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Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880 cover

Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

Chapter 76: FOOTNOTES:
By John Ruskin
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About This Book

A collected set of public letters offers sustained commentary on political, economic, and cultural questions of the era. Subjects include foreign policy, war, and imperial unrest, as well as economic issues such as currency, supply and demand, wages, strikes, and the nature of wealth and property. Other pieces discuss infrastructure and industry, domestic service and housing, education, art and literary criticism, dress and women's work, and proposals for social and institutional reform. The epistolary form combines moral argument, practical policy suggestions, and cultural observation addressed to newspapers, public figures, and civic audiences.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," November 30, 1870.]
RAILWAY SAFETY.[82]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

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

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

Denmark Hill, Nov. 29, 1870.

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

[83] In the first letter on the Franco-Prussian War, ante, p. 34. (Daily Telegraph, Oct. 7, 1870.)

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.