dation of his immense fortune in the purchase of a patent for an
invention by a Dutch Guiana Negro named Jan E. Matzeliger. This
inventor was born in Dutch Guiana, September, 1852. His parents were a
native Negro woman and her husband, a Dutch engineer, who had been
sent there from Holland to direct the government construction works at
that place. As a very young man Matzeliger came to this country and
served an apprenticeship as a cobbler, first in Philadelphia and later
in Lynn, Massachusetts. The hardships which he suffered gradually
undermined his health and before being able to realize the full value
of his invention, he passed away in 1889 in the thirty-seventh year of
his age.

He invented a machine for lasting shoes. This was the first appliance
of its kind capable of performing all the steps required to hold a
shoe on its last, grip and pull the leather down around the heel,
guide and drive the nails into place and then discharge the completed
shoe from the machine. This patent when bought by Mr. Winslow was made
to form the nucleus of the great United Shoe Machinery Company, which
now operates on a capital stock of more than twenty million dollars,
gives regular employment to over 5,000 operatives, occupies with its
factories more than 20 acres of ground, and represents the
consolidation of over 40 subsidiary companies. The establishment and
maintenance of this gigantic business enterprise forms one of the
biggest items in the history of our country's industrial development.

Within the first twenty years following the formation of The United
Shoe Machinery Company, in 1890, the product of American shoe
manufacturers increased from $220,000,000 to $442,631,000, and during
the same period the export of American shoes increased from $1,000,000
to $11,000,000, the increase being traceable solely to the superiority
of the shoes produced by the new American machines, founded on the
Matzeliger type. The cost of shoes was reduced more than 50 per cent.
by these machines and the quality improved correspondingly. The wages
of workers greatly increased, the hours of labor diminished, and the
factory conditions surrounding the laborers immensely improved. The
improvement thus brought about in the quality and price of American
shoes has made the Americans the best shod people in the world.[20]

That invention will serve as Matzeliger's towering monument far beyond
our vision of years. Throughout all shoe-making district