Is England Big Enough? 1868.
The Ownership of Railways. 1868.
Railway Economy. 1868.
Our Railway System. 1865.
Railway Safety. 1870.

[Pg 78]
[Pg 79]

I.

THE MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: You terminate to-day a discussion which seems to have been greatly interesting to your readers, by telling them the "broad fact, that England is no longer big enough for her inhabitants."[72]

Might you not, in the leisure of the recess, open with advantage a discussion likely to be no less interesting, and much more useful—namely, how big England may be made for economical inhabitants, and how little she may be made for wasteful ones? Might you not invite letters on this quite radical and essential question—how money is truly made, and how it is truly lost, not by one person or another, but by the whole nation?

For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. They are always considering how to get it from somebody else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it.

Also, they very naturally mourn over their loss of it to other people, without reflecting that, if not lost altogether, it may still be of some reflective advantage to them. Whereas, the real national question is not who is losing or gaining money, but who is making and who destroying it. I do not of course mean making money, in the sense of printing notes or finding gold. True money cannot be so made. When an island is too small for its inhabitants, it would not help them to one ounce of bread more to have the entire island turned into one nugget, or to find bank notes growing by its rivulets instead of fern leaves. Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the true money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners.

Surely this is a question which people would like to have clearly answered for them, and it might lead to some important results if the answer were acted upon. The riband-makers at Coventry, starving, invite the ladies of England to wear ribands. The compassionate ladies of England invest themselves in rainbows, and admiring economists declare the nation to be benefited. No one asks where the ladies got the money to spend in rainbows (which is the first question in the business), nor whether the money once so spent will ever return again, or has really faded with the faded ribands and disappeared forever. Again, honest people every day lose quantities of money to dishonest people. But that is merely a change of hands much to be regretted; but the money is not therefore itself lost; the dishonest people must spend it at last somehow. A youth at college loses his year's income to a Jew. But the Jew must spend it instead of him. Miser or not, the day must come when his hands relax. A railroad shareholder loses his money to a director; but the director must some day spend it instead of him. That is not—at least in the first fact of it—national loss. But what the public need to know is, how a final and perfect loss of money takes place, so that the whole nation, instead of being rich, shall be getting gradually poor. And then, indeed, if one man in spending his money destroys it, and another in spending it makes more of it, it becomes a grave question in whose hands it is, and whether honest or dishonest people are likely to spend it to the best purpose. Will you permit me, Sir, to lay this not unprofitable subject of inquiry before your readers, while, to the very best purpose, they are investing a little money in sea air?

Very sincerely yours,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, July 30.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: The ingenious British public seems 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 price 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 person 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.

I believe, if the votes of the proprietors of all the railroads in the kingdom were taken en masse, it would be found that the majority would gladly receive back their original capital, and cede their right of "revising" prices of railway tickets. And if railway property is a good and wise investment of capital, the public need not shrink from taking the whole off their hands. Let the public take it. (I, for one, who never held a rag of railroad scrip in my life, nor ever willingly travelled behind an engine where a horse could pull me, will most gladly subscribe my proper share for such purchase according to my income.) Then let them examine what lines pay their working expenses and what lines do not, and boldly leave the un-paying embankments to be white over with sheep, like Roman camps, take up the working lines on sound principles, pay their drivers and pointsmen well, keep their carriages clean and in good repair, and make it as wonderful a thing for a train, as for an old mail-coach, to be behind its time; and the sagacious British public will very soon find its pocket heavier, its heart lighter, and its "passages" pleasanter, than any of the three have been, for many a day.

I am, Sir, always faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Aug. 5.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I had not intended again to trespass on your space until I could obtain a general idea of the views of your correspondents on the questions you permitted me to lay before them in my letters of the 31st July and 5th inst.; but I must ask you to allow me to correct an impression likely to be created by your reference to that second letter in your interesting article on the Great Eastern Railway, and to reply briefly to the question of your correspondent "S." on the same subject.[74]

You say that I mistook the charge against the railway companies in taunting my unfortunate neighbors at Sydenham[75] with their complaints against the operation of the law of supply and demand, and that it was because the companies neglected that law that they suffered.

But, Sir, the law of supply and demand, as believed in by the British public under the guidance of their economists, is a natural law regulating prices, which it is not at all in their option to "neglect." And it is precisely because I have always declared that there is no such natural law, but that prices can be, and ought to be, regulated by laws of expediency and justice, that political economists have thought I did not understand their science, and you now say I laugh at it. No, Sir, I laughed only at what was clearly no science, but vain endeavor to allege as irresistible natural law, what is indeed a too easily resisted prudential law, rewarding and chastising us according to our obedience. So far from despising true political economy, based on such prudential law, I have for years been chiefly occupied in defending its conclusions, having given this definition of it in 1862. "Political Economy is neither an art nor a science; but a system of conduct and legislature founded on the sciences, including the arts, and impossible except under certain conditions of moral culture."[76]

And, Sir, nothing could better show the evil of competition as opposed to the equitable regulation of prices than the instance to which you refer your correspondent "Fair Play"—the agitation in Brighton for a second railway. True prudential law would make one railway serve it thoroughly, and fix the fares necessary to pay for thorough service. Competition will make two railways (sinking twice the capital really required); then, if the two companies combine, they can oppress the public as effectively as one could; if they do not, they will keep the said public in dirty carriages and in danger of its life, by lowering the working expenses to a minimum in their antagonism.

Next, to the question of your correspondent "S.," "what I expect the capitalist to do with his money," so far as it is asked in good faith I gladly reply, that no one's "expectations" are in this matter of the slightest consequence; but that the moral laws which properly regulate the disposition of revenue, and the physical laws which determine returns proportioned to the wisdom of its employment, are of the greatest consequence; and these may be briefly stated as follows:

1. All capital is justly and rationally invested which supports productive labor (that is to say, labor directly producing or distributing good food, clothes, lodging, or fuel); so long as it renders to the possessor of the capital, and to those whom he employs, only such gain as shall justly remunerate the superintendence and labor given to the business, and maintain both master and operative happily in the positions of life involved by their several functions. And it is highly advantageous for the nation that wise superintendence and honest labor should both be highly rewarded. But all rates of interest or modes of profit on capital, which render possible the rapid accumulation of fortunes, are simply forms of taxation, by individuals, on labor, purchase, or transport; and are highly detrimental to the national interests, being, indeed, no means of national gain, but only the abstraction of small gains from many to form the large gain of one. For, though inequality of fortune is not in itself an evil, but in many respects desirable, it is always an evil when unjustly or stealthily obtained, since the men who desire to make fortunes by large interest are precisely those who will make the worst use of their wealth.

2. Capital sunk in the production of objects which do not immediately support life (as statues, pictures, architecture, books, garden-flowers, and the like) is beneficially sunk if the things thus produced are good of their kind, and honestly desired by the nation for their own sake; but it is sunk ruinously if they are bad of their kind, or desired only for pride or gain. Neither can good art be produced as an "investment." You cannot build a good cathedral if you only build it that you may charge sixpence for entrance.

3. "Private enterprise" should never be interfered with, but, on the contrary, much encouraged, so long as it is indeed "enterprise" (the exercise of individual ingenuity and audacity in new fields of true labor), and so long as it is indeed "private," paying its way at its own cost, and in no wise harmfully affecting public comforts or interests. But "private enterprise" which poisons its neighborhood, or speculates for individual gain at common risk, is very sharply to be interfered with.

4. All enterprise, constantly and demonstrably profitable on ascertained conditions, should be made public enterprise, under Government administration and security; and the funds now innocently contributed, and too often far from innocently absorbed, in vain speculation, as noted in your correspondent "Fair Play's" excellent letter,[77] ought to be received by Government, employed by it, not in casting guns, but in growing corn and feeding cattle, and the largest possible legitimate interest returned without risk to these small and variously occupied capitalists who cannot look after their own money. We should need another kind of Government to do this for us, it is true; also it is true that we can get it, if we choose; but we must recognize the duties of governors before we can elect the men fit to perform them.

The benefit of these several modes of right investment of capital would be quickly felt by the nation, not in the increase of isolated or nominal wealth, but in steady lowering of the prices of all the necessaries and innocent luxuries of life, and in the disciplined, orderly, and in that degree educational employment of every able-bodied person. For, Sir (again with your pardon), my question "Is England big enough?" was not answered by the sad experience of the artisans of Poplar. Had they been employed in earth-building instead of in shipbuilding, and heaped the Isle of Dogs itself into half as much space of good land, capable of growing corn instead of mosquitoes, they would actually have made habitable England a little bigger by this time;[78] and if the first principle of economy in employment were understood among us—namely, always to use whatever vital power of breath and muscle you have got in the country before you use the artificial power of steam and iron for what living arms can do, and never plough by steam while you forward your ploughmen to Quebec—those old familiar faces need not yet have looked their last at each other from the deck of the St. Lawrence. But on this subject I will ask your permission to write you in a few days some further words.[79]

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Aug. 9.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Will you allow me a few words with reference to your excellent article of to-day on railroads.[80] All you say is true. But of what use is it to tell the public this? Of all the economical stupidities of the public—and they are many—the out-and-out stupidest is underpaying their pointsmen; but if the said public choose always to leave their lines in the hands of companies—that is to say, practically, of engineers and lawyers—the money they pay for fares will always go, most of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be spent in decorating railroad stations with black and blue bricks, and in fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are more bills for new lines to be brought forward this year than at any previous session. But, Sir, it might do some little good if you were to put it into the engineers' and lawyers' heads that they might for some time to come get as much money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public) by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as for ramifying them; and if you were also to explain to the shareholders that it would be wiser to spend their capital in preventing accidents attended by costly damages, than in running trains at a loss on opposition branches. It is little business of mine—for I am not a railroad traveller usually more than twice in the year; but I don't like to hear of people's being smashed, even when it is all their fault; so I will ask you merely to reprint this passage from my article on Political Economy in Fraser's Magazine for April, 1863, and so leave the matter to your handling:

"Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigation on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had—what ultimately it will be found we must have—quadruple rails, two for passengers and two for traffic, on every great line, and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares."[81]

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Dec. 7.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I am very busy, and have not time to write new phrases. Would you mind again reprinting (as you were good enough to do a few days ago[83]) a sentence from one of the books of mine which everybody said were frantic when I wrote them? You see the date—1863.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Nov. 29, 1870.

I have underlined the words I want to be noticed, but, as you see, made no change in a syllable.

Already the Government, not unapproved, carries letters and parcels for us. Larger packages may in time follow—even general merchandise; why not, at last, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigations on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had—what ultimately it will be found we must have—quadruple rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on every great line; and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.