Sir: I read your Gazette so attentively that I am always falling into arrears, and have only to-day arrived at your last week's articles on strikes, arbitration, etc., which afford me the greatest satisfaction, but nevertheless embarrass me somewhat. Will you permit me to ask for a word or two of further elucidation?
I am an entirely selfish person, and having the means of indulging myself (in moderation), should, I believe, have led a comfortable life, had it not been for occasional fits and twinges of conscience, to which I inherit some family predisposition, and from which I suffer great uneasiness in cloudy weather. Articles like yours of Wednesday,[42] on the proper attention to one's own interests, are very comforting and helpful to me; but, as I said, there are yet some points in them I do not understand.
Of course it is right to arrange all one's business with reference to one's own interest; but what will the practical difference be ultimately between such arrangement and the old and simple conscientious one? In those bygone days, I remember, one endeavored, with such rough estimate as could be quickly made, to give one's Roland for one's Oliver; if a man did you a service, you tried in return to do as much for him; if he broke your head, you broke his, shook hands, and were both the better for it. Contrariwise, on this modern principle of self-interest, I understand very well that if a man does me a service, I am always to do the least I can in return for it; but I don't see how I am always to get more out of him than he gets out of me. I dislike any references to abstract justice as much as you do, but I cannot see my way to keeping this injustice always in my own favor; and if I cannot, it seems to me the matter may as well be settled at first, as it must come to be settled at last, in that disagreeably just way.
Thus, for instance, in producing a piece of iron for the market, one man digs it, another smelts it, another puddles it, and I sell it. We get so much between us four; and I suppose your conscientious people would say that the division of the pay should have some reference to the hardness of the work, and the time spent in it. It is true that by encouraging the diggers and puddlers to spend all they get in drink, and by turning them off as soon as I hear they are laying by money, it may yet be possible to get them for some time to take less than I suppose they should have; but I cannot hide from myself that the men are beginning to understand the game a little themselves; and if they should, with the help of those confounded—(I beg pardon! I forgot that one does not print such expressions in Pall Mall)—education-mongers, learn to be men, and to look after their own business as I do mine, what am I to do? Even at present I don't feel easy in telling them that I ought to have more money than they because I know better how to spend it, for even this involves a distant reference to notions of propriety and principle which I would gladly avoid. Will you kindly tell me what is best to be done (or said)?
I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.
Easter Monday, 1865.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] The articles alluded to were, one upon "Strikes and Arbitration Courts," in the Gazette of Wednesday, the 12th, and the one on "The Times on Trade Arbitration," in the Gazette of Thursday, the 13th. The former dealt with the proposal to decide questions raised by strikes by reference to courts of arbitration. Amongst the sentences contained in it, and alluded to by Mr. Ruskin, were the following: "Phrases about the 'principles of right and justice' are always suspicious and generally fallacious." "The rate of wages is determined exclusively by self-interest." "There is no such thing as a 'fair' rate of wages or a 'just' rate of wages."