Friday, December 27, 2013

How might one summarize Chapter 1 of John Ruskin's book Unto This Last?

The first chapter of John Ruskin’s book Unto
This Last
might be summarized as
follows:


  • Recent political economists have been
    mistaken to ignore human affections and focus instead on human
    greed.

  • The relations between employers and workers is
    crucial to actual economic life but has been ignored by recent political
    economists.

  • Human beings are not always motivated by
    simple, naked self-interests, as animals are.

  • Human
    beings were created by God to be concerned with justice, not merely with
    self-interest.

  • Workers will work best for those who treat
    them decently; they are not mere
    machines:

readability="15">

if the master, instead of endeavouring to get as
much work as possible from the servant, seeks rather to render his appointed and
necessary work beneficial to him, and to forward his interests in all just and wholesome
ways, the real amount of work ultimately done, or of good rendered, by the person so
cared for, will indeed be the greatest
possible.



  • Workers
    who are treated as human beings, not as cogs in an economic machine, will be the most
    productive:

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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 . .
.



  • Paying the
    lowest possible wages is not a good way to get the best
    workers.

  • Wages for various jobs should be standardized;
    workers should not be hired according to which ones cost
    less:

readability="11">

The false, unnatural, and destructive system is
when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the
place of the good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate
sum.



  • Society tends
    to value people who give of themselves over those who seem selfish. Thus, doctors are
    generally valued over businessmen because the latter are presumed to act from selfish
    motives. Ideally, however, merchants and businessmen should not act
    from selfish motives.

  • The ideal purpose of merchants and
    businessmen is to provide for the needs of the
    nation.

  • Ideally, it is the
    businessman’s

readability="12">

duty, not only to be always considering how to
produce what he sells, in the purest and cheapest forms, but how to make the various
employments involved in the production, or transference of it, most beneficial to the
men
employed.



  • Businessmen
    should be like concerned fathers to the people they
    employ.

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