Town and Country Shoes

I came across a negative from the Simmons Studio collection of this United Shoe Workers of America Charter.  It's dated 1945 which is baffling.  The only local factory to which it could apply is Town and Country Shoes.

However Buddy Baker worked there in the early 1950s and he says it wasn't a union shop back then.

Here's Buddy running a pullover machine at Town and Country Shoes in the early 50s.  

The factory started out in the basement of the old National Guard Armory and then moved to its permanant location on North Main Street.

It's closed now, and they've put a fence up around it.

Ruth Holtz wrote a very interesting article about it back in 1967.  Three Hundred and Twenty Five employees at $100,000 a month.  That comes to an average wage of about $307 a month. That's the same as making $2,258 a month 2017.

                                                         

Here's some of the people who worked there in 1967.

Sometime in the early 1970s, the factory closed,  They had a reunion for former employees. 

Buddy didn't go.