Arizona weekly citizen., 1890-05-31
FACTS ABOUT FooTeEAR.
A Massachusetts Salesman Talks Aboui
 Phases of the Business.

A Massachusetts Salesman Talks About
 Phases of the Business.
 Therc are more people wearing shoes than there are who know about the shoes they wear. For the benefit of the shoe wearing race in general and the wearer of fine calf skin shoes in particular, The Post has collected a few facts. A reporter met at the Met ropolitan the other evening Mir. E. F. Sawyer, the representative of a big firm at North Weymouth, Mass.
 Washington, said he, demands a fine grade shoe, and a good many of them. The trade is steady the year round. Take the heaviest firms you hare here and their stocks will not vary 5000 during the d. fferent sea- sons. There are so few novelties in the business that the holidays make no special demand.
 Your asphalt streets and sidewalks are very wearing on shoes. The as phalt is slippery. Every time your foot Is set down 1t slips little, and 1t tells in time on the sole of the shoe. Asphalt wears leather faster than brick, and brick faster than dirt It Is not always economical to black your own boots. You are apt to put the blacking on too thick and unevenly, let t dry and cake on and ruin the leather. Backing should be put toD thin and evenly and washed of occar sionally."
 How can l pick out good shoeF asked the reporter.
 Well, it isn't so easily told. You have to learn by experience. You are probably aware that calfskin grows tougher from the tail to the horns. It does; the fiber gets longer and tough CT. The skin at the tail IS finer, but not so tough. The skin Is tougher on the sides than the belly; yet, strange ly, right along the backbone the skin piece of paper. The lower part of your shoe upper is called the vamp. The vamps are cut from the two pieces of a calfskin, commencing at the tail. The cutter puts on his patterns and cuts one from each side, never cross ing the back. Next two pairs come out over the ribs, one pair on the shoulders and one pair from the neck The neck vamps have much more wear than any of the others. You can tell them by the wrinkles. These wrinkles, which were in the neck of the calf, are still preserved in the leather, and you can find them by close examination. But since the neck vamps are coarse and heavy they are never put in the finest grades of shoes The belly of the calfskin needs tan ming longer than the side; so within a few years the tanners have tried plan of taking the side out when 1t has tan ned long enough, and hanging it so that the belly remains in the pickle a little longer
 Kangaroo leather makes the most durable fine shoes in the world. Year before last the tanners thought they had found a way or tanning their kan garoo skins i'll much less time than formerly by using a new process. The result was that they injured the leath- CT and 1t didn't wear we'll. This year kangaroo shoes will wear 8 per cent longer than last year.
 ''When l first brought kangaroo shoes into this section l could hardly make the dealers believe that they were what l claimed. It was by tho most strenuous effort that the stock could be placed. But kangaroo shoes have come to stay. When they were first made the Australian goverrmen. paid a bounty for their slaughter, they were so destructive to crops. Al a result they were killed by the thou sands, and their hides were very cheap. Now the government has re- moved the bounty and restricted theil slaughter to certain seasons, and the price of hides has gone up so much that the dealers are kicking on the price of shoes. Still they will continue to be popular Australia Is nearly as big as the United States, and there is no immediate danger of the extermina- uon of tue kangaroo. Washington Post.