To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I am not usually unready for controversy, but I dislike it in spring, as I do the east wind (pace Mr. Kingsley), and I both regret having given occasion to the only dull leader which has yet[43] appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, and the necessity I am involved in of dissecting the same, instead of a violet, on which I was about this morning to begin operations.
But I see, Sir, that you mean fairly, and that you have careful thinkers and writers on your staff. And I will accept your battle, if you will fight with short swords, which is clearly your interest, for such another article would sink the Gazette; and mine, for I have no time to answer speculations on what you writers suppose my opinions may be, "if we understand" them.
You shall understand them utterly, as I already understand yours. I will not call yours "fallacies" à priori; you shall not call mine so. I will not tell you of your "unconscious" meanings; you shall not tell me of mine.[44] But I will ask you the plainest questions, and make to you the plainest answers my English will admit of, on one point at a time only, expecting you also to ask or answer as briefly, without divergence or deprecation. And twenty lines will always contain all I would say, at any intervals of time you choose.
For example: I said I must "dissect" your leader, meaning that I should have to take a piece of it, as I would of my flower, and deal with that first; then with its sequences.
I take this sentence then: "He (Mr. R.) seems to think that apart from the question of the powers of the parties, there is some such thing as a just rate of wages. He seems to be under the impression that the wages ought to be proportioned, not to the supply and demand of labor and capital, but 'to the hardship of the work and the time spent in it.'"
Yes, Sir, I am decisively under that impression—as decisively as ever Greek coin was under its impression. You will beat me out of all shape, if you can beat me out of this. Will you join issue on it, and are these following statements clear enough for you, either to accept or deny, in as positive terms?—
I. A man should in justice be paid for two hours' work twice as much as for one hour's work, and for n hour's work n times as much, if the effort be similar and continuous.
II. A man should in justice be paid for difficult or dangerous work proportionately more than for easy and safe work, supposing the other conditions of the work similar.
III. (And now look out, for this proposition involves the ultimate principle of all just wages.) If a man does a given quantity of work for me, I am bound in justice to do, or procure to be done, a precisely equal quantity of work for him; and just trade in labor is the exchange of equivalent quantities of labor of different kinds.
If you pause at this word "equivalent," you shall have definition of it in my next letter. I am sure you will in fairness insert this challenge, whether you accept it or decline.
I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.[45]
Denmark Hill, Thursday, April 20.
[43] The Gazette was at this time of little more than eight weeks' standing. The dull leader was that in the Gazette of April 19, entitled "Masters and Men," and dealt entirely with Mr. Ruskin's letter on strikes. The "pace Mr. Kingsley" alludes, of course, to his "Ode to the North-East Wind."
[44] The leader had begun by speaking of Mr. Ruskin's previous letter as "embodying fallacies, pernicious in the highest degree," and concluded by remarking how "easily and unconsciously he glided into the true result of his principles."
[45] In reply, the Gazette denied "each of the three propositions to be true," on grounds shown in the quotations given in the following letter.