The New England Shoe and Leather Association considered certain features of the leases for the metallic fastening machines so objectionable that a long series of conferences was held in 1901 with the company, and certain modifications were obtained. Thus an alternative was secured for the ironclad lease covering the metallic fasteners by which the shoe manufacturer could use them with foreign machines by paying ten per cent more for his materials. (The rent of these machines, it will be remembered, was included in the price charged for the materials.) The penalty for disobedience was also lightened, and other concessions were obtained. Thus it is possible now to buy the general machines outright. The committee said quite frankly in its report that it was clear that the company intended to make such contracts as would give it a monopoly of the manufacture and renting of all shoe machinery, but it added it was patent that to do this it must continue to serve the shoe manufacturers better than they could be served elsewhere. The monopoly the committee foresaw was of course inevitable. To-day the United Shoe Machinery Company owns more than ninety per cent of the shoe machinery of the country. Its profits are enormous, as the expansion noted above shows. The royalty on a pair of woman’s shoes is about three cents. On a pair of man’s shoes it is from four to five cents. In a factory turning out a thousand pairs a day of the former there is a royalty of $30.00 a day. The writer has talked with one shoe manufacturer who claimed he had paid $165,000 a year in royalties to the trust and upward of $100,000 for materials. Many would-be independent manufacturers claim they could reduce the cost of manufacture two cents a pair if allowed to own their machines. It is a common assertion among them that the royalties for the first year pay a reasonable price for the machines; that as the life of a machine is ten years, there are nine years of “unholy profits to the trust!” While discontent at the “benevolent despotism” which rules the business breaks out all over the country in spots, and a few energetic attempts are working to build up independent systems, the shoe manufacturers as a body have accepted the combination. Certainly they are getting from it such a service as they never had before, whatever the oppression. The shoe manufacturer can by the use of the “system” increase his product and the piece-paid laborer his wages. At the same time without raising royalties the company profits enormously. The person who gets no advantage is the man who buys the shoes. The royalty paid on each pair is just what it was when the trust was formed.