The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-11
WOODEN SHOES IN CHICAGO.

WOOI)EN phoE0 LIN CI1ICA1o. They Are Worn By Many WorlSmen.
 Thousands of pairs of wooden shoes are purchased and worn in Chicago every year. Some of them are made entirely of wood, but perhaps the most of them have leather tops. Many of these shoes are made here in the city, while large numbers are brought from factories and from the woods of Wis consin. To the uninitiated it may sound rather strange to speak of shoes being brought from forests, but ac- cording to excellent authority that is where most of the shoes are made which are composed entirely of wood. These shoes which are made out in the woods are, of course, roughly hewn, and scarcely hewn, and can scarcely be spoken of as having finish. All of the shoes, both those which are all wood and those which have leather tops, are made by hand, and pretty roughly made at that. All of them are for rough wear. There is never any ef- finish.
 Several classes of employees find the wooden shoe real necessity, but most of them find that the heavy wooden sole with leather top will answer all demands. The wooden shoe is used for two purposes-as protection against water and cold. The men who use them are the workmen in dye fac tories, breweries, tanneries, ice cream factories and the dressing departments of poultry houses. The brewers and the men who pluck the chickens and turkeys in the South Water street eel lars find that a shoe wholly wooden is the best thing for them. That is the shoe they wear when engaged in that part of the work which makes it nec- essary for them to be where the floor is wet and where water, blood or beer is likely to fall upon their shoes from above.
 For many of the workmen in all of the factories and establishments men, tioned above the ordinary leather shoes would not do at all. Leather is a ready conductor of heat. and water will go through it in very short time if the leather is kept in the water. If these men wore leather -soled shoes they would be going about their work with wet feet all the time, and the feet would be rather cold besides. The great number of cases of pneumonia, rheumatism, etc, which would inevita- bly, follow is at once apparent.
 Tt may seem little far-fetched to you, but tell 1t is an actual fact that time and again customers have told me that they thought wooden shoes had preserved their lives" said a dealer in the queer looking footwear over on Randolph street. There is little doubt that every one of them spoke the truth. One fellow worked down in a base ment at the ice cream trade, and you can be sure he had a pretty damp time of it. Ice would melt, and the water, of course, ran all over the floor. If our man had worn only ordinary shoes or boots his feet would have been wet and cold from morning till night. It would have killed him. But instead of leather-soled shoes he wore wooden
 ones. and his feet were warm and dry | all the time. It takes a long time for
 water to soak through a wooden sole an inch and a quarter thick. In tan- neries and all places where it is wet and where there are acids the wooden | shoe must be worn. Acids will go right through leather, while they will | hardly affect wood at all. In some de- partments of breweries the floors are | wet all the time, and the workmen can only escape wet feet by wearing shoes | of wood. Some of these workmen, | who are also employed part of the time | where the floors are not wet, have big | shoes which they can slip on over their | other shoes. Here are the ones they | use.''
 | The dealer pulled out of a. box a | pair of solid wooden shoes that look | ed large enough to be made into cou- | pie of small tugboats They were
 roughly cut, and each one was about a | foot and a half in length. At the back
 part the article was cut down flat to | the sole, with no upper part to protect i the heel. At the front part the open | ing was so large that a man wearing a
 No. Il boot could not possibly find | difficulty inserting it into the great 1 shoes. When the brewer starts for a room in which he knows that the floor Is wet he jumps, boots and all, into a | pair of these big shoes He shuffies I around through the wet as long as he l has to or wants to, keeping the shoes
 on all the while When he leaves the room he puts off the shoes and leaves | them at the door.
 Over on South Water street, where | chickens and turkeys are deprived o1 | feathers by the thousands, woodeI
 shoes are in big demand in the clean
 ing rooms. The cleaning rooms art | generally in the basements. Here the | apartmens are kept damp by the ueces | sary presence of large quantities O.
 water. It would take a very shor- | time for a workman to acquire very | wet feet if he depended on leather | shoes for protection. Blood from th' l fowls and the water that is throwr | about would shortly wet his feet iron 1 the upper side, even 1.-the floors wer, l dry, so he finds refuge for his feet il | the solid wooden shoes, which ar,
 wooden on the top as well as on tn, | bottom.
 Wooden-soled shoes are made on
 small scale at a number of places il
 Chicago. There are no factories, tn
 shoes being made at humble privat
 homes. Often man and his wife pu 1 in all of their time making shoes, tn
 wife usually being quite as expert il
 the art as the husband. When the.