Production Note Cornell University Library produced this volume to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. It was scanned using Xerox software and equipment at 600 dots per inch resolution and compressed prior to storage using CCITT Group 4 compression. The digital data were used to create Cornell's replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1984. The production of this volume was supported in part by the New York State Program for the Conservation and Preservation of Library Research Materials and the Xerox Corporation. Digital file copyright by Cornell University Library 1993. 10Fifty" Years of The c/trt of Boot cTVIaking M BUSINESS that can celebrate its fiftieth birthday in the New York of the present has many things to look back upon, much to conserve, and something to be proud of. To those who, like Henry James, revisit this “ American Scene,” there appears to be nothing left of the city of former days. But the old New Yorkers can point out to you how, beneath all this complex modernism of speed and skyscrapers, the traditions of the town are still remembered. When the house of J. & J. Slater had its beginning, the shoemaking trade was in the hands of individual artisans, each keeping his own little shop, where he fashioned and finished his goods with a painstaking pride of production that had all the essential qualities of art. Then it was the habit of a gentleman to have his own lasts from which to order footwearfor himself and family. Scarcely any im- portance is attached to the old time shoe- maker and his last in the shoe manufac- turing industry of to-day. When we began making shoes, every last was conscientiously carved for an individual foot, and the shoes built on it conformed to all the little idiosyncracies of the wearer. This method is still car- ried out in our custom shop; and it is also the secret of how we have built up our ready to wear department. On ac- count of the growing demand for stock footwear that should have the old time “Slater” excellence of fit and style and finish we gradually selected a number of recurring types of feet, and made lasts and shoes to meet the increasing call for such goods. This was a perfectly proper and rational basis for the designing of stock shoes. But the average factory made shoe is de- signed by a different class of men from the old time artisans with whom we have always filled our benches. The factorydesigner has studied from a theoretical standpoint only the so called “ no mal foot” and has not had the experience to learn-—as did the old time shoemaker— that there are many types of feet that may be regarded as normal when shape and contour are considered as well as size. Thus it is that our custom department is the foundation of “Slater” success, the chart room by which we have been able to steer a straight course through the changing conditions of shoemaking for half a century. A customer, once de- scribing the elegantly appointed private office of one of the modern shoe palaces, was laughingly asked if she would like to see ours. She was shown to the cutting room in the basement, and as she saw lasts rasped, leathers being selected and cut out, and the hundreds of filed records of customers and measurements, she real- ized that practicability is the backbone of the Slater establishment. And that is why none of the many changes in the shoemaking trade—so apparent to us—have been felt by our customers. To them Slater shoes have always been the same. For in that modern basement our shoes are cut and fitted and finished—plus the improvement that brings to any skillftdly conducted business—exactly as we finished them fifty years ago in the first Slater shop at 858 Broadway. At that time Wallack’s first theatre which was built at 13 th Street had not been thought of. Near us was the Mor- ton, Everett and the New York Hotels, patronized as they were by many old New York families and the favorite stopping places of substantial Southerners, who numbered themselves among our regular patrons during their periodical visits to town. Cradled in this once exclusive locality, our trade was built up, both in town and out, among the conservative families of the period, who invariably insisted on “the best.” With the passing of Union Square as a social centre, we migrated to the local- ity so long presided over by the FifthAvenue Hotel. Now that famous old structure has given way to the modern office building, and looking across Madi- son Square at the highest tower in the world, our customers from the corners of this and other cities, where shifting conditions of living have scattered, still come—these old families—unto the third and fourth generation, because among all these changes they have always found in our shop progressive methods tempered with the sound old-fashioned principles of shoe making. — 7 —IN PRESENTING OUR CATALOGUE WE WISH TO NOTE THAT AN ADEQUATE IDEA OF THE REAL CHARACTER OF OUR GOODS CAN- NOT BE CONVEYED BY ILLUSTRA- TION, THEREFORE WE REQUEST A PERSONAL INSPECTION. TO THOSE DESIRING WELL-FITTED SHOES FOR CHILDREN WE RECOM- MEND OUR SHAPES OF LASTS, SO CONSTRUCTED AS TO PRODUCE HEALTHY, WELL-FORMED FEET.“Fifty Years of the