Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
General
Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
Ruskin, John
Aesthetics; Conduct of life; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems; Working class -- Great Britain
Secondly, we have to study the effects of the mode in which Captain
Roland empties his purse. The landlord, usurer, or labour-master, does
not, and cannot, himself consume all the means of life he collects. He
gives them to other persons, whom he employs in his own behalf—growers
of champagne; jockeys; footmen; jewellers; builders; painters;
musicians; and the like. The diversion of the labour of these persons
from the production of food to the production of articles of luxury is
very frequently, and, at the present day, very grievously, a cause of
famine. But when the luxuries are produced, it becomes a quite separate
question who is to have them, and whether the landlord and capitalist
are entirely to monopolize the music, the painting, the architecture,
the hand-service, the horse-service, and the sparkling champagne of the
world.
And it is gradually, in these days, becoming manifest to the tenants,
borrowers, and labourers, that instead of paying these large sums into
the hands of the landlords, lenders, and employers, that they may
purchase music, painting, etc.; the tenants, borrowers, and workers,
had better buy a little music and painting for themselves! That, for
instance, instead of the capitalist-employer’s paying three hundred
pounds for a full-length portrait of himself, in the attitude of
investing his capital, the united workmen had better themselves pay the
three hundred pounds into the hands of the ingenious artist, for a
painting, in the antiquated manner of Lionardo or Raphael, of some
subject more religiously or historically interesting to them; and
placed where they can always see it. And again, instead of paying three
hundred pounds to the obliging landlord, that he may buy a box at the
opera with it, whence to study the refinements of music and dancing,
the tenants are beginning to think that they may as well keep their
rents partly to themselves, and therewith pay some Wandering Willie to
fiddle at their own doors; or bid some grey-haired minstrel
“Tune, to please a peasant’s ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.”
And similarly the dwellers in the hut of the field, and garret of the
city, are beginning to think that, instead of paying half-a-crown for
the loan of half a fireplace, they had better keep their half-crown in
their pockets till they can buy for themselves a whole one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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