Unto This Last

Unto This Last is an essay critical of economics by John Ruskin, who published the first chapter between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal Cornhill Magazine in four articles.

Because the essay also attacks the destructive effects of industrialism upon the natural world, some historians have seen it as anticipating the Green movement.

[2] The essay begins with the following verses, taken from Matthew 20:13 and Zechariah 11:12 respectively (in the King James Version):[3] Friend, I do thee no wrong.

One of the few that received the book positively was Thomas Carlyle, whom Ruskin said had "led the way" for Unto This Last with his critique of laissez-faire political economy as the "Dismal Science".

Such a thing flung suddenly into half a million dull British heads on the same day, will do a great deal of good.

; but what you say and show is incontrovertibly true—that no 'science,' worthy of men (and not worthier of dogs or of devils), has a right to call itself 'political economy,' or can exist at all, except mainly as a fetid nuisance and a public poison, on other terms than those you shadow out to it for the first time.

Gandhi decided immediately not only to change his own life according to Ruskin's teaching, but also to publish his own newspaper, Indian Opinion, from a farm where everybody would get the same salary, without distinction of function, race, or nationality.