06/27/03

PETER FARRELL

TROUTDALE -- It looks like a tin can with a crank and a bunch of needles. So it comes as a surprise that the circular sock machine can claim a place in helping win World War I.

JoJo Hall's machine doesn't provide dry socks to soldiers standing in damp trenches, but she does sell some of the socks she makes on the Internet.

At least, she does now that she finally got the darn thing working. Hall got her first machine from a friend who found it at an estate sale. "She couldn't get it to work, and she got frustrated and gave it to me."

Hall doesn't like to give up on something, she said, and eventually realized her machine was missing a part. She went online to learn more, and found the Circular Sock Machine Society of America. Now she has two machines, is a board member and secretary of the group, and is bringing its annual convention to her hometown of Troutdale this weekend.

About 70 of the machines, which go back to the 1800s and were last manufactured in 1985, will be on display at the Sam Cox Building at Glenn Otto Park. More than 50 sock people have registered for convention sessions.

Knitters and antique collectors both find the machines interesting -- so interesting that they might pay up to $2,000 for machines that at one point the U.S. government was giving away free.

"I love the history of the machine as much as actually using it," Hall said.

A highlight of the machine's history is that during World War I women all over the country -- as well as in Canada, Australia and Britain -- were knitting like mad to save sockless soldiers from developing trench foot, or foot rot. Cold, wet trenches could make a soldier's feet swell to twice their normal size. Severe cases required amputation.

The condition disabled thousands of soldiers, so many that British troops were ordered to change socks twice a day. Soldiers also covered their feet with whale oil to keep them a little warmer.

But socks were in short supply.

"In 1917 a special commission of the Red Cross cabled national headquarters for supplies from France," Hall said. "They needed 1.5 million mufflers, sweaters and socks. They distributed the military patterns to women."

It was a huge order, even for the Red Cross production division, which in 1916 began organizing groups to make surgical dressings and refugee clothing and ended up with 8 million women making articles for the war effort.

Mabel Thorp Boardman, whose other claims to fame include unseating an aging Clara Barton as head of the Red Cross, headed the production effort. It took a woman about a week to knit a pair of wool socks for a soldier. With the sock machine, she knew, a person could make a pair in 40 minutes.

"The Red Cross set up these knitting rooms all across the country," Hall said. "They were all supplied with sock machines and wool. Even the Rockefeller mansion in New York had a knitting room. Almost everyone knitted everywhere. There were contests and competitions."

But knitting machines were not perfect. "They were standardized, but not mass-produced the way machines are today," Hall said. Individual factory workers turned out slightly different machines. "Each machine was so different that if you broke a part you could get one from the same machine and it wouldn't fit."

The knitting machines were sold door-to-door in the late 1800s as a home business for women, Hall said. Although one line was advertised as "better than a hundred hands," many people simply couldn't master the technique. That has been a boon for antique collectors.

"A lot of people gave up on them and put them in closets," she said. As a result, barely used machines are sometimes found in attics in their original boxes -- always a bonus for collectors -- with instructions and the sample products sent with the machines.

Hall is one of a few people who makes socks to order, from size 18 to baby present sizes, and she can even knit pairs in separate sizes for each foot. She sells the socks for $23 a pair on the Web at www.sweetpeaz.com.

There is a skill to making the socks, she said, and about 50 people have registered for the convention's classes on such topics as using the ribber, fancy stitches and open work, different heels and toes, the kitchener stitch and knitting mittens.

Peter Farrell: 503-294-5937; peterfarrell@news.oregonian.com