There is perhaps nothing more fanciful in Ruskin’s reconstruction of Society than his marriage regulations, laid down in _Time and Tide_, and mentioned in the last chapter. We have not yet put Cupid into harness to this extent, but the popular interest and concern about the propagation of the unfit and the feeble-minded, and in general the attention which is being paid to heredity and the interest in eugenics, are all in the direction laid down by Ruskin in a thorough-going shape, fearless as the schemes of childhood. By feeding school children and by doctoring them the State supplements the weakness of the homes. In many unfamiliar forms the work of St. George goes on.
But in his day thought and practice in Social Reform were comparatively uninstructed by experience. One is reminded of his own phrase about Cimabue and Giotto. They uttered “the burning messages of prophecy by the stammering lips of infants.” He goes straight for his object without fear or hesitation, as an inexperienced child will toddle across a crowded street, unfearing because unknowing about the motor cars. Ruskin, for instance, would set the unemployed to reclaim waste lands. To which of us has not that thought come? Here are the men wanting work; here is the land wanting workers. Let us put them together. But experience has shown that the dour nature of the unoccupied land, and the frequently dour nature of the unoccupied men, render such schemes generally hopeless, and at times even scandalous, failures. Land and men are unoccupied because they are hard to occupy, and by putting together waste land and waste men you only double the difficulty of the task. When good workers might make something of bad land, or bad workers of good land, bad workers on bad land are hopeless. Some years ago in the House of Commons in the debate on the Right to Work Bill, Mr. Burns explained amid general agreement the complete failure of relief works, and their tendency rather to increase the evil and waste public resources. Why is the land out of cultivation? For no other reason than that it does not pay to cultivate it. The return will not give a maintenance and pay taxes. We may leave rent out, for landlords would rather have their lands cultivated for no rent than let them lie a waste of weeds. And why are the men not at work? Because in normal times about 40 per cent. of them are unemployable, the degenerates who are such a cause for alarm and concern to the nation. Of the rest, most are unsuited to agricultural work, and only a moderate proportion can be helped in that way. That some tolerable land can be so cultivated, and some industrious unemployed so maintained is true, but it requires the spiritual amalgam of the Salvation Army, or some such body of patient and capable enthusiasts, to solve the difficult problem, for a selected minority of the submerged, on their farm colonies. They are doing the work of St. George.