We have practically now a roughly formed shoe ready for the finishing room.
Here the heel slugs are ground down, heel and sole buffed by sandpaper rolls on a scouring machine, wet down, stained, or blacked, as case may be, finished on bristle brushes, placed to dry, polished by a polishing machine, bottom stamped with the trademark, and passed to an operator whose duty it is to see that no tacks are left inside the shoes. Generally girls are hired to do this, as their hands are smaller and it is very important that no tacks are left, which might cause a great deal of trouble. If any are found, they are cut out with nippers or otherwise removed.
A lining is also generally put inside the shoe, covering the whole of the insole in a McKay shoe, and the heel only in a Goodyear shoe. Shoes must also be inspected here before they are packed, to see if they are perfect in every way and that each shoe is a perfect mate in the pair.
The shoes are now sent to the last department, called treeing, dressing, and packing department.
This department has to do with the finishing of the uppers. The bottoms and edges are all finished when shoes get to this department, and nothing remains but to finish the uppers and pack the shoes in single-pair cartons and then in wooden boxes or cases.
The different uppers are all finished by a different process, some being ironed with a hot iron, which is done to take out the wrinkles and smooth the uppers. Ironing was first introduced on kid shoes, but in recent years the hot iron has been put on nearly all kinds of stock. A shoe must be on a form or tree when ironed, the form or tree being the same shape as the last. The whole idea in ironing is the same as that followed by the tailor, who uses a hot iron to press and smooth out clothes. The operations in detail are as follows:--
Each shoe is treed, after having been drawn over a foot form similar to that on which the shoe was lasted, and any stain or dirt which may have been carelessly put on in former operations is cleaned off; the shoe is sponged with a gum prepared for either black or tan goods, rubbed down dull, and then rubbed to a polish. In many patent leather shoes the treeing is to clean off the surface, as we said before, and then to iron it with a hot iron, which takes out all stains, and leaves the leather shiny and black.