GAY PRINT SACKS

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22730, 4 October 1945, Page 3

GAY PRINT SACKS

CLOTHES ON THE FARM When a farm wife says. “I’m going to the feed store to pick out a piece of dress goods,” she isn’t trying to be funny—necessarily. She is taking advantage of a war emergency. When the burlap supplies which India had been sending to America were cut off, manufacturers of stock foods were faced with a serious shortage of bags. Even before that they had begun, a bit dubiously, to use sacks made of gay cotton prints. Rural housewives soon were making these into house dresses. Bag manufacturers, quick to sense this trend, are now selecting their prints with considerable taste. At the same time they obligingly stamp their brand names with water colours, which wash off easily. In consequence, farm women have to a large extent taken over the buying of stock foods. This is necessary if they are to match the designs they now have on hand. Bagmakers question seriously whether the oldfashioned, non-utilitarian burlap sack will ever regain its place. The flv in the ointment is that the farm women’s city cousins can’t buy a piece of dress goods in town that approaches the feed sacks for quality.