Surgery for Soots

Horowhenua Chronicle, 5 February 1918, Page 4

Surgery for Soots

girl war workers beat all male records.

In a factory at the far end of the ' Old Kent Road tho war girl is again ! beating all records. From all over the ; country she is sending the soldier shells; down here she is mending Ms j boots—and those who know most about ' armies have the greatest difficulty in de- | ciding which is the more important ■ mission. I A "Daily News" representative wHo i was shown round this model Govcrn--1 jnent workshop, tied two labels beariag \ the name of the paper on to a pair of ! boots straight from the front, coated i thickly with Flanders mud, with their ' soles worn through and their toes turned i up so that they hardly looked like boots " at all. Then he followed them through, the wards of the boot hospital till in 40 minutes' time they had been completely restored to strength and soundness, a perfect miracle of feminine surgery. First they were scrubbed in a bath of warm water, then they were dressed with castor oil; then a muscular young woman stripped off heel and fore-sole, to be followed a few minutes later by

a skilful young woman who stripped off - the outer skin of the "waist" with the help of a wonderful machine that has been invented during the war. After the fierce surgery of knife and pincers came tho various processes of rebuilding a perfect sole and heel —the best the world produces — the mending of various injuries to the superstruc- ; ture, the ' 1 blocking'' into quite a stj - j lish anny shape, and finally the rei staining and polishing. Only the labels > still attached made it possible to recog- ) nise this smart footwear as the dilapi- | dated, useless lump of Jeather that had j been picked out of a p;le of similar invalids little more than half an hour I earlier.

Over 300 girls have graduated as boot surgeons at this establishment — girls who not long ago were' picklemalcors, tailoresses, domestic servants, and so on—£and they are "smashing" (to quote tTie factory manager) all output figures hitherto put up by men, ■nilether inside or outside the army. The other day ten women stripped the soles from 1000 pairs of boots in a single day —a speed unheard" of till they came on tho scene. '/Stripping" is by faT the hardest job of all. There are very few men on the premises: Practically everything, from cutting the sole leather to tacking the finished boots, is done by the war-girl. And the opinion of the army is that a pair of old boots that have passed through her hands are actually to be preferred to a pair of new boots that have never seen the inside of a hospital.