_Indenting machines_:--The welt is known as that strip of leather around the shoe between the upper and the sole, and machines were invented for cutting and placing this, indenting it for the purpose of rendering it flexible and separating the stitches, all a work until recently entirely done by hand. Machines for twining the seams in the uppers, and forming the scallops; machines especially adapted to the making of the heel, as heel trimming and compressing, rounding and polishing, and for nailing the finished heel to the boot or shoe; machines for treating the sole in every way, rolling it, in place of the good old way of pounding it on a lap stone; trimming, rounding, smoothing, and polishing it; machines for cutting out gores; machines for marking the uppers so that at one operation every shoe will be stamped by its size, number, name of manufacture, number of case, and any other convenient symbols; machines for setting the buttons and eyelets; all these are simply members in the long line of inventions in this art. The old style of boot has given way to the modern shoe and gaiter, but for the benefit of those who still wear them, special machines for shaping the leg, called boot trees, have been contrived. So far had the art advanced that twenty years ago one workingman with much of this improved machinery combined in one machine called the “bootmaker,” could make three hundred pairs of boots or shoes a day. Upward of three thousand such machines were then at work throughout the world; and one hundred and fifty million pairs of boots were then being made annually thereon. Now the number of machines and pairs of boots and shoes has been quadrupled. And the world is having its feet clothed far more extensively, better and at less cost than was ever possible by the hand system. The number of workers in the art, both men and women, has vastly increased instead of being diminished, while their wages have greatly advanced over the old rates. As an illustration of how rapidly modern enterprise and invention proceeds in Yankeeland, it has been related that some years ago in Massachusetts, after many of these shoe-making machines had got into use, a factory which was turning out 2400 pairs of shoes every day was completely destroyed by fire on a Wednesday night. On Thursday the manufacturer hired a neighbouring building and set carpenters at work fitting it up. On Friday he ordered a new and complete outfit of machinery from Boston; on Saturday the machinery arrived and the men set it up; on Monday work was started, and on Tuesday the manufacturer was filling his orders to the full number of 2400 pairs a day.