Note 35 — Chapter XI · CONSEQUENCES
Reading edition
Some notes of mine on this subject in the "Daily News" brought me the following letter from the provinces:
"You very rightly, I think, referred on Monday and Tuesday to the subject of boots. Here is my own experience. 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 bootmaker 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. I shall never forget the feelings that passed through my mind as I thought of the circumstances; and so it came home to me again when I read your reference to the boot trade, and I decided I would forward this to you. Most surely, as you say, if the 30,000,000 could and would buy those 50,000,000 pairs of boots you mention, there need not be any slackness in the boot trade; but, as you say again, if your reference to the question is the means of making people think seriously about it, much good will be done."
Thus between my correspondent who sorely needed boots, and his neighbour the bootmaker there stood a wall—and our commercial system.
[36] "Warp and Woof," by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton.
[37] "Poverty," a Study of Town Life, by B. Seebohm Rowntree (Macmillan).