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 J

ShoeJftakuwL
Old and New

FRED A. GANNON

A short history of the

American Shoe Manufacturing Industry.
The marvelous progress that has been made
S
 Copyright by
FRED A. GANNON
1911

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Printed by
NEVVCOMB & GAUSS
Salein. Mass.

Cci.A•i^•^l3l
 ^/

SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS.

Part 1. First shoes and shoemakers in

America. Indians and moccasins. First
shoemalcers came on Mayflower.
Part 2. Colonial shoemakers. Their
hard struggle for existence. Shoemakers
cut hair, pulled teeth and did other things.
Part 3. The time of the "Ten Foot-
ers." Shoemakers used the lap stone and
flat face hammer.

Part 4. Union store period. Shoemak-

ers were paid in groceries and dragged
them home in a cart.
Part 5. Story of Ebenezer Breed, who
established the protective tariff on shoes,
and died in an almshouse.
Part 6. Howe's great invention of the
sewing machine. His dream of what his
genius failed to discover.
Part 7. John B. Nichols made the
Howe machine sew leather.

Part 8. Blake's great invention of the

McKay machine, and the revolution in
shoemaking that it caused.
Part 9. The story of the lasting ma-
chine, showing how a genius from Dutch
Guiana revolutionized the lasting of
American shoes.
Part The general development of
10.

machinery, Including the Goodyear ma-

chine and the pegging machine, and the
benefits from it.

Part 11. American leather making. The

story of the chrome process.
 Shoe Making

Part 12. Organization of the factory

system, showing how the individual work-
man became a part of an organization
and how he was benefitted.

Part 13. The Greater New England

movement.
Part 14. Organization of the machin-
ery system of shoemaking by the U. S.
M. Co. and its benefits to the trade and
the people.
Part 15. Development of transporta-
tion of shoes from the time of the "bag
boss" to modern swift express service.
Part 16. Development of shoe styles
from colonial to 20th century fashions,
the use of blacking, of laces and but-
tons and the development of the modern
repair business.

Part 17. Clogs, pattens and goloshes

and modern rubbers. The story of Good-
year's invention of the method of vul-
canizing rubber.
 UK^ W *

-'''Ml-

¥
,vt^-
 PART I

In the manufacture of boots and

shoes the United States is the fore-
most nation in the world today.
The industry of making boots and
shoes is among the most important
industries of the nation today and
it is also among the oldest. An in-
quiry into the rise of the industry
from its humble beginnings of co-
lonial times to its splendid pros-
perous, but, very complex state,
of today, reveals some interesting
changes in commercial and social
life, as well as in the mechanics
and economics of manufacturing.
The first white people in this
country of course brought over
their boots and shoes from the
European mother countries, and
they were for a long time depend-
ent upon the mother countries for
additional supplies of footwear.
There were, in the first days of
the settlements, no big factories,
such as there are today, nor even
BJiy little shoe shops or **ten foot-
ers,*' as the shops occupied by the
old fashioned hand shoemakers
were called. The colonists found
only forests and wild lands inhab-
ited by Indians and animals.
The Indians made leather by
primative processes and they used
the leather for their garments and
wigwams. They sewed two or
three pieces of leather together to
make a sock, called a moccasin.
Pioneers among the white men put
on me moccasins of the Indians
and used leather tanned by In-
dians for making hunting shirts,
trousers and leggings. Some of
the settlers in the towns wore
footwear and clothing of leather
made by the Indians, when sup-
plies from Europe were scant.
The American shoe manufactur-
ing industry appears to have had'
its beginning in Salem, Massachu-
setts. Thomas Beard and Isaac
Eickerman settled in Salem in
1629, coming on the Mayflower, on
her second voyage. They were
shoemakers by trade and they are
the first shoemakers of record in
this country. Philip Kertland, a
shoemaker, settled in Lynn in 1635
and was the shoemaker in
first
that now celebrated shoe manufac-
turing city.
The shoemakers who came to
this country in its early day were
most welcome men. The rough
lands of the new country, broken
only by rude roads and paths,
wore out quickly even the strong-
est boots. was difficult to get
It
new it was necessary to
boots for
send to Europe for them, until the
shoemakers came. Beard and
Eickerman were considered so val-
uable to the colony at Salem
that they were to have their board
and houseroom at the expense of
the colony. Kertland was granted
 Old and New

ten acres of land by Lynn. The

littletown of Reading, in Massa-
chusetts, granted its first shoe-
maker ''rights to wood and herb-
age, meaning that he could gath-
'
'

er from the town lands such wood

as he wished for fuel and herbs
as he wished for medicine without
cost.
These early shoemakers brought
over "the art and mystery of shoe-
making,'' as the trade was called
in colonial times. They brought
it from Europe as a trade new to
this land, but ancient in Europe.
Beginnings of this "art and mys-
tery of shoemaking" may be
traced even back to ancient Egypt,
for methods of some of the Egyp-
tian shoemakers, as pictured on
the walls of tombs at Thebes cor-
respond to methods of the hand
shoemakers of former days in this
country, ^he new industry was
very slow in starting in this coun-
try but after it once had a good
start it flourished mightily, and it
accomplished more in a few years
for the men engaged in it, as well
as for the world at large, than had
been accomplished in Europe in
more than 2000 years.
The shoe industry in this coun-
try has so prospered that the
United States now makes about
$500,000,000 worth of boots and
shoes annually. It produces about
300,000,000 pairs, which averages
about three pairs to each person
in thecountry. It sells $10,000,-
000 worth of shoes to foreign
countries each year. It provides
people with the best footwear at
 Shoe Making

the lowest prices that they ever

have had.
The rise of the American shoe
industry from its small beginnings
to its present splendid position
makes one of the most interesting
chapters in industrial history.
 Old and New

PART II

The first shoemakers in the col-

onies, though most welcome, found
a very poor market for products
of their skill. People needed shoes,
it is true, but there were only a
few people in the colonies, and
they were spread out along the en-
tire Atlantic Coast among the 13
colonies, in little settlements, and
in isolated cabins in clearings of
the forest. New England was the
manufacturing section of the col-
onies, and, naturally, led in shoe
manufacturing. There were some
Dutch shoemakers in New York.
The Southern colonies were agri-
cultural communities and they de-
pended largely upon the artisans
of New England and of Europe
for their manufactured goods of
all kinds.
The struggle for existence was
keen in colonial days. Necessity
compelled settlers to become jacks
of all trades. The farmer often
tanned hides and skins from his
own cattle, or from beasts of the
field, which he hunted. He hunted
deer, bear, and the wolf for their
flesh for food. He used for tanning
the pelts bark from trees close by
his cabin. He sank a hogshead or
an old boat, or box, in his yard for
a vat. Sometimes he cut up this
leather and made it into garments,
 Shoe Making

coats and trousers too, as well as

boots and shoes.
Many of the first shoemakers
found insufficient employment in
the settlements. There were not
enough people to buy their shoes
to keep them busy all the time.
Some of thesa shoemakers became
jacks of all trades while others be-
came traveling shoemakers.
The jack of all trades undertook
to sharpen knives, saws and axes,
and to mend furniture, tinker
clocks, teach singing, cut hair, and
even to pull teeth, for the shoe-
maker was the only person in the
settlement who had pincers.
Thomas Bowler, of Lynn, com-
bined the tasks of town clerk with
those of shoemaker. He charged
ten cents an hour for his work as
town clerk, for that was the
amount he earned as a shoemaker.
The traveling shoemaker packed
his kit, and his stock of leather in
a bag, threw the bag over his
shoulder, and walked from settle-
ment to settlement, seeking work.
He was warmly received at many
an isolated home. Not only did
he bring the means of providing
new footwear, and of mending the
old, but he also brought the news
and gossip of the time, which he
cheerfully dispensed and dis-
cussed, as he sat in the warm
chimney place and worked over
his last, with the settler and his
family gathered around him.
The kit of the colonial shoe-
maker was necessarily quite sim-
ple. He had a flat face hammer
and an awl and pincers and
 Old and New

knives, which he brought from

England with him, a lap stone
that was picked up on the sea-
shore, some hand forged nails,
some linen thread spun perhaps
by housewives of New England,
some wax from the bee hives of
colonial farms, and leather im-
ported from Europe or possibly
made by some early tanner. His
product was crude, for he had
only crude tools and materials
with which to work.
The leather was rough and
heavy. It was bark tanned. It
was stuffed with oil from fish of
the sea, which was quite plentiful
in colonial times, since the sea-
faring men made oil for export to
Europe. But the leather was not
glazed, or polished, as is leather
of to-day.
The shoes made by the colonial
shoemakers, though not hand-
some, were strong and serviceable,
and well endured the hard wear
which they got on the rough
roads. As the colonies increased
in wealth and population, the
well-to-do people called for fine
shoes. For them, some fine shoes
were imported from London, and
Paris. A few enterprising shoe-
makers imported fine leather from
abroad, and made stylish shoes,
particularly buckled slippers for
the beaux, and dancing slippers
for the belles.
 Shoe Making

PART III

Shoemaking was a picturesque

industry in the first half of the
19th century. Whittier portrayed
some interesting aspects of it in
his ''Cobbler Keezar" and other
poems.
The typical shoe shop of New
England of a century ago was a
wooden building ten feet square,
or the size of a small living room
in a house of today. It had one
room with a stud of six and one
half feet so that a tall shoemaker
had to take off his hat when en
tering it. It also had a garret in
which was kept a wonderful mis-
cellany of discarded articles such
as old lasts and tools, umbrellas,
broken clocks, chairs, candle rig-
gers, old boots and shoes and
other trumpery. The old time
shoemaker religiously believed
that everything came into use
again once in seven years, and so
saved everything.
Such shops as there were, were
scattered over New England in
the farming regions as well as in
the manufacturing centers. It was
a common practice for a farmer
to till his farm in the summer time
and to spend his winter making
shoes, or for a fisherman to fish in
the summer time and make shoes
in the winter.

lO
 Old and New

The interior of a shoe shop of

a century ago would amuse a shoe-
maker of today. On the sunny
side was the shoemaker's bench or
seat. The salamander stove was
in the middle. Leather tubs for
soaking soles and miscellaneous
supplies were scattered over the
floor. A couple of extra chairs
were placed for the convenience
of visitors. On the wall was a bat-
tered clock, a notice of a political
meeting or picture of the cobbler's
favorite candidate.
The shoemaker worked **on a
seat " or a low stool, having a low
bench attached to it to pro-
vide room for his kit. The
"seat" corresponded to the
*'seat" on which the cobbler
of today works. Sometimes
shoemakers shared a shop. Then
it was a problem to divide up the
room evenly and to place each
man so that he would not strike
his neighbor when he **
swung
out" with his waxed ends in sew-
ing a shoe.
The first shops were heated by
an open fire-place. When stoves
became common shoemakers set
them up in their shops. They
showed favor for the style of
stove called "the salamander.'*
But the shops were loosely built,
and it was a difficult matter to get
them comfortably warm even with
the hottest kind of a fire. Some
shoemakers crept so close to the
fire to keep warm that they actu-
ally wore "shin boards'' to pre-
vent the flames from scorching
their legs. Yet the cold winds
 Shoe Making

pierced through the cracks in the

doors, windows and walls, and
struck the shoemaker in the back
and made him shiver. Of course,
in the summer time the old fash-
ioned shoe shop with its leaky
walls was comfortable.
It is a tradition that shoemakers
on very cold days used to debate
whether it would cost more to heat
the shop than they could earn. To
decide the problem an unlucky ap-
prentice lad was captured and set
down onto a wet lap stone. If he
froze to the stone it was too cold
to work. So the shoemaker^ went
home, either to play cards by the
fireside or to get a gun and go
hunting.
Johnson says in his "Sketches of
Lynn" that the following tools and
appliances were regarded as neces-
sary by the old fashioned shoe-
maker :

"A lap stone, hammer, stirrup,

whet board, pincers, nippers,
shoulder stick, long stick, petti-
bois, toe-stick, fender, bead, scrap-
er, knives of different sorts, such
as skiver, paring off knife, heel
knife, etc., awl, bristles, tacks,
beeswax, a piece of sponge,
paste horn, bottle for blacking,
gum and acid, chalk, dog fish skin,
stitch rag, grease, channel-opener
and apron."
The shoemaker of today would
be quite as much at loss to handle
all these old fashioned tools as
would be the cordwainer of a cen-
tury ago to operate the machinery
of factories today.
 Old and New

The lap stone of the old time

shoemaker was sometimes selected
from the stones of a neighboring
beach or field, or in rare cases, it
might have been secured by the
shoemaker in some foreign land
that he visited when he was a sail-
or before the mast.
The stirrup, a leather strap,
was primarily intended for use
in strapping a shoe to the last,
but it frequently served as a
means for disciplining or stimu-
lating the training of an appren-
tice. Some jocose shoemakers
pasted a sign on the wall of their
shop reading ''Strap Oil for Sale
Here." When a small boy of a
century ago was told to go to the
shoemakers for some strap oil he
foresaw that a painful scene wa^
to be enacted in the woodshed.
Colonial shoemakers often took
pay for their work in corn, beaver
skins, wampum or any other com-
modity that served as a substitute
for money in the colonial days,
when real money was scarce.
Towards the close of the colonial
period wages of shoemakers rose
as high as 70 cents a day, in cash.
Today, shoemakers of high skill
can sometimes earn 70 cents an
hour. The General Court of Massa-
chusetts undertook to regulate the
industry of shoemaking. At one
time it forbade tanners to make
shoes, or shoemakers to make
leather on the ground that a man
should not have two trades, lest
he injure another man. In the
colony of New York there was
actually prosecution of tanners
 Shoe Making

and shoemakers for maintaining

a monopoly.
The General Court of Massa-
chusetts also forbade persons of
mean estate, or scant wealth, to
wear great boots, or other expen-
sive footwear. This law was in-
tended to prevent extravagance
in dress by people who could not
afford rich apparel.
James Everell was a great shoe-
maker in Boston along in 1650.
He employed several journeymen
to workfor him. He made fine
boots and shoes for the wealthy
merchants of Boston, and for the
crown officers, and their families.
He made some second grade shoes
which were sold as ready made
shoes to the poorer folk of the
town and colony. It is tradition
that he even exported shoes.
Everell owned the property
that is now bounded by Hanover,
Elm and Uiiion streets in Boston.
He secured from the town officials
a permission to sink pits, **to
water his leather in." He ac-
quired much wealth for his time.
He was a pioneer in making Bos-
ton an important shoe centre. He
served as selectman of the town.
One of the first transactions in
boots and shoes in the new coun-
try occurred in 1623, when Gov.
Bradford, and others of the Ply-
mouth colony, formed a syndicate
and raised $250, and sent Isaac
Ellerton to England to buy shoes,
stockings and cloth.

14
 Old and New

PART IV

Real cash was scarce a centurj

a».'0 and credits were long. NevV
England shoe manufacturers sold
their shoes to the South and
the West, as far as it was
settled, on six, and even on
nine months' credit. Sometimes
they accepted wheat, tobacco,
sugar, cotton, or other commodi-
ties in payment for their shoes.
As shoe manufacturers received
cash for their goods only in small
quantities, they were able to pay
their employees only small wages,
and those wages quite infre-
quently. It was a common prac-
tice for a shoe manufacturer of
60 or 70 years ago to get his em-
ployes to trust him for their
wages, until he could sell his shoes
for cash. Then he would pay them
their total wages, and a premium
besides. If he lost on his venture
his employes lost on their wages.
A successful Marblehead, Mass.,
shoe manufacturer got his start
by cutting shoes on top of a pork
barrel in his grocery store, and by
getting his customers to make
his shoes he paid them in grocer-
ies.
In Lynn, the practice of paying
shoemakers with orders on a
store was developed to a consid-
erable extent. The Union Store,
 Shoe Making

a noted store of 1830, was estab-

lished and carried on by a group
of Lynn manufacturers. It was
stocked with goods of all kinds,
indeed, with everything that a
man might need in daily life.
Shoe manufacturers who were
interested in this store, gave their
employes, when they brought in
their manufactured shoes each
Saturday afternoon, orders on
the store in payment of wages.
Each order read "Please deliver
to the bearer goods to the amount
of ."
The amount was never large,
for wages of shoemakers of 1830
ranged from $5 to $7 a week,
when they were paid in orders.
A man who insisted on cash pay-
ments of his wages usually had a
great deal of difficulty in finding
employment. The orders went
into circulation, for shoemakers
used them to pay for goods that
they bought at stores other than
the Union Store, and to pay the
doctor, the druggist and others.
The orders were accepted as
worth 60 or 70 per cent of their
face value, when in general circu-
lation, but were worth their full
face value, in exchange for goods
at the Union Store.
Fortunately, necessities of life
were very cheap 80 years ago.
So a shoemaker who brought in
his week's work, and got an order
on the store in payment for
his wages, was usually able to' ex-
change that order for enough
goods to keep himself and his
family alive for the week.

i6
 Old and New

It was common for the shoe-

maker to fetch to the factory the
shoes that he had made during
the week in a bag, or a basket,
often the family laundry basket,
or even in a wheel barrow, or a
cart made by placing a soap box
on solid wooden wheels. This cart
he loaded up for his trip back
home with leather* and supplies
for his next week's work, and
with his supplies that he got at
the store in exchange for his or-
der. The supplies often consisted
of a few pounds of corn meal and
a little molasses, tea or coffee, a
salt fish, some sugar, a piece of
butter, a few yards of cloth, a
new hat, or a piece of crockery.
Necessities of life were very
scant indeed a century ago. Men
knew what it was to go hungry.
But they struggled on, courage-
ously seeking better times, and
manfully building the founda-
tion of the prosperity that is en-
joyed by their successors today.
There were many v_ pleasant
hours in the life of the shoemaker
of a century ago. The occupation
of shoemaking was agreeable to
many, because a man could read
from an open book by his side, or
discuss political topics of the day
with friends, as he made shoes.
These facilities for improving the
mind were taken advantage of by
many shoemakers. Roger Sher-
man studied from an open book
as he made shoes, and so did Hen-
ry Wilson, ''The Natick Cob-
bler.*'
Shoemakers who lacked ambi-

IX
 Shoe Making

tion to profitably employ their

leisure time found many ways to
idle away the hours. Haverhill
shoemakers had a curious sche-
dule of days for absenting them-
selves from their tasks of shoe-
making. In April, the Haverhill
shoemaker would go out one day
and sun himself on a bank. It
was his spring medicine. In May.
he would take a day to plant his
garden, and in June a day to hoe
it. In July, he would make hay

for his cow; in August he would

pick berries; in September go to
the shore for a clam bake, and in
the winter months he would go
gunning frequently. Once a Haver-
hill shoemaker felt that he
wanted a day off, no power
known to the employers of the
time could induce him to work.
In Lynn, almost every shoe-
maker kept a pig. The slaughter
of the pig was quite a ceremony.
The shoemaker and his friends
celebrated the event as a holiday.
The pork was packed away for
use in the winter time. Many
Lynn shoemakers lived on their
pork, ondandelions from the
field and on clams and fish from
the harbor, during the panic of
1837, when there was no work for
them.
The introduction and use of shoe
machinery, and the development of
the factory system, led to increase
in wages, shortening of hours of la-
bor, and improvement of product.

i8
 Old and New

PART V

After the Revolution, the new

nation began to prosper. But its
shoe manufacturers could not get
a start in their efforts to develop
their business. They had im-
proved the quality and appear-
ance of their shoes so much that
the newspapers of the time de-
clared American made shoes supe-
rior to the best, imported shoes
and advised American people to
buy the home product as a pa-
triotic duty. But a habit once es-
tablished, good or bad, is difficult
to abandon, and the American
people kept on wearing many im-
ported shoes. The future looked
dark for the American shoe manu-
facturing industry.
At the critical moment, the
first great leader of the American
shoe manufacturing industry ap-
peared on the scene. This man,
Ebenezer Breed, proposed that
Congress should put upon import-
ed boots and shoes a tariff that
would keep them out of this coun-
try, until American shoe manufac-
turers got opportunity to develop
their business, and to prove to the
American people that the Ameri-
can made shoes were best. After
much agitation of his idea he con-
vinced Congress of its merit, and
a tariff was placed on the Ameri-

19
 Shoe Making

can shoe industry, and it remains

in force even to this day. Behind
this protective tariff the Ameri-
can shoe manufacturing industry
has prospered in a way that has
amazed the shoe trade of the
world.
Breed's career was dramatic.
He was born in Lynn, Mass., the
son of Quaker parents. He
learned the shoe trade. When a
young man, he went to Philadel-
phia, then the capital of the na-
tion. There, his Quaker faith ad-
mitted him to the best society.
During his stay in Philadelphia,
he made the proposition that a
tariff be placed on boots and
shoes. Leading people of Phila-
delphia, to whom he argued his
plan, agreed to help him. He
gave a big dinner, to which he in-
vited leading members of Con-
gress and prominent citizens of
Philadelphia. The brilliant Dolly
Madison was there. During the
dinner, he made a grandiloquent
speech. A fragment of it is pre-
served to-day.
Soon after the dinner, Congress
placed a protective tariff on boots
and shoes. Breed, who engaged
in the wholesale boot and shoe in-
dustry, prospered much. He be-
came one of the early great
American merchants. He went to
England where he was received
by King George and Queen Char-
West, the painter, gave him
lotte.
a platter with his own portrait
upon it. He visited Paris, too,
but there he hid one day in a cel-
lar until the riot and bloodshed

20
 Old and New T
of a sad 24 hours in the French
revolution had passed.
Breed returned home. He made
a tour of triumph of his country.
He was feted everywhere, but he
quickly fell to the depths of de-
spair. He loved a Quakeress. Her
parents refused to permit his at-
tentions. They declared that he
drank liquors while in Europe in
violation of the temperance prin-
ciples of the Quakers. He tried
to drown his sorrow in the wine
cup, and he drank it to the very
dregs. He^i lost his business, his
property and even his eye-
sight. He made his way a broken,
blinded man to the almshouse in
his native town of Lynn.
Some kind person taught him to
make shoes. He made them as
best his sightless eyes would let
him. Some of them he sent to
Dolly Madison and other friends
of his prosperous days. They re-
membered him with gifts. He be-
came a gentle man again. The chil-
dren learned to love him and to call
him ''Uncle Eben" and to lead
him along the streets as he went
on visits to friends. One little girl
brought him baskets of dainties
from her mother's kitchen. Her
mother was the Quakeress whom
Breed had loved.
The man who was so powerful
as to build up a great wall of pro-
tection about the entire American
shoe trade spent his declining days
quietly and peacefully in an alms-
house, forgotten by nearly every-
one but the Quakers.
 Shoe Making

PART VI

Up to the middle of the 19th

century the uppers of shoes were
stitched at home by hand. The
operation was called "binding
shoes." Lucy Larcom made it
famous in her poem, "Hannah at
the Window Binding Shoes."
Housekeepers in the shoe towns
commonly kept a lot of shoes in the
kitchen,and when they sat down
to rest during the routine of house-
hold duties, they picked up shoes
and sewed them to improve their
moments. Wives and daughters of
shoemakers commonly '*
"bound"
shoes for the breadwinner of the
family. Dependent women "bound"
shoes in order to earn their daily
bread. By working all day they were
able to earn 50 or 75 cents.
The work was tedious and it hurt
the eyes. But it was very necessary,
for shoe manufacturers had much
difficulty in getting shoes enough
sewed to satisfy the wants of their
customers. In the homes of some
prosperous manufacturers it was
the custom for wives and daughters
and household servants to sit down
for half an hour after dinner each
day and "bind shoes."
Along in 1850 these things were
changed. The sewing machine, in-
vented by Howe, was adapted to
the sewing of leather by Nichols,

22
 Old and New

and the occupation of "binding"

Bhoes ceased to flourish.
Elias Howe was a workman in a
Cambridge machine shop where he
had come from his boyhood farm
home at Spencer, Mass. He was of
a family of inventors. It occurred
to him one night, as he watched his
patient wife toiling with the family
sewing, that he might build a ma-
chine that would help her. His idea
was not new. Patents on a sewing
machine had been taken out in Eng-
land as early as 1750. Napoleon had
offered a rich reward to any inven-
tor who would make a machine that
would sew shoes. He wanted the
shoes for his soldiers so that they
could march and fight better. Howe
wanted a sewing machine to help
his wife in her daily work. Na-
poleon failed; Howe won.
Howe had a desperate struggle.
He began to work on his ideas of
a sewing machine evenings after
his day's work in the factory was
done. He became so fascinated
with his dream of a sewing machine
that he gave up his place in the fac-
tory and devoted nearly all his time
to working on his wonderful inven-
tion, sparing from it only enough
time to do odd jobs in machinery or
to pawn some household possession,
60 as to provide himself and family
with daily bread. But they often
suffered hunger and want.
After eight years' labor he built
a machine which took stitches. It
is a pretty tradition that one night,
defeated in all his endeavors and at
hil wit's end, he threw himself down
to restless sleep. He dreamed that

23
 Shoe Making

he was seized by a tribe of strange

people whose king commanded him
'.o stitch him a garment upon his
sewing machine upon pain of in-
stant death. His machine refused
to stitch. Guards seized him to ex-
ecute him. He noticed that their
spears had holes near their points,
not at their butts. Instantly it
game to him that the eye of the
needle of the sewing machine should
be at its point, not at its butt, as
in the ordinary needle. He made a
needle with the eye near the point,
and his sewing machine became a
success.
But success had not yet come to
Howe. Nobody believed in his in-
vention. He could secure no mon-
ey with which to build and market
his machine, despite the fact that
it was one of the most valuable ma-
chines in the world's history. He
had to take a position as a railroad
engineer to earn his living.
He was tempted to accept an of-
fer from England for $1250 for
the English rights to his patents
and a position at $15 a week. The
position in England was disagree-
able to him. He returned home,
pawning the model of his sewing
machine to get money enough to
pay his passage. When he arrived
in New York he learned that his
beloved wife had died of consump-
tion and that shrewd machinery
companies had seized upon his in-
vention and were putting sewing
machines upon the market.
He borrowed money, brought suit
against those who had infringed his
patents, and won a victory. From

24
 Old and New

this time on his career was one of

much prosperity. Companies mak-
ing sewing machines had to pay him
royalties, and at one time he was
receiving $4000 a day in royalty
payments.
He enlisted in the Union army
during the war as a private. The
paymaster was slow in coming
roimd. One day Howe disappeared
from camp. He returned the next
day with a big box, from which he
paid off the entire regiment. For
his invention he was awarded the
cross of the Legion of Honor of
France. He died in 1867.

25
 Shoe Making

PART VII

An early advertisement of sew-

ing machines, published by I. M.
Singer & Co., in a Boston news-
paper in 1851, attracted the at-
tention of a young shoemaker,
John Brooks Nichols, of Lynn.
He was bom in Wakefield, Feb-
ruary 8, 1823. He learned the
trade of shoe cutting of his cousin
Thomas Batfcroft, who had a shop
in the basement of the Congrega-
tional church close by Lynn Com-
mon. After two years as a shoe
cutter, he bought a retail store
in Cambridge. This venture
failed. Then he saw the adver-
tisement of the sewing machines.
Mr. Nichols, an ambitious young
man, was seeking some opening
with a bright future. He decided
that the sewing machine would be-
come of great value. So he bought
one of the first lot of 25 machines
that I. M. Singer & Co. made.
This machine, Mr. Nichols set
up in a shop on Sudbury street,
Boston. He established a con-
tract stitching business, stitching
pantaloons on the machine. At
the time, the sewing machine had
not been perfected for use in
stitching leather. Mr. Nichols, a
shoemaker by trade, naturally
wondered why the machine
couldn't be made to stitch leather.

26
 Old and New

He began to experiment, using

scraps of kid
leather that he
brought from Lynn shoe facto-
ries.
He found that his sewing ma-
chine wouldn't stitch leather neatly
because the needle was bigger
than the thread. The seams were
loose and the stitches coarse.
But he was of the opinion
that his machine could be made to
stitch leather as nicely as did
the "binders.'' To make it do so,
he got around to his shop one and
one-half hours ahead of time in
the morning, and he left it one
and one-half hours late, putting
in the extra time in his attempts
to make his machine stitch leath-
er.
Finding that the needle was too
large, hewent to the needle manu-
facturers and got them to make
needles of new shapes and sizes.
These needles he filed, and even
smoothed down with emery paper
to get them of the desired small
size. He
also went to the manu-
facturers of silk and cotton
threads, and got them to make
new kinds of thread for his ex-
periments. After months of pa-
tient labor, he succeeded in
stitch-
ing leather on the machine so
that
its stitches compared favorably
with the stitches of the shoe bind-
ers.
I. M. Singer & Co.
undertook to
put onto the market machines
for
stitching shoes. Thev sold to three
Lynn manufacturers (Scudder
Moore, John Wooldredge
and
Walter Keene), rights to use
the

27
•
 Shoe Making

machine for stitching leather in

Essex County. Mr. Nichols be-
came instructor of operators on
the machines used by these firms.
He was paid $3 a day for his ser-
vices,which was twice the wage
that he ever received before, and
a wonderfully high wage for the
time.
Mr. Nichols decided that he
would himself start a contract
stitching shop. The three manu-
facturers who had purchased the
exclusive rights to iise Singer ma-
chines for stitching shoes in Essex
County protested to the Singer Co.
against Mr. Nichols starting in
business. The Sinerer Co. declined
to let Mr. Nichols have any ma-
chines. But he secured a Singer
machine that the Singer Company
had sold to his cousin, Thomas
Bancroft, before they made their
exclusive agreement with the
three manufacturers. This ma-
chine he remodeled so that he
was able to use it for stitching
shoes.
At this time Mr. Nichols first
heard of Elias Howe. Howe was
just home from his unhappy Eu-
ropean trip, and was laying claim
to his patent rights. Mr. Nichols
went to him in Cambridge and
asked for permission to make use
of his invention in stitching shoes.
Mr. Howe replied that Mr.
Nichols was the first man who had
asked permission to use his inven-
tion. He furthermore said that
William R. Bliss, a Worcester shoe
manufacturer, had the rights to
use the invention for stitching
28
 Old and New

leather. Mr. Bliss was one of the

good friends who provided Howe
with money to fight for his patent
rights.
Mr. Nichols joined interests
with Howe and Bliss. Howe, with
money provided by Bliss, suc-
ceeded in putting a line of sew-
ing machines on the market.
These machines were called the
Howe improved machine. They
were built on designs prepared
by Mr. Nichols. The profit on
these machines enabled Howe to
employ counsel and to fight his
patent suits to a successful finish.
Mr. Nichols continued in the
machinery business as a partner
in the firm of Nichols, Bliss & Co.
and later of Nichols, Leavitt &
Co. When the sewing machine was
new, shoe manufacturers used to
visit the Nichols & Bliss store in
Boston, inspect the machine and
say that it was necessary to give
them a practical demonstration.
So he employed shoe stitchers to
operate the machines in the Bos-
ton store. When shoe manufac-
turers came in and saw the ma-
chines sewing shoes they decided
that they must have them, and
they bought.
Mr. Nichols demonstrated the
machine in several communities.
In one place, shoemakers, both
men and women, crowded around
the machine. Mr. Nichols made
it run splendidly. The next morn-
ing a shoe binder sent word to
him that she ''would like to hang
him to a sour apple tree because
his machine would take her work

^%
 Shoe Making

away from her." She did not

foresee that themachine would
save her labor and add to her
wages.
Mr. Nichols retired from bus-
iness many years ago. On Feb.
8, 1910, he passed his 87th birth-
day pleasantly at his home in
Lynn. He is a remarkably alert
and active for a man of his years.

30
 Old and New

PART VIII

When the Civil War

broke out,
the government Washinerton
at
was perplexed to provide shoes
for the army. So many shoe-
makers had left their benches to
volunteer that there were not
enough at home to make sufficient
shoes for the army. Some shoe-
makers left their unfinished shoes
on the bench as Putnam left hJs
plow in the furrow. Some manu-
facturers rode around New Eng-
land towns waving rolls of bills,
and offering premiums to those
shoemakers who would stay a
while longer and finish up the
shoes in the factory. But the shoe-
makers marched off to war and
there weren't enough left behind
to make shoes for the soldiers, to
say nothing of the other people
of the country. Prices of shoes
rose rapidly.
Congress considered the matter
of taking the tariff off boots and
shoes, the tariff that Breed had
won, so that large quantities of
European shoes might be brought
in to make up the threatened de-
ficiency in the American supply.
A crisis was at hand in the Amer-
ican shoe manufacturing in-
dustry. But, as has always hap-
pened in this great nation, the
right man with the right idea ap-

31
 Shoe Making

peared at the right moment. Col.

Gordon McKay brought out his
sewing machine, an invention so
wonderful that one machine took
the pjace of a whole company of
shoemakers who had gone to war.
This machine was invented by
Lyman R. Blake, a young man of
South Abington, a little town on
the South Shore of Massachu-
setts, where he was born August
24, 1835. When a boy he began
to work in a shoe factory during
his school vacations. Before he
was 21 years old he had saved
$1400 from his wages, and this
sum he invested in a shoe manu-
facturing firm, of which he be-
came a partner.
To improve the business of his
company he conceived the idea of
making a machine that would sew
the soles of shoes to the uppers,
just as the Howe machine sewed
the uppers together. His part-
ners thought the idea somewhat
dreamy, and insisted that if he
worked on it, he should work on
it only after fact<»ry hours, and
should spend only his own money
on it.
Blake went ahead on these
terms. Evenings, after finishing
his day in the factory, he drew
his designs and whittled out his
model. He made a wooden ma-
chine that looked to him as if it
would sew shoes. He got the vil-
lage wheelwright to make him
moulds, and from them he had
parts of a metal machine cast.
He put the machine together and
found that it would sew shoes.

32
 Old and New

But he realized that he had a

machine that was too big for his
business experience. His patent
attorney introduced him to Col.
Gordon McKay, a machinery man-
ufacturer of experience and abil-
ity. Col. McKay agreed to buy
Blake's invention, giving him for
it $8000 in cash and $62,000 in
notes, to be paid from the profits
of the company.
Col. McKay started to develop
the machine. Blake took his
$8000 in cash and went to Staun-
ton, Va., where he established a
retail shoe store. He had hardly
opened the store when the war
broke out. He came North on the
last train out, leaving his stock
behind him.
His return home was most time-
ly. McKay was having a great
deal of trouble with his machine,
even though he had employed to
perfect it the ablest mechanical
engineers that money could se-
cure. Blake was the sole master
of the machine, however. He per-
fected it, and made it sew shoes,

and he taught others how to make

it sew shoes. The machines were
set up in shoe factories in New
England towns to take the place
of the shoemakers who had gone
to war. Soon the shoemaker sol-
diers at the front received the Mc-
Kay shoes. They looked upon
them in wonder, realizing that the
shoes were not sewed by hand
alone, and yet being unwilling to
believe thatit was possible to bui^d
a machine that would sew shoes.
 Shoe Making

PART IX

For a score of years after it

was proven practical and profit-
able to sew shoes by machinery,
it was necessary to last shoes by
hand. Inventors burned barrels
of midnight oil and promotors
spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars in endeavors to change
the methods of lasting shoes from
hand to machine, as Blake and
McKay had changed the methods
of sewing shoes.
Manufacturers had McKay ma-
chines and other machines in
their factories, but their lasting
rooms were occupied by hand
workmen. The lasters were very
strongly organized and their un-
ions strictly regulated their occu-
pation, limiting the number of ap-
prentices and insisting upon and
securing a very high wage.
Indeed, the hand lasters were
commonly looked upon as princes
among shoemakers. Their wages
ranged from $20 to $40 a week,
and at times even $50. Most of
the lasters were proud of their
position in the trade even to vain
boasting.
It is tradition that, in a Lynn
factory one day, a laster boast-
ed: **No matter if the McKay ma-
chine is a wonderful machine, no
man can build a machine that will

34
 '

Old and New

take the joJb of the laster until he

can make a machine that has
fingers like a laster, and that's
'
impossible.
The boast fell upon the ears of
J.W. Matzeliger, an operator of a
McKay machine. This young man
came to Lynn from Dutch Guiana,
where he was born, the son of a
Dutch engineer. He was educa-
ted in the government machine
shops. He came to this country
when a young man and obtained
a position in a Lynn shoe factory.
His mechanically trained mind
naturally bent itself upon ideas of
improving the McKay machine.
But when he heard the boast of
the laster that no machine could
possibly be built to last shoes, he
thought of the possibility of
building such a machine.
He went to work secretly on his
plan, for the shoemakers of his
time were very strongly opposed
to machinery. They thought it
took work away, from men. The
lasters, in particular, dreaded any
attempts to build a machine to
last shoes. Matzeliger established
a little experimental shop over
the West Lynn mission. There he
toiled each night, after complet-
ing his day's work in the shoe fac-
tory. His machine became his
idol. He spent all his money in
building it. Yet he was so short
of money that at times he picked
up bits of wood and old cigar
boxes from the street and used
them in making his model.
His first machine was a disap-
pointment, to himself, and to

35,
 Shoe Making

those who looked at it. One in-

ventor, who was also working on
a lasting machine, offered him $50
for his model. Matzeliger con-
cluded that if the model was
worth $50 to another person, it
was worth more than that to him-
self. So he kept it. He went to
work to build another model.
Unhappily for Matzeliger, his
secret leaked out. His fellow
workers laughed at him as a
dreamer, and the lasters jeered at
him. They did not foresee the
splendid results his work would
bring to them.
Matzeliger 's second model was
also a failure. But it was so
much of an improvement over the
first that a machinery man offered
him $1500 for it. Again he de-
cided that if the model was worth
something to another person it
was worth more to himself, and
he kept it He' set out to build a
.

third machine.
This third model was so satis-
factory that Lynn men, who in-
spected it, advanced Matzeliger
money with which to build a
fourth model This model was the
.

foundation of the present consoli-

dated lasting machine. Matzeli-
ger was exhausted by his efforts
to build the machine, and was un-
used to the New England climate.
His health failed him in the midst
of his work on the fourth model,
and he died before he completed
it.

But others saw the merit of his

invention and completed his mod-
el. The machine was put upon

36
 Old and New

the market. It was

set up in shoe
factories, where took the place
it

of hand lasters. They struck

against it. Abitter fight was car-
ried on for a while. Some of the
lasters said that the machine sung
to them, as it worked, "I've got
your job, I've got your job."
The machine was one of the
most remarkable shoe machines
ever built. Some of its motions
were exactly like those of the
hand lasters. So Matzeliger's ma-
chine proved vain the boast of the .

laster that a machine could not

be built to last shoes.
The story of Matzeliger well il-

lustrates how intricate are some

of the workings of our complex
civilization. Matzeliger came to
this country, from distant Dutch
Guiana, unused to our ways. Yet
he built a machine that revolu-
tionized the lasting of shoes, sub-
stituting a machine for the hand
methods that had been employed
since the days of the first Ameri-
can shoemakers.
The lasting machine, like the
McKay sewing machine, has im-
proved product, decreased cost
and decreased hours of labor and
has multiplied production. The
hand laster considered it a good
day's work to last 60 pairs of
shoes in the old fashioned way.
.

An operator of a lasting machine)

today will do from 200 to 300
pairs of shoes daily, according
to the nature of his work, and '(^

some operators have lasted as i

many as 700 pairs in ten hours. I

The invention of Matzeliger was

37
 Shoe Making

greatly improved by Sherman

Ladd. Of Mr. Ladd, it has been
said that he ** couldn't invent a
tooth-pick, but there never has
been a machine which he couldn't
improve upon."
^ Sidney W. Winslow and George
/ W. Brown made the invention of
\Matzeliger a commercial success.
\Mr. Winslow began his career as
San employe in his father's shoe
factory in Salem, Mass. George
W. Brown worked in a general
store in Vermont in the days of
his youth, was in the employ of
some Western railroads, and then
became interested in the sewing
machine business. Mr. Brown and
Mr. Winslow made their company
,
the Consolidated Lasting Ma-
\ chine Co., the strongest shoe ma-
\chinery company in the world.
^Eventually, they formed the
United Shoe Machinery Co. by
consolidating important machi-
nery companies with the Consoli-
dated Co.

38
 A MODERN SHOEMAKER.
Operating the Welt Sewing Machine at a speed of 500 stitches a minute.
 Old and New

PART X

Methods of making shoes have

been revolutionized by American
shoemakers in the past 275 years.
Changes have been made slowly.
One generation improving upon
the methods of its predecessors,
until the sum total of the changes
was a revolution of the industry
from a manual to a mechanic in-
dustry.
Shoes of colonial days were
commonly sewed by hand. Heavy
shoes were welt sewed, and light
shoes were turn made. Some
heavy boots were copper nailed.
One of the first improvements
in making shoes came from the
use of the shoe peg. The histori-
cal sketch of the shoe industry,
published in the U. S. census re-
ports for 1900 is authority for the
statement that the shoe peg was
invented in 1815. The first pegs
were whittled out by hand. The
pegs, when properly driven, firm-
ly fastened the sole to the uppers.
The first machine in the shoe
industry appears to have been a
shoe pegging machine. It was in-
vented by Samuel Preston, a
Danvers, Mass., shoe manufactur-
er, in 1833. A pair of shoes pegg-
ed on it is preserved in the Essex
Institute, in Salem.
The pegging machine, however.

39
•
 Shoe Making

did not come into successful use

until about 1859, when a machine
invented in 1851, by A. C. Galla-
hue, was perfected. This machine
really began the revolution of
the shoe industry, from a manual
to a mechanical industry. The Mc-
Kay machine, which came soon
after it,is given the credit of re-
volutionizing the industry.
The first machine in successful
practical use in the shoe industry
was the rolling machine. It is a
simple machine, consisting of two
iron rollers. A
shoemaker passed
a pairof soles through the rollers
and so compressed the leather. By
using the rolling machine, the
shoemaker saved himself half an
hour labor of pounding a pair of
soles on a lap stone with a flat
face hammer.
The McKay machine and the
pegging machine were rapidly
adopted by shoe manufacturers.
But they did not put an end to
the occupation of hand shoemak-
ing. The McKay shoes and the
pegged shoes, too, were stiff. Their
soles were like a board. People
were accustomed to the flexible
hand sewed shoes, and those per-
sons who could afford it contin-
ued to buy hand sewed shoes
made by custom shoemakers.
In 1862 August Destroy secured
patents on a welt sewing ma-
chine. He assigned his patents
to James Hanan, of Hanan & Son,
shoe manufacturers, of Brooklyn.
Mr. Hanan interested Charles Good-
year, an expert machinist, in the
machine. Mr. Goodyear devel-
40
 Old and New

oped it, and the machine took his

name, even as the invention of
Blake took the name of McKay.
The welt sewing machine did
not come into use until about
1876, however. From that time
the industry of making shoes by
hand began to wane rapidly. The
machine accurately imitated hand
methods of making shoes and
sewed soles to uppers with stitch-
es almost as fine as could the
skilled hand shoemakers.
There have been invented, de-
veloped and brought into use in
the shoe industry a thousand and
one machines besides these im-
portant and successful ones. All
of them have contributed in a
greater or less extent to the saving
of time and increasing the wages
of the shoemaker and to the im-
provement of product and de-
crease of price of product.
These many machines, how-
ever, would have been of small
value had they not been harnessed
to the giant powers, steam and
electricity. The first machines;
were driven by hand power or
foot power. Some enterprising
shoe manufacturer adopted the
horse mill that was in common
use in the textile factories. In
about 1855 the steam engine was
substituted for the horse mill and
along in 1890, the electric motorij
began to take the place of the,
steam engine. '

William F. Trowbridge, an en-

terprising shoe manufacturer of
Feltonville, now Trowbridge,
Mass., employed three stout Irish-

41
 Shoe Making

men to turn over the main power

wheel in his factory. Later, he
employed his horse, ''Old Gener-
al." In 1855, Mr. Trowbridge had
a steam engine set up in his fac-
tory. It was the first used in the
shoemaking industry.
One man performed the entire \

process of making shoes in coloni- j

al times. He did all his work with

his own hands. Today, in some |

shops, a single shoe passes j

through the hands of 100 em- i

ployees, 90 of whom operate ma-

chines. Acolonial shoemaker
|

spent a day, more or less making j

a pair of shoes. In one modem 1

factory, a pair of fine shoes has

been made in 15 minutes.
There are few men today who
can make a shoe, performing the
entire operation. But there are
some men who have built up or-
ganized establishments that will
make twenty thousand pairs of shoes
in a day.

42
 Old and New

PART XI

American tanners make the

best leather in the world. The
superior quality of their product
helps American shoemakers to
make the best of shoes.
The American leather manu-
facturing industry has been
built up slowly from small be-
ginnings, as has the American
shoe manufacturing industry.
The first leather was brought
here from England. The colo-
nists often used deer skins, tanned
by the Indians. Many a colonist
was his own tanner.
Francis Ingalls, a tanner of Lin-
colnshire, England, settled in
Lynn in 1629. Philemon Dicker-
son, a tanner, and servant of Ben-
jamin Cooper of Branton, Eng-
land passed his examination to
come to this country May 10,
1637. He settled in Salem, and, in
1639, he was granted land on
which to make tan pit§ and to
dress hides and goat skins. The
tanning industry was carried on
by the Dutch ir». New York, the
Quakers in Pennsylvania and the
Cavaliers in the South.
In 1800, William Rose, a tan-
ner near Blackfriar's Bridge,
London, came to Lynn. He was
induced to come here by Ebencr
zer Breed, the same man who had

43
^
Shoe Making

secured from Congress the pas-

sage of the law which put a pro-
tective tariff on American shoes.
Rose practiced the art of mak-
ing morocco leather, an art which
the English had learned from the
Spaniards and the Spaniards
from the Moors.
Rose was called ''the father of
the American morocco manufac-
turing industry." He was a good
tanner but was unfortunate in be-
ing intemperate in speech, act
and appetite. He threw a tax col-
lector into a river who demanded
payment of a bill of him one day.
Shortly before the Civil War,
machinery was introduced into
the leather making industry. At
firstthe hand workmen thought it
impossible to use machinery in
making leather. But one by one
the various labor saving machines
were introduced and perfected,
until today machinery is used in
place of hand labor in all branches
of leather making. Of course,
the machinery has saved time,
money and labor.
In 1884, a tanner asked August
Schultz if he couldn't make leath-
er that would resist the action of
perspiration of the feet better
than did the t^en common alum
tanned kid leather. Schultz was
at the time a chemist for a New
York City house. He was using
chrome mordant in the process of
dyeing wool. He substituted
chrome for alum in tanning skins.
But practical tanners laughed at
his leather. It was stiff and hard.

44
 Old and New

and robin's egg in color. How-

ever, Robert Foederer, a morocco
manufacturer of Philadelphia, had
faith in the process. He began to
experiment with it. After spend-
ing a great deal of time and
money, he learned to fat liquor
his chrome tanned leather. He
dressed it with an emulsion of
soap and oil, while it was drying.
The chrome made a leather im-
pervious to water, that resisted
the action of perspiration from
the feet, and the fat liquor made
it soft and pliable.
Foederer called his leather Vici
kid, taking his trade mark from
Caesar's famous message. Shoe
manufacturers pronounced this
chrome tanned leather the best
made. Consequently, rival tan-
ners undertook to make leather
by the chrome process. The own-
ers of the Schultz patents brought
suits against many tanners for
infringement on their patent. Af-
ter costly suits, it was learned
that Prof. Knapp, a German
chemist, had used the chrome
process for tanning leather in
1850. The suits were comprom-
ised. The chrome process has
come into general use for the
manufacturers of all kinds of
leather. It has given American
tanners leadership in the leather
making industry.
American tanners now tan
about 20,000,000 hides and 100,-
000,000 skins annually. Their raw
material, including their tanning
agents, costs them about $200,-

45»
 Shoe Making

000,000 annually. They import

more than $50,000,000 worth of
skins annually, fetching them
from the interior* of Africa, the
hills of India, and from China,
Siberia, Australia, and South
American countries.
American tanners now make
about $300,000,000- worth of
leather annually, most of which is
used for boots and shoes. A few
million dollars' worth is used for
upholstering automobiles and
furniture, for binding books, for
belting on machinery, for trunks,
bags and valises, card cases and
pocket books and for novelties.

46
 Old and New

PART XII

The organization of the modern

factory system makes an interesting
chapter of the story of the shoe in-
dustry. It shows how individual
enterprise has given place to co-op-
erative effort, how the jack of all
trades has become a specialist, and
how habits and opinions of men
have changed as new and better con-
ditions have been created.
An early shoemaker labored alone,
upon his own responsibility. He
bought leather himself, made
his
shoes completely, and sold his pro-
duct to his customer personally. He
was a unit in an individual system
of production. The shoemaker of
today is a unit in a collective sys-
tem.
After the Eevolution, the "bag
boss'^ appeared. He made shoes in
his own little shop, packed them into
a bag, threw the bag over his shoul-
der and tramped from house to
house, and from town to town, sell-
ing shoes from door to door. Some
of the bag bosses walked to Boston,
or other large cities, and sold their
shoes to wholesalers and retailers.
Ambitiouis shoemakers employed
other shoemakers to work for them.
They became manufacturers or em-
ployers. shoemakers, whom
The
they employed, became employees.
This was the beginning of the di-

47i
 Shoe Making

vision between capital and labor, in

the shoe trade.
Some shrewd shoemakers observed
that one man could perform some
part of shoemaking better than an-
other. For instance, one man ex-
celled in cutting and fitting boot
tops, while another excelled in sew-
ing on soles and finishing them. So
teams of workers were formed. One
man gave all his time to cutting and
fitting uppers and the other to sew-
ing on soles and finishing them.
Teams of turn workers were also
formed.
The manufacturers made a spe-
cialty of buying material for their
employees to make up into shoes and
of selling the product of their em-
ployees. As they prospered, they
hired more shoemakers. A few
manufacturers built factories to ac-
commodate their workmen. Other
manufacturers built factories which
were practically store houses for
raw material and finished product.
Shoemakers took home material for
a week^s work from the factory, and
to make the shoes in the little shop
at home.
1
Along in 1850, manufacturers be-
gan to equip their factories with
machinery, and to drive the machin-
ery by steam power. They called
shoemakers from their little shops
at hometo the shoe factories of the
shoe centers to operate the ma-
chines. Then it became necessary
to organize the shoemakers into shop
crews, and to establish factory dis-
cipline.
This was a huge task. The typi-
cal shoemaker had long been his own

48
 Old and New

boss. He worked in his little shop at

home when, and how, he pleased.
He looked upon the factory rules,
which required him to work from 7
o^clock in the morning to 6 at night
as prison rules, and he considered
the shriek of the factory whistle
an order of a stern Czar whom he
must obey. He believed obedience
to the orders of the foreman a sur-
render of his personal rights and
liberties, and he was certain that
—
machinery would labor saving ma-
—
chinery deprive him of his occu-
pation and reduce him to slavery and
poverty. Indeed, it was a common
practice for the old fashioned shoe-
makers to resist the factory system,
and they aso fought against abor
saving machinery by striking against
its introduction, or, by attempting
the crafty trick of causing the ma-
chine to do work much poorer than
could be done by hand.
One machine followed another un-
til practically every part of the pro-
qess of making shoes has become a
mechanical work, and not manual.
As the machines appeared, shoe-
makers undertook to operate them.
Each shoemaker undertook to run
one machine only. So the specialist
in the shoemaking, the man who op-
erates one machine alone, has taken
the place of the man who performed
by hand the entire process of mak-
ing a shoe. Yet each specialist has
to work in harmony with his neigh-
bor so that the factory system may
run smoothly.
The assembling of shoemakers in-
to factories called for men to organ-
ize and train them, just as the as-

49,
 Shoe Making

sembling of a group of men in an

army for warfare, in the early state
of society, called for leaders to form
and drill them. Superintendents and
foremen, or overseers of depart-
ments, appeared in the factories.
There is today one foreman, or su-
perintendent to each group of 50
shoemakers for the entire shoe in-
dustry. Some of the large shoe
firms employ 100 superintendents
and foremen in their factories.
The business, as well as the labor,
of manufacturing shoes, has been
sub-divided, and each division has
come into the charge of a specialist.
The large shoe manufacturing firms
of today have one man who is a spe-
cialist in leather buying, another one
who is a specialist in securing lasts
and patterns, another man in charge
of buying miscellaneous supplies, a
manager of the sales department, an
executive officer sometimes called a
manager of the factory, or superin-
tendent, still another man in charge
of the finance, advertising, statistics,
and even of the foreign sales depart-
ment.
The little factories in which one
man labored, a ruler of all that he
surveyed; have grown into large es-
tablishments, in which are employed
a thousand and more men daily,
and in which are made shoes to the
quantity of 10,000 pairs daily, and
even more. The larg- shoe man-
ufacturing companies of the coun-
try today operate groups of factories
and make 25,000 pairs of shoes
daily and even more. The annual
daily product of some of the big
factories exceeds the entire product

50
 THE PULLING OVER MACHINE
Whose steel fingers have taken the place of shoemakers' hands.
 Old and New

of all the shoemakers in the country

in colonial times.
The introduction and use of shoe
machinery, and the development of
the factory system, led to increase
in wages, shortening of hours of la-
bor, and improvement of product.
Wages rose from the $5 and $6
level of the days of hand shoemak-
ing to $8, $10, $12 and $15 a week,
and even higher, for some shoemak-
ers of today earn $1000 a year in
wages. Hours of labor have been
shortened from twelve to ten, and
from ten to nine, and now shoe-
makers are seeking the eight hour
day and in a few cases they have
gained it. Increased wages and
shortening of hours have, of course,
enabled shoemakers to adopt and en-
joy higher standards of living than
did their predecessors.
 Shoe Making

PART XIII

Further organization of the boot

and shoe industry has resulted in
the building up of large corpora-
tions, the forming of strong asso-
ciations of manufacturers and shoe-
makers, and the centralizing of the
industry in certain communities.
Some large shoe firms have a
capital of $1,000,000 and more and
manufacture and distribute $10,-
000,000 worth and more shoes an-
nually. One manufacturing firm
has 700 retail agencies for the dis-
tribution ofits shoes in this coun-
try, andanother has circled the
world with a chain of shoe stores.
New England, the birthplace of
the shoe industry, is still the dom-
inating factor in the shoe manufac-
turing business of the nation. It
makes more than half of the shoes
that are produced in this country
each year.
It sends its shoes to all parts of
this country, and to every foreign
country in which white men have
settled. It is a leader in the building
up of America's foreign trade of
more than $10,000,000 annually.
Boston is the great shoe and leath-
er market of the world. It is the
central point for shoe buyers as
well as those who have shoes to sell.
Every live and progressive buy-
er of shoes in the country visits Bos-

52
 Old and New

ton market twice a year, once in

January and again in July, when
samples of new shoes for coming
seasonsare shown. Some buyers
Boston once a month.
visit
The New England Shoe & Leather
association is the largest organiza-
tion in the world devoted to the ad-
vancement of the welfare of the
shoe and leather and allied trades.
Its membership is made up of a
large number of manufacturers of
New England. It represents their
crystallized sentiment.
The Boston Boot & Shoe club is
the leading social organization of
men of the shoe trade. In Boston
fashion, it dines monthly and lis-
tens to speeches by distinguished
men, who discuss topics of close in-
terest to the shoe trade. It pro-
motes the social graces, and brings
into pleasant companionship men
who may be rivals in business, or
even strangers to each other, though
engaged in the same lines of busi-

There is also a large and influen-

tial organization of shoe makers, the
Boot & Shoe Workers' Union. John
F. Tobin is its president' and it has
a membership of 30,000. It regu-
lates conditions of employment of
shoemakers. It makes contracts
with manufacturers fixing the hours
of labor and the wages to be paid,
and providing for the arbitration of
any disputes that may arise between
manufacturers and its members.
There are several other organizations
of shoe makers, and, also, some small
but excellent associations of superin-
tendents and foremen.

53
 Shoe Making

A new movement is being organ-

ized. purpose is to build up a
Its
Greater New England. Its leaders
are Charles C. Hoyt, President of the
New England Shoe & Leather asso-
ciation, Alfred W. Donovan, Presi-
dent of the Boston Boot & Shoe
club, and Thomas F. .Anderson,
who is Secretary of both organiza-
tions. There has rallied to the ad-
vancement of this movement the
leading organizations of the shoe
and leather trade in Boston and in
nearby cities, and, also, a large num-
ber of men of the shoe, leather and
allied trades. These, Greater New
Englanders believe in the mainten-
ance and advancement of New Eng-
land's traditional supremacy in shoe
manufacturing in the past and in
the development of New England
character in shoe making in the fu-
ture, so that shoes "Made in New
England'^ shall be known as the best
in the world, and shall be bought as
the best by the entire world.
It is a huge task to carry on this
Greater New England movement.
It will introduce, if it
is carried out,
a new era in the bhoe manufacturing
industry. It promises to lead to a
volume of business now undreamed
of,and not methods and machinery
and to relations between employers
and employees, and to a general ad-
vancement of the industry to a plane
as elevated above the plane of the
industry today, as the plane of the
industry of today is above that of
the periods told about in this history.

54
 Old and New

PART XIV

The modern development of shoe

machinery is along new lines, and it
is not yet entirely clear to what fu-
ture it will lead. In 1899, progress
in modern business organization, as
well as in shoe machinery, led to the
establishment of the United Shoe Ma-
chinery Co., a corporation made up
by the consolidation of the several
important shoe machinery companies,
the Goodyear Sewing Machine Co.,
the McKay Shoe Machine Co., and
the ConsolidatedLasting Machine
Co. and their auxiliary companies.
These concerns had possession of the
important machines used in the man-
ufacture of shoes, and the organiza-
tion of the United Shoe Machinery
Co. brought them together in a sys-
tem.
The development of this system
has brought up some new conditions.
Relations between the machinery
company and shoe manufacturers
are unique. Similar relations are
found in no other industry, neither
at the present time nor in familiar
history. So these new conditions
and relations, must be considered
from the view point of the twentieth
century that seeks what is best for
the world, not from the viewpoint of
the past that says this was best and
looks upon that best as a standard
for all time.

55*
 Shoe Making

At first, shoe manufacturers re-

sented the new system of shoe ma-
chinery, and found much fault with
it. But, now, a great number of
shoe manufacturers regard the
United Shoe Machinery Co. as a
partner in their business, and have
come to believe that there is estab-
lished, not a corporation control of
the shoe machinery business, but a
new form of co-operation in busi-
ness. Whatever the new state of
affairs may be, it is certainly con-
tributing much to the welfare of all
concerned, to the general public as
well as to manufacturers of shoes,
and the shoe machinery company.
Methods employed under the new
system of handling shoe machinery
are new. The U. S. M. Co. equips
shoe factories, in this country and
abroad, dealing with the smallest
shops that employ only ten or twelve
as well as the biggest concerns that
employ thousands of persons and
that make from 10,000 to 30,000
pairs of shoes, and even more, daily.
All manufacturers, large or small,
are dealt with upon the same terms,
and with the same courtesy. There
is no special rate for big fellows, nor
any neglect of small fellows. The
rebating idea is unknown to the shoe
machinery industry. So the new
system of handling shoe machinery
provides for fair play.
The United Shoe Machinery Com-
pany provides shqe manufacturers
with "everything from a tack to a
whole factory equipment. '^ Not only
does it provide anything of a me-
chanical nature, which may be used
in shoe manufacturing, but it also

56
 Old and New

teaches manufacturers, or their em-

ployees, how to get the best possible
results from the things which they
use. It has a large corps of experts
who go among the factories keeping
machines in repair, and making sug-
gestions to operators for the improve-
ment of their product. Thereby, im-
provement in workmanship and in
product is encouraged, and the shoe-
makers, as well as the shoe manu-
facturers, are benefitted, and the peo-
ple get better shoes. So here is a
practical education as a feature of
the new system.
Machinery set up in shoe factor-
ies by the Company is not
sold out-
right, but is leased, on the royalty
system. The manufacturer pays so
much per pair for the use of the ma-
chine in making shoes. Because of
this arrangement, the manufacturer
does not have to tie up his capital m
machinery, but keeps it actively em-
ployed in his manufacturing busi-
ness. He pays for his machinery
only as he uses it. As the income of
the Company depends upon
the
number of shoes made upon its ma-
chines, it is the plain duty of
the
Company to keep its machines the m
best possible condition, and to
have
the best shoes made on them
that
can be produced. This new feature
of the new system of handling
ma-
chinery makes the Company some-
thing like a public service corpora-
tion. ^ ^, .
The royalty system for the use ol
new shoe machinery corresponds in
sys-
certain respects to the railroad
tem. The railroad companies pro-
for
vide the cars, and people pay
 Shoe Making

the use of them as they ride upon

them. A person who wishes to make
a journey does not have to build or
buy a railroad line and equip it. He
merely pays for the use of such fa-
the railroad company pro-
cilities as
vides. Likewise, a shoe manufac-
turer does not have to build or buy
shoe machinery. He merely pays for
machinery as he uses it.
The new systems of doing busi-
ness have at times been vigorously
attacked. This is natural, for it is
not yet clear in the public mind
where injurious competition leaves
off and where beneficial co-operation
begins. But it is apparent that the
new system of handling shoe ma-
chinery has led to a great amount of
good. It appears a new form of co-
operation which benefits all persons
who come into contact with it.
As to the benefits that have come
from the new system of handling
machinery, it may be stated that the
records show that the United Shoe
Machinery Company has paid good
returns to investors, thereby profit-
ing and encouraging capital, and
that has increased the wages of its
it

employees and shortened the hours

of labor, thereby profiting and en-
couraging labor.
It has benefitted the shoe trade,
and, also, the public, for shoe manu-
facturers are making more shoes and
better shoes, and consequently they
have a larger business and the peo-
ple have more shoes and better shoes.
From 1890 (the year after the or-
ganization of the U. S. M. Co.) to
1900, the product of American shoe
manufacturers increased from $220,-

58
 Old and New

000,000 to $258,000,000, a gain of

17 per cent, and from 1900 to 1905,
it increased from $258,000,000 to
$320,000,000, a gain of 23 per cent.
Statistics show that people have
more shoes and better shoes today
than ever before. This feature of
improvement in the shoe business is
discussed in other chapters.
Furthermore, the development of
shoe machinery has enabled Ameri-
can shoe manufacturers to gain the
foremost position among the nations
of the world in the exporting of
shoes. During ten years, the ex-
ports of American shoes has in-
creased from $1,000,000 to $11,-
000,000. Superiority of American
machinery has undoubtedly contrib-
uted in a large measure to the growth
of the export trade.
The true worth of an industrial
corporation, as well as of a man, is
tested in its own home. The United
Shoe Machinery Company is held in
high esteem in Beverly, the city in
which its factory is located, and in
which its president, Sidney W. Wins-
low, makes his home. It is his na-
tive place. The company is consid-
ered a public benefactor, not alone
because it employs 5,000 men, and
pays them good wages (the average
wages in Beverly are the highest in
the state of Massachusetts) but be-
cause it is developing twentieth cen-
tury ideals in industry.
Its buildings are of concrete, that
wont burn down. So insurance
costs, an economic waste, are saved.
The buildings have the best heating,
lighting, ventilating and sanitary
equipment, so the health of employ-
 Shoe Making

ees is safe-guarded. Abig restau-

rant provides employees with good
dinners at cost. It is based on the
theory that the man who eats well
works well. About the factories are
lawns and gardens, they being main-
tained on the theory that the man
who looks out upon a pleasant view
cheers up, and does better work
than the man who might look out
upon rough or unpleasant things,
such as a factory dump. A factory
farm provides fresh vegetables for
the factory restaurant, and, also, pro-
vides opportunity for employees to
raise vegetables for their own homes,
or to secure shrubs and flowers for
their homes.
The employees have organized the
United Shoe Machinery Athletic club.
It has a gun club, baseball, soccer
football, motor boat and tennis di-
visions. To encourage out of door
sports the Company has given a
large athletic field, and a substan-
tial club house, with locker rooms,
baths, bowling alleys, billiard room,
reading room, and a large hall for
dances, entertainments and other
gatherings. The gift of the club
house was made with the recommen-
dation that employees play hard and
earnestly, and enjoy well their leis-
ure, for men who do so get the best
results the shop, the home, and
in
wherever else life takes them.
The employees have an association
that pays benefits in case of sick-
ness, accident or death. Many employ-
ees have taken policies from the in-
surance department of Massachusetts
savings banks.
So, here in this Beverly factory,

60
 Old and New

there is actively going on the work

of building up a newer and higher

civilization for this twentieth cen-
tury. Wages have been increased
and hours of labor shortened, and
men have been in many ways en-
couraged to excel in their work, and
new and better ways of do-
to create
ing work. The health of the body
and mind is protected, and men are
encouraged to preserve and increase
through games
their physical strength
of the athletic field and club house,
and to increase the capacity of their
minds by study of machinery, in the
school, or in the inventive depart
ment.
These things tend to make the up-
building of a higher civilization, and
to the wiping out of those great
evils of poverty and sickness, from
which the world has suffered so long
that it thinks them necessary evils.
Furthermore these, and the protec-
tion of the benefit association and of
the savings bank insurance, ward off
the want and despair that often
comes among families of workmen
when sickness, or death, or old age,
overtakes the bread winner.
These conditions seem to show
that the new system
of handling ma-
chinery which is practised by the
U. S. M. Co. is one of the practical
methods of co-operation that is well
worked out, and that is adding to the
real prosperity of the people who
come into contact with it.

6u
 Shoe Making

PART XV

It was a century ago, a com-

mon practice to ''send out" shoes
to be made up. Manufacturers
had factories in the large towns,
or shoe centres. These factories
were really warehouses. In them,
the manufacturer kept his raw
material and his finished shoes.
Each week, he distributed
"stock" or leather and supplies,
to his shoemakers, and he re-
ceived from them the shoes which
they had made during the week,
in their little shops at home.
Shoemakers who lived near the
factories came to them, wheeling
their shoes in a barrow, or fetch-
ing them in a bag, or basket.
Some sent express wagons on
regular weekly trips among shoe-
makers who lived distant from
the factory, even to New Hamp-
shire towns. The "shoe freight-
ers," as they were called, took
a week for making a round trip
between New Hampshire towns
and Lynn.
Enterprising shoemakers con-
tinued to do business individual-
ly, even after the factory system
was introduced. One young man,
Putnam by name, was told by
his employer, a Danvers shoe
manufacturer, that there was no
work for him, because business

62
 COL. GORDON R. McKAY
Developer of McKay Machine and of royalty system.

"^ '^^QB^ «HP^

J. W. MATZELIGER
Inventor of the Lasting Machine.
 Old and New

was bad. Putnam secured leather

and supplies upon credit, from
his employer. He took them
home and made them into shoes.
He packed the shoes in a saddle
bag, borrowed his father's horse,
and rode from Danvers to Bos-
ton and there sold his shoes.
His venture was the beginning
of a large shoe business.
Philip Lefavor related that he
made shoes in Marblehead in
about 1840. He worked from sun
rise to sun set, four days a week,
and Friday, he worked all day
and all night. At sun rise Satur-
day morning, without stopping
for sleep, he started to walk to
Boston, a distance of 15 miles*
with his shoes in a bag on his
shoulder. In Boston, he sold his
shoes, and bought fresh stock,
and then he walked back home,
arriving late Saturday afternoon.
Mr. Lefavor lived four score
years. He said that he never felt
any ill effects from his strenuous
work.
In days before the railroads,
shoes were sent from Boston, the
great shoe market of the coun-
try, to the South in coasting
schooners. Shoes for St. Louis
were sent to New Orleans in
schooners, and thence up the
Mississippi River in flat boats.
During the war of 1812, some
Beverly shoemakers secretly load-
ed a schooner hidden in the Es-
sex River. They ran the British
blockade, and they sold their
shoes at a handsome profit in the
South. Some wealthy shoe manu-

63
 .

Shoe Making

facturers owned coasting schoon-

ers.
When John B. Alley was given
his freedom, after serving his ap-
prenticeship in a Lynn factory,
he made up a lot of shoes, loaded
them into a wagon and set out
overland for St. Louis to sell
them. His journey was not finan-
cially profitable. But he learned
the need of transportation, and
he made a fortune in Western
railroads. He was a member of
Congress.
Shoes were often sent from
some New England towns to Bos-
ton market in ox carts. Some old
men of the trade remember the
ox carts laden with shoes. When
prosperous manufacturers were
first able to buy and keep wag-
ons, they did an express business.
They carried shoes to Boston for
less fortunate manufacturers, at
so much per case. They also took
passengers, upon payment of
fares
Today, shoes from Boston, and
citiesand towns near Boston,
leave the factory at night and
are delivered in the New York
market the next morning, in Chi-
cago the next day, and in San
Francisco within a week. Shoes
are sent from Boston to London,
in a week, at a cost of a nickel a
pair.

64
 Old and New

PART XVI
1

Styles in footwear have changed

as have people, during three cen-
turies of American life.
Puritans of early New England
wore knee trousers, woolen stock-
ings and broad, low cut, buckle shoes,
with square toes.In English poli-
Puritans were some-
tical life, the
times called "square toes.'' Broad
toes and narrow toes and long toes
and short toes have alternated in
the fashions of years and centuries.
Buckled shoes were common in
the colonies, as well as in England.
During the reign of Charles II,
when gaudy apparel was fashion-
able, shoe buckles were large in
size, and were made of pewter, sil-
ver and even of gold. The fashion
of buckled shoes for men vanished
long ago. But low cut shoes for
women are frequently adorned with
buckles, and party slippers some-
times have elaborate buckles of bril-
liants, and even of sterling silver
and gold. Some buckles of the co-
lonial period were so valuable that
they were handed down as family
heirlooms, and a few of them are
possessed in old families today.
Boots were the typical footwear of
the American pioneer. The settler
wore heavy boots of cow hide
leather when he plunged into the
wilderness, when he cut lumber for

6t
his home, when he plowedthe fields,
and when he harvested his crops.
These old fashioned leg boots of
cow hide leather were the sturdiest
boots that ever were made. They
were worn for years, and, in some
cases, they were actually handed
down from father to son. A
few
old gentlemen of today have a strong
preference for leg boots in the win-
ter time. They consider them sov-
ereign protection for the health be-
cause they keep warm the feet, an-
kles and legs.
These old fashioned boots had legs
of bark tanned cow hide, that were
sewn together by skillful shoemak-
ers, and soles of best oak tanned
leather, that were fastened on with
copper nails or pegs. Often a nail
or a peg stuck up in the sole of the
shoe, but that was a small matter,
easily rubbed away by the rasp that
the shoe man always kept handy.
The shoes were apt to shrink, if
they got very wet, so the hardy
wearer of them usually kept a boot
jack handy, to serve as an anchor
in the struggle to pull them off.
He also kept close by a piece of
mutton tallow, or some woodchuck'a
oil, or other grease, with which he
dressed the leather, after it dried,
and thereby made the boots soft and
pliable enough to put on again.
Women's dress shoes have always
been light in weight and fine in ap-
pearance. Fabric shoes, which are
fashionable at the present time, were
prized by belles of colonial times,
and so were high heels, pointed toes,
and short foreparts and high arches,
that make the feet look small, and

66
 Old and New

please the eye of vanity, but that in-

jure the health, the doctors say. The
fine dress shoes, of silk and satin,
that were worn by fashionable wo-
men of colonial society, were im-
ported from London and Paris. A
few were made in New England.
The best colonial shoes, judging
from the appearance of a few of
them that are preserved in muse-
ums, were very poor shoes in com-
parison with shoes of today.
For many years, serge Congress
shoes were in fashion among wo-
men. Some old folks of today re-
member them. They had broad,
square toes, and when they fitted
well, they were comfortable, though
they did not afford as good protec-
tion to the foot as do leather shoes.
Some shoe manufacturers were very
glad to make serge shoes, because
they believed that there weren't
hides enough in the world to make
leather shoes for everybody.
Among many people of old New
England, it was a custom to dress
shoes by greasing them with mutton
tallow every Sunday morning, just
as it was a practice among them to
take a bath every Saturday night.
The grease softened the leather, and
gave it an oily gloss that lasted un-
til the dust fell on it. It preserved
the leather, however, and it was,
without doubt, much better for the
shoe than some of the acid dressings
that are used today.
Shoe blacking, which was intro-
duced into this country from Eng-
land, was not much used until re-
cent years. Though school teachers
in days of old sometimes told the

6>
 Shoe Making

rising generation the rewards that

came from well shined shoes,
from well washed faces and well
combed hair, yet the practice of
shining every day did not
shoes
flourish. Itdidn't flourish even
when shoe retailers, competing for
trade, gave a box of blacking with
each pair of shoes that they sold.
Invention came to the aid of men
whose backs ached at the mere
thought of shining their shoes. In-
genious tanners varnished and ja-
panned on leather a shine that
stayed on, and called the leather
patent leather. A person puts on
a pair of shoes of this leather and
they stay bright and shiny as long
as they are worn. Other persons
wear shoes of dull or glazed leather,
and have them frequently shined in
a boot black ^^parlor," commonly
managed by a Greek or an Italian.
A nickel a shine doesn't seem much
to the prosperous American, but
these nickels have totalled to the
great sum of $10,000,000 which
amount the American people spend
annually for having their shoes
shined.

Laces are the oldest form of shoe

fastenings. They are centuries old-
er than buckles. They were used
even before the time of Moses. In
early New England, laces were
sometimes used in place of buckles
for fastening shoes. Buttons are,
comparatively speaking, a modem
invention. When they were first
used on shoes is not known. But
some old persons remember when
they bought shoes at the, store, and

68
 Old and New

the dealer gave them some buttons,

which they took home and sewed on.
The great desire of shoe manufac-
turers of today is to make a shoe
that will automatically fasten onto
the foot the moment it is put on.
The nearest that the manufacturers
have got to it is the pump, the low
cut shoe that is built to fit the foot
snugly and cling to it. But it has
a fault of slipping off, after it is
worn and stretched. The old fash-
ioned Congress boots clung to the
foot, but the goring stretched, and
fitted loosely about the ankles, and
that fault drove it out of fashion.
The trade of cobbling shoes, like
the industry of making shoes, has
changed much in the passing of
years. The early New Englander,
a jack of all trades, commonly cob-
bled his own shoes. So do some
thrifty people today, especially in
the shoe manufacturing centres and
in farming regions. Apprentices to
the shoe trade often cobbled shoes in
olden days. Sometimes they got a
pair of large sized worn out boots,
took them apart, cut them down, and
made them over again, gaining a
new pair of shoes, just as in some
thrifty families, in olden days, a
father's coat was cut down for the
growing son.
After more than two centuries of
cobbling, in the simple old fashioned
way, the cobbler is now yielding to
the advance of machinery, as did
the old time cordwainer. Modern
repair shops are appearing in many
large cities and towns. They are
equipped with machines, that cor-
respond to the machines used in

69
 Shoe Making

Bhoe factories, and they re-sole, or

otherwise repair shoes, in the same
manner in which shoes were made
in the factories. The proprietors of
these shops send out agents who go
from door to door showing house-
wives how new shoes may be made
from old. Wagons, often motor
trucks follow up the agents, and
gather the shoes that are to be re-
paired, and deliver them after they
have been made to look like new.
Old shoes are of trivial value, in
the eyes of the prosperous Ameri-
cans. But thrifty Americans now
spend $100,000,000 annually in
having their shoes repaired. This
expenditure shows that Americans
are not quite as wasteful as some
economists would have us think.
Americans are the best dressed
people in the world. They have the
Best footwear. They buy more new
shoes, and pay more for new shoes,
than do the people of any other
country, and they spend more money
in keeping their shoes shined, and in
good repair, than do the people of
any other nation.
In early days, when many a man
made his own shoes, a pair of shoes
was made to last for years, and, as
has been said, stout boots were some-
times handed down from father to
son. In the period of prosperity at
the close of the 18th century, ac-
cording to a writer of that time,
"most women had two pairs of shoes,
one pair of neats leather shoes for
work day wear, and one pair of
Lynn made shoes for Sunday best."
Today, the average American has
three pairs of shoes a year, and

70
 Old and New

spends more than $5 a year for foot-

wear. The total retail trade in foot-
wear exceeds $500,000,000. Wealthy
persons keep on hand a dozen, a
score or even more shoes, and so-
ciety women have paid $50, even
more than $100 a pair for fine
shoes.
In the days of hand shoemaking,
the custom shoemaker flourished.
A person of means went to his shop,
had his feet measured, and the shoe
maker made a pair of shoes for him.
According to tradition, there never
were shoes as nice and as comfort-
able as these custom made shoes.
They cost, by the way, from $10 to
$15 a pair. But time has worn
away the memory of the troubles
that were frequently had with these
custom made shoes. Usually, a per-
son had to wait a week or more for
them to be made up, and that^s a
long time to wait when a person
needs shoes. Often they didn't fit,
and sometimes they did not appear
as nice and stylish as the customer
expected. Then there was wrang-
ling over the quality of the shoes,
and the price to be paid for them.
Today, a person in need of shoes,
goes directly to a store, and inspects
a hundred and more different styles
in shoes, sees the price plainly
marked on them, knows the stylish
appearance of the shoes as surely as
he can believe his own eyes, and, if
he is earnest in his intention to buy,
the clerk will fit him with a pair of
shoes, and he may wear them when
he walks out of the store. He will
pay $3 or $4 a pair for them, only a
third as much as were paid for the
 Shoe Making

custom made boots of years ago, and

his shoes excel in quality the cus-
tom made boots.
So machinery, and the develop-
ment of the manufacturing and mer-
chandising of shoes, has conferred
great benefit upon the people, for
it gives them better shoes for less
money, enables them to choose just
the kind of shoes that they want,
and it saves them time in buying
shoes.

^2
 Old and New

PART XVII

The story of goloshes is as curi-

ous as the word itself.' Goloshes
were known in Europe in the 14th
century. Early settlers brought
them to this country. They, and
their immediate successors, clogs
and pattens, were in fashion in this
country for two centuries. No one of
today, however, remembers when
they were worn. They have disap-
peared from stores, and the few pairs
that remain are kept in historical
museums.
The original golosh was simply
a piece of heavy leather cut in the
shape of the sole of a shoe, and hav-
ing strings by which it could be
tied onto the shoe, like an extra sole.
It provided an extra thickness of
leather between the feet of its wear-
er, and the cold wet earth beneath.
Some ingenious and economical
individual found, at some time or
other, that a sole of wood would
serve quite as well as a sole of
leather for a golosh. Then another
ingenious person discovered that the
putting of blocks under the sole, at
both toe and heel, lifted the wearer
above the snow or mud. Some econ-
omical man substituted iron rings
for the wooden blocks, because the
iron rings would wear longer. Some
artistic person substituted bands of

1\
 Shoe Making

leather for the plain strings, and

found that the bands protected, as
well as adorned the foot. Some aris-
tocratic person put plates of brass
upon the heels and toes of the soles.
So the original goloshes grew into
clogs and pattens.
Colonists brought over these va-
rious forms of storm footwear, and
found them serviceable. The iron
clad shoes clattered on hard paths,
and on steps of houses. Dignified
deacons of early New England post-
ed signs at the entrance to their
churches, requesting people to re-
move their pattens and clogs before
entering the church, so that their
clatter would not disturb the con-
gregation.
At this point mention of foot
stoves may be timely. Footwear of
women of early New England was
thin, and the goloshes, pattens, and
clogs furnished but slight extra pro-
tection. So it was the custom, on
Sundays, for men of the Puritan
homes to fill the foot stove with hot
coals from the hearth, and to run
to the meeting house with it, and
put it into the family pew. This
foot stove was a metal box, about
the size of a modern shoe carton.
It saved many lives, without doubt.
The women folks who followed,
warmed their feet on the stoves.
These were, by the way, the only
stoves in early New England
churches, for a heating stove was
regarded by some sturdy Puritans
as a device of the devil to tempt peo-
ple to enervating luxury. Men
wore very heavy boots to church,
and kept their feet warm by kicking

74
 Old and New

the pews, or stamping on the floor.

Sympathetic preachers sometimes
stopped in their long sermons and
waited while men of the congrega-
tion stamped their feet enough to
get them warm.
Goloshes have now been super-
ceded by rubber boots and shoes. Co-
lumbus saw natives playing with
bounding balls, or balls of rubber,
when he came here. But it was not
until the middle of the nineteenth
century that rubber became of real
use to mankind. During that period
of much invention which preceded
the Civil War, a few men began to
experiment with rubber. New Eng-
land traders had brought crude rub-
ber from the valley of the Amazon,
and they told about the bowls and
gourds that the natives made of it.
The bowls held water perfectly
tight so it naturally occurred to
ingenious Yankees that if rubber
would keep in water perfectly, it
would also keep out water perfectly,
and they undertook to make rain
proof garments of it.
After some difficulty they suc-
ceeded in making rubber garments
and it was predicted that the age of
rubber was at hand, and that men
would dress in rubber and that rub-
ber would be used for the binding
of books, the sails of vessels, the har-
nesses of teams and for many other
things for which cloth and leather
are commonly used.
But the early manufacturers of
rubber goods were amazed to dis-
cover that their product didn^t stand
the test of wear. It was apt to melt
in the heat and crack in the cold.

85
 Shoe Making

If a man put his rubber boots be-

fore a fire to dry them, the rubber
melted, and if he wore them in zero
cold weather the cold might crack
them.
Hopes of the rubber age were
vanishing when Charles Goodyear
made his great discovery of the pro-
cess of vulcanizing rubber. He was a
poor, lean Yankee, with a wonderful
mind, and the determination of a
zealot. He was bound to make rub-
ber. To carry on his experiments in
rubber making, he experienced pov-
erty, saw his family hunger, suffered
imprisonment for debt, and under-
went a painful ordeal of jeers and
ridicule from his friends. He suc-
ceeded at last. It is a tradition that
he discovered the secret of vulcani-
zing rubber while loitering in a gro-
cery store. A bit of rubber, and a
sulphur match dropped together
from his pocket onto a warm stove.
He noticed the curious action of
the sulphur on the rubber, and it
gave him the key to the process of
vulcanizing rubber, and the process
has made rubber of use to mankind.
The process was one of the great
inventions of modern industry. It
has opened the way to the develop-
ment of the great rubber goods man-
ufacturing industries, to the man-
ufacture of rubber shoes and cloth-
ing that keeps away dampness and
colds and saves lives, to the manu-
facture of rubber tires for vehicles,
oarticularly automobiles that are so
swiftly advancing civilization, and to
the production of a thousand and
one articles that add to the health
and happiness of humanity.

76
H 181 8
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