way.
Why should they? They're very well satisfied as they are! But if the
community as a whole insisted that this idea of private Ownership you
have in regard to land and natural things was all nonsense--and it is
all nonsense!--just think what you might not do with it now that you
have all the new powers and lights that Science has given you. You
might turn all your towns into garden cities, put an end to
overcrowding, abolish smoky skies----"

"Hush!" I should have to interrupt; "if you talk of the things that
are clearly possible in the world to-day, they will say you are an
Utopian dreamer!"

But at least one thing would have become clear, the little swarm of
Owners and their claims standing in the way of any bold collective
dealing with housing or any such public concern. The real work to be
done here is to change an idea, that idea of ownership, to so modify
it that it will cease to obstruct the rational development of life;
and that is what the Socialist seeks to do.

Sec. 2.

Now the argument that the civilized housing of the masses of our
population now is impossible because if you set out to do it you come
up against the veto of the private owner at every stage, can be
applied to almost every general public service. Some little while ago
I wrote a tract for the Fabian Society about Boots;[3] and I will not
apologize for repeating here a passage from that. To begin with, this
tract pointed out the badness, unhealthiness and discomfort of
people's footwear as one saw it in every poor quarter, and asked why
it was that things were in so disagreeable a state. There was plenty
of leather in the world, plenty of labour.

[3] _This Misery of Boots._ It is intended as an
introductory tract explaining the central idea of Socialism
for propaganda purposes, and it is published by the Fabian
Society, of 3 Clement's Inn, London, at 3_d._ That, together
with my tract _Socialism and the Family_ (A. C. Fifield, 44
Fleet Street, London, 6_d._), gives the whole broad outline
of the Socialist attitude.

"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 tr