SHOE-FITTING SCHOOL, CAMP MEIGS, D. C.
When the great demand for shirts came in the spring of 1917, the most expert of these seamstresses were hired outright by the month to act as instructors in the homes of new sewing women who had volunteered for the work. Advertisements were then sent out through the newspapers of that entire section for women workers, and presently the factory had a sewing force of 20,000 operatives from practically every town and village throughout southern Indiana and northwestern Kentucky. The output of shirts was increased from 600,000 per year to 8,500,000. Each home worker was supplied with one complete shirt to be used as a guide, and she secured from the factory as often as she needed it shirt material cut from the pattern and tied up in bundles of 10 sets. A large corps of sanitary inspectors was employed to visit the thousands of homes and see to it that the shirts were made under proper conditions. All shirts accepted from the home workers were thoroughly fumigated before being issued from the depot.
SHOE FITTING.
The Quartermaster Department, along with its other activities, was a school-teacher on a large scale. Without going into a general description of the quartermaster schools and the branches they taught, we will here consider some of the most interesting educational enterprises such as the shoe-fitting schools, the schools for butchers, and the school of goods packing.
Elsewhere in this volume the mechanical system of shoe measuring, perfected and adopted by the War Department, was described. Studies made at the camps at various times during 1917 and 1918, studies which examined nearly 59,000 men, showed that a little more than 70 per cent were wearing shoes too short, more than 9 per cent were wearing shoes too long, while less than 19 per cent were correctly fitted. It is probable that these proportions ran clear through the Army before shoe fitting was scientifically taken up, and there is no reason to believe that in civil life the averages of correct shoe fitting are any better.
After the so-called Resco system of shoe fitting was adopted, schools for shoe measuring were held at Camp Meigs, D. C., and at Jefferson Barracks, Mo. Each camp and cantonment in the country sent two officers to one or the other of these schools. The course of instruction lasted five days and consisted of lectures by experts and demonstrations of the various appliances. In this way the science of correct shoe fitting was scattered throughout the Army.
MEAT CUTTING.
It is no easy trick to teach a man to cut meat properly; butchering is a skilled trade. As soon as it was apparent that the American Expeditionary Forces in France were to be greatly expanded in size, our officers overseas sent requests that several trained and experienced butchery companies be sent over to cut meats properly for the organizations abroad. In order to comply with this request there was added to the curriculum of the quartermaster training camp in Florida a butchery course in the cutting, boning, rolling, and tying of fresh and frozen beef.