Jackson County IL Archives News.....Murphysboro Plant No. 7, Brown Shoe Co., Factor In Growth Here Since 1910; Employs 438 Persons October 16, 1923
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Mary Riseling riseling@insightbb.com July 13, 2006, 4:59 pm

Murphysboro Daily Independent October 16, 1923


    Back in 1910 the Murphysboro Commercial Association, Jos. H. DAVIS,
president, brought to Murphysboro Plant No. 7 of the Brown Shoe Co. of St.
Louis, by giving the company a plant site and the equivalent of its splendid
three story brick plant on South 19th street.  The plant since that time has
been one of the principal factors of local industry and town growth.  Growing
with the town, it stands to day a complete unit, operating on its own power and
promising a future of expansion.

    An hour at the Murphysboro "Star 5 Star" plant of the Brown Shoe Company,
Inc., with perfectly good tanned cow hide running the gamut of hundreds of
machines and hands and coming to the packing room at the rate of 22,000 pairs of
shoes a week, makes the uninitiated wonder why system and exactness do not get
lost in the very clatter and bang, and stamp of the days work-and then wonder
again at the astounding exactness of it all!

    Here 438 employees, 58 percent of them men and boys and 48 percent women and
girls, have set what seems an unrivaled industrial pace in Murphysboro.  As pay
for their labors, these workers earn an average aggregate sum of $8,000 a week,
ninety percent of it to reach our home merchants for clothing, food and things
for the home.  A clean modern plant of three floors and 417,519 square feet but
worlds of complicated shoemaking machinery that speaks much for the progress of
Industrial Mechanics during the last half century.

    Space forbids a detail story of this plant, which occasions freightage of
supplies and products amounting to feet of working space, there is indeed
nothing that smacks of "fifty years two arrivals and two departures weekly." 
Stocks and supplies are predetermined in St. Louis, based on what the
Murphysboro unit is commissioned to do and facilities for the doing.  Upper
leather, for instance comes in allowances to the stock room, in great rolls,
just as sole leather comes in sacks to the bottoming room.  And here to receive
it all and profitability put it through the factory and into cases and cars and
ship it to the home distributing house is Plant Superintendent Charles F. COOKE.
 His job is to make the Murphysboro plant "pay" and his lieutenants are eight
departmental foremen, 438 operatives and an office manager, G. J. ALEXANDER.

    From the stock room upper leather starts through the cutting room, east end,
third floor, where expensive machines and dyes and expert workers cut the
leather for the fitters, where vamps, quarters, tips and tongues are fitted.

    From the third floor fittings go to the second floor and the lasting room. 
After the lasters the bottoming room gets the traffic and heels and soles are
put on and the shoes are eyed, trimmed, set, leveled, etc.  And even the
uninitiated begins to admit that many parts have come together some how out of
the maze of machinery and hands, and are becoming shoes.

    Then the finishing room on the first floor gets them.  Bottoms are stained,
scoured, brushed and made presentable for the packing room.  Here they are
ironed, polished, stringed and finally put in boxes inspected and hurried along.

    The wonder of it all to the visitor is that tens of hundreds of thousands of
parts of shoes travel up and down the long rows of machines, through so many
human hands, and come out neatly fashioned together in the form of the famous 5
Star 5 brand shoes for all the family, without leaving a world of tangled litter
behind.  Yet it is so, and the big plant remains miraculously clean even when
the output is running thousands more pairs the week, as needs demand.

    The plant is making footwear for men, ladies, misses and children in diverse
styles and colors.  The big job is system itself and the product the mark of
expert care in the quality it reflects.  The plant hopes to give its operation
to the making of stitch-downs in the near future, meaning to say work of a
quality superior even to the quality shoes now being made.  Intricate stitchers
for the purpose were installed sometime ago.  The plant is now making 75 per
cent men's and boy's dress, nail shoes with a new line of stitchdowns.

    An hour with Murphysboro's biggest and we believe happiest industrial family
at this factory convinced the writer that this city must continue to thrive with
such a major industry and loyal workers in the heart of the town.  Well cared
for, rest rooms and first aid hospitals and safety and health provisions not
forgotten, these workers seem to lack nothing--unless it is more elbow room to
make shoes in.  Floor space is at a premium.

    The Brown Shoe Company is operating thirteen factories, the Capitol,
President, Homestake, Buster Brown, and Factory L in St. Louis and plants in
Brookfield Mo., Litchfield, Dixon, Murphysboro, Mattoon and Charleston, Ill.,
and at Moberly Mo., and Union City, Tenn.

    Department foremen of the Murphysboro plant are:

Charles KNEPPLER, Cutting Department
F. C. LICHTENBERG, Fitting Department
E. OTT, Sole Leather Department
W. R. WEST, Lasting Department
George BUNCH, Goodyear, Stitching Department
Thomas CRISS, Bottoming Department
C. H. MONTGOMERY, Finishing Department
John MARCH, Packing Department
G. J. ALEXANDER, Office Manager


Additional Comments:
Transcribed by Mary Riseling from grandfather C. E. RISELING's collection of old
newspapers.

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