Lynn, Massachusetts was the first city to make history in shoe industry. The shoe industry originated in Lynn, Massachusetts in the early 1800's and late 1800's, this city was known as the first location where to find high-end shoes during the 19th and 20th centuries according to Abby Battis. Previously In the early1800's independent artisans shoemakers were very skilled craftsmen who worked in their kitchen or detached workshop in their yards or a front of their house called a ten-footer home where they crafted shoes by hands, a stone on their laps and a hammer for pounding sole leather. Being their own boss, made their work lives very relaxing, comfortable their environment less hustle, friendly and easygoing. Workload was light, a shoe make made about five to six shoes on the daily basis. In the late 1800's the shoes industry methods had changed during the Transition from Hand to Machine Labor 1850-1880 according to William Mulligan. Shoe productions and sale increased tremendously by the invention of the first machine industry by "John Adam Dagyt ". The development of machines industry had affected the independent shoemaking families of Lynn and changed their lives especially of relationship they had built with their customers over the years. In this paper I will analyze two images of how shoes were made in the first half of the 19th century and the transition of shoes making industry later in the 19th century.
First image is a photograph of an old Shoe Shop on Walnut Street, Breeds Pond a ten-footer in the first half of the 19th century. The image is very intriguing to me like a nice painting that helps me imagine and able me to visualize what the life of an independent shoemaker used to be in the first half of the 19th century. In the photograph there is: an old man, a ten-footer shop, and a barricaded pond. It looks like it is around summer because the old man who seems to be an independent shoemaker is sitting on the chair outside of his ten-footer shop getting some fresh air and working on shoes.
