Shoemaking For nearly two centuries, the industries of Beverly were essentially agricultural and maritime with new trades developing only slowly. A Boston Globe writer, in 1886, commented that, "Twenty-five years ago, the town was wholly devoted to shipping." It was partly a regional development, spinning off the labors of nearby Lynn, and partly a reaction to the dropping returns on the fishing business. By 1890, though, a third of all working men and a third of employed women of Beverly were toiling over shoes. Ranoul and Park Streets were dominated by the large factories sprung up to meet the demand. Resident shoemakers were scarce in the early days, the earliest recorded cordwainer being Andrew Elliot who also served as town clerk! Joseph Foster, an Ipswich native, did well during the Revolution, supplying shoes to the Continental Army, and following that war, to the South. This involvement with outside markets proved provitable enough to lure Nathaniel Roundy and Captain Thomas B. Smith to build small factories in the 1820's, with much of the product going to the South, to the West Indies, and to Africa. Still, the stock in trade was the piecework shoemaker-the characters made famous by Lucy Larcom in her poem, "Hannah Binding Shoes: sitting at the window, binding shoes: Faded, wrinkled, sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse." With at least a third of the men off to sea or traveling to California in the Gold Rush, women were left to their own employ back home and sewed on a piecework basis, providing at least some financial reward for females. Soon, shoes took off as a major industry. Daniel Lefavour began, the manufacture of women's shoes at the Cove in 1830. Ebenezer Moses introduced the system of the division of labor into the shop and began using tin patterns for the shaping of soles. In 1856, Seth Norwood bought out the Friend and Lord factory at the corner of Rantoul and Railroad Avenue, where he built a larger factory. The Beverly Citizen trumpeted, "The individual members of the firm are all Beverly boys who have grown up in town and take pride in its historic features. They are also interested in the future development of all that tends to make Beverly more than ever a shoe manufacturing centre." The Woodbury Brothers ran the other large firm in town, ending up in the large brick structure now being converted to housing on Rantoul Street. Their products included ladies' and children's shoes, employing around two hundred and fifty people. With increasing industrialization and growth in the local shoe industry came labor/management problems, leading to the great shoemakers strike in 1860-part of the largest strike in the United States prior to the Civil War and possibly, as one historian writes, "the greatest social crisis in the history of the town." Begun by Lynn shoeworkers on Washington's Birthday, Beverly workers joined three weeks later. Although Lynn was sharply split by the strike, with the Mayor calling in the militia and police, Beverly's tensions seemed considerably lower. Many of the manufacturers-Knowlton, Porter, and Young-supported the strikers openly. Porter gave the assembled marchers a banner reading, "Beverly-United Efforts Bring Sure Success." Even the local newspaper, the Citizen, in a highly unusual move, backed the strikers. |
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