CLOG SOLE MARKET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 100, 27 March 1936, Page 14

CLOG SOLE MARKET

AN INDEPENDENT CRAFTSMAN. / A correspondent of the London Times writes: In the towns and villages of industrial Lancashire the clog still remains usual for work-in the mill, for. cleaning up the home, and for children at school. This is not true of cities like Manchester and Liverpool, but elsewhere the clog prevails, and with it one of Lancashire’s few remaining individual craftsmen, the clog sole maker.

Most towns possess one or two, but there is not much competition, for the task of making a clog sole is .highly skilled and takes years of apprenticeship. To make anything of a living a man must make them at the rate of 200 a day, and he must keep a vigilant eye on all the by-products, shavings j and logs with flaws in them, turning the one into firelighters and finding a regular market for the other. . His stock-in-trade consists of a small motor lorry, a large yard with a good shed in it, and an instrument, like a cross between an axe and a sword. It is fastened at one end to a block, and its fastening is so arra.nged that itcan be swung from side to side as well as up and down. By the handle at the other end the long, heavy, razor-sharp blade is manipulated; and in the hands of a skilled man it is like the Sword of Eden—it turns every way, and is a.s capable of the delicate shaping at the end of the process as it is of hacking the rough off the logs at the beginning. This is the one tool which the clog sole maker needs. SEARCH FOR SUPPLIES. He is no Sabbatarian. Every weekend he goes off with his lorrv to some part of the country where elder trees abound, usually to Cumberland or Hereford, for clog soles are always made of elder wood. There he picks up four tons of timber, having contracted for it in his summer holiday, which lie always spends touring the

country in search- of his next year’s supply. Back he comes with it oii Sunday evening, and from Monday to Thursday lie will be hard at work, making as many as 200 clog soles a day. When the pile of soles at his side, and of shavings at his feet, is so mountainous that it threatens to oust him from his shed and interferes with the free swing of his axe-like sword, ho sets about his marketing. The local co-operative store will always take most of his wares, and the other boot-shops easily account for the rest. But the price paid is low, and he could hardly pay himself adequate wages out of 800 clog soles a week. His by-products are all-important to him.

He must' be in touch with all the makers of firelighters, most of whom buy their shavings from him and his kind. To them he contrives to sell all his shavings, but he will not himself make the firelighters, for the danger of fire on the premises it too great, and besides he likes to smoke his clay pipe as lie works. But the greater potential wastage lies in the log lengths which, for one reason or another, he cannot use; they amount to a surprisingly large proportion of even the best elder' trees. For these he must rely on the fires of the local gentry; he sells them at a sovereign for a ton, and they make admirable firewood. They are well worth the money, and in any case one would gladly pay it if it were only to encourage a craftsman who, in any Lancashire town, is one of its most independent and happiest citizens.