This Misery of Boots

American Edition of an essay originally read by Wells to the Fabian Society in December 1905. Unwearable boots are cited as an example of the pointless suffering brought about by a system in which capital is privately owned. This essay is especially notable for the manner in which Well's uses his childhood view of the world from a basement: Well's seemed destined, in these first fifteen years of his life, to spend much of his time underground, in dark, dismal surroundings. Raised in an underground kitchen, from which, through the grating, he could see only the feet of passers by, he lodged in cellars or garrets, dim, closed in, filled with shadows, away from the sun, in all of the apprentice homes in which he was forced to stay.