17

pers, strippers and sole cutters for blocking out soles, adjustable lasts, and the Howe stitching machine referred to above. The introduction of the stitching machine radically modified the manufacture of uppers. Much of the work was taken away from women working at home and given to machine girls working in stitching shops run either by contractors or merchantcapitalists. It was soon followed by the invention of levellers and skivers the first to shape the shoes after they were manufactured, the second to cut the edges of the sole leather. Heel making, lasting, and sandpapering machines were next invented. Pegging machines, run by steam power, were introduced in Lynn and Philadelphia in 1857 and the promise of a factory system was at hand. A Philadelphian triumphantly declared that these would "peg two rows on either side of a boot or shoe in three minutes and cut their own pegs. The same year saw the invention, by Lyman R. Blake, of Abington, Massachusetts, of the sole sewing machine which, when perfected by McKay in 1862, was destined to revolutionize shoe manufacture. By means of a "horn" which held a thread within the shoe and a needle that came up through the sole, it sewed a chain stitch through the upper, insole, and sole. The journeyman, sewing by hand, had to sew the welt to the upper and then the sole to the welt. The machine did both at once and made eighty pairs while the journeyman made one.

Between 1860 and 1870 invention progressed still more rapidly and, under the stimulus of the war, the machines were utilized almost as fast as invented. The Townsend and Bean wax thread machines, wire nail peggers, and new pricking, breasting and heel-trimming machines were invented, the earlier machines were perfected, and all were rapidly put into use.

17 Massachusetts Statistics of Labor, Report 1871, p. 609. Johnson, D. N., Lynn, Fifty Years a City, p. 179.

18 Freedley, E. T., Philadelphia and its Manufactories, p. 187.

CHAPTER III

INDUSTRIAL CHANGES DURING THE CIVIL WAR, THEIR CAUSES AND THEIR RESULTS

The development of the factory system, which started with the introduction of the power pegging machine at Lynn and Philadelphia, in 1857, was checked by the industrial depression of 1857 and 1860. During the next three years little progress was made. But the outbreak of the war began a period that taxed every means of production to the utmost. The government's purchases sharply increased the demand for sewed shoes; the patriotism of the journeymen sharply decreased the supply of shoemakers. The invention of the McKay machine in 1862 was quickly followed by its introduction into factories. A Lynn editor wrote in 1864,

"Comparatively few people are aware of the quiet steady revolution that is going on in the business of shoemaking, and particularly as that business is conducted in Lynn. Previous to the introduction of the original sewing machines, which are now universally used for the binding and stitching of the uppers, but little or no improvement or even change had been made in the manufacture of shoes. The awl, the bristle and thread, the lapstone and hammer, with plenty of 'elbow grease' were, as they had been for years, the main appliances of the shoemakers, and little was known or thought of labor-saving machinery. After a time, women's nimble fingers were found inadequate to the demand, and sewing machines soon transformed the old-fashioned 'shoe-binder' into a new and more expansive class of 'machinegirls' whose capacity for labor was only limited by the capabilities of the machines over which they presided. Iron and steel came to the aid of wearied fingers and weakened eyes. This was the beginning of the new era, which is destined to produce results big with lasting benefits to our flourishing city.

"It is scarcely 10 years since the first introduction of machinery of any kind into the manufacture of shoes in this city. Everything was done by hand, even to the cutting out of the

soles, which was a slow process, and required the expenditure of a large amount of physical force. The introduction of solecutting and stripping machines, although used sparingly, was the first indication that a change was to take place in the business of shoemaking; but no one, even ten years ago, would have dared to prophesy that the change was to be so immediate and so great. The rapid progress that has been made during that time, and especially within the past year or two, in the introduction of machinery in shoemaking, has been beyond all previous calculation. It may almost be said that handwork has already become the exception, and machinery the rule. The little shoemaker's shop and the shoemaker's bench are passing rapidly away, soon to be known no more among us; and the immense factory, with its laboring steam-engine and its busy hum of whirling wheels, is rising up in their place to change the whole face of things in this ancient and honored metropolis of the 'workers in the gentle craft of leather.'

"The problem as to how best to bring in and concentrate the vast army of men and women employed in the shoe manufacture of Lynn is one that has attracted the attention of many thinking minds among our business men, but it has never been satisfactorily solved until now. Machinery, and particularly the sewing machine,1 has done in a few short months what years of theorizing and speculation could not do. It has demonstrated that the factory system can be successfully and profitably introduced into the shoe business; in fact, that, with the rapid strides which the business has made within a few years, it is the only system that can be made available for its successful application in future. Of course, the new system is yet in its infancy-the business is yet in a transition state; but the wheels of revolution are moving rapidly, and they never move backward. Operatives are pouring in as fast as room can be made for them; buildings for 'shoe factories' are going up in every direction; the hum of machinery is heard on every hand; old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new.

12

The Massachusetts Commissioner of Labor Statistics, writing seven years later said:

"Invention has seemed to center about it [the shoe industry] until every phase of the 'Ancient and Honorable Mysterie of Cordwainers' [shoemakers], has disappeared and in its place have come cutters, stock-fitters, lasters, bottomers, machine op

1i. e., the McKay machine.

9 Quoted.-Fincher's Trades' Review, March 26, 1864.

erators, beaders, trimmers, edge setters, finishers, etc., etc.men who each perform some fractional part of the trade.''

The rapid building of factories and utilization of machinery during the war period was the fundamental cause of the Crispin movement. It increased the productive powers of the industry beyond what the normal necessities of the shoe market required. It filled the industry with surplus labor, and it preFared the way for a period of excessive competition between employers for orders and between laborers for work.

The manufacturing process in the factories did not require skilled workmen. Journeymen were still needed for cutting and for certain other hand operations, but common laborers could run the machines, each of which performed but a small operation. The absence of any shoemakers' organization with apprenticeship rules that hindered the entrance of new hands into the trade, the plentitude of work in the small shops for the journeymen, the manufacturers' need for more labor, and the cheapness of unskilled labor, combined to allow thousands of "green hands" from the streets and farms and other occupations to go into the shoe factories." The effect was not felt until the end of the war brought an industrial reaction. The return of thousands of journeymen from the war increased the supply of labor, the stoppage of the government purchases decreased the demand for shoes. The South American, Mexican, Australian, West Indian, and Canadian Markets, which had taken all surplus products before the war, were found to have been lost.

* Massachusett's Statistics of Labor, Report 1871, p. 232.

'Massachusetts Statistics of Labor, Report 1871, pp. 604, 609. One factory operative testified that he had served no apprenticeship and another that he had served one of three months. "Skilled labor has diminished in value since the introduction of machinery," he suggestively added. "You can put into a shop a farm laborer from New Hampshire, and in three days he will learn to do a part. There is comparatively nothing to learn, and so no apprenticeship is required." p. 243. "The skilled shoemaker found that the knowledge and experience gained by years of practice gave him little advantage over the green hand." Report 1877, p. 21.

The situation was well described by a correspondent in Fincher's Trades' Review, Nov. 21, 1863, p. 3, chap. 2: "They are flooding the factories with boys, to the great injury of those who have served an apprenticeship to the trade; in fact, doing just what they please without any regard to our interest or rights." The reference to "boys" should not be taken to mean child-labor. It rather refers to young men and others who had not yet acquired the trade.

Wages fell, work became irregular. The seasonal character of the industry was intensified. The shoemaker who could secure steady work at decent prices was exceptionally fortunate."

The most pronounced, if not the most important, evil that confronted the shoe workers after the war was the shortened working year. Newhall, commenting upon the change from the small shops to the factories, says, "the revolution in the mode of manufacture, brought about by the introduction of machinery, has no more marked feature than the division of time into seasons of intense activity followed by seasons of almost perfect quietness. Orders can be so rapidly filled that when few or rone are waiting the manufacturer does not work along accumulating a stock in expectancy." The orders which had formerly covered the whole year could now "be filled in six or eight months."' 8 Long periods of unemployment were common, especially in winter, and many of the shoemakers had "to work at anything for support."" One of them summarized the situa

tion as follows:

"Since the old system of working in little shops was abandoned for that of larger manufactories, there has been a steady diminution in the length of the working season per year. Before the time of factories there would be a steady run of employment for from seven to ten years, only interrupted by commercial depressions or revulsions. The working hours would be from twelve to fifteen. The season for lighting up, was from September 20 to May 20. Since that time there has never been a year of steady work. At first a month only would be lost; now it has got so that we lose over four months' time every year.

"Those of us who have watched the current of events for the last 10 years have seen a remarkable and in some respects unnecessary change in the character of the shoe business of the country caused by the late terrible civil war. For years before the war began we were exporting largely of shoes and leather, especially to the South American and Mexican Republics. In that way we got rid of much of our surplus stock and thus secured, in the main, steady work from year to year, undisturbed except by financial revulsions. The war changed all this and the shoe maker who could secure since 1864 steady employment at a decent price was fortunate indeed. So many shoemakers entered the army

that the necessities of the country stimulated the invention of machinery so that now the American market can be fully supplied in eight or nine months." Proceedings, 1872, p. 18. The same facts are emphasized in American Workman, July 3, 1869.

Newhall, J. R., Lynn Centennial, p. 62.

8 American Workman, June 19, 1869.

• Massachusetts Statistics of Labor, Report 1872, p. 271.