Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political EconomyRuskin, John
General
Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy
Ruskin, John
Art; Economics
Well, supposing them sculptors, will not the same rule hold? You
naturally conclude at once that it will; but you will have hard work
to convince your modern architects of that. They will put twenty men
to work, to carve twenty capitals; and all shall be the same. If I
could show you the architects' yards in England just now, all open at
once, perhaps you might see a thousand clever men, all employed in
carving the same design. Of the degradation and deathfulness to the
art-intellect of the country involved in such a habit, I have more or
less been led to speak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its
definite tendency to increase the price of _work_, as such. When men
are employed continually in carving the same ornaments, they get into
a monotonous and methodical habit of labour--precisely correspondent
to that in which they would break stones, or paint house-walls. Of
course, what they do so constantly, they do easily; and if you excite
them temporarily by an increase of wages, you may get much work done
by them in a little time. But, unless so stimulated, men condemned to
a monotonous exertion, work--and always, by the laws of human nature,
_must_ work--only at a tranquil rate, not producing by any means a
maximum result in a given time. But if you allow them to vary their
designs, and thus interest their heads and hearts in what they are
doing, you will find them become eager, first, to get their ideas
expressed, and then to finish the expression of them; and the moral
energy thus brought to bear on the matter quickens, and therefore
cheapens, the production in a most important degree. Sir Thomas Deane,
the architect of the new Museum at Oxford, told me, as I passed
through Oxford on my way here, that he found that, owing to this
cause alone, capitals of various design could be executed cheaper than
capitals of similar design (the amount of hand labour in each being
the same) by about 30 per cent.
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