The Harvest of RuskinGraham, John W. (John William)
Religion
The Harvest of Ruskin
Graham, John W. (John William)
Ruskin, John, 1819-1900
It is to be noted that every increase of the gross output which
machinery enables man to produce, increases the demand for the more
skilled portions of the work, for those which require judgment and
character. The multiplication of the printing output of the country has
increased the number of writers, of reporters, of proof-readers, of
overlookers, and of men who can tastefully arrange a title page. It has
also multiplied the demand for men who can draw, can photograph, or can
reproduce illustrations. Similarly the “hands” who work the machines on
a farm are fewer but are probably more intelligent than the agricultural
labourer in a backward country.
It will be observed that this inquiry has left untouched and
unaffected--
1. The skilled artistic crafts where a sense of the beautiful and a
special value in human thought goes to each article.
2. The mass of unskilled and unspecialized labour at the bottom of the
social ladder which division of labour and machine production leave
largely untouched.
To the cleansing, quieting, moralizing of machinery, then, not to its
extinction or supersession, social reformers should apply themselves. To
the compulsory consumption of smoke, to sanitary factories and
workshops, to the substitution of gas or electricity for steam, we must
look with hope.
Therefore, out of the industrial hurly-burly, we must look forward, not
back--accept the industrialization of the world which marked the
nineteenth century, and go on to find a home for humanity in it. It is a
world phenomenon, and it is the result of one thing, the exploitation of
coal.
It is in the abuse of this very coal, on which all manufacturing and
transport depends, that the most obvious wrong has been done to
humanity. The first condition of human happiness to-day is to be found
in the abolition or sufficient abatement of smoke, so keeping our skins
and clothes clean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account