Ruskin Unto This Last Pdf

[Athina Dollison]

UntoThis Last is an essay critical of economics by John Ruskin, who published the first chapter between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal Cornhill Magazine in four articles.[1]

I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

The "last" are the eleventh hour labourers, who are paid as if they had worked the entire day. Rather than discuss the contemporary religious interpretation of the parable, whereby the eleventh hour labourers would be death-bed converts, or the peoples of the world who come late to religion, Ruskin looks at the social and economic implications, discussing issues such as who should receive a living wage. This essay is very critical of the economists of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this sense, Ruskin is a precursor of social economy. Because the essay also attacks the destructive effects of industrialism upon the natural world, some historians have seen it as anticipating the Green movement.[2]

Friend, I do thee no wrong.

Didst not thou agree with me for a penny?

Take that thine is, and go thy way.

I will give unto this last even as unto thee.

If ye think good, give me my price;

And if not, forbear.

So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

Ruskin says himself that the articles were "very violently criticized", forcing the publisher to stop its publication after four months.[4] Subscribers sent protest letters, but Ruskin countered the attack and published the four articles in a book in May 1862. One of the few that received the book positively was Thomas Carlyle, whom Ruskin said had "led the way" for Unto This Last with his critique of laissez-faire political economy as the "Dismal Science".[5] Carlyle wrote to Ruskin:

The book is cited as an inspiration upon the British Labour Party in its initial stages, a survey of Labour Members of Parliament after the party achieved its electoral breakthrough in the 1906 UK general election listing the book as one of their key influences.[7]

Unto This Last had a very important impact on Gandhi's philosophy.[8] He discovered the book in March 1904 through Henry Polak, whom he had met in a vegetarian restaurant in South Africa. Polak was sub-editor of the Johannesburg paper The Critic. Gandhi decided immediately not only to change his own life according to Ruskin's teaching, but also to publish his own newspaper, Indian Opinion, from a farm where everybody would get the same salary, without distinction of function, race, or nationality. This, for that time, was quite revolutionary. Thus Gandhi created Phoenix Settlement.

Gandhi translated Unto This Last into Gujarati in 1908 under the title of Sarvodaya (Well Being of All). Valji Govindji Desai translated it back to English in 1951 under the title of Unto This Last: A Paraphrase.[9] This last essay can be considered his programme on economics, as in Unto This Last, Gandhi found an important part of his social and economic ideas.

Not a whit the less, I believe them to be the best, that is to say, the truest, the rightest-worded, and most serviceable things I have ever written; and the last of them, having had especial pains spent on it, is probably the best I shall ever write.

'This,' the reader may reply, 'it might be, yet not therefore well written.' Which, in no mock humility, admitting, I yet rest satisfied with the work, though with nothing else that I have done; and purposing shortly to follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I may find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to be within the reach of any one who may care to refer to them. So I republish the essays as they appeared. One word only is changed, correcting the estimate of a weight; and no word is added.

Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these papers, it is a matter of regret to me that the most startling of all statements in them, -- that respecting the necessity of the organization of labour, with fixed wages, -- should have found its way into the first essay; it being quite one of the least important, though by no means the least certain, of the positions to be defended. The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give, as I believe for the first time in plain English, -- it has often been incidentally given in good Greek by Plato1 and Xenophon2, and good Latin by Cicero3 and Horace4, -- a logical definition of WEALTH: such definition being absolutely needed for a basis of economical science. The most reputed essay on that subject which has appeared in modern times, after opening with the statement that 'writers on political economy profess to teach, or to investigate,(1*) the nature of wealth,' thus follows up the declaration of its thesis -- 'Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purpose, of what is meant by wealth.' ... 'It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition.'(2*)

Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House-law (Oikonomia), has been Star-law (Astronomia), and that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wandering, as here between wealth radiant and wealth reflective, the writer had begun thus: 'Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purpose, of what is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a star is not the object of this treatise'; - the essay so opened might yet have been far more true in its final statements, and a thousand fold moreserviceable to the navigator, than any treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusion on the popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the economist.

It was, therefore, the first object of these following papers to give an accurate and stable definition of wealth. Their second object was to show that the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence, and even, for practical purpose, in the attainability of honesty.

Without venturing to pronounce - since on such matter human judgement is by no means conclusive - what is, or is not, the noblest of God's works, we may yet admit so much of Pope's5 assertion as that an honest man is among His best works presently visible, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one; but not an incredible or miraculous work; still less an abnormal one. Honesty is not a disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of economy; but a consistent and commanding force, by obedience to which - and by no other obedience - those orbits can continue clear of chaos.

It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for the lowness, instead of the height, of his standard: - 'Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue; but how much higher may men attain! Shall nothing more be asked of us than that we be honest?'

For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that. What else we may have lost faith in, there shall be here no question; but assuredly we have lost faith in common honesty, and in the working power of it. And this faith, with the facts on which it may rest, it is quite our first business to recover and keep: not only believing, but even by experience assuring ourselves, that there are yet in the world men who can be restrained from fraud otherwise than by the fear of losing employment;(3*) nay, that it is even accurately in proportion to the number of such men in any State, that the said State does or can prolong its existence.

To these two points, then, the following essays are mainly directed. The subject of the organization of labour is only casually touched upon; because, if we once can get sufficient quantity of honesty in our captains, theorganization of labour is easy, and will develop itself without quarrel or difficulty; but if we cannot get honesty in our captains, the organization of labour is for evermore impossible.

The several conditions of its possibility I purpose to examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the following investigation of first principles, as if they were leading him into unexpectedly dangerous ground, I will, for his better assurance, state at once the worst of the political creed at which I wish him to arrive.

(1.) First, - that there should be training schools for youth established, at Government cost,(4*) and under Government discipline, over the whole country; that every child born in the country should, at the parent's wish, be permitted (and, in certain cases, be under penalty required) to pass through them; and that, in these schools, the child should (with other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to be considered) imperatively be taught, with the best skill of teaching that the country could produce, the following three things: - (a) The laws of health, and the exercices enjoined by them; (b) Habits of gentleness and justice; and (c) The calling by which he is to live.

(2.) Secondly, - that, in connection with these training schools, there should be established, also entirely under Government regulation, manufactories and workshops for the production and sale of every necessary of life, and for the exercise of every useful art. And that, interfering no whit with private entreprise, nor setting any restraints or tax on private trade, but leaving both to do their best, and beat the Government if they could, -- there should, at these Government manufactories and shops, be authoritatively good and examplary work done, and pure and true substance sold; so that a man could be sure, if he chose to pay the Government price, that he got for his money breadthat was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was work.

3a8082e126