Now let us imagine some one who will dispute what I am saying. I do not suppose any one will dispute my argument that a large part of the misery of civilised life—I do not say “all” but only a “large part”—arises out of the network 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 uncomfortable, 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 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 determination to have them, the exquisitely good boots, those of the finest leather and the most artistic cut, will fall. I have never denied that. Nobody dreams of a time when every one will have exactly 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 interesting 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 intelligence to organise the shoemaking and 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 unfashionable 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?”