Short answers, pulled from the story.
John Ruskin published the first chapter of Unto This Last between August and December 1860 in Cornhill Magazine. The journal released four articles over that period before a sudden end to the run.
Subscribers sent angry letters demanding the series stop immediately because they felt his arguments attacked their livelihoods. The publisher halted publication after only four months of serialization due to this violent criticism from readers.
Ruskin defined wealth not as money but as social honesty within a community. He argued that acquiring wealth requires a society that values truth above profit.
Contemporary response to the book was overwhelmingly hostile during the early 1860s. One subscriber letter described the work as dangerous to public order while only a few figures like Thomas Carlyle offered strong support at the time.
Mahatma Gandhi discovered the book in March 1904 through Henry Polak. They met in a vegetarian restaurant in South Africa where Polak served as sub-editor of The Critic.