^^ *o«o' ,^ 
 
 
 
 
 • 0* 
 
 
 
 
 " o 
 
 
 • I •» 
 
 '*=' « ,j.^-v ° 
 
 ^•.3i^.* -^ -^^ ^. 
 
 ,/% 
 
 *^ '*/r.T.- .-S 
 
,;«...? 
 
 • ci:*\^.».* . O 
 
 ^* . 
 
 "^^^ ^^TTo ^^^ _^ O^^ 
 
 
 ' /°- . 
 
 o»*- ,0^ %b 
 
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 
 
 l\ 
 
 / 
 
 y> 
 
 i'l 
 
 V/ 
 
 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 10. The general development of 
 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 first shoemaker in 
 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. It was difficult to get 
 new boots for it was necessary to 
 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 
 little town 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 the country. 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 work for 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, on dandelions 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- 
 lotte. West, the painter, gave him 
 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, he went 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 the machine 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 at Washinerton 
 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 that it 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 it took the place 
 of hand lasters. They struck 
 against it. A bitter 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. A colonial 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 
 first the 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 his leather himself, made 
 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. The shoemakers, whom 
 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 home to 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 of its shoes in this coun- 
 try, and another 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 
 seasons are shown. Some buyers 
 visit Boston once a month. 
 
 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. Its purpose is to build up a 
 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 Consolidated Lasting 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 m the 
 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 
 certain respects to the railroad sys- 
 tem. The railroad companies pro- 
 vide the cars, and people pay for 
 
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- 
 cilities as the railroad company pro- 
 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 it has increased the wages of its 
 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. A big 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 in the shop, the home, and 
 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 
 to create new and better ways of do- 
 ing work. The health of the body 
 and mind is protected, and men are 
 encouraged to preserve and increase 
 their physical strength through games 
 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 
 cities and 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- 
 tical life, the Puritans were some- 
 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 plowed the 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 shoes every day did not 
 flourish. It didn'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 
 

 ,-1°^ 
 
 * -A 
 
 
 
 ^^-n^. 
 
 ^^ **r!^, .^ .-^J- 
 

 \ 
 
 ,*^ % 
 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 
 ECKMAN 
 
 iDERY INC. 
 
 ^ SEP 84 
 
 Bw N. MANCHESTER, 
 i=g^ INDIANA 46962 I 
 
 
 A^"-. 
 
1)03 431 268 •