SHOE TRADE. In addition to the few details given under Boor AND SHOE MANUFAC TURE, the following may not be out of place.
In the old statutes a shoemaker is called a eordwainer, apparently a corruption of the French Cordonnier, which means a worker of Cordova leather. The companies of shoe makers in our ancient towns were incorporated under this name ; and where some of these companies still exist, they still go by the same name. As a legal term, cordwainer is yet in use.
The trade, as now followed in London and other principal places, is subdivided into about twenty branches. The following may be set down as the chief: the shoeman, or maker of the sole part of the shoe ; the bootman, or maker of the sole part of the boot ; and the boot closer, or joiner together of the leg, vamp, &c. The labour of these is especially directed to what is called the men's line; whilst others make the ladies' shoes or boots. There are many women, too, who get a livelihood by closing the shoe ; while others again follow the various sorts of binding.
The mechanical processes, after marking and cutting out the leather, consist chiefly in various kinds of strong needlework, such as the lasting or tacking of the upper leather to the in-sole, the sewing in of the welt, the stitching to this welt of the out or top sole, the building and sewing down of the heel, and the sewing or closing of boot legs. The boot
closer is the most skilful of the persons em ployed, and receives the highest wages.
No other common handicraft is exercised by so large a number of persons as that ofj the shoemaker. In the metropolis and in many parts of the country, women are extensively employed in the lighter parts of the business. The government contracts for the army and navy, the police, dm., are executed in London and at Northampton and Stafford ; and the export market is almost entirely supplied from these quarters. The boots and shoes exported (chiefly to the East and West Indies and the colonies) are included in the general entry of leather wrought and unwrought,' in the par liamentary returns; but it is supposed that the value is about a quarter of a million sterling annually.
In 1850 there were imported, almost en tirely from France : Women's boots and calashes 22,346 pairs.
Women's shoes 119,420 „ Men's boots and shoes 31,178 „ Children's boots and shoes 1,698 „ Boot fronts 603,302 „