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 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 process. Do you? H. G. WELLS * * * * * [Here is just a bit of hard fact to carry out what I say. It is a quotation 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 30s. 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 course, that my wife is a thoroughly domesticated woman, and I am one of the most temperate 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 25s. 6d. per week; and I then had the six children. My next-door neighbour was a boot-maker and repairer. He fell out of work, and was out for months. During that time, of course, my children’s boots needed repairing as at other times. I had not the money to pay for them being repaired, so had to do what repairing I could myself. 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 organisation 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 another. Food first, then rent; and boots, if you can, when all the owners are paid.] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of This Misery of Boots, by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells