Workmen now level the bottoms and form the shank by a hand method, preparatory to the machine leveling process. The shoe is still wet and is left to dry on the last twenty-four hours. Then it is run through the machine called the “leveler,” which, with its enormous pressure, forms the sole to that of the last. The shoes are now left four days on the lasts, to dry thoroughly, so that they may retain their shape permanently.
The putting on of the heel, and the various finishing processes are practically the same as that of the welt, with the exception that a turn sole must have a sock lining.
Some factories use a grain leather sock lining, which is pasted in, covering up the channels of the sole which hold the stitches and forming a smooth surface for the foot to rest upon.
The difference between a McKay and a turn shoe may be told by the fact that the stitching on the inside of the sole is much closer to the edge in a turn. Another thing, in a turn shoe, the seam connecting the upper and the outsole can be seen.
Nothing is likely to excel the turn shoe for lightness and flexibility, since the method of making, whereby the sole is stitched directly to the upper, interposes no thick or cumbersome material. Sole leather of good quality is used. In fact, the sole would have to be not only strong, but thin and light, or the shoe could not be turned in the process of manufacture without straining it and getting it out of shape.
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.