There are three things necessary to be done in commerce to make it healthy A. To make things always of the best, whether cheap or dear. C. To let nobody live by lending money. The manner of approach to these three perfections must be determined by each of us according to our means and position. Is it impossible to begin an association of merchants, more or less independent, who would at least observe B? [Mr. Brooke replied: "I think you would be surprised if you knew how often I for one have declared myself (to myself) willing to accept your invitation-Fors, May 1871, p. 22;1 and before you wrote it I could envy a man I knew in Wales whom we caught once digging his own potatoes, with a volume of Essays open near him -a fair sample of his life. But who is ever to restore truth and faithfulness between Capitalists and Labourers, to stay the rush of competition in Trade and its attendant crimes, to bring back again that pride of service, much of which I even have seen corrupted, and thus perhaps eventually to make England's face something cleaner again,' if we don't stand to our posts? God knows I don't feel any special mission for the task-none less; but I think if I were to shirk my share of it, I could never feel that He had given me the ease. 6 "A friend of mine,* wealthy and highly gifted, has deliberately educated his sons with the injunction that they shall follow him in this work. He gives his life to it, and is at this time planning a new scheme whereby the interests of the Workpeople shall be from the first legally involved in those of their Employers in a new Concern' which he is establishing for the purpose of trying the experiment. I know that the idea of profit-accruing to himself does not enter his calculations further than is necessary to establish the success of his scheme and recommend its adoption to others. He has read Munera Pulveris, and I want, Sir, to modify your assertion that people will have it that you want them to be moral and unbusinesslike'-it may be true, probably is, of many, but other some think and feel differently about you. Surely you don't gauge public opinion of your utterances by the criticisms of the Daily Press, blatant pest that it has become! "Your second precept for rendering commerce healthy-To give and exact cash payments-is in my business practised as nearly as is possible-the terms of the Trade being for purchase of cotton cash in ten days and for purchase of produce from cotton cash in fourteen days. These terms are rigid, and we know no paper' except bank-notes. But your first and third precepts' To make things always of the best, whether cheap or dear' and 'To let nobody live by Interest' are hopeless indeed. How can we obey the first when often the demand is for poor quality (though I hope that's mending), and when our values are for ever interfered with by speculation totally unlawful?” * The Chairman of the Associated Employers of Labour. 1 1 [See now Vol. XXVII, pp. 96–97.] Ruskin replied (no date):—] DEAR MR. BROOKE,-Please glance over these rough pages1 written for the May Fors; and I'm sorry to send you such a scrawl, but can't write better now, in average work. If you will further criticize and question, I think we shall make it a useful number, between us. Ever gratefully yours, J. R. [Mr. Brooke continued the correspondence, and Ruskin replied, sending some more bits of Fors, Letter 44:-] CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD, 15th Feb. Here are two bits you DEAR MR. BROOKE,-I'm very sorry you're ill. ought to have-but the continuation has gone on continuing into too much to send. Tell me first what you feel about what you have-if you can read it. Ever faithfully yours, J. R. [In reply to a further letter from Mr. Brooke, Ruskin wrote:-] BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, 25th Feb. DEAR MR. BROOKE,-Thanks for all your letters. I fear you were a little hurt by the manner of mine, but I am obliged to think of you as representing your class-not as yourself. I did not reply to your last because you said you were unwell. There is no haste; I have plenty in hand. When you are ready to go on we must be very steady in keeping to one point at a time. Nor is it a question whether you are making a bad article or not, but whether you are co-operating in their make. You don't forge notes; you only supply the forgers with good paper, which, luckily for you, they want thin. (That is the gist of your last letter, you know.) But all these personal questions are irrelevant until the general points and laws are fixed.* When you are ready to go on, we will, if you please, begin with your admission (is it not?) that machinery does not enable us Thus in your last note you say, "Don't stop building dwellings for the poor; as long as the bank will give you interest, that is a benefit at any rate." Now, suppose the bank were a brothel on a vast scale, would you say the same of its profits? That I ought to go on building for the poor out of them? You must first determine what the bank is. Then, what I am to do. [The "rough pages" were for the most part printed in Fors, Letter 44, §§ 8, 9, 13 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 132-134, 137-138). For an additional passage, now printed from the MS., see the note in Vol. XXVIII. p. 132.] to produce more food, but only to buy it of others. Which you think we have, or may have, a "call" to do. This is quite a new element in the debate, and we must clear it up. Are we to debate on the ground of Christianity? or of science only. I do not care which, but let me know which, and let us keep to it. Ever truly yours, J. RUSKIN. Parcel of MS. received all right. This is a private letter altogether, meant only to clear the way.1 [Here on Ruskin's side the correspondence ceased. He went abroad in March (see Vol. XXIII. p. xxx.).] 11 THE DEFINITION OF MONEY: LETTERS TO THE REV. J. P. FAUNTHORPE1 [See Letter 44, § 11 n. (Vol. XXVIII. p. 134)] BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, DEAR MR. FAUNTHORPE,-You call me "Master" in private. I know you dare not confess me for one in public; but do you know accurately and thoroughly why you dare not? In your article 2 on Money you quote an entirely common and valueless bit of me, but you repeat deliberately the lie which I have been twenty years fighting against, with my entire heart and soul. You have much more than the power of mind necessary to understand the nature of that Lie. What is it that makes you shrink from using the mind God gave you, in this one direction? The Lie is, apparently, a very innocuous one"Money is a Medium of Exchange." You might find it out to be a lie merely by defining its words. Ask just what is a Medium? Having defined that, ask farther, when you give a penny for a loaf, where is the Medium? You have a penny; somebody else has a loaf; you exchange the penny for the loaf. But where's the Medium? But you might find it out to be a lie by substituting the false definition in the most important passage in which the word Money is used in all human literature. "The love of Money is the root of all Evil." Try it with: "The love of a Medium of Exchange is the root of all evil." Will it still be true? Is it still "Word of God," in evangelical sense? Is it still word of a wise [The letters in this section of the Appendix are here reprinted from Letters from John Ruskin to Rev. J. P. Faunthorpe, M.A., edited by Thomas J. Wise, privately issued 1895, vol. i. pp. 21-41.] 2 [The reference is to "Lesson XLIV.: Money" in Household Science: Readings in Necessary Knowledge for Girls and Young Women, edited by the Rev. J. P. Faunthorpe, Principal of Whitelands College, 1881. The Lesson begins (p. 391) with the statement "Money is the medium of exchange." The "entirely common and valueless bit" of Ruskin (quoted on p. 397) is from Time and Tide, § 18 (Vol. XVII. p. 334): "whether a shilling a day be good pay or not, depends wholly on what a shilling's worth' is," etc.] (1 Timothy vi. 10.] man, in human and common sense? Now you have assuredly common sense enough, and divine spirit enough, to understand the difference between this Lie-definition and the true one. "Money is an order for goods." And you can see that though the Bible sentence will not read so musically, it will read as truly, and with much more meaning, when you substitute this definition: "The love of Orders for Goods is the root of all Evil." That is to say, the love of Power, to begin with, and of Consumption, to end with. The endeavour to get the grasp of Goods, instead of to produce them, and to get the privilege of devouring them, instead of the faculty of creating them. You can see, also, that when you define the terms farther this true definition becomes a hundred-fold more precious. For you have to define the word " Goods," and to distinguish "Goods" from " Evils," which to do is of all the work proposed in any Training College the precisely Primary. I am going to print this letter in next Fors; and probably also for separate circulation. But will you first give me an answer to be printed with it? And be assured that I should not have written it unless, first, I had trusted much in your friendship, your courage, and your sincerity; and, secondly, so much admired both the substance and arrangement of this volume of yours on Household Science, as to hope with all my heart that it may become oracular in every English and un-English Household, alike to those that are far off, and to them that are nigh.2 Ever yours respectfully and affectionately, THE REV. J. P. FAUNTHORPE, M.A. J. RUSKIN. Postscript.-Note to be put to the question, "Where is the Medium," when the letter is published. You would probably at first answer, "It is not a penny, but my knowledge, that I really exchange with the baker for bread, and the penny is the 'Medium' of that exchange!" But, if the Baker wanted your knowledge, you would not need the penny, nor he take it. He would give you the loaf for the Latin lesson at once. That exchange needs no "Medium," and can have none. The exchange of English coals for American meat indeed needs the "Medium" of a ship, but not of money. If there were none in the world the exchange would still take place, as it does now, and a tally of notches on the masts would express every condition of debt and credit. And you will find, in every other conceivable instance, that money is not a "Medium of Exchange," but an "Order for Goods"; and that, therefore, its reality as Money depends on there being Goods to Order, which your vulgar economist, and your England taught by him, never considers it his or her business to ascertain! And the essential difference between having a thousand pounds in your pocket-book, or only a penny in your purse, is not that you can become a Mediator of your Exchanges, but that you can become a consumer of more goods. [This intention, however, was not carried out.] 2 [Ephesians ii. 17.] |