To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I have my Pall Mall Gazette of the 28th to-day, and must at once, with your permission, solemnly deny the insidiosity of my question, "Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself see how a more straightforward question could be put! So straightforward indeed that I particularly dislike making a martyr of myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day—a martyr, at least, in the way of witness; for if we rich people don't begin to speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some day soon, lose them and our heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the point in question then, as to means of living: the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. He and his partners entered into what your correspondent mellifluously styles "a mutually beneficent partnership,"[62] with certain laborers in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth annually a certain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In which state of mutual beneficence my father and his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my dinner), and so far from finding his money "grow" in my hands, I never try to buy anything with it; but people tell me "money isn't what it was in your father's time, everything is so much dearer." I should be heartily glad to learn from your correspondent as much pecuniary botany as will enable me to set my money a-growing; and in the mean time, as I have thus given a quite indubitable instance of my notions of the way money is made, will he be so kind as to give us, not an heraldic example in the dark ages (though I suspect I know more of the pedigree of money, if he comes to that, than he does),[63] but a living example of a rich gentleman who has made his money by saving an equal portion of profit in some mutually beneficent partnership with his laborers?
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, Coniston,
King Charles the Martyr, 1873.
P.S.—I see by Christie & Manson's advertisement that some of the best bits of work of a good laborer I once knew, J. M. W. Turner (the original plates namely of the "Liber Studiorum"), are just going to be destroyed by some of his affectionate relations. May I beg your correspondent to explain, for your readers' benefit, this charming case of hereditary accumulation?
[62] W. R. G. had declared that the rich man (or his ancestors) got the money "by co-operation with the poor ... by, in fact, entering into a mutually beneficent partnership with them, and advancing them their share of the joint profits ... paying them beforehand, in a word."
[63] W. R. G. had written: "In nine cases out of ten, in the case of acquired wealth, we should probably find, were the pedigree traced fairly and far back enough, that the original difference between the now rich man and the now poor man was, that the latter habitually spent all his earnings, and the former habitually saved a portion of his in order that it might accumulate and fructify."