Year: 1868

GETTING AND SPENDING MoNEY-QuEs-
TONS FOR ALL PEoPLE.-We find in the
London papers the following interesting
letter from Ruskin:


Sir,--You terminate to-day discussion
which seems to have been greatly interest
ing to your readers by telling them the
broad fact that England is no longer big
enough for her inhabitants" Might you
not in the leisure of the recess open with
advantage discussion likely to be no less
interesting and much more useful-namely,
how big England may be made for eco
nomical 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
nation9 For, practically, peoples eyes
are 80 intensely fixed on the imme-
diate operation of money as it changes
hands that they hardly ever reflect
on its 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 rejecting that, if not
lost altogether, it may still be of some re-
fective advantage to them. Whereas the
real national question is, not who is losing
or gaining money, but who is making
and who is destroying it. do not of
course mean making money in the sense Of
printing notes or finding gold. True
money cannot be made so. 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
it's rivulets instead of fern leaves. Nei-
ther, by destroying money, do [ mean
burning notes or throwing gold away.
If burn fve-pound note, or throw FIVE
sovereigns into the sea, hurt no one but
myself; nay, benefit others, for everybody
with pound in his pocket is richer by the
withdrawal Of my competition in the mar
ket. But what l 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 COM
Portable houses or satisfactory dinners.
Surely this is q question which people
would like to have answered clearly for
them, and it might lead to some important
results if the answer we're acted upon. The
ribbon makers at Coventry, starving, in
vite the ladies of England to wear ribbons.
The compassionate ladies of England invest
themselves in rainbows, and admiring
economists declare the nation to be bene-
ited. No one asks where the ladies got
the money to spend in rainbows (Which is
the first question in the business), nor whe-
ther money once SO spent will ever return
again, or has really faded with the faded
ribbons and disappeared forever. Again,
honest people every day lose quantities
of money to dishonest people. But that
is merely 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 col
lege loses his years income to 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 o director; but the director
must some day spend it instead of him.


This is not-at least, in the first sense Of
it-national loss. But what the people need
10 know is, how 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 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 improbable subject of inquiry
before your readers, while, to the very best
purpose, they are investing lite money in
sea air? Very sincerely yours,


Denn,ark Hill, July 80. j. RusKIN.