ude in the power of a few.

Ruskin's views on money are as disturbing to the usurers and those who
through special privileges in money have amassed fortunes of unearned
wealth as his sound position on railroads is distasteful to the
monopolists who impoverish the producer and consumer by exorbitant
rates on transportation.

The great Englishman is also too clear-sighted to accept the
fallacious doctrines of the money-changers in regard to the medium of
exchange. He is too honest to hold his peace in the presence of a
great wrong, hence his definition of money is far more nearly correct
than the false and essentially injurious definitions so industriously
promulgated by special pleaders for an interested class. "The final
and best definition of money," says Ruskin, "is that it is a
documentary promise ratified and guaranteed by the nation to give or
find a certain quantity of labor on demand."

In 1873 our author carried on a spirited discussion with some
conventional economists regarding the money of the rich. One writer
undertook to defend the lavish and reckless expenditures of the
wealthy by calling to his aid the well-worn plea that money thus paid
out finds its way into the pockets of poor families, and that thus
through the bounty of the rich the starving are blest. Ruskin, in the
course of his reply, observed that, were he a poor man instead of a
moderately rich one, he would be sure that the paper referred to would
suggest the question:

These _means of living_, which this generous and useful gentleman
is so fortunately disposed to bestow on me--where does he get
them himself?... These are the facts. The laborious poor produce
"the means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess
themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these
means of life, and, keeping as much means as they want for
themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest usually only in
return for _more labor from the poor_, expended in producing
various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now
gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep
in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life"
they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra
occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than
that of other people.

The conventional economist replied to the question relating to how the
rich man got h