1 and came
into common use about 1815 for the cheaper grades of shoes: Soon the
practice of sending out the uppers to be done by women in their own
homes became common. These women were wretchedly paid, and when the
sewing machine came to do the work better than it could be done by hand,
the practice of "putting out" work gradually declined.

That variation of the sewing machine which was to do the more difficult
work of sewing the sole to the upper was the invention of a mere boy,
Lyman R. Blake. The first model, completed in 1858, was imperfect, but
Blake was able to interest Gordon McKay, of Boston, and three years
of patient experimentation and large expenditure followed. The McKay
sole-sewing machine, which they produced, came into use, and for
twenty-one years was used almost universally both in the United States
and Great Britain. But this, like all the other useful inventions, was
in time enlarged and greatly improved, and hundreds of other inventions
have been made in the shoe industry. There are machines to split
leather, to make the thickness absolutely uniform, to sew the uppers, to
insert eyelets, to cut out heel tops, and many more. In fact, division
of labor has been carried farther in the making of shoes than in most
industries, for there are said to be about three hundred separate
operations in making a pair of shoes.

From small beginnings great industries have grown. It is a far cry from
the slow, clumsy machine of Elias Howe, less than three-quarters of
a century ago, to the great factories of today, filled with special
models, run at terrific speed by electric current, and performing tasks
which would seem to require more than human intelligence and skill.

CHAPTER V. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

The Census of 1920 shows that hardly thirty per cent of the people are
today engaged in agriculture, the basic industry of the United States,
as compared with perhaps ninety per cent when the nation began. Yet
American farmers, though constantly diminishing in proportion to
the whole population, have always been, and still are, able to feed
themselves and all their fellow Americans and a large part of the
outside world as well. They bring forth also not merely foodstuffs, but
vast quantities of raw material for manufacture, such as cotton, wool,
and hides. This immense productivity is due to the use of farm machinery
on a scale seen nowhere else in the world. There is still, and always
will be, a go