SURGERY FOR BOOTS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16039, 25 January 1918, Page 5

SURGERY FOR BOOTS.

GIRL WAR WORKERS BEAT ALL MALE RECORDS. In a factory at the far end l of the Old. Kent Road the war girl is again beating all records. From all over thfe country she is sending the soldier shells; down here she is mending hie boots—and those who know most about armies have the greatest difficulty m deciding which is the more important mission. 1 A Daily 'News representative who was shown round /this model Government workshop, tied two labels bearing the name of the naper on to a pair of boots straight from the front, coated thickly with Flanders mud, with their j soles worn through and their toes turned ut> so that they hardly looked like boots at ail. Then he followed them through tho 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 hath 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 moments later by a skilful young woman who stripped off the outer skin of the “waist” with the heln of a wonderful machine that has been invented during the war. After the fierce surgery of knife and pincers came the various processes of rebuilding a perfect sole and heel—the best the world produces—the mending of various injuries'to the superstructure, the “blocking” into quite a stylish army shape, and finally the' restaining and polishing. Only tho labels still attached made it possible to recognise this smart footwear as the dilapidated, useless lump of leather that had been picked out of a pile of similar invalids little more than half an hour earlier. Over 300 girls have graduated as boot surgeons at this establishment—girls who not long ago were picklemakers, tailoresses, domestic servants, j and so on—and they are “smashing” (to i quote tho factory.- manager) all output | figures hitherto put up by men, whether | inside or outside tho army. The other ; day ten women stripped the soles from 1000 pairs of boots in a single day—a speed unheard of till they same on the scone. “Stripping” is by far 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 he hands are actually to he preferred to a- pair of new boots that have never seen the inside of a hospital.