New Britain herald., 1916-04-26
\ GIRL AND HER SHOES.
Solomon in All His Glory Was Not Arrayed in Such Splendor As
 MiIady of Today.

lovely white bucksklns she claimed.
 T do not think I would care to
 wear them,' replied the teacher a l woman of fine taste. "But I would like to know what they cost'
 Ten dollars. I'm going to buy
 pair myself
 of fancy white shoes queried the astonished elder woman, recalling the poverty of the home in which the girl lived.
 | ''Why, yes,' replied the $S-a-week | girl. "All the girls are wearing them. | Of course I must have some." 1 The teacher went away. worrying over lost opportunities.
 What is our school system good l for, she wants to know, if it turns 1 out our girls-thousands of them l with no more sense than to put more 1 than a weeks wages into a pair of ] white shoes. Yet worse than that 1 is the exceedingly bad taste of wear l ing fine white shoes downtown to work at 8 a. m.
 There no use in trying to teach 1 economy to women, she says, unless 1 they are taught the principles of taste in dress first of all. And this
 ought to be just as much a part of public school training as domestic l science has become. The girl clerk who felt that she must have S10 white shoes had that very day paid s16 for spring hat an s8 week girl paying over three weeks salary for hat and shoes and then they say that the high cost of living makes it impossible for wage workers to save a cent.
 Soloman in all his glory was not arrayed in such splendor as are some of our girls who feel that they must have all the latest and most costly of fashions fads-not emitting the white shoes.
 Mrs Winnifred Harper Cooley has been thinking about the white shoe fad and writes as follows: "Time was when s3 pair of black shoes lasted any sane God-fearing woman fully two seasons. She pro- tected them with rubbers, hlacked
 them herself with good oil dress paper in the bathroom, had them half soled, reheeled and even patched. i '"The high ones were supplemented 1 by s2 Oxfords in summer and were
 brought-out from the packing trunk | in the fall for the second seasons l wearing As they began to look 1 "scuffed" and dingy, in spite of black l ing. they might be retired to the su- bordinate position of second best, | and a, new Sunday" pair added. All
 this was not so very long ago. "Those were the wise old days
 when girls wore woollen stockings in winter, and heavy dresses for warmth Nowadays the snow and sleet find them in cobweb lacy lin- gerie waists, chiffon sleeves, silk stockings of a wicked transparency and white glace or suede boots. And still the fool killer does not sweep
 all of us into eternity.
 Pneumonia decimates the ranks
 occasionally and the bread line gets
 the flag end of the strugglers, but in
 the main the vast army seem to
 keep to the diagonal and expansive
 Broadway, if not always to the
 "strait and narrow way" and always
 are they arrayed as Solomon never
 was.
 "Now high white shoes cost $8, $1O,
 SIP and money does not grow on
 trees. How can feminine folk keep
 on buying a new pair every few
 weeks, and where do they go, the
 partly worn shoes? What becomes of
 the tan, the pearl gray, the patent
 leather, the bronze, the champagne
 color, the virgin white ones? Where
 are the shoes of yesteryear? 'It must have taken the sten- ographer nearly a solid week or labor to. earn that ten dollars. The department store clerk worked over
 a week at job meaning many hours day Even the bookkeeper and hair dresser stood at their arduous tasks, many, many days to earn thar pair of glorious boots. It must he ! that meat bills and rent are in ar rears. The devil must have sent that ] storm; but presto next! time we see l them they again are shod-like the
 millionaire What is the secret. DO l they possess an endless chain of l younger sisters to wear their dis carded shoes? Perish the thought: Little sister-cash- girl that she is at s3 Q week-wou1d not deign to in- ] herit a pair of shabby boots, but appears in her own white high ones, or perchance in spats!
 'What becomes of all the shoes that are a month o1d--two months six months? little wear, and they surely must show some sign of age and decay-for shoes are mortal like wom en-and their beauty must needs fade in time. But no; they seem to defy natural law and peren-
 nally to replace themselves, as
 snake grows a fresh skin when need
 ed.
 ''Who, then, is the recipient of the
 countless discarded ones, sacrificed
 10 the Mo1och Fashion? Who receives
 all those perfectly good, strong, com
 fortable pairs that are merely bit
 worn and of a color no longer the
 latest mode?