The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-28

be made from one skin, so that the ami : mals required for each days output numper 10000. Every pair of army
 shoes requires at least four square feet ol such leather so that at a rough cal culatlon the product of one day would
 be enough to make a leather bel+ a
 loot wide and 40 miles long. The shoes | TOT one month would take enough
 leather to make a belt reaching from, Chlcago to Boston. The leather so 1 Tar consumed since the war began if
 patched together into a crazy onilt l Would cover 5o00 acres, or if cut into strips 1t would carpet a roadway wide enough for the largest motor car ae as
 long as from Philadelphia to the bat | tlefields.
 In buying the leather for army shoes an enormous amount of money has bean saved for the government through inc patriotic advice and assistance of lead ing men of the shoe and leather indus trY. AS IL IS now, a great part of the cost of the Pershing shoes goes into leather At the time war began l. F McEawain, the chairman of the com
 mittee on the shoe and leather industry or the council of national defense. and others aided in making the preparations for the shoe orders. They saw that the demand would send the prices of cer-
 tain leather to the skies and went to
 the tanners and got from them the bot tom patriotic rate at which the leather could be furnished The orders were
 filled at this rate. thereby saving the government many millions of dollars
 Had the leather purchases been thrown open to competitive bids the shoes would
 have cost 50 cents upward per pair above
 what they cost now.
 The orders for the old type of trench
 -lNA 4n the new trench footwear which is now being made, is being let in orders rang ing from 5000 pairs to 100000 pairs and upward at from s6.5S to S6.65 per pair. The shoes are being made all over the country. We have altogether about 1900 shoe factories and of these more than 70 of the largest are engaged in making shoes for the soldiers.
 It was to tell you how the army shoe is made that I came to Manchester. Here is the chief establishment of the McElwain Shoe company, which has 2 plants in different parts of New Eng land, and which since the war began has at times been turning out shoes for sol diers at the rate of 10000 pairs per day. The company was making army shoes for our government before the war broke out, and after that it furnished
  government tried to arrange with this company through it's buyers in New York, but the McElwains preferred to make their contracts direct and sent a man to Paris. fHe brought back an order for 300,000 pairs to be made after our army patterns and with slight modifica- tions. Later on the company got more contracts from France Rumana, Bel gium and other countries, so that they had made 100000 pairs of shoes for the allies before we declared war. It was experience of this kind that aided the government in it's first contracts for leather and shoes.
 The army shoes of today are made in far different way from those worn by our troops in the revolutionary war The colonial shoemaking was done by cob blers who travelled about from house to house, carrying their tools with them and making the home-tanned skins into shoes for the family. They made their own lasts, and sometimes they would whittle down the big lasts for men when they had to make shoes for the women and children. Some cobblers had shops 10 feet square, known as 1O-footers. in which they worked away with lap board