“The natural and 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, 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.”

— John Ruskin , book Unto This Last

Essay I: "The Roots of Honour," section 29.
Unto This Last (1860)
Context: “I choose my physician and my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be “chosen.” The natural and 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, 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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The natural and right system respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman emp…" by John Ruskin?

John Ruskin 133

English writer and art critic 1819–1900

Related quotes

“The differential rate system of piece-work consists briefly in offering two different rates for the same job: a high price per piece, in case the work is finished in the shortest time possible and in perfect condition, and a low price, if it takes a longer time to do the job, or if there are any imperfections in the work. (The high rate should be such that the workman can earn more per day than is usually paid in similar establishments.) This is directly the opposite of the ordinary plan of piece-work, in which the wages of the workmen are reduced when they increase their productivity.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: "A Piece-rate System," 1896, p. 90; Cited in: Morgen Witzel, Fifty key figures in management. Routledge, 2004. p. 250.

“By the work one knows the workman.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

A l'oeuvre on connaît l'artisan.
Book I (1668), fable 21 (The Hornets And The Bees)
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: The artist by his work is known.

“67. Never had ill workman good tooles.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“The greatest problem before engineers and managers today is the economical utilization of labor. The limiting of output by the workman, and the limiting by the employer of the amount a workman is allowed to earn, are both factors which militate against that harmonious co-operation of employer and employee which is essential to their highest common good.”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

H.L. Gantt (1904) paper presented before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, St. Louis, 1904. Published in: H.L. Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910.

“I choose my physician and my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be “chosen.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

The natural and 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, 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.

Essay I: "The Roots of Honour," section 29
Unto This Last (1860)

“Perhaps the most prominent single element in modern scientific management is the task idea. The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work. And the work planned in advance in this way constitutes a task which is to be solved, as explained above, not by the workman alone, but in almost all cases by the joint effort of the workman and the management. This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 39.

“After a workman has had the price per piece of the work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result of his having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely to entirely lose sight of his employer's side of the case and to become imbued with a grim determination to have no more cuts if soldiering can prevent it.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Shop Management, 1903, p. 1352.

“Ina regular and constant employment the greatest result will always be gained by such a rate as allows a workman each day, or each week at the most, to recover all fatigue and recommence with an undiminished store of energy.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter V, Theory of Labour, p. 176.

“To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Agesilaus the Great
Laconic Apophthegms

“As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 14, Section 5, pg. 396.
(Buch I) (1867)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Ruskin 133

Related quotes

Related topics