them, having
had especial pains spent on it, is probably the best I shall
ever write.
“ This,” the reader may reply, “ it might be, yet not
therefore well written.” Which, in no mock humility,
admitting, I yet rest satisfied with the work, though with
nothing else that I have done; and purposing shortly to
follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I may
find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to be
within the reach of any one who may care to refer to
them. So I republish the essays as they appeared. One
word only is changed, correcting the estimate of a
weight ; and no word is added.
Although, however, I find nothing to modify in
these papers, it is matter of regret to me that the most
startling of all the statements in them—that respecting
the necessity of the organisation of labour, with fixed
wages-—should have found its way into the first essay;
it being quite one of the least important, though by no
means the least certain, of the positions to be defended.
The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and
aim, is to give as I believe for the first time in plain
English—it has often been incidentally given in good
Greek by Plato and Xenophon, and good Latin by Cicero
and Horace—a logical definition of WEALTH: such
definition being absolutely needed for a basis of economi
cal science. The most reputed essay on that subject
�6
UNTO THIS LAST.
which has appeared in modern times, after opening with
the statement that “ writers on political economy profess
to teach, or to investigate, the nature of wealth,” thus
*
follows up the declaration of its thesis—“ Every one has a
notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what
is meant by wealth.” . . . “It is no part of the design
of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of defini
tion. ”t
Metaphysical nicety, we assuredly do not need ;
but physical nicety, ana logical accuracy, with respect to
a physical subject, we as assuredly do.
Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House
law (Oikonomia), had been Star-law (Astronomia') y and
that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wan
dering, as here between wealth radiant and wealth re
flective, the writer had begun thus : “ Every one has a
notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what
is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition
of a star is not the object of this treatise ; ”—the essay so
opened might yet have been far more true in its final
statements, and a thousand-fold more serviceable to the
navigator, than any treatise on wealth, which founds its
conclusions on the popular conception of wealth, can
ever become to the economist.
It was, therefore, the first object of these follow
ing papers to give an accurate and stable definition of
wealth. Their second object was to show that the ac
quisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain
moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was
a belief in the existence, and even, for practical purposes,
in the attainability of honesty.
Without venturing to pronounce—since on such a
matter human judgment is by no means conclusive—what
is, or is not, the noblest of God’s works, we may yet admit
so much of Pope’s assertion as that an honest man is
among His best works presently visible, and, as things
stand, a somewhat rare one ; but not an incredible or
miraculous work ; still less an abnormal one. Honesty
is not a disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of
economy ; but a consistent and commanding force, by
obedience to which—and by no other obedience—thoSfe
orbits can continue clear of chaos.
It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned
for the lowness, instead of the height, of his standard :—
“ Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue ; but how much
higher may men attain ! Shall nothing more be asked of
us than that we be honest ? ”
* Which ? for where investigation is necessary, teaching is impossible.
t ‘ Principles of political Economy,’ By J, S. Mill, Preliminary remarks, p. g,
�PREFACE.
7
For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that
in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some
extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as
that. What else we may have lost faith in, there shall
be here no question; but assuredly we have lost .faith in
common honesty, and in the working power of it. And
this faith, with the facts on which it may rest, it is quite
our first business to recover and keep : not only believing,
but even by experience assuring ourselves, that there are
yet in the world men who can be restrained from fraud
otherwise than by the fear of losing employment; nay,
*
that it is even accurately in proportion to the number of
such men in any State, that the said State does or can
prolong its existence.
To these two points, then, the following essays are
mainly directed. The subject of the organisation ol
labour is only casually touched upon ; because, if we once
can get a sufficient quantity of honesty in our captains,
the organisation of labour is easy, and will develop itself
without quarrel or difficulty ; but if we cannot get honesty
in our captains, the organisation of labour is for ever
more impossible.
The several conditions of its possibility I purpose
to examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader
should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the
following investigation of first principles, as if they were
leading him into unexpectedly dangerous ground, I will,
for his better assurance, state at once the worst of the
political creed at which I wish him to arrive.
(i.) First—that there should be training schools for
youth established, at Government cost,+ and under Gov
ernment discipline, over the whole country; that every
child born in the country should, at the parent’s wish, be
permitted (and, in certain cases, be under penalty re
quired) to pass through them; and that, in these schools,
the child should (with other minor pieces of knowledge
hereafter to be considered) imperatively be taught, with
the best skill of teaching that the country could produce,
the following three things:—
* “The effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of
his corporation, but of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment
which restrains his frauds, and corrects his negligence,” (‘ Wealth of Nations,’
Book I. chap, io.)
t It will probably be inquired by near-sighted persons, out of what funds such
schools could be supported. The expedient modes of direct provision forthem
I will examine hereafter : indirectly, they would be far more than self-support
ing, The economy in crime alone (quite one of the most costly articles of luxury
in the modern European market), which such schools would induce, would
suffice to support them ten times over. Their economy of labour would be pure
gain, and that too large to be presently calculable,
�UNTO THIS LAST.
8
(a)
The laws of health, and the exercises enjoined by
them;
Habits of gentleness and justice ; and
The calling by which he is to live.
(2.) Secondly—that, in connection with these training
schools, there should be established, also entirely under
Government regulation, manufactories and workshops
for the production and sale of every necessary of life,
and for the exercise of every useful art. And that, in
terfering no whit with private enterprise, nor setting any
restraints or tax on private trade, but leaving both to do
their best, and beat the Government if they could—there
should, at these Government manufactories and shops,
be authoritatively good and exemplary work done, and
pure and true substance sold; so that a man could be
sure, if he chose to pay the Government price, that he
got for his money bread that was bread, ale that was ale,
and work that was work.
(3.) Thirdly—that any man, or woman, or boy, or girl,
out of employment, should be at once received at the
nearest Government school, and set to such work as it
appeared, on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of
wages determinable every year;—that, being found in
capable of work through ’ ignorance, they should be
taught, or being found incapable of work through sick
ness, should be tended; but that being found objecting to
work, they should be set, under compulsion of the strictest
nature, to the more painful and degrading forms of neces
sary toil, especially to that in mines and other places of
danger (such danger being, however, diminished to the
utmost by careful regulation and discipline), and the due
wages of such work be retained, cost of compulsion first
abstracted—to be at the workman’s command, so soon as
he has come to sounder mind respecting the laws of em
ployment.
(4.) Lastlv—that for the old and destitute, comfort
and home should be provided ; which provision, when mis
fortune had been by the working of such a system sifted
from guilt, would be honourable instead of disgraceful
to the receiver. For (I repeat this passage out of my
1 Political Economy of Art,’ to which the reader is referred
for farther detail “ 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, and,
therefore, the wages during health less, then the reward
when health is broken may be less, but not less honour
able ; and it ought to be quite as natural and straight
forward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from
(b)
(c)
* ‘ A Joy for Ever.’
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
9
his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish,
as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his
country, because he has deserved well of his country.”
To which statement, I will only add, for conclusion,
respecting the discipline and pay of life and death, that,
for both high and low, Livy’s last words touching
Valerius Publicóla, “ de -publico est elatus” ought not to
be a dishonourable close of epitaph.
These things, then, I believe, and am about, as I
find power, to explain and illustrate in their various bear
ings ; following out also what belongs to them of col
lateral inquiry. Here I state them only in brief, to pre
vent the reader casting about in alarm for my ultimate
meaning; yet requesting him, for the present, to remem
ber, 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 im
mediately accomplished is always questionable, and what
can be finally accomplished, inconceivable.
Denmark Hill,
loth May, 1862.
“UNTO THIS LAST.”
“ I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.”—
Matt. xx. 14.
I.—THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
MONG the delusions which at different periods
have possessed themselves of the minds of
large masses of the human race, perhaps the
most curious—certainly the least creditable—is the
modern soi-disant science of political economy, based
on the idea that an advantageous code of social
action may be determined irrespectively of the in
fluence of social affection.
Of course, as in the instances of alchemy,
B2
A
�IO
UNTO THIS LAST.
astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds,
political economy has a plausible idea at the root of it.
“ The social affections,” says the economist, “ are
accidental and disturbing elements in human nature;
but avarice and the desire of progress are constant
elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and,
considering the human being merely as a covetous
machine, examine by what laws of labour, purchase,
and sale, the greatest accumulative result in wealth
is obtainable. Those laws once determined, it will
be for each individual afterwards to introduce as
much of the disturbing affectionate element as he
chooses, and to determine for himself the result on
the new conditions supposed.”
This would be a perfectly logical and successful
method of analysis, if the accidentals afterwards to
be introduced were of the same nature as the powers
first examined. Supposing a body in motion to be
influenced by constant and inconstant forces, it is
usually the simplest way of examining its course to
trace it first under the persistent conditions, and
afterwards introduce the causes of variation. But
the disturbing elements in the social problem are not
of the same nature as the constant ones; they alter
the essence of the creature under examination the
moment they are added; they operate, not mathe
matically, but chemically, introducing conditions
which render all our previous knowledge unavailable.
We made learned experiments upon pure nitrogen,
and have convinced ourselves that it is a very
manageable gas; but, behold ! the thing which we
have practically to deal with is its chloride, and this,
the moment we touch it on our established principles,
sends us and our apparatus through the ceiling.
. Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclu
sion of the science, if its terms are accepted. I am
simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those
of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men
had no skeletons. It might be shown, on that sup
position, that it would be advantageous to roll the
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
II
students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or
stretch them into cables; and that when tírese results
were effected, the re-insertion of the skeleton would
be attended with various inconveniences to their con
stitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the
conclusions true, and the science deficient only in
applicability. Modern political economy stands on a
precisely similar basis. Assuming, not that the
human being has no skeleton, but that it is all skele
ton, it founds an ossifiant theory of progress on this
negation of a soul; and having shown the utmost
that may be made of bones, and constructed a
number of interesting geometrical figures with
death’s-head and humeri, successfully proves the in
convenience of the reappearance of a soul among
these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the
truth of this theory : I simply deny its applicability
to the present phase of the world.
This inapplicability has been curiously manifested
during the embarrassment caused by the late strikes
of our workmen. Here occurs one of the simplest
cases, in a pertinent and positive form, of the first
vital problem which political economy has to deal
with (the relation between employer and employed);
and, at a severe crisis, when lives in multitudes, and
wealth in masses, are at stake, the political econo
mists are helpless—practically mute; no demon
strable solution of the difficulty can be given by
them, such as may convince or calm the opposing
parties. Obstinately the masters take one view of
the matter; obstinately the operatives another; and
no political science can set them at one. It would
be strange if it could, it being not by “ science ” of
any kind that men were ever intended to be set at
one. Disputant after disputant vainly strives to
show that the interests of the masters are, or are not,
antagonistic to those of the men: none of the pleaders
ever seeming to remember that it does not absolutely
or always follow that the persons must be antagon
istic because their interests are. If there is only a
�12
UNTO THIS LAST.
crust of bread in the house, and mother and children
are starving, their interests are not the same. If the
mother eats it, the children want it; if the children
eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet
it does not necessarily follow that there will be “ an
tagonism ” between them, that they will fight for the
crust, and that the mother, being strongest, will get
it, and eat it. Neither, in any other case, whatever
the relations of the persons may be, can it be as
sumed for certain that, because their interests are
diverse, they must necessarily regard each other
with hostility, and use violence or cunning to obtain
the advantage.
Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is
convenient to consider men as actuated by no other
moral influences than those which affect rats or
swine, the logical conditions of the question are still
indeterminable. It can never be shown generally
either that the interests of master and labourer are
alike, or that they are opposed; for, according to
circumstances, they may be either. It is, indeed,
always the interest of both that the work should be
rightly done, and a just price obtained for it; but, in
the division of profits, the gain of the one may or
may not be the loss of the other. It is not the
master’s interest to pay wages so low as to leave the
men sickly and depressed, nor the workman’s in
terest to be paid high wages if the smallness of the
master’s profit hinders him from enlarging his busi
ness, or conducting it in a safe and liberal way. A
stoker ought not to desire high pay if the company
is too poor to keep the engine-wheels in repair.
And the varieties of circumstance which influence
these reciprocal interests are so endless, that all en
deavour to deduce rules of action from balance of
expediency is in vain. And it is meant to be in vain.
For no human actions ever were intended by the
Maker of men to be guided by balances of expedi
ency, but by balances of justice. He has therefore
rendered all endeavours to determine expediency
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
13
futile for evermore. No man ever knew, or can
know, what will be the ultimate result to himself, or
to others, of any given line of conduct. But every
man may know, and most of us do know, what is a
just and unjust act. And all of us may know also,
that the consequences of justice will be ultimately
the best possible, both to others and ourselxes,
though we can neither say what is the best, or hov
it is likely to come to pass.. .
I have said balances of justice, meaning, in the
term justice, to include affection—-such affection as
one man owes to another. All right relations be
tween master and operative, and all their best inter
ests, ultimately depend on these.
_
We shall find the best and simplest, illustration. 01
the relations of master and operative in the position
of domestic servants.
We will suppose that the master of a household
desires only to get as much work out of his servants
as he can, at the rate of wages he gives. He never
allows them to be idle; feeds them as poorly and
lodges them as ill as they will endure, and in all
things pushes his requirements to the exact point
beyond which he cannot go without forcing the ser
vant to leave him. In doing this, there is no vio
lation on his part of what is commonly called
“ justice.” He agrees with the domestic for his
whole time and service, and takes them;—the limits
of hardship in treatment being fixed by the practice
of other masters in his neighbourhood; that is to
say, by the current rate of wages for domestic
labour. If the servant can get a better place, he is
free to take one, and the master can only tell what
is the real market value of his labour, by requiring
as much as he will give.
This is the politico-economical view of the case,
according to the doctors of that science; who assert
that by this procedure the greatest average of work
will be obtained from the servant, and therefore, the
greatest benefit to the community, and through the
community, by reversion, to the servant himself.
�14
UNTO THIS LAST.
That, however, is not so. It would be so if the
servant were an engine of which the motive power
was steam, magnetism, gravitation, or any other
agent of calculable force. But he being, on the con
trary, an engine whose motive power is a Soul, the
force of this very peculiar agent, as an unknown
quantity, enters into all the political economist’s
equations, without his knowledge, and falsifies every
one of their results. The largest quantity of w'ork
will not be done by this curious engine for pay, or
under pressure, or by help of any kind of fuel which
may be supplied by the chaldron. It will be done
only when the motive force, that is to say, the will
or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest
strength by its own proper fuel; namely, by the
affections.
It may indeed happen, and does happen often, that
if the master is a man of sense and energy, a large
quantity of material work may be done under
mechanical pressure, enforced by strong will and
guided by wise method; also it may happen, and does
happen often, that if the master is indolent and weak
(however good natured), a very small quantity of
wrork, and that bad, may be produced by the
servant’s undirected strength, and contemptuous
gratitude. But the universal law' of the matter is
that, assuming any given quantity of energy and
sense in master and servant, the greatest material
result obtainable by them will be, not through anta
gonism to each other, but through affection for each
other; and that, if the master, instead of endeavour
ing to get as much work as possible from the ser
vant, seeks rather to render his appointed and neces
sary work beneficial to him, and to forward his in
terests in all just and wholesome ways, the real
amount of w’ork ultimately done, or of good ren
dered, by the person so cared for, w-’ill indeed be the
greatest possible.
Observe, I say, “ of good rendered,” for a ser
vant’s. work is not necessarily or always the best
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
15
thing he can give his master. But good of all kinds,
whether in material service, in protective watchful
ness of his master’s interest and credit, or in joyful
readiness to seize unexpected and irregular occasions
of help.
Nor is this one whit less generally true because
indulgence will be frequently abused, and kindness
met with ingratitude. For the servant who, gently
treated, is ungrateful, treated ungently, will be
revengeful; and the man who is dishonest to a liberal
master will be injurious to an unjust one.
In any case, and with any person, this unselfish
treatment will produce the most effective return.
Observe, I am here considering the affections wholly
as a motive power; not at all as things in themselves
desirable or noble, or in any other way abstractedly
good. I look at them simply as an anomalous force,
rendering every one of the ordinary political econo
mist’s calculations nugatory; while, even if he
desired to introduce this new element into his
estimates, he has no power of dealing with it; for the
affections only become a true motive power when
they ignore every other motive and condition of
political economy. Treat the servant kindly, with
the idea of turning his gratitude to account, and you
will get, as you deserve, no gratitude, nor any value
for your kindness; but treat him kindly without any
economical purpose, and all economical purposes will
be answered; in this, as in all other matters, whoso
ever will save his life shall lose it, whoso loses it
shall find it.
*
* The difference between the two modes of treatment,
and between their effective material results, may be seen
very accurately by a comparison of the relations of Esther
and Charlie in ‘ Bleak House,’ with those of Miss Brass
and the Marchioness in ‘ Master Humphrey’s Clock.’
The essential value and truth of Dickens’s writings have
been unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons,
merely because he presents his truth with some colour
of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens’s caricature,
though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing for his
�i6
UNTO THIS LAST.
The next clearest and simplest example of relation
between master and operative is that which exists
between the commander of a regiment and his men.
Supposing the officer only desires to apply the
rules of discipline so as, with least trouble to him
self, to make the regiment most effective, he will not
be able, by any rules or administration of rules, on
this selfish principle, to develop the full strength of
his subordinates. If a man of sense and firmness, he
may, as in the former instance, produce a better
result than would be obtained by the irregular kind
ness of a weak officer; but let the sense and firmness
be the same in both cases, and assuredly the officer
who has the most direct personal relations with his
men, the most care for their interests, and the most
value for their lives, will develop their effective
strength, through their affection for his own person,
and trust in his character, to a degree wholly un
attainable by other means. This law applies still
more stringently as the numbers concerned are
manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always
true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his
brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public
amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high
national importance, such as that which he handled in
‘ Hard Times,’ that he would use severer and more ac
curate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my
mind, in several respects the greatest he has written) is
with many persons seriously diminished because Mr.
Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead of a
characteristic example of a worldly master; and Stephen
Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a character
istic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose
the use of Dickens’s wit and insight, because he chooses to
speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his
main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and
all of them, but especially 1 Hard Times,’ should be
studied with close and earnest care by persons interested
in social questions. They will find much that is partial,
and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they ex
amine all the evidence on the other side, which Dickens
seems to overlook, it will appear, after all their trouble,
that his view was the finally right one, grossly and
sharply told.
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
17
larger : a charge may often be successful, though the
men dislike their officers; a battle has rarely been
won, unless they loved their general.
Passing from these simple examples to the more
complicated relations existing between a manufac
turer and his workmen, we are met first by certain
curious difficulties, resulting, apparently, from a
harder and colder state of moral elements.. It is easy
to imagine an enthusiastic affection existing among
soldiers for the colonel.
Not so easy to
imagine an enthusiastic affection among cotton
spinners for the proprietor of the mill. A body of
men associated for purposes of robbery (as a High
land clan in ancient times) shall be animated by per
fect affection, and every member of it be ready to
lay down his life for the life of his chief. But a band
of men associated for purposes of legal production
and accumulation is usually animated, it appears, by
no such emotions, and none of them are in any wise
willing to give his life for the life of his chief. Not
only are we met by this apparent anomaly, in moral
matters, but by others connected with it, in adminis
tration of system. For a servant or a soldier is
engaged at a definite rate of wages, for a definite
period; but a workman at a rate of wages variable
according to the demand for labour, and with the
risk of being at any time thrown out of his situation
by chances of trade. Now, as, under these contin
gencies, no action of the affections can take place,
but only an explosive action of disaffections, two
points offer themselves for consideration in the
matter.
The first.—How far the rate of wages may be so
regulated as not to vary with the demand for labour.
The second.—How far it is possible that bodies of
workmen may be engaged and maintained at such
fixed rate of wages (whatever the state of trade may
be), without enlarging or diminishing their number,
so as to give them permanent interest in the estab
lishment with which they are connected, like that of
�i8
UNTO THIS LAST.
the domestic servants in an old family, or an esprit
de corps, like that of the soldiers in a crack regiment.
The first question is, I say, how far it may be
possible to fix the rate of wages irrespectively of the
demand for labour.
Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the
history of human error is the denial by the common
political economist of the possibility of thus regu
lating wages; while, for all the important, and much
of the unimportant labour on the earth, wages are
already so regulated.
We do not sell our prime-ministership by Dutch
auction; nor, on the decease of a bishop, whatever
may be the general advantages of simony, do we
(yet) offer his diocese to the clergyman who will take
the episcopacy at the lowest contract. We (with
exquisite sagacity of political economy !) do indeed
sell commissions; but not, openly, generalships :
sick, we do not inquire for a physician who takes less
than a guinea; litigious, we never think of reducing
six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence; caught in
a shower, we do not canvass the cabmen, to find one
who values his driving at less than sixpence a mile.
It is true that in all these cases there is, and in
every conceivable case there must be, ultimate refer
ence to the presumed difficulty of the work, or
number of candidates for the office. If it were
thought that the labour necessary to make a good
physician would be gone through by a sufficient
number of students with the prospect of only half
guinea fees, public consent would soon withdraw the
unnecessary half-guinea. In this ultimate sense, the
price of labour is indeed always regulated by the de
mand for it; but, so far as the practical and imme
diate administration of the matter is regarded, the
best labour always has been, and is, as all labour
ought to be, paid by an invariable standard.
(i What! ” the reader perhaps answers amazedly :
“ pay good and bad workmen alike? ”
Certainly. The difference between one prelate’s
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
19
sermons and his successor’s—or between one phy
sician’s opinion and another’s,—is far greater, as
respects the qualities of mind involved, and far more
important in result to you personally, than the
difference between good and bad laying of bricks
(though that is greater than most people suppose).
Yet you pay with equal fee, contentedly, the good
and bad workmen upon your soul, and the good and
bad workmen upon your body; much more may you
pay, contentedly, with equal fees, the good and bad
workmen upon your house.
“Nay, but I choose my physician, and (?) my
clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality
of their work.” By all means, also, choose your
bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good
workman, to be “ chosen.” The natural and right
system respecting all labour is, that it should be paid
at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and
the bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural,
and destructive system is when the bad workman is
allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either
take the place of the good, or force him by his com
petition to work for an inadequate sum.
This equality of wages, then, being the first object
towards which we have to discover the directest
available road—the second is, as above stated, that
of maintaining constant numbers of workmen in em
ployment, whatever may be the accidental demand
for'the article they produce.
I believe the sudden and extensive inequalities of
demand which necessarily arise in the mercantile
operations of an active nation, constitute the only
essential difficulty which has to be overcome in a
just organisation of labour.
The subject opens into too many branches to admit
of being investigated in a paper of this kind; but
the following general facts bearing on it may be
noted.
The wages which enable any workman to live are
necessarily higher if his work is liable to intermission
�20
UNTO THIS LAST.
than if it is assured and continuous; and however
severe the struggle for work may become, the
general law will always hold, that men must get
more daily pay if, on the average, they can only cal
culate on work three days a week, than they would
require if they were sure of work six days a week.
Supposing that a man. cannot live on less than a
shilling a day, his seven shillings he must get, either
for three days’ violent work, or six days’ deliberate
work. The tendency of all modern mercantile opera
tions is to throw both wages and trade into the form
of a lottery, and to make the workman’s pay depend
on intermittent exertion, and the principal’s profit on
dexterously used chance.
In what partial degree, I repeat, this may be
necessary in consequence of the activities of modern
trade, I do not here investigate; contenting myself
with the fact that in its fatallest aspects it is assur
edly unnecessary, and results merely from love of
gambling on the part of the masters, and from ignor
ance and sensuality in the men. The masters cannot
bear to let any opportunity of gain escape them, and
frantically rush at every gap and breach in the walls
of Fortune, raging to be rich, and affronting, with
impatient covetousness, every risk of ruin; while the
men prefer three days of violent labour and
three days of drunkenness, to six days of
moderate work and wise rest. There is no way in
which a principal, who really desires to help his
workmen, may do it more effectually than by check
ing these disorderly habits both in himself and them;
keeping his own business operations on a scale which
will enable him to pursue them securely, not yielding
to temptations of precarious gain; and at the same
time, leading his workmen into regular habits of
labour and life, either by inducing them rather to
take low wages, in the form of a fixed salary, than
high wages, subject to the chance of their being
throwm out of work; or, if this be impossible, by dis
couraging the system of violent exertion for nomi
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
21
nally high day wages, and leading the men to take
lower pay for. more regular labour.
In effecting any radical changes of this kind,
doubtless there would be great inconvenience and
loss incurred by all the originators of the movement.
That which can be done with perfect convenience and
without loss, is not always the thing that most needs
to be done, or which we are most imperatively re
quired to do.
I have already alluded to the difference hitherto
existing between regiments of men associated for
purposes of violence, and for purposes of manufac
ture; in that the former appear capable of. self-sacri
fice—the latter, not; which singular fact is the real
reason of the general lowness of estimate in which
the profession of commerce is held, as compared with
that of arms. Philosophically, it does not, at first
sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endea
voured to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and
rational person, whose trade is buying and selling,
should be held in less honour than an unpeaceable
and often irrational person, whose trade is slaying.
Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in
spite of the philosophers, given precedence to the
soldier.
And this is right.
For the soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is
not slaying, but being slain. This, without, well
knowing its own meaning, the world honours it for.
A bravo’s trade is slaying; but the world has never
respected bravos more than merchants : the reason
it honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at
the service of the State. Reckless he may be—fond
of pleasure or of adventure—all kinds of bye-motives
and mean impulses may have determined the choice
of his profession, and may affect (to all appearance
exclusively) his daily conduct in it; but our estimate
of him is based on this ultimate fact—of which we
are well assured—that, put him in a fortress breach,
with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and
�22
UNTO THIS LAST.
only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep
his face to the front; and he knows that his choice
may be put to him at any moment, and has before
hand taken his part,—virtually takes such part con
tinually—does, in reality, die daily.
Not Jess is the respect we pay to the lawyer and
physician, founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice.
Whatever the learning or acuteness of a great
lawyer, our chief respect for him depends on our J
belief that, set in a judge s seat, he will strive to
judge justly, come of it what may. Could we sup
pose that he would take bribes, and use his acuteness
and legal knowledge to give plausibility to iniquitous
decisions, no degree of intellect would win for him
our respect. Nothing will win it, short of our tacit
conviction, that in all important acts of his life jus
tice is first with him; his own interest, second.
In the case of a physician, the ground of the
honour we render him is clearer still. Whatever his
science, we would shrink from him in horror if we
found him regard his patients merely as subjects to
experiment upon; much more, if we found that,
receiving bribes from persons interested in their
deaths, he was using his best skill to give poison in
the mask of medicine.
Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness
as it respects clergymen.. No goodness of disposition
will excuse .want of science in a physician, or of
shrewdness in an advocate; but a clergyman, even
though his power of intellect be small, is respected
on the presumed ground of his unselfishness and ser
viceableness.
Now, there can be no question but that the tact,
foresight, decision, and other mental powers, re
quired for the successful management of a large
mercantile concern, if not such as could be compared
with those of a great lawver, general, or divine,
would at.least match the general conditions of mind
required in the subordinate officers of a ship, or of a
regiment, or in the curate of a country parish. If,
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
23
therefore, all the efficient members of the so-called
liberal professions are still, somehow, in public esti
mate of honour, preferred before the head of a com
mercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in the
measurement of their several powers of mind.
And the essential reason for such preference will
be found to lie in the fact that the merchant is pre
sumed to act always selfishly. His work may be
very necessary to the community; but the motive of
it is understood to be wholly personal. The mer
chant’s first object in all his dealings must be (the
public believe) to get as much for himself, and leave
as little to his neighbour (or customer) as possible.
Enforcing this upon him, by political statute, as the
necessary principle of his action; recommending it
to him on all occasions, and themselves reciprocally
adopting it, proclaiming vociferously, for law7 of the
universe, that a buyer’s function is to cheapen, and
a seller’s to cheat,—the public, nevertheless, involun
tarily condemn the man of commerce for his com
pliance with their own statement, and stamp him for
ever as belonging to an inferior grade of human
personality.
This they will find, eventually, they must give up
doing. They must not cease to condemn selfishness;
but they will have to discover a kind of commerce
which is not exclusively selfish. Or, rather, they will
have to discover that there never was, or can be, any
other kind of commerce; that this which they have
called commerce was not commerce at all, but cozen
ing; and that a true merchant differs as much from
a merchant according to laws of modern political
economy, as the hero of the Excursion from Autolycus. They will find that commerce is an occupation
which gentlemen will every day see more need to
engage in, rather than in the businesses of talking
to men, or slaying them; that, in true commerce, as
in true preaching, or true fighting, it is necessary to
admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss;—that
sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, under a
�24
UNTO THIS LAST.
sense of duty; that the market may have its martyr
doms as well as the pulpit; and trade its heroisms as
well as war.
May have—in the final issue, must have—and only
has not had yet, because men of heroic temper have
always been misguided in their youth into other
fields, not recognising what is in our days, perhaps,
the most important of all fields; so that, while many
a zealous person loses his life in trying to teach the
form of a gospel, very few will lose a hundred
pounds in showing the practice of one.
The fact is, that people never have had clearly
explained to them the true functions of a merchant
with respect to other people. I should like the
reader to be very clear about this.
Five great intellectual professions, relating to
daily necessities of life, have hitherto existed—three
exist necessarily, in every civilised nation :
The Soldier’s profession is to defend it.
The Pastor’s, to teach it.
The Physician’s, to keep it in health.
The Lawyer’s, to enforce justice in it.
The Merchant’s, to provide for it.
And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to
die for it.
“ On due occasion,” namely :—
The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle.
The Physician, rather than leave his post in
plague.
The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood.
The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice.
The Merchant—What is his “ due occasion ” of
death ?
It is the main question for the merchant, as for all
of us. For, truly, the man who does not know when
to die, does not know how to live.
Observe, the merchant’s function (or manufac
turer’s, for the broad sense in which it is here used
the word must be understood to include both) is to
provide for the nation. It is no more his function to
�THE ROOTS OF HONOUR.
25
get profit for himself out of that provision than it is
a clergyman’s function to get his stipend.
is
stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the
object of his life, if he be a true clergyman, any
more than his fee (or honorarium) is the object ot
life to a true physician. Neither is his fee the object
of life to a true merchant. All three, if true men,
have a work to be done irrespective of fee—to be
done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of
fee; the pastor’s function being to teach, the phy
sician's to heal, and the merchant’s, as I have said,
to provide. That is to say, he has to understand to
their very root the qualities of the thing he deals in,
and the means of obtaining or producing it; and he
has to apply all his sagacity and energy to the pro
ducing or obtaining it in perfect state, and distri
buting it at the cheapest possible price where it is
most needed.
. .
And because the production or obtaining ot any
commodity involves necessarily the agency of man)
lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course
of his business the master and governor of large
masses of men in a more direct, though less con
fessed way, than a military officer or pastor; so that
on him falls, in great part, the responsibility for the
kind of life they lead; and it becomes his duty, not
only to be always considering how to produce what
he sells, in the purest and cheapest forms, but how to
make the various employments involved in the pro
duction, or transference of it, most beneficial to the
men employed.
And as into these two functions, requiring for their
right exercise the highest intelligence, as well as
patience, kindness, and tact, the merchant is bound
to put all his energy, so for their just discharge he is
bound, as soldier or physician is bound, to give up,
if need be, his life in such way as it may be de
manded of him. Two main points he has in his
Providing function to maintain : first, his engage
ments (faithfulness to engagements being the real
�26
UNTO THIS LAST.
root of all possibilities in commerce); and, secondly,
the perfectness and purity of the thing provided; so
that, rather than fail in any engagement, or consent
to any deterioration, adulteration, or unjust and
exorbitant price of that which he provides, he is
bound to meet fearlessly any form of distress,
poverty, or labour, which may, through maintenance
of these points, come upon him.
Again : in his office as governor of the men em
ployed by him, the merchant or manufacturer is
invested with a distinctly paternal authority and re
sponsibility. In most cases, a youth entering a com
mercial establishment is withdrawn altogether from
home influence; his master must become his father,
else he has, for practical and constant help, no
father at hand : in all cases the master’s authority,
together with the general tone and atmosphere of
his business, and the character of the men with
whom the youth is compelled in the course of it to
associate, have more immediate and pressing weight
than the home influence, and will usually neutralise it
either for good or evil; so that the only means which
the master has of doing justice to the men employed
by him is to ask himself sternly whether he is deal
ing with such subordinate as he would with his own
son, if compelled by circumstances to take such a
position.
Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or
were by any chance obliged to place his own son in
the position of a common sailor; as he would then
treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one
of the men under him. So, also, supposing the
master of a manufactory saw it right, or were by
any chance obliged, to place his own son in the
position of an ordinary workman; as he would then
treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of
his men. . This is the only effective, true, or practical
Rule which can be given on this point of political
economy.
And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
27
last man to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to
share his last crust with the sailors in case of famine,
so the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis or dis
tress, is bound to take the suffering of it with his
men, and even to take more of it for himself than he
allows his men to feel; as a father would in a famine,
shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice himself for his son.
All which sounds very strange: the only real
strangeness in the matter being, nevertheless, that
it should so sound. For all this is true, and that
not partially nor theoretically, but everlastingly and
practically : all other doctrine than this respecting
matters political being false in premises, absurd in
deduction, and impossible in practice, consistently
with any progressive state of national life; all the life
which we now possess as a nation showing itself in
the resolute denial and scorn, by a few strong minds
and faithful hearts, of the economic principles taught
to our multitudes, which principles, so far as ac
cepted, lead straight to national destruction. Re
specting the modes and forms of destruction to which
they lead, and, on the other hand, respecting the
farther practical tvorking of true polity, I hope to
reason further in a following paper.
II___ THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
HE answer which would be made by any
ordinary political economist to the statements
contained in the preceding paper, is in few
words as follows :—
“It is indeed true that certain advantages of a
general nature may be obtained by the development
of social affections. But political economists never
professed, nor profess, to take advantages of a gen
eral nature into consideration. Our science is simply
the science orf getting rich. So far from being a fal
T
�28
UNTO THIS LAST.
lacious or visionary one, it is found by experience to
be practically effective. Persons who follow its pre
cepts do actually become rich, and persons who dis
obey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe
has acquired his fortune by following the known
laws of our science, and increases his capital daily
by an adherence to them. It is vain to bring forward
tricks of logic, against the force of accomplished
facts. Every man of business knows by experience
how money is made, and how it is lost.”
Pardon me. Men of business do indeed know how
they themselves made their money, or how, on oc
casion, they lost it. Playing a long-practised game,
they are familiar with the chances of its cards, and
can rightly explain their losses and gains. But they
neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling
house, nor what other games may be played with
the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far
away among the dark streets, are essentially, though
invisibly, dependent on theirs in the lighted rooms.
They have learned a few, and only a few, of the laws
of mercantile economy; but not one of those of politi
cal economy.
Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I ob
serve that men of business rarely know the meaning
of the word “rich.” At least, if they know, they
do not in their reasonings allow for the fact, that it
is a relative word, implying its opposite “ poor ” as
positively as the word “ north ” implies its opposite
“ south.” Men nearly always speak and write as
if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by
following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to
be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of elec
tricity, acting only through inequalities or negations
of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your
pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in
your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it
would be of no use to you; the degree of power it
possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire
he has for it—and the art of making yourself rich in
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
29
the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is there
fore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your
neighbour poor.
. .
I would not contend in this matter (and rarely, in
any matter) for the acceptance of terms. But I wish
the reader clearly and deeply to understand the diference between' the two economies, to which the
terms “Political” and “Mercantile” might not
unadvisedly be attached;
Political economy (the economy of a State, or ot
citizens) consists simply in the production, preserva
tion, and distribution, at fittest time and place, ot
useful or pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts
his hay at the right time; the shipwright who drives
his bolts well home in sound wood; the builder who
lays good bricks in well-tempered mortar; the house
wife who takes care of her furniture in the parlour,
and guards against all w’aste in her kitchen; and
the singer who rightly disciplines, and never, over
strains her voice : are all political economists in the
true and final sense; adding continually to the riches
and well-being of the nation to which they belong.
But mercantile economy, the economy . of
“ merces ” or of “ pay,” signifies the accumulation,
in the hands of individuals, of legal or moral claim
upon, or power over, the labour of others, every
such claim implying precisely as much poverty or
debt on one side, as it implies riches or right on the
other.
It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an
addition to the actual property, or well-being, of the
State in which it exists. But since this commercial
wealth, or power over labour, is nearly always con
vertible at once into real property, while real pro
perty is not always convertible at once into power
over labour, the idea of riches among active men in
civilised nations, generally refers to commercial
wealth; and in estimating their possessions, they
rather calculate the value of their horses and fields
by the number of guineas they could get for them,
�30
UNTO THIS LAST.
than the value of their guineas by the number of
horses and fields they could buy with them.
There is, however, another reason for this habit
of mind; namely, that an accumulation of real pro
perty is of little use to its owner, unless, together
with it, he has commercial power over labour. Thus,
suppose any person to be put in possession of a
large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold
in its gravel; countless herds of cattle in its pas
tures; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of
useful stores; but suppose, after all, that he could get
no servants? In order that he may be able to have
servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be
poor, and in want of his gold—or his corn. Assume
that no one is in want of either, and that no servants
are to be had.
He must, therefore, bake his own
bread, make his own clothes, plough his own
ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will
be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on
his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot con
sume them. He can eat no more than another man
could eat, and wear no more than another man could
wear. He must lead a life of severe and common
labour to procure even ordinary comforts; he will be
ultimately unable to keep either houses in repair, or
fields in cultivation; and forced to content himself
with a poor man’s portion of cottage and garden,
in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by
wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces,
which he will hardly mock at himself by calling
“ his own.”
The most covetous of mankind would, with small
exultation, I presume, accept riches of this kind on
these terms. What is really desired under the name
of riches, is, essentially, power over men; in its
simplest sense, the power of obtaining for our own
advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and
artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large
masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial,
or hurtful, according to the mind of the rich person).
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
3i
And this power of wealth of course is greater or less
in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over
whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to
the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves,
and who are ready to give the same price for an
article of which the supply is limited. If the musician
is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as there
is only one person who can pay him; but if there be
two or three, he will sing for the one who offers him
most. And thus the power of the riches of the patron
(always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see pre
sently, even when most authoritative) depends first
on the poverty of the artist, and then on the limita
tion of the number of equally wealthy persons, who
also want seats at the concert. So that, as above
stated, the art of becoming “ rich,” in the common
sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumu
lating much money for ourselves, but also of con
triving that our neighbours shall have less. In
accurate terms, it is “ the art of establishing the
maximum inequality in our own favour.”
Now, the establishment of such inequality cannot
be shown in the abstract to be either advantageous
or disadvantageous to the body of the nation. The
rash and absurd assumption that such inequalities
are necessarily advantageous, lies at the root of most
of the popular fallacies on the subject of political
economy. For the eternal and inevitable law in this
matter is, that the beneficialness of the inequality
depends, first, on the methods by which it was ac
complished; and, secondly, on the purposes to which
it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly estab
lished, have assuredly injured the nation in which
they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly
directed, injure it yet more during their existence.
But inequalities of wealth, justly established, benefit
the nation in the course of their establishment; and,
nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence. That
is to say, among every active and well-governed
people, the various strength of individuals, tested
�32
UNTO THIS LAST.
by full exertion and specially applied to various need,
issues in unequal, but harmonious results, receiving
reward or authority according to its class and ser
*
vice; while, in the inactive or ill-governed nation,
the gradations of decay and the victories of treason
work out also their own rugged system of subjection
and success; and substitute, for the melodious ine
qualities of concurrent power, the iniquitous domin
ances and depressions of guilt and misfortune.
* I have been naturally asked several times with re
spect to the sentence in the first of these papers, “ the
bad workmen unemployed,” “ But what are you to do
with your bad unemployed workmen?” Well, it seems
to me the question might have occurred to you before.
Your housemaid’s place is vacant—you give twenty
pounds a year—two girls come for it, one neatly dressed,
the other dirtily; one with good recommendations, the
other with none.' You do not, under these circumstances,
usually ask the dirty one if she will come for fifteen
pounds, or twelve; and, on her consenting, take her in
stead of the well-recommended one. Still less do you
try to beat both down by making them bid against each
other, till you can hire both, one at twelve pounds a year,
and the other at eight. You simply take the one fittest
for the place, and send away the other, not perhaps con
cerning yourself quite as much as you should with the
question which you now impatiently put to me, “ What is
to become of her ? ” For all that I advise you to do, is to
deal with workmen as with servants; and verily the ques
tion is of weight: “ Your bad workman, idler, and rogue
—what are you to do with him ? ”
We will consider of this presently: remember that the
administration of a complete system of national com
merce and industry cannot be explained in full detail
within the space of twelve pages. Meantime, consider
whether, there being confessedly some difficulty in deal
ing with rogues and idlers, it may not be advisable to
produce as few of them as -possible. If you examine into
the history of rogues, you will find they are as truly manu
factured articles as anything else, and it is just because
our present system of political economy gives so large a
stimulus to that manufacture that you may know it to be
a false one. We had better seek for a system which will
develop honest men, than for one which will deal cun
ningly with vagabonds. Let us reform our schools, and
we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
33
Thus the circulation of wealth in a nation re
sembles that of the blood in the natural body. There
is one quickness of the current which comes of
cheerful emotion or wholesome exercise; and another
which comes of shame or of fever. There is a flush
of the body which is full of warmth and life; and
another which will pass into putrefaction.
The analogy will hold, down even to minute par
ticulars. For as diseased local determination of the
blood involves depression of the general health of the
system, all morbid local action of riches will be
found ultimately to involve a weakening of the re
sources of the body politic.
The mode in which this is produced may be at
once understood by examining one or two instances
of the development of wealth in the simplest possible
circumstances.
Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited
coast, and obliged to maintain themselves there by
their own labour for a series of years.
If they both kept their health, and worked steadily
and in amity with each other, they might build
themselves a convenient house, and in time come to
possess a certain quantity of cultivated land, to
gether with various stores laid up for future use. All
these things would be real riches or property; and,
supposing the men both to have worked equally
hard, they would each have right to equal share or
use of it.
Their political economy would consist
merely in careful preservation and just division of
these possessions.
Perhaps, however, after some
time one or other might be dissatisfied with the re
sults of their common farming; and they might in
consequence agree to divide the land they had
brought under the spade into equal shares, so that
each might thenceforward work in his own field, and
live by it. Suppose that after this arrangement had
been made, one of them were to fall ill, and be un
able to work on his land at a critical time—say of
sowing or harvest.
C
�34
UNTO THIS LAST.
He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap
for him.
Then his companion might say, with perfect
justice, “ I will do this additional work for you; but
if I do it, you must promise to do as much for me at
another time. I will count how many hours I spend
on your ground, and you shall give me a written
promise to work for the same number of hours on
mine, whenever I need your help, and you are able
to give it.”
Suppose the disabled man’s sickness to continue,
and that under various circumstances, for several
years, requiring the help of the other, he on each
occasion gave a written pledge to work, as soon as
he was able, at his companion’s orders, for the
same number of hours which the other had given
up to him. What will the positions of the two men
be when the invalid is able to resume work?
Considered as a “ Polis,” or state, they will be
poorer than they would have been otherwise : poorer
by the withdrawal of what the sick man’s labour
would have produced in the interval. His friend may
perhaps have toiled with an energy quickened by the
enlarged need, but in the end his own land and
property must have suffered by the withdrawal of
so much of his time and thought from them; and
the united property of the two men will be certainly
less than it would have been if both had remained in
health and activity.
But the relations in which they stand to each
other are also widely altered. The sick man has not
only pledged his labour for some years, but will prob
ably have exhausted his own share of the accumu
lated stores, and will be in consequence for some
time dependent on the other for food, which he can
only “ pay ” or reward him for by yet more deeply
pledging his own labour.
Supposing the written promises to be held entirely
valid (among civilised nations their validity is
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
35
secured by legal measures
)
*,
the person who had
hitherto worked for both might now, if he chose, rest
altogether, and pass his time in idleness, not only
forcing his companion to redeem all the engagements
he had already entered into, but exacting from him
pledges for further labour, to an arbitrary amount,
for what food he had to advance to him.
There might not, from first to last, be the least
illegality (in the ordinary sense of the word) in the
arrangement; but if a stranger arrived on the coast
at this advanced epoch of their political economy, he
would find one man commercially Rich; the other
commercially Poor. He would see, perhaps, with no
small surprise, one passing his days in idleness; the
other labouring for both, and living sparely, in the
hope of recovering his independence at some distant
period.
This is, of course, an example of one only out of
many ways in which inequality of possession may be
established between different persons, giving rise to
the Mercantile forms of Riches and Poverty. In the
instance before us, one of the men might from the
first have deliberately chosen to be idle, and to put
his life in pawn for present ease; or he might have
mismanaged his land, and been compelled to have
* The disputes which exist respecting the real nature of
money arise more from the disputants examining its
functions on different sides, than from any real dissent
in their opinions. All money, properly so called, is an
acknowledgment of debt; but as such, it may either be
considered to represent the labour and property of the
creditor, or the idleness and penury of the debtor. The
intricacy of the question has been much increased by the
(hitherto necessary) use of marketable commodities, such
as gold, silver, salt, shells, etc., to give intrinsic value or
security to currency; but the final and best definition of
money is that it is a documentary promise ratified and
guaranteed by the nation to give or find a certain quantitv
of labour on demand. A man’s labour for a day is a
better standard of value than a measure of any produce,
because, no produce ever maintains a consistent rate of
productibility.
�36
UNTO THIS LAST.
recourse to his neighbour for food and help, pledging
his future labour for it. But what I want the reader
to note especially is the fact, common to a large
number of typical cases of this kind, that the estab
lishment of the mercantile wealth which consists in a
claim upon labour, signifies a political diminution of
the real wealth which consists in substantial posses
sions.
Take another example, more consistent with the
ordinary course of affairs of trade. Suppose that
three men, instead of two, formed the little isolated
republic, and found themselves obliged to separate,
in order to farm different pieces of land at some dis
tance from each other along the coast; each estate
furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each more
or less in need of the material raised on the other.
Suppose that the third man, in order to save the
time of all three, undertakes simply to superintend
the transference of commodities from one farm to the
Other; on condition of receiving some sufficiently re
munerative share of every parcel of goods received in
exchange for it.
If this carrier or messenger always brings to each
estate, from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at
the right time, the operations of the two farmers will
go on prosperously, and the largest possible result
in produce, or wealth, will be attained by the little
community. But suppose no intercourse between
the landowners is possible, except through the travel
ling agent; and that, after a time, this agent, watch
ing the course of each man’s agriculture, keeps back
the articles with which he has been entrusted until
there comes a period of extreme necessity for them,
on one side or the other, and then exacts in exchange
for them all that the distressed farmer can spare of
other kinds of produce : it is easy to see that by in
geniously watching his opportunities, he might pos
sess himself regularly of the greater part of the super
fluous produce of the two estates, and at last, in
some year of severest trial or scarcity, purchase both
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
37
for himself and maintain the former proprietors
thenceforward as his labourers or servants.
This would be a case of commercial wealth ac
quired on the exactest principles of modern political
economy. But, more distinctly even than in the
former instance, it is manifest in this that the wealth
of the State, or of the three men considered as a
society, is collectively less than it would have been
had the merchant been content with juster profit.
The operations of the two agriculturists have been
cramped to the utmost; and the continual limitations
of the supply of things they wanted at critical times,
together with the failure of courage consequent on
. the prolongation of a struggle for mere existence,
without any sense of permanent gain, must have
seriously diminished the effective results of their
labour; and the stores finally accumulated in the mer
chant’s hands will not in any wise be of equivalent
value to those which, had his dealings been honest,
would have filled at once the granaries of the farmers
and his own.
The whole question, therefore, respecting not only
the advantage, but even the quantity, of national
wealth, resolves itself finally into one of abstract
justice. It is impossible to conclude, of any given
mass of acquired wealth, merely by the fact of its
existence, whether it signifies good or evil to the
nation in the midst of which it exists. Its real value
depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as
• sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends
on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given
accumulation of commercial wealth may be indicative,
on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive
energies, and productive ingenuities : or, on the
other, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, merci
less tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some treasures are
heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored harvest with
untimely rain; and some gold is brighter in sunshine
than it is in substance. And these are not, observe,
merely moral or pathetic attributes of riches, which
�38
UNTO THIS LAST.
the seeker of riches may, if he chooses, despise; they
are, literally and sternly, material attributes of
riches, depreciating or exalting, incalculably, the
monetary signification of the sum in question. One
mass of money is the outcome of action which has
created—another, of action which has annihilated—
ten times as much in the gathering of it; such and
such strong hands have been paralysed, as if thev
had been numbed by nightshade : so many strong
men’s courage broken, so many productive opera
tions hindered; this and the other false direction
given to labour, and lying image of prosperity set
up, on Dura plains dug into seven-times-heated fur
naces. That which seems to be wealth may in verity
be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin; a
wrecker’s handful of coin gleaned from the beach to
which he has beguiled an argosy; a camp-follower’s
bundle of rags unwrapped from the breasts of
goodly soldiers dead; the purchase-pieces of potter’s
fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen
and the stranger.
And, therefore, the idea that directions can be
given for the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the
consideration of its moral sources, or that any gen
eral and technical law of purchase and gain can be set
down for national practice, is perhaps the most in
solently futile of all that ever beguiled men through
their vices. So far as I know, there is not in history
record of anything so disgraceful to the human in
tellect as the modern idea that the commercial text,
“ Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dear
est,” represents, or under any circumstances could
represent, an available principle of national economy.
Buy in the cheapest market?—yes; but what made
your market cheap ? Charcoal may be cheap among
your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be
cheap in your streets after an earthquake; but fire
and earthquake may not therefore be national bene
fits. Sell in the dearest?—ves, truly; but what made
your market dear? You sofd your bread well to-day;
�THE VEINS OF WEALTH.
39
was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for it,
and will never need bread more, or to a rich man who
to-morrow will buy your farm over your head; or. to
a soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which
you have put your fortune?
None of these things you can know. One. thing
only you can know, namely, whether this dealing of
yours is a just and faithful one, which is all you
need concern yourself about respecting it; sure thus
to have done your own part in bringing about ulti
mately in the world a state of things which will not
issue in pillage or in death. And thus every ques
tion concerning these things merges itself ultimately
in the great question of justice, which, the ground
being thus far cleared for it, I will enter upon in the
next paper, leaving only, in this, three final points
for the reader’s consideration.
It has been shown that the chief value and virtue
of money consists in its having power over human
beings; that, without this power, large material
possessions are useless, and to any person possess
ing such power, comparatively unnecessary.
But
power over human beings is attainable by other
means than by money. As I said a few pages back,
the money power is always imperfect and doubtful;
there are many things which cannot be reached with
it, others which cannot be retained by it. Many joys
may be given to men which cannot be bought for
gold, and many fidelities found in them which can
not be rewarded with it.
Trite enough—the reader thinks. Yes : but it is
not so trite—I wish it were—that in this moral
power, quite inscrutable and immeasurable though it
be, there is a monetary value just as real as that re
presented by more ponderous currencies. A man’s
hand may be full of invisible gold, and the wave of
it, or the grasp, shall do more than another’s with a
shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does
not necessarily diminish in spending. Political econo
�40
UNTO THIS LAST.
mists will do well some day to take heed of it, though
they cannot take measure.
But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists
in its authority over men, if the apparent or nominal
wealth fail in this power, it fails in essence; in fact,
ceases to be wealth at all. It does not appear lately
in England, that our authority over men is absolute.
The servants show some disposition to rush riot
ously upstairs, under an impression that their wages
are not regularly paid. We should augur ill of anv
gentleman’s property to whom this happened every
other day in his drawing-room.
So, also, the power of our wealth seems limited as
respects the comfort of the servants, no less than
their quietude. The persons in the kitchen appear
to be ill-dressed, squalid, half-starved. One cannot
help imagining that the riches of the establishment
must be of a very theoretical and documentary
character.
Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in
power over men, will it not follow that the nobler and
the more in number the persons are over whom it has
power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may
even appear, after some consideration, that the per
sons themselves are the wealth—that these pieces of
gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them,
are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine
harness or trappings, very glittering and beautiful
in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures;
but that if these same living creatures could be guided
without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in
their mouths and ears, they might themselves be
more valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be
discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple
—and not in Rock, but in Flesh—perhaps even that
the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is
in the producing as many as possible full-breathed,
bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures.
Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendency
the other way;—most political economists appearing
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
41
to consider multitudes of human creatures not con
ducive to wealth, or at best conducive to it only by
remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested state o
being.
Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious ques
tion, which I leave to the reader s pondering,
whether, among national manufacturers, that of
Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a
quite leadingly lucrative one?
Nay, in some far
away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine
that England may cast all thoughts of possessive
wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom
they first arose; and that, while the sands of the
' Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the
housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of
the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last at
tain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen
one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying
“ These are my Jewels.”
Ill___ QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
(“ They who rule the Earth.")
OME centuries before the Christian, era, a Jew
merchant, largely engaged in business on the
Gold Coast, and reported to have made one of
the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute
for much practical sagacity), left among his ledgers
some general maxims concerning wealth, which have
been preserved, strangely enough, even to our own
days. They were held in considerable respect by the
most active traders of the middle ages, especially by
the Venetians, who even went so far in their admira
tion as to place a statue of the old Jew on the angle
of one of their principal public buildings. Of late
years these writings have fallen into disrepute, being
c2
S
�42
UNTO THIS LAST.
opposed in every particular to the spirit of modern
commerce. Nevertheless I shall reproduce a passage
or two from them here, partly because they may in
terest the reader by their novelty; and chiefly be
cause they will show him that it is possible for a very
practical and acquisitive tradesman to hold, through
a not unsuccessful career, that principle of dis
tinction between well-gotten and ill-gotten wealth,
which, partially insisted on in my last paper, it must
be our work more completely to examine in this.
He says, for instance, in one place : “ The get
ting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed
to and fro of them that seek death; ” adding in
another, with the same meaning (he has a curious
way of doubling his sayings) : “Treasures of wicked
ness profit nothing : but justice delivers from death.”
Both these passages are notable for their assertions
of death as the only real issue and sum of attain
ment by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we read,
instead of “ lying tongue,” “ lying label, title, pre
tence, or advertisement,” we shall more clearly per
ceive the bearing of the words on modern business.
The seeking of death is a grand expression of the
true course of men’s toil in such business.
We
usually speak as if death pursued us, and we fled
from him; but that is only so in rare instances.
Ordinarily, he masks himself—makes himself beauti
ful—all-glorious; not like the King’s daughter, allglorious within, but outwardly : his clothing of
wrought gold.
We pursue him frantically all our
days, he flying or hiding from us. Our crowning suc
cess at three-score and ten is utterly and perfectly
to seize, and hold him in his eternal integrity—robes,
ashes, and sting.
Again : the merchant says, “ He that oppresseth
the poor to increase his riches, shall surely come to
want.” And again, more strongly: “ Rob not the
poor because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted
in the place of business.
For God shall spoil the
soul of those that spoiled them.”
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM
43
This “ robbing the poor because he is poor,” is
especially the mercantile form of theft, consisting in
taking advantage of a man’s necessities in order to
obtain his labour or property at a reduced price. The
ordinary highwayman’s opposite form of robbery—
of the rich, because he is rich—does not appear to
occur so often to the old merchant’s mind; probably
because, being less profitable and more dangerous
than the robbery of the poor, it is rarely practised
by persons of discretion.
But the two most remarkable passages in their
deep general significance are the following :—
“ The rich and the poor have met. God is their
' maker. ’ ’
“ The rich and the poor have met. God is their
light. ”
They ” have met ” : more literally, have stood in
each other’s way (obviaverunf). That is to say, as
long as the world lasts, the action and counteraction
of wealth and poverty, the meeting, face to face, of
rich and poor, is just as appointed and necessary a
law of that world as the flow of stream to sea, or the
interchange of power among the electric clouds :—
“ God is their maker.” But, also, this action may
be either gentle and just, or convulsive and destruc
tive : it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by
lapse of serviceable wave;—in blackness of thunder
stroke, or continual force of vital fire, soft, and
shapeable into love-syllables from far away. And
which of these it shall be, depends on both rich and
poor knowing that God is their light; that in the
mystery of human life, there is no other light than
this by which they can see each other’s faces, and
live;—light, which is called in another of the books
among which the merchant’s maxims have been pre
served, the “ sun of justice,”* of which it is pro* More accurately, Sun of Justness; but, instead of
the harsh word “Justness,” the old English “Righteous
ness” being commonly employed, has, by getting con
fused with “ godliness,” or attracting about it various
�UNTO THIS LAST.
44
mised that it shall rise at last with “ healing ”
(health-giving or helping, making whole or setting
at one) in its wings. For truly this healing is only
possible by means of justice; no love, no faith, no
hope will do it; men will be unwisely fond—vainly
faithful—unless primarily they are just; and the mis
take of the best men through generation after gen
eration, has been that great one of thinking to help
the poor by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience
or of hope, and by every other means, emollient or
consolatory, except the one thing which God
orders for them, justice.
But this justice, with
its accompanying holiness or helpfulness, being
even by the best man denied in its trial
time, is by the mass of men hated wherever
it appears : so that, when the choice was one day
fairly put to them, they denied the Helpful One and
the Just; and desired a murderer, sedition-raiser,
*
and robber, to be granted to them;—the murderer in
stead of the Lord of Life, the sedition-raiser instead
of the Prince of Peace, and the robber instead of the
Just Judge of all the world.
I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the
sea as a partial image of the action of wealth. In
one respect it is not a partial, but a perfect, image.
vague and broken meanings, prevented most persons
from receiving the force of the passage in which it occurs.
The word “ righteousness ” properly refers to the justice
of rule, or right, as distinguished from “ equity,” which
refers to the justice of balance. More broadly. Righteous
ness is King’s justice; and Equity Judge’s justice; the
King guiding or ruling all, the Judge dividing or dis
cerning between opposites (therefore, the double question,
“ Man, who made me a ruler— ft/caorifc —or a
divider—pEptarric—over you ? ”)
Thus, with respect
to the Justice of Choice (selection, the feebler and passive
justice), we have from lego—lex, legal, loi, and loyal;
and with respect to the Justice of Rule (direction, the
stronger and active justice), we have from rego—rex, regal,
roi, and royal.
* In another place written with the same meaning,
“Just, and having salvation.”
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
45
The popular economist thinks himself wise in having'
discovered that wealth, or the forms of property in
general, must go where they are required, that
where demand is, supply must follow. He farther
declares that this course of demand and supply can
not be forbidden by human laws.
Precisely in the
same sense, and with the same certainty, the waters
of the world go where they are required. Where the
land falls, the water flows. The course neither of
clouds nor rivers can be forbidden by human will.
But the disposition and administration of them can
be altered by human forethought.
AVhether the
stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon
man’s labour, and administrating intelligence. For
centuries after centuries, great districts of the world,
rich in soil, and favoured in climate, have lain
desert under the rage of their own rivers; nor only
desert, but plague-struck. The stream which, rightly
directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from
field to field—would have purified the air, given food
to man and beast, and carried their burdens for them
on its bosom—now overwhelms the plain and poisons
the wind; its breath pestilence, and its work famine.
In like manner this wealth “ goes where it is re
quired.” No human laws can withstand its flow.
They can only guide it: but this, the leading trench
and limiting mound can do so thoroughly, that it
shall become water of life—the riches of the hand of
*
wisdom; or, on the contrary, by leaving it to its
own lawless flow, they may make it, what it has
been too often, the last and deadliest of national
plagues : water of Marah—the water which feeds the
roots of all evil.
The necessity of these laws of distribution or re
straint is curiously overlooked in the ordinary politi
cal economist’s definition of his own “ science.” He
calls it, shortly, the “ science of getting rich.” But
there are many sciences, as well as many arts, of get* “ Length of days in her right hand; in her left,
riches and honour.”
�46
UNTO THIS LAST.
ting rich. Poisoning people of large estates, was
one employed largely in the middle ages; adultera
tion of food of people of small estates, is one em
ployed largely now. The ancient and honourable
highland method of blackmail; the more modern and
less honourable system of obtaining goods on credit,
and the other variously improved methods of appro
priation—which, in major and minor scales of in
dustry, down to the most artistic pocket-picking, wc
owe to recent genius—all come under the general
head of sciences, or arts, of getting rich.
So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling
his science the science par excellence of getting rich,
must attach some peculiar ideas of limitation to its
character. I hope I do not misrepresent him, by
assuming that he means his science to be the science
of “ getting rich by legal or just means.” In this
definition, is the word “ just,” or “ legal,” finally to
stand? For it is possible among certain nations, or
under certain rulers, or by help of certain advocates,
that proceedings may be legal which are by no means
just. If, therefore, we leave at last only the word
“ just ” in that place of our definition, the insertion
of this solitary and small word will make a notable
difference in the grammar of our science. For then
it will follow that in order to grow rich scientifically,
we must grow rich justly; and, therefore, know what
is just; so that our economy will no longer depend
merely on prudence, but on jurisprudence—
and that of divine, not human law.
Which
prudence is indeed of no mean order, hold
ing itself, as it were, high in the air of
heaven, and gazing for ever on the light of the sun
of justice; hence the souls which have excelled in it
are represented by Dante as stars forming in heaven
for ever the figure of the eye of an eagle; they having
been in life the discerners of light from darkness;
or to the whole human race, as the light of the body,
which is the eye; while those souls which form the
wings of the bird (giving power and dominion to
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
47
justice, “ healing in its wings ) trace also in light
the inscription in heaven: “ diligite justitiam qui
judicatis terram.” “Ye who judge the earth,
give ” (not, observe, merely love, but) “ diligent
love to justice ” : the love which seeks diligently,
that is to say, choosingly, and by preference to all
things else. Which judging or doing judgment in
the earth is, according to their capacity and position,
required not of judges only, nor of rulers only, but
of all men : a truth sorrowfully lost sight of even by
*
those who are ready enough to apply to them
selves passages in which Christian men are
spoken of as called to be “ saints ’ (f.e., to
helpful or healing functions); and “ chosen to
be kings” (i.e., to knowing or directing
functions); the true meaning of these titles having
been long lost through the pretences of unhelpful
and unable persons to saintly and kingly character;
also through the once popular idea that both the
sanctity and royalty are to consist in wearing long
robes and high crowns, instead of in mercy and judg
ment; whereas all true sanctity is saving power, as
all true royalty is ruling power; and injustice is part
and parcel of the denial of such power, which
“ makes men as the creeping things, as the fishes
of the sea, that have no ruler over them.”!
* I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly
amused by the statement in the first of these papers that
a lawyer’s function was to do justice. I did not intend
it for a jest; nevertheless it will be seen that in the above
passage neither the determination nor doing of justice are
contemplated as functions wholly peculiar to the lawyer.
Possibly, the more our standing armies, whether of
soldiers, pastors, or legislators (the generic term “ pastor ”
including all teachers, and the generic term “lawyer”
including makers as well as interpreters of law), can be
superseded by the force of national heroism, wisdom, and
honesty, the better it may be for the nation.
+ It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and
wolves, to live by the laws of demand and supplv;
the
distinction of humanity, to live by those of right.
�48
UNTO THIS LAST.
Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable
than absolute truth; but the righteous man is distin
guished from the unrighteous by his desire and hope
of justice, as the true man from the false by his de
sire and hope of truth. And though absolute justice
be unattainable, as much justice as we need for all
practical use is attainable by all those who make it
their aim.
We have to examine, then, in the subject before
us, what are the laws of justice respecting payment
of labour—no small part, these, of the foundations
of all jurisprudence.
I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money
payment to its simplest or radical terms. In those
terms its nature, and the conditions of justice re
specting it, can be best ascertained.
Money payment, as th^re stated, consists radically
in a promise to some person working for us, that
for the time and labour he spends in our service to
day we will give or procure equivalent time and
labour in his service at any future time when he may
demand it.
*
If we promise to give him less labour than he has
given us, we under-pay him. If we promise to give
him more labour than he has given us, we over-pay
him. In practice, according to the laws of demand
and supply, when two men are ready to do the work,
and only one man wants to have it done, the two
men underbid each other for it; and the one who
* It might appear at first that the market price of
labour expressed such an exchange: but this is a fallacy,
for the market price is the momentary price of the kind
of labour required, but the just price is its equivalent of
the productive labour of mankind. This difference will
be analysed in its place. It must be noted also that I
speak here only of the exchangeable value of labour, not
of that of commodities. The exchangeable value of a
commodity is that of the labour required to produce it,
multiplied into the force of the demand for it. If the
value of the labour— x and the force of demand = y, the
exchangeable value of the commodity is xy, in which if
either x±o, or y=o, xy=o.
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
49
gets it to do, is under-paid. But when two men
want the work done, and there is only one man
ready to do it, the two men who want it done over
bid each other, and the workman is over-paid. .
I will examine these two points of injustice in
succession; but first I wish the reader to clearly
understand the central principle, lying between the
two, of right or just payment.
When we ask a service of any man, he may either
give it us freely, or demand payment for it. Re
specting free gift of service, there is no question at
present, that being a matter of affection not of
traffic.
But if he demand payment for it, and we
wish to treat him with absolute equity, it is evident
that this equity can only consist in giving time for
time, strength for strength, and skill for skill. . If a
man works an hour for us, and we only promise to
work half an hour for him in return, we obtain an
unjust advantage. If, on the contrary, we promise
to work an hour and a half for him in return, he has
an unjust advantage. The justice consists in abso
lute exchange; or, if there be any respect to the
stations of the parties, it will not be in favour of the
employer : there is certainly no equitable reason in
a man’s being poor, that if he give me a pound of
bread to-day, I should return him less than a pound
of bread to-morrow; or any equitable reason in a
man’s being uneducated, that if he uses a certain
quantity of skill and knowledge in my service, I
should use a less quantity of skill and knowledge in
his. Perhaps, ultimately, it may appear desirable,
or, to say the least, gracious, that I should give in
return somewhat more than I received. But at pre
sent, we are concerned on the law of justice only,
which is that of perfect and accurate exchange;—
one circumstance only interfering with the simplicity
of this radical idea of just payment—that inasmuch
as labour (rightly directed) is fruitful just as seed is,
the fruit (or “ interest,” as it is called) of the labour
first given, or ‘‘ advanced,” ought to be taken into
�50
UNTO THIS LAST.
account, and balanced by an additional quantity of
labour in the subsequent repayment. Supposing the
repayment to take place at the end of the year, or of
any other given time, this calculation could be ap
proximately made; but as money (that is to say,
cash) payment involves no reference to time (it being
optional with the person paid to spend what he re
ceives at once or after any number of years), we can
only assume, generally, that some slight advantage
must in equity be allowed to the person who ad
vances the labour, so that the typical form of bargain
will be : If you give me an hour to-day, I will give
you an hour and five minutes on demand. If you
give me a pound of bread to-day, I will give you
seventeen ounces on demand, and so on. All that
is necessary for the reader to note is, that the
amount returned is at least in equity not to be less
than the amount given.
The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as
respects the labourer, is that they will at any time
procure for him at least as much labour as he has
given, rather more than less. And this equity or
justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent
of any reference to the number of men who are
willing to do the work. I want a horseshoe for my
horse. Twenty smiths, or twenty thousand smiths
may be ready to forge it; their number does not in
one atom’s weight affect the question of the equitable
payment of the one who does forge it. It costs him
a quarter of an hour of his life, and so much skill
and strength of arm, to make that horseshoe for me.
Then at some future time I am bound in equity to
give a quarter of an hour, and some minutes more,
of my life (or of some other person’s at my disposal),
and also as much strength of arm and skill, and a
little more, in making or doing what the smith may
have need of.
Such being the abstract theory of just remunera
tive payment, its application is practically modified
by the fact that the order for labour, given in
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
51
payment, is general, while the labour received is
special. The current coin or document is practically
an ordcron the nation for so much work of any kind;
and this universal applicability to immediate need
renders it so much more valuable than special labour
can be, that an order for a less quantity of this gen
eral toil will always be accepted as a just equivalent
for a greater quantity of special toil.
Any given
craftsman will always be willing to give an hour of
his own work in order to receive command over half
an hour, or even much less, of national work. This
source of uncertainty, together with the difficulty of
determining the monetary value of skill, render the
*
* Under the term “ skill ” I mean to include the united
force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their opera
tion on manual labour: and under the term passion,
to include the entire range and agency of the moral reel
ings ; from the simple patience and gentleness of mind
which will give continuity and fineness to the touch, or
enable one person to work without fatigue, and with
good effect, twice as long as another, up to the qualities
of character which render science possible—(the retarda
tion of science by envy is one of the most tremendous
losses in the economy of the _ present century)—
and to the incommunicable emotion and imagination
which are the first and mightiest sources of all value m
art.
It is highly singular that political economists should
not yet have perceived, if not the moral, at least the
passionate element, to be an inextricable quantity m
every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how
it was possible that Mr. Mill should have followed the
true clue so far as to write—“ No limit can be set to the
importance—even in a purely productive and material
point of view—of mere thought,” without seeing that it
was logically necessary to add also, “ and of mere feel
ing.” And this the more, because in his first definition of
labour he includes in the idea of it “ all feelings of a dis
agreeable kind connected with the employment of one’s
thoughts in a particular occupation.” True; but why not
also, “ feelings of an agreeable kind ” ? It can hardly be
supposed that the feelings which retard labour are more
essentially a part of the labour than those which acceler
ate it. The first are paid for as pain, the second as
power. The workman is merely indemnified for the first;
�52
UNTO THIS LAST.
ascertainment (even approximate) of the proper
wages of any given labour in terms of a currency,
matter of considerable complexity. But they do not
affect the principle of exchange. The worth of the
work may not be easily known; but it has a worth,
just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a
substance, though such specific gravity may not be
easily ascertainable when the substance is united
with many others. Nor is there so much difficulty
or chance in determining it, as in determining the
ordinary maxima and minima of vulgar political
economy.
There are few bargains in which the
buyer can ascertain with anything like precision that
the seller would have taken no less;—or the seller ac
quire more than a comfortable faith that the pur
chaser would have given no more. This impossi
bility of precise knowledge prevents neither from
striving to attain the desired point of greatest vexa
tion and injury to the other, nor from accepting it
for a scientific principle that he is to buy for the least
and sell for the most possible, though what the real
least or most may be he cannot tell. In like manner,
a just person lays it down for a scientific principle
that he is to pay a just price, and, without being
able precisely to ascertain the limits of such a price,
will nevertheless strive to attain the closest possible
approximation to them. A practically serviceable
approximation he can obtain. It is easier to deter
mine scientifically what a man ought to have for his
but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable
value of the work, and materially increase its actual
quantity.
“ Fritz is with us. He is worth fifty thousand men.”
Truly, a large addition to the material force ;—consisting,
however, be it observed, not more in operations carried
on in Fritz’s head, than in operations carried on in his
armies’ heart. “ No limit can be set to the importance
of mere thought.” Perhaps not!
Nay, suppose some
day it should turn out that “ mere ” thought was in itself a
recommendable object of production, and that all Mate
rial production was only a step towards this more precious
Immaterial one?
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
53
work, than what his necessities will compel him to
take for it. His necessities can only be ascertained
by empirical, but his due by analytical, investigation.
In the one case, you try your answer to the sum like
a puzzled schoolboy—till you find one that fits, in
the other, you bring out your result within certain
limits, by process of calculation.
Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity
of given labour to have been ascertained, let us ex
amine the first results of just and unjust payment,
when in favour of the purchaser or employer: t.e.,
when two men are ready to do the work, and only
one wants to have it done.
The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against
each other till he has reduced their demand to its
lowest terms. Let us assume that the lowest bidder
offers to do the work at half its just price.
The purchaser employs him, and does not employ
the other. The first or apparent result is, therefore,
that one of the two men is left out of employ, or
to starvation, just as definitely as by the just pro
cedure of giving fair price to the best workman. The
various writers who endeavoured to invalidate the
■positions of my first paper never saw this, and as
sumed that the unjust hirer employed both. He em
ploys both no more than the just hirer. The only
difference (in the outset) is that the just man pays
sufficiently, the unjust man insufficiently, for the
labour of the single person employed.
I say, “ in the outset
for this first or apparent
difference is not the actual difference. By the unjust
procedure, half the proper price of the work is left
in the hands of the employer. This enables him to
hire another man at the same unjust rate, on some
other kind of work; and the final result is that he
has two men working for him at half-price, and two
are out of employ.
By the just procedure, the whole price of the first
piece of work goes into the hands of the man who
does it. No surplus being left in the employer’s
�54
UNTO THIS LAST.
hands, he cannot hire another man for another piece
of labour. But by precisely so much as his power
is diminished, the hired workman’s power is in
creased : that is to say, by the additional half of
the price he has received; which additional half he has
the power of using to employ another man in his
service. I will suppose, for the moment, the least
favourable, though quite probable, case—that, though
justly treated himself, he yet will act unjustly to his
subordinate; and hire at half-price if he can. The
final result will then be, that one man works for the
employer, at just price; one for the workman, at
half-price; and two, as in the first case, are still out
of employ. These two, as I said before, are out of
employ in both cases. The difference between the
just and unjust procedure does not lie in the number
of men hired, but in the price paid to them, and the
persons by whom it is paid. The essential difference,
that which I want the reader to see clearly, is, that
in the unjust case, two men work for one, the
first hirer. In the just case, one man works for the
first hirer, one for the person hired, and so on,
down or up through the various grades of service;
the influence being carried forward by justice, and
arrested by injustice.
The universal and constant
action of justice in this matter is therefore to dimin
ish t-he power of wealth, in the hands of one in
dividual, over masses of men, and to distribute it
through a chain of men. The actual power exerted
by the wealth is the same in both cases; but by in
justice it is put all into one man’s hands, so that he
directs at once and with equal force the labour of a
circle of men about him; by the just procedure, he is
permitted to touch the nearest only, through whom,
with diminished force, modified by new minds, the
energy of the wealth passes on to others, and so till
it exhausts itself.
The immediate operation of justice in this respect
is therefore to diminish the power of wealth, first, in
acquisition of luxury, and secondly, in exercise of
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
55
moral influence. The employer cannot concentrate
so multitudinous labour on his own interests, nor can
he subdue so multitudinous mind to.his own will. But
the secondary operation of justice is not less impor
tant. The insufficient payment of the group of men
working for one, places each under a maximum of
difficulty in rising above his position. The tendency of
the system is to check advancement. But the suffi
cient or just payment, distributed through a.descend
ing series of offices or grades of labour,gives each
subordinated person fair and sufficient means of
rising in the social scale, if he chooses to use them,
and thus not only diminishes the immediate power of
wealth, but removes the worst disabilities of
poverty.
It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny
* I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly,
the equivocations of the writers who sought to obscure the
instances given of regulated labour in the first of these
papers, bv confusing kinds, ranks, and quantities of
labour with its qualities. I never said that a colonel
should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the
same pay as a curate. Neither did I say that more woik
ought to be paid as less work (so that the curate of a
parish of two thousand souls should have no more than
the curate of a parish of five hundred). But I said that,
so far as you emplov it at all, bad work should be paid
no less than good work; as a bad clergyman yet takes
his tithes, a bad phvsician takes his fee, and a bad lawyer
his costs. And this, as will be farther shown in the con
clusion, I said, and say, partly because the best work
never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all; but
chiefly because, the moment people know they have to
pay the bad and good alike, they will try to discern the
one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious
writer in the Scotsman asks me if I should like any com
mon scribbler to be paid by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.
''as their good authors are. I should, if they employed
him—¿ut would seriously recommend them, for the
scribbler’s sake as well as their own, not to employ him.
The quantity of its money, which the country at present
invests in scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, eco
nomically spent; and even the highly ingenious person to
whom this question occurred, might perhaps have been
more beneficially employed than in printing it.
�56
UNTO THIS LAST.
of the labourer is ultimately dependent. Many minor
interests may sometimes appear to interfere with it,
but all branch from it. For instance, considerable
agitation is often caused in the minds of the lower
classes when they discover the share which they
nominally, and to all appearance, actually, pay out
of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or
forty per cent.). This sounds very grievous; but in
reality the labourer does not pay it, but his em
ployer. If the workman had not to pay it, his wages
would be less by just that sum; competition would
still reduce them to the lowest rate at which life was
possible. Similarly the lower orders agitated for the
repeal of the corn laws, thinking they would be
*
* I have to acknowledge an interesting communica
tion on the subject of free-trade from Paisley (for a
short letter from “A Well-wisher” at ----- , my thanks
are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I fear,
be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and always
have been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free
trader. Seven years ago, speaking of the various signs of
infancy in the European mind (‘ Stones of Venice,’ vol.
iii., p. 168), I wrote: “The first principles of commerce
were acknowledged by the English parliament only a
few months ago, in its free-trade measures, and are still
so little understood by the million, that no nation ¿Lares
to abolish its custom-houses.”
It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea
of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their
ports shut; every wise nation will throw its own open.
It is not the opening them, but a sudden, inconsiderate,
and blunderingly experimental manner of opening them,
which does harm. If you have been protecting a manu
facture for a long series of years, you must not take the
protection off in a moment, so as to throw every one of its
operatives at once out of employ, any more than you
must take all its wrappings off a ieeble child at once in
cold weather, though the cumber of them may have been
radically injuring its health. Little by little, you must
restore it to freedom and to air.
Most people’s minds are in curious confusion on the
subject of free-trade, because they suppose it to imply
enlarged competition. _ On the contrary, free-trade puts
an end to all competition. “ Protection ” (among various
other mischievous functions) endeavours to enable one
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
57
better off if bread were cheaper; never perceiving
that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper,
wages would permanently fall in precisely that pro
portion. The corn laws were rightly repealed; not,
however, because they directly oppressed the poor,
but because they indirectly oppressed them in caus
ing a large quantity of their labour to be consumed
unproductively. So also unnecessary taxation op
presses them, through destruction of capital, but the
destiny of the poor depends primarily always on this
one question of dueness of wages.
Their distress
(irrespectively of that caused by sloth, minor error,
or crime) arises on the grand scale from the two re
acting forces of competition and oppression. There
is not yet, nor will yet for ages be, any real over
population in the world; but a local over-population,
or, more accurately, a degree of population locally
unmanageable under existing circumstances for want
of forethought and sufficient machinery, necessarily
shows itself by pressure of competition; and the
taking advantage of this competition by the pur
chaser to obtain their labour unjustly cheap, consum
mates at once their suffering and his own; for in this
(as I believe in every other kind of slavery) the op
pressor suffers at last more than the oppressed, and
those magnificent lines of Pope, even in all their
force, fall short of the truth :—
“ Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,
Each does but HATE HIS NEIGHBOUR AS HIMSELF :
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides
The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.”
The collateral and reversionary operations of jus
tice in this matter I shall examine hereafter (it being
country to compete with another in the production of an
article at a disadvantage. When trade is entirely free,
no country can be competed with in the articles for the
production of which it is naturally calculated; nor can
it compete with any other, in the production of articles for
which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, for in
stance, cannot compete with England in steel, nor Eng-
�58
UNTO THIS LAST.
needful first to define the nature of value); proceeding
then to consider within what practical terms a juster
system may be established; and ultimately the vexed
question of the destinies of the unemployed work
*
men. Lest, however, the reader should be alarmed
at some of the issues to which our investigations
seem to be tending, as if in their bearing against the
power of wealth they had something in common with
those of socialism, I wish him to know, in accurate
land with Tuscany in oil. They must exchange their
steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank and
free as honesty and the sea-winds can make it. Com
petition, indeed, arises at first, and sharply, in order to
prove which is strongest in any given manufacture pos
sible to both; this point once ascertained, competition is
at an end.
* I should be glad if the reader would first clear the
ground for himself so far as to determine whether the
difficulty lies in getting the work or getting the pay for
it. Does he consider occupation itself to be an expen
sive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which too little is
to be found in the world ? or is it rather that, while in the
enjoyment even of the most athletic delight, men must
nevertheless be maintained, and this maintenance is not
always forthcoming? We must be clear on this head be
fore going farther, as most people are loosely in the
habit of talking of the difficulty of “ finding employment.”
Is it employment that we want to find, or support during
employment ? Is it idleness we wish to put an end to, or
hunger? We have to take up both questions in succes
sion, only not both at the same time. No doubt that
work is a luxury, and a very great one. It is, indeed, at
once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain either
health of mind or body without it. So profoundly do I
feel this, that, as will be seen in the sequel, one of the
principal objects I would recommend to benevolent and
practical persons, is to induce rich people to seek for a
larger quantity of this luxury than they at present
possess. Nevertheless, it appears by experience that even
this healthiest of pleasures may be indulged in to excess,
and that human beings are just as liable to surfeit of
labour as to surfeit of meat; so that, as on the one hand,
it may be charitable to provide, for some people, lighter
dinner, and more work—for others, it may be equally ex
pedient to provide lighter work, and more dinner.
�QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.
59
terms, one or two of the main points which I have in
view.
Whether socialism has made more progress among
the army and navy (where payment is made on my
principles), or among the manufacturing operatives
(who are paid on my opponents’ principles), I leave
it to those opponents to ascertain and declare. What
ever their conclusion may be, I think it necessary to
answer for myself only this : that if there be any one
point insisted on throughout my_ works more fre
quently than another, that one point is the impossi
bility of Equality. My continual aim has been to
show the eternal superiority of some men to others,
sometimes even of one man to all others, and to
show also the advisability of appointing such persons
or person to guide, to lead, or on occasion even to
compel and subdue, their inferiors according to their
own better knowledge and wiser will. My principles
of Political Economy were all involved in a single
phrase spoken three years ago at Manchester .
“ Soldiers of the Ploughshare as well as Soldiers of
the Sword
and they were all summed in a single
sentence in the last volume of * Modern Painters
“ Government and co-operation are in all things the
Laws of Life; Anarchy and competition the Laws of
Death.”
.
v
And with respect to the mode in which these
general principles affect the secure possession of pro
perty, so far am I from invalidating such security,
that the whole gist of these papers will be found ulti
mately to aim at an extension in its range; and
whereas it has long been known and declared that
the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I
wish it also to be known and declared that the rich
have no right to the property of the poor..
But that the working of the system which I have
undertaken to develop would in many ways shorten
the apparent and direct, though not the unseen and
collateral, power, both of wealth, as the Lady of
Pleasure, and of capital as the Lord of Toil, I do
�6o
UNTO THIS LAST.
not deny;—on the contrary, I affirm it in all joyful
ness; knowing that the attraction of riches is already
too strong, as their authority is already too weighty,
for the reason of mankind. I said in my last paper
that nothing in history had ever been so disgraceful
to human intellect as the acceptance among us of the
common doctrines of political economy as a science.
I have many grounds for saying this, but one of the
chief may be given in few words. I know no pre
vious instance in history of a nation’s establishing a
systematic disobedience to the first principles of its
professed religion. The writings which we (verb
ally) esteem as divine, not only denounce the love of
money as the source of all evil, and as an idolatry
abhorred of the Deity, but declare mammon service
to be the accurate and irreconcileable opposite of
God’s service; and, whenever they speak of riches
absolute, and poverty absolute, declare woe to the
rich, and blessing to the poor. Whereupon we forth
with investigate a science of becoming rich, as the
shortest road to national prosperity.
“Tai Cristian dannerà l’Etiòpe,
Quando si partiranno i due collegi,
L’uno in eterno ricco, e l’altro inope.”
IV.--- AD VALOREM.
(“ According to the Value.”)
N the last paper we saw that just payment of
labour consisted in a sum of money which would
approximately obtain equivalent labour at a
future time : we have now to examine the means of
obtaining such equivalence. Which question involves
the definition of Value, Wealth, Price, and Produce.
None of these terms are yet defined so as to be
understood by the public. But the last, Produce,
which one might have thought the clearest of all, is,
I
�AD VALOREM.
61
in use, the most ambiguous; and the examination
of the kind of ambiguity attendant on its present
employment will best open the way to our work. .
In his chapter on Capital, Mr. J. S. Mill in
*
stances, as a capitalist, a hardware manufacturer,
who, having intended to spend, a certain portion o
the proceeds of his business in buying plate and
jewels, changes his mind, and “ pays it as wages to
additional workpeople.” The effect is stated y r.
Mill to be, that “ more food is appropriated to the
consumption of productive labourers.”
Now I do not ask, though, had I written this
paragraph, it would surely have been asked of me,
What is to become of the silversmiths? If they are
truly unproductive persons, we will acquiesce in
their extinction. And though in another, part of the
same passage, the hardware merchant is supposed
also to dispense with a number of servants, whose
“ food is thus set free for productive purposes,” I
do not inquire what will be the effect, painful. or
otherwise, upon the servants, of this emancipation
of their food. But I very seriously inquire why iron
ware is produce, and silverware is not? That the
merchant consumes the one, and sells the other, cer
tainly does not constitute the difference, unless it can
be shown (which, indeed, I perceive it to be becom
ing daily more and more the aim of tradesmen to
show) that commodities are made to be sold, and not
to be consumed. The merchant is an agent of con
veyance to the consumer in one case, and is himself
the consumer in the other :f but the labourers are in
* Book I. chap. iv. s. i. To save space, my future
references to Mr. Mill’s work will be by numerals only, as
in this instance, I. iv. i. Ed. in 2 vols. 8vo, Parker, 1848.
+ If Mr. Mill had wished to show the difference in re
sult between consumption and sale, he should have repre
sented the hardware merchant as consuming his own
goods instead of selling them; similarly, the silver mer
chant as consuming his own goods instead of selling them.
Had he done this, he would have made his position
clearer, though less tenable; and perhaps this was the
�62
UNTO THIS LAST.
either case equally productive, since they have pro
duced goods to the same value, if the hardware and
the plate are both goods.
And what distinction separates them? It is indeed
possible that in the “ comparative estimate of the
moralist,” with which Mr. Mill says political econ
omy has nothing to do (III. i. 2), a steel fork might
appear a more substantial production than a silver
one : we may grant also that knives, no less than
forks, are good produce; and scythes and plough
shares serviceable articles. But, how of bayonets?
Supposing the hardware merchant to effect large
sales of these, by help of the “ setting free ” of the
food of his servants and his silversmith,—is he still
employing productive labourers, or, in Mr. Mill’s
words, labourers who increase “the stock of per
manent means of enjoyment ” (I. iii. 4)? Or if, in
stead of bayonets, he. supply bombs, will not’ the
absolute and final “ enjoyment ” of even these ener
getically productive articles (each of which costs ten
)
*
pounds
be dependent on a proper choice of time
and place for their enfantement; choice, that is to
say, depending on those philosophical considera
tions with which political economy has nothing to
do?t
position he really intended to take, tacitly involving his
theory, elsewhere stated, and shown in the sequel of this
paper to be false, that demand for commodities is not de
mand for labour. But by the most diligent scrutiny of
the paragraph now under examination, I cannot deter
mine whether it is a fallacy pure and simple, or the half
of one fallacy supported by the whole of a greater one;
so that I treat it here on the kinder assumption that it is
one fallacy only.
* I take Mr. Helps’ estimate in his essav on War.
+ Also, when the wrought silver vases'of Spain were
dashed to fragments bv our custom-house officers because
bullion might be imported free of duty, but not brains,
was the axe that broke them productive ?—the artist who
wrought them unproductive? Or again. If the wood
man’s axe is productive, is the executioner’s? as also, if
the hemp of a cable be productive, does not the produc
tiveness of hemp in a halter depend on its moral more
than on its material application ?
�AD VALOREM.
63
I should have regretted the need of pointing out
inconsistency in any portion of Mr. Mill’s work, had
not the value of his work proceeded from its incon
sistencies. He deserves honour among economists
by inadvertently disclaiming the principles which he
states, and tacitly introducing the moral considera
tions with which he declares his science has no con
nection. Many of his chapters are, therefore, true
and valuable; and the only conclusions of his which I
have to dispute are those which follow fr®m his pre
mises.
Thus, the idea which lies at the root of the passage
we have just been examining, namely, that labour
applied to produce luxuries will not support so many
persons as labour applied to produce useful articles,
is entirely true; but the instance given fails—and in
four directions of failure at once—because Mr. Mill
has not defined the real meaning of usefulness. The
definition which he has given—“ capacity to satisfy
a desire, or serve a purpose ” (III. i. 2)—applies
equally to the iron and silver; while the true defini
tion—which he has not given, but which nevertheless
underlies the false verbal definition in his mind, and
comes out once or twice by accident (as in the words
“ any support to life or strength ” in I. i. 5)—applies
to some articles of iron, but not to others, and
to some articles of silver, but not to others. It
applies to ploughs, but not to bayonets; and to forks,
but not to filigree.
*
The eliciting of the true definitions will give us the
reply to our first question, “ What is value? ” re
specting which, however, we must first hear the
popular statements.
“ The word ‘ value,’ when used without adjunct,
always means, in political economy, value in ex
change ” (Mill, III. i. 3). So that, if two ships can
not exchange their rudders, their rudders are, in
politico-economic language, of no value to either.
* Filigree; that is to say, generally ornament depen
dent on complexity, not on art.
�64
UNTO THIS LAST.
But “ the.subject of political economy is wealth.”
—(Preliminary remarks, page I.)
And wealth “ consists of all useful and agreeable
objects which possess exchangeable value.”—(Pre
liminary remarks, page io.)
It appears, then, according to Mr. Mill, that use
fulness and agreeablcness underlie the exchange
value, and must be ascertained to exist in the thing,
before we can esteem it an object of wealth.
Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends
not merely on its own nature, but on the number of
people who can and will use it. A horse is useless,
and therefore unsaleable, if no one can ride,—a
sword, if no one can strike, and meat, if no one can
eat. Thus every material utility depends on its rela
tive human capacity.
Similarly : The agreeableness of a thing depends
not merely on its own likeableness, but on the
number of people who can be got to like it. The
relative agreeableness, and therefore saleableness, of
“ a pot of the smallest ale,” and of ” Adonis painted
by a running brook,” depends virtually on the
opinion of Demos, in the shape of Christopher Sly.
That is to say, the agreeableness of a thing depends
on its relatively human disposition. Therefore, poli
*
tical economy, being a science of wealth, must be
* These statements sound crude in their brevity; but
will be found of the utmost importance when they are
developed. Thus, in the above instance, economists have
never perceived that disposition to buy is a wholly moral
element in demand: that is to say, when you give a man
half a crown, it depends on his disposition whether he is
rich or poor with it—-whether he will buy disease, ruin,
and hatred, or buy health, advancement, and domestic
love. And thus the agreeableness or exchange value of
every offered commodity depends on production, not
merely of the commodity, but of buyers of it; therefore
on the education of buyers, and on all the moral elements
by which their disposition to buy this, or that, is formed.
I will illustrate and expand into final consequences every
one of these definitions in its place: at present they can
�AD VALOREM.
65
a science respecting human capacities and disposi
tions. But moral considerations have nothing to do
with political economy (III. i. 2). Therefore, moral
considerations have nothing to do with human capa
cities and dispositions.
I do not wholly like the look of this conclusion
from Mr. Mill’s statements :—let us try Mr.
Ricardo’s.
“ Utility is not the measure of exchangeable value,
though it is absolutely essential to it.”—(Chap. I.
sect, i.) Essential in what degree, Mr. Ricardo?
There may be greater and less degrees of utility.
Meat, for instance, may be so good as to be fit for
any one to eat, or so bad as to be fit for no one to
eat. What is the exact degree of goodness which is
“ essential ” to its exchangeable value, but not “ the
measure” of it? How good must the meat be, in
order to possess any exchangeable value? and how
bad must it be—(I wish this were a settled question
in London markets)—in order to possess none?
There appears to be some hitch, I think, in the
working even of Mr. Ricardo’s principles; but let
him take his own example. “ Suppose that in the
early stages of society the bows and arrows of the
hunter were of equal value with the implements of
the fisherman. Under such circumstances the value
of the deer, the produce of the hunter’s day’s labour,
would be exactly ” (italics mine) “ equal to the value
of the fish, the product of the fisherman’s day’s
labour. The comparative value of the fish and game
would be entirely regulated by the quantity of labour
realised in each.” (Ricardo, chap. iii. On Value.)
Indeed ! Therefore, if the fisherman catches one
sprat, and the huntsman one deer, one sprat will be
only be given with extremest brevity; for in order to put
the subject at once in a connected form before the
reader, I have thrown into one, the opening definitions
of four chapters: namely, of that on Value (“Ad Val
orem”); on Price (“Thirty Pieces”); on Production
(“Demeter”); and on Economy (“The Law of the House”).
D
�66
UNTO THIS LAST.
equal in value to one deer; but if the fisherman
catches no sprat and the huntsman two deer, no
sprat will be equal in value to two deer?
Nay; but—Mr. Ricardo’s supporters may say—he
means, on an average;—if the average product of a
day’s work of fisher and hunter be one fish and one
deer, the one fish will always be equal in value to
the one deer.
Might I inquire the species of fish. Whale? or
*
whitebait?
It would be waste of time to pursue these fallacies
farther; we will seek for a true definition.
Much store has been set for centuries upon the use
of our English classical education. It were to be
wished that our well-educated merchants recalled to
mind always this much of their Latin schooling,—
that the norpinative of valorem (a word already suffi
ciently familiar to them) is valor; a word which,
therefore, ought to be familiar to them. Valor, from
* Perhaps it may be said, in farther support of Mr.
Ricardo, that he meant, “ when the utility is constant or
given, the price varies as the quantity of labour.” If he
meant this, he should have said it; but, had he meant it,
he could have hardly missed the necessary result, that
utility would be one measure of price (which he expressly
denies it to be); and that, to prove saleableness, he had to
prove a given quantity of utility, as well as a given
quantity of labour; to wit, in his own instance, that the
deer and fish would each feed the same number of men,
for the same number of days, with equal pleasure to their
Salates. The fact is, he did not know what he meant
imself. The general idea which he had derived from
commercial experience, without being able to analyse it,
was that when the demand is constant, the price varies as
the quantity of labour required for production; or, using
the formula I gave in last paper—when y is constant, x y
varies as x. But demand never is nor can be ultimately
constant, if x varies distinctly; for as price rises, con
sumers fall away; and as soon as there is a monopoly
(and all scarcity is a form of monopoly, so that every _
commodity is affected occasionally by some colour of
monoplv), y becomes the most influential condition of
the price. Thus the price of a painting depends less on
its merit than on the interest taken in it by the public;
�AD VALOREM.
67
vAlere, to be well or strong (uytairw) ;—strong, in
life (if a man), or valiant; strong, for life (if a thing),
or valuable. To be “ valuable,” therefore, is to
“avail towards life.” A truly valuable or availing
thing is that which leads to life with its whole
strength. In proportion as it does not lead to life, or
as its strength is broken, it is less valuable; in pro
portion as it leads away from life, it is unvaluable
or malignant.
The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of
opinion, and of quantity. Think what you will of it,
gain how much you may of it, the value of the thing
itself is neither greater nor less. For ever it avails,
or avails not; no estimate can raise, no disdain re
press, the power which it holds from the Maker of
things and of men.
The real science of political economy, which has
yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as
medicine -from witchcraft, and astronomy from astro
logy, is that which teaches nations to desire and
labour for the things that lead to life : and which
the price of singing less on the labour of the singer than
the number of persons who desire to hear him: and the
price of gold less on the scarcity which affects it in com
mon with cerium or iridium, than on the sunlight colour
and unalterable purity by which it attracts the admira
tion and answers the trust of mankind.
It must be kept in mind, however, that I use the word
“ demand ” in a somewhat different sense from economists
usually. They mean by it “ the quantity of a thing sold.”
I mean by it “ the force of the buyer’s capable intention
to buy.” In good English, a person’s “ demand ” signi
fies, not what he gets, but what he asks for.
Economists also do not notice that objects are not
valued by absolute bulk or weight, but by such bulk and
weight as is necessary to bring them into use. They say,
for instance, that water bears no price in the market.
It is true that a cupful does not, but a lake does; just as
a handful of dust does not, but an acre does. And were
it possible to make even the possession of a cupful or
handful permanent (i.e., to find a place for them), the
earth and sea would be brought up by handfuls and cup
fuls.
�68
UNTO THIS LAST.
teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that
lead to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy,
they supposed indifferent things, such as excres
cences of shell-fish, and pieces of blue and red stone,
to be valuable, and spent large measures of the
labour which ought to be employed for the
extension and ennobling of life, in diving or digging
for them, and cutting them into various shapes,—or
if, in the same state of infancy, they imagine pre
cious and beneficent things, such as air, light, and
cleanliness, to be valueless,—or if, finally, they imag
ine the conditions of their own existence, by which
alone they can truly possess or use anything, such,
for instance, as peace, trust, and love, to be pru
dently exchangeable, when the markets offer, for
gold, iron, or excrescences of shells—the great and
only science of Political Economy teaches them, in
all these cases, what is vanity, and what substance;
and how the service of Death, the Lord of Waste,
and of eternal emptiness, differs from the service of
Wisdom, the Lady of Saving, and of eternal fulness;
she who has said, “ I will cause those that love me
to inherit Substance; and I will Fill their trea
sures.”
The “ Lady of Saving,” in a profounder sense
than that of the savings bank, though that is a good
one: Madonna della Salute,—Lady of Health,—
which, though commonly spoken of as if separate
from wealth, is indeed a part of wealth. This word,
“ wealth,” it will be remembered, is the next w’e
have to define.
‘‘To be wealthy,” says Mr. Mill, “is to have a
large stock of useful articles.”
I accept this definition. Only let us perfectly
understand it. My opponents often lament my not
giving them enough logic : I fear I must at present
use a little more than they will like; but this business
of Political Economy is no light one, and we must
allow no loose terms in it.
We have, therefore, to ascertain in the above
�AD VALOREM.
69
definition, first, what is the meaning of “ having,”
or the nature of Possession. Then what is the mean
ing of “ useful,” or the nature of Utility.
And first of possession. At the crossing of the
transepts of Milan Cathedral has lain, for three hun
dred years, the embalmed body of St. Carlo Borromeo. It holds a golden crosier, and has a cross of
emeralds on its breast. Admitting the crosier and
emeralds to be useful articles, is the body to be con
sidered as “ having ” them? Do they, in the politicoeconomical sense of property, belong to it? If not,
and if we may, therefore, conclude generally that a
dead body cannot possess property, what degree and
period of animation in the body will render posses
sion possible?
As thus : lately in a wreck of a Californian ship,
one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with
two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was
found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was
sinking—had he the gold ? or had the gold him ?
*
And if, instead of sinking him in the sea by its
weight, the gold had struck him on the forehead, and
thereby caused incurable disease—suppose palsy or
insanity,—would the gold in that case have been
more a “possession” than in the first? Without
pressing the inquiry up through instances of gradu
ally increasing vital power over the gold (which I
will, however, give, if they are asked for), I presume
the reader will see that possession, or “ having,” is
not an absolute, but a gradated power; and consists
not only in the quantity or nature of the thing pos
sessed, but also (and in a greater degree) in its suit
ableness to the person possessing it and in his vital
power to use it.
And our definition of Wealth, expanded, becomes :
“ The possession of useful articles, which we can
use.” This is a very serious change. For wealth,
instead of depending merely on a “have,” is thus
* Compare George HERBERT, ‘The Church Porch,’
Stanza 28.
�70
UNTO THIS LAST.
seen to depend on a “ can.” Gladiator’s death, on
a “ habet ”; but soldier’s victory, and State’s salva
tion, on a “ quo plurimum posset.” (Liv. VII. 6.)
And what we reasoned ol only as accumulation of
material, is seen to demand also accumulation of
capacity.
So much for our verb. Next for our adjective.
What is the meaning of “ useful ”?
The inquiry is closely connected with the last. For
what is capable of use in the hands of some persons,
is capable, in the hands of others, of the opposite of
use, palled commonly “ from-use,” or “ ab-use. ”
And it depends on the person, much more than on
the article, whether its usefulness or ab-usefulness
will be the quality developed in it. Thus, wirte,
which the Greeks, in their Bacchus, made rightly the
type of all passion, and which, when used, “ cheereth
god and man ” (that is to say, strengthens both the
divine life, or reasoning power, and the earthy, or
carnal power, of man); yet, when abused, becomes
“ Dionusos,” hurtful especially to the divine part of
man, or reason. And again, the body itself, being
equally liable to use and to abuse, and, when rightly
disciplined, serviceable to the State, both for war and
labour;—but when not disciplined, or abused, value
less to the State, and capable only of continuing the
private or single existence of the individual (and that
but feebly)—the Greeks called such a body an
“idiotic” or “private” body, from their word
signifying a person employed in no way directly
useful to the State; whence finally, our “ idiot,”
meaning a person entirely occupied with his own
concerns.
Hence, it follows that if a thing is to be useful, it
must be not only of an availing nature, but in avail
ing hands. Or, in accurate terms, usefulness is
value in the hands of the valiant; so that this science
of wealth being, as we have just seen, when regarded
as the science of Accumulation, accumulative of
capacity as well as of material,—when regarded as
�AD VALOREM.
71
the Science of Distribution, is distribution not abso
lute, but discriminate; not of every thing to every
man, but of the right thing to the right man. A
difficult science, dependent on more than arithmetic.
Wealth, therefore, is “the possession , of the
valuable by the valiant ”; and in considering it as
a power existing in a nation, the two elements, the
value of the thing, and the valour of its possessor,
must be estimated together. Whence it appears that
many of the persons commonly considered wealthy,
are in reality no more wealthy than the locks of their
own strong boxes are, they being inherently and
eternally incapable of wealth; and operating for the
nation, in an economical point of view, either as
pools of dead water, and eddies in a stream (which,
so long as the stream flows, are useless, or serve
only to drown people, but may become of importance
in a state of stagnation should the stream dry); .or
else, as dams in a river, of which the ultimate service
depends not on the dam, but the miller; or else, as
mere accidental stays and impediments, acting not as
wealth, but (for we ought to have a correspondent
term) as “ illth,” causing various devastation and
trouble around them in all directions; or lastly, act
not at all, but are merely animated conditions of
delay, (no use being possible of anything they have
until they are dead,) in which last condition they are
nevertheless often useful as delays, and “ impedi
menta,” if a nation is apt to move too fast.
This being so, the difficulty of the true science of
Political Economy lies not merely in the need of
developing manly character to deal with material
value, but in the fact, that while the manly character
and material value only form wealth by their con
junction, they have nevertheless a mutually destruc
tive operation on each other. For the manly char
acter is apt to ignore, or even cast away, the material
value :—whence that of Pope :—
“ Sure, of qualities demanding praise
More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise.”
�72
UNTO THIS LAST.
And on the other hand, the material value is apt to
undermine the manly character; so that it must be
our work, in the issue, to examine what evidence
there is of the effect of wealth on the minds of its
possessors; also, what kind of person it is who
usually sets himself to obtain wealth, and succeeds
in doing so, and whether the world owes more grati
tude to rich or to poor men, either for their moral
influence upon it, or for chief goods, discoveries, and
practical advancements. I may, however, anticipate
future conclusions, so far as to state that in a com
munity regulated only by laws of demand and
supply, but protected from open violence, the persons
who become rich are, generally speaking, indus
trious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, metho
dical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and
ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the
entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reck
less, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the ima
ginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the im
provident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked,
the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely
merciful, just, and godly person.
Thus far, then, of wealth. Next, we have to
ascertain the nature of Price; that is to say, of
exchange value, and its expression by currencies.
. Note first, of exchange, there can be no profit in
it. It is only in labour there can be profit—that is to
Sj^’>
making in advance,” or “ making in favour
of
(from proficio).. In exchange, there is only
ad\ antage, i.e., a bringing of vantage or power to
the exchanging persons. Thus, one man, by sowing
and reaping, turns one measure of corn into two
measures. That is Profit. Another, by digginc and
forging, turns one spade into two spades. That is
Profit. But the man who has two measures of corn
wants sometimes to dig; and the man who has two
spades wants sometimes to eat:—Thev exchange the
gained grain for the gained tool; and both are the
better for the exchange; but though there is much
�AD VALOREM.
73
advantage in the transaction, there is no profit.
Nothing is constructed or produced.
Only that
which had been before constructed is given to t.ie
person by whom it can be used. If laboui is neces
sary to effect the exchange, that labour is in reality
involved in the production, and, like all other
labour, bears profit. Whatever number of men are
concerned in the manufacture, or in the conveyance,
have share in the profit; but neither the manufacture
nor the conveyance are the exchange, and in the
exchange itself there is no profit. .
,
There may, however, be acquisition, which is a
very different thing. If, in the exchange, one man
is able to give what cost him little labour for what
has cost the other much, he “ acquires ” a certain
quantity of the produce of the other’s labour. And
precisely what he acquires, the other loses. In mer
cantile language, the person who thus ,acquires is
commonly said to have “ made a profit
and I be
lieve that many of our merchants are seriously under
the impression that it is possible for everybody,
somehow, to make a profit in this manner. WEereas,
by the unfortunate constitution of the world we live
in, the laws both of matter and motion have quite
rigorously forbidden universal acquisition of this
kind. Profit, or material gain, is attainable only by
construction or by discovery; not by exchange.
Whenever material gain follows exchange, for every
plus there is a precisely equal minus.
Unhappily for the progress of the science of Poli
tical Economy, the plus quantities, or—if I may be
allowed to coin an awkward plural—the pluses, make
a very positive and venerable appearance in. the
world, so that every one is eager to learn the science
which produces results so magnificent; whereas the
minuses have, on the other hand, a tendency to
retire into back streets, and other places of shade,—
or even to get themselves wholly and finally put out
of sight in graves : which renders the algebra of this
science peculiar, and difficultly legible; a large
D2
�74
UNTO THIS LAST.
number of its negative signs being written by the
account-keeper in a kind of red ink, which starvation
thins, and makes strangely pale, or even quite in
visible ink, for the present.
The Science of Exchange, or, as I hear it has been
proposed to call it, of “ Catallactics,” considered as
one of gain, is, therefore, simply nugatory; but con
sidered as one of acquisition, it is a very curious
science, differing in its data and basis from every
other science known. Thus :—If I can exchange a
needle with a savage for a diamond, my power of
doing so depends either on the savage’s ignorance of
social arrangements in Europe, or on his want of
power to take advantage of them, by selling the
diamond to any one else for more needles. If,
farther, I make the bargain as completely advan
tageous to myself as possible, by giving to the
savage a needle with no eye in it (reaching, thus a
sufficiently satisfactory type of the perfect operation
of catallactic science), the advantage to me in the
entire transaction depends wholly upon the
ignorance, powerlessness, or heedlessness of the per
son dealt with. Do away with these, and catallactic
advantage becomes impossible. So far, therefore, as
the science of exchange relates to the advantage of
one of the exchanging persons only, it is founded on
the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite person.
Where these vanish, it also vanishes. It is therefore
a science founded on nescience, and an art founded
on artlessness. But all other sciences and arts,
except this, have for their object the doing away
with their opposite nescience and artlessness. This
science, alone of sciences, must, by all available
means, promulgate and prolong its opposite
nescience; otherwise the science itself is impossible.
It is, therefore, peculiarly and alone the science of
darkness; probably a bastard science—not by any
means a divina scientia, but one begotten of another
father, that father who, advising his children to turn
stones into bread, is himself employed in turning
�AD VALOREM.
75
bread into stones, and who, if. you ask a fish of him
(fish not being producible on his estate), can but gi\e
you a serpent.
The general law, then, respecting just or econo
mical exchange, is simply this: —lhere must be
advantage on both sides (or if only advantage on
one, at least no disadvantage on the other), to. the
persons exchanging; and just payment for his time,
intelligence, and labour, to any intermediate person
effecting the transaction (commonly called a mer
chant); and whatever advantage there is on either
side, and whatever pay is given to the intermediate
person, should be thoroughly known to all con
cerned. All attempt at concealment. implies some
practice of the opposite, or undivine science, founded
on nescience. Whence another saying of the Jew
merchant’s—“ As a nail between the stone joints, so
doth sin stick fast between buying and selling.”
Which peculiar riveting of stone and timber, in men’s
dealings with each other, is again set forth in the
house which was to be destroyed—timber and stones
together—when Zechariah’s roll (more probably
“curved sword”) flew over it: “the curse that
goeth forth over all the earth upon every one that
stealeth and holdeth himself guiltless,” instantly
followed by the vision of the Great Measure;—the
measure “ of the injustice of them in all the earth ”
(avr;; )/ acacia avruv er 7rd<rp rij yij) with the
weight of lead for its lid, and the woman, the spirit
of wickedness, within it;—that is to say, Wickedness
hidden by dulness, and formalised, outwardly, into
ponderously established cruelty. “ It shall be set
upon its own base in the land of Babel.”*
I have hitherto carefully restricted myself, in
speaking of exchange, to the use of the term “ ad
vantage ”; but that term includes two idea'? : the
advantage, namely of getting what we need, and
that of getting what we wish for,
Three-
* Zech. v.
ii.
See note on the passage, at p. 82.
�76
UNTO THIS LAST.
fourths of the demands existing in the world
are romantic; founded on visions, idealisms, hopes,
and affections; and the regulation of the purse is, in
its essence, regulation of the imagination and the
heart. Hence, the right discussion of the nature of
price is a very high metaphysical and psychical
problem; sometimes to be solved only in a passionate
manner, as by David in his counting the price of the
water of the well by the gate of Bethlehem; but its
first conditions are the following :—The price of any
thing is the quantity of labour given by the person
desiring it, in order to obtain possession of it. This
price depends on four variable quantities. A. The
quantity of wish the purchaser has for the thing;
opposed to a, the quantity of wish the seller has to
keep it. B. The quantity of labour the purchaser
can afford, to obtain the thing; opposed to
/3,
the quantity of labour the seller can
afford, to keep it.
These quantities are opera
tive only in excess: i.e., the quantity of wish (A)
means the quantity of wish for this thing, above wish
for other things; and the quantity of work (B) means
the quantity which can be spared to get this thing
from the quantity needed to get other things.
Phenomena of price, therefore, are intensely com
plex, curious, and interesting—too complex, how
ever, to be examined yet; every one of them, when
traced far enough, showing itself at last as a part
of the bargain of the Poor of the Flock (or “ flock of
slaughter ”), “ If ye think good, give me my price,
and if not, forbear ”—Zech. xi. 12; but as the price
of everything is to be calculated finally in labour, it
is necessary to define the nature of that standard.
Labour is the contest of the life of man with an
opposite;—the term “ life ” including his intellect,
soul, and physical power, contending with question,
difficulty, trial, or material force.
Labour is of a higher or lower order, as it includes
more or fewer of the elements of life : and labour of
good quality, in any kind, includes always as much
�AD VALOREM.
77
intellect and feeling as will fully and harmoniously
regulate the physical force.
In speaking of the value and price of labour, it is
necessary always to understand labour of a given
rank and quality, as we should speak of gold 01
silver of a given standard. Bad (that is, heartless,
inexperienced, or senseless) labour cannot be vajued;
it is like gold of uncertain alloy, or flavved iron." .
The quality and kind of labour being given, its
value, like that of all other valuable things, is invari
able. But the quantity of it which, must be given for
other things is variable : and in estimating this varia
tion, the price of other things must always be
counted by the quantity of labour; not the price oi
labour by'the quantity of other things.
Thus, if we want to plant an apple sapling in
rocky ground, it may take two hours’ work; in soft
ground, perhaps only half an hour. Grant the soil
equally good for the tree in each case. Then the
value of the sapling planted by two hours’ work is
nowise greater than that of the sapling planted in
half an hour. One will bear no more fruit than the
other. Also, one half-hour of work is as valuable as
another half-hour; nevertheless, the one sapling has
cost four such pieces of work, the other only one.
Now, the proper statement of this fact is, not that
the labour on the hard ground is cheaper than on the
* Labour which is entirely good of its kind, that is to
say effective, or efficient, the Greeks called ‘ weighable,
or ’ a^tog, translated usually “ worthy,” and because thus
substantial and true, they called . its price n/iij, the
“ honourable estimate ” of it (honorarium): this word be
ing founded on their conception of true labour as a
divine thing, to be honoured with the kind of honour
given to the gods; whereas the price of false labour, or
of that which led away from life, was to be, not honour,
but vengeance; for which they reserved another word,
attributing the exaction of such price to a peculiar god
dess, called Tisiphone, the “ requiter (or quittance
taker) of death ” ; a person versed in the highest branches
of arithmetic, and punctual in her habits; with whom
accounts current have been opened also in modern days.
�78
UNTO THIS LAST.
soft; but that the tree is dearer. The exchange value
.may, or may not, afterwards depend on this fact.
If other people have plenty of soft ground to plant
in they will take no cognizance of our two hours’
labour in the price they will offer for the plant on the
rock. And if, through want of sufficient botanical
science, we have planted an upas-tree instead of an
apple, the exchange value will be a negative quan
tity; still less proportionate to the labour expended.
What is commonly called cheapness of labour,
signifies, therefore, in reality, that many obstacles
have to be overcome by it; so that much labour is
required to produce a small result. But this should
never be spoken of as cheapness of labour, but as
dearness of the object wrought for. It would be
just as rational to say that walking was cheap, be
cause we had ten miles to walk home to our dinner,
as that labour was cheap, because we had to work
ten hours to earn it.
The last word which we have to define is “ Pro
duction.”
1 have hitherto spoken of all labour as profitable;
because it is impossible to consider under one head
the quality or value of labour, and its aim. But labour
of the best quality may be various in aim. It may
be either constructive (“ gathering,” from con and
struo), as agriculture; nugatory, as jewel-cutting; or
destructive (” scattering,” from de and struo), as
war. It is not, however, always easy to prove
labour, apparently nugatory, to be actually so;
*
* The most accurately nugatory labour is, perhaps,
that of which not enough is given to answer a purpose
effectually, and which, therefore, has all to be done over
again. Also, labour which fails of effect through nonco-operation. The cure of a little village near Bellin
zona, to whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants
allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that they
would not join to build an effectual embankment high up
the valley, because everybody said “that would help
his neighbours as much as himself.” So every proprietor
built a bit of low embankment about his own field; and
�AD VALOREM.
79
generally, the formula holds good : “ he that gathereth not; scattereth ”; thus, the jeweller’s art is prob
ably very harmful in its ministering to a clumsy
and inelegant pride. So that, finally, I believe nearly
all labour may be shortly divided into positive and
negative labour : positive, that which produces lite,
negative, that which produces death; the most
directly negative labour being murder, and the most
directly positive, the bearing and rearing of chil
dren : so that in the precise degree in which murder
is hateful, on the negative side of idleness, in that
exact degree child-rearing is admirable, on the posi
tive side of idleness. For which reason, and because
of the honour that there is in rearing children, while
*
the wife is said to be as the vine (for cheering), the
children are as the olive branch, for praise :.nor for
praise only, but for peace (because large families can
only be reared in times of peace) : though since, in
their spreading and voyaging in various directions,
they distribute strength, they are, to _ the home
strength, as arrows in the hand of the giant strik
ing here and there far away.
Labour being thus various in its result,. the pros
perity of any nation is in exact proportion to the
quantity of labour which it spends in obtaining and
employing means of life. Observe, I say, obtaining
and employing; that is to say, not merely wisely pro
ducing, but wisely distributing and consuming.
Economists usually speak as if there were no good in
the Ticino, as soon as it had a mind, swept away and
swallowed all up together.
* Observe, I say, “rearing,” not “begetting.’
The
praise is in the seventh season not m oirop^roe, nor m
tbvraXia, but in óirwpa.
It is strange that men alwavs praise enthusiastically any person who, by a mo
mentary exertion, saves a life; but praise very hesitatingly a person who, by exertion and. self-denial prolonged through years, creates one. We give the crown
“ ob civem servatum ” why not “ ob civem natum ?
Born I mean, to the full, in soul as well as body. Eng
land has oak enough, I think, for both chaplets.
�8o
UNTO THIS LAST.
consumption absolute.
*
So far from this being so,
consumption absolute is the end, crown, and perfec
tion of production; and wise consumption is a far
more difficult art than . wise production. Twenty
people can gain money for one who can use it; and
the vital question, for individual and for nation, is,
never “ how much do they make? ” but “ to what
purpose do they spend? ”
The reader may, perhaps, have been surprised at
the slight reference I have hitherto made to
“ capital,” and its functions. It is here the place to
define them.
Capital signifies “ head, or source, or root
material ”—it is material by which some derivative
or secondary good is produced. It is only capital
proper (caput vivum, not caput mortuum) when it is
thus producing something different from itself. It is
a root, which does not enter into vital function till it
produces something else than a root: namely, fruit.
That fruit will in time again produce roots; and so
all living capital issues in reproduction of capital;
but capital which produces nothing but capital is
only root producing root; bulb issuing in bulb, never
in tulip; seed issuing in seed, never in bread. The
Political Economy of Europe has hitherto devoted
itself wholly to the multiplication, or (less even) the
aggregation, of bulbs. It never saw, nor conceived,
such a thing as a tulip. Nay, boiled bulbs they
might have been—glass bulbs—Prince Rupert’s
drops, consummated in powder (well, if it were
glass-powder and not gunpowder), for any end or
meaning the economists had in defining the laws of
aggregation. We will try and get a clearer notion
of them.
The best and simplest general type of capital is a
well-made ploughshare. Now, if" that ploughshare
did nothing but beget other ploughshares, in a poly* When Mr. Mill speaks of productive consumption,
he only means consumption which results in increase of
capital or material wealth. See I. iii. 4, and I. iii. 5.
�AD VALOREM.
81
pous manner,—however the great cluster of polypous
plough might glitter in the sun, it would have
lost its function of capital. It becomes true capital
only by another kind of splendour, when it is seen
“ splendescere sulco,” to grow bright in the furrow,
rather with diminution of its substance, than addi
tion, by the noble friction. And the true home ques
tion, to every capitalist and to every nation, is not,
“ how many ploughs have you? ” but, “ where are
your furrows? ’’ not—11 how quickly will this capital
reproduce itself? ”—but, <l what will it do during
reproduction? ’’ What substance will it furnish,
good for life? what work construct, protective of
life? if none, its own reproduction is useless—-if
worse than none,—(for capital may destroy life as
well as support it), its own reproduction js worse
than useless; it is merely an advance from Tisiphone,
on mortgage—not a profit by any means.
Not a profit, as the ancients truly saw, and showed
in the type of Ixion;—for capital is the head, or foun
tain head, of wealth—the “ well-head ” of wealth,
as the clouds are the well-heads of rain : but when
clouds are without water, and only beget clouds, they
issue in wrath at last, instead of rain, and in light
ning instead of harvest; whence Ixion is said first to
have invited his guests to a banquet, and then made
them fall into a pit filled with fire; which is the type
of the temptation of riches issuing in imprisoned
torment,—torment in a pit, (as also Demas’ silver
mine,) after which, to show the rage of riches pass
ing from lust of pleasure to lust of power, yet power
not truly understood, Ixion is said to have desired
Juno, and instead, embracing a cloud (or phantasm),
to have begotten the Centaurs; the power of mere
wealth being, in itself, as the embrace of a shadow,
—comfortless, (so also “ Ephraim feedeth on wind
and followeth after the east wind ”; or “ that which
is not ”—Prov. xxiii. 5; and again Dante’s Geryon,
the type of avaricious fraud, as he flies, gathers the
�82
UNTO THIS LAST.
air up with retractile claws,—“l’aer a se raccolse,”*
)
but in its offspring, a mingling of the brutal with the
human nature : human in sagacity—using both intel
lect and arrow; but brutal in its body and hoof, for
consuming, and trampling down. For which sin
Ixion is at last bound upon a wheel—fiery and
toothed, and rolling perpetually in the air;—the type
of human labour when selfish and fruitless (kept far
into the Middle Ages in their wheel of fortune); the
wheel which has in it no breath or spirit, but is
whirled by chance only; whereas of all true work the
Ezekiel vision is true, that the Spirit of the living
creature is in the wheels, and where the angels go,
the wheels go by them; but move no otherwise.
This being the real nature of capital, it follows
that there are two kinds of true production, always
going on in an active State : one of seed, and one of
food; or production for the Ground, and for the
Mouth; both of which are by covetous persons
thought to be production only for the granary;
whereas the function of the granary is but interme
diate and conservative, fulfilled in distribution; else
it ends in nothing but mildew, and nourishment of
rats and worms. And since production for the
* So also in the vision of the women bearing the ephah
before quoted, “ the wind was in their wings,” not wings
‘• of a stork,” as in our version ; but “ milvi,” of a kite, in
the Vulgate, or perhaps more accurately still in
the Septuagmt, “hoopoe,” a bird connected typically
with the power of riches by many traditions, of which that
of its petition for a crest of gold is perhaps the most in
teresting.
The “ Birds ” of Aristophanes, in which its
part is principal, are full of them; note especially the
“ fortification of the air with baked bricks, like Babylon,”
i. 550; and again, compare the Plutus of Dante, who (to
show the influence of riches in destroying the reason) is
the only one of the powers of the Inferno who cannot
speak intelligibly; and also the cowardliest; he is not
merely quelled or restrained, but literally “ collapses ”
at a word; the sudden and helpless operation of mercan
tile panic being all told in the brief metaphor, “ as the
sails, swollen with the wind, fall, when the mast breaks.”
�AD VALOREM.
83
Ground is only useful with future hope of harvest, all
essential production is for the Mouth; and is finally
measured by the mouth; hence, as I said above, con
sumption is the crown of production; and the wealth
of a nation is only to be estimated by what it con
The want of any clear sight of this fact is the
capital error, issuing in rich interest and revenue of
error among the political economists. Their minds
are continually set on money-gain, not on mouth
gain; and they fall into every sort of net and snaie,
dazzled bv the coin-glitter as birds by the fowler s
glass; or'rather (for there is not much else like
birds in them) they are like children trying to jump
on the heads of their own shadows; the. money-gam
being only the shadow of the true gain, which is
humanity.
The final object of political economy, therefore, is
to get good method of consumption, and great quan
tity of consumption : in other words, to use every
thing, and to use it nobly; whether it be substance,
service, or service perfecting substance. The most
curious error in Mr. Mill’s entire work, (provided for
him originally by Ricardo,) is his endeavour to dis
tinguish between direct and indirect service, and
consequent assertion that a demand for commodities
is not demand for labour (I. v. 9, et seq.). He dis
tinguishes between labourers employed to lay out
pleasure grounds, and to manufacture velvet; declar
ing that it makes material difference to the labouring
classes in which of these two ways a capitalist spends
his money; because the employment of the gardeners
is a demand for labour, but the purchase of velvet is
*
not.
Error colossal, as well as strange. It will,
* The value of raw material, which has, indeed, to be
deducted from the price of the labour, is not contem
plated in the passages referred to, Mr. Mill having fallen
into the mistake solely by pursuing the collateral results
of the payment of wages to middlemen. He says—“ The
consumer does not, with his own funds, pay the weaver
�84
UNTO THIS LAST.
indeed, make a difference to the labourer whether we
bid him swing his scythe in the spring winds, or
drive the loom in pestilential air; but, so far as his
pocket is concerned, it makes to him absolutely no
difference w’hether we order him to make green
velvet, with seed and a scythe, or red velvet, with
silk and scissors. Neither does it anywise concern
him whether, when the velvet is made, we consume
it by walking on it, or wearing it, so long as our
consumption of it is wholly selfish. But if our con
sumption is to be in anywise unselfish, not only our
mode of consuming the articles we require interests
him, but also the kind of article we require with a
view to consumption. As thus (returning for a mo
ment to Mr. Mill’s great hardware theory : it
)
*
matters, so far as the labourer’s immediate profit is
concerned, not an iron filing whether I employ him in
growing a peach, or forging a bombshell; but my
probable mode of consumption of those articles
matters seriously. Admit that it is to be in both
cases “ unselfish,” and the difference, to him, is
final, whether when his child is ill, I walk into his
cottage and give it the peach, or drop the shell down
his chimney, and blow his roof off.
for his day’s work.” Pardon me: the consumer of the
velvet pays the weaver with his own funds as much as he
pays the gardener. He pays, probably, an intermedi
ate ship-owner, velvet merchant, and shopman; pays
carriage money, shop rent, damage money, time money,
and care money; all these are above and beside the velvet
price (just as the wages of a head gardener would be above
the grass price); but the velvet is as much produced by
the consumer’s capital, though he does not pay for it till
six months after production, as the grass is produced by
his capital, though he does not "pay the man who rolled
and mowed it on Monday, till Saturday afternoon. I
do not know if Mr. Mill’s conclusion—“'the capital can
not be dispensed with, the purchasers can ” (p. q8) has
vet been reduced to practice in the City on any large
scale.
* Which, observe, is the precise opposite of the one
under examination. The hardware theory required us to
�AD VALOREM.
85
The worst of it, for the present, is, that the capi
talist’s consumption of the peach is apt to be selfish,
and of the shell, distributive; but, in all cases, this
*
is the broad and general fact, that on due catallactic
commercial principles, somebody's roof must go oh
in fulfilment of the bomb’s destiny. You may grow
for your neighbour, at your liking, grapes or grapeshot; he will also, catallactically, grow grapes or
grape-shot for you, and you will each reap what you
have sown.
.
It is, therefore, the manner and issue of consump
tion which are the real tests of production. Pro
duction does not consist in things laboriously made,
but in things serviceably consumable; and the. ques
tion for the nation is not how much labour it em
ploys, but how much life it produces. For as condischarge our gardeners and engage manufacturers; the
velvet theory requires us to discharge our manufacturers
and engage gardeners.
* It is one verv awful form of the operation of wealth
in Europe that it' is entirely capitalists’ wealth which sup
ports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money
to support them; for most of the men who wage such,
wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men s bodies
and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of
war for them besides ; which makes such war costly to the
maximum ; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry
suspicion, between nations which have not grace nor
honestv enough in all their multitudes to buv an hour s
peace of mind with : as, at present, France and England,
purchasing of each other ten millions sterling worth of
consternation annually (a remarkably light crop, half
thorns and half aspen leaves sown, reaped, and granaried by the “ science ” of the modern political economist
teaching covetousness instead of truth). And all unjust
War being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy,
only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by
subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have
no will in the matter, the capitalists’ will being the
primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetous
ness of'the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith,
frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in
due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each
person.
�86
UNTO THIS LAST.
sumption is the end and aim of production, so life is
the end and aim of consumption.
I left this question to the reader’s thought two
months ago (pp. 40-41), choosing rather that he
should work it out for himself than have it sharply
stated to him. But now, the ground being suffi
ciently broken (and the details into which the several
questions, here opened, must lead us, being too com
plex for discussion in the pages of a periodical, so
that I must pursue them elsewhere), I desire, in clos
ing the series of introductory papers, to leave this
one great fact clearly stated. There is no Wealth
but Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and
of admiration. That country is the richest which
nourishes the greatest number of noble and happv
human beings; that man is richest who, having per
fected the functions of his own life to the utmost,
has also the widest helpful influence, both personal,
and by means of his possessions, over the lives of
others.
A strange political economy; the only one, never
theless, that ever was or can be: ' all political
economy founded on self-interest being but the ful
*
filment of that which once brought schism into the
Policy of angels, and ruin into the Economy of
Heaven.
“ The greatest number of human beings noble and
happy.” But is the nobleness consistent with the
number? Yes, not only consistent with it, but essen
tial to it. The maximum of life can only be reached
by the maximum of virtue. In this respect the law
of human population differs wholly from that of
animal life.
The multiplication of animals is
checked only by want of food, and by the hostility of
races; the population of the gnat is restrained by the
hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow by
the scarcity of gnats. Man, considered as an animaf,
* “ In all reasoning about prices, the proviso must be
understood, ‘supposing all parties to take care of their
own interest.”’—Mill, III. i. 5.
�AD VALOREM.
87
is indeed limited by the same laws : hunger,, or
plague, or war, are the necessary and only restraints
upon his increase,—effectual restraints hitherto,—his
principal study having been, how most swiftly to
destroy himself, or ravage his dwelling-places, and
his highest skill directed to give range to the famine,
seed to the plague, and sway to the sword. But,
considered as other than an animal, his increase is
not limited by these laws. It is limited only by the
limits of his courage and his love. Both of these
have their bounds; and ought to have; his race has
its bounds also; but these have not yet been reached,
nor will be reached for ages.
In all the ranges of human thought I. know none
so melancholy as the speculations of political econo
mists on the population question. It is proposed to
better the condition of the labourer by giving him
higher wages. “Nay,” says the economist,—“if
you raise his wages, he will either people down to
the same point of misery at which you found, him, or
drink your wages away.” He will. I know it. Who
gave him this will ? Suppose it were your own ®on
of whom you spoke, declaring to me that you. dared
not take him into your firm, nor even give him his
just labourer’s wages, because if you did he would
die of drunkenness, and leave half a score of children
to the parish, “ Who gave your son these disposi
tions? ”—I should enquire. Has he them by inherit
ance or by education? By one or other they must
come; and as in him, so also in the poor, Either
these poor are of a race essentially different from
ours, and unredeemable (which, however often im
plied, I have heard none yet openly say), or else by
such care as we have ourselves received, we may
make them continent and sober as ourselves—wise
and dispassionate as we are—models arduous of imi
tation. “ But,” it is answered, “ they cannot receive
education.” Why not? That is precisely the point
at issue. Charitable persons suppose the worst fault
of the rich is to refuse the people meat; and the
�88
UNTO THIS LAST.
people cry for their meat, kept back by fraud, to the
Lord of Multitudes.
*
Alas ! it is not meat of which
the refusal is crudest, or to which the claim is
validest. The life is more than the meat. The rich
not only refuse food to the poor; they refuse wisdom;
they refuse virtue; they refuse salvation. Ye sheep
without shepherd, it is not the pasture that has been
shut from you, but the Presence. Meat 1 perhaps
your right to that may be pleadable; but other rights
have to be pleaded first. Claim your crumbs from
the table if you will; but claim them as children, not
as dogs; claim your right to be fed, but claim more
loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and pure.
* James v. 4. Observe, in these statements I am not
taking up, nor countenancing one whit, the common
socialist idea of division of propertv: division of property
is its destruction; and with it the destruction of all hope,
all industry, and all justice: it is simply chaos—a chaos
towards which the believers in modern political economy
are fast tending, and from which I am striving to save
them. The rich man does not keep back meat from the poor
by retaining his riches ; but by basely using them. Riches
are a form of strength ; and a strong man does not injure
others by keeping his strength, but by using it injuriouslv.
The socialist, seeing a strong man oppress a weak one,
cries out—“ Break the strong man’s arms; ” but I say,
“Teach him to use them to better purpose.” The forti
tude and intelligence which acquire riches are intended,
by the Giver of both, not to scatter, nor to give away, but
to employ those riches in the service of mankind ; in other
words, in the redemption of the erring and aid of the weak
—that is to say, there is first to be the work to gain
money; then the Sabbath of use for it—the Sabbath,
whose law is, not to lose life, but to save. It is continu
ally the fault or the folly of the poor that they are poor,
as it is usually a child’s fault if it falls into a pond, and
a cripple’s weakness that slips at a crossing; nevertheless,
most passers-by would pull the child out, or help up the
cripple. Put it at the worst, that all the poor of the
world are but disobedient children, or careless cripples,
and that all rich people are wise and strong, and you will
see at once that neither is the socialist right in desiring to
make everybody poor, powerless, and foolish as he is
himself, nor the rich man right in leaving the children in
the mire.
�AD VALOREM.
89
Strange words to be used of working people
“ What 1 holy; without any long robes or anointing
oils; these rough-jacketed, rough-worded persons,
set to nameless, dishonoured service? Perfect!-—
these, with dim eyes and cramped limbs, and slowlywakening minds? Pure !—these, with sensual desiie
and grovelling thought; foul of body and coarse of
soul? ” It may be so; nevertheless, such as they are,
they are the holiest, perfectest, purest persons the
earth can at present show. They may be what you
have said; but if so, they yet are holier than we who
have left them thus.
But what can be done for them ? Who can clothe
—who teach—who restrain their multitudes? What
end can there be for them at last, but to consume
one another ?
I hope for another end, though not, indeed, from
any of the three remedies for over-population com
monly suggested by economists.
These three are, in brief—Colonisation; Bringing
in of waste lands; or Discouragement of Marriage.
The first and second of these expedients merely
evade or delay the question. It will, indeed, be long
before the w’orld has been all colonised, and its
deserts all brought under cultivation. But the radical
question is, not how much habitable land is in the
world, but how many human beings ought to be
maintained on a given space of habitable land.
Observe, I say, ought to be, not how many can
be. Ricardo, with his usual inaccuracy, defines what
he calls the “ natural rate of wages ” as “ that which
will maintain the labourer.” Maintain him ! yes; but
how?—the question was instantly thus asked of me
bv a working girl, to whom I read the passage. I
will amplify her question for her. ” Maintain him,
how? ” As, first, to what length of life? Out of a
given number of fed persons, how many are to be
old—how many young? that is to say, will you
arrange their maintenance so as to kill them early—
say at thirty or thirty-five on the average, including
�90
UNTO THIS LAST.
deaths of weakly or ill-fed children?—or so as to
enable them to live out a natural life? You will feed
a greater number, in the first case, by rapidity of
*
succession; probably a happier number in the second :
which does Mr. Ricardo mean to be their natural
state, and to which state belongs the natural rate of
wages ?
Again : A piece of land which will only support ten
idle, ignorant, and improvident persons, will support
ivl-\°r
intelligent and industrious ones,
vvhich of these is their natural state, and to which
of them belongs the natural rate of wages ?
. Again . If a piece of land support forty persons in
industrious ignorance; and if, tired of this ignorance,
they set apart ten of their number to study the pro
perties of cones, and the sizes of stars; the labour of
these ten being withdrawn from the ground, must
either tend to the increase of food in some transi
tional manner, or the persons set apart for sidereal
and conic purposes must starve, or some one else
starve instead of them. What is, therefore, the
natural rate of wages of the scientific persons, and
how does this rate relate to, or measure, their re
verted or transitional productiveness?
Again : If the ground maintains, at first, forty
labourers in a peaceable and pious state of mind, but
they become in a few years so quarrelsome and im
pious that they have to set apart five, to meditate
upon and settle their disputes;—ten, armed to the
teeth with costly instruments, to enforce the deci
sions, and five to remind everybody in an eloquent
manner of the existence of a God ?—what will be the
result upon the general power of production, and
what is the “ natural rate of wages ” of the medita
tive, muscular, and oracular labourers ?
Leaving these questions to be discussed, or
waived, at their pleasure, by Mr. Ricardo’s fol. *
,.The quantity of life is the same in both cases: but it
is differently allotted.
�AD VALOREM.
91
lowers, I proceed to state the main facts bearing on
that probable future of the labouring classes which
has been partially glanced at by Mr. Mill. That
chapter and the preceding one differ from the
common writing of political economists in admitting
some value in the aspect of nature, and expressing
regret at the probability of the destruction of natural
scenery. But we may spare our anxieties on this
head. Men can neither drink steam, nor eat stone.
The maximum of population on a given space of
land implies also the relative maximum of edible
vegetable, whether for men or cattle; it implies a
maximum of pure air, and of pure water. There
fore : a maximum of wood, to transmute the air, and
of sloping ground, protected by herbage from the
extreme heat of the sun, to feed the streams. All
England may, if it so chooses, become one manufac
turing town; and Englishmen, sacrificing themselves
to the good of general humanity, may live diminished
lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and of
deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a
factory, nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will
ever make iron digestible by the million, nor sub
stitute hydrogen for wine. Neither the avarice nor
the rage of men will ever feed them; and however the
apple of Sodom and tnP grape of Gomorrah may
spread their table for a time with dainties of ashes,
and nectar of asps,—so long as men live by bread,
the far away valleys must laugh as they are covered
with ths gold of God, and the shouts of His happy
multitudes ring round the winepress and the well.
Nor need our sentimental economists fear the too
wide spread of the formalities of a mechanical agri
culture. The presence of a wise population implies
the search for felicity as well as for food; nor can
any population reach its maximum but through that
wisdom which “ rejoices ” in the habitable parts of
the earth. The desert has its appointed place and
work; the eternal engine, whose beam is the earth’s
axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath is its
�92
UNTO THIS LAST.
ocean, will still divide imperiously to their desert
kingdoms bound with unfurrowable rock, and swept
by unarrested sand, their powers of frost and fire :
but the zones and lands between, habitable, will be
loveliest in habitation. The desire of the heart is
also the light of the eyes. No scene is continually
and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful human
labour; smooth in field; fair in garden; full in
orchard; trim, sw’eet, and frequent in homestead;
ringing with voices of vivid existence. No air is
sweet that is silent; it is only sweet when full of low
currents of under sound—triplets of birds, and
murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words
of men, and wayward trebles of childhood. As the
art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all
lovely things are also necessary;—the wild flower by
the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild
birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the
tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread
only, but also by the desert manna; by every won
drous word and unknowable work of God. Happy,
in that he knew them not, nor did his fathers know;
and that round about him reaches yet into the in
finite, the amazement of his existence.
Note, finally, that all effectual advancement to
wards this true felicity of the human race must be
by individual, not public effort. Certain general
measures may aid, certain revised laws guide, such
advancement; but the measure and law which have
first to be determined are those of each man’s home.
We continually hear it recommended by sagacious
people to complaining neighbours (usually less well
placed in the world than themselves), that they
should “ remain content in the station in which Pro
vidence has placed them.” There are perhaps some
circumstances of life in which Providence has no in
tention that people should be content. Nevertheless,
the maxim is on the whole a good one; but it is
peculiarly for home use. That your neighbour
should, or should not, remain content with his posi
�AD VALOREM.
93
tion, is not your business; but it is very much your
business to remain content with your own, What
is chiefly needed in England at the present day is to
show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained
by a consistent, well-administered competence,
modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples
of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether
they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves
that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to
seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not
higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first
of possessions, self-possession; and honouring them
selves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of
peace.
Of which lowly peace it is written that “ justice
and peace have kissed each other ”; and that the
fruit of justice is “ sown in peace of them that make
peace ”; not “ peace-makers ” in the common under
standing—reconcilers of quarrels; (though that func
tion also follows on the greater one;) but peaceCreators; Givers of Calm. Which you cannot give,
unless you first gain; nor is this gain one which will
follow assuredly on any course of business, com
monly so called. No form of gain is less probable,
business being (as is shown in the language of all
nations—-7rwXE<r from tteXw, 7rpaatc from Trepaw,
venire, vendre, and venal, from venio, etc.) essenti
ally restless—and probably contentious;—having a
raven-like mind to the motion to and fro, as to the
carrion food; whereas the olive-feeding and bearing
birds look for rest for their feet; thus it is said of
Wisdom that she “ hath builded her house, and
hewn out her seven pillars ”; and even when, though
apt to wait long at the doorposts, she has to leave
her house and go abroad, her paths are peace also.
For us, at all events, her work must begin at the
entry of the doors : all true economy is “ Law of the
house.” Strive to make that law strict, simple,
generous : waste nothing, and grudge nothing. Care
in nowise to make more of money, but care to make
�94
UNTO THIS LAST.
much of it; remembering always the great, palpable,
inevitable fact the rule and root of all economy—
that what one person has, another cannot have; and
that every atom of substance, of whatever kind, used
or .consumed, is so much human life spent; which, if
it issue in the saving present life, or gaining more,
is well spent, but if not is either so much life pre
vented, or so much slain. In all buying, consider,
first, what condition of existence you cause in the
producers of what you buy; secondly, wrhether the
sum you have paid is just to the producer, and in due
proportion, lodged in his hands; thirdly, to how
*
much clear use, for food, knowledge, or joy, this that
you have bought can be put; and fourthly, to whom
and in. what way it can be most speedily and service
ably distributed; in all dealings whatsoever insisting
on. entire openness, and stern fulfilment; and in all
doings, on peifection and loveliness of accomplish
ment; especially on fineness and purity of all market
able commodity : watching at the same time for all
ways of gaining, or teaching, powers of simple plea
sure; and of showing “o'o-or ¿r
y£y’ 6'„«ap”
—the sum of enjoyment depending not on the quan
tity of things tasted, but on the vivacity and
patience of taste.
And if, on due and honest thought over these
things, it seems that the kind of existence to which
men are now summoned by every plea of pity and
claim of right, may, for some time at least, not be
a luxurious one, consider whether, even supposing
,
PV’Per offices of middlemen, nanielv, overseers
(or authoritative workmen), conveyancers (merchants
sailors, retail dealers, etc.), and order-takers (persons
employed to receive directions from the consumer), must
of course, be examined before I can enter farther into th<i
question of just payment of the first producer. But I
have not spoken of them in these introductory papers
because the evils attendant on the abuse of such inter
mediate functions result not from any alleged principle of
modern political economy, but from private carelessness
�AD VALOREM.
95
it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us,
if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which ac
companies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible
in the future—innocent and exquisite; luxury for all,
and by the help of all; but luxury at present can only
be enjoyed by the ignorant: the crudest man living
could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold.
Raise the veil boldly; face the light; and if, as yet,
the light of the eye can only be through tears, and
the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou
forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time
come, and the kingdom, when Christ’s gift of bread,
and bequest of peace, shall be “ Unto this last as
unto thee ”; and when, for earth’s severed multitudes
of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier
reconciliation than that of the narrow home, and
calm economy, where the Wicked cease—not from
trouble, but from troubling—and the Weary are at
rest.
THE END.
�JUST PUBLISHED.
A new and important Booklet by Mr. H. G. WELLS.
SOCIALISM AND
THE FAMILY
By H. G. WELLS.
-
Author of “ Anticipations ” ; “ Mankind in the Making,” &c.
6d. nett. Postage id. J cloth, gilt to/, is. nett. Postage i%d.
FIRST REVIEWS.
“The greater Socialism . . . Very remarkable indeed,
comprehensive, concise, eloquent, original.”—Evening News.
“ In this little book Mr. Wells puts before us the quintes
sence of his Socialism. We say “quintessence” advisedly.
The writer lays aside, for the moment, his visions of external
reconstruction and of a new mechanism of life, and gives us,
frankly and fully, the spirit of his teaching, the inner meaning
of that system of ideas which is at once his socialism and his
religion. . . . Let it be noted that all this has nothing to do
with weakening of the marriage ties. Mr. Wells puts aside
the suggestion of free love with heat and indignation.”—
Morning Leader.
“ In our endeavours to forecast the development of the
future, no subject presents so many difficulties as that of the
family, and few there be that dare to write upon it. Within
these covers Mr. Wells has dared, and gives us another of
those illuminating and stimulating essays he has taught us
to expect from him.”—Daily News.
“ It is a very inspiring pamphlet, completely refuting the
silly and malicious charge that Socialism tends to free love.
Socialism would strengthen the sanctity of the family tie.”—
A. E. Fletcher, in The Clarion.
LONDON: A. C. PIFIELD, 44) FLEET ST., E.C.
�C. FIFIELD’S NEW LIST.
(THE BISHOPS AS
I LEGISLATORS :
[Record of the Speeches and Votes of the Bishops in the House
of Lords during the last 100 years.
By JOSEPH CLAYTON
Author of “ Father Dolling ” ; “ Bishop Westcott.’*
nd Edition, is. nett, Postage 2d.
Cloth gilt, 2s. nett.
*
f It will be difficult for the hardiest episcopolater to
take anything good out of this book. It is a bad record,
whether we regard it as citizens or as churchmen.”—Pall
tall Gazette.
' “ This is a tremendous and terrible indictment, which
m only be supported by an appeal to facts. Unfortunately
rr the bishops, the record is black. It could not be much
brse.”—Daily News.
p'The importance of Mr. Clayton’s investigations lies
t their cumulative effect. In view of their calling, nearly
kery intervention and every abstention of the bishops in
critical affairs has been melancholy. Taken together,
le record is overwhelming. What we have here is a
istory of the absolute uniformity with which popular
ruses, involving no menace to the church, have found
le bishops against them. . . . It is a record of hopeless,
hredeemed failure. It has been sectarian. It has been
ilfish. It has never once been national. It has never
ace been right, never even magnificently wrong. Its
Mistakes have all been mean."—Morning Deader.
LONDON .• A. C. FIFIELD, 44, FLEET ST., E.C.
�The Simple Life Series
of booklets _ are inexpensive, tasteful in get-up, suggestive in matter, and
appeal to quiet, thoughtful, and earnest people.
“An excellent series."—MaZZ Gazette.
TOLSTOY AND HI8 MESSAGE. E. Crosby. 6d. nett. r*. Cloth
7th Thousand.
EVEN AS YOU AND I. Bolton Hall. 6d. nett. ir. Cloth. 3rd
Thousand.
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM. Fitzgerald 3d. Cloth 6d.
35th Thousand.
ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DI8OBEDIENCE. Thoreau. 3d.
Cloth 6d. 7th Thousand.
TRUE AND FALSE LIFE. Tolstoy, 3d. Cloth M. and (special
edition) xs. 9th Thousand.
MAN THE REFORMER. ____
Emerson. 3d. Cloth 6d. 6th Thousand.
THE WELL BY THE WAV. E. Gibson, 3d. Cloth 6d. 4th.
Thousand.
THE GOSPEL OF SIMPLICITY. G. Blount, 3d. Cloth 6d. 6th
Thousand.
WALDEN: MY LIFE IN THE WOODS. Thoreau, bd. nett. 1
Cloth xs. With Illustration of the famous hut. Three extra photos in '
the is. edition. 12th Thousand.
TOLSTOY A8 A SCHOOLMASTER.
A. Crosby, bd. nett.
Cloth ir. 5th Thousand.
MASTER AND MAN. Tolstov, bd. nett. Cloth xs, 5th Thousand
SELECTIONS FROM “ IN MEMCRIAM.” 3d. Clothed
CULTURE AND EDUCATION.
3d. Cloth bd’
CHAPTERS IN DEMOCRATIC CHRISTIANITY. ¿War A
.
*
Hocking. Cd. nett. Cloth xs. 4th Thousand.
THE DEFENCE AND DEATH OF SOCRATES,
6d. nett. I
Cloth, gilt top. is. 5th Thousand.
WESLEY’S TRANSLATION OF “ THE IMITATION OF
CHRIST.” bd. nett. Cloth, gilt top, tr. 5th Thousand.
THE HIGHER LOVE. A Plea for a Nobler Conception of Human
Love. George Barlow. bd. nett. Cloth, gilt top, u.
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE. Thoreau. 3d. Cloth bd. nett aj
A SIDING ATA RAILWAY STATION. A Religious and Social
Allegory. /. A. Froude. 3d. Cloth bd. nett.
IN PRAISE OF WALKING. Essayshy Thoreau, Whitman, Haaliit I
*
dr Burroughs, fid. nett. Cloth, gilt top, is. 4th Thousand.
THE RUSTIC RENAISSANCE. Godfrey Blount. 6d.nett. Cloth, I
gilt top, is. nett.
A VINDICATION OF NATURAL 8OCIETY. Adwwwd
6d. nett. Cloth, gilt top, is. nett.
,
THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF HELEN KELLER, The '
blind, deaf, anddumbgirl. yd. Cloth ad. nett.
CURDLED MILK; A Natural key to Health and Long
Life. Dr. Monteuis. bd. nett.
RICHARD JEFFERIES: His Life and Hts Ideals. H.S.
Salt, 138 pages. 6d. nett. Cloth, gilt, with portrait, is. bd. nett.
THINGS MORE EXCELLENT: The Manual of the
Tolstoy Sisters.
Compihsd
He.nnor Morten.
6d. nett
Quarter doth, gilt top, t nett
.
*
Postage of 3d. Books, id.; ot bd. Books, id.; of is. Books, ad.
IVAN ILYITCH : A Study.
EDWARD CARPENTER :
EDWARD CARPENTER :
SAYINGS OF TOLSTOY.
Leo Tolstoy. Post free, ;d.
Poetand Prophet. E. Crosby. Post free, 7<Z
The Man and his Message. New edition, 7™
6d. nett. Cloth gilt, is. Postage xd.
London: A. C. FIFIELD, 44, Fleet Street, E.C.
1
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Unto this last : four essays on the first principles of political economy
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ruskin, John [1819-1900]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 95. [1] p. ; 17 cm.
Notes: First published in book form 1862. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher's advertisements inside covers, and on unnumbered page at the end. Contents: The Roots of Honor -- The Veins of Wealth - Qui Judicatis Terram - Ad Valorem.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
A.C. Fifield
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1907
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N567
Subject
The topic of the resource
Economics
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Unto this last : four essays on the first principles of political economy), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Economics
NSS
Political Economy