“It is the law of heaven,” says Ruskin, “that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our master—the order of all others that is given oftenest: ‘Do justice and judgment.’ That’s your Bible order; that’s the ‘service of God.’ The one divine work—the one ordered sacrifice—is to do justice; and it is the last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As much charity as you choose, but no justice. ‘Nay,’ you will say, ‘charity is greater than justice.’ Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of justice; it is the temple of which justice is the foundation. But you can’t have the top without the bottom; you cannot build upon charity. You must build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the last reward of good work. It is all very fine to think you can build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all you have got to begin with begins at home, and is essentially love of yourself.
“You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night will go to ‘Divine Service’ next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you’ll think, complacently and piously, how lovely they look! So they do; and you love them heartily, and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That’s all right; that is charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper got up also—in its Sunday dress—the dirtiest rags it has that it may beg the better: we shall give it a penny, and think how good we are. That’s charity going abroad. But what does justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind, decrepit this many a day: she keeps her accounts still, however—quite steadily—doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention she cares about). You must put your ear down ever so close to her lips to hear her speak; and then you will start at what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, ‘Why shouldn’t that little crossing-sweeper have a feather on its head, as well as your own child?’ Then you may ask justice, in an amazed manner, How she can possibly be so foolish as to think children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads? Then you stoop again, and justice says—still in her dull, stupid way—‘Then, why don’t you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a hat and feather?’ Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next? And you answer, of course, that you don’t, because everybody ought to remain content in the position in which Providence has placed them.
“Ah, my friends, that’s the gist of the whole question. Did Providence put them in that position, or did you? You knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the ‘position in which Providence has placed him.’ That’s modern Christianity. You say, ‘We did not knock him into the ditch.’ How do you know what you have done or are doing? That’s just what we have all got to know, and what we shall never know until the question with us every morning, is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do the just thing.”
These thoughts suggest to us Ruskin, the social economist, for we must not lose sight of the fact that this greatest of all art critics, this strong, sane ethical philosopher who has emphasized so forcibly the possibilities, duties, and responsibilities of the individual in all his complex relations, is also one of the most enlightened and broad-visioned economists of our wonderful age. By treatises, essays, and letters he has striven for a brighter day for the breadwinners. He has sought to elevate the ideals and tastes of all toilers, while he has labored unremittingly to secure for them that meed of justice which is their right, but which has so long been denied them.
So far back as 1868, when few people of position dared advocate so sane a proposition as the governmental ownership of “natural monopolies,” John Ruskin published these bold and thoughtful words in the London Daily Telegraph:
The ingenious British public seemed to be discovering to its cost, that the beautiful law of supply and demand does not apply in a pleasant manner to railroad transit. But if they are prepared to submit patiently to the “natural” laws of political economy, what right have they to complain? The railroad belongs to the shareholders; and has not everybody a right to ask the highest he can get for his wares? The public have a perfect right to walk, or to make other opposition railroads for themselves, if they please, but not to abuse the shareholders for asking as much as they think they can get. Will you allow me to put the real rights of the matter before them in a few words?
Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong to any private persons. All means of public transit should be provided at public expense, by public determination, where such means are needed, and the public should be its own shareholder. Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay dividends to anybody. They should pay their working expenses, and no more. All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller and the goods, levied by the persons to whom the road or canal belongs, for the right of passing over his property, and this right should at once be purchased by the nation, and the original cost of the roadway—be it of gravel, iron, or adamant—at once defrayed by the nation, and then the whole work of the carriage of persons or goods done for ascertained prices, by salaried officers, as the carriage of letters is done now.
Happily these suggestions of the distinguished Englishman have been followed, in part at least, by several enlightened nations, but to the disgrace of our republic, and to the great cost of the producing and consuming masses, we are lagging behind in these respects, becoming a camp-follower instead of a leader in the march of progress, because of the influence exerted by a small class, who have grown so powerful through special privileges given to them by the nation that they now assume to thwart beneficent legislation in order that they may continue to grow richer through this vicious form of governmental paternalism, which places the multitude in the power of a few.
Ruskin’s views on money are as disturbing to the usurers and those who through special privileges in money have amassed fortunes of unearned wealth as his sound position on railroads is distasteful to the monopolists who impoverish the producer and consumer by exorbitant rates on transportation.