AT THIS POINT A DISPUTE ARISES
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?”
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 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 induce you to give.
If he chanced to be a person of exceptional sweetness of disposition,
you might perhaps argue with him. You might point out to him that this
project of giving people splendid boots was a fine one that would put an
end to much human misery. He might even sympathise with your generous
enthusiasm; but you would, I think, find him adamantine 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 them, exacting this profit?” He would probably either embark
upon a long rigmarole, or, what is much more probable, lose his temper
and decline to argue. Pursuing your doubt as to the rightfulness 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 intention 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 every one. You
would find the railway was private property, and had an owner or owners;
you would find the ship was private property, 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 gentlemen 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 property, demands an enormous sum for rent. And your
workers all round you, 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 shoemakers eat, the clothes they wear, have
all paid tribute and profit to land-owners, cart-owners, house-owners,
endless tribute over and 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 institution of Private Property in land and naturally
produced things, these obstructive 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 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 fanciful 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 unavoidable 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 roadways and railways so crowded and
inconvenient, 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 respects, by
refusing to have private property 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 take away the land, and the
railways, and shipping, and many great organised enterprises 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 administer all
these things, generously and boldly, not for profit, but for service. It
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 present
dingy state of affairs, of which this painful wretchedness of boots is
only one typical symbol.
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