The modern improved machines for sewing on the soles of shoes are wonderful instruments. Upon one machine a good workman will sew eight hundred pairs of women's shoes in ten hours. A great part of the boots and shoes worn by the people of this country are made with this improved machinery in large establishments in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other large cities, and particularly in several towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. The most important seat of this manufacture is Lynn, Massachusetts, but great quantities of shoes are made in Brockton, Haverhill, Milford, Marblehead, Danvers, and Worcester in Massachusetts, Portland, Auburn, and Augusta in Maine, and Dover and Farmington, in New Hampshire.
CHAPTER VI.
NEEDLES.
In the earlier times what was the mantle that covered the human person? How was it made? How was it held together? With what was the sewing thereof? When was thread first used for the seam? How early in human history was the eye made for the needle?
From the beginning of history we find references to sewing, even earlier than to weaving. We might naturally suppose that leather was sewed before cloth, and that stout leathern thongs served for thread. The leather string for thread and the awl for the needle must have been in use long, long ago. The stout moccasin, the wolfskin cap, the buckskin breeches were sewed by punching holes and laboriously pulling a leather string through them. By and by, however, some skillful inventor produced the needle. Perhaps the first needles were made of bone or ivory. Then metal was used.
What a great invention was the eye of the needle! No one knows who was the inventor, but we have reason to bless the unknown personage who first devised this ingenious arrangement. Would you not like to see the needles that were in use hundreds of years ago? They were not like the finely finished needles of to-day. Crude and coarse were they, and only adapted to the crude and coarse sewing which could then be performed. To-day the needle-woman is often an artist. Embroidery is done with the needle. The plain seam, the hem, the gather, the back stitch, are simply so many forms of the work of an artist.
Century after century our needle-makers have been improving in the manufacture of this simple but effective little machine. In the complicated civilization of the present time we have an almost infinite variety of needles: the ordinary sewing needle for the making of garments; smaller needles for lace work, the hemming of delicate handkerchiefs and the seam of fine silk goods; and coarse and heavy needles for carpet sewing, bagging, and leather work.