The monopoly the committee foresaw was of course inevitable. To-day the United Shoe Machinery Company owns more than ninety per cent of the shoe machinery of the country. Its profits are enormous, as the expansion noted above shows. The royalty on a pair of woman’s shoes is about three cents. On a pair of man’s shoes it is from four to five cents. In a factory turning out a thousand pairs a day of the former there is a royalty of $30.00 a day. The writer has talked with one shoe manufacturer who claimed he had paid $165,000 a year in royalties to the trust and upward of $100,000 for materials. Many would-be independent manufacturers claim they could reduce the cost of manufacture two cents a pair if allowed to own their machines. It is a common assertion among them that the royalties for the first year pay a reasonable price for the machines; that as the life of a machine is ten years, there are nine years of “unholy profits to the trust!” While discontent at the “benevolent despotism” which rules the business breaks out all over the country in spots, and a few energetic attempts are working to build up independent systems, the shoe manufacturers as a body have accepted the combination. Certainly they are getting from it such a service as they never had before, whatever the oppression. The shoe manufacturer can by the use of the “system” increase his product and the piece-paid laborer his wages. At the same time without raising royalties the company profits enormously. The person who gets no advantage is the man who buys the shoes. The royalty paid on each pair is just what it was when the trust was formed.
And what has the United Shoe Machinery Company to do with the Linen Thread Company? The president and the vice-president of the latter, Mr. William Barbour and Mr. A. R. Turner, are both directors in the former. Mr. Barbour, who is reputed to be the largest owner of the linen thread stock, is also a large individual stock-holder of United Shoe Machinery. Can any one doubt that such a relation has not been of importance to the Linen Thread Company in securing the 80 per cent of the linen thread business which it controls? Or would it be surprising, the power, the protection, and the surpluses of the two being given, if there soon was nobody outside of their fold making either linen thread or shoe machinery?