THE PRESIDENCY: Button Shoes & Camisoles

The sharp eye of President Roosevelt last week focused upon women's high button shoes. Along with rubbers, corsets, kimonos, camisoles, stockings, dresses, cotton drawers, aprons, bloomers, lingerie, hairpins, princess slips and plug tobacco, he found button shoes listed as an item used by the Department of Labor in calculating its periodic Cost-of-Living index. The President needed no style expert to inform him that such footwear was now an anachronism even in the back-country districts. Suspecting that Madam Secretary Perkins' statisticians were behind the times on other articles in daily use, he...