A Manual of Shoemaking and Leather and Rubber Products

by William H. Dooley

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.”