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:readability="13">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’sreadability="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.
No comments:
Post a Comment