A century ago, New England was the world's shoemaker. Factories in Massachusetts towns such as Brockton, Haverhill, Marlboro and Peabody drove the local economy, churning out millions of pairs of shoes that were shipped from nearby ports to Europe and beyond.
Most of those factories have long since gone quiet, but last week's US$3.8 billion sale of Canton-based Reebok International Ltd to German-based Adidas-Salomon AG continues the erosion of what was once one of the region's signature industries.
The Reebok sale was the latest in a series of industry mergers that has also swept up two other Massachusetts shoemakers in recent years -- Saucony and Converse -- and threatens more lost jobs.
The symbols of New England's shoemaking legacy are still easy to see in Lynn, the North Shore city of 80,000 where three of every five workers was once employed by shoe factories. But Lynn's last shoe plant shut down five years ago, and the few remaining brick factories are either vacant or being converted to loft apartments.
"It's a factory town, and we're embracing what we once were," said Diane Shepard, archivist librarian at the Lynn Museum and Historical Society.
The industry emerged alongside textile mills in the early 19th century. With easy access to ports and waterways, entrepreneurs employed new manufacturing techniques and relied on low-cost raw materials from the South to mechanize and expand the industry, giving New England a global reputation as a shoe supplier. Shoemaking equipment was produced by United Shoe Machinery Corp, whose Beverly headquarters are a local landmark.
The industry eventually spread to neighboring New Hampshire and into Maine, home to brands like Bass, Rockport and Eastland.
Regional links among shoe and leather makers and machinery suppliers kept the industry healthy through much of the 20th century.
"As long as those historical links stayed intact, the regional industry did well," said Bob Forrant, a historian who has studied New England's industrial past.
But the industry was challenged by the emergence of midwestern meatpacking plants, which produced leather that could be transported on an expanding rail network to shoemakers nationwide. New England's high labor costs also drove jobs to the South and eventually to East Asia.
"The companies began to see the potential for making more money by moving the work, at first to other places in the United States, and then to the global economy," Forrant said.
Reebok in the 1980s became one of the first major sneaker makers to move production jobs to east Asian countries with low labor costs.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS