be at least recognized. Let us see how that is in
the present case.

The shoe business was not unknown in Lynn before 1750, but in that year
it first got a firm footing here. So we are not surprised to find the
fact mentioned, but we are somewhat disappointed to find only half a
page given to it. Beyond this, mention of the shoe trade in the last
century is very slight, as, no doubt, was the trade itself. Since 1800,
however, the trade has been rapidly increasing, and has gradually
assumed enormous proportions. Yet in this precious volume we find the
subject mentioned just once in the chronological annals, _three lines_
being devoted to it under the head of 1810: "It appeared, by careful
estimation, that there were made in Lynn, this year, one million pairs
of shoes, valued at eight hundred thousand dollars. The females (!)
earned some fifty thousand dollars by binding." To be sure, the burning
of two shoe factories received, respectively, two and three lines; the
formation of an ineffective board of trade by shoemakers, ten lines; and
of an equally fruitless union by journeymen shoemakers, ten lines. A
page and a quarter (_mirabile dictu_) is devoted to a shoemakers' strike
with no definite result. In a biography, the connection of its subject
with the shoe business is mentioned in a quoted letter. A quick job by a
shoemaker receives six lines, and one by another, four; and the death of
a third is mentioned.

In an appendix the state of the shoe business in 1864 is discussed at
length in a third of a half-page! All we learn from it is that by the
State returns in the year ending June 1, 1833, there were made
9,275,593 pairs of shoes valued at $4,165,529. In the year ending
September 1, 1864, about ten million pairs of shoes were made, valued at
fourteen million dollars (probably paper, not gold, value), and the
number of shoe manufacturers was 174; of men and women employed, 17,173.
As the total population of Lynn at that time was little if anything over
twenty-three thousand, it will be seen that even these figures are
untrustworthy, or else the shoe business played even a greater part in
Lynn affairs than is generally supposed.

And this is all the mention to be found in a History of Lynn concerning
the backbone of the city--that great industry to which it almost wholly
owed its population of 38,274 in 1880. Can any one maintain that this
sort of a book is a history?

And so we might go on, finding history after