The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-08-18

Boston. Boston is sometimes called the ! Hub of the United States" Beverly is certainly the hub of our shoe machinery | industry.
 But first let me give you a bit of the 1 talk as to the machinery for war shoes our way to the plant Mir Winslow
 knows as much about shoe machines as Brer Rabbit did about the original brier patch into which he was thrown by Brer Fox. He was born and bred in the shadow Of the shoe machinery business. Educated at Harvard, where he took a course in mechanical engineering, he went into the plant here working his way from one department to another until he had mastered the processes of mak- ing the various machines and had learned the business from the ground up AL though the son of the president of the company he put in the same time as the ordinary mechanic. and received the same wages. He got 10 cents an hour at the
 start and worked 10 hours a day. At the end of three years one hot July morn
 ing when he was about to begin new job in handling the molten iron of
 the foundries he was called to the of flee in Boston instead. All this was a
 number of years ago and there he is now a director of the company and one of the managers of it's business.
 In speaking about the situation
 brought about by the war Mir. Wnslow
 said: No industry was better prepar ed to take it's part in the war than the shoe
 machinery industry The machines for army work have been supplied as fast as
 they were ordered, and We have been able to give every factory doing govern ment work such of our machines as It needed. We could do this largely on
 count of our leasing system As you probably know, we own the most of our machines and lease them out to the tac-
 tories. We know just where they are,
 and have been able to transfer them
 from one factory to another and move them about to where they could do the most good for the government. In some cases we have had to give other ma chimes to the factories from which the machines for army shoes were taken, or to persuade the lessees to get along in some other way until we could replace the machines Altogether we have fur nished over 2500 machines for government work in addition to making many new machines for the same purpose. Take this new Pershng shoe. As soon as we learned that the government had ordered 100000 pairs of such shoes for trial, we saw that there would be a large demand for the new machines required to make it. We knew they could not make an adequate test with that number of shoes, and that they would need several million pairs before they could try the type out. Thereupon we took the courage of our convictions and the chances of loss, and set to making machines for that type of shoe It is for this reason that we are ready to handle the orders now coming in from the government without borrow ing largely from our shoe machines in the other factories So far. if there has heen any delay in the shipping of army shoe orders, it has not been from the lack of shoe machinery One of the fac tories recently got an order for 100000 pairs of soldiers shoes. It had it's ma chimes 15 days ago, but it has not yet got the leather"
 Does the government require shoe machines for the use of the soldiers?" I asked.
 "A great deal of our present busi- ness is making special machines for the war department" replied Mir. Winslow. Repair plants have been and a large number of special ma chimes for repairing shoes there have been furnished. The army wants ma chimes that can be run by foot power and operated independently of any central power plant. Such machines can be easily moved from place to place, and they could be carried along with the army. As it is now the shoes of the soldiers when repaired are half-soled by machinery, the soles be- ing nailed on by a patent mailer. which can faSten on a sole in one minute. The government has ordered HOO such ma