How Shoes are Made: "The Story of My Life by Mr. Shoe" circa 1922 New York City Schools

http://tidd.ly/ecd1b1d0 Sale page at QdStores
more at http://quickfound.net/ Shoe manufacturing is shown at a Thom McAn plant. Silent. Public domain film from the Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoemaking Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or craftsmanship. Shoemakers or cordwainers (cobblers being, historically, those who repair shoes) may produce a range of footwear items, including shoes, boots, sandals, clogs and moccasins. Such items are generally made of leather, wood, rubber, plastic, jute or other plant material, and often consist of multiple parts for better durability of the sole, stitched to a leather upper... Traditional shoemaking Most shoemakers use a last—made traditionally of wood, but now often of plastic— on which to form the shoe. Some lasts are straight, while curved lasts come in pairs: one for left shoes, the other for right shoes. Traditional shoemakers used to use more than 15 different techniques of making shoes. Some of these are: pegged construction, English Welted (machine-made versions are referred to as "Goodyear Welted" after the inventor of the technique), goyser welted, Norwegian, stitchdown, turnout, German sewn, moccasin, bolognese stitched, and blake-stitched. Some types of ancient and traditionally-made shoes include: - Furs wrapped around feet, and sandals wrapped over them: used by Romans fighting in northern Europe. - Clogs: wooden shoes, often filled with straw to warm the feet. - Moccasins: simple shoes, often without the durability of joined shoes (although different types of leather have different wear characteristics). In modern times Current crafters, in developing regions or supply constrained areas may use used or surplus car or truck tire tread sections as an inexpensive and plentiful material resource to make strong shoe soles or sandals with. The Society for Creative Anachronism offers some advice about making period shoes for people engaged in the leisure activity of historical reenactment. Traditional shoemakers still exist today, and create custom shoes containing no plastics, paper, or nails (which rust, eventually). In popular culture The shoemaking profession makes a number of appearances in popular culture, such as in stories about shoemaker's elves, and the proverb "The shoemaker's children go barefoot". The patron saint of shoemakers is Saint Crispin. Chefs and cooks sometimes use the term "shoemaker" as an insult to others who have prepared sub-standard food, possibly by overcooking, implying that the chef in question has made his or her food as tough as shoe leather or hard leather shoe soles, and thus may be in the wrong profession. Similarly, to "cobble" can mean not only to make or mend shoes, but "to put together clumsily; to bungle..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_McAn Thom McAn is a brand of shoes and was formerly a retail chain. The brand is distributed by Footstar, Inc., formerly the Melville Corporation (now known as CVS Caremark) and is currently sold in Kmart and Sears stores. It consists of leather dress, casual, and athletic shoes (under its Tm Sport label). Until the 1990s, Thom McAn had hundreds of retail stores in the US, and was one of the oldest and best known shoe retailers in the country. The Meldisco (Melville Discount) Company, operated shoe departments in a partnership with Kmart stores in the early 1980s. Meldisco was established in 1959 and for much of its existence was based in Mahwah, N.J. As of late 2008 the brand is now controlled by Sears Brands, LLC. History Ward Melville, chairman of the Melville Corporation, introduced the new Thom McAn shoe line in 1922, opening the first Thom McAn retail store in New York. The brand was named after Scottish golfer Thomas McCann. Within five years, 300 stores were open, and by 1939 there were over 650 stores... The brand achieved the peak of its popularity and near iconic status from the 1950s to the 1970s, due to its combination of quality leather and affordability. There were 850 Thom McAn stores in the United States in 1955, and Melville became the largest American shoe retailer by the 1970s, operating 1,400 stores. The popularity of sneakers in the 1980s hurt Thom McAn sales... ... In 1996, Melville converted 85 Thom McAn stores into Footaction outlets, and it closed the remaining 200 stores, ending the storied existence of the Worcester, Massachusetts, based retailer. Melville divested itself of all of its shoe retailing business, focusing on its CVS drug stores. A new corporation, Footstar, was created from the former Melville shoe lines...