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\author{Mohandas K. Gandhi}
\title{Unto This Last}

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Unto This Last\\
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A Paraphrase\\

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Mohandas K. Gandhi
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Original editor:\\
\copyright{} Navajivan Publishing House\\
Ahmedabad 380014\\
India\\

%Printed and Published by
%Jitendra T.Desai
%Navajivan Mudranalaya

\vspace{2ex}
under the title\\
``Sarvodaya'' (en gujarati)\\

\vspace{2ex}
\large{Translated from the Gujarati\\
by Valji Govindji Desai}

\vspace{2ex}
ISBN 81-7229-076-4

\vspace{2ex}
\large{Published with the help of \LaTeXe{} on Debian GNU/Linux.}

\vspace{2ex}
\large{This text is available from http://www.forget-me.net/.}
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\tableofcontents

\chapter{Translator's note}

\par In a chapter in his Autobiography (Part IV, Chapter XVIII) entitled ``The
Magic Spell of a Book'', Gandhiji tells us how he read Ruskin's Unto this Last
on the twenty-four hours' journey from Johannesburg to Durban. ``The
train reached there in the evening. I could not get any sleep that night.
I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book.
\ldots I translated it later into Gujarati, entitling it Sarvodaya.''

\par Sarvodaya is here re-translated into English, Ruskin's winged words
being retained as far as possible.

\par At the end of that chapter Gandhiji gives us a summary of the
teachings of Unto This Last as he understood it:

\begin{enumerate}
\item The good of the individual is contained in the good of all.

\item A lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, as all have the same
right of earning their livelihood from their work.

\item A life of labour, i.e. the life of the tiller of the soil and the
handicraftsman is the life worth living.
\end{enumerate}

\par Nothing more need be said as regards the paraphrase of Ruskin's four chapters,
but Gandhiji's conclusion (pp. 41-44), written as it was in South Africa long
before he returned to India in 1915, is prophetic and fit to be treasured by
India for all time to come. And the last paragraph of the booklet is a pearl
beyond price.

\begin{flushright}
Valji Govindji Desai
\end{flushright}

\chapter{To the reader}

\par I would like to say to the diligent reader of my writings and to others who are
interested in them that I am not at all concerned with appearing to be
consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt
many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to
grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What
I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from
moment to moment, and therefore, when anybody finds any inconsistency between
any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well
to choose the later of the two on the same subject.

\begin{flushright}
M. K. Gandhi\\
\textit{Harijan. 29-4-1933. p.2}
\end{flushright}

\chapter{Introduction}

\par People in the West generally hold that the whole duty of man is to promote
the happiness if the majority of mankind, and happiness is supposed to mean
only physical happiness and economic prosperity. If the laws of morality city
are broken in the conquest of this happiness, it does not matter very much.
Again, as the object sought to be attained is the happiness of the majority,
Westerners do not think there is any harm if this is secured by sacrificing a
minority. The consequences of this line of thinking are writ large on the face
of Europe.

\par This exclusive search for physical and economic well-being prosecuted
in disregard of morality is contrary to divine law, as some wise men
in the West have shown. One of these was John Ruskin who contends in
Unto This Last that men can be happy only if they obey the moral law.

\par We in India are very much given nowadays to an imitation of the West. It
is necessary to imitate the virtues of the West, but there is no doubt that
Western standards are often bad, and every one will agree that we should shun
all evil things.

\par The Indians in South Africa are reduced to a sorry plight. We go abroad
in order to make money, and in trying to get rich quick, we lose sight of
morality and forget that God will judge all our acts. Self-interest absorbs
our energies and paralyzes our power of discrimination between good and evil.
The result is that instead of gaining anything, we lose a great deal by staying
in foreign countries; or at least we fail to derive full benefit from it.
Morality is an essential ingredient in all the faiths of the world, but apart
from religion, our commonsense indicates the necessity of observing the moral
law. Only by observing it can we hope to be happy, as Ruskin shows in the
following pages.

\par Socrates in Plato's Apology\footnote{Gandhiji had published a summary of
The Apology in Indian Opinion before Sarvodaya was written. V.G.D.} gives us
some idea of our duty as men. And he was as good as his word. I feel that
Ruskin's Unto This Last is an expansion of Socrates' ideas; he tells us how men
in various walks of life should behave if they intend to translate these ideas
into action. What follows is not a translation of Unto This Last but a
paraphrase, as a translation would not be particularly useful to the readers of
Indian Opinion. Even the title has not been translated but paraphrased as
Sarvodaya [the welfare of all], as that was what Rusking aimed at in writing
this book.

%ESSAY I
\renewcommand{\thechapter}{\Roman{chapter}.}
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\chapter{The Roots of Truth}

\par Among the delusions which at different periods have afflicted mankind,
perhaps the gretest --- certainly the least creditable --- is modern economics
based on the idea that an advantageous code of action may be determined
irrespectively of the influence of social affection.

\par Of course, as in the case of other delusions, political economy has a
plausible idea at the root of it. ``The social affections,'' says the economist,
``are accidental and disturbing elements in human nature; but avarice and the
desire for progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants,
and considering man merely as a money-making machine, examine by what laws of
labour, purchase and sale, the greatest amount of wealth can be accumulated.
Those laws once determined, it will be for each individual afterwards to
introduce as much of the disturbing affectionate element as he chooses.''

\par This would be a logical method of analysis if the accidentals afterwards
to be introduced were of the same nature as the powers first examined.
Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant and inconstant forces,
it is the simplest way of examining its course to trace it first under the
persistent conditions and afterwards introduce the causes of variation. But the
disturbing elements in the social problem are not of the same nature as the
constant ones; they alter the essence of the creature under examination the
moment they are added. They operate not mathematically but chemically,
introducing conditions which render all our previous knowledge unavailable.

\par I do not doubt the conclusions of the science of its terms are accepted. I
am simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science of
gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be shown on that
supposition that it would be advantageous to roll the students up into pellets,
flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into cables; and that when these
results were effected, the reinsertion of the skeleton would be attended with
various inconveniences to their constitution. The reasoning might be admirable,
the conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applicability. Modern
political economy stands on a precisely similar basis. It imagines that man has
a body but no soul to be taken into account and frames its laws accordingly.
How can such laws possibly apply to man in whom the soul is the predominant
element?

\par Political economy is no science at all. We see how helpless it is when
labourers go on a strike. The masters take one view of the matter, the
operatives another; and no political economy can set them at one. Disputant
after disputant vainly strives to show that the interests of the masters are
not antagonistic to those of the men. In fact it does not always follow that
the persons must be antagonistic because their interests are. If there is only
a crust of bread in the house, and mother and children are starving, their
interests are not the same. If the mother eats it, the children want it; if the
children eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it does not follow
that there is antagonism between them, that they will fight for the crust, and
the mother, being strongest, will get it and eat it. Similarly it cannot be
assumed that because their interests are diverse, persons must regard one
another with hostility and use violence or cunning to obtain the advantage.

\par Even if we consider men as actuated by no other moral influences than
those which affect rats or swine, it can never be shown generally either that
the interests of master and labourer are alike or that they are opposed; for
according to circumstances they may be either. It is indeed the interest of
both that the work should be rightly done and a just price obtained for it;
but in the division of profits, the gain of the one may or may not be the loss
of the other. It is not the master's interest to pay wages so low as to leave
the men sickly and depressed, nor the workman's interest to be paid high wages
if the smallness of the master's profit hinders him from conducting it in a
safe and liberal way. A stoker ought not to desire high pay if the company is
too poor to keep the engine-wheels in repair.

\par All endeavour, therefore, to deduce rules of action from balance of
expediency is in vain. And it is meant to be in vain. For no human actions ever
were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency but by
balances of justice. He has therefore rendered all endeavours to determine
expediency futile for evermore. No man can know what will be the ultimate
result to himself or others of any given line of conduct. But every man may
know and most of us do know what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may
know also that the consequences of justice will be ultimately the best
possible, both to others and ourselves, though we can neither say what is
best, or how it is likely to come about.

\par I have meant in the term justice to include affection-such affection as
one man owes to another. All right relations between master and operative
ultimately depend on this.

\par As an illustration let us consider the position of domestic servants.

\par We will suppose that the master of a household tries only to get as much
work out of his servants as he can, at the rate of wages he gives. He never
allows them to be idle; feeds them as poorly and lodges them as ill as they
will endure. In doing this, there is no violation on his part of what is
commonly called ``justice''. He agrees with the domestic for his whole time and
service and takes them, the limits of hardship in treatment being fixed by the
practice of other masters in the neighbourhood. If the servant can get a better
place, he is free to take one.

\par This is the politico-economical view of the case according to the doctors
of that science who assert that by this procedure the greatest average of work
will be obtained from the servant, and therefore the greatest benefit to the
community, and through the community, to the servant himself.

\par That however is not so. It would be so if the servant were an engine of
which the motive power was steam, magnetism or some such agent of calculable
force. But on the contrary he is an engine whose motive power is the Soul.
Soul force enters into all the economist's equations without his knowledge and
falsifies every one of their results.

\par The largest quantity of work will not be done by this curious engine for
pay or under pressure. It will be done when the motive force, that is to say,
the will or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest strength by its
own proper fuel, namely by the affections.

\par It does happen often that if the master is a man of sense and energy, much
material work may be done under pressure; also it does happen often that if
the master is indolent and weak, a small quantity of work, and that bad, may be
produced by his servant. But the universal law of the matter is that, assuming
any given quantity of energy and sense in master and servant, the greatest
material result obtainable by them will be not through antagonism to each
other, but through affection for each other.

\par Nor is this one whit less generally true because indulgence will be
frequently abused, and kindness met with ingratitude. For the servant who,
gently treated, is ungrateful, treated ungently, will be revengeful; and the
man who is dishonest to a liberal master will be injurious to an unjust man.

\par In any case and with any person, this unselfish treatment will produce the
most effective return. I am here considering the affections wholly as a motive
power; not at all as things in themselves desirable or noble. I look at them
simply as an anomalous force, rendering every one of the ordinary economist's
calculations nugatory. The affections only become a true motive power when
they ignore every other motive and condition of economics. Treat the servant
kindly with the idea of turning his gratitude to account, and you will get, as
you deserve, no gratitude nor any value for your kindness; but treat him
kindly without any economical purpose, and all economical purposes will be
answered; here as elsewhere whoever will save his life shall lose it, whoso
loses it shall find it.

\par The next simplest example of relation between master and operative is that
which exists between the commander of a regiment and his men.

\par Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of discipline so as,
with least trouble to himself, to make the regiment most effective, he will not
be able, by any rules, on this selfish principle, to develop the full strength
of his subordinates. But if he has the most direct personal relations with his
men, the most care for their interests, and the most value for their lives, he
will develop their effective strength, through their affection for his own
person and trust in his character, to a degree wholly unattainable by other
means. This applies more stringently as the numbers concerned are larger: a
charge may often be successful though the men dislike their officers; a battle
has rarely been won, unless they loved their general.

\par A body of men associated for the purposes of robbery (as a Highland clan
in ancient times) shall be animated by perfect affection, and every member of
it be ready to lay down his life for the life for the life of his chief. But a
band of men associated for purpose of legal production is usually animated by
no such emotions, and none of them is willing to give his life for the life of
his chief. For a servant or a soldier is engaged at a definite rate of wages
for a definite period; but a workman at a rate of wages variable according to
the demand for labour, and with the risk of being at any time thrown out of
employment by chances of trade. Now as under these conditions no action of the
affections can take place, but only an explosive action of disaffections, two
points offer themselves of consideration in the matter:

\begin{enumerate}
\item How far the rate of wages may be so regulated as not to vary with
the demand for labour;

\item How far it is possible that bodies of workmen may be engaged and maintained
at such fixed rate of wages (whatever the state of trade may be), without
enlarging or diminishing their number, so as to give them permanent interest in
the establishment with which they are connected, like that of the domestic
servants in an old family, or an esprit de corps, like that of the soldiers in
a crack regiment.

\item A curious fact in the history of human error is the denial by the economist
of the possibility of so regulating wages as not to vary with the demand for
labour.
\end{enumerate}

\par We do not sell our prime-minister by Dutch auction. Sick, we do not
inquire for a physician who takes less than a guinea; litigious, we never
think of reducing six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence; caught in a shower
we do not canvass the cabmen to find one who value his driving at less than
sixpence a mile.

\par The best labour always has been, and is, as all labour ought to be, paid
by an invariable standard.

\par ``What!'' the reader perhaps answers amazedly: ``to pay good and bad
workman alike?''

\par Certainly. You pay with equal fee, contentedly, the good and bad preachers
(workmen upon your soul) and the good and bad physicians (workmen upon your
body); much more may you pay, contentedly, with equal fees, the good and bad
workmen upon your house.

\par ``Nay, but I choose my physician, thus indicating my sense of the quality
of their work.'' By all means choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward
of the good workman, to be ``chosen''. The right system respecting all labour is,
that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the
bad workman unemployed. The false system is when the bad workman is allowed to
offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good or to force
him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum.

2. This equality of wages, then, being the first object towards which we have
to discover the road, the second is that of maintaining constant numbers of
workmen in employment, whatever may be the accidental demand for the article
they produce.

\par The wages which enable any workman to live are necessarily higher if his
work is liable to intermission, than if it is assured and continuous. In the
latter case he will take low wages in the form of a fixed salary. The provision
of regular labour for the workman is good for him as well as for his master in
the long run, although he cannot then make large profits or take big risks or
indulge in gambling.

\par The soldier is ready to lay down his life for his chief and therefore he
is held in greater honour than an ordinary workman. Really speaking, the
soldier's trade is not slaying, but being slain in the defence of others. The
reason the world honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at the
service of the State.

\par Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer, physician and clergyman,
founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Set in a judge's seat, the lawyer
will strive to judge justly, come of it what may. The physician will treat his
patients with care, no matter under what difficulties. The clergyman will
similarly instruct his congregation and direct it to the right path.

\par All the efficient members of these so-called learned professions are in
public estimate of honour preferred before the head of a commercial firm, as
the merchant is presumed to act always selfishly. His work may be very
necessary to the community; but the motive of it is understood to be wholly
personal. The merchant's first object in all his dealings must be (the public
believe) to get as much for himself and leave as little to his customer as
possible. Enforcing this upon him, by political statute, as the necessary
principle of his action; recommending it to him, and themselves reciprocally
adopting it, proclaiming for law of the universe that a buyer's function is to
cheapen, and a seller's to cheat, --- the public, nevertheless, involuntarily
condemn the man of commerce for his compliance with their own statement, and
stamp him for ever as belonging to an inferior grade of human personality.

\par This they must give up doing. They will have to discover a kind of
commerce which is not excluselfish . Or rather they must discover that there
never was or can be any other kind of commerce; and that this which they have
called commerce was not commerce at all but cozening. In true commerce, as in
true preaching or true fighting, it is necessary to admit the idea of
occasional voluntary loss; --- that sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives,
under a sense of duty; that the market may have its martyrdoms as well as the
pulpit; and trade its heroism as well as war.

\par Five great intellectual professions exist in every civilized nation:

\par The Soldier's profession is to defend it.
\par The Pastor's to teach it.
\par The Physician's to keep it in health.
\par The Lawyer's to enforce justice in it.
\par The Merchant's to provide for it.

\par And the duty of all these men is on due occasion to die for it. For truly
the man who does not know when to die does not know how to live.

\par Observe, the merchant's function is to provide for the nation. It is no
more his function to get profit for himself out of that provision than it is a
clergyman's function to get his stipend. This stipend is a necessary adjunct
but not the object of his life if he be a true clergyman, any more than his fee
(or honorarium) is the object of life to a true physician. Neither is his fee
the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true men, have a work to
be done irrespective of fee-to be done even at any cost, or for quite the
contrary of fee; the pastor's function being to teach, the physician's to heal
and the merchant's to provide. That is to say, he has to apply all his sagacity
and energy to the producing the thing he deals in in perfect state and
distributing it at the cheapest possible price where it is most needed.

\par And because the production of any commodity involves the agency of many
lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business the master
and governor of large masses of men in a more direct way than a military
officer or pastor, so that on him falls, in great part, the responsibility for
the kind of life they lead; and it becomes his duty not only to produce goods
in the purest and cheapest forms, but also to make the various employments
involved in the production most beneficial to the men employed.

\par And as into these two functions, requiring for their right exercise the
highest intelligence as well as patience, kindness and tact, the merchant is
bound to put all his energy, so for their just discharge he is bound, as solier
or physican is to give up, if need be, his life, in such way as it may be
demanded of him.

\par Two main points he has to maintain; first his engagement; and secondly the
perfectness and purity of the thing provided by him; so that rather than fail
in any engagement or consent to any deterioration, adulteration, or unjust or
exorbitant price of that which he provides, he is bound to meet fearlessly any
form of distress, poverty or labour which may through maintenance of these
points come upon him.

\par Again in his office as governor of the men employed by him, the merchant
is invested with a paternal authority and responsibility. In most cases a youth
entering a commercial establishment is withdrawn altogether from home
influence; his master must become his father; else he has, for practical and
constant help, no father at hand. So that the only means which the master has
of doing justice to the men employed by him is to ask himself sternly whether
he is dealing with such subordinate as he would with his own son, if compelled
by circumstances to take such a position.

\par Supposing the captain of a frigate were obliged to place his own son in
the position of a common sailor; as he would then treat his son, he is bound
always to treat every one of the men under him. So also supposing the master of
a factory were obliged to place his own son in the position of an ordinary
workman; as he would then treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one
of his men. This is the only effective, true or practical Rule which can be
given in this point of economics.

\par And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man to leave his ship
in case of wreck and to share his last crust with the sailors in case of
famine, so the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis, is bound to take the
suffering of it with his men, and even to take more of it for himself than he
allows his men to feel; as a father would in a famine, shipwreck or battle,
sacrifice himself for his son.

\par All this sounds very strange; the only real strangeness in the matter
being, nevertheless, that it should so sound. For all this is true
everlastingly and practically; all other doctrine than this being impossible in
practice, consistently with any progressive state of national life; all the
life which we now possess as a nation showing itself in the denial by a few
strong minds and faithful hearts of the economic principles taught to our
multitudes, which principles, so far as accepted, lead straight to national
destruction. Respecting the modes and forms of destruction to which they lead I
hope to reason farther in a following paper.

%ESSAY II
\chapter{The Veins of Wealth}

\par The answer which would be made by any ordinary economist to the
statement in the preceding papers, is in a few words as follows:

\par ``It is true that certain advantages of a general nature may be obtained
by the development of social affections. But economists never take such
advantages into consideration. Our science is simply the science of getting
rich. So far from being fallacious, it is found by experience to be practically
effective. Persons who follow its precepts do become rich, and persons who
disobey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe has acquired his fortune
by following the laws of our science. It is vain to bring forward tricks of
logic against the force of accomplished facts. Every man of business knows by
experience how money is made and how it is lost.''

\par Pardon me. Men of business do indeed make money, but they do not know if
they make it by fair means or if their money-making contributes to national
welfare.  They rarely know the meaning of the word ``rich''. At least if they
know, they do not allow for the fact that it is a relative word, implying its
opposite ``poor'' as positively as the word ``north'' implies its opposite
``south''. Men write as if it were possible, by following certain scientific
precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of
electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force
of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea
in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to
you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need he has
for it, and the art of making yourslf rich, in the ordinary mercantile
economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your
neighbour poor.

\par I wish the reader clearly to understand the difference between the two
economies, to which the terms, ``political'' and ``mercantile'' might be
attached.

\par Political economy consists in simply the production, preservation and
distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable things. The
farmer who cuts his hay at the right time; the builder who lays good bricks in
well-tempered mortar; the housewife who takes care of her furniture in the
parlour and guards against all waste in her kitchen are all political
economists in the true and final sense, adding continually to the riches and
well-being of the nation to which they belong.

\par But mercantile economy signifies the accumulation in the hands of
individuals, of legal claim upon, or power over, the labour of others; every
such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one side as it implies
riches or right on the other.

\par The idea of riches among active men in civilized nations generally refers
to such commercial wealth; and in estimating their possessions, they rather
calculate the value of their horses and fields by the number of guineas they
could get for them, than the value of their guineas by the number of horses
and fields they could buy with them.

\par Real property is of little use to its owner, unless together with it he
has commercial power over labour. Thus suppose a man has a large estate of
fruitful land with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle;
houses, and gardens and storehouses; but suppose, after all, that he could get
no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants, some one in his
neighbourhood must be poor and in want of his gold or his corn. Assume that no
one is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He must therefore
bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground and shepherd
his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles
on his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no
more than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear.
He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even ordinary
comforts.

\par The most covetous of mankind would, with small exultation , I presume,
accept riches of this kind on these terms. What is really desired, under the
name of riches is, essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the
power of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman and
artist.  And this power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct
proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised and in inverse
proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are
ready to give the same price for an article of which the supply is limited. If
the musician is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as there is only one
person who can pay him; but if there be two or three, he will sing for the one
who offers him most. So that the art of becoming ``rich'' in the common sense
is not only the art of accumulating much money for ourselves but also of
contriving that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms it is ``the
art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour''.

\par The rash and absurd assumption that such inequalities are necessarily
advantageous lies at the root of most of the popular fallacies on the subject
of economics. For the beneficialness of the inequality depends first, on the
methods by which it was accomplished and secondly, on the purposes to which it
is applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly
injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and
unjustly directed, injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities
of wealth, justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their
establishment; and nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.

\par Thus the circulation of wealth in nation resembles that of the blood in
the natural body. There is one quickness of the current which comes of cheerful
emotion or wholesome exercise; and another which comes of shame or of fever.
There is a flush of the body which is full of warmth and life; and another
which will pass into putrefaction.

\par Again even as diseased local determination of the blood involves
depression of the general health of the system, all morbid local action of
riches will be found ultimately to involve weakening of the resources of the
body politic.

\par Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast and obliged to
maintain themselves there by their own labour for a series of years.

\par If they both kept their health, and worked steadily and in amity with each
other, they might build themselves a house and in time to come possess some
cultivated land together with various stores laid up for future use. All these
things would be real riches or property; and supposing the men both to have
worked equally hard, they would each have right to equal share or use of it.
Their political economy would consist merely in the careful preservation and
just division on these possessions.

\par Perhaps however after some time one or other might be dissatisfied with
the results of their common farming; and they might in consequence agree to
divide the land into equal shares, so that each might thenceforward work in his
own field and live by it. Suppose that after this arrangement had been made,
one of them were to fall ill, and be unable to work on his land at a critical
time --- say of sowing or harvest. He would naturally ask the other to sow or
reap for him.

\par Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, ``I will do this
additional work for you; but if I do it, you must promise to do as much for me
at another time. I will count how many hours I spend on your ground, and you
shall give me a written promise to work for the same number of hours on mine,
whenever I need your help, and you are able to give it.''

\par Suppose the disabled man's sickness to continue, and that under various
circumstances, for several years, requiring the help of the other, he on each
occasion gave a written pledge to work, as soon as he was able, at his
companion's orders, for the same number of hours as the other had given up to
him.

\par What will the positions of the two men be when the invalid is able to
resume work?

\par Considered as polis or state, they will be poorer than they would have
been otherwise; poorer by the withdrawal of what the sick man's labour would
have produced in the interval. His friend may perhaps have toiled with an
energy quickened by the enlarged need, but in the end his own land must have
suffered by the withdrawal of so much of his time from it; and the united
property of the two men will be less than it would have been if both had
remained in health and activity.

\par But the relations in which they stand to each other are also widely
altered. The sick man has not only pledged his labour for some years, but will
have exhausted his share of the stores, and will be in consequence for some
time dependent on the other for food, for which he can only ``pay'' him by yet
more deeply pledging his own labour.

\par Supposing the written promises to be held entirely valid, the person who
had hitherto worked for both might now, if he chose, rest altogether, and
pass his time in idleness, not only forcing his companion to redeem all his
pervious pledges but exacting from him pledges for further labour, to an
arbitrary amount, for what food he had to advance to him.

\par There might not be the least illegality (in the ordinary sense of the
word) in the arrangement; but if a stranger arrived on the coast at this
advanced stage of their political economy, he would find one man commercially
Rich; the other commercially Poor. He would see, with no small surprise, one
passing his days in idleness; the other labouring for both and living sparely,
in the hope of recovering his independence at some distant period.

\par What I want the reader to note especially is the fact that the
establishment of the mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon labour
signifies a political diminution of the real wealth which consists in
substantial possessions.

\par Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary course of affairs
of trade. Suppose that three men, instead of two, formed the little isolated
republic, and were obliged to separate, in order to farm different pieces of
land at some distance from each other: each estate furnishing a distinct kind
of produce and each in need of the material raised on the other. Suppose that
the third man, in order to save the time of all three, simply superintends the
transference of commodities from one farm to the other, on condition of
receiving a share of every parcel of goods conveyed.

\par If this carrier always brings to each estate, from the other, what is
chiefly wanted, at the right time, the operations of the two farmers will
prosper, and the largest possible result in produce or wealth will be attained
by the little community. But suppose no intercourse between the landowners is
possible, except through the travelling agent; and that after a time, this
agent keeps back the articles with which he has been entrusted until there
comes a period of extreme necessity for them, on one side or other, and then
exacts in exchange for them all that the distressed farmer can share other
kinds of produce; it is easy to see that by ingeniously watching his
opportunities, he might possess himself of the greater part of the surplus
produce of the two estates, and at last, in a year of scarcity, purchase both
for himself and maintain the former proprietors thenceforward as his labourers
or servants.

\par This would be a case of commercial wealth acquired on the exactest
principles of modern political economy. But it is clear in this instance also
that the wealth of the State or of the three men considered as a society, is
collectively less than it would have been if the merchant had been content
with juster profit. The operations of the two farmers have been cramped to the
utmost; the limitations of the supply of things they wanted at critical times,
together with the failure of courage consequent on the prolongation of a
struggle for mere existence, must have diminished the effective results of
their labour; and the stores accumulated by the merchant will not be of
equivalent value to those which, had he been honest, would have filled the
granaries of the farmers and his own.

\par The question, therefore, respecting not only the advantage but even the
quantity of national wealth, resolves itself finally into one of abstract
justice. The real value of acquired wealth depends on the moral sign attached
to it, just as sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends on the
algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth
may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive
energies and productive ingenuities; or on the other hand, it may be
indicative of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicanery.

\par And these are not merely moral attributes of riches, which the seeker of
riches may, if he chooses, despise; they are literally material attributes of
riches, depreciating or exalting the monetary signification of the sum in
question. One mass of money is the outcome of action which has created, ---
another, of action which has annihilated, --- ten times as much in the
gathering of it.

\par Therefore the idea that directions can be given for the gaining of wealth,
irrespectively of the consideration of its moral sources is perhaps the most
insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices.  So far as
I know, there is not in history record of anything so disgraceful to the human
intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text ``Buy in the cheapest
market and sell in the dearest'' represents an available principle of national
economy. Buy in the cheapest market? --- yes; but what made your market cheap?
Charcoal may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire and bricks may be
cheap in your streets after an earthquake; but fire and earthquake may not
therefore be national benefits. Sell in the dearest? --- yes, truly; but what
made your market dear? You sold your bread well today; was it to a dying man
who gave his last coin for it and will never bread more; or to a rich man who
tomorrow will buy your farm over your head; or to a soldier on his way to
pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune?

\par None of these things you can know. One thing only you can know; namely
whether this dealing of yours is a just and faithful one, which is all you
need concern yourself about respecting it; sure thus to have done your
part in bringing about ultimately in the world a state of things which will
not issue in pillage or in death.

\par It has been shown that the chief value of money consists in its having
power over human beings; that without this power large material possessions are
useless, and to a person possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But
power over human beings is attainable by other means than by money.

\par In this moral power there is a monetary value as real as that represented
by more ponderous currencies. A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and
the wave of it or the grasp shall do more than another's with a shower of
bullion.

\par But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in its authority over
men, if the apparent wealth fail in this power, it ceases to be wealth at all.
It does not appear lately in England that our authority over men is absolute.

\par Finally since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will it
not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are over whom it
has power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may even appear after some
consideration that the persons themselves are the wealth; not gold and silver.
The true veins of wealth are purple --- and not in Rock but in Flesh. The final
consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible
full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human beings. In some far-away and
yet undreamt-of hour I can even imagine that instead of adorning the turbans of
her slaves with diamonds from Golkonda and thus showing off her material
wealth, England, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and
the treasures of a non-Christian one and be able to lead forth her Sons,
saying,

\begin{center}
``These are MY Jewels.''
\end{center}

%ESSAY III
\chapter{Even-handed Justice}

\par Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant, reported to have
made one of the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for much
practical sagacity), left among his ledgers some general maxims which have been
preserved even to our own days. They were held in respect by the Venetians who
placed a statue of the old Jew on the angle of one of their principal
buildings. Of late years these writings have fallen into disrepute, being
opposed to the spirit of modern commerce.

\par He says for instance in one place: ``The getting of treasures by a lying
tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death'; adding in
another, with the same meaning: ``Treasures of wickedness profit nothing; but
truth delivers from death.'' Both these passages are notable for their
assertions of death as the only real issue and sum of attainment by any unjust
scheme of wealth. If we read instead of ``lying tongue', ``lying label, title,
pretence or advertisement,'' we shall more clearly perceive the bearing of
these words on modern business.

\par Again the wiseman says: ``He that oppresseth the poor to increase his
riches shall surely come to want.'' And again more strongly: ``Rob not the poor
because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted in the place of business. For
God shall spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.''

\par This ``robbing the poor because he is poor'' is especially the mercantile
form of theft, consisting in taking advantage of a man's necessities in order
to obtain his labour or property at a reduced price. The ordinary highwayman
robs the rich, but the trader robs the poor.

\par But the two most remarkable passages are the following:


\begin{center}
``The rich and the poor have met.
God is their maker.
The rich and the poor have met.
God is their light.''
\end{center}

\par They ``have met.'' That is to say, as long as the world lasts the action
and counteraction of wealth and poverty is just as appointed a law of the world
as the flow of stream to sea: ``God is their maker.'' But also this action may
be either gentle and just, or convulsive and destructive; it may be by rage of
devouring flood or by lapse of serviceable wave. And which of these it shall
be, depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is their light.

\par The flowing of streams is in one respect a perfect image of the action of
wealth. Where the land falls, the water flows. So wealth must go where it is
required. But the disposition and administration of rivers can be altered by
human forethought. Whether the stream shall be a curse or a blessing depends
upon man's labour and administrating intelligence. For centuries districts of
the world, rich in soil and favoured in climate, have lain desert under the
rage of their own rivers; not only desert, but plague-struck. The stream
which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from field to
field --- would have purified the air, given food to man and beast, and carried
their burdens for them on its boson --- now overwhelms the plain and poisons the
wind: its breath pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner human laws
can guide the flow of wealth. This the leading trench and limiting mound can do
so thoroughly that it shall become water of life --- the riches of the hand of
wisdom; or on the contrary, by leaving it to its own lawless flow, they may
make it the last and deadliest of national plagues: water of Marah --- the water
which feeds the roots of all evil.

\par The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint is curiously
overlooked in the ordinary economist's definition of his own ``science''. He
calls it the ``science of getting rich''. But there are many sciences as well as
many arts of getting rich.

\par Poisoning people of large estates was one employed largely in the middle
ages; adulteration of food of people of small estates is one employed largely
now. All these come under the general head of sciences or arts of getting rich.

\par So the economist in calling his science the science of getting rich must
attach some ideas of limitation to its character. Let us assume that he means
his science to be the science of ``getting rich by legal or just means''. In
this definition is the word ``just'' or ``legal'' finally to stand? For it is
possible that proceedings may be legal which are by no means just. If therefore
we leave at last only the word ``just'' in that place of our definition, it
follows that in order to grow rich scientifically, we must grow rich justly;
and therefore know what is just. It is the privilege of the fishes, as it is of
rats and wolves, to live by the laws of demand and supply; but it is the
distinction of humanity to live by those of right.

\par We have to examine then what are the laws of justice respecting payment of
labour.

\par Money payment, as stated in my last paper, consists redically in a promise
to some person working for us, that for the time and labour he spends in our
service today we will give or procure equivalent time and labour in his service
at any future time when he may demand it.

\par If we promise to give him less labour than he has given us, we under-pay
him.  If we promise to give him more labour than he has given us, we overpay him.

\par In practice, when two men are ready to do the work and only one man wants
to have it done, the two men underbid each other for it; and the one who gets
it to do is under-paid. But when two men want the work done and there is only
one man ready to do it, the two men who want it done overbid each other, and
the workman is over-paid. The central principle of right or just payment lies
between these two points of injustice.

\par Inasmuch as labour rightly directed is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit
(or ``interest'' as it is called) of the labour first given, or ``advanced',
ought to be taken into account and balanced by an additional quantity of labour
in the subsequent repayment. Therefore the typical form of bargain will be: if
you give me an hour today, I will give you an hour and five minutes on demand.
If you give me a pound of bread today, I will give you seventeen ounces on
demand and so on.

\par Now if two men are ready to do the work and if I employ one who offers to
work at half price he will be half-starved while the other man will be left out
of employment. Even if I pay due wages to the workman chosen by me, the other
man will be unemployed. But then my workman will not have to starve, and I
shall have made a just use of my money. If I pay due wages to my man, I shall
not be able to amass unnecessary riches, to waste money on luxuries and to add
to the mass of poverty in the world. The workman who receives due wages from me
will act justly to his subordinates. Thus the stream of justice will not dry
up, but gather strength as it flows onward. And the nation with such a sense of
justice will be happy and prosperous.

\par We thus find that the economists are wrong in thinking that competition is
good for a nation. Competition only enables the purchaser to obtain his labour
unjustly cheap, with the result that the rich grow richer and the poor poorer.
In the long run it can only lead the nation to ruin. A workman should receive a
just wage according to his ability. Even then there will be competition of a
sort, but the people will be happy and skilful, because they will not have to
underbid one another, but to acquire new skills in order to secure employment.
This is the secret of the attractiveness of government services in which
salaries are fixed according to the gradation of posts. The candidate for it
does not offer to work with a lower salary but only claims that he is abler
than his competitors. The same is the case in the army and in the navy, where
there is little corruption. But in trade and manufacture there is oppressive
competition, which results in fraud, chicanery and theft. Rotten goods are
manufactured. The manufacturer, the labourer, the consumer, --- each is mindful
of his own interest. This poisons all human intercourse. Labourers starve and
go on strike. Manufacturers become rogues and consumers too neglect the ethical
aspect of their own conduct. One injustice leads to may others, and in the end
the employer, the operative and the customer are all unhappy and go to rack and
ruin. The very wealth of the people acts among them as a cures.

\par Nothing in history has been so disgraceful to human intellect as the
acceptance among us of the common doctrines of economics as a science. I know
no previous instance in history of a nation's establishing a systematic
disobedience to the first principle of its professed religion.

\par The writings which we (verbally) esteem as divine not only denounce the
love of money as the source of all evil, and as an idolatry abhorred of the
deity, but declare mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcilable
opposite of God's service; and whenever they speak of riches absolute and
poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich and blessing to the poor.

\par True economics is the economics of justice.

\par People will be happy in so far as they learn to do justice and be
righteous.  All else is not only vain but leads straight to destruction. To
teach the people to get rich by hook or by crook is to do them an immense
disservice.

%ESSAY IV
\chapter{Ad Valorem}

\par We have seen how the ideas upon which political economy is based are
misleading. Translated into action they can only make the individual and the
nation unhappy. They make the poor poorer and the rich richer and none are any
the happier for it.

\par Economics do not take the conduct of men into account but hold that the
accumulation of wealth is the sign of prosperity, and that the happiness of
nations depends upon their wealth alone. The more factories, the merrier. Thus
men leave village farms with their spring winds and coming to cities, live
diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and of deadly exhalation.
This leads to deterioration of the national physique, and to increasing avarice
and immorality. If some one talks of steps to be taken to eradicate vice,
so-called wise men will say that it is of no use at all that the poor should
receive education and that it is best to let things alone. They however forget
that the rich are responsible for the immorality of the poor, who work like
slaves in order to supply them with their luxuries, and have not a moment which
they can call their own for self-betterment. Envying the rich, the poor also
try to be rich, and when they fail in this effort, they are angry. They then
lose their senses, and try to make money by force of fraud. Thus both wealth
and labour are barren of all fruit or else are utilized for chicanery.

\par Labour in the real sense of the term is that which produces useful
articles.  Useful articles are those which support human life, such as food,
clothes or houses, and enable men to perfect the functions of their own lives
to the utmost and also to exercise a helpful influence over the lives of
others. The establishment of big factories with a view to getting rich may lead
a person into sin. Many people amass riches but few make a good use of it.
Accumulated wealth which leads to the destruction of a nation is of no earthly
use. The capitalists of modern times are responsible for wide spread and unjust
wars which originate from the covetousness of mankind.

\par Some people say that it is not possible to impart knowledge so as to
ameliorate the condition of the masses; let us therefore live as seems fit and
amass riches. But this is an immoral attitude. For the good man who observes
ethical rules and does not give way to greed has a disciplined mind, does not
stray from the right path, and influences others by his acts. If the
individuals who constitute a nation are immoral, so is the nation too. If we
behave as we choose and at the same time take our neighbours to task for their
wrongdoing, the results can only be disappointing.

\par We thus see that money is only an instrument which makes for misery as
well as happiness. In the hands of a good man it helps in the cultivation of
land and the harvesting of crops. Cultivators work in innocent contentment and
the nation is happy. But in the hands of a bad man, money helps to produce say
gunpowder which works havoc among its manufacturers as well as among its
victims. Therefore \textsc{THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE}. That country is the
richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings;
that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the
utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by means of
his possessions, over the lives of others.

\par This is not a time for self-indulgence but for each of us to labour
according to our capacity. If one man lives in idleness, another has to put in
a double amount of work. This is at the root of the distress of the poor in
England.  Some so-called work is nugatory as in jewel-cutting and even
destructive as in war. It brings about a diminution in the national capital,
and is not beneficial to the worker himself. It seems as if men are employed,
but really they are idle. The rich oppress the poor by misuse of riches.
Employers and employees are at daggers drawn with one another, and men are
reduced to the level of beasts.

\renewcommand{\thechapter}{}
\chapter{Conclusion}

\par Ruskin's book thus paraphrased has a lesson for Indians no less than for
the Englishmen to whom it was primarily addressed. New ideas are in the air in
India. Our young men who have received Western education are full of spirit.
This spirit should be directed into the right channels, as otherwise it can
only do us harm. ``Let us have Swaraj'' is one slogan; ``Let us industrialize
the country'' is another.

\par But we hardly understand what Swaraj is. Natal for instance enjoys Swaraj
but her Swaraj stinks in our nostrils, for she crushes the negroes, and
oppresses the Indians. If by some chance the negroes and the Indians left
Natal, its white men would fight among themselves and bring about their own
destruction.

\par If not like Natal's will we have Swaraj as in the Transvaal one of whose
leaders, General Smuts, breaks his promises, says one thing and does another?
He has dispensed with the services of English policemen and employed
Afrikanders instead. I do not think that this is going to help any of the
nationalities in the long run. Selfish men will loot their own people, when
there are no more ``outsiders'' left to be looted.

\par Thus Swaraj is not enough to make a nation happy. What would be the result
of Swaraj being conferred on a band of robbers? They would be happy only if
they were placed under the control of a good man who was not a robber himself.
The United States, England and France for instance are powerful States, but
there is no reason to think that they are really happy.

\par Swaraj really means self-control. Only he is capable of self-control who
observes the rules of morality, does not cheat or give up truth, and does his
duty to his parents, wife and children, servants and neighbours. Such a man is
in enjoyment of Swaraj, no matter where he lives. A state enjoys Swaraj if it
can boast of a large number of such good citizens.

\par It is not right that one people should rule another. British rule in India
is an evil, but let us not run away with the idea that all will be well when
the British quit India.

\par The existence of British rule in the country is due to our disunity,
immorality and ignorance. If these national defects were overcome, not only
would the British leave India without a shot being fired but we would be
enjoying real Swaraj.

\par Some foolish Indians rejoice in bomb-throwing, but if all the Britishers
in the country were thus killed, the killers would become the rulers of India
who would only have a change of masters. The bomb now thrown at Englishmen will
be aimed at Indians after the English are there no longer. It was a Frenchman
who murdered the President of the French Republic. It was an American who
murdered President Cleveland. Let us not blindly imitate Western people.

\par If Swaraj cannot be attained by the sin of killing Englishmen, it cannot
be attained either by the erection of huge factories. Gold and silver may be
accumulated but they will not lead to the establishment of Swaraj. Ruskin has
proved this to the hilt. Western civilization is a mere baby, a hundred or
only fifty years old. And yet it has reduced Europe to a sorry plight. Let us
pray that India is saved from the fate that has overtaken Europe, where the
nations are poised for an attack on one another, and are silent only because of
the stockpiling of armaments. Some day there will be an explosion, and then
Europe will be a veritable hell on earth. Non-white races are looked upon as
legitimate prey by every European state. What else can we expect where
covetousness is the ruling passion in the breasts of men? Europeans pounce
upon new territories like crows upon a piece of meat. I am inclined to think
that this is due to their mass-production factories.

\par India must indeed have Swaraj but she must have it by righteous methods.
Our Swaraj must be real Swaraj, which cannot be attained by either violence or
industrialization. India was once a golden land, because Indians then had
hearts of gold. The land is still the same but it is a desert because we are
corrupt. It can become a land of gold again only if the base metal of our
present national character is transmuted into gold. The philosopher's stone
which can effect this transformation\footnote{Institutions,'' says Herbert
Spencer, ``are dependent on character; and however changed in their superficial
aspects, cannot be changed in their essential natures faster than character
changes.''} is a little word of two syllables --- Satya (Truth). If every
Indian sticks to truth, Swaraj will come to us of its own accord.


\begin{flushright}
Mohandas K. Gandhi
\end{flushright}

\end{document}