This work, however, as its title indicates, is devoted more specifically to the application of Gutta-Percha, and the various Rubber compounds, in the manufacture of boots and shoes. Yet we regard the principles of their manufacture, as equally important, and as vitally essential, to the perfect fitting of the boot or shoe, whether sewed, pegged, or cemented.
CHAPTER II.
RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE BOOT AND SHOE TRADE.
The Boot and Shoe Trade of New England is of comparatively modern date. The first vessel, the sloop Delight, ever freighted at Boston with a full cargo of boots and shoes, sailed for the port of New York, in the month of May, 1818, consigned to Spofford & Tileston, then the largest boot and shoe jobbers in New York. This firm then commenced supplying the shipping demand from that port, instead of Boston. The manufacture, then, was confined to the New England States, but it soon commenced to take a wider scope. The trade increased rapidly, but eleven years later, 1829, there were only four jobbing houses in New York. In Boston, the centre of the trade, the whole jobbing trade for 1828 did not exceed but little over one million of dollars. The trade has increased to an almost wonderful extent. It now forms one-third of the whole manufacturing power of the country; New England and Pennsylvania retaining two-thirds. In the city of Boston there are about two hundred and eighteen wholesale and jobbing boot and shoe houses, doing business to the amount of fifty-two millions of dollars annually. In New York there are about fifty-five jobbing houses, whose aggregate sales reach from fifteen to sixteen millions yearly. The domestic and foreign boot and shoe trade of the State of Massachusetts alone, amounts to between fifty-five and sixty millions annually. The shipments from Boston to San Francisco for 1856, were $2,100,000.
The manufacture of boots and shoes is the largest domestic trade in the States, and there is no country or nation that can successfully compete with us, either as regards prices or quality. Common styles of goods, such as men’s pegged boots and brogans, women’s pegged and common sewed shoes and gaiters, are manufactured in the following villages of New England, viz: Lynn, Haverhill, Worcester, Milford, Natick, Randolph, Abington, the Readings, Danvers, Georgetown, Stoughton, Woburn, and several other towns in Massachusetts. The amount of capital employed in the city of Worcester, in the boot and shoe business, is one hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars; the annual value of boots and shoes manufactured, about one million of dollars. The total value of boots manufactured in Milford, Mass., in 1857, was upwards of two millions of dollars. The amount would have greatly exceeded that estimate had not the financial troubles of the country prostrated this, in common with every other manufacturing interest. According to present indications, the manufactories of Milford, this year, 1858, will nearly, or quite, reach the value of four millions of dollars. The city of Lynn, Mass., has employed in this business, about five thousand workmen, and its sales for the year 1857, exceeded four millions of dollars.
Each New England village, town or city, where this industry is carried on, is devoted to one kind of boot or shoe, and whole communities are built up by this special industry. Some idea of the importance and extent of the boot, shoe and leather interest may be inferred from the fact, that there are forty-one thousand men in Massachusetts who work upon leather, either in manufacturing the article or moulding it into various forms. Every eighth man in the State is a shoemaker.
The Shoe and Leather Trade of Boston takes its date, as a prominent branch of commerce, about the year 1830, caused principally by the change made in conducting the business. It was formerly the custom for Manufacturers and Dealers in Boots and Shoes to seek a market for their goods, by consignment on their own account, to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Havana, and other West India Islands. It was found to be remunerative for a while, but on the increase and competition of trade, it became a losing business. The leading houses failed. Since 1828 and 1829, an entire change in the method of conducting the shoe business has taken place. Manufacturers and Dealers now sell their goods on their own account instead of consigning them to other States. The consequence is that Boston is made not only the head-quarters for nearly all the manufactories of New England; and although the city of Lynn and the towns of Haverhill, Danvers, &c., sell a large portion of their goods at home, a large number of the manufactories have offices in Boston for the sale of their goods. If the domestic trade of Boston had been conducted on the home principle, the expansion of the city would have greatly exceeded its present limits.
The great industrial and trading interest is a correct type of New England thrift and industry. No branch of our mechanical pursuits is conducted with so much safety, energy and intelligent perseverance, as is the great Boot and Shoe interest. When convulsions come which rend in pieces other commercial or internal trading interests, the boot, shoe and leather trade, is the last to succumb, and the first to reinstate itself. The great financial crisis of 1857, thoroughly tried the strength of this branch of trade, and nobly did it sustain itself, even extending the helping hand to such as required assistance. Especially applicable is the latter remark to the merchants of Boston. All this demonstrates the soundness of their basis—the back-bone which enables the Shoe and Leather interest to hold itself up under a pressure which easily crushes all departments of trade and commerce built up on a paper foundation.
The peculiar characteristics of the boot and shoe trade, its democratic elements, its freedom from all monopoly, gives it a strength and power which corporations can never wield. Every man is his own director, and as all interested are subject to, and dependent upon, their individual shrewdness and enterprise, it is very seldom that success fails to crown their efforts. The day is not far distant when all our industrial interests will be conducted upon a like basis, and corporations cease to exist.
CHAPTER III.
GUTTA-PERCHA—ITS PROPERTIES, MANUFACTURE, &c.
The almost numberless uses to which this remarkable gum has been, and is applied, has awakened an interest in the public mind concerning its discovery, and its uses, and especially the different applications, and their methods.