This misery of boots

Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

THIS MISERY OF BOOTS

7

This Misery of Boots. By
H. G Wells. Reprinted with
alterations from me Indepen-
dent Review, December 1905

London : The Fabian Society
3 Clement's Inn, Strand, w.c.
1907.

BOOKS BY H. G. WELLS
of interest to enquirers into Socialism.

A MODERN UTOPIA (3/6), a vision of the world under
Socialism.

ANTICIPATIONS (3/6; or 6d.), an attempt to forecast
the course of things in the Twentieth Century, an an-
alysis of contemporary tendencies.

MANKIND IN THE MAKING (3/6; or 6d.), a book
on Education in the widest sense.

THE FUTURE IN AMERICA (ro/6), a descriptive
study of the situation in America, with especial reference
to the drift towards Socialism.

[All the above are published by CHAPMAN & HALL.]

SOCIALISM AND THE FAMILY (6d.).

[Published by A. C. FiFlELD, 44 Fleet Street.]

THE FOOD OF THE GODS (3/6), a fantastic alle-
gory of the conflict between the gigantic constructive
ideas of Science and the pettiness of individualism.

IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET (6,'-), a romantic
love story, giving a picturesque contrast between the
disorders of our present state and the free beauty of an
ideal world.

WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES (3/6).

KIPPS (3/6). LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM (3/6).

TALES OF SPACE AND TIME (3/6).

[These latter are published by MACMILLAN & Co.]

THIS MISERY OF BOOTS

I. THE WORLD AS BOOTS
AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

"TT does not do," said a friend of mine,
A "to think about boots." For my
own part, I have always been particu-
larly inclined to look at boots, and think
about them. I have an odd idea that
most general questions can be expres-
sed in terms of foot-wear — which is
perhaps why cobblers are often such
philosophical men. Accident, it may
be, gave me this persuasion. A very
considerable part of my childhood was
spent in an underground kitchen ; the
window opened upon a bricked-in space,
surmounted by a grating before my
father's shop window. So that, when
I looked out of the window, instead of
seeing — as children of a higher upbring-
ing would do — the heads and bodies of
people, I saw their under side. I got
acquainted indeed with all sorts of so-

6 Ubis

cial types as boots simply, indeed, as
the soles of boots; and only subse-
quently, and with care, have I fitted
heads, bodies, and legs to these pedi-
ments.

There would come boots and shoes
(no doubt holding people) to stare at
the shop, finicking, neat little women's
boots, good sorts and bad sorts, fresh
and new, worn crooked in the tread,
patched or needing patching ; men's
boots, clumsy and fine, rubber shoes,
tennis shoes, goloshes. Brown shoes I
never beheld — it was before that time;
but I have seen pattens. Boots used
to come and commune at the window,
duets that marked their emotional de-
velopment by a restlessness or a kick.
. . But anyhow, that explains my pre-
occupation with boots.

But my friend did not think it did, to
think about boots.

My friend was a realistic novelist, and
a man from whom hope had departed.
I cannot tell you how hope had gone out
of his life; some subtle disease of^the
soul had robbed him at last of any en-
terprise, or belief in coming things; and

Ot

he was trying to live the few declining
years that lay before him in a sort of
bookish comfort, among surroundings
that seemed peaceful and beautiful, by
not thinking of things that were painful
and cruel. And we met a tramp who
limped along the lane.

"Chafed heel," I said, when we had
parted from him again ; "and on these
pebbly byways no man goes barefooted. ' '
My friend winced ; and a little silence
came between us. We were both re-
calling things ; and then for a time, when
we began to talk again, until he would
have no more of it, we rehearsed the
miseries of boots.

We agreed that to a very great ma-
jority of people in this country boots are
constantly a source of distress, giving
pain and discomfort, causing trouble,
causing anxiety. We tried to present
the thing in a concrete form to our own
minds by hazardous statistical inven-
tions. " At the present moment," said
I, "one person in ten in these islands is
in discomfort through boots."

My friend thought it was nearer one
in five.

8 Ubis

" In the life of a poor man or a poor
man's wife, and still more in the lives of
their children, this misery of the boot
occurs and recurs — every year so many
days."

We made a sort of classification of
these troubles.

There is the TROUBLE OF THE NEW
BOOT.

(i) They are made of some bad, un-
ventilated material; and "draw the
feet," as people say.

(ii) They do not fit exactly. Most
people have to buy ready-made boots ;
they cannot afford others, and, in the
submissive philosophy of poverty, they
wear them to "get used" to them. This
gives you the little-toe pinch, the big-toe
pinch, the squeeze and swelling across
the foot ; and, as a sort of chronic de-
velopment of these pressures, come
corns and all the misery of corns. Chil-
dren's feet get distorted for good by this
method of fitting the human being to the
thing ; and a vast number of people in
the world are, as a consequence of this,
ashamed to appear barefooted. (I used
to press people who came to see me in

Of BOOtS 9

warm pleasant weather to play Badmin-
ton barefooted on the grass — a delight-
ful thing to do — until I found out that
many were embarrassed at the thought
of displaying twisted toes and corns,
and such-like disfigurements.)

(iii) The third trouble of new boots is
this : they are unseasoned and in bad
condition, and so they squeak and make
themselves an insulting commentary on
one's ways.

But these are but trifling troubles to
what arises as the boots get into wear.
Then it is the pinch comes in earnest.
Of these TROUBLES OF THE WORN BOOT,
I and my friend, before he desisted,
reckoned up three principal classes.

(i) There are the various sorts of
chafe. Worst of the chafes is certainly
the heel chafe, when something goes
wrong with the upright support at the
heel. This, as a boy, I have had to en-
dure for days together ; because there
were no other boots for me. Then there
is the chafe that comes when that inner
lining of the boot rucks up — very like
the chafe it is that poor people are al-
ways getting from over -darned and

io Ubfs

hastily-darned socks. And then there
is the chafe that comes from ready-made
boots one has got a trifle too large or
long, in order to avoid the pinch and
corns. After a little while, there comes
a transverse crease across the loose-
fitting forepart; and, when the boot
stiffens from wet or any cause, it chafes
across the base of the toes. They have
you all ways. And I have a very lively
recollection too of the chafe of the knots
one made to mend broken laces — one
cannot be always buying new laces, and
the knots used to work inward. And
then the chafe of the crumpled tongue,
(ii) Then there are the miseries that
come from the wear of the sole. There
is the rick of ankle because the heel has
gone over, and the sense of insecurity ;
and there is the miserable sense of not
looking well from behind that many
people must feel. It is almost always
painful to me to walk behind girls who
work out, and go to and fro, consuming
much foot-wear, for this very reason,
that their heels seem always to wear
askew. Girls ought always to be so
beautiful, most girls could be so beauti-

Of J500t0 "

ful, that to see their poor feet askew,
the grace of their walk gone, a sort of
spinal curvature induced, makes me
wretched, and angry with a world that
treats them so. And then there is the
working through of nails, nails in the
shoe. One limps on manfully in the
hope presently of a quiet moment and
a quiet corner in which one may hammer
the thing down again. Thirdly, under
this heading I recall the flapping sole.
My boots always came to that stage at
last; I wore the toes out first, and then
the sole split from before backwards.
As one walked it began catching the
ground. One made fantastic paces to
prevent it happening ; one was dread-
fully ashamed. At last one was forced
to sit by the wayside frankly, and cut
the flap away.

(iii) Our third class of miseries we
made of splitting and leaks. These are
for the most part mental miseries, the
feeling of shabbiness as one sees the
ugly yawn, for example, between toe cap
and the main upper of the boot; but
they involve also chills, colds, and a long
string of disagreeable consequences.

12 Ubis

And we spoke too of the misery of sit-
ting down to work (as multitudes of
London school children do every wet
morning) in boots with soles worn thin
or into actual holes, that have got wet
and chilling on the way to the work-
place . . .

From these instances my mind ran
on to others. I made a discovery. I
had always despised the common run of
poor Londoners for not spending their
Sundays and holidays in sturdy walks,
the very best of exercises. I had allowed
myself to say when I found myself one
summer day at Margate: "What a soft
lot all these young people must be who
loaf about the band-stand here, when
they might be tramping over the Kentish
hills inland ! " But now I repented me
of that. Long tramps indeed ! Their
boots would have hurt them. Their
boots would not stand it. I saw it all.

And now my discourse was fairly
under way. " Expede Herculem" I said ;
"these miseries of boots are no more
than a sample. The clothes people wear
are no better than their boots ; and the
houses they live in far worse. And think

Of BOOtB '3

of the shoddy garment of ideas and mis-
conceptions and partial statements into
which their poor minds have been
jammed by way of education ! Think
of the way that pinches and chafes them !
If one expanded the miseries of these
things . . . Think, for example, of the
results of poor, bad, unwise food, of
badly-managed eyes and ears and teeth !
Think of the quantity of toothache."

" I tell you, it does not do to think of
such things ! " cried my friend, in a sort
of anguish ; and would have no more of
it at any price . . .

And yet in his time he had written
books full of these very matters, before
despair overtook him.

II. PEOPLE WHOSE BOOTS DON'T

HURT THEM

Well, I did not talk merely to torment
him ; nor have I written this merely to
torment you. You see I have a per-
sistent persuasion that all these miseries

14 Ubis

are preventible miseries, which it lies
in the power of men to cure.

Everybody does not suffer misery
from boots.

One person I know, another friend of
mine, who can testify to that ; who has
tasted all the miseries of boots, and who
now goes about the world free of them,
but not altogether forgetful of them.
A stroke of luck, aided perhaps by a
certain alacrity on his own part, lifted
him out of the class in which one buys
one's boots and clothes out of what is
left over from a pound a week, into the
class in which one spends seventy or
eighty pounds a year on clothing. Some-
times he buys shoes and boots at very
good shops; sometimes he has them
made for him ; he has them stored in a
proper cupboard, and great care is taken
of them ; and so his boots and shoes and
slippers never chafe, never pinch, never
squeak, never hurt nor worry him, never
bother him ; and, when he sticks out his
toes before the fire, they do not remind
him that he is a shabby and contemptible
wretch, living meanly on the dust heaps
of the world. You might think from

of Boots is

this he had every reason to congratulate
himself and be happy, seeing that he has
had good follow after evil ; but, such is
the oddness of the human heart, he isn't
contented at all. The thought of the mul-
titudes so much worse off than himself
in this matter of foot-wear, gives him
no sort of satisfaction. Their boots
pinch him vicariously. The black rage
with the scheme of things that once he
felt through suffering in his own person
in the days when he limped shabbily
through gaily busy, fashionable London
streets, in split boots that *?

okir^do, 11* u^" .-

feels now just as badly as he goes about
the world very comfortably himselt, but
-among people whom he knows with a
pitiless clearness to be almost intoler-
ably uncomfortable. He has no opti-
mistic illusion that things are all right
with them. Stupid people who have al-
ways been well off, who have always had
boots that fit, may think that ; but not
so, he. In one respect the thought of
boots makes him even more viciously
angry now, than it used to do. In th«
old days he was savage with his luck,
but hopelessly savage ; he thought that

bad boots, ugly uncomfortable clothes,
rotten houses, were in the very nature
of things. Now, when he sees a child
sniffing and blubbering and halting upon
the pavement, or an old country-woman
going painfully along a lane, he no longer
recognises the Pinch of Destiny His
rage is lit by the thought, that there are
tools in this world who ought to have
foreseen and prevented this. He no
longer curses fate, but the dulness of
statesmen and powerful responsible
people who have neither the heart nor

the badness of'hTs clMepIe' from

con ,

being shabby ™t SLshame from
stategof Se^V™1" f^e ; neglected

of Boots 17

beyond the unaided power of a poor
overworked man to remedy. And now
all these disagreeable things have gone
out of his life ; he has consulted dentists
and physicians, he has hardly any dull
days from colds, no pain from toothache
at all, no gloom of indigestion. . . .

I will not go on with the tale of good
fortune of this lucky person. My pur-
pose is served if I have shown that this
misery of boots is not an unavoidable
curse upon mankind. If one man can
evade it, others can. By good manage-
ment it may be altogether escaped. If
you, or what is more important to most
human beings, if any people dear to you,
suffer from painful or disfiguring boots
or shoes, and you can do no better for
them, it is simply because you are get-
ting the worse side of an ill-managed
world. It is not the universal lot.

And what I say of boots is true of all
the other minor things of life. If your
wife catches a bad cold because her
boots are too thin for the time of the
year, or dislikes going out because she
cuts a shabby ugly figure, if your chil-
dren look painfully nasty because their

1 8 Ubis

faces are swollen with toothache, or be-
cause their clothes are dirty, old, and
ill-fitting, if you are all dull and disposed
to be cross with one another for want
of decent amusement and change of air
— don't submit, don't be humbugged for
a moment into believing that this is the
dingy lot of all mankind. Those people
you love are living in a badly-managed
world and on the wrong side of it; and
such wretchednesses are the daily de-
monstration of that.

Don't say for a moment : " Such is
life." Don't think their miseries are
part of some primordial curse there is
no escaping. The disproof of that is
for any one to see. There are people,
people no more deserving than others,
who suffer from none of these things.
You may feel you merit no better than
to live so poorly and badly that your
boots are always hurting you ; but do
the little children, the girls, the mass of
decent hard-up people, deserve no better
fate ?

ot Boots 19

III. AT THIS POINT A DISPUTE

ARISES

Now let us imagine some one who will
dispute what I am saying. I do not sup-
pose any one will dispute my argument
that a large part of the misery of civi-
lised life — I do not say " all " but only
a " large part " — arises out of the net-
work of squalid insufficiencies of which
I have taken this misery of boots as the
simplest example. But I do believe
quite a lot of people will be prepared to
deny that such miseries can be avoided.
They will say that every one cannot have
the best of things, that of all sorts of
good things, including good leather and
cobbling, there is not enough to go
round, that lower-class people ought not
to mind being shabby and uncomfort-
able, that they ought to be very glad to
be able to live at all, considering what
they are, and that it is no good stirring
up discontent about things that cannot
be altered or improved.

Such arguments are not to be swept
aside with a wave of the hand. - It is
perfectly true that every one cannot

20

have the best of things ; and it is in the
nature of things that some boots should
be better and some worse. To some
people, either by sheer good luck, or
through the strength of their determi-
nation to have them, the exquisitely
good boots, those of the finest leather
and the most artistic cut, will fall. I
have never denied that. N obody dreams
of a time when every one will have ex-
actly as good boots as every one else ;
I am not preaching any such childish
and impossible equality. But it is a long
way from recognising that there must
be a certain picturesque and interest-
ing variety in this matter of foot-wear,
to the admission that a large majority
of people can never hope for more than
to be shod in a manner that is frequently
painful, uncomfortable, unhealthy, or
unsightly. That admission I absolutely
refuse to make. There is enough good
leather in the world to make good
sightly boots and shoes for all who need
them, enough men at leisure and enough
power and machinery to do all the work
required, enough unemployed intelli-
gence to organise the shoemaking and

of J3oots 21

shoe distribution for everybody. What
stands in the way ?

Let us put that question in a rather
different form. Here on the one hand
—you can see for yourself in any un-
fashionable part of Great Britain — are
people badly, uncomfortably, painfully
shod, in old boots, rotten boots, sham
boots ; and on the other great stretches
of land in the world, with unlimited
possibilities of cattle and leather and
great numbers of people, who, either
through wealth or trade disorder, are
doing no work. And our question is :
"Why cannot the latter set to work
and make and distribute boots ? "

Imagine yourself trying to organise
something of this kind of Free Booting
expedition ; and consider the difficulties
you would meet with. You would begin
by looking for a lot of leather. Imagine
yourself setting off to South America,
for example, to get leather; beginning
at the very beginning by setting to work
to kill* and flay a herd of cattle. You
find at once you are interrupted. Along
comes your first obstacle in the shape
of a man who tells you the cattle and

22 Ubfs

the leather belong to him. You explain
that the leather is wanted for people
who have no decent boots in England.
He says he does not care a rap what
you want it for; before you may take
it from him you have to buy him off; it
is his private property, this leather, and
the herd and the land over which the
herd ranges. You ask him how much
he wants for his leather; and he tells
you frankly, just as much as he can in-
duce you to give.

If he chanced to be a person of ex-
ceptional sweetness of disposition, you
might perhaps argue with him. You
might point out to him that this pro-
ject of giving people splendid boots was
a fine one that would put an end to much
human misery. He might even sympa-
thise with your generous enthusiasm;
but you would, I think, find him ada-
mantine in his resolve to get just as
much out of you for his leather as you
could with the utmost effort pay.

Suppose now you said to him: " But
how did you come by this land and these
herds, so that you can stand between
them and the people who have need of

of Boots «3

them, exacting this profit?" He would
probably either embark upon a long rig-
marole, or, what is much more probable,
lose his temper and decline to argue.
Pursuing your doubt as to the right-
fulness of his property in these things,
you might admit he deserved a certain
reasonable fee for the rough care he
had taken of the land and herds. But
cattle breeders are a rude, violent race ;
and it is doubtful if you would get far
beyond your proposition of a reasonable
fee. You would in fact have to buy off
this owner of the leather at a good
thumping price — he exacting just as
much as he could get from you — if you
wanted to go on with your project.

Well, then you would have to get your
leather here; and, to do that, you would
have to bring it by railway and ship to
this country. And here again you would
find people without any desire or inten-
tion of helping your project, standing
in your course, resolved to make every
possible penny out of you on your way
to provide sound boots for everyone.
You would find the railway was private
property, and had an owner or owners ;

24 Ubfs

you would find the ship was private pro-
perty, with an owner or owners ; and
that none of these would be satisfied
for a moment with a mere fee adequate
to their services. They too would be
resolved to make every penny of profit
out of you. If you made inquiries about
the matter, you would probably find the
real owners of railway and ship were
companies of shareholders, and that
the profit squeezed out of your poor
people's boots at this stage went to fill
the pockets of old ladies at Torquay,
spendthrifts in Paris, well-booted gen-
tlemen in London clubs, all sorts of
glossy people. . . .

Well, you get the leather to England
at last; and now you want to make it
into boots. You take it to a centre of
population, invite workers to come to
you, erect sheds and machinery upon
a vacant piece of ground, and start off
in a sort of fury of generous industry,
boot-making. . . . Do you ? There
comes along an owner for that vacant
piece of ground, declares it is his pro-
perty, demands an enormous sum for
rent. And your workers all round you,

ot Boots 25

you find, cannot get house room until
they too have paid rent — every inch of
the country is somebody's property,
and a man may not shut his eyes for
an hour without the consent of some
owner or other. And the food your
shoe-makers eat, the clothes they wear,
have all paid tribute and profit to land-
owners, cart - owners, house - owners,
endless tribute over and above the fair
pay for work that has been done upon
them. . . .

So one might go on. But you begin
to see now one set of reasons at least
why every one has not good comfortable
boots. There could be plenty of leather ;
and there is certainly plenty of labour
and quite enough intelligence in the
world to manage that and a thousand
other desirable things. But this insti-
tution of Private Property in land and
naturally produced things, these ob-
structive claims that prevent you using
ground, or moving material, and that
have to be bought out at exorbitant
prices, stand in the way. All these
owners hang like parasites upon your
enterprise at its every stage ; and, by the

26

time you get your sound boots well made
in England, you will find them costing
about a pound a pair — high out of the
reach of the general mass of people.
And you will perhaps not think me fanci-
ful and extravagant when I confess that
when I realise this, and look at poor
people's boots in the street, and see them
cracked and misshapen and altogether
nasty, I seem to see also a lot of little
phantom land -owners, cattle - owners,
house -owners, owners of all sorts,
swarming over their pinched and weary
feet like leeches, taking much and giving
nothing, and being the real cause of all
such miseries.

Now is this a necessary and unavoid-
able thing? — that is our question. Is
there no other way of managing things
than to let these property-owners exact
their claims, and squeeze comfort, pride,
happiness, out of the lives of the common
run of people? Because, of course, it
is not only the boots they squeeze into
meanness and badness. It is the claim
and profit of the land-owner and house-
owner that make our houses so ugly,
shabby, and dear, that make our road-

Of B00t0 *7

ways and railways so crowded and in-
convenient, that sweat our schools, our
clothing, our food — boots we took merely
by way of one example of a universal
trouble.

Well, there are a number of people
who say there is a better way, and that
the world could be made infinitely better
in all these matters, made happier and
better than it ever has been in these re-
spects, by refusing to have private pro-
perty in all these universally necessary
things. They say that it is possible to
have the land administered, and such
common and needful things as leather
produced, and boots manufactured, and
no end of other such generally necessary
services carried on, not for the private
profit of individuals, but for the good of
all. They propose that the State should
takeaway the land, and the railways, and
shipping, and many great organised en-
terprises from their owners, who use
them simply to squeeze the means for a
wasteful private expenditure out of the
common mass of men, and should ad-
minister all these things, generously and
boldly, not for profit, but for service. It

28 TTbis /HMserg

is this idea of extracting profit they hold
which is the very root of the evil. These
are the Socialists; and they are the only
people who do hold out any hope of far-
reaching change that will alter the pre-
sent dingy state of affairs, of which this
painful wretchedness of boots is only
one typical symbol.

IV. Is SOCIALISM POSSIBLE ?

I will not pretend to be impartial in
this matter, and to discuss as though I
had an undecided mind, whether the
world would be better if we could abolish
private property in land and in many
things of general utility ; because I have
no doubt left in the matter. I believe
that private property in these things
is no more necessary and unavoidable
than private property in our fellow-
creatures, or private property in bridges
and roads. The idea that anything and
everything may be claimed as private
property belongs to the dark ages of the

of Boots 29

world; and it is not only a monstrous
injustice, but a still more monstrous in-
convenience. Suppose we still admitted
private property in high roads, and let
every man who had a scrap of high road
haggle a bargain with us before we could
drive by in a cab ! You say life would
be unendurable. But indeed it amounts
to something a little like that if we use
a railway now; and it is quite like that
if one wants a spot of ground somewhere
upon which one may live. I see no more
difficulty in managing land, factories,
and the like, publicly for the general
good, than there is in managing roads
and bridges, and the post office and the
police. So far I see no impossibility
whatever in Socialism. To abolish pri-
vate property in these things would be
to abolish all that swarm of parasites,
whose greed for profit and dividend
hampers and makes a thousand useful
and delightful enterprises costly or hope-
less. It would abolish them ; but is that
any objection whatever?

And as for taking such property from
the owners ; why shouldn't we ? The
world has not only in the past taken

30

slaves from their owners, with no com-
pensation or with a meagre compensa-
tion ; but in the history of mankind, dark
as it is, there are innumerable cases of
slave-owners resigning their inhuman
rights. You may say that to take away
property from people is unjust and rob-
bery; but is that really so? Suppose
you found a number of children in a nur-
sery all very dull and unhappy because
one of them, who had been badly spoilt,
had got all the toys together and claimed
them all, and refused to let the others
have any. Would you not dispossess
the child, however honest its illusion
that it was right to be greedy? That is
practically the position of the property-
owner to-day. You may say, if you
choose, that property -owners, land-
owners for example, must be bought
out and not robbed ; but since getting
the money to buy them out involves tax-
ing the property of some one else, who
may possibly have a better claim to it
than the land-owner to his, I don't quite
see where the honesty of that course
comes in. You can only give property
for property in buying and selling ; and

of JSoots 31

if private property is not robbery, then
not only Socialism but ordinary taxation
must be. But if taxation is a justifiable
proceeding, if you can tax me (as I am
taxed) for public services, a shilling and
more out of every twenty shillings I
earn, then I do not see why you should
not put a tax upon the land-owner if you
want to do so, of a half or two thirds or
all his land, or upon the railway share-
holder of ten or fifteen or twenty shil-
lings in the pound on his shares. In
every change some one has to bear the
brunt; every improvement in machinery
and industrial organisation deprives
some poor people of an income ; and I
do not see why we should be so extra-
ordinarily tender to the rich, to those
who have been unproductive all their
lives, when they stand in the way of the
general happiness. And though I deny
the right to compensation I do not deny
its probable advisability. So far as the
question of method goes it is quite con-
ceivable that we may partially compen-
sate the property owners and make all
sorts of mitigating arrangements to
avoid cruelty to them in our attempt

32

to end the wider cruelties of to-day.

But, apart from the justice of the case,
many people seem to regard Socialism
as a hopeless dream, because, as they
put it, " it is against human nature."
Every one with any scrap of property in
land, or shares, or what not, they tell us,
will be bitterly opposed to the coming of
Socialism ; and, as such people have all
the leisure and influence in the world,
and as all able and energetic people tend
naturally to join that class, there never
can be any effectual force to bring So-
cialism about. But that seems to me to
confess a very base estimate of human
nature. There are, no doubt, a number
of dull, base, rich people who hate
and dread Socialism for purely selfish
reasons ; but it is quite possible to be a
property-owner and yet be anxious to
see Socialism come to its own.

For example, the man whose private
affairs I know best in the world, the
second friend I named, the owner of all
those comfortable boots, gives time and
energy and money to further this hope
of Socialism, although he pays income
tax on twelve hundred a year, and has

Of 3BOOt0 33

shares and property to the value of some
thousands of pounds. And that he does
out of no instinct of sacrifice. He be-
lieves he would be happier and more
comfortable in a Socialistic state of
affairs, when it would not be necessary
for him to hold on to that life-belt of in-
vested property. He finds it — and quite
a lot of well-off people are quite of his
way of thinking — a constant flaw upon
a life of comfort and pleasant interests
to see so many people, who might be his
agreeable friends and associates, detest-
ably under-educated, detestably housed,
in the most detestable clothes and boots,
and so detestably broken in spirit that
they will not treat him as an equal. It
makes him feel he is like that spoilt child
in the nursery; he feels ashamed and
contemptible ; and, since individual
charity only seems in the long run to
make matters worse, he is ready to give
a great deal of his life, and lose his en-
tire little heap of possessions if need be,
very gladly lose it, to change the present
order of things in a comprehensive
manner.

I am quite convinced that there are

34 ^bts /HMsetn?

numbers of much richer and more in-
fluential people who are of his way of
thinking. Much more likely to obstruct
the way to Socialism is the ignorance,
the want of courage, the stupid want of
imagination of the very poor, too shy
and timid and clumsy to face any change
they can evade ! But, even with them,
popular education is doing its work ; and
I do not fear but that in the next gener-
ation we shall find Socialists even in the
slums. The unimaginative person who
owns some little bit of property, an acre
or so of freehold land, or a hundred
pounds in the savings bank, wilt no doubt
be the most tenacious passive resister
to Socialistic ideas; and such, I fear, we
must reckon, together with the insensi-
tive rich, as our irreconcilable enemies,
as irremovable pillars of the present
order. The mean and timid elements in
"human nature" are, and will be, I ad-
mit, against Socialism ; but they are not
all "human nature," not half human na-
ture. And when, in the whole history
of the world, have meanness and timidity
won a struggle? It is passion, it is en-
thusiasm, and indignation that mould

Of 3BOOt5 35

the world to their will — and I cannot
see how any one can go into the back
streets of London, or any large British
town, and not be filled up with shame,
and passionate resolve to end so grubby
and mean a state of affairs as is dis-
played there.

I don't think the "human nature"
argument against the possibility of So-
cialism will hold water.

V. SOCIALISM MEANS REVOLUTION.

Let us be clear about one thing : that
Socialism means revolution, that it
means a change in the every-day tex-
ture of life. It may be a very gradual
change, but it will be a very complete
one. You cannot change the world,
and at the same time not change the
world. You will find Socialists about,
or at any rate men calling themselves
Socialists, who will pretend that this is
not so, who will assure you that some
odd little jobbing about municipal gas

3*

and water is Socialism, and back-stairs
intervention between Conservative and
Liberal the way to the millennium. You
might as well call a gas jet in the lobby
of a meeting-house, the glory of God in
Heaven !

Socialism aims to change, not only the
boots on people's feet, but the clothes
they wear, the houses they inhabit, the
work they do, the education they get,
their places, their honours, and all their
possessions. Socialism aims to make
a new world out of the old. It can only
be attained by the intelligent, outspoken,
courageous resolve of a great multitude
of men and women. You must get
absolutely clear in your mind that So-
cialism means a complete change, a break
with history, with much that is pictur-
esque ; whole classes will vanish. The
world will be vastly different, with a
different sort of houses, different sorts
of people. All the different trades and
industries will be changed, the medical
profession will be carried on under dif-
ferent conditions, engineering, science,
the theatrical trade, the clerical trade,
schools, hotels, almost every trade, will

Of 3BOOt0 37

have to undergo as complete an in-
ternal change as a caterpillar does
when it becomes a moth. If you are
afraid of so much change as that, it is
better you should funk about it now
than later. The whole system has to
be changed, if we are to get rid of the
masses of dull poverty that render our
present state detestable to any sensi-
tive man or woman. That, and no less,
is the aim of all sincere Socialists: the
establishment of a new and better order
of society by the abolition of private
property in land, in natural productions,
and in their exploitation — a change as
profound as the abolition of private pro-
perty in slaves would have been in
ancient Rome or Athens. If you demand
less than that, if you are not prepared
to struggle for that, you are not really
a Socialist. If you funk that, then you
must make up your mind to square your
life to a sort of personal and private
happiness with things as they are, and
decide with my other friend that "it
doesn't do to think about boots."

It is well to insist upon one central
idea. Socialism is a common-sense,

38 ttbfs

matter-of-fact proposal to change our
conventional admission of what is or is
not property, and to re-arrange the world
according to these revised conceptions.
A certain number of clever people, dis-
satisfied with the straightforwardness
of this, have set themselves to put it in
some brilliant obscure way ; they will
tell you that Socialism is based on the
philosophy of Hegel, or that it turns on
a theory of Rent, or that it is some-
how muddled up with a sort of white
Bogey called the Overman, and all sorts
of brilliant, nonsensical, unappetising
things. The theory of Socialism, so far
as English people are concerned, seems
to have got up into the clouds, and its
practice down into the drains ; and it is
well to warn inquiring men, that neither
the epigram above nor the job beneath
are more than the accidental accompani-
ments of Socialism. Socialism is a very
large, but a plain, honest, and human en-
terprise; its ends are to be obtained
neither by wit nor cunning, but by out-
spoken resolve, by the self-abnegation,
the enthusiasm, and the loyal co-opera-
tion of great masses of people.

Of JSOOtS 39

The main thing, therefore, is the crea-
tion of these great masses of people out
of the intellectual confusion and vague-
ness of the present time. Let me sup-
pose that you find yourself in sympathy
with this tract, that you, like my second
friend, find the shabby dulness, the posi-
tive misery of a large proportion of the
population of our world, make life under
its present conditions almost intolerable,
and that it is in the direction of Social-
ism that the only hope of a permanent
remedy lies. What are we to do ? Ob-
viously to give our best energies to mak-
ing other people Socialists, to organising
ourselves with all other Socialists, irre-
spective of class or the minor details of
creed, and to making ourselves audible,
visible, effectual as Socialists, wherever
and whenever we can.

We have to think about Socialism,
read about it, discuss it ; so that we may
be assured and clear and persuasive
about it. We have to confess our faith
openly and frequently. We must refuse
to be called Liberal or Conservative,
Republican or Democrat, or any of those
ambiguous things. Every where we must

40 Ubis

make or join a Socialist organisation, a
club or association or what not, so that
we may " count." For us, as for the
early Christians, preaching our gospel
is the supreme duty. Until Socialists
can be counted, and counted upon by the
million, little will be done. When they
are — a new world will be ours.

Above all, if I may offer advice to a
fellow-Socialist, I would say: Cling to
the simple essential idea of Socialism,
which is the abolition of private property
in anything but what a man has earned
or made. Do not complicate your cause
with elaborations. And keep in your
mind, if you can, some sort of talisman
to bring you back to that essential gospel,
out of the confusions and warring sug-
gestions of every-day discussion.

For my own part, I have, as I said at
the beginning, a prepossession with
boots ; and my talisman is this : — The
figure of a badly fed but rather pretty
little girl of ten or eleven, dirty, and her
hands coarse with rough usage, her poor
pretty child's body in ungainly rags, and,
on her feet, big broken-down boots that
hurt her. And particularly I think of

Of 3BOOtS 41

her wretched sticks of legs and the limp
of her feet ; and all those phantom
owners and profit- takers I spoke of, they
are there about her martyrdom, leech-
like, clinging to her as she goes ....
I want to change everything in the
world that made that; and I do not
greatly care what has to go in the pro-
cess. Do you ?

H. G. WELLS

[Here is just a bit of hard fact to
carry out what I say. It is a quota-
tion from a letter from a workman to
my friend Mr. Chiozza Money, one of
the best informed writers upon labour
questions in England :

" I am a railway man, in constant work at 305.
per week. I am the happy, or otherwise, father
of six healthy children. Last year I bought
twenty pairs of boots. This year, up to date, I
have bought ten pairs, costing £2 ; and yet, at
the present time, my wife and five of the children
have only one pair each. I have two pairs, both
of which let in the water ; but I see no prospect
at present of getting new ones. I ought to say,
of courset that my wife is a thoroughly domesti-

of JSoota

cated woman, and I am one of the most temper-
ate of men. So much so, that if all I spend in
luxuries was saved it would not buy a pair of
boots once a year. But this is the point I want
to mention. During 1903 my wages were 255. 6d.
per week ; and I then had the six children. My
next-door neighbour was a boot-maker and re-
pairer. He fell out of work, and was out for
months. During that time, of course, my chil-
dren's boots needed repairing as at other times.
I had not the money to pay for them being re-
paired, so had to do what repairing I could my-
self. One day I found out that I was repairing
boots on one side of the wall, and my neighbour
on the other side out of work, and longing to do
the work I was compelled to do myself. . . ."

The wall was a commercial organisa-
tion of society based on private property
in land and natural productions. These
two men must work for the owners or
not at all; they cannot work for one an-
other. Food first, then rent ; and boots,
if you can, when all the owners are
paid.]

NOTICES

44

DRAMATIC WORKS
BY BERNARD SHAW

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45

jfabian Society*

(Founded 1884.)

THE FABIAN SOCIETY consists of men and women
who are Socialists, that is to say, in the words of
its "Basis," of those who aim at the reorganiza-
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The Society welcomes as members any persons,
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46

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47

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48

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246

Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
This misery of boots

1907