But food is only one of the materials which we should handle.At our Whitechapel Factory there is one shoemaker whom we picked off the streets destitute and miserable.He is now saved,and happy,and cobbles away at the shoe leather of his mates.That shoemaker,Iforesee,is but the pioneer of a whole army of shoemakers constantly at work in repairing the cast-off boots and shoes of London.Already in some provincial towns a great business is done by the conversion of old shoes into new.They call the men so employed translators.Boots and shoes,as every wearer of them knows,do not go to pieces all at once or in all parts at once.The sole often wears out utterly,while the upper leather is quite good,or the upper leather bursts while the sole remains practically in a salvable condition;but your individual pair of shoes and boots are no good to you when any section of them is hopelessly gone to the bad.But give our trained artist in leather and his army of assistants a couple of thousand pairs of boots and shoes,and it will go ill with him if out of the couple of thousand pairs of wrecks he cannot construct five hundred pairs,which,if not quite good,will be immeasurably better than the apologies for boots which cover the feet of many a poor tramp,to say nothing of the thousands of poor children who are at the present moment attending our public schools.In some towns they have already established a Boot and Shoe Fund in order to provide the little ones who come to school with shoes warranted not to let in water between the school house and home.When you remember the 43,000children who are reported by the School Board to attend the schools of London alone unfed and starving,do you not think there are many thousands to whom we could easily dispose,with advantage,the resurrected shoes of our Boot Factory?
第52章 TO THE RESCUE!--THE CITY COLONY.(12)（1 / 3）