[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 9, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.
To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I am under the impression that we are both getting prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last letter, or your comments upon it, in the places in which you have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, and you, I imagine, are not.
It is true that differences of feeling may exist among gentlemen; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speaking; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an interjection; and a strong one can abide its time. I will therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, to practice towards them so much of old English manners as may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner-tables; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to turn the room into a greenhouse, and serve everything cold, the pièces de résistance are still presented whole, and carved afterwards.
Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you are well breathed—en garde, if you please.
I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear no relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the labor expended."
The price asked by the seller has, I believe, in respectable commercial houses, and respectable shops, very approximate relation to the price paid by the buyer. I do not know if you are in the habit of asking, from your wine-merchant or tailor, reduction of price on the ground that the sum remitted will be "alms to themselves;" but, having been myself in somewhat intimate connection with a house of business in the City,[53] not dishonorably accounted of during the last forty years, I know enough of their correspondents in every important town in the United Kingdom to be sure that they will bear me witness that the difference between the prices asked and the prices taken was always a very "imaginary" quantity.
But urging this no farther for the present, and marking, for gained ground, only your admission that "the price asked depends on the labor expended," will you farther tell me, whether that dependence is constant, or variable? If constant, under what law; if variable, within what limits?
II. "The alms are thus given by himself to himself." I never said they were not. I said it was a question of alms, not of trade. And if your original leader had only been an exhortation to English workmen to consider every diminution of their pay, in the picturesque though perhaps somewhat dim, religious light of alms paid by themselves to themselves, I never should have troubled you with a letter on the subject. For, singular enough, Sir, this is not one of the passages of your letters, however apparently indefensible, which I care to attack.
So far from it, in my own serious writings I have always maintained that the best work is done, and can only be done, for love.[54] But the point at issue between us is not whether there should be charity, but whether there can be trade; not whether men may give away their labor, but whether, if they do not choose to do so, there is such a thing as a price for it. And my statement, as opposed to yours, is briefly this—that for all labor, there is, under given circumstances, a just price approximately determinable; that every conscious deflection from this price towards zero is either gift on the part of the laborer, or theft on the part of the employer; and that all payment in conscious excess of this price is either theft on the part of the laborer, or gift on that of the employer.
III. If you wish to substitute the word "moral" for "just" in the above statement, I am prepared to allow the substitution; only, as you, not I, introduced this new word, I must pray for your definition of it first, whether remembered from Mr. Hobbes, or original.
IV. I am sorry you doubt my understanding your views; but, in that case, it may be well to ask for a word or two of farther elucidation.
"Justice," you say, is "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad." And "good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." And bad rules are (therefore) rules which promote the general misery of those whom they affect? Justice, therefore, may as often as not promote the general misery of those who practice it? Do you intend this?[55]
Again: "Good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." But "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured by laying down no rule at all" (as to the price of "labor").
Do you propose this as a sequitur? For if not, it is merely a petitio principii, and a somewhat wide one. Before, therefore, we branch into poetical questions concerning happiness, we will, with your permission, and according to my original stipulation, that we should dispute only of one point at a time, determine the matters already at issue. To which end, also, I leave without reply some parts of your last letter; not without a little strain on the ερκος ὀδοντων, for which I think, Sir, you may give me openly, credit, if not tacitly, thanks.
I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, May 4.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] That of Messrs. Ruskin, Telford Domecq, in which Mr. Ruskin's father, "who began life as a wine-merchant" ("Fors Clavigera," Letter 10, p. 5, 1871), had been a partner.
[54] See § 41 of "The Crown of Wild Olive," p. 50 of the 1873 edition. "None of the best head-work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for.... It is indeed very clear that God means all thoroughly good work and talk to be done for nothing."
[55] "Yes. But, generally speaking, rules are beneficial; hence, generally speaking, justice is a good thing in fact. A state of society might be imagined in which it would be a hideously bad thing."—(Foot-note answer of the Gazette.)