HOW THE AflERICAN SHOE HAS BECOME 

 STANDARD. 



BY GEORGE HOUGHTON. 



[George C. Houghton, secretary of the New England Shoe and Leather association, is 

 the leading authority on the subject in the United States and has written the most 

 authoritative historical sketches of the industry and descriptions of its methods. 

 He has been a prominent factor in the extension of the foreign market for shoes and 

 in this connection has made several trips abroad for the association. He has also 

 had charge of government investigations into the industry.] 



Few industries, in their evolution, offer a more interesting 

 history than the manufacture of boots and shoes. Supply- 

 ing, as the shoemaker does, a necessity common to all civil- 

 ized people, his progress is due to the fact that the num- 

 ber of wearers increases each year, and the demand for his 

 products continues in an ever widening ratio. The history 

 of this branch of manufacturing, as it has progressed from 

 the shoemaker's bench, where shoes were turned out one at 

 a time, to the modern factor^^ with its output of thousands 

 of pairs daily marks, as do few others, the remarkable in- 

 dustrial progress of the present age. 



The introduction of the boot and shoe industry in Amer- 

 ica is almost coincident "^ith the first settlement of New 

 England, for it is a matter of history that in the year 1629 

 a shoemaker named Thomas Beard, with a supplj' of hides, 

 arrived on board the Maj^flower. This pioneer of the Amer- 

 ican boot and shoe trade was accredited to the governor of 

 the colony, by the company in London, at a salary of £10 

 per annum and a grant of 50 acres of land, upon which he 

 should settle. Seven years after the arrival of Beard, the 

 city of L}Tin saw the inception of the industry which has 

 given it a world wide fame, for there, in 1636, PhiHp Kert- 

 land, a native of Buckinghamshire, began the manufacture 

 of shoes, and fifteen j^ears later the shoemakers of Ljmn were 

 supphing the trade of Boston. As early as 1648, we find 

 tanning and shoemaking mentioned as an industry in the 

 colony of Virginia, special mention being made of the fact 



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