Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1905-12-02
New England Leads u S.
in Production.
Middle West also Making
Large Quantities
Southern States are Greatest Market
for the n. {. Product.

greatest industries came over in the
Mayf1ower should appeal to antiquari-
ans as we'll as to the large army Of
workers in New England now con-
nected with the manufacture of boots
and shoes. In the midst of one of those
huge cargoes which, if we can believe
all we hear about antique furniture,
must have strained the ribs of the
Mayfower on her few trips to these
shores, there sailed one Thomas Beard
and his bundle of hides. the pioneer
Yankee shoemaker. He landed in
Plymouth in 1929 and was accredited to
the governor of the colony, by the
company in London, at a salary Of $50
a year and a grant OF so acres of land
on which to settle. That was PA years
ago; today the wages of shoemaking
in New England total SO millions a year
while the floor space in shoe factories
alone covers 2S3 acres not to mention
the hundreds a thousands of acres on
which all those engaged in making New
, England shoes dwell.
In 1886, the same year that Cam
bridge began manufacturing college
graduates at Harvard. Lynn began her
WOrlG-famed career in the making of
shoes. Fifteen years afterWard. the
shoemakers of Lynn were supplying the
trade of Boston, which means that
most of Harvard'S graduates wore
Lynn shoes and continued to wear
them. BY the time Of the Revolution,
New England shoes were being worn
by all the American colonists up and
down the Atlantic Coast. 1t is re-
cd nd bat oil oil
shoes worn by Washington's soldiers,
whether in their siege of Boston Or
while crossing the Delaware, in the
battle of Saratoga or before Yorktown.
| We're made in Massachusetts. Later,
| the slaves of the South picked cotton
and cultivated tobacco in Yankee made
brOgans: and today New England
| makes enough boots and shoes of both
leather and rubber to supply each man,
woman and child in the United States
with more than two pairs apiece every
year.
Figures for shipments from Boston
| during the last year show that if all
| tie shoes made by New England for
the rest of the world were to be poured
over her borders through one funnel a
|
| four pairs a second would be the result.
| If the annual number of shoes thus
poured forth could be gathered into one
| freight train, that train would have to
| be composed of $4,000 cars, or, in other
| words, be long enough to reach from
| New York to Philadelphia. If the rail-
| roads did not make this footwear circu-
late throughout the South and West
and the steamers did not take their
share to Europe. every man, woman
and child III New England would have
twenty-five more pair Of shoes than he
| could find use for. The Yankee shoe
dealer, under. such circumstances. to
! get rid of his stock, would have to give
| it away.
| Just fifty years ago a shoe manu-
facturer by the name of William f.
| Trowbridge conceived and carried
through the idea of running his fac
tory at FeltOnvllle, now Hudson, Mas
sachusetts. by horsepower. In a
building attached to the factory, he es-
tablished a sweep about which a horse,
known as the 'Old General" trudged
his days away. This old horse fur
nished the first power other than
chinery and inaugurated a revolution
in the manufacture of boots and shoes.
The transition to steam quickly fol-
lowed and with the help of the rail-
roads, which began to be useful for
long distances at the same time, the
present marvellous expansion of the in
dustTy was inaugurated. The growth
has been from an annual product
/ !, hot, i
lars. as turned out by Thomas Beard,
the first New England shoemaker, to
one worth two hundred million dollars,
and this Notwithstanding the fact that
today pair of shoes is approximately
twenty times as cheap as in the days
of the Mayflower.
Shoes are being manufactured in 9TH
err parts of the country also. notably in
Cincinnati. st. Louis and Chicago. In
| tense rivalry exists between this new
western shoe interest and the old one
by which New England gets her bread.
New England manufacturers are nomi-
, nally handicapped by being farther
away from the large southern and
| western markets on which their indus
try depends. But fortunately the dis
advantage has been wiped out by New
England railroads which charge such
| low rates on shoes that the manufac-
| turers and wholesalers shipping over
their lines can compete successfully
even iii the home towns Of their rivals
Every week figures in the Shoe and
Leather Reporter show that among the
largest shipments of shoes from Boston
for that week are consignments to
Chicago and st. Louis.
But by far the largest market for
New England shoes exists in the
Southern states, those south of Mason
and Dixon'S line. Southerners have
become accustomed to Yankee leather
through wearing it steadily for two
hundred years. Master and slave alike
were shod by Yankee shoemakers
They purchase now something like
fifty million pairs of New England
shoes year, in spite of the fact that
manufacturers in Cincinnati and
Cthirapo