doing the work so regularly that an exacting seamstress would not hesitate to commend it. After the "vamp" has been joined to the quarters by two or three rows of stitching, there is no use to look for more pieces, because they have all been sewed together. They have become an "upper." Perhaps you may wonder at the swiftly moving machines, but if you will look at your watch you will wonder still more to find that this whole stitching has been done in fifteen minutes-scarcely more than a dressmaker would have taken in making a single hand-made button-hole in a new dress. Some inventor watched this process, and supplemented it in 1882 with a machine to sew on the buttons! The "last" of shoemaking is an important factor in securing perfect shoes, and unless it is in fashion shoes might as well be made on an ill-shaped stick. Patterns and lasts are so carefully graded for different sizes and widths of feet that it is no end of expense to change them to follow the caprice of fashion. From hats to shoes it is one thing to-day, another tomorrow. A well-fitted manufactory must carry a variety of perhaps fifty different kinds of lasts and patterns, each style having, say, nine sizes, or eighteen lasts when rights and lefts are used. If shoes are made "on the last," each "set" consists of sixty pairs of "followers" additional. One manufacturer will sometimes have from three to five thousand pairs of lasts. These must be changed with each change of fashion, at a cost of some hundreds of dollars. Innumerable combinations of stock and varieties of finish can be planned for as many samples as desired. Preparing the sole for the last is called "stock-fitting." Leather destined for the bottom or sole of a shoe, in order to cut, die, split, and mould easily, must be properly tempered" by dampening it. Now called "stock," each sole is subjected to pressure between two rapidly revolving rollers, so as to make it solid, and then rolled through a splitting machine to reduce it to an even thickness. By means of "dies," or sole-shaped knives, in a diemachine, required shapes, sizes, and widths are cut out. Before the use of dies, soles were "rounded out" by hand to follow the shape of a tin pattern, and even the tin pattern was a marvel in its day. Prior to its use the old-time shoemaker guessed at the shape to make the sole. Tin patterns and dies settled the question of uniformity of shape, and made it possible to produce in large quantities shoes similar to samples. The stitching uniting the sole to the upper in a machine-made shoe runs in a "groove" made by a "channelling machine." Sometimes a "sole-rounder" is used, an ingeniously contrived equipment of recent invention, in using which the sole is clamped upon an iron form. By one simple motion well-poised knives follow the shape of the form, cutting instead of dieing the sole, and making the channel groove at the same time. A small shaving from the flesh side is taken off by a "feather-edging machine" to make the edge lighter than the rest of the sole. An edge worked down to the least possible thickness is a test of good workmanship in hand-made goods, as the thickest part of the leather is needed only in the central part of the foot, where the wear comes. To hollow the shank and round it into a genteel shape, the sole is subjected to a pressure of one or two tons between two heavy iron "moulds." Every machine-made shoe also has an "inner sole" died out or moulded to correspond in shape with the "outer sole." We have now seen the hide or skin become by successive steps a "side," a piece of "leather," "stock," and "sole." Such are the many important changes at the tannery, at the sole-cutter's, and thus far in the shoe factory, which have been necessary to prepare the skins, so that at a proper moment the upper and sole can be united to make a shoe. "Lasting" your "pair of shoes" properly requires a skilled workman, and is a process which through years of wonderful invention has stood invulnerable against any improvement over an honest pair of hands. There are many chances for variation in stitching an upper, and no matter how carefully patterns are graded, or how smoothly skins are cut, the least difference in meeting the seams may destroy the whole proportion. A workman with a true eye can often counteract "stretchy stock," and cover up the deficiencies of the stitcher so that the upper will be a "snug fit" to every part of the last. Two or three inventors, however, claim to have discovered this philosopher's stone, but there is no machine for fine work which has yet stood the test of an exacting market. The laster is about the only shoemaker left who can still talk fondly of his "kit." He owns his post, his jack, his THE LASTER. 283 hammer, his pincers, and his awl, but progress has deprived almost every other son of St. Crispin of his peculiar emblems. Even while glorying in the ingenuity about you, these relics of the past are quite refreshing. The laster with his pincers pulls the upper tightly over an iron-bottomed wooden last, the inner sole is adjusted, a dampened piece of leather, half spherical in shape, called a counter, or stiffening, is inserted at the heel between the outside and lining, and sharppointed little tacks, clinched by the iron bottom of the last, are driven at intervals to hold the upper in place. The laster supplies the tacks from his mouthful of them, and his pincers have a hammer head which drives them in. His flattened thumb is also an important tool to him, and is his distinguishing mark among his fellow-craftsmen. A "steel shank" is also inserted to assist in keeping the shank of the shoe in desired shape. The outer sole is applied by a "nail tacker," and this workman, by the assistance of his machine, can "lay the soles" for a dozen lasters. Lasters apply the sole to the upper, but do not unite them. THE MCKAY SHOE-SEWING MACHINE. or "set," by coming 'in contact with a swiftly moving "edge-iron" corresponding in shape with the cutters. Burnishing is burning blacking into the sole, whether done by heated irons or by friction. After edge-setting the sole is held against a cylinder covered with sand-paper, revolving at the rate of twenty-five hundred times a minute, which in a twinkling "buffs" the grain of the leather, leaving it white and velvety. The action of the sand-paper creates a "nap." The edge of leather can be cut the whole length of the side with no perceptible change in color, but sand-paper applied to the surface changes it at once. When the great problem of stitching the sole to the upper was solved, the little shoemakers' shops disappeared before the march of the sewing-machine, that revolutionizing influence which has made famous the humble pursuit of the cobbler. A resistless combination of cog-wheels, so arranged above a heavy frame-work as to drive an awl-like needle through half an inch or more of tough pieces of leather, has built great factories and made thriving cities. A swift workman was he who could sew soles to a pair of shoes in fifteen minutes' time, yet this wonderful piece of mechanism can sew six hundred pairs within the limits of a working-day. The machine which does this work must feed a waxed thread in any direction, so that the shoe rests not on a table but over the end of a horn, from within which the thread, previously waxed, is supplied, after being heated by a gas-jet within the horn. By letters patent, for many years the company controlling the machine collected a royalty from persons who used it, and one large manufacturer paid in a single year the sum of fifteen thousand dollars for the privilege of using thirteen of them. A McKay stamp, like a postage stamp, was in these times attached to each pair of shoes made on this machine. With several hundred in use, the corporation paid a fancy dividend for many years that was more than the original value of the stock. Rivers have attracted capitalists to build acres of mills on their banks, but this machine has made cities and large towns anywhere. The fine outline of a shoe depends largely on the iron lasts and corresponding forms of a "beating-out machine," between which, after the channel groove has been filled with naphtha cement, the sole of the shoe is subjected to enormous pressure. The edge of the sole is yet in a rough state, but sliding knives or revolving cutters in "trimming" machines pare off unThis drives the nails firmly into necessary parts, so as to leave a bevel, the sole, and by the movement of a curved round, or square edge. To rival the high "shave" cuts off enough leather to leave a finish on the upper-leather, blacking is well-formed heel. The front of the heel then applied to the original leather-color is cut smooth by a "breasting" machine, of the edge, and when dry "burnished," and quartz-covered wheels "scour" off the A shoe without a heel would be as great an anomaly as a ship without a rudder. Whether French, medium, or "commonsense," an appropriate heel has much to do with the beauty of the product. A number of lifts," cut out of a piece of leather by means of heel dies, are tacked into a pile and punctured with small holes to be filled with nails by light-fingered operatives. A wedge-shaped "rand" is put under the heel lifts to make the heel level, and the crude heel is pressed upon the "heel seat" of the shoe by a nailing machine. roughness left after shaving. Blacking is applied to this prepared surface, and brilliantly polished by the heated iron of a burnishing machine to finish the heel. The heel top is buffed to correspond with the sole, and the bottom is further prepared for finish by being thoroughly scoured with an emery pad. Attached to a small countershaft is a stiff circular brush, and after a coat of "finish" is applied to the bottom of the sole, a To "brusher" holds it against the brush to PIECES OF A SHOE. 10. Heel stiffener. 16, Rand. With two soles, two inner soles, two stiffenings, two steel shanks, two rands, a dozen heel lifts, and two sole linings 13, Outer sole. added to the twenty pieces in the upper, the pair of shoes required forty-four separate pieces. Besides this there would be as many as thirty lasting tacks, twelve heel nails, and twenty buttons, making over one hundred distinct pieces, to omit entirely the silk used in stitching the upper and the well-waxed thread which sewed the sole. If a shoe could be "kept in the air" from the time the knife of the cutter divided the skin until finished, your most approved button boot could be thoroughly cut, stitched, and made in a well-appointed factory in less than two hours' time. Mr. Parnell, 11, Sole lining. 14, Heel lifts (6). THE COMPLETED SHOE. 12, Inner sole. 15, Steel shank. |