BOOTS AND SHOES

The manv-| facture of footwear is a leading American industry, mainly centered in New Eng-| land, where it became established with the first colonial settlement in Ma achusetts. American improvements in machinery and devices generally for producing footwear early revolutionized the industry and set the pace to the adoption of similar methods of production in other countries. The boot and shoe industry of no other nation, however, has reached the high level and volume attained by American manufacturers, whose preeminence in invention, methods and equipment becomes firmer established year by year. They produce footwear of a style and durability that has created a market for Am. shoes in every land. In 1921, for exam- ‘ple, 8,957,697 pairs of shoes (children’s, men’s and women’s) were exported of a yalue of $24,678,701. The entire production of boots and shoes in that year, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1923, amounted to 284,660,000 pairs. This is not a normal output but rather a temporary decline. The industry, in common with busine generally, suffered by the post-war depre ion, which reached its peak in 1921 and curtailed or restricted production and reduced prices to nearly pre-war levels. In 1919 331,225,000 pairs of boots and shoes were produced, and in 1914, 292,666,000 pairs. Of the 1921 output of 284,660,000 airs, women’s footwear predominated 101,140,000 pairs); then men’s (69,- 858,000 pairs.). The manufacturing establishments in that year, including cut stock and findings, numbered 560, whose total products had a value of $111,809,000, as against 679 establishments with a total production of $224,- 028,000 in 1919. The figure thus shows quite a setback in footwear manufacture in 1920. In the United States a shoe is any type of footwear that does not extend above the ankle. In England ‘shoe’ is generally applied to footwear whose covering stops at the ankle, that is, the American ‘low shoe,’ or the Oxford or Derby ‘tie’ in English parlance. Footwear become boots in the United States when they reach above the ankle, even to the knee and beyond. In England they are boots only when they reach the shin; extended beyond that point they become top-boots or Bluchers (half boots) or Wellingtons (reaching the knee), the last named displacing the He ian type, but are now rarely seen in England. In practice American ‘shoes’ and English ‘boots’ are synonymous. Footwear had its origin in the sandal, which protected the soles of the feet and was not an adornment. The primitive sandal slowly acquired additions and ornamentation with the dawning and growth of culture and aesthetics and thus the modern shoe or boot acquired its present forms. The Egyptians were among the pioneer sandal-makers and the tools they used are not unlike those employed by the modern cobbler. The Tromans wore the sandal, but in their empire-making they came in contact with other peoples and absorbed their diversities of dre , footwear among them, and thus came to wear shoes, boots and buskins. But it was not until the Middle Ages, with its renai ance in art and culture, that modern footwear had its beginnings: Many styles arose embracing the crude moca in-like shoe of rawhide or roughly tanned, with its thongs as fastenings, worn by peasants; the heelle slipper-like shoe with spurs; ankle-high shoes with sharp or turned-up points; low shoes with heels and large buckles; high tight boots, heelle with pointed toes, each leggin differing in color; knee boots proclaiming their wearer as knights; the ‘jack boot,’ as worn by the British Horse Guards today; and the fanciful footwear styles of the French in heels and buckles. The machinery era of the 19th century brought boots and shoes to their modern perfection as factory products. It gradually displaced the ancient craft of shoemaking, represented by the local or itinerant shoemaker or cobbler, who produced hand-made footwear of entire families, though for a long time machine and manual production went on side by side. The industry did not begin to grow to its present proportions till the invention of the sewing machine. Nowadays, except for repairing, there is scarcely such a thing as hand-sewing in shoe manufacture. In the United States the slow operation of handwork began to be discarded with the invention of the McKay Stitching machine, which came into active use in 1861 and proved of valuable service in the supply of footwear to Union troops in the Civil War. It automatically sewed the outer sole to the inner sole by a strong chain stitch. Other machines came into operation about this time and later, among them the leather-rolling machine, which pre ed the leather to the right consistency, a laborious task previously done on the lapstone; leather sewing machines for stitching the uppers with wat thread and attaching them to the sole; splitting devices for dividing leather or giving it a uniform thickne ; machines for cutting the soles and other parts of a shoe on a fixed pattern; the screw machine, which cut individual layers for heels, a embled and nailed them together, and attached them to their place on the sole; and welt sewing machines, which produce shoes with smooth interiors. adaptable to feet with irregularities. In fact, every operation in the production of boots and shoes is now accomplished by machinery. In one large American plant, devices are in use that effect 170 different operations on a single pair of shoes, which pa through 210 pairs of hands in the proce . A standardization in manufacture and styles has resulted generally from the immense volume of production made po ible by perfected machinery applied to every detail of shoemaking. Throughout Europe and America, the modern machine-made boot and shoe has generally supplanted all other types of footwear, but in other parts of the world, racial customs sanctify the retention of ancient forms of feet-coverings. Workers in China still wear the sandal made of woven reeds, while the thick soled, quilted slipper (familiar in pictures) marks the merchant and others of that social grade. The sandal and low shoe of their ancestors, sometimes of costly leather and richly ornamented, is religiously clung to by the people of India, Turkey and Arabia. Then there are top-boots worn in Ru ia and in the} Balkans, the sabots or wooden shoes seen in Holland, Belgium, France and Germany, and the Esparto gra sandals and slippers used in some parts of Spain. Of sabots it may be said that they are now being manufactured in quantities for domestic use in the United States.