Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1884-06-14
QUICK WORK.
How COmyirts Make Six Pairs o.
shoes n Minute

SuOeS n
A cobbler takes half day to sole and
neel a pair Of shoes In Crow Hill peni
Tertiary few hundreds OF men and
women start with the raw material, end
turn out $500 pairs of shoes in ten
hours, or more than six pairs of shoes a
minute. The men and women have lit
tie 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 beautiful shoe they
do, one part at a time and one machine
TO each part. For instance, the first ma
chine cuts the soles out OF the leather.
1t is nothing but punch fitted with a
knife the shape of shoe sole. Differ
ent sized knives cut out anything, from
baby's to plantation darky's size.
Cutting out the sole leaves the sheets of
leather in tatters. The biggest tatters are
used for heels; the smallest make fuel.
Leather scraps make as good q furnace
Are as coal does. The next machine
splits thin slice of the upper surface of
the sole 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 a machine presses a little gutter or
channel in which the mailing or sewing
is done, and afterward hidden by FASTING
the loose edge over it when the 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 button holes
are put through both leather and lining
by machinery. The buttonholes are
stitched by automatic machines, consist
ing of a sewing machine having under
~the needle a!ittfe plate which turns ex-
acSly in accordance with the outlines OF
the buttonhole, and stops when the but
tonhole is finished. One man feeds
several machines, starts them, and does
not touch them while they are at work.
After this the soes and uppers come in
to the hands of one set of convicts, the
lasters and tackers on, who put the two
together with a very few small tacks.
These people all work like lightning,
but are slow beside the machinery
The soles and uppers are firmly joined
an 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 metal horn, which
keeps il soft and warm; yet another imi
tates hand sewing with yellow thread,
leaving an extended sole, which is after
ward beveled to look pretty The merit
of this machine is that the shoes it sews
are pliable and easy TO the foot, and
bring good price This does its work
in eleven seconds.
The heels are made separately, and
when finished have all the nails project
ing half an inch below the bottom of the
lower sheet of leather. A convict puts
one Of these heels into metal cup in a
press of great power, and over that he
rests 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 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 surface. The
heel-shaving machines present TO the
heel set of rapidly revolving knives,
shaped to make a straight heel or a gut
tered one or even lady's French heel.
Another machine cuts the front of the
heel square, and another trims and
smooths the edge of the sole. The edge
of the sole and the sides of the heel are
Eblackened and the edge is put under a
hot iron about the size of fat chestnut.
This iron moves to and fro with ineredi-
BILE rapidity, in imitation of the motions
of the cobblers who used to do the work
ibv hand. A large iron, also heated by q
gas-iet, does the same thing for the heel
and does it under such pressure that
cracks and unevenness in the heel are
smoothed over. filled up, and concealed.
Some shoe uppers have eyeIet holes
anstead of buttonholes. There is ma
chine in the prison for doing this work.
1t has two steel rods close 10 one another,
and while one punches the holes the
other inserts the eyelets, which run down
little gutter, right side up, exactly into
place to fix into the puncturcs in the
leather, and to have their edges squeezed
over by the other rod and the piece that
hts upon it. Twenty years ago shoe.
making machinery performed only one
half this work ana did that roughly.
Now the shoes made in Crow Hill prison
are such as most people wear, and are in
4 II ~