USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 51
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 51
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 51
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Important Trade With the West Indies-There was a large trade with the West Indies carried on by several shoemakers in this section before the railroads were built. One such manufacturer was Seth Bryant who manufactured in that part of East Bridgewater called Joppa, specializ- ing in men's heavy goods. He was of the firm of Mitchell and Bryant which had the first wholesale boot and shoe store in Boston. The shoes made by them for the West India trade were largely kip brogans and copper nailed shoes. These were hauled overland from Joppa to New York by way of Providence, Rhode Island.
All transportation from New York to the West Indies was by sailing vessels. The shoes were packed, seventy-five to one hundred pairs to a Havana sugar box, and the boxes returned, filled with brown and white Cuban sugar. The white sugar was again shipped to Russia, and Rus- sian calfskins were taken in return, the calfskins coming in an untanned condition. The brown sugar was shipped to Trieste and exchanged for opium. What was done with the opium does not appear in the records or whether the sugar boxes served as containers for all the exchanges.
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Shoes sent from Joppa to Haiti were exchanged for coffee, which was much in demand in Boston.
Others in this vicinity who were successful in the West Indies trade were Abner Curtis of Rockland, A. and H. Reed of South Weymouth and Littlefield Brothers of East Stoughton. Others engaged consider- ably in the South American trade, where the shoes were sometimes packed on the backs of mules and sent three to four hundred miles over the mountains.
Making of Shoe Tools and Accessories-When the shoe industry is mentioned it does not give as vivid an impression to the casual listener as the facts deserve of the allied industries. From earliest times shoe tools have been made in Plymouth and Norfolk counties and the shoe findings and accessories have constituted an important division of in- dustry. Prior to 1830 the tools and processes of shoemaking were so crude or simple that only eight tools were considered necessary for cut- ting, fitting, lasting, bottoming, and putting the upper onto the sole. These eight tools were knife, awl, needle, pinchers, last, hammer, stirrup and lapstone. These were arranged around the shoemaker's bench or 'seat" within easy reach. Given good materials and plenty of time he could make a good pair of shoes or boots. When the number of tools increased it was merely to add a few extra knives, to suit the several needs. With these eight or ten tools shoes were made in this vicinity for two hundred years, as there was no shoe machinery in 1830.
In 1835 North Bridgewater manufactured shoe tools in great num- bers and supplied the shoemakers in neighboring towns as well as in the town itself. Lasts and boot trees were being made by Chandler Sprague. The old iron industry, so important from the beginning of history in the Old Colony, led naturally into tool making.
Looking back to those days-1837 for instance-we find that the largest town in Plymouth County was Middleboro, with a population a little rising 5,000. Hingham came next with 3,445 and about 125 people were engaged in shoemaking. The third largest town was Abington, with a population of 3,057 and manufacturing the largest number of shoes, in fact almost as many as all the other Plymouth County towns put together.
According to statistics compiled by John W. Barber and published in his "Historical Collections of Massachusetts," Abington, in 1837, pro- duced 526,208 pairs of shoes and 98,081 pairs of boots, the total value being $746,794, and the number employed in the industry 1,317. North Bridgewater, now Brockton, the only city in the county and the leading shoe city in the country, was at that time a town of 2,701 people, pro- ducing 22,300 pairs of shoes and 79,000 pairs of boots-considerably more boots than shoes-and the industry in the town employed 1,125
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people. The value of the output was $184,200. The town of Halifax was then considerably larger than it is today, with 781 inhabitants, forty of them shoemakers, turning out 30,600 pairs of shoes.
In that year Randolph, in Norfolk County, was doing more business in the boot and shoe industry than any town in Plymouth County. Its population was about the same as Abington but 1,475 of the total of 3,041 were shoemakers, who turned out 470,620 pairs of shoes and 200,- 175 pairs of boots, at a valuation of $944,715.
The population of the whole of Plymouth County in 1837 was 50,399; and nearly one-tenth, or 5,259 persons, were engaged in shoemaking. Weymouth in that year, made 70,155 pairs of boots and 242,083 pairs of shoes, the value being $427,679, and also curried and tanned $42,500 of leather. Several of the towns in Norfolk County engaged in tanning and some in Plymouth County, but North Bridgewater tanned very little leather. It was a good customer of the tanneries in Weymouth.
Almost all shoemaking in those days was done by hand. Stephen Bel- cher of Holbrook saw pegged boots for the first time in 1827, according to an historian. A pegging machine had been invented in 1818 and used for brogans and cheap boots and shoes. In 1832 James Hall of North Bridgewater (Brockton) invented a machine for pointing pegs.
The manufacture of counters for boots and shoes was started by Syl- vanus C. Phinney in Stoughton in 1845. He early realized that shoe- making by the factory system was going to consist of specializing to a large degree. Up to that time workmen fashioned counters and inner- soles from leather scraps. N. M. Capen was another pioneer in making counters. Several engaged in making leather shoe strings, among them J. Winsor Pratt of Randolph. Shoe blacking was a commodity made outside the factories and purchased.
The files of the "Massachusetts Spy" show in the issue of March 11, 1773, an advertisement of "patent cakes for making the liquid, shining, blacking for shoes." Rands, stays and patterns and cut leather for all purposes came on the market and manufacturers early saw the advantage of purchasing from those who specialized in these accessories. Lasts and shoe trees were made in North Bridgewater as early as 1836.
One of the early machines was run by hand for skiving. Then came the stripper, for cutting up sides of sole leather. In 1845 came a leather rolling machine, in place of the process of hammering the leather on a lapstone, which was a great saving in time and labor. Block lasts of various sizes and shapes, sole patterns, irons for polishing edges, a ma- chine for cutting pegs, the sewing machines for uppers, and finally the McKay and Goodyear machines for stitching sole leather came along as the industry grew, until the factory system was complete.
The rest of the shoe machinery story is largely that of the United
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Shoe Machinery Company and its inventions and the inventions of others which it controlled, which is a marvelous romance in itself, and brings into the picture a Cape Cod genius.
He Learned the Business; Then Controlled It-Sidney W. Winslow, who started the United Shoe Machinery Company and developed it into a hundred-million-dollar corporation, was born in Brewster. He first engaged in the shoe business in Salem and had a dream of organizing the industry to avoid the waste and unhandy methods used in the door- yard shops, the processes of having various things done in many places, the transportation of which made it all too expensive. Shoe machines were being invented and as fast as one appeared which seemed to him to be the right thing he secured control of it. When the McKay stitch- ing machine came along it brought him to the attention of the financial world and that world never lost sight of him afterwards, for Mr Wins- low kept on organizing and making improvements in the industry, en- abling shoe manufacturers to put their capital into stock and labor and rent the machinery on a royalty basis. The United Shoe Machinery Company eventually had factories all over the world to meet the de- mands.
Mr. Winslow many years ago erected a palatial summer home on Cape Cod and was the forerunner of the large colony of wealthy men who established homes in Orleans, bringing to that little town so much wealth in personal property that the tax rate was for several years three dollars on one thousand dollars of taxable valuation, and, even with such a low rate, the income was sufficient for the town to provide the best roads and other permanent improvements.
Sidney W. Winslow, founder and late president of the United Shoe Machinery Company, secured his first shoemaking knowledge in a "ten footer" operated by his father, Freeman Winslow. Nearly a score of modernly constructed buildings, covering over twenty-four acres of floor space, now house the manufacturing end of this industry. Branch offices, with complete service facilities, are located in every important shoe centre in the world.
Romances of Some of the Old Guard-Blanche Evans Hazard, pro- fessor of home economics in Cornell University, in a book published in 1921 entitled "The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Mas- sachusetts Before 1875," tells how Quincy Reed of Weymouth expected to be a shoemaker "just as his great-grandfather William, who landed in Weymouth in 1635, and his grandfather and father had been." In 1809, the father was a master with custom work, doing some sale work for local consumption.
As Quincy tells the story: "My brother Harvey began it by taking
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chickens to Boston. He had a pair of chaise wheels in the barn, and putting on a top piece, loaded her up and drove to town. He hung some shoes in the chaise and we sold them in Boston. We did not have a wagon then-I can remember when there wasn't a wagon in this part of the town, and between here and East Abington there was only one pair of wheels. All the shoes, before we began business, were carried into Boston in saddle-bags. We hired a store of Uriah Cotting, at 133 Broad Street, and fitted it up. .... We moved into the Broad Street store with two bushels of shoes. ... Most of the shoes were made by people in South Weymouth. We had nearly every man there working for us before long. Used to bring out the sole leather swung across the horse's back in those days."
The town of Halifax had its part in local shoemaking as well as the larger towns, like Abington, North Bridgewater and Plymouth. Levi Leach was born in Halifax in 1775, and early in life had a "ten-footer" in his "side front yard," in which he worked, with a few neighbors, until his own sons were old enough to help. Then he taught his three sons, George, Levi and Giles, to make shoes.
When the eldest son, George, became twenty-one, he moved to East Middleboro, built a "ten-footer" of his own, in his orchard, and divided his time between farming, teaching the village school and shoemaking, just as his father had done. He later formed a partnership with Dea- con Eddy, who had the general store in town and had made considerable money by manufacturing shovels. It is said that Deacon Eddy invested $10,000 and George Leach $200, and engaged in the manufacture of bro- gans for the Southern trade. Deacon Eddy carried on the general store' and post office on the lower floor and George Leach conducted the shoe factory on the second floor of the same building.
The business grew, as did the family of George Leach. He soon added a stitching machine for uppers; also two sons, who, at the age most boys of the present generation are becoming expert "marble- shooters" took full charge of the stitching in an ell added to the back of the building. This was one of the first stitching rooms in Plymouth County and measured fourteen feet each way.
Deacon Eddy retired at the outbreak of the Civil War but George Leach continued the business until 1874. His sons, George and Giles, moved to Raynham and worked as stitchers in that town and in Brock- ton, George continuing as a stitcher until 1889.
Another early shoemaker and jobber who was a native of Halifax was Perez Bryant. In 1796, Perez Bryant & Company had a shoe store in Boston and another in Savannah, Georgia.
Beginning about 1807, Ebenezer Belcher had a "ten-footer" in Brook- ville, not far from the present factories of the W. L. Douglas Shoe Com-
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pany in Brockton. He had regular apprentices and journeymen in his employ and under his instruction, and continued in business more than forty years. Other pioneers of shoemaking in that vicinity were Silas Alden, Moses and Thomas French of Randolph. They were previous to the time of Micah Faxon who was probably the first person who manu- factured shoes for the wholesale trade in North Bridgewater, now Brockton. Ebenezer Belcher was employed by the Faxon family. If Micah Faxon was the pioneer of the shoe industry in Brockton in 1811, "the shoe city" was twenty years later than Randolph in getting started in the business which has since made it internationally famous.
As a matter of fact North Bridgewater, as late as 1835, was more noted for shoe-making tools than for the shoes manufactured by them. In 1836 Chandler Sprague was making lasts and boot trees, and ten years later a long line of shoemakers' tools and devices were being made in North Bridgewater. By that time, however, the manufacture of boots and shoes had become important in the town and there was evi- dence 'that it was destined to play a leading part in the industry.
Both boots and shoes were being made in North Bridgewater in 1837 but records for that year show that the output of boots was 79,000 pairs and the output of shoes 22,300 pairs, showing that boots were much more in demand for the trade which early Brockton supplied. In the next few years there was a decided change. As a matter of fact in 1845 only 44,711 pairs of boots were made, while the output of shoes had risen to 115,476 pairs. A decade later (1855) 66,956 pairs of boots were made and 694,760 pairs of shoes, while in 1865 the records show the mil- lion mark exceeded in shoe manufacture. The pairs of boots numbered 103,066 and the number of pairs of shoes 1,009,700.
Women's pegged and common sewed shoes were manufactured in Randolph, Abington, Stoughton and Weymouth, and all of these towns also made boots. Tucker Brothers of East Stoughton, now Avon, made up boots and shoes on definite orders. They had a Boston office at which samples were shown to buyers from the South and West but they had no stores to dispose of made-up stock, as did some of their neighbors, no- tably Littlefield Brothers. The Littlefields manufactured considerably for the Cuban trade and were so well known in the Cuban markets that some of the traders from Havana and elsewhere came to their Boston office and made their purchases in person.
When Heavy Boots Were Much in Vogue-Where boots are men- tioned in the records of 1830 and succeeding years it meant long-legged, heavy leather boots, instead of the ordinary boots of recent years. Such boots, with heavy sewed soles, were manufactured in Randolph about 1830 and for several years that town specialized in that kind of foot- wear. Randolph boots had a favorable reputation and were known in
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the markets of California, Australia, and Texas as early as 1855 and possibly earlier.
In 1837, 200,175 pairs of boots were made in Randolph, which marked the beginning of specializing in boot-making. That same year Ran- dolph manufacturers made 470,620 pairs of shoes. With the expansion of the West and the new frontier there was a market and demand for boots of the better sort which were produced about 1840 and later.
Many of the boots made in Randolph, Abington, Weymouth and other towns in their vicinity were marketed by Nathan Tucker of East Stoughton (Avon), who was taken into the boot and shoe-manufactur- ing concern of his brothers. His part in the development of the con- cern was largely on the sales end. In 1838 he started a store in Cincinnati, so it is not a recent thing for shoe manufacturers in Brock- ton and the South Shore District to have their own stores in distant cities and merchandising centres.
Among the large firms in the boot-making industry, were Howard & French and they employed many men and women to make and fit boots in their homes as well as employing a "gang" in a "twelve- footer." They began business in 1840. Gideon Howard, who lived in South Randolph, took out stock and brought back finished boots. His partner had a Vermont farm and part of his attention was given to agriculture. Many of the employees took time off for planting, haying and other work but there was a good average production to meet the demand. Blanche Evans Hazard, in her shoemaking book, already referred to as furnishing many facts mentioned in this chap- ter, says, in 1855 the treeing done in the shop of Howard & French, which was at the junction of Liberty and Main streets, Randolph, was done by Sylvanus Pratt, Ira Howard, Edwin Howard, Luther Rowe, and Henry Bangs. Mr. Pratt "did one hundred pairs a week on an average of seven cents a pair for regular length boots. Short- legged grained boots were easier to tree and the price was correspond- ingly smaller. Luther Rowe treed and varnished and earned more than Pratt did in any one week. He was young and vigorous in the 50's and one of his fellow-workmen has told me that Luther always put in a 'long day' when he could. This he explained was their ex- pression for working as many hours as there were of daylight in sum- mer and winter."
Howard & French got their share of the California trade. They had an agent in San Francisco, Jonathan Wales, in 1850, who sold their "Californian" boots for $10 a pair.
The methods of manufacture in the "ten-footers" were wasteful and considerable scrap leather piled up. J. Winsor Pratt of Randolph was a purchaser of this scrap and from it made leather shoe-strings.
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A square inch of scrap leather could be converted into a leather shoe- string, twenty-seven inches in length, by being cut into a spiral. Many times the roads in front of "ten-footers" were covered with leather scraps, and the proximity to a little shoe shop in those days was forced upon the attention of a person, jogging over the road in a chaise, by the odor of leather which had been thrown out as useless. There were shoe-string factories in various towns in Southeastern Massachusetts. Plympton, in Plymouth County, had a considerable local industry in shoe-string making.
Some Eminent Graduates and Rapid Operatives-There were many shoemakers of the early days who employed their minds in higher edu- cation while they were fashioning boots or shoes, with the eight original tools or a few others, before the advent of machinery in the industry. Some rose to eminence. Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was brought up in Stoughton in Norfolk County and ap- prenticed to a shoemaker. He worked at the trade until he was twenty- two, became a lawyer, member of the Continental Congress; a delegate to the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States in 1787, and later a Congressman and senator.
Henry Wilson, before becoming vice-President of the United States, was a shoemaker in a "ten-footer," and later manufactured brogans for Southern plantation slaves to wear.
Paul Hathaway was the first shoemaker in Middleboro and decided to "stick to his last" and make his customers bring their leather to him to be made into shoes, rather than spend his time gathering materials. By thus saving time and being always on the job, he was able to hire others to work for him, supervise their work and make surplus stock to be sold in the stores when there were not sufficient customers to keep him busy on custom-made shoes. Hathaway was, therefore, the pioneer in cus- tom shoemaking, as contrasted with itinerant shoemakers; and also in making shoes to be sold in stores by sizes.
The question frequently arises how much work one of the old-time shoemakers could do in a given time. Samuel White of Randolph could make a thread and seam up a boot in fifteen minutes. His record in peg- ging was twelve pairs of boots in one day, said boots having double soles. He had a "ten-footer" on Union Street, Randolph, in the late forties. He held his supply of pegs in his mouth and, by the use of both hands, ran the dink, used the awl and drove the pegs.
When the Commonwealth shoe factory was opened in Whitman in 1883, the uppers of the first sample shoes made there were sewed by Mrs. Lucy Brown, a native of Hanson. Mrs. Brown first worked in the shoe industry as a messenger for her aunt, who sent her to a central factory in North Bridgewater to get boots to cord, wheeling
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them to and from her aunt's home in a baby carriage. In 1861 she ran a wax thread machine for stitching mocassins, made of cloth, trimmed with leather and lined with buffalo skin or lamb's wool, soled with leather. The machine went by foot-power but Mrs. Brown was able to make four dollars a day at the work on a piece price of seventy- five cents a pair.
Backing from Banks Won Distant Markets and Much Gold-Norfolk and Plymouth counties started early and have persisted in being impor- tant in the boot and shoe industry. In the first place the soil of the two counties, taken as a whole, did not furnish the encouragement for agri- culture that was true of some other counties. The counties in the western part of Southeastern Massachusetts and Middlesex engaged in the cotton and woolen industry while Norfolk and Plymouth clung to the fisheries, shipbuilding, and manufacturing boots and shoes, iron ware and numerous other things.
Banks came into the picture and discounts and loans were easily avail- able for those who dealt in something as universally used as boots and shoes. After the hard times of 1837, shoemaking became an investment for capitalists, rather than the outgrowth of the "ten-footers" and small community interests. With capital to fall back upon, the genius of good business men was put into developing the shoe business with the whole world as a market, so far as transportation facilities were con- cerned, even though those transportation facilities seem exceedingly crude today.
As early as 1838, Tucker Brothers of East Stoughton had a store in Cincinnati, catering to the retail trade of that rapidly growing Ohio city, which increased in population from 24,831 in 1830 to 46,338 in 1840. Some of the Cincinnati people were wearing shoes made in Randolph and East Stoughton. In 1840, Chicago had less than 5,000 inhabitants but it was on the way to California and California became a possession of the United States, filled with gold and rumors of gold, before 1849. The boots which were being made in Randolph were just what the miners in California needed and many of the '49ers had them on when they made footprints in the mud as they panned the gravel beside the California streams in search of nuggets.
The discovery of gold in California and in Australia had a distinct influence on the shoe industry in Plymouth and Norfolk counties. To cater to the California market, Jonathan Wales of Randolph crossed the continent and established a store in San Francisco in 1851. He de- ยท manded prompt delivery of ordered goods and made it well worth the while of those who speeded up production to meet the demand. There were in Randolph, his home town, at that time manufacturing boots and shoes suitable for the California trade, Wentworths, Whitcombs,
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and Howard & French, and for a time these firms supplied Wales with their product.
He entered the firm of Newhall & Gregory in San Francisco and was able to sell at auction many more boots and shoes than he could get from the Whitcombs, Wentworths, Howard & French, and so took additional product from about twenty firms in Randolph, North Bridge- water and Stoughton. It was good business, payable in California gold. Bags of this valuable commodity were sent home in payment for shoes, sometimes as much as $20,000 in a single bag of white drilling.
The representative of this section in Australia was Frank Maguire who went to Melbourne, Australia, and marketed practically the whole output of the Randolph factory of Burrell & Maguire. Speed was added to good work and good materials. Twenty to thirty girls were employed by Burrell & Maguire to paste in straps and put pieces of bright-colored morocco leather across the upper part of the vamps, which was an embellishment appreciated in Australia. Machinery was used, anything to get quick production of salable goods.
Maguire became United States Consul at Melbourne. Randolph, his home town, in 1857 had a population of 5,000 to 6,000, a large share of which was making shoes for California and Australia, receiving in return bags of gold. In that year Randolph produced 345,100 pairs of boots, 363,300 pairs of shoes and employed 1,532 people. The value of the boot and shoe output was $1,269,400; that of all other indus- trial pursuits of the town, $129,483.
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