Rubber Terms
Ankle Piece. A large piece of light sheeted gum, which goes around the ankle and extends about halfway up the leg.
Back Stay. A piece of frictioned sheeting similar to the side stay in shape and placed at the back of the heel and ankle.
Gum Counter. A piece cut out of sheeted gum, on the under side of which is placed a counter form or a piece of frictioned sheeting.
Outer Filler. A filling sole cut from rag-coated or frictioned sheeting, and designed to fill up the hollow on the bottom caused by bringing the edges of the gum vamp and counter underneath.
Inner Sole. Usually made of felt or sheeting coated on one side with rag stock. In lasting up, the bottom edges of the lining (which have previously been cemented) are pulled under and adhere to the inner sole.
Leg Cover. A piece of sheeted gum rolled upon a piece of frictioned sheeting called the leg form.
Leg Lining. The lining, usually of felt or wool netting, for the leg.
Para. A name given to rubber from Brazil.
Piping. Strips of frictioned sheeting used to join the lining together over the instep and up the back, and also to hold the lining up on the tree by passing a strip over the top.
Rag Counter. Quarter stiff is a counter piece cut out of rag-coated or frictioned sheeting, which gives stiffness to the counter.
Side Stay. A spike-shaped piece of frictioned sheeting, placed on each side of the ankle.
Rag Sole. A sole stiffening cut out of a sheet of rag stock, which covers the whole bottom. The edges are skived to make a perfect edge.
Toe Filler. A rag-stock filling sole to fill up the hollow on the bottom caused by attaching the lining to the inner sole.
Parts of a Rubber Boot.
Toe Lining. The lining for the vamp, of the same material as the leg lining.
Vamp. A piece cut out of sheeted gum.
Vamp Form. A piece of frictioned sheeting cut to the shape of the vamp, and put on over the toe lining.
Web Straps. Straps put on with the joined ends between the leg lining and the leg cover, and forming a loop on the inside of the boot to pull it on with.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HISTORY OF FOOTWEAR
We find that primitive footwear, in common with all other beginnings, was of the crudest nature and took the form of the simple sandal. It is probable that man first protected his foot from the rough way by simple pieces of hide, which were bound to the bottom of the foot. The sandal, among the most primitive, is the type of footwear worn to-day. The sandal was simply bound to the foot by thongs of hides, which were brought between the toes and tied around the ankle.
At about the Elizabethan period, shoemaking had really become a very fine art. Some foot creations were made by the Court shoemakers that reflected the individual taste of the monarch, and so great was the competition to produce something novel that very often the styles assumed a grotesque aspect. The toes were elongated so that sometimes they were carried up and fastened by cords and tassels to the tops of the shoes, and it finally became necessary to enact a law to prevent such outrageous types of footwear. The slippers of this period were of the extremely high-heeled variety, and small fortunes were often spent on their ornamentation. They were mostly of the turn-shoe type, and samples which are preserved show the excellent workmanship that was in vogue at that time.
We now come to the first shoemaker in America. When the Mayflower made the second trip to America, she carried among others a shoemaker named Thomas Beard, who brought with him a supply of hides. Seven years afterwards there arrived one Phillip Kertland, a native of Buckinghamshire, who settled in Lynn in 1636.
Kertland was the pioneer shoemaker of Lynn and for years he successfully worked at his craft, teaching others his methods and ways, so that fifteen years after his arrival, Lynn was not only supplying the requirements of its inhabitants, but was also sending a part of its products to the port of Boston. As early as 1648 we find tanning and shoemaking mentioned as an industry of the colony of Virginia, special mention being made of the fact that a planter named Matthews employed eight shoemakers on his premises. Legal restraint was placed on the cordwainer in Connecticut in 1656, and in Rhode Island in 1706, while in New York the business of tanning and shoemaking is known to have been firmly established previous to the capitulation of the Province to England in 1664. In 1698 the industry was carried on profitably in Philadelphia, and in 1721 the Colonial Legislature of Pennsylvania passed an act regulating the material and the prices of the boot and shoe industry.
Prior to 1815 most of the shoes were hand sewed, a few having been copper nailed. The heavier shoes were welted and the lighter ones turned. This method of manufacture was changed, about the year 1815, by the adoption of the wooden shoe peg, which was invented in 1811 and soon came into general use. Up to this time little or no progress had been made in the methods of manufacture. The shoemaker sat on his bench, and with scarcely any other instrument than a hammer, knife, and wooden shoulder stick, cut, stitched, hammered, and sewed until the shoe was completed. Previous to the year 1845, which marked the first successful application of machinery to American shoemaking, this industry was in the strictest sense a hand process, and the young man who chose it for his vocation was apprenticed for seven years, during which time he was taught every detail of the art. He was instructed in the preparation of the insole and outsole, depending almost entirely upon his eye for the proper proportions; taught to prepare pegs and drive them, for the pegged shoe was the common type of footwear in the first half of the last century; and familiarized himself with the making of turned and welt shoes, which have always been considered the highest types of shoemaking, as they require exceptional skill of the artisan in channeling the insole and outsole by hand, rounding the sole, sewing the welt, and stitching the outsole. After having served his apprenticeship, it was the custom for the full-fledged shoemaker to start on what was known as “whipping the cat,” which meant traveling from town to town, living with a family while making a year’s supply of shoes for each member, then moving on to fill engagements previously made.
The change from which has been evolved our present factory system began in the latter part of the 18th century, when a system of sizes had been drafted, and shoemakers more enterprising than their fellows gathered about them groups of workmen, and took upon themselves the dignity of manufacturers.
It was soon found that the master workman could largely increase his income by employing other men to do the work while he directed their efforts, and this gradually led to a division of the labor: the shoe uppers, which had prior to this time been sewed by men using waxed thread with bristles, now were done by women, who often took the work home.
One workman cut the leather, others sewed the uppers, and still others fastened uppers to soles, each workman handling only one part in the process of manufacture.
We find that in the year 1795 the evolution of the factory system had reached a stage where in Lynn alone there were two hundred master workmen, employing six hundred journeymen and turning out three hundred thousand pairs of shoes per year. The entire shoe was then made under one roof, and generally from leather that was tanned on the premises.
Factory buildings were not at this time of a very pretentious nature and did not by any means represent the amount of work undertaken by the proprietor; for the small ten by ten factories, which are even to-day in existence in some of the backyards of Lynn homes, came into existence at this time. Many farmers found that shoemaking was a remunerative occupation in the winter, and they, and perhaps their neighbors, gathered in these shops and took from the different factories shoes on which to fasten the soles, or uppers to bind, which, after completion of the work, were returned to the factory, where they were finished and sent to market packed in wooden boxes. It was in this way that the industry prospered and developed up to the period of the introduction of machines, which happened but a little over half a century ago.
Up to the year 1811 absolutely no machinery was used in the making of shoes. This year shoe pegs were invented and a machine for making them. The pegged shoe became very widely worn, but it was not until 1835 that any machine for driving pegs was made, and even at this time the machine was but an indifferent success. It was a hand machine and its work was by no means of a reliable nature.
The first machine to be widely accepted by the trade was the “rolling machine.” This was used for rolling the sole leather under pressure, and it is said that a man could perform in a minute with this machine the same office that he would have required half an hour to have performed with the old-fashioned lapstone and hammer. This was followed in 1848 by the most important invention, the “sewing machine,” which was perfected by Elias Howe, and was soon followed by a machine which sewed with waxed thread and made it possible to sew the uppers of shoes in a much more rapid, reliable, and satisfactory manner than had ever been done by hand. This, too, was soon followed by a machine which split the sole leather and by another for buffing or removing the grain.
In 1855 William F. Trowbridge, who was a partner in the firm of F. Brigham & Company, of Feltonville, Massachusetts, then a part of Marlboro, conceived the idea of driving by horse power the machines then in use. The introduction of power became very general, so that in the year 1860 there were scarcely any factories which were not driven by either steam or water power.
The year 1858 was marked by the invention by Lyman R. Blake of the McKay sewing machine, which probably more than any other has exerted a revolutionary effect on the industry.
The McKay machine did not at this time sew the toe or heel; the sewing was started at the shank and carried forward to a point near the toe on one side, and the same operation repeated on the other side; but it seemed to possess great possibilities and created a great deal of interest throughout the trade. It was, of course, a very crude machine and very different from the McKay machine of to-day. It was set on a bench and the shoe to be sewed was placed over a horn, and the sewing was done from the channel in the outsole through the sole and insole. Colonel McKay immediately started to improve the machine. He employed skilled mechanics to work on it and attempted to introduce it in different factories, but encountered a great deal of opposition and criticism in regard to its future. It is said that he offered to dispose of the machine to the shoemakers of Lynn and allow them its exclusive use if they would pay him three hundred thousand dollars, an offer which was not accepted.
The machine left a loop stitch and a ridge of thread on the inside of the shoe, but it filled the great demand that existed for sewed shoes, and many hundreds of millions of pairs have been made by its use.
While Colonel McKay had met rebuff and discouragement in attempting to introduce his machine, the public necessity was such that manufacturers were obliged to take it up immediately; but Colonel McKay was still embarrassed by lack of capital to carry on his rapidly increasing business. It was at this time that a system of placing machines in factories, which system has proven to be the most potent factor in the upbuilding of the shoe industry, was started. This was a royalty system, whereby the machine or machine owner participated in the profits accruing from the use of the machine.
It hardly seems that there can be any question as to the principle of royalty being one of the greatest forces in building up the successful industry which we have to-day; it afforded an easy means whereby machines could be introduced without entailing hardships on the manufacturers, who, had they been obliged to pay the actual worth of the machines, would have been entirely unable to adopt them. Instances are known where hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on machines, which machines were abandoned without having made a single shoe.
At the time of the introduction of the McKay machine, inventors were busy in other directions, and as a result, came the introduction of the “cable nailing machine.” This was provided with a cable of nails, the head of one being joined to the point of another; these the machines cut into separate nails and drove automatically. At about this time also was introduced the “screw machine,” which formed a screw from brass wire, forcing it into the leather and cutting it off automatically. This was the prototype of the “rapid standard screw machine,” which is a comparatively recent invention, and is very widely used at the present time as a sole fastener on the heavier class of boots and shoes. Very soon thereafter the attention of the trade was attracted to the invention of a New York mechanic for the sewing of soles. The device was particularly intended for the making of turn shoes and afterwards became famous as the “Goodyear turn shoe machine.”
Closely following the Goodyear invention came the introduction of the first machine used in connection with heeling,—a machine which compressed the heel and pricked holes for the nails; this was soon followed by a machine which automatically drove the nails, the heel having previously been put in place and held by the guides on the machine. Other improvements in heeling machines followed with considerable rapidity, and a machine came into use shortly afterwards which not only nailed the heel, but which was also provided with a hand trimmer, which the operator swung round the heel, after nailing. From these have been evolved the heeling machines in use at the present time.
One of the early uses to which the sewing machine was put was the sewing together of the pieces of soft and pliable leather which make the upper of a shoe—a simple thing, involving only a slight adjustment of the original machine. It is a far more complicated operation to sew the upper to the thick and heavy sole, and years passed by before the secret was discovered, and the McKay machine appeared. In the shoe sewed on the McKay machine, the thread ran through into the inside of the inner sole, leaving a rasping ridge on which the stocking of the wearer rubbed. The McKay shoe displaced only the coarser grades. The hand-sewed shoe remained the favorite of wealth and fashion, and was worn exclusively by those who cared for comfort and could afford the price. In sewing a shoe by hand, a thin and narrow strip of leather, called a welt, is first sewed to the insole and upper, and the heavy outsole is sewed to this welt, so that the stitches come outside and do not touch the foot, the insole being left entirely smooth. It is a delicate operation by hand, and many years elapsed before a machine was contrived by which it could be done. At last the problem was solved. The “Goodyear welting and stitching machines” appeared—so named for Charles Goodyear, who financed and perfected them, a son of the man who taught the world the use of rubber. These two machines are the nucleus of the Goodyear welt system, to which must be attributed the revolution of an industry. Although they are entirely distinct machines, they are inseparable, for neither can be used effectively without the other in making the modern Goodyear welt shoe.
Insole for Hand Sewed Shoe.
Hand Sewed Shoe.
Much of the style of a shoe depends upon the wooden last over which the upper is shaped before being attached to the sole. To find a substitute for the human hand in fitting the shoe to the last and pulling the leather over its delicate lines and curves seemed for a long time impossible.
This took place in the early seventies, when a machine was invented for doing this work. It created a great change in a department of shoemaking which, prior to this time, had been regarded as a confirmed hand process. This machine, as well as those which followed afterwards for a period of twenty years, was known as the best type of machine, by which the shoe upper was drawn over the last by either friction or pincers, and then tacked by use of a hand tool.
At a comparatively recent period another machine which revolutionized all previous ideas in lasting was introduced. This machine is generally in use at the present time, and is known as the “consolidated hand method lasting machine.” It was fitted with pincers, which automatically drew the leather round the last, at the same time driving a tack which held it in place. This machine has been so developed that it is now used for the lasting of shoes of every type, from the lowest and cheapest to the highest grade, and it is a machine that shows wonderful mechanical ingenuity.
The perfection of the lasting machine has been followed recently by the introduction of a machine which performs in a satisfactory way the difficult process known as “pulling over,” which consists of accurately centering the shoe upper on the last and securing it temporarily in position for the work of lasting. The new machine, which is known as the “hand-method pulling over machine,” is provided with pincers, which close automatically, gripping the shoe upper at sides and toe. It is fitted with adjustments by which the operator is enabled to quickly center the shoe upper on the last, and, on pressure of a foot lever, the machine automatically draws the upper closely to the last and secures it in position by tacks, which are also driven by the machine. The introduction of this machine marked a radical change in the one important shoemaking process that had up to this time successfully withstood all attempts at mechanical improvement.
At about the time that lasting was first introduced, came the machines which were used for finishing heel and fore part. These machines were fitted with a tool, which was heated by gas and which practically duplicated the hand workman in rubbing the edges with a hot tool for the purpose of finishing them. From these early machines have been evolved the “edge-setting machines” which are in use at present.
Thus, one after another, every operation has yielded to invention, until very recently the only remaining process was subdued when a machine for cutting uppers was devised. There are machines for shaping, compressing, and nailing heels; for attaching soles to uppers in heavy shoes by wooden pegs or copper screws and wires; for rounding, buffing, and polishing the soles; for trimming and setting the edges of the sole; for performing innumerable operations, some seemingly trivial, but all essential to perfection in comfort, durability or style; so that in shoe factories to-day a greater variety of intricate and expensive machines is used than in factories of any other kind.
At the present time the genius of the American inventor has provided for every detail of shoemaking, even the smallest processes being performed by mechanical devices of some kind. This has naturally made the shoemaker of to-day a specialist, who very seldom knows anything of shoemaking apart from the particular process in the performance of shoemaking of which he is an adept, and from which he earns a livelihood. The American shoe of to-day is the standard production of the world. It is in demand wherever shoes are worn.
In the year 1874 there had been perfected not only the machines which Colonel McKay and Mr. Goodyear had been instrumental in building, but other inventors had introduced similar machines for doing similar work. This brought about the most acute business competition, and finally resulted in many cases where one machine manufacturer alleged that the other machine infringed his rights of patent, and in many other cases the fiercest kind of litigation was established. This had a most disastrous effect upon shoe manufacturers, for in many cases the manufacturer was made to bear the brunt of the blows which contending shoe machinery manufacturers aimed at each other.
Machines in use in factories were stopped by means of injunctions; damage suits were entered, and litigation was very general. During the year 1899, there was ushered in one of the most important events that ever transpired in the history of shoemaking. The most important of the concerns which had been making war upon each other were purchased by one large company and brought under one harmonious management.
The United Shoe Machinery Company owes its origin to a call for a change in conditions menacing the industry of making shoes which could not be ignored. It was created by combining into one the three companies existing in 1899: the Goodyear Sewing Machine Company, the Consolidated & McKay Lasting Machine Company, and the McKay Shoe Machinery Company, each of which respectively made and leased machines adapted to a particular class of operations. The principal machines which each made did not interfere with the principal machines of any other. They were dependent links in an industrial chain. The Goodyear Sewing Machine Company chiefly made machines for sewing the sole to the upper in welt shoes and various auxiliary machines which helped to complete the shoe; The Consolidated & McKay Lasting Machine Company made machines for lasting a shoe; The McKay Shoe Machinery Company made various machines for attaching soles and heels by metallic fastenings, and furnished material for that purpose. A single manufacturer, in order to make Goodyear welt shoes, would be compelled to patronize all the companies, going to each of them for that part of his equipment which it exclusively supplied. Each company had its agents in factories looking after its machines.
The gathering of these three companies into a single organization wrought an instant change. It resulted immediately in greater economy of administration; in relieving the manufacturer of the vexation of sometimes seeing his factory crippled while orders were piling up; in freeing him from the annoyance and expense of dealing with several different concerns in order to get his most important machines and keep them in repair.
The attention which had been paid to royalty machines and which had been such an important factor in building up the industry in America, was magnified by the management of the new company. Large forces of men and expert machinists, as well as expert shoemakers, were maintained in the different districts where shoes were made, and every effort exerted to promote the growth of the industry.
While the royalty system proved to be of great advantage to small shoe manufacturers, the largest manufacturers objected to paying royalty on machines and desired to purchase them outright. Being unable to do so, they placed experts at work to invent similar machines. This has resulted in the United Shoe Machinery Company claiming that these machines are infringements and causing considerable litigation.
If one reviews the history of the trade during the past ten years, there will be little question but that one will find it has been a period of the greatest advancement that the trade has ever known.
Within the time of those who read these words, the way to make a shoe has been completely changed. Methods which held their own for centuries have disappeared, to be replaced by processes which only recently would have been thought impossible, and which have brought within the reach of men of modest means a luxury once enjoyed exclusively by the well-to-do. The feet of the million are clad to-day as finely as the feet of yesterday’s millionaire. Shoes marked by comfort, durability, and style have driven to historical museums the stiff and clumsy boots and brogans which not so many years ago were worn by those who could not pay to have shoes sewed by hand.
The American people spend more than three hundred million dollars every year in buying shoes, and average three pairs apiece, and yet few ever think about their shoes so long as they do not look clumsy, or wear out too quickly, or hurt the foot. Every one likes to buy good shoes as cheaply as he can, and every one likes to feel that shoe manufacturers are independent and successful, and that workmen get good wages, because these things help along prosperity; but that is all. Yet here is an industry in which the United States within a decade has come to lead the world, and there are many things about it which it would be worth while for every one to understand. It is worth while, for instance, to know that there is no important operation on a shoe which need be done by hand; that in the making of every good shoe no less than fifty-eight different machines, and sometimes twice that number, are brought into play; that nearly all these machines are of American invention; and that they have been so perfectly adjusted one to another that they work together almost with the precision of a watch; it is worth while to know something about the marvelous system under the encouragement of which this typical American industry has blossomed and borne fruit until it employs two hundred million dollars of capital and nearly two hundred thousand people, and turns out two hundred and fifty million pairs of shoes a year; and why it is that the average man you meet to-day has a better fitting, better wearing, and better looking shoe than the moneyed man of yesterday—at a fraction of the expense.
This remarkable growth is distinctly American. In the United States the tendency among the artisan class has been to abandon the slow hand process. This tendency has been as strong as the tendency in Europe to adhere to it. Moreover, there has developed among the laboring classes in the United States a mobility such as is unknown elsewhere in the world.
Another advantage which has contributed to the rapid development of the manufacture of shoes in the United States is the comparative freedom from inherited and overconservative ideas. This country has entered upon its industrial development unfettered by the old order of things, and with a tendency on the part of the people to seek the best and quickest way to accomplish every object.
Stitching Room of a German Shoe Factory.
In all of the European countries in which the manufacturing of shoes is an important industry, the transition from the household to the factory system was hampered by guilds, elaborate national and local restrictions, and by the national reluctance with which a people accustomed for generations to fixed methods of work, in which they have acquired a large degree of skill, abandon those methods for new ones. It was natural, also, that in spite of the superior advantages of machine methods, hand process of manufacture should still continue side by side with them, in the European countries, though machine work had long since usurped the whole field of the shoe industry in the United States.
As an American goes about among the European shoe factories he is greatly surprised at the state of affairs. He is struck by three things which are very conspicuous. They are: (1) Lack of use of machinery, lack of all sorts of devices in order to save hand labor, which is carried out so extensively in the United States. (2) Lack of the division of labor, one factory attempting to make four or five kinds of shoes. (3) Lack of methods employed for handling large quantities of materials.
One point that is overlooked in considering the shoe industries of the two countries is the great difference in organization. In most European factories, the manufacturer gets all the orders of different kinds, and then attempts to make one or two lines with one or two qualities in the same factory. In Switzerland one may find shoes and slippers for men, women, and children made under the same roof.
In the United States the manufacturer makes a certain line of shoes in one factory, and no other kind. If he has more than one line, he has more than one factory, and each factory turns out a distinct shoe for a distinct purpose. The manufacturer has his salesmen to sell these shoes.
The advantages of the American system are: (1) The managers and workers of a factory turning out a certain line of goods become highly specialized in that line, and can produce better results than the workers in a factory attempting to make two or three lines of goods. (2) A large shoe factory is laid out as a rule to do a certain kind of work, and it seldom changes. This practice makes possible a greater production. On the other hand we have something to learn from the European organization. American manufacturers must meet the foreign trade. In order to do this, the manufacturer must cater to the habits, customs, and climatic conditions. The European manufacturer does this.