WOMEN CLOGMAKERS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 54, 18 May 1942, Page 8

WOMEN CLOGMAKERS

THEIR SKILL AT THE BENCH IN 1914-18 Women who, as young girls, made clogs fro Britain's factories in the last war are- to-day returning to work alongside their sons and daughters at the benches. There they are making heavy protective footwear for munitions factories., steel works and all kinds of industrial concerns. More important than ever, now that the loss of Malalyia means less rubber for gumboots, Britain's pre-' sent production of 50,000 clogs a week can be stepped up to 100,000 without adding to existing plant. And the raw materials need no shipping space; much of the leather comes from Britain's cattle herds, the wood from the bechwoods of the Chilterns' and the iron tips and nails from the foundries of the Midlands. The clogs are very different | from the all-wooden Continental sa|bot. Built up carefully and skilfully like a heavy boot, sometimes with felt linings for eomfrotable wear, they are clogs only so> far as the sole is made of shaped beechwood, the best material for the purpose. Resisting heat, cold, water, molten metall and glass and injurious chemicals, they are much better than lea-ther-soled! boots, which would crack or perish under such conditions. They last longer and are quite 50 per cent cheaper than rubber, j Queen Anne is dead, but not a clog factory founded! during her reign which made footwear for the soldiers of Marlborough and has the same familly represented on its board as in 1703. Standing opposite the "blitzed" ruins of Bow Church,, Lon- ! don, the men and women working there to-day are turning out over 100 pairs of clogs a week each for explosive works, collieries, chemical, gas and electrical works, bottling and canning factories, steel, rolling mills, laundries, railway workshops, stables, garages, glassworks, dairies, breweries, distilleries, oil refineries and so on.