Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1896 — Non-animal Boots. [ARTICLE]

Non-animal Boots.

There arc vegetarians who deny themselves flesh food on sanitary grounds only, while others cling to the diet on humanitarian grounds. They refuse to eat meat, because they decline even remotely to sanction the slaughter of a living creature for any purpose. This feeling is carried to the point of a fad in England, and, as a result, "vegetarian boots and shoes*’ are advertised as for sale in the Loudon papers. The uppers are made of "jannus corium,” which, by the way. is oak tanned leather, but few people will recognize the fact. This is all the leather used in the shoes, however. The soles are of closely waterproofed flax belting. The vegetarians, in arguing that the skins of slaughtered animals are not necessary, say that India rubber, gutta-percha, steel, iron, and brass nails, cashmere, cotton, elastic webbing, wood, paper, cork, straw, silk, jute and wax go to form the mod ern mystery of a lady’s shoe in which oftentimes no element of leather enters.