of producers to find purchasers with ready money, is a constant stimulus of inflated credit. Sound business, as Mr. Ruskin clearly sees, does not rest upon credit. A striking testimony to this truth is afforded by the fact that the most important structural change in modern industry, the growth of joint-stock companies, is attended by a return to the custom of ready-money payments. Mr. Ruskin's persistent advocacy of ready money, both in wholesale and retail transactions, is not merely a sound moral principle but a true economic policy.

Finally, his insistence that all money means power over labour, authority over men, proves that he has brought his currency teaching into true organic relation with the rest of his political economy, which is more than can be said for most of our writers on the subject. The possession of money means, ultimately, the power to demand work, and Mr. Ruskin rightly insists that the true vital significance of a quantity of money depends upon the economic condition of the workers. Where a large, poor, and degraded class of workers exists, the possession of £5 gives me the power to force an injurious quantity of bad work out of weaklings who are unable to refuse my demands; in a fairly ordered society of skilled and comfortable workers, the possession of the same sum would only give me power to put some of those workers to wholesome and moderate labour. Thus, the mere knowledge of the quantity of money owned by a person or a nation tells us nothing of the underlying human facts. Money must be reduced to subjective or vital "cost" before its significance is understood.

CHAPTER VI.

THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM.

§ 1. Denunciation of competition in general terms. § 2. Work motived by pay injures the worker. § 3. Bad influence of competition upon quality of "goods." § 4. Qualifications of the charge of immorality. §5. Incisive exposure of the unfair nature of bargaining. § 6. Proposal for a scientific basis of exchange. §7. Mr. Ruskin's doctrine of "No profit in exchange." § 8. Doctrine of the illegitimacy of interest. § 9. Source of error in Mr. Ruskin's economic reasoning. § 10. Distinction of charitable loans for need and loans for investment.

§ 1. MR. RUSKIN's attitude towards competition as a method of determining prices and payments of any kind is one of unqualified hostility. The disutility and the immorality of industrial competition are charges he is never tired of pressing. "Government and Co-operation are in all things the Laws of Life; Anarchy and Competition the Laws of Death." 1 He accuses the current economic teaching of misrepresenting the processes of bargaining and competition so as to conceal their immoral and anti-social character. Adam Smith's doctrine of "the invisible hand," by whose guidance every industrial man, in following his own individual gain, was necessarily impelled to conduct which contributed to the welfare of society, indisputably underlay the current teaching, furnishing a utilitarian sanction. It was,

1 Unto this Last, p. 102.

indeed, no business of theirs, economists averred, to justify the morality of economic processes, nor to defend the motive of enlightened self-interest, by which "economic men" were actuated; but this analysis of industry did serve, in fact, to palliate self-seeking conduct by showing that it fulfilled, and by suggesting that it was "intended" to fulfil, a social purpose, as well as by presenting such an account of the processes of bargains as to teach that each man got what he deserved, and that substantial justice was done by the existing methods of appointment of wealth.

§ 2. Now, addressing himself first to this defence of the "competitive system" of industry, Mr. Ruskin vehemently repudiates both its morality and its utility, the latter not only because he believes that what is immoral cannot be ultimately useful, but because he denies that the self-seeking motive of the "economic man does actually impel him to a socially profitable line of conduct. Competitive industry, he contends, is doubly degrading to the character of those engaging in it, both in the conscious motive it indulges and in the character it imposes upon work. Since profit, not excellence of work, is the admitted motive, the individual producer is purely self-engrossed, his selfishness not being tempered by any sense of social service; in all the processes of buying and selling this selfishness is accentuated by the constant sharp antagonism between himself and his competitors. Any dim perception that competition involves some indirect co-operation towards a common social end is kept in the background of consciousness by the unceasing sense of struggle. A system which thus concentrates all thought upon profit, instead

of upon quality of work or excellence of achievement, inevitably damages the character of work, and does not secure the utility it professes to serve. Good work can only be the result of a conscious effort to work well. A sense of enjoyment accompanies all true effort of the artist; no worthy art-work is produced for pay. In every process of art or industry, just in proportion as the work and its result are not valued for themselves, and are by their very conditions incapable of such valuation, will the product be base. Large quantities of common routine machine-made goods may be turned out by wholly unenjoyed and toilsome labour undergone for pay, but none of the worthier forms of material or immaterial wealth can be thus produced. Work undertaken merely for pay is essentially degrading to the worker; and blinded as our age is by the spurious ethics of commercialism, it has sufficient sound feeling to attest this truth by the degrees of honour it imputes to different kinds of workers. Why are soldiers, doctors, preachers, held in high social esteem?1 Because, though all live by their calling, the conditions of their labour are such as to give them an independent interest in the success of their work, and not to keep their minds fixed upon the pay they are to get for it. Again, in manufacture, just in so far as an employer or a worker is able to take a genuine pride and interest in his work, apart from the profit or wage which it brings, will he do good work, and that work do good to him. Where a carpenter (not a subdivided cabinetmaker) or a tailor (not a presser or a button-holer) is engaged in turning out by skill a complete article, even modern industrial 1 Unto this Last, pp. 25-28.

conditions preserve for him a certain dignity of labour, which is endorsed by the general estimate of his fellows. Why is it that merchants, and still more retail shopkeepers, have always been held in low esteem? Mr. Ruskin's answer is conclusive. "A great deal of the vulgarity and nearly all the vice of retail commerce, involving the degradation of persons engaged in it, depend simply on the fact that their minds are always occupied by the vital (or rather mortal) question of profits." 1 The carpenter is interested in his work, and knows that he is making a useful article; the retailer is interested in persuading people to buy goods for their highest price, and knows only that he is making profit. Just in proportion as men's minds are set on profit, it is not their "interest" to do the best work of which they are capable; it is rather their "interest" to do the worst work which will enable them to earn their pay. This is Mr. Ruskin's answer to the argument that love of profit will evoke good work by competition. Competitive profit-seeking may serve to prevent the making and the selling of bad articles where badness can be detected by consumers, but it is a direct stimulus to the practice of every art of adulteration and concealment which can escape detection, and can thus become the "custom of a trade;" while it offers direct and prohibitive discouragement to any excellence of work which cannot recommend itself by specious show to the consuming public. The skill really stimulated by profit-seeking consists far more in keeping down expenses (not "human cost") of production than in improving the quality of products.

1 Unto this Last, p. 28.