FACTORY LIFE TO-DAY 267 



boots could, it seems, be produced at the factory within, 

 from start to finish, three hours. But in those three 

 hours, or such other time as might actually be occupied, 

 the pair of boots would go through something like thirty- 

 five different hands, or separate processes, and, as far 

 as possible, each process would be done by machinery. 



Many of the machines are positive marvels of 

 ingenuity. But, for my own part, I was still more 

 impressed by the human machines, for such they 

 seemed to be, who attended on the machines of steel 

 and iron. I remember reading, in the days of my 

 youth, a series of stories concerning learned shoe- 

 makers individuals who read and who thought as 

 they shaped and made a boot on their knee, and 

 became men of learning, if not quite philosophers, in 

 their way. But in the operation of that infinite variety 

 of machines I saw in the Wheat Sheaf Factory at 

 Aylestone there was no time for philosophy no time 

 for anything but for the performance by each worker, 

 with the utmost expedition, of just that one operation 

 on each boot or shoe, or section thereof, that was 

 required of him from one year's end to the other. 



So one gets to this remarkable outcome of the factory 

 system that out of the 1,000 or more men and women 

 employed in one of these vast establishments, nominally 

 as ' boot and shoe makers,' there might be scarcely half 

 a dozen able to make a boot right out, and only a small 

 proportion who would be qualified later on in life to set 

 up even as village cobblers. The man, for instance, 

 who was spending his days in pushing strips of leather 

 under a press which moulded them into the required 

 shape for heel-stiffenings might well be an expert 

 operator in working that particular machine. But how, 

 when eventually separated both from the machine and 

 from the factory, should he still earn his living ? 



