Sir: I am disappointed of my Gazette to-day, and shall be grievously busy to morrow. I think it better, therefore, to follow up my own letter, if you will permit me, with a simple and brief statement of the facts, than to wait till I see your correspondent W. R. G.'s reply, if he has vouchsafed me one.
These are the facts. The laborious poor produce "the means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these "means of life," and keeping as much means as they want of it for themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest, usually only in return for more labor from the poor, expended in producing various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life" they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than that of other people. There is something to be said, nevertheless, in favor of the present arrangement, but it cannot be defended in disguise; and it is impossible to do more harm to the cause of order, or the rights of property, than by endeavors, such as that of your correspondent, to revive the absurd and, among all vigorous thinkers, long since exploded notion of the dependence of the poor upon the rich.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.
January 28.
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1873.]
HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY.
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?