Boot and Shoe Manufacturing

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BOOT AND SHOE MANUFACTURING

BOOT AND SHOE MANUFACTURING. Boot-makers and shoemakers arrived early in the history of each of the colonies to provide the settlers with much-needed products. After acquiring leather from nearby tanneries, cobblers, who frequently worked at home, used hand tools and centuries-old techniques to cut out the various parts, to sew together the pieces to make the upper, and to attach the upper to the sole, shaping each shoe over a wooden last or form. A nascent industry developed in eastern Massachusetts by the end of the colonial era. Lynn had become a leading center after John Adam Dagyr and other immigrants introduced the most recent European hand processes, permitting colonists to make products that competed successfully with foreign imports.

In order to supply the demands of a growing population after the Revolutionary War, merchant capitalists slowly reorganized the trade. They purchased leather from both American and foreign markets, cut the materials, hired craftsmen to make the shoes in their homes or small shops, and sold the finished products. This domestic, or putting-out, system of manufacture meant the cobbler worked for the merchant. Two kinds of specialization emerged: shoemakers in a region would specialize in a particular type of shoe, while craftsmen would specialize in only one step in the manufacturing process. Improving transportation networks and growing financial resources permitted shoe manufacturers in Massachusetts and the Middle Atlantic states to exploit southern and western markets.

Factories and mechanization came to this large industry after 1850, as entrepreneurs gradually recognized the usefulness of consolidating the various processes at one location, where better supervision of the increasingly specialized steps could occur. Within these central shops, or factories, machines were perfected that imitated specific hand processes. Of the more than five thousand American patents issued before 1900 for improvements in shoemaking, three developments proved most significant: the adaptation of the Howe sewing machine to stitching uppers; the invention by Lyman R. Blake, a black mechanic, of a device for sewing the upper to the sole (the machine bears the name of Col. Gordon McKay, who improved and marketed it during the Civil War); and the perfection, by Charles Goodyear, Jr., by 1875 of Auguste Deystouy's welt-stitching machine for joining the upper and sole. The advantages of machines, especially those that were power driven, encouraged the further subdivision of processes that led, by the end of the century, to a process with more than 170 steps. Mechanization reduced the time required to make a shoe by more than 80 percent.

With the creation of large, integrated factories, employees turned toward trade unionism. In 1895, in the wake of several other more radical labor associations, workers formed the International Boot and Shoe Workers Union. In 1899 the principal producers of shoemaking machinery formed the United Shoe Machinery Company, which still controlled this industry in the mid-1970s. In 1905 the shoe manufacturers formed the National Boot and Shoe Manufacturers Association.

Although New England and the Atlantic seaboard dominated shoemaking, before World War I other centers of manufacture emerged in western New York, the Midwest, and the upper South, using materials from throughout the world. Consolidation reduced the number of firms to 1,449 in 1919, but these companies had 211,000 employees and an output of 331 million pairs of shoes. Americans exported almost $75 million worth of leather footwear per year.

After World War I the shoemaking industry experienced difficulties. Although Americans refined techniques, foreign machinery manufacturers competed successfully. Imported shoes and a trend toward canvas and rubber shoes eroded the domestic market. Synthetic leather materials forced firms to adopt costly new technology. A more affluent society encouraged companies to design new styles, which then presented inventory problems. As competition and the size of the required capital investment rose, many firms either closed or consolidated.

Many of the most successful American firms in sub-sequent decades produced sneakers and athletic shoes. Athletic shoes were first marketed in the 1910s and 1920s as necessary components of such new popular sports as tennis and baseball. Only in the 1930s, however, did most firms add traction to the soles of shoes and sell different models for different sports. The market expanded somewhat in the 1950s, but sneaker production did not become big business until the 1970s. The popularity of running and more relaxed dress codes in schools and workplaces led to a boom in the market for athletic shoeware. Manufacturers introduced sophisticated marketing techniques to launch state-of-the-art advertising campaigns, funded extensive research to develop high-tech shoe soles, and paid famous athletes to wear and promote their shoes. Athletic shoes became fashion statements, subject to yearly model changes and very high markups.

Although many American firms profited from sales of these shoes, they were rarely manufactured in the United States. Only Converse, New Balance, and Hyde Athletics (makers of Saucony) maintained some manufacturing operations in the United States by 1997; domestically manufactured sneakers accounted for only 10 percent of the total sold in 1995. Most firms shifted production to overseas factories, often working through Asian subcontractors. One reason for the move was technological; Korea and Taiwan had fully developed networks of parts producers that could satisfy the need for constantly changing equipment and technologically advanced shoes. But economics also played a role. Wages, especially in poorer countries like Indonesia, were dramatically lower than those in the United States. Working conditions were also generally much harsher and more repressive. Manufacturers were subject to intensifying public scrutiny over charges of exploitation of overseas workers. These complaints resulted in increased oversight of American firms' overseas suppliers and antisweatshop activism on many college campuses. Athletic shoes nonetheless remained extraordinarily popular; by 1997 these shoes had more than twice the market share of dress or casual shoes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blewett, Mary H. Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780–1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Dawley, Alan. Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Hazard, Blanche Evans. The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts Before 1875. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921.

Vanderbilt, Tom. The Sneaker Book: Anatomy of an Industry and an Icon. New York: New Press, 1998.

Lucius F.Ellsworth/t. d.