USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 50
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 50
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 50
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This adopting of a standard measure brought about a revolution, vir- tually the beginning of shoemaking by factory methods, although the factories were far from what they are today. Standard sizes enabled
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shoemakers to make up a stock in readiness for a customer instead of waiting for an order.
Abington was the first town in Plymouth County to make shoes by the system of gathering workmen around an employer, making the en- tire shoe under one roof but not by one man. This plan was early adopted in Abington and in Randolph, Holbrook and Quincy. The "ten-footer" shoe shop became scattered through all the towns in the county. Some- times boys and girls were taught to peg shoes. On many of the farms, in the winter time, shoes were bound and stitched by women at home and lasted and pegged by men and boys. All was hand work.
The first machine-made part of a shoe was the wooden peg, invented in 1815, but it was driven by hand. The shoe pegging machine came later.
Army shoes have been made in large quantities in Plymouth County for the Revolution, the Civil War, the War of 1812, Spanish-American War and the World War. As Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale said in "The Story of Massachusetts :"
In a certain sense it may be said that the victories of the war at the front were won in the workshops at home. A single shoe-factory would supply in a day more shoes than a whole regiment would wear. The machine shops and foundries were capable of the best work needed for improving artillery and other munitions of war. And it proved, for the thousandth time, that a nation which means to be fit for war, must develop on every line the processes of manufacture.
In the Days of "Whipping the Cat"-Shoemaking in primitive days was carried on by the head of the house, the father or oldest son, who made shoes for himself and other members of the family. Then came the traveling shoemaker, an individual carrying lapstone, hammer and awls, a few lasts and waxed-ends, who boarded with the family while he fixed the footwear. This was called "whipping the cat." Sometimes a journeyman of this type would find enough to do in a given community that his stay there would be sufficiently long to make a demand for his services come from the first ones served before he had moved on to some other place. Unless he desired to keep on traveling, he became a fix- ture, set up a cobbling shop and joined the community. Traveling cob- blers were dated up in advance, much the same as dressmakers in later days and even today.
Bouck White tells in his book, "The Book of Daniel Drew," "We used to learn the news in a general way when the cobbler came to the house once a year to make up the year's supply of shoes and boots for the household. This visit of the cobbler was quite an event each year. Father would prepare for it by swapping a pair of cattle or a load of po- tatoes down at Foster's tan yard for a few sides of leather. Then the cobbler would come for a week or so and make the leather up into foot- wear. When the cobbler came, it was the boy's work to whittle out the
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pegs for him." This was the case after 1811, for that was the first year wooden pegs were used. Hand-sewed shoes were in vogue in the ear- lier years.
Sometimes these shoemakers "whipping the cat" were apprentices who had been bound out to a master to learn a trade, and this was their first venture in search of a location. An apprentice was clothed, lodged and fed, given an opportunity to attend school, and, usually after serv- ing his time was given a "freedom suit," a small amount of money men- tioned in the indenture or verbal agreement as the case might be. Wil- liam L. Douglas of Brockton, who became "the world's greatest shoe- maker," a former governor of Massachusetts, was bound out as an ap- prentice in his boyhood and learned shoemaking under that system. The apprentice system was by no means confined to shoemakers. Ben- jamin Franklin was apprenticed to his older brother, James Franklin, as a printer in Boston.
When a shoemaker settled down in a shop for that purpose, his cus- tomers would bring leather to him, out of which the shoes were to be made. This was called "bespoke work." When the shoemaker fur- nished the leather his shoes, made up at odd times, were called "sales" or "shop" shoes. The cheaper kind were called "market" shoes, the kind made to sell instead of to wear, and disposed of in some market to which they were shipped in hogsheads, barrels, tea chests or sugar boxes. Regular shoe boxes or cases did not come into use until 1836. The leather was prepared by hand until 1830, when the first machinery was used for some of the shoemaking processes. As early as 1831 shoes were being made in Massachusetts and sold to the planters in the South, for slaves.
Shoes made entirely by hand and hand-sewed were necessarily ex- pensive and pegged shoes were stiff and uncomfortable. In 1871 Good- year made a machine which sewed shoes, not as well as they were sewed by hand but a great improvement over the pegged shoes. The patents issued for the Goodyear Welt Sewing Machine in 1871 and 1873 were the beginning of the now famous Goodyear welt system of manufactur- ing shoes. It was some twenty years later that the machine became really successful and improvements on it have come in rapid succession.
Gordon Mckay perfected the Mckay Sewing Machine. The first Mckay machine was used in 1861 and for many years Mckay sewed shoes were manufactured in Plymouth County and the South Shore district in great numbers. The system is still used in making some of the cheaper grades.
The cutting out of soles and tops, the sewing together of the pieces of the uppers and the fastening together of the two main portions, are the three main processes in shoe-making by the modern factory system, but there are from one hundred to one hundred and fifty different pro-
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cesses which enter into the construction. There are about fifty separate pieces and they are handled by about fifty different operators from cut- ting room to packing room. In Plymouth County, where high and medi- um grades of shoes are produced, much of the cutting is done by hand, on linings, quarters, vamps, tips, tops, stays, tongues and other small parts of the shoe. Women are found in nearly every room in the factory but not to any great extent in the cutting rooms, unless skiving is done there. The stitching rooms are almost exclusively populated by wo- men, except for vamping. Sometimes this process also is undertaken by women with reasonable success.
Labor Union and High Wages-The high wages that rule in Plym- outh County towns and vicinity in the shoe industry is largely the re- sult of labor union activities. Brockton is a union city which is known as such all over the world and it is also a city in which high wages are paid, money is freely spent for the things which promote and sustain high standards of living and the result is an especially happy and well- satisfied population.
The high wages demanded and received have, at times,. especially since the World War, interfered with the growth and prosperity of the city to a certain extent. Brockton manufacturers claim it is practically necessary to turn out a high-grade product. Cheap goods cannot be profitably manufactured on so high a wage scale. "The Brockton-made shoe is manufactured by the highest paid shoe operatives in the world. This brings to her factories the most skilled laborers and the manufac- turers cannot afford to set such labor to work on careless designs or poor material." The drawback has been that the demand for cheaper shoes has been supplied elsewhere, orders for cheaper grades being turned down in Brockton.
Organized labor has reached its greatest success in Plymouth County and vicinity in the shoemaking industry. Shoemakers were always jealous of their calling. As early as 1648 The Company of Shoemakers was in existence. Then came the Society of Master Cordwainers in 1789, the Federation of Journeymen Cordwainers in 1794, the United Beneficial Society of Journeymen in 1835, the Knights of St. Crispin in 1868, afterwards affiliations with the Knights of Labor, and the American Federation of Labor. The greatest prosperity in the shoe- making industry and freedom from strikes has come since the organiza- tion of the Boot and Shoe Workers' Union a generation ago.
The first strike in this country was by shoemakers in the early part of the nineteenth century, in Philadelphia. Laws were passed regard- ing the making of shoes and the price to be demanded for them in Phila- delphia and vicinity in 1721. The manufacturers were compelled to make good shoes of good leather and sell them at a fair price, as they
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were considered a commodity necessary to everyone. The making and marketing of them was something vitally affecting the public welfare. The better trained Boston cobblers and those in the Old Colony dis- trict, who had shops of their own, petitioned the General Court early against the nomad shoemakers and the "damage which the country sus- tains by occasions of bad wear."
Shoe manufacturers and labor unionists in this vicinity are optimistic and believe that the people will demand the highest grade footwear and will expect Brockton and vicinity to furnish it. They, therefore, seem to be satisfied to "sit tight" and wait for the slower but surer increase, rather than let down the standard and meet the demand for a cheaper shoe at the cost of losing their reputation for the best in the world. Hamilton Lowe, in an article on "Brockton, A City of Enterprise". in the "New England Magazine," September, 1911, penned a paragraph which is just as true today as then: "It is doubtful if any other indus- try in the United States, unless it should be the manufacture of steel, which is controlled by local conditions and a great trust, can show any- thing like the same centralization of skilled labor and manufacturing brains."
Psychology of Local Shoemaking-It is permissible to introduce in this connection a quotation from an article prepared by E. Gerry Brown for the "Brockton and South Shore Magazine" and printed in September, 1926, concerning "Personal Pride in Product." Mr. Brown said in part :
The Brockton and South Shore District is the fortunate center of a popu- lation that has a personal pride in the shoe that is the product of its industry. This shoe has a reputation that remains undisturbed by the varying incidents in the years as they go by. It is evident that such a reputation could not have been established wholly by the claims of the makers.
The other factor-and the most important one-in maintaining the stability of this reputation is the user of the product-those who wear shoes made in this district. At times the question is asked, "Why can Brockton and the South Shore produce a better and more attractive shoe than those offered by other centers?"
Psychology is a word often used to explain the effects resulting from the opera- tion of certain causes. The psychologist would tell us that the growth and the permanence of the reputation of shoes made in this district are the effect and the result of natural causes. When the dials of a radio instrument are set for a broadcasting station that is in operation, it is practically certain that it will be heard from. When the working machinery of individuals is "tuned in" to the making of shoes, the result is better shoes than would be the case if the machinery were disturbed by "interferences!"
Brockton and the surrounding towns are and have been a centre for the shoe industry. From the little shops by the wayside to the more than half a hundred large factories with all the appurtenances for perfection in production was a natural evolution. The surrounding atmosphere was a potent force that vibrated Plym-30
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a good shoe. The "shop talk" outside of business hours is always shoes, because there is little other manufacturing.
The thirteen different labor unions having jurisdiction over all of the many operations in the making of shoes afford opportunities to consider the many de- tails in the making of a shoe that are continually presenting themselves for settle- ment. The several joint shoe councils in the Brockton and South Shore District are made up of the agents and representatives of the unions. They are trained experts. There are creative forces in evolving ideas, the psychologists might tell you, that spell "Brockton Shoe" or "South Shore Shoe"-always attractive and last- ing, lasting beyond the lasting in the factory, because all forces inside and outside of the factory operate with that intention as the motive power. Cooperation plus intelligence always produces results.
Mr. Brown has been a worker in the ranks and a leader in trade union- ism and the promotion of the conditions of the workers some threescore years-as he began young. He was a reporter on the Boston "Post" more than fifty-five years ago and has been in the newspaper activities ever since, a large share of the time as owner and publisher of several newspapers, one at a time, in Boston and vicinity, and in Brockton. He is, perhaps, as widely known as any man living in Brockton today, and has enjoyed the personal friendship of scores of the most prominent pub- lic men in the United States during the last half century, which makes his opinion, quoted above, interesting reading in every State of the Union. And, in the language of the man in the street, when he penned it he "said a mouthful."
For a generation there has been no labor disturbance in Brockton and the South Shore District from strikes or lock-outs, on account of con- tractual relations with the manufacturers. Nearly all the shoeworkers, both men and women, are members of the Boot and Shoe Workers' Union, which is an association affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The unions guarantee that there will be no strikes. The manufacturers guarantee that they will maintain an agreed-upon wage list, fixed by a joint conference. In case of misunderstanding, claims of changes in conditions or any other reason for dispute, the matter is ap- pealed to the Massachusetts Department of Conciliation and Arbitra- tion. Shoe workers continue at work while the matters are being put before the State Board by delegates and the decision of the board, after reviewing the case, dates from the time the matter was submitted. The State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration was created largely through the influence of the late Governor William L. Douglas, a native of Plymouth who manufactured shoes in Brockton.
The higher wages, good factory equipment and working conditions and permanence of business concerns in Plymouth County has been largely due to the intelligent and moderate management of the labor or- ganizations and the sincerity with which contracts between employers and employees have been made and maintained. There is very little
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absenteeism among Plymouth County shoe manufacturers. They re- side in the city or towns in which they manufacture. Many of those of the two former generations worked at the bench and knew shoemaking from personal experience as former employees. The families have been in the shoe business for a century. The manufacturer respects his em- ployees and is respected in return.
In many instances, they were schoolmates, and the children of both are growing up together and associating together. This is true even in the present generation to a remarkable degree. The worker at the bench expects his children to get a college education as good as any which the children of the manufacturer can get, and it is being done. There may be instances in the rising generation where the children of the bench worker will becoine the employers of some of the children of the manu- facturers. It has already been done in the last generation. There are no great social distinctions between those who work at the bench and those employed in an administrative capacity. Sometimes the women employed as the office force show a conviction of apparent superiority in a social way but usually the women in the stitching rooms get the higher wages.
Early Organizations of Shoemakers-The first attempt to organize the shoeworkers in America was in 1648 when a "Company of Shoe- makers" was incorporated, known as the Boston Guild. The incorpora- tion was under a charter granted by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, a copy of which appears in the records of the colony, Volume III, page 132. It was not an attempt at a closed shop but to prevent work being put out into families and the itinerant cobbler and pretended to be for the purpose of protecting the public against inferior work. It had its day and passed away and shoemakers in general were so well satisfied with the conditions under which they labored for themselves or their neighbors, that no further attempt was made to organize until 1868. In that year, when conditions following the Civil War were much changed, the Knights of St. Crispin organized in various towns.
Numerous machines had been introduced into the industry but the Mckay sewing machine for sewing soles, run by power, "took work away from men who had been domestic workers". Skiving machines and sewing machines for the uppers were already in general use.
The Knights of St. Crispin had eighty-five active lodges at the end of 1870 and claimed a total membership of 40,000. That was at the height of its popularity and the year they had a strike in Worcester which. lasted for three months, involved 1200 men and cost $175,000. In 1872 there was a strike in North Adams which was broken by 107 Chinamen brought from California. .
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John F. Tobin, for several years general president of the Boot and Shoe Workers' Union, wrote in 1915 as follows: "I have never found anyone who could give me any connected history of the Knights of St. Crispin, notwithstanding the fact that I have made diligent search. I was a member of the organization some forty-three years ago, but at that time, did not accumulate any knowledge of its workings. I feel that its history was not of any great consequence and its achievements did not go beyond seeking higher wages through the old-fashioned strike method. At that time, employers were practically unanimous in opposi- tion to organization of the workers, and the contests generally hinged upon a recognition of the Union in conjunction with the wage question."
Burrell and Maguire of Randolph acceded to one demand of the Cris- pins and then closed their shop. Washington Reed closed his shop in Abington, rather than submit to the organization. After Chinamen had been brought to North Adams to break a strike at the factory of Calvin T. Sampson, the order became lukewarm concerning its principal purpose to prevent the introduction of "green hands." In 1873 when the "hard times" came, shoemakers were glad to get work on any terms the manufacturers could offer and the Crispin Order dwindled to in- significance.
On the Trail of the "Ten-Footers"-It has been recorded how Marsh- field was one of the early towns set apart from Plymouth and took care of the "overflow" when the traditional English desire for more land actuated some of the first comers to that town, to move away from Plym- outh. Babies continued to be born bare-footed and so shoemakers followed the trail of the Pilgrims and their housefurnishings to where new settlements were made on the main Indian trail from Plymouth to Boston. In this way Randolph and Brockton originated, and both of them became shoemaking villages, and have always held that distinction. The former settlement was on Cochato River and Tumbling Brook, early in the eighteenth century. North Precinct of Bridgewater (now Brockton) became established as a settlement on the main road half way between Bridgewater and Randolph. Before the Revolution there were at least two vats and pits for tanning leather in Randolph.
It is said of Deacon Thomas Wales of the first Randolph church, that he operated bark pits for tanning and the "Bark house piece" of land on the Wales estate was named because it was the site of the early indus- try.
Brockton, by its former names, was at first an iron smelting and cast- ing community. Shepherd Fiske, the agent for Governor Bowdoin of Massachusetts, had a blast furnace at Bridgewater from which were supplied cohorns and grenobles for use in the colonial wars as well as cast-iron kettles, spiders and other kitchen implements.
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The original shoemaker in Brockton, who made "sale shoes" was a Randolph man, Micah Faxon, referred to elsewhere. Randolph led Brockton in manufacturing footwear for a long time.
Following the days of the itinerant shoemakers, who lived with a family while making the family shoes, and traveled from place to place with the required tools and a few lasts done up in his apron, came the "ten-footers," in which a shoemaker set up business, usually in his own yard, teaching and employing his own sons or a few neighbors. The little shops, called "ten-footers," came into use about the middle of the eighteenth century. Usually there was a garret, or cockloft, which be- came the catch-all for everything saved for future use. There were as many benches in a "ten-footer" as the space would allow, and they had to be placed a sufficient distance from the wall to enable the shoemaker to swing his arms at full length as he sewed the shoes with waxed-ends. Sometimes a "ten-footer" was a misnomer, as many of the shops were twelve and sometimes fourteen by fourteen. Some of them are still in existence, in some instances converted into modern bungalows, but, dig under the surface of the road which passes by, and one will find leather chips thrown out half a century or more ago.
Lincoln Was a Pioneer Jobber-One of the first men in this vicinity to become a "middleman" or entrepreneur in the shoe industry was Ephraim Lincoln of Holbrook. Beginning about 1816 he purchased stock in Boston, had it cut and put out to neighbors to make into shoes. The shoes he took to Boston when he went after additional stock. He conducted a general store but the shoe business eventually became larger than his store business. One of the neighbors who was an especially fast workman for him was Samuel Ludden, who sometimes made "15 pare" between Lincoln's trips to Boston.
Some of the pioneers in the shoe industry are considered by people of the present day as small business men, viewed by present-day standards, but Littlefield Brothers of East Stoughton (now Avon) marketed their product in New Orleans and Cuba and in 1836 or earlier invested $80,000 in Aroostook County, Maine, where the potatoes come from. Harvey Reed, a brother of Quincy Reed, an early shoemaker of Weymouth or- ganized the business so that the firm had a store in Boston, made cus- tom shoes, and additional shoes for sale over the counter and in the West Indies, repaired shoes for customers, and sold such supplies as leather, blacking, awls and tacks to other shoemakers.
One of Harvey Reed's investments was the purchase of a whole town- ship in Maine. Quincy Reed had, as a side line, a grain business which kept four schooners busy in the coastwise trade and over the deep-water path between here and Spain. It is said that Harvey Reed was one of the original promoters of the Union Bank of Weymouth and Braintree
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and of the Weymouth Savings Bank. From 1833 to his death in 1859, he carried on a large lumbering business in Bangor, Maine.
Littlefield Brothers of East Stoughton, already referred to, were Na- thaniel, James, Isaac and Darius. The latter became postmaster in 1822. In those days a postmaster could frank his own mail and this was a valuable concession, as he had extensive mail with New Orleans customers.
The part performed by James Littlefield was largely that of traveling salesman. He was one of the pioneer "shoe drummers" from this sec- tion and covered considerable southern territory, as the firm did an ex- tensive business in Philadelpia, Virginia, New Orleans and Cuba. Con- siderable talk was made in the spring of 1927 about "the year without a summer," as there had been a prediction that 1927 was going to repeat such a year. The year referred to was 1816-17, and the peculiar climatic conditions were capitalized by James Littlefield. The crops in this vicinity were short and he took pay for the Littlefield shoes sold in the South in flour, which he had sent North and sold at the Littlefield store at a good profit. Many jobbers in the shoe business had grocery stores and obtained an additional profit by paying the shoemakers who made up their stock of leather in groceries and other goods. Shoes in those days were usually shipped to Cuba in casks instead of cases and the casks came back filled with molasses. The transportation facilities in those early days were exceedingly primitive. Noah Thayer of Ran- dolph, in 1812, drove an ox team to Richmond, Virginia, to deliver a consignment of shoes. He returned with a load of corn and cotton and without a blowout or engine trouble.
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