There is no need for you to remain equally in the dark about me; and you had better know whom you are dealing with. I am a landlord and capitalist, rich enough to be supertaxed; and in addition I have a special sort of property called literary property, for the use of which I charge people exactly as a landlord charges rent for his land. I object to inequality of income not as a man with a small income, but as one with a middling big one. But I know what it is to be a proletarian, and a poor one at that. I have worked in an office; and I have pulled through years of professional unemployment, some of the hardest of them at the expense of my mother. I have known the extremes of failure and of success. The class in which I was born was that most unlucky of all classes: the class that claims gentility and is expected to keep up its appearances without more than the barest scrap and remnant of property to do it on. I intrude these confidences on you because it is as well that you be able to allow for my personal bias. The rich often write about the poor, and the poor about the rich, without really knowing what they are writing about. I know the whole gamut from personal experience, short of actual hunger and homelessness, which should never be experienced by anybody. If I cry sour grapes, you need not suspect that they are only out of my reach: they are all in my hand at their ripest and best. So now let us come down to tin tacks. 29 YOUR SHOPPING Ask yourself this question: “Where does unequal distribution of the national income hit me in my everyday life?” The answer is equally plain and practical. When you go out to do your marketing it hits you in every purchase you make. For every head of cabbage you buy, every loaf of bread, every shoulder of mutton, every bottle of beer, every ton of coals, every bus or tram fare, every theatre ticket, every visit from your doctor or charwoman, every word of advice from your lawyer, you have to pay not only what they cost, but an additional charge which is handed over finally to people who have done nothing whatever for you. Now though every intelligent woman knows that she cannot expect to have goods or services for less than they cost in education, materials, labor, management, distribution, and so on, no intelligent woman will consent, if she knows about it and can help it, to pay over and above this inevitable cost for the luxuries and extravagances of idlers, especially if she finds great difficulty in making both ends meet by working pretty hard herself.