shoe leather

Malkin also likes to get out of her house and do shoe-leather reporting, albeit with ideological intent.

He did not see the look, which was a startled and sorrowful one; he was bending over his shoe-leather.

She lives down the Mews here to the right—name of Horlick, and as honest a woman as ever stood in shoe-leather.

It was a tempting morsel—more susceptible of mastication than shoe-leather.