History of the Turn Shoe
History states that prior to 1845, which marked the date of the introduction of shoe machinery, most of the shoes were sewed by hand, the lighter ones turned and the heavier ones welted. In fact, the early factories that began to spring up in New England about the beginning of the century, were merely cutting rooms and places for storing the lasts and stock.
Here the uppers, soles, and linings were cut by hand and then given out to people in the vicinity, mostly farmers and fishermen, to be stitched together and paid for at so much a dozen. Such was the beginning of the shoe industry in New England. Hundreds of families added to their resources in this way, the women doing the lighter work and the men the heavier.
In fishing communities, where men were away most of the time in their boats, their wives and daughters, who stayed at home, undertook the lighter grades of shoemaking—the turn process. This was the case in the “North Shore” towns like Lynn, Haverhill, and Marblehead, and these to-day, keeping to the old traditions, are the great centers for the finer turn-grades of shoemaking, whereas the “South Shore” towns, like Brockton, Whitman, Abington, Rockland, and the Weymouths, with the men at home all the year, came to make a specialty of shoes for men, and absorbed the heavier part of the growing industry.
With the introduction of the Goodyear turn machine, however, the handwork was gradually done away with, although more handwork is done in the turn process than in either the McKay or welt process.