Workers seated in the David Cummings & Co. shoe factory, South Berwick, ca. 1900
Contributed by Old Berwick Historical Society
Description
Cummings shoe factory employees sat at their workbenches in this unpainted room of the Cummings shoe factory. The women occupied the front half of the room, the men, sitting at high benches, occupied the back.
The Cummings factory building--which, as of 2016, still stands on Norton Street--was constructed about 1872. By the late 1800s, the mill employed 350 men and women to manufacture nearly 5000 pairs of shoes per day.
The factory continued to operate as the South Berwick Shoe, Inc., and later as the Duchess Shoe Company. It closed in the early 1990s.
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