The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1898-09-22
WOODEN SHOES IN CHICAGO.
Thousands Are Worn by Workmen
in That CITY.

Thousands Are Worn by Workmen
in That City.
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 &C
cording to excellent authority tnar is
where most of the shoes are made
which are composed entirely of wood.
These shoes which are made out III the
woods are, of course, roughly hewn,
and can scarcely be spoken of as hav-
ing 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 effort made to give them
elegance of finish.
Several classes of employees find the
wooden shoe a 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 factories,
breWerieS, tanneries, ice cream factories
and the dressing departments of poul-
try houses The brewers and the men
who pluck the chickens and turkeys in
the South Watershed cellars 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 necessary 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
toned above the ordinary leather shoes
would not do at ALL Leather is a ready
conductor of heat, and water will So
through it in a very short time ii the
leather is kept in the water. II 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
rheumatism, etc, which would inev-
itably follow is at once apparent.
1T may sound little far-fetched to
you, but / tell you it 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 lit
tie doubt that every one of them spoke
the truth. One fellow worked down
in a basement at the ice cream trade,
and you can be sure he had q pretty
damp time of it. Ice would melt, and
the water, Of course, ran all over the
floor. If our man had worn only or
binary shoes or boots his feet would
have been wet and cold from morning
till night 1t would have killed him.
But instead of leather-soled shoes he
wore wooden ones, and his feet were
warm and dry all the time. 1t takes
long time for water to soak through
a wooden sole an inch or an inch and
quarter thick. In tanneries 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 departments 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 box a pair
of solid wooden shoes that looked large
enough to be made into a couple 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 fiat to the SOLE
with no upper part to protect the heel.
At the front part the opening was so
large that a man wearing a No. IL boot
could not possibly find difficulty in
serting it into the great 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 shuff1es around through the
wet as long as he 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 of
feathers by the thousands, wooden
shoes are in big demand in the clean
ing rooms. The cleaning rooms are
generally in the easements. Here the.
apartments are kept damp by the nee
essary presence of large quantities Of
water. 1t would take a very short
time for a workman to acquire very
wet feet if he depended on leather shoes
for protection. Blood from the fowls
and the water that is thrown about
would shortly wet his feet from the up
per side, even if the floors were dry,
so he finds a refuge for his feet in the
solid wooden shoes, which are wooden
on the top as we'll as on the bottom.