OCR Text |
Show I WHY SHOES ARE HIGH During the war the government ordered leather goods without any regard to its actual needs. It ordered order-ed 945,000 saddles when it had only 391,000 horses and mules; 1,000,-000 1,000,-000 sets of harness or three for each horse; and 2,850,S35 halters, or sev en for each animal. Its experts said the government ordered so many leather lea-ther goods that to make them would take 300,000 more hides than were produced in the United States. When the war eneded the government govern-ment had 1.800,000 pounds of unmanufactured un-manufactured leather on hand. So leather was hard to get and the price of shoes began to soar. The government govern-ment had on hand millions of pairs i of shoes for which it now has no use Vast quantities of shoes, old and new, were burned in France. "Other vast quantities were sold to the French for 12 1-2 cents on the dollar and ten years in which to pay." Evidence comes that carload lots of new shoes, in addition to those listed above, were sold to the French for old shoes about 50 cents a pair. |