Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 299, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1920 — FRANK P. MEYER DEFENDS HIGH HEELED SHOES [ARTICLE]

FRANK P. MEYER DEFENDS HIGH HEELED SHOES

Frank P. “Dutch” Meyer, president/of the Illinois Shoe Retailers’ Association, and son of Mrs. Wm. Meyer, of this city, in a letter to the Danville Press, his home paper, defends the high heeled shoe for women. Mr. Meyer says in part: Editor Morning Press: “I do not wish to take issue with a learned physician as to what wearing apparel is most essential to the healthful welfare of our women, for I am not a scientist. But the article by one of our physicians appearing in your paper regarding high heels is not sustained by facts. The theory may be perfect, but figures refute the supposition that the “Louis” or so-called opera heel is injurious. At least 75 per cent of the dress shoes sold during the last ten years have carried Louis heels, or from two to two and one-half inches. Any ’observer in the foyer of a hotel lobby or on the street corner where the well dressed women and girls pass, will tell you that 90 per cent of the well dressed feet are clothed in Louis heels. Nor are* these shoes on the feet of sickly looking or anaemic women.

The chic, pepful, clear-cheeked and bright-eyed girls, are invaribly the wearers of the high heeled shoes. The low or military heel of course, has its place. If not too low it is proper for the tailored suit used in shopping, is not out of place in the usual , half negligee of street apparel, and is probably essential in the pursuance of athetic sports, but as a dress affair, it is as foreign to the eternal scheme of style as the stocking cap would be in the stylish headgear. If the Louis heel is inimical to health as its decries would have one believe, the appearance of the 75 per cent of the girls who wear them it believes the facts, for no generation of women has been mere beautiful, graceful, or healthful than those we are proud to boast of today. Through evolutions of civilization, women have acquired the habit of walking upright, instead of on all fours, and it would be just as remarkable to ask all mankind to go back to the state of the flat pated and flat footed quadruped, as to ask our women, who have acquired through the process of civilization as we have followed to acquire an upright position, to go back to the arch destroying, grace degrading, flat instep shoe. ■» F. P. MEYER, President of the Illinois Shoe Retailers Ass’n.” / x . f