Lewis Underwood in Newspaper Articles

Date: 1941 [unknown]
Location: Fort Worth, Tarrant, Texas, United States
Surname/tag: Underwood

Transcriptions of newspaper articles about Lewis Underwood.

This Little Business Man Has No Worries in This War Period

His Operators Mend 50,000 Women's Hose a Week; He Started at One Table in Local Store; Now has 63 Operators in Two States.

By Edith Alderman Guedry, Fort Worth Press Women's Dept. Editor [Undated, but based on Carol's age of 7, this was published sometime in 1941.]

The silk shortage and the high price of women's hose have brought sudden prosperity to one little business man in Fort Worth. He is now managing a business that repairs 50,000 women's hose each week, and employs 63 persons.

He is Lewis Underwood, a slender, unobtrusive fellow, who has barely turned 30, and who prefers to call himself a "country boy." He started his business two and a half years ago at the table at Leonard's. He himself did all of the mending.

He now has 12 workers in that same department and operates from his office in the Mid-Continent Bldg., a two-state business in eight department stores. And he has letters in his files from 15 other department stores, ranging all the way from Buffalo, N. Y. to Detroit, Mich., who want him to start hose mending departments for them.

HIs only problem now is a shortage of operators for locations outside of Fort Worth. It requires from one to three months to train them. A good operator can mend anywhere from 50 to 100 hose a day.

The only tool required in his trade is a little needle that costs but a few cents. His business problems seem simple, but others, who have started hose mending departments, have not met with Lewis Underwood's success. He is an indefatigable worker, and he will never listen to defeat.

He started mending hose a few years ago when the nation was saying there were no opportunities for young men, especially those without education. Lewis Underwood, a farm boy, had gone no farther than the eighth grade.

But he wasn't afraid to use his hands, even in a job that might be termed sissy. He mended his first hose in a department store in Seattle, Wash. As he would mend, he would plan. He realized that Texas also needed such a department. Why not Fort Worth, his former home?

He attributes his success first to the defense program and an interest on the part of women to conserve what they have. But he knows that faith and hard work also carried him a long way.

His business has now outgrown the bounds of his home, where he and his wife first trained operators, kept books, etc. His wife is now devoting all of her time to their new home on Lewis St. in the Tandy School District, and their two little daughters, age 7 and 9. And he is assuming business responsibilities that he ever dreamed would come to him. One of his codes is "Fair dealings to others." He applies this first to his employees. He believes that if his employees are satisfied, they in turn will keep the customers satisfied. He will not pay a small pittance of a wage. He starts his operators at $15 a week, and many of them, after they become efficient in the operation of the needle, make $26 a week.

He seems to have their cooperation 100 per cent. Recently he sent a letter telling them that they had benefitted by the defense program, and that the least they could do was to show their patriotism to their country. His suggestion to them was that they deduct 10 percent each week from their salaries for defense stamps. They signed up with him 100 per cent. And he is setting an example by making the same investment himself. While other small business men worry about the future, Lewis Underwood presses on unafraid. If silk and rayon hose are taken off the market, he knows that he can still continue his business. Women will turn to lisle hose and lisle hose will need mending, too.

It's a Living - Hose Repairer Owes a Lot to Sharp Fingernails, Cats

It's a Very New Trade but in Great Demand by all the Womenfolk

By Lee Roy Manuel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram February 24, 1941

In at least one home in town, the problem of torn socks never rears its head. Head of this family and chief of the sock-darning department is slender, bespectacled Lewis Underwood, darndest sock darner you ever met.

But where some men pick up a needle as a hobby or as a means of getting in the feature section, Mr. Underwood does it for a living and a profitable one at that. Mr. Underwood, who came here from the Pacific Coast 18 months ago, heads the sock and stocking repair department at a local store. Working under him are a half-dozen assistants, most of them women, who all make a tidy sum at this, one of the newest trades.

Watch Mr. Underwood repair a stocking in just a minute and you'll sear you can do it yourself. Actually, it's a bit more difficult.

First and most essential implement of the trade is a small, hook-like needle embedded in a wooden handle. The second is a wine glass. Mr. Underwood stretches thread in his needle and begins the run over the glass, picks up a jabbing. Before you can say darn it, the stocking is.

Source of considerable wonder to passersby is how Mr. Underwood and his assistants are able to chat, look about them and never miss a stitch. The secret, they confide, is in the needle. It all but urns into place automatically with each jab.

The finished stocking is as good as new and but for a small, almost imperceptible know where the run started, the owner cannot tell it from one just out of the store. The price for a repair is about 30 per cent of a new pair.

Some 700 women bring in hose every week to be repaired. Mr. Underwood hazards a guess that the average woman will snag her hose or cause a run some way or another at least once a week.

Biggest boost to the repair business are fingernails. There's way to compile statistics but roughly one of every three pair of ruined hose owes its unhappy state to sharp finger nails. Runners up are pets, cats and dogs in particular. But for them, business would take a sharp drop.

Other sources of discomfiture to milady and profit to Mr. Underwood are weeds, chairs and strain.