Word: shoes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...leather shoe has four main parts: the upper,the lining inside the upper, the insole directlyunderneath the foot and the outsole which scrapesthe pavement. Until the middle of the 19thcentury, all shoes were made by hand. Massproduction had to wait for the rival of a machinethat could sew the upper to the sole. Gordon McKayarrived in 1860 with the McKay sole-sewingmachine, an improved version of the one LymanBlake patented...
McKay could not have had better timing. TheCivil War brought him an order for 25,000 boots.He filled it. By 1873 his machines were turningout 50 million pairs of shoes a year. McKay becamerich and gave Harvard four million dollars, whichendowed not just one or two professorships, but anentire department--the Division of AppliedScience. Shoe technology has not changed muchsince McKay's time. McKay would recognize theLandis Aristocrat sewing machine that stands inFelix's workspace...
Felix was trained to build shoes from scratch.Now he does repairs only, but sometimes that meansrebuilding a shoe from very little. On hisworkbench there is a an English calf-high bootwith the soles ripped off, the welt in tatters,only the upper remains. "This job will take morework, I don't make no money doing this, but I knowthis customer long time, sometimes you got to putin special effort, and then he tells other people,other people, other people, and I don't need toadvertise...
Winks drew inspiration from an earlier Americanbook, J. Prince's Sketches of EminentShoemakers, published in Boston in 1848.Prince reports that Roger Sherman, Connecticutsigner of the Declaration of Independence andConstitution, began life as a shoemakers. Whileserving on an appropriations committee during theRevolutionary War, Sherman uncovered fraud in anarmy shoe contract and proved his case byspecifying the market price of the leather andworkmanship. Prince argues, "This incident willserve to illustrate the advantage which may oftenbe derived from the election of practicalmen to fill the office of legislators." (Hisitalics...
...animated. Nailing a heel onto a shoe, hestops, looks up to the window and turns to me. "Ifyou are educated, things are different. It is aday, but it is a sunny day, or a rainy day, or asnowy day, you see, they are all a day, but eachis different." Felix is excited. He smilesbroadly, pleased at the thought. "Now, I'm noteducated. Maybe I have some street smarts becauseI've been on my own since I was 11, back in theOld Country...