Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/902

 876 SHOE For stitching the uppers of shoes several ma- chines are in use, chief among which, both in this country and in Europe, are the Elias Howe and the Wheeler and Wilson. Next in impor- tance to the pegging and sewing machines should be ranked cable-screw wire and wire- tacking machines, which have come into ex- tensive use within a few years. After these come machines for setting and burnishing the edges of the soles, for making and trimming heels, for forming and beating out the sole, as well as for cutting it out, for rolling and splitting the leather, for sandpapering, eyelet making, &c. These machines, together with scores of less importance, are all of Amer- ican invention, and most of them have been adopted in the shoe factories in other parts of the world. The attempt to introduce machine- ry on a large scale was first made in England, where in 1809 a patent was granted to David Mead Randolph for a method of riveting soles and heels to the uppers instead of sewing them together. He used a last sheathed on the bot- tom with an iron or steel plate. On this plate he laid the inner sole, and brought the edges of the upper leather around, and temporarily fastened them. The outer sole was then ap- plied and secured by small nails driven through the three thicknesses and clinched against the plate. The first large manufactory with ma- chines for expediting the operation was estab- lished in Battersea, by Brunei, the famous en- gineer, and it was carried on by the invalid soldiers of Chelsea hospital for supplying shoes to the British army. The shoes were made with a welt riveted to the edge of the outer sole by small nails, and a row of longer nails outside of these secured the whole to the up- pers and inner sole. The bottoms were stud- ded with short nails of copper or iron to im- prove the wear. Several ingenious machines, worked mostly by treadles, or otherwise by a winch turned by hand, were devised by Bru- nei for the various processes, as cutting out the leather, hardening it by rolling, punching the holes for the nails, forming the nails from slips of metal and inserting them in the holes, both by one machine, and for the others connected with the securing of the parts together. The machines do not appear to have continued in use after 1815, when on the establishment of peace the demand for army shoes fell off, and manual labor being more abundant the ma- chines were of less importance. It was not un- til English manufacturers had generally adopt- ed the American factory system and American machinery, that any large portion of the total production was supplied by the use of machine- ry. The wooden peg, now used for fastening boots and shoes, which has largely contributed to cheapening these articles, was invented about 1818 by Joseph Walker of Hopkinton, Mass. In a modern shoe factory the division of labor on the various parts of a shoe is carried to its greatest extent. The uppers and linings are cut and stitched generally in one department, where the buttonholes are worked by hand or by a machine especially adapted to that pur- pose, and the buttons put on or eyelets punched, if for a laced shoe. The uppers being ready, the first process in bottoming is to wet the soles, which, after being partially dried, are passed under a heavy roller, which takes the place of the shoemaker's lapstone. They are then, if for machine sewing, after being properly cut out for the requisite sizes, run through a chan- nelling machine, which takes out a thread of leather from the outside edge in the bottom of the sole, leaving a thin narrow flap all round, so that when the stitch is laid in the place of the leather thus removed the bottom may be hammered down so smoothly as hardly to indi- cate where its surface was raised to allow of the stitching. The upper is then drawn over the last and tacked on the insole, and the outeole is tacked on. The last is now withdrawn, and the shoe passed to the sewing machine, where the stitch is made through the outsole and insole, and the edge of the upper coming be- tween them, the flap raised for the channel being laid and cemented over the seam. The heel is now put on in the rough, and the edges of both heel and sole are trimmed and bur- nished. In making a " turn " shoe, the sole is shaped before tacking to the last, on which it is placed with the grain side of the leather, or that which is to form the bottom of the shoe, next the last; the upper, with the stiffening in, is then pulled over, wrong side out, then lasted and sewed, the last being taken out after sew- ing, and the surplus upper cut away. The shoe is then turned right side out, first at the seat, then the ball and toe, the last again put in, and the sole and stiffening hammered into proper form. A "team" of shoemakers con- sists of from four to nine men, comprising lasters, heelers, trimmers, burnishers, and fin- ishers, who complete the shoe, after the uppers are made and the soles cut out. But the num- ber of men in a team and the way in which the work is divided up are altogether depen- dent upon the kind of work. What is called custom work, or making boots and shoes to measure for individuals, has of late years be- come comparatively obsolete. The styles of boots and shoes have not varied to any great extent for many years, the extremes of fash- ion having been from a long, narrow sole to a short and very broad one, with at times what is known as a "box" toe, and from a small, high heel, of from 1| to 2 in., to one of about an inch, more broad and comfortable. END OF VOLUME FOURTEENTH.