This Misery of Boots (or Socialism Means Revolution) - The original unabridged edition E-Book

H G Wells

• Herausgeber: e-artnow
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

This carefully crafted ebook: "This Misery of Boots (or Socialism Means Revolution) - The original unabridged edition" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. This Misery of Boots is a non-fiction essay originally written by H. G. Wells in 1905. The book is a condemnation of economic practices of the time and an impassioned plea in support of Socialism. Table of contents : Chapter I. The World As Boots And Superstructure Chapter II. People Whose Boots Don't Hurt Them Chapter III. At This Point A Dispute Arises Chapter IV. Is Socialism Possible? Chapter V. Socialism Means Revolution Herbert George "H. G." Wells (1866 – 1946) was an English writer, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games. Wells was now considered to be one of the world's most important political thinkers and during the 1920s and 30s he was in great demand as a contributor to newspapers and journals.

Leseprobe

H. G. Wells

This Misery of Boots (or Socialism Means Revolution) - The original unabridged edition

e-artnow, 2013

ISBN 978-80-7484-896-4

Cover:

Albrecht Dürer , Woodcut Philosophia, inspired by Boëthius’ Consolation of Philosophy, 1502

Table of Contents

I. — THE WORLD AS BOOTS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

II. — PEOPLE WHOSE BOOTS DON’T HURT THEM

III. — AT THIS POINT A DISPUTE ARISES

IV. — IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE?

V. — SOCIALISM MEANS REVOLUTION

I. — THE WORLD AS BOOTS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

Table of Contents

IT does not do,” said a friend of mine, “to think about boots.” For my own part, I have always been particularly inclined to look at boots, and think about them. I have an odd idea that most general questions can be expressed 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 upbringing would do—the heads and bodies of people, I saw their under side. I got acquainted indeed with all sorts of social types as boots simply, indeed, as the soles of boots; and only subsequently, and with care, have I fitted heads, bodies, and legs to these pediments.

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 development by a restlessness or a kick…. But anyhow, that explains my preoccupation 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 enterprise, or belief in coming things; and 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 recalling 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 majority 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 inventions. “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.

“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 hoot 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 development of these pressures, come corns and all the misery of corns. Children’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 warm pleasant weather to play Badminton barefooted on the grass—a delightful 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 work 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 endure 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 always getting from over-darned and 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.