THE BOOT TRADE IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11854, 4 January 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE BOOT TRADE IN ENGLAND.

THE AMERICAN INVASION. The great shoe and leather fair lately held at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, is visible proof of how labour is ever growing more specialised. . " ' - -, ~;\ Ten years ago the bootmaker in the villages ' around' Northampton or Leicester employed a' few children and youths, and with the aid of a primitive machine or two jobbed together his leather as best he could. To-day this old type is almost extinct. In the centre of the Agricultural Hall are great stands of machines, all delicate, costly, and complicated. The average ordinary -boot; of today goes through from seventy-five to a hundred of these machines before it is finished. Each machine is run by a different man, a specialist in his own line. The battle of the machines in the boot trade is growing every year more severe. For instance, quite recently each lace hole , was stamped separately'by a press moved by hand. - Then someone brought out a press moved by power which stamped all one side at once. Now we have a still more; recent machine that'stamps both sides simultaneously. All the holes, in the- side of, the shoe are now finished and metal cased before the old-time operator would have been able to see 'that his leather was the right side up. . ■''//" , '.. ; - The leather fair affords ample proof of the reality of the American invasion in the boot trade. The first thing that meets the eye on entering the large hall is a notice proclaiming " Special Range of American Samples from Boston." Columbia boots edge out those from England, and often enough it is English retailers who give them special prominence. , But as the experts at the show say it is in machinery rather than in manufactured boots that the Americans have made their great triumph. The machine boot is to-day as near perfection as can be. Even the British Government has during the past six months withdrawn its old veto against British army boots being made by machinery. To meet prejudices some makers stamp their boots, "Warranted like hand-sewn," but with the word "like" in such microscopic letters that none but an expert looking for the word would see it. The American machinery to be seen in the exhibition has simply swept its rivals 'on one side. "Every shoe sold in England today pays a royalty in one form or another ' to the owners of the American patents," said one expert.. "The United Machinery Trust of America succeeded hi securing all the master patents and in amalgamating the various manufacturers. Then it came to Europe. In England it bought up many firms and fought others. It has so unproved machines that it has succeeded in forcing down.the throats of our firms its goods, even against their own desires." ■■■■~■■