Footwear » The Story of Shoes

In North America shoemaking as a craft began in 1629 when Thomas Beard, a shoemaker, arrived from London. He settled in Salem, Massachusetts, to make shoes under contract for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But many early colonists tanned leather and made their own shoes, and later, itinerant cobblers went from town to town, making crudely formed, silver-buckled shoes that could be worn on either foot.

Then shoemakers set up shops in villages and passed on their trade through apprentices. The first to operate a shoe shop on the factory system was John Adam Dagyr, a Welshman who came to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1750. Under his system each worker specialized in only a single operation of the entire shoemaking process. Dagyr is called the "father of American shoemaking." Around 1800 came the Ten Foot shops, which were named for their small size. Around 1822, American cobblers invented the first “left” and “right” side shoes made from specific lasts, or molds, of each foot.

Until the middle of the 19th century work on shoes was done by hand by skilled craftsmen. Then a number of American inventors developed machines to perform the tasks specific to shoemaking. The first innovation was the rolling machine, invented in 1845 that replaced the lapstone and beating hammers used for making leather stronger. In the same year Elias Howe invented the sewing machine--it was adapted for use in stitching the upper parts of shoes. Then in 1858 Lyman R. Blake patented a machine for sewing together soles and uppers. Around 1874 the welt stitcher of Charles Goodyear, Jr., made possible machine production of high-grade welt shoes. In 1896 Humphrey O'Sullivan, a printer in Lowell, Massachusetts, patented his invention of the rubber heel--it was his custom to stand on a rubber mat to ease his tired feet as he set type. It was inconvenient to carry the mat from place to place, so he nailed pieces of it to the heels of his shoes. To keep the nails from working loose, he molded washers into the rubber.

A significant development in the shoe industry was the formation of the United Shoe Machinery Corporation in 1899. It combined several leading shoe-machinery companies, each making machines for a principal operation, thereby reducing patent litigation and improving the service of shoe machinery. The Compo Shoe Machinery Corporation was organized in 1928 to make machines for attaching soles with adhesive. This process was about 70 years old at the time, but until then had been a hand operation. Machine production made its use widespread.

The U.S. shoe-size system evolved from the mid-19th century, when the mass production and marketing of shoes became possible. The modern shoe-size system begins with size 1 in adult shoes and size 0 in children's shoes. These sizes correspond to the length of the insole: a size 1 adult shoe has an insole of 8 7/12 inches, a size 0 children's shoe an insole of 3 11/12 inches. Each full-size increase represents an increase of 1/3 inch in the length of the shoe's insole.

More than 200 operations are performed in making a pair of shoes, but with modern machines a pair of shoes can be made in less than one man-hour. In the past, when shoes were made by hand, the output was less than one pair of shoes per worker per day. Today a separate machine generally performs each step in production.

Italy, Spain, Brazil, and Great Britain are major producers of leather shoes, and Japan and Hong Kong are major suppliers of rubber and canvas shoes. The U.S. was long one of the world's foremost producers and consumers of shoes. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, a growing number of imported shoes entered the American market. Foreign manufacturers were able to produce shoes more cheaply because they paid lower wages.

Today more than 3 fourths of the shoes sold in the U.S. are imported. Taiwan alone accounts for nearly half of the shoe imports. Others include Korea, Brazil, Italy, and Spain. Efforts to limit imports have been made and American shoe manufacturers have increased productivity to remain competitive. Many, particularly athletic-shoe manufacturers, began specializing in an effort to retain a niche in the shoe market.