Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/352

 338 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

1810, it was reported that the women binders of Lynn alone had earned $50,000 in the course of that year.^ From the beginning, Lynn shoemakers made a specialty of the manufacture of ladies'® shoes, and this perhaps accounts in part for the large proportion of women always employed there; for the work of these Lynn shoeworkers was much lighter and less fatiguing than the heavy work of the old cobblers, or of the makers of men's shoesJ

A change of some importance followed the invention of the wooden shoe peg in 181 1. Nearly all shoes were sewed before this time and premiums had been offered for the invention of machines which would enable shoemakers to work in a standing position and thus relieve the pressure upon the breast which came from holding the shoe and the fatigue caused by the stooping position which was necessary while sewing;^ but improvements came slowly. After the introduction of the pegging machine, however, the work of "bottoming" became much easier, so that boys and even women could peg shoes while they could not be advantageously employed on the heavy sewed work.^

With the impetus given by the success of the attempts at a division of labor, the industry grew rapidly and many so-called "factories" were established in the large centers. These fac- tories, however, were merely small buildings from which the large dealers gave out materials to be worked up by shoemakers on the domestic or commission system, very much as the early cotton "manufactories" gave out the yarn to be woven by weav- ers in their own homes. ^^ These shoe dealers, or manufactur- ers as they were called, used the factories as a place where they accumulated materials, had the different kinds of leather cut into "uppers" and understock, and from which they gave out work to be made up all through the surrounding country in shoe- makers' shops or binders' homes. The finished shoes were then


 * Hurd, History of Essex County, I, 284.

• The work of making ladies' shoes is still kept more or less segregated. Just as Lynn has always been the center of the manufacture of ladies' shoes, Brockton makes a specialty of manufacturing men's shoes.

^ Johnson, Sketches of Lynn, p. 4.

"1905 Census of Manufactures, III, 242. 'Kingman, p. 402.

^ See pp. 342, 358, for a description of this system.