Women's Footwear in America

Boston: Library of Congress:
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-131972 (b&w film copy neg.)

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In England you always heard Boston is the Shoe Center of this country, so I was anxious to get to Boston, see what it was like. I kept finding jobs and the union wouldn’t give me a permit to go to work. That’s why I came back to New York.  – Ben Benjamin

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Before he left Schwartz & Benjamin my grandfather went back to Boston.

Shoe Factories Lynn Mass
Library of Congress: LOT 2913 (F) [P&P]

A couple years before I got out, before we moved into New York City. We talked it over, Ben Schwartz & I, about starting a factory out of town instead of NY. See? It was getting impossible to lead the business there because of the unions and their demands.  Prices kept on going up higher, and new machinery was coming into place. So people out of town who made cheap shoes could make better shoes than what they were making with the new equipment. So we went. We went to Lynn, and Boston and St. Louis, Cincinnati. We went all around. When I came back we sat down and talked it over. I says Ben, after seeing all the towns, I think Lynn is the best place of the lot. A lot of the shoe factories have went out of business there. Not good shoemakers like we’ve got in New York, but they could be trained–taught to make better shoes. After I got out, Ben Schwartz did finally go to Lynn.  – Ben Benjamin

Dora Benjamin (sister)

Lynn Museum