Shoes (1916)

Eva Meyer works in a five-and-dime store for $5 a week. At home her mother takes in washing to help support three smaller children and a lazy, beer-drinking, novel-reading, good-for-nothing husband and father. For months Eva has needed a pair of shoes. As the weeks pass the necessity for shoes increases, until finally heavy rains set in and rot what little there is left of her bedraggled and worthless shoes until they are literally falling from her feet. Eva brings her unopened pay envelope home to her mother every Saturday night; each time she's promised that "next week" she should have enough money for shoes. She has set her heart upon a pair that are displayed in a shop window she passes going to and from her work, but each week there is a new and valid reason for postponement: the rent must be paid; the merchants will no longer trust them for food; the worthless father is still out of work. All this time she sees the money she has earned go for beer, dime novels, and food to satisfy her shiftless father's desires. Finally, one Saturday night, she demands that he provide her with a pair of shoes. Her only solace is the retort from the man who was her natural protector and supporter, that he needed shoes for himself. Then and there Eva resolves to no longer suffer from sore feet, blistered and splintered from the rough floor upon which she stands behind the counter. One of her fellow-slaves in the five-and-ten introduced her to a cabaret singer weeks before, but she had steadfastly, indifferently declined his invitations. Eva droops to her cheerless room in the dreary and stuffy flat; she puts on a clean shirt-waist, lowers her skirt by pinning it around her hips to hide her rotten, ragged shoes; and gets carfare from her mother and says she is spending Sunday with a girl friend from the store. And Monday night Eva returns home from work with the new shoes upon her feet.