Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-07-14
Sunny Side Shoes.

"You newspaper fellows have had
your whack at a!!great many of the frauds
of the day, but you have thus far over-
looked the commonest and in some re-
spects the meanest of all frauds, that in
shoes. Why don't you expose itp" The
speaker was a middle aged man OF
hatty dress, evidently a member of the
craft known rs commercial travellers,
and the one addressed a reporter for
The Commercial Gazette. The latter,
overlooking the fippancy with which
journalists had been classedas fellows
asked for plans and specification as to
frauds in shoes, and was enlightened in
this wise:
cit would take too much of your
space to go into minute details as to how
frauds are perpetrated on the purchaser
of shoes, so numerous and ingenious are
they. Twill therefore merely tell you
about some of the ordinary ways of
getting up cheap shoes of deceptive
appearance. Good leather Of all kinds,
as you are aware, costs money, and .
great deal of it, in comparison with
prices twenty-five years ago, and a
great deal of Yankee ingenuity has been
expended in devising methods for max
ing a little of the tanners product Cos
great way. Sole leather is the most
costly of all, and naturally there is more
fraud in the soles of shoes than in the
uppers. In a great many of the cheaper
grades of shoes now sold the soles consist
Of a very thin sheet of leather for the
bottom, just enough to hold it together,
and the space between it and the So
called insole, which usually consists OF
q strip of muslin, is filled either with
leather shavings pressed together or
with common straw board. The wear
ers of this kind of leather goods should
always be careful to avoid the shady
side of the street, as dampness is ruin
Ous to this sort of shoe, causing the
pieces. .s
1.-The uppers, which the seller always
assures the purchaser are ginuine calf
skin, are split cowhide, and wear little,
if any better than the soles. The heels
are in strick keeping with the other
parts, consisting of a thin outer rim of
leather, and a slender bottom of the
same material, the remainder being
made up of scrap leather. Half the
ready-made shoes worn in Pittsburg, I
don't hesitate to assert, are shams OF
one sort or another, in part or in whole.
1.-The Justification is not confined to
mems shoes; oh, no. There is fully as
much or more fraud in women's foot
gear. There is pebble, goat made out
Of blackened muslin, with soles of
plated hash,' as pressed scraps are
termed. 34
%..Sheepskin is skillfully dressed to
initiate kid, and many of the shoes
made of it and sold for sewed work are
merely pasted together, and dissolve, so
to speak, the first time they are wet.
This sort of fraud sets hardest on the
poor, who must economic from force
Of necessity, and always buy things
that are cheap without much reference
to the quality or durability. Shoes at
half-price arealways a temptation to the
poor, but if they would give the matter
q little study they would soon discover
that one pair of honest shoes, sold at .
fair price, would outlast three or four
pairs of the other kind, though when
first put on the latter look just as nice
or nicer than the better kind."-PIks-
burg Commercial Gazette.