To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."
Sir: I trust you will hold the very able and interesting letter from "W. H. W.,"[98] which you publish to-day, excuse enough for my briefly trespassing on your space once more. Indeed, it has been a discomfort to me that I have not yet asked the pardon of your correspondent, "A Tenant, not at will" (Sept. 21),[99] for the apparent discourtesy of thought of which he accused me. He need not have done so: for although I said "a gentleman would hew for himself a log hut" rather than live in modern houses, I never said he would rather abandon his family and his business than live in them; and your correspondent himself, in his previously written letter, had used precisely the same words. And he must not suspect that I intend to be ironical in saying that the prolonged coincidence of thought and word in the two letters well deserves the notice of your readers, in the proof it gives of the strength and truth of the impression on both minds. "W. H. W.'s" graphic description of his house is also sorrowfully faithful to the facts of daily experience; and I doubt not that you will soon have other communications of the same tenor, and all too true.
I made no attempt to answer "A Tenant, not at will," because the subject is much too wide for any detailed treatment in a letter; and you do not care for generalizations of mine. But I am sure your two correspondents, and the large class of sufferers which they represent, would be very sincerely grateful for some generalizations of yours on this matter. For, Sir, surely of all questions for the political economist, this of putting good houses over people's heads is the closest and simplest. The first question in all economy, practically as well as etymologically, must be this, of lodging. The "Eco" must come before the "Nomy." You must have a house before you can put anything into it; and preparatorily to laying up treasure, at the least dig a hole for it. Well, Sir, here, as it seems to my poor thinking, is a beautiful and simple problem for you to illustrate the law of demand and supply upon. Here you have a considerable body of very deserving persons "demanding" a good and cheap article in the way of a house. Will you or any of your politico-economic correspondents explain to them and to me the Divinely Providential law by which, in due course, the supply of such cannot but be brought about for them?
There is another column in your impression of to-day to which, also, I would ask leave to direct your readers' attention—the 4th of the 3d page; and especially, at the bottom of it, Dr. Whitmore's account of Crawford Place,[100] and his following statement that it is "a kind of property constituting a most profitable investment;" and I do so in the hope that you will expand your interpretation of the laws of political economy so far as to teach us how, by their beneficent and inevitable operation, good houses must finally be provided for the classes who live in Crawford Place, and such other places; and, without necessity of eviction, also for the colliers of Cramlington (vide 2d column of the same 3d page).[101] I have, indeed, my own notions on the subject, but I do not trouble you with them, for they are unfortunately based an that wild notion of there being a "just" price for all things, which you say in your article of Oct. 10, on the Sheffield strikes, "has no existence but in the minds of theorists."[102] The Pall Mall Gazette, with which journal I have already held some discussion on the subject, eagerly quoted your authority on its side, in its impression of the same evening; nor do I care to pursue the debate until I can inform you of the continuous result of some direct results which I am making on my Utopian principles. I have bought a little bit of property of the Crawford Place description, and mending it somewhat according to my notions, I make my tenants pay me what I hold to be a "just" price for the lodging provided. That lodging I partly look after, partly teach the tenants to look after for themselves; and I look a little after them, as well as after the rents. I do not mean to make a highly profitable investment of their poor little rooms; but I do mean to sell a good article, in the way of house room, at a fair price; and hitherto my customers are satisfied, and so am I.[103]
In the mean time, being entirely busy in other directions, I must leave the discussion, if it is to proceed at all, wholly between you and your readers. I will write no word more till I see what they all have got to say, and until you yourself have explained to me, in its anticipated results, the working—as regards the keeping out of winter and rough weather—of the principles of Non-iquity (I presume that is the proper politico-economic form for the old and exploded word Iniquity); and so I remain, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Oct. 16.
[98] The letter of "W. H. W." commenced by stating that the writer had "waited till the discussion ... about domestic servants was brought to a close to make a few remarks on a subject touched on in Mr. Ruskin's last letter—domestic architecture." It then gave a "graphic description" of "W. H. W.'s" own modern villa and its miseries, and concluded by asking Mr. Ruskin if nothing could be done!
[99] "A Tenant, not at will" had written to point out the coincidence that he had, before the publication of Mr. Ruskin's third letter, himself begun a letter to the Daily Telegraph on the subject of houses, in parts of which, strangely enough, he had used expressions very similar to those of Mr. Ruskin (see ante, pp. 147-8). He had described his modern suburban villa as "one of an ugly mass of blossoms lately burst forth from the parent trunk—a brickfield;" and declared that if it were not that people would think him mad, he "would infinitely rather live in a log hut of his own building" than in a builder's villa. He concluded by saying that all the houses were the same, and that therefore, until Mr. Ruskin could point out honest-built dwellings neglected while the "villas" were all let, it was not quite fair of him to assume that "suburban villains" utterly wanted the true instinct of gentlemen which would lead to the preference of log huts to plaster palaces.
[100] The account consisted of a report presented by Dr. Whitmore, as Metropolitan Officer of Health to the district, to the Marylebone Representative Council. Describing the miseries of Crawford Place, which was left in an untenantable condition, while the landlords still got high rents for it, he added that "property of this description, let out in separate rooms to weekly tenants, constitutes a most profitable investment," according to the degree of flinty determination exercised in collecting the rents.
[101] This alludes to an account of the position of the Cramlington colliers after seventeen days of strike. The masters attempted to evict the pitmen from their houses, an attempt which the pitmen met partly by serious riot and resistance, and partly by destroying the houses they were forced to leave.
[102] "Such a thing as a 'just price,' either for labor or for any other commodity, has, with all submission to Mr. Ruskin, no existence save in the minds of theorists." (Daily Telegraph, Oct. 10, quoted by the Pall Mall in its "Epitome of the Morning Papers" on the same day.) The discussion with the Gazette consisted of the "Work and Wages" letters (see ante, pp. 72 seqq.).
[103] See "Fors Clavigera," 1877, Letter 78, Notes and Correspondence, p. 170.
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.