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OFFICERS, SESSIONS, ETC.

SESSIONS AND OFFICERS OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TYPOGRAPHICAL UNIONS.

† Name changed to International Typographical Union,

* National Typographical Union formally organized on third day of session,
Terms of officers extended to close of session.

CHAPTER VIII.

SHOEMAKERS IN THE MOVEMENT.

"Oh! Workers of the old time, styled

The gentle craft of leather!

Young brothers of the ancient guild,

Stand forth once more together!

Call out again your long array,

In the olden merry manner;

Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day,
Fling out your blazoned banner!"

- Whittier.

HAND WORK IN THE OLDEN TIME THE LITTLE SHOP-ITS EDUCATIONAL, INFLUENCE THE NEWSPAPER AND THE DEBATE COUNTRY WORKMACHINERY AND CHANGES WROUGHT BY IT — ORGANIZATIONS THE CRISPINS-THEIR FOUNDER-GROWTH OF THE ORDER-DECADENCE AND MORAL-LASTERS' PROTECTIVE UNION-METHODS AND PRINCIPLES-THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR - LARGE SUPPORT FROM SHOEMAKERS -THE INDUSTRIAL WAR-LYNN IN 1860-BROCKTON AND THE "

THE
T streets to see and

from

42."

HE keen-witted cobbler who made holiday in Roman streets to see and rejoice in Cæsar's triumph, and whose sharp retorts so ruffled the sensitive nerves of Tribune Marullus, was the fitting representative of his craft. A "cobbler's wit" has long been famed; and Shakespeare but used the proverbial aptness of the shoemaker's tongue to spice the opening scene of the great Roman tragedy. The traditions of the craft have been well preserved; and while the shoemaker of the nineteenth century no longer universally sticks to his last," yet the old-time front rank of comparative intelligence has ever been maintained by the trade as a whole.

The history of organized labor would be really incomplete if the part played by the workers in "the gentle craft of leather" was to be omitted. The cobbler in the streets of Rome, the guild brother in the middle ages, the early New

THE SHOEMAKER OF ESSEX.

193

England hand-worker in the little shop, and the operative of to-day, who guides an ingenious machine in the big factory, have all left their imprint on the era in which they lived.

The leather industry is a typical one in its development from the hand to machine labor; but the shoe factory has been far less potent than the cotton factory as yet, in crushing out the individuality of the people employed in it. This is due to a variety of causes, among them the comparatively recent introduction of machinery, and superior organization among shoemakers.

The labor question exists in this industry in all its force. Here we find the sharp competition among manufactures for the market, and the still sharper competition among the operators for work. This condition of the latter is interrupted by the constant introduction of new labor-saving and profit-making machinery, and the consequently increased facility with which comparatively unskilled labor may be utilized in the production of shoes. In addition to these drawbacks, shared in common with most of the makers of staple commodities, the shoemaker meets with difficulties peculiar to the craft. Among these may be classed the "farmer and fisherman shoemaker," hard to enroll in the ranks of labor organization, and oftentimes a serious stumbling-block in the way of the union of labor societies in their efforts to control the labor market.

To fully comprehend the work done by shoemakers in organization, in the face of these obstacles, it may be well to glance at the development of the trade itself.

In 1634 Philip Kirtland established a shoemaking shop in Lynn. Kirtland Street, in the west end of that city, is named after him. The trade was not firmly established until nearly a century and a quarter later, in 1750, when John Adam Dagyr, the "celebrated shoemaker of Essex," went to Lynn, laid the foundation of the modern trade. Dagyr was a Welshman, and became successful and famous, although he met with reverses, and finally died a pauper. During the first half of the present century, New England was, even more than at present, the abiding place of the shoemaker. As

early as 1812 wagon loads of boots and shoes were sent from Lynn and Haverhill to New York and Philadelphia. These shoes were "hand-welts." The manufacturers cut the stock and then gave it out to be made up in the little country shops. With the coming of canals and railroads, furnishing the manufacturer with means of transportation for the product of his factory, the industry rapidly developed.

Previous to 1857 the wives and daughters of the country shoemakers stitched the uppers at their homes. It was hard and toilsome labor, but labor surrounded by far different influences from those which help to mould those employed in making shoes. It should be pointed out, however, that the date of the organization of shoemakers is nearly identical with that of the establishment of the factory system; that most of the legislation, statutory or to be enforced by wage-workers, aimed at by these organizations, relates to abnormal social conditions brought about by the use of machines, and that possibly the source of the unrest and sense of injustice so largely permeating the wage class of to-day is due as much to the inequitable division of the benefits of machinery, as to any other one reason.

With the machine, in the abstract, the labor reformer can have no contest. The futility of opposing the forces making toward larger industrial development is clearly seen by him. His utmost restrictive effort is to prevent sudden and radical changes with consequent displacement of labor and attendant suffering. The demand of the labor organization is, however, that the machine shall be the servant of the producing masses as well as of the consuming; that its benefits shall be as great to the man who runs as to the man who owns it; that the leisure it creates accrue to mechanic as well as millionaire; that the child and mother be not taken from the home to operate it while the father is made a truant; in short that it be subordinated not alone to the greed of gain and desire for cheapness of production among capitalists, but to the needs, wants and general advancement of the working people. Before machinery made necessary the massing of large numbers of operatives in one factory, it is perhaps not

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195

too much to say that almost every New England shoe shop was a lyceum. Not so romantic, possibly, as the academic groves where the Grecian seekers after truth gathered about the old-time philosophers, but quite in harmony with that Yankee combination of utility with a keen spirit of inquiry into all things mundane and celestial. In the little shops of Lynn, Haverhill, Milford and other shoe centres, it was a common thing for the workmen to hire a boy to read to them while they were at work, the contents of the last newspaper; questions public, philosophic and theoretical, were discussed with zest and acumen amid uninterrupted tasks. It may be noted that in Tchernychewsky's "What's to be Done," the Russian reformer describes this method of education as prevailing in the modern co-operative shops directed by the heroine, Vera Parlovnu. To this custom of daily reading and discussions may doubtless be credited the many graduates from the shoemaker's bench to positions of public trust. It was about this date that the Singer sewing machine was introduced. In 1859 Blake brought out his sole-sewing machine. This was remodeled and improved by Gordon McKay, a Lawrence mechanic, and the result was the McKay stitcher, which completely revolutionized one branch of the manufacture of shoes. Previous to the invention of this machine, all the medium and low-priced shoes were pegged, this mode of fastening the sole to the upper being cheaper than the two seams necessary in the welted shoe. The McKay stitcher superseded the hand-welt and turned process, and the large manufactory superseded the small shops of the hand-worker. Soon after this came the pegging machine; then heel trimmers and burnishers, edge-trimmers and setters, bottom-finishers and buffers, heel crimpers, polishers, button fasteners, and scores of other machines followed in quick and bewildering profusion. By 1870 the present factory system was well developed.

It is neither within the scope nor province of this chapter to treat of the effects - physiological, pathological and sociological- of the introduction of machinery upon those improved mechanisms of production. We may, perhaps, be