1922.] Making of Clogs. Clog-Soles and Clog-Blocks. 741 



when demand was keen and prices were high, many workmen 

 established businesses for themselves. For the roughest work 

 of felling and sawing labour is often hired on the spot, but for 

 the actual clog-block cutting skilled workers are employed who 

 travel in gangs of six or seven. The system is the same as 

 that in the timber trade when gangs are sent out to fell trees. 

 Before the War, a Shropshire timber-merchant and clog-block 

 dealer employed some twenty-five to thirty clog-block cutters. 

 They travelled from place to place in various parts of the country, 

 Salisbury, Oxford, Thetford and Southampton being amongst 

 the places mentioned by this Shropshire merchant. Thus it 

 sometimes happens that a travelling clog-block cutter settles 

 down in a district where alder flourishes and sends off his blocks 

 to former employers or other acquaintances in the trade. Some 

 of the ^log-block dealers who are settled in the south and west 

 of England may be known by their speech and enterprise as 

 North-countrymen . 



The tree or pole after being felled is sawn into fixed lengths 

 of four sizes, for men, women, boys and children. If the wood 

 is knottv there is more waste, and onlv the smaller sizes can 

 be cut. These lengths are then placed on wooden block supports 

 and cut into shape with a special tool. This is a knife made of 

 one piece of steel about 2 J ft. in length, bent to an obtuse angle 

 in the middle, the lower half forming a blade about four inches 

 deep and terminating at the end in a strong hook. This secures 

 the knife to a wooden block driven firmly into the ground. This 

 block forms one of the two supports of a low bench on which the 

 piece of alder is placed and the knife is w T orked as on a pivot. 

 The cutter grips it with his right hand by a wooden handle at 

 right angles to the steel, stooping, and cutting downwards with 

 remarkable certainty and rapidity, while he holds and moves 

 the clog-block with his left hand. The cuts are made at angles, 

 and the block trimmed with an axe, so that it represents very 

 roughly the final shape of the clog-sole. The blocks are then 

 stacked to dry in bee-hive shaped heaps as high as a man can 

 reach, built as peat-ruckles are built with air spaces between 

 the blocks. When a truck-load of blocks is ready, it is sent off 

 to Lancashire. 



Not a Whole-time Trade, — An employer did not consider 

 that pre-war earnings yielded a " living wage " but the men 

 are paid by piece-rates and their earnings vary with their skill. 

 The clog-block trade is not carried on by itself, for the masters, 

 and probably the men too, require some other source of income. 



