410 THE IRISH LEATHER AND BOOT-MAKING INDUSTRY. 



centres of laige population, but in many towns, villages, and hamlets 

 throughout the country. So far as the making of footgear was concerned, 

 Ireland may be considered as self-providing up to the end of the sixties. 

 It is true that the wearing of boots was not as general then as it is to-day. 

 The small farmers, cottiers, and agricultural labourers could not in many 

 instances afford to buy them, and accordingly the number of people, more 

 especially children, to be seen in their bare feet was very much greater then 

 than now. Those who did wear boots or shoes, chiefly the latter, patron- 

 ized a strong coarse class suitable for wear in a humid climate such as that 

 of Ireland. " Factory " goods were tiien unknown, and practically all the 

 boots worn in the country were made at home. The temptation to buy 

 cheap footgear was not present, and the people were content to use the 

 same styles which had been in vogue for generations. This support of 

 home manufacture was not confined to any class. The gentry and people 

 of moans generally patronized local industry, their boots being made from 

 the finer classes of upper leather made in Cork and other smaller towns. 

 From all this it may be gathered that the leather industry and the allied 

 trades were in a thoroughly healthy condition at this period. There was 

 a good return on capital invested, a large amount of employment 

 given, and the money thus circulated throughout the country had a bene- 

 ficial effect on the general prosperity of Ireland. Then came the lean 

 years. Great Britain, and more especially England, is known to have 

 reached high-water mark in commercial development in the early seventies, 

 and this was exactly the period that witnessed the undermining and 

 eventually the downfall of the leather industry in Ireland. Commercial 

 energy across the Channel, and more markedly in the midlands of England, 

 was not confined to the textile trades, although these were the first to take 

 advantage of the great wave of prosperity which swept with astonishing 

 results over the country. Immense boot factories were erected in various 

 centres between Leeds and Northampton, and to a lesser extent in other 

 parts of England. The introduction of modern machinery cheapened 

 production enormously, and the- Irish market was flooded with machine- 

 made boots and shoes at prices which made successful competition by the 

 Irish boot makers, who did not adopt similar methods of production, impos- 

 sible. In Ireland boot-making which had been largely a cottage industry 

 ■ — many men and their families working in their homes — was ruined by the 

 march of modern mechanical invention, and the factory system which in- 

 evitably followed. This state of affairs was not long in re-acting on the 

 Irish leather industry itself. About the same time too were occurring 

 those changes in the manufacture of leather abroad, which resulted in very 

 considerable reductions in the prices of all leather goods. Thus every 

 year witnessed a decline in the profits of the Irish tanner, and at the same 

 time his output was gradually but effectually being reduced. Many of the 

 Irish tanners at this critical epoch were, it is to be feared, not equal to the 

 occasion. They were essentially conservative in their ideas and adhered 

 to the old fashioned methods. The result was lamentable, but it was in- 

 evitable. The ordinary sources for consumption of their goods were no 

 longer available. No new markets v/ere opened, and the natural conse- 

 quence was that trade shrank rapidly. Many of those whose capital was 

 sunk in tanneries withdrew it from the languishing industry, and thus, in 

 many towns, what had been previously a thriving trade, was reduced to the 

 last stages of decay. Some few, here and there, took up a more intelligent 



