2. Capital sunk in the production of objects which do not immediately support life (as statues, pictures, architecture, books, garden-flowers, and the like) is beneficially sunk if the things thus produced are good of their kind, and honestly desired by the nation for their own sake; but it is sunk ruinously if they are bad of their kind, or desired only for pride or gain. Neither can good art be produced as an "investment." You cannot build a good cathedral if you only build it that you may charge sixpence for entrance.
3. "Private enterprise" should never be interfered with, but, on the contrary, much encouraged, so long as it is indeed "enterprise" (the exercise of individual ingenuity and audacity in new fields of true labor), and so long as it is indeed "private," paying its way at its own cost, and in no wise harmfully affecting public comforts or interests. But "private enterprise" which poisons its neighborhood, or speculates for individual gain at common risk, is very sharply to be interfered with.
4. All enterprise, constantly and demonstrably profitable on ascertained conditions, should be made public enterprise, under Government administration and security; and the funds now innocently contributed, and too often far from innocently absorbed, in vain speculation, as noted in your correspondent "Fair Play's" excellent letter,[77] ought to be received by Government, employed by it, not in casting guns, but in growing corn and feeding cattle, and the largest possible legitimate interest returned without risk to these small and variously occupied capitalists who cannot look after their own money. We should need another kind of Government to do this for us, it is true; also it is true that we can get it, if we choose; but we must recognize the duties of governors before we can elect the men fit to perform them.
The benefit of these several modes of right investment of capital would be quickly felt by the nation, not in the increase of isolated or nominal wealth, but in steady lowering of the prices of all the necessaries and innocent luxuries of life, and in the disciplined, orderly, and in that degree educational employment of every able-bodied person. For, Sir (again with your pardon), my question "Is England big enough?" was not answered by the sad experience of the artisans of Poplar. Had they been employed in earth-building instead of in shipbuilding, and heaped the Isle of Dogs itself into half as much space of good land, capable of growing corn instead of mosquitoes, they would actually have made habitable England a little bigger by this time;[78] and if the first principle of economy in employment were understood among us—namely, always to use whatever vital power of breath and muscle you have got in the country before you use the artificial power of steam and iron for what living arms can do, and never plough by steam while you forward your ploughmen to Quebec—those old familiar faces need not yet have looked their last at each other from the deck of the St. Lawrence. But on this subject I will ask your permission to write you in a few days some further words.[79]
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Aug. 9.
FOOTNOTES:
[74] The Daily Telegraph of Saturday, August 8, contained an article on the "Increased Railway Fares," in which, commenting on Mr. Ruskin's statement that, given the law of political economy, the railways might ask as much as they could get, it is said that Mr. Ruskin mistook "the charge against the companies. While they neglected the 'law of supply and demand,' they suffered: now that they obey that law, they prosper." The latter part of the article dealt with a long letter signed "Fair Play," which was printed in the Daily Telegraph of the same day. "To Mr. Ruskin, who laughs at Political Economy," concluded the article; "and to 'Fair Play,' who thinks that Parliament is at the bottom of all the mischief, we commend a significant fact. An agitation is now on foot in Brighton to have a second railway direct to London. What is the cause of this? Not the Legislature, but the conduct of the Brighton company in raising its fares. That board, by acting in the spirit of a monopoly, has provoked retaliation, and the public now seeks to protect itself by the aid of a competing line."
The letter of the correspondent "S." (also in the Daily Telegraph of August 8) began by asking "what the capitalist is to do with his money, if the Government works the railways on the principle of the Post Office."
[75] Several of the letters had been written by residents in the neighborhood of Sydenham.