DRASTIC SURGERY FOR BOOTS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 101, 22 January 1918, Page 2

DRASTIC SURGERY FOR BOOTS

GIRL WAR WORKERS BEAT ALL I MALE RECORDS. In a factory at tho far end of the Old Kent Road the war girl is again beating all records. From all over the country she is sending the soldier shells; at the Kent Road faotory she is mending, his boots—and those who know most about armies have the greatest difficulty in deciding which is the more important mission. A "Daily News" representative who waj. shown round this model Government workshop tied two labels bearing, tho name of the paper 011 to a pair of boots straight fromv the front, coated thickly with Flanders mud, with their soles worn through and their toes turn- , ed up so that they hardly looked like ! boots at all. Then he followed them': through the wards of the boot hospital till in forty minutes' time they had been completely restored to ■ strength and soundness, a perfect miracle of feminine surgery. First they were scrubbed in a batii of warm water, then they were dressed with castor oil; then a muscular young woman stripped off heel and; fore-sole, to be followed a few moments later by a skilful young woman who stripped off the outer skin of the "waist" with tho help of a wonderful machine that has been invented during the war.

After this fierce surgery of knife and pincers came the various processes of rebuilding a perfect sole and heel —tho best the world produces—tho mending of various injuries to tho superstructure, tho "blocking" into quite a stjlish Army shape, and finally the restaining and polishing. Only tho labels still attached .made it possible to i-ceogni.se this smart footwear as the dilapidated, useless lump of leather that had been picked out of a. pile of similar invalids little more than half an hour earlier.

Over 300 girls have graduated as iioi.t surgeons at this establishment— girls who not long ago were picklemakers, tailoresscs, domestic servants, iim! so on —and they are "smashing" (to '|tiole the factory manager) all output figures hitherto put up by men, whether inside or outside the. Army. The other day ten women stripped the sole* from 1000 pairs of boots in "

sing].' day—a speed unheard of till l.hey came on the scene. "Stripping" is by far the hnr-rlost job of all.

There are very few men on ilie premises. Practically everything, from cutting the sole l leather to poking the finished hoots, is clone by the war-girl. And (lie opinion of the Army is that a pair of old hoots lhat . have passed through her hands are actually to ho. preferred to a- pair of new hoots that hnve never seen the inside of a hospital.