The birth of the lasting machine
The story of how one young and technically gifted man worked tirelessly to change how shoes were made.
For hundreds of years, the ‘hand laster’ – the worker who pulled uppers over and nailed them onto the lasts – held a special place in the footwear factory. Theirs was a very skilled job, as it involved considerable manipulation to accurately form the leather around the last, especially at the heel and toe.
This final step in the manufacturing process was time-consuming and these specialised workers could charge a high price for their services, which contributed towards making shoes reasonably expensive.
One machine missing
As part of a rapid mechanisation of industry during the early 19th century, new equipment was designed to handle different parts of the footwear manufacturing process. Not to be left behind their competitors, many shoemakers began to use machinery to cut the leather, stitch the cut sections together to form the upper and various other important jobs. However, there was no machine available that could replicate the lasting process, so the pulling over of the upper to conform to the shape of the last and its attachment to the insole was still carried out by hand.
While the mass production of machine-made footwear to sell to a growing population was the goal of profit-minded factory owners, the need for hand lasting caused a problem. A fast and skilled hand laster could only process up to 60 pairs of shoes a day, so the components made by machine would pile up while waiting to be used. This production bottleneck made shoes expensive.
Gordon McKay was a pioneer of shoe mechanisation at that time. In 1872, he launched the McKay Lasting Association and worked on creating a machine that could form, shape, tug, pleat, hold and tack upper materials like a human hand laster could. His company reportedly spent $120,000 (some $2.5 million at today’s rate) attempting to develop such a machine and an additional $130,000 ($2.8 million in 2020) taking legal action against an alleged infringer before dropping the case and joining the competitor. However, although the resulting Copeland-McKay lasting machine was reasonably effective when making heavier varieties of boots and shoes, it proved to be useless when the factory was manufacturing footwear with pointed toes or fine women’s shoes made from thin leather. This situation was a particular problem for shoemakers in the city of Lynn, as such footwear was the mainstay of their businesses.
From small beginnings
The solution to this problem originated in South America’s smallest country. In 1852, Jan Ernst Matzeliger was born on a coffee plantation in Dutch Guiana, (now called Suriname). His father, Ernst Matzeliger, was an engineer and his mother was a ‘house slave’ of African descent. At ten years of age, Jan became an apprentice in the Colonial Ship Works in the capital city of Paramaribo, where he was described as ‘demonstrating a natural aptitude for machinery and mechanics’. At the age of 19, he decided to go to sea, and spent two years working as a mechanic on a Dutch East Indies merchant ship before settling in Philadelphia, USA. As he spoke very little English at that time, it was difficult for Matzeliger to find a satisfying job, and he appears to have spent the next few years moving from one minor labouring role to another.
It was while in Philadelphia that he first became involved in the shoe trade. In 1877, Matzeliger moved to the city of Lynn, Massachusetts to pursue his interest in shoemaking. After starting an apprenticeship in Harney Brothers Shoe factory in Lynn, he is said to have worked for ten hours a day making shoes while his evenings were taken up with his continuing study of English. As was typical of the day, the company had machinery to use for most of the processes, but lasting was still done by hand.
This situation obviously captured Matzeliger’s attention, as he became determined to automate the process. His machine would have to quickly and easily pull the upper leather over the last, so reducing the time t