ABSTRACT
THERE is something humorous as well as pathetic in the contempt with which Ruskin’s claim to be a teacher of the Science and the Art of Political Economy was received by the orthodox exponents of that subject during his life-time. They were the accredited practitioners; he a mere quack, an unqualified interloper. University professors, statesmen, bankers, even cotton spinners or ironmasters, had some right to pronounce with authority upon grave issues affecting the wealth of nations. But what could an art critic, a literary dilettante, know about the business world f To the academic, as to the business man, it never seems to have occurred that wealth is primarily a quality, not a quantity, and that the understanding or appreciation of that quality demanded qualifications which Ruskin had, and they had not. How should it have occurred to them? Political economy, in this country, as soon as it emerged from the more liberal treatment of Adam Smith, underwent a narrowing and degrading process. It became the bondslave of the rising manufacturing and trading classes, who needed it to work their intellectual mill, just as they needed an abundant supply of cheap labour to work their textile and flour mills. The object of the Political Economy, moulded under the pressure of these interests, was to build up a theory to support the current capitalist control of industry with its demand for increased quantity of output, expanding markets and abounding profits. Minute division of labour, unfettered competition, complete liberty of contract, such was the chief conditions for the maximum production of wealth, towards which, as its final end, the formulas and 218method of economic science were directed. This quantitative conception of the wealth of nations, and the monetary measure applied to estimate it, were the core of the indictment to which Ruskin devoted a large part of his intellectual and moral energy. This crusade carried him into two great fields of controversy, distinguishable and yet related. The first was his exposure of the injustice and inhumanity of existing industrial arrangements. The second was his exposure of the sophistry, the shallowness and the illogic of the Political Economy, which, professing to expound the operations of existing industry, really operated as a defence and an approval.
