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Show 22 Million Cattle Hides Needed for Shoes in '43 Almost two million pairs of shoes are being made daily in the 1,200 shoe factories of the United States, according to latest government figures. fi-gures. The approximately 500 million pairs of shoes which shoe craftsmen crafts-men will turn out this year actually actu-ally one billion footwear units will utilize about 22 million hides of cattle for leather soles and other vtal shoe parts, and many millions of hides and skins of other foreign and domestic animals such as goats, sheep, horses, and reptiles. The average per capita consumption consump-tion of shoes in the United States is about three pairs a year; about two pairs a year for men and a little better than three for women. This is an astonishingly small figure fi-gure compared to other articles of clothing, especially considering the daily pounding given to the average aver-age pair of shoes. Shoes utilize almost 300 other materials in the course of their construction many of these coming com-ing from remote corners of the world, such as tanning extracts like quebracho, myrobalans, sumac, su-mac, gambier, divi-divi and others used in making leather soles. Fabric for the lining of shoes will require about 100 million yards this year. Whole forests of maple trees will come down for wooden lasts to insure variety of design and comfort of fit. These plus the designers' magic, the dictates of fashion, the upper and sole leather that emerge from their own saga of production history, and the tacks, nails, thread, welting, ad-hesives, ad-hesives, etc. all these go into the almost 400 operations involved in making a modern pair of shoes. |