[Illustration: THE CAVALIER BOOT OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
[Illustration: MILITARY JACK BOOT OF CROMWELL’S TIME]
[Illustration: MILITARY JACK BOOT OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]
~HOW SHOE MACHINERY WAS DEVELOPED~
While the quality of work was pronounced by manufacturers to be a
success, few had any faith in the possibility of manufacturing shoes
by machinery and McKay met with constant rebuffs in his endeavor
to introduce his machine. It is recorded that in his desperation
he finally offered to sell all the patent rights in machines which
he owned to a syndicate of Lynn manufacturers for the sum of
$250,000.00--the amount he had expended--but the offer was refused.
In his dilemma McKay at last offered to shoe manufacturers the use of
his machines on a basis, which afterwards became famous and an inherent
part of the shoe industry known as “royalty,” whereby McKay placed his
machines with manufacturers and participated to a small extent in the
amount of money saved. Owing to the fact that shoemakers were leaving
rapidly for the front and that there was a great scarcity of footwear,
the manufacturers gladly accepted this proposition and the machines
were very rapidly introduced.
The success of his early machines accomplished, McKay set about the
perfecting of others that would do different parts of the work and
there was accordingly great activity on the part of inventors in
their endeavor to perfect machines for the wide variety of uses made
necessary in the preparation of leather for shoemaking. There were soon
machines on the market for a wide variety of purposes--including the
lasting of the shoe, cutting the leather and for many other processes
necessary in making a complete shoe.
Contemporary with the early success of the McKay machines, a French
inventor, August Destoney, conceived the idea of making a machine
which would sew turned shoes--then a popular type of footwear for
women. After several years of endeavor he finally secured the interest
of John Hanan, a famous shoemaker of that time in New York City, and
through him the interest of Charles Goodyear--nephew of Goodyear of
India-rubber fame.
No sooner had the machine become perfected for the sewing of turned
shoes, however, than he set to work to make changes which would fit
it to sew welt shoes. (The welt shoe has always been considered the
highest type of shoemaking, as, by a very ingenious process, a shoe
is made which is perfectly smooth inside; all the other types having
a seam of thread or tacks inside which make them of considerable
disadvantage. He was able to accomplish this a few years later,
although the machines were not in extended use until about 1893, when
auxiliary machines for performing important parts of the work were
perfected; and from that time headway was made in the manufacture of
this high grade type of footwear.
The development of the industry--which has been very rapid with the
introduction of machinery--suffered materially in the latter part of
the last century through the bitter rivalry of machinery manufacturers,
a common process being the enjoining of manufacturers from the use of
machines on which it was claimed the patents were infringed and this
created a state of great uncertainty in the minds of many of those
manufacturing shoes.
This condition finally found its solution in the formation of one large
corporation, known in the shoe industry as the “United Shoe Machinery
Company,” which purchased the patents for a sufficient number of
machines to form a complete system for the “bottoming”--or fastening
the soles and heels of shoes--and finishing them.
These machines have been the subject of constant improvement and
others have been perfected to take care of operations which, prior to
their introduction, were purely hand operations. Each machine has been
standardized and so adapted to meet the requirements of those used in
connection with it that they collectively form the most remarkable and
efficient system of machines used at the present time.
Mention is made of this company owing to the important position it
has taken in the organization and advancement of the industry, the
American-made shoe being the one commodity of world-wide consumption
whose supremacy is not contested.
[Illustration: MY LADY’S SLIPPERS OF EARLY TIMES
EMBROIDERED RIDING BOOT WORN BY NOBLES DURING LAST DAYS OF POLISH
INDEPENDENCE]
[Illustration: EMBROIDERED RIDING BOOT FROM PERSIA OF ABOUT 1850]
[Illustration: FRENCH CALF BOOT MADE IN NEW YORK CITY, 1835]
[Illustration: LADY’S SHOE--PERIOD OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION]
[Illustration: LADY’S SHOE--PERIOD OF LOUIS XVI.