Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-05-04
SIX PAIRS OF SHOES A MINUTE.
Machines which Turn Them Out as il
They were Barrel Slaves.
Eaaa VopE. Sac,


They were Barrel Slaves.
Neas York Sun.
A cObbler takes half day to sole and
heel pair OF shoes. In Crow Hill peni-
tertiary few hundreds of men and Wo-
men start with the raw material, and
turn out $500 pairs of shoes in ten hours,
or more than six pairs of shoes a minute.
The men and women have little to do with
it. Machines do the work, and need only
to be fed, started, and stopped; all the fine
and ingenious work of building a beauti-
full shoe they do, one part at a time and
one machine 30 each part. For instance,
the first machine cuts the soles out of the
leather. 1t is nothing but a punch fitted
with a knife the shape of a shoe sole.
Different sized knives cut out anything,
from baby's to plantation darky's
size. Cutting out the soles leaves the
sheets of leather in tatters. The biggest
tatters are used for heels; the smallest
make fuel. Leather scraps make as good
a furnace fire as coal does. The next
machine splits thin slice of the upper
surface of the sole a little way from the
edge all around, so that it looks as if
thin sheet had been pasted on to the sole,
leaving the edges unpasted. Under this
loose edge machine presses a little
gutter or channel in which the mailing or
sewing is done. and afterward hidden by
upper is attached.
AT the same moment other convicts are
cutting uppers out of sheets of dressed
calfskin. They lay patterns on the skins
and thus cut the needed sizes. This is
done by hand, but the Innings are sewed to
the uppers, and the buttOnholes are put
through both leather and lining by ma
chinery. The buttonhOles are stitched by
automatic machines, consisting of a sew
ing machine having under the needle a
little plate which turns exactly in accord
ance with the outlines of the buttOnhOle,
and stops when the buttOnhOleis finished.
One man feeds several machines. starts
them, and does not touch them while they
are at work. After this the sOles and
uppers come into the hands of one set of
convicts, the lasters and tackers on, who
put the two together with very few
small tacks. These people all work like
lightning, but are slow beside the machin-
cry.
The soles and uppers are firmly Joined
in several ways. One machine puts In
brass screws and bites them off exactly at
the right distance between the upper and
the under surface of the leather: another
drives in an iron screw with the same
nicely, another sews the parts together
with wax thread, the thread passing
through heated mettle horn, which keeps
1t soft and warm; yetanOther initiates hand
sewing with yellow thread, leaving an
extended sole which is afterWard bevelled
to look pretty. The merit of this ma
chine is that the shoes it sews are pliabIe
and easy to the foot, and bring a good
price. This does its work in II seconds
The heels are made separately, and
when finished have all the nails projecting
half an inch below the bottom of the lower
sheet Of leather. A convict puts one of
these heels into a metal cup in press of
great power, and over that he rests a shoe
in the right position. Then down comes
great bar and squeezes the heel and shoe
together, driving every other nail all the
way in, and leaving every other nail
sticking a little way out. He takes the
shoe out puts a pretty heel tap in, puts
the shoe back, submits it to the pressure,
and then withdraws it, and finds the tap
firmly nailed, with the nails not quite
through the tap, which presents a smooth,
unbrOken under serfice. The heel-shaY-
ing machines present to the heel a set of
rapidly revolving knives, shaped to make
straight heel or guttered one, or even
a lady's French heel. Another machine
cuts the front of the heel square, and an
other trims and smOOths the edge of the
sole. The edge of the sole and the sides of
the heel are blackened and the edge is put
under a hot iron about the size of fat
chestnut. This iron moves to and fro
with incredible rapidity, in imitation of
the motions of the cobblers who used to do
the work by hand. A large iron, also
heated by a gas Jet, does the same thing
for the heel, and does it under such pres
sure that cracks and unevenesses in the
heel are smoothed over, filed up, and con-
cealed.
Some shoe uppers have eyelet holes in
stead of buttOnhOles. There is a machine
IN the prison for doing this work. 1t has
two steel rods close to one another and
while one punches the holes the other
inserts the eyelets, which run down a
little gutter, right side up, exactly into
place to fix into the punctures i'm the
leather, and to have their edges squeezed
over by the other rOds and the piece that
hts upon it. Twenty years ago shoemak-
ing machinery performed only one-half
this work and did that roughly. Now the
shoes made in Crow Hill prison are such
as most persons wear, and are in all
respects shaDely, presentabIe, and we'll
finished. Some OF them retail for 81 or IS
a pair.
In this prison, side by side with the
scum OF humanity reputable men and
girls are employed. There are probably
two hundred girls in the female prison,
who live in Brooklyn, come every morn
ing, and are free to go home whenever
they present certain ticket at the prison
door. The Warden, who is, in all proba-
bility, not consulted, since these persons
work for the contractors, was asked what
he thought was the effect of such sur
roundings upon the youths of good morals.
He replied that there used to be a general
feeling that the arrangement was impro-
per and dangerous, but it has not proved
so. Outside free labor has been employed
IN Grow Hill eleven or twelve years. and
OF all the hundreds who have thus come
daily to the prison not one has ever been
sent there as prisoner. The outsiders
do not have anything to do with the pri-
soners. They sit apart, and never, under
any circumstances, speak a word to the
fo4e