Boot & Shoemaker's Shop-Civil War is Good for Business

This video is part of the Genesee Country Village & Museum audio tour series. Click through all the videos in the playlist to learn about life in New York during the 19th century.
Transcript:
The Civil War fundamentally changed American society. For business people in cities like Rochester, it was an opportunity to adopt new technologies and make profits at the same time. In April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 recruits. Volunteers from New York State responded immediately. But now, the state faced a crisis: how to supply these new soldiers with uniforms, weapons, rucksacks, and shoes?
In Rochester’s already-established clothing factories, production switched to uniforms and undergarments, designed in ready-made sizes and standardized patterns. Shoemaking, traditionally done in small shops, shifted to factories. Jesse Hatch, one of Rochester’s pioneering shoemakers, adopted the Singer sewing machine to stitch uppers, and developed a dye for cutting soles. Another manufacturer, L&H Churchill, advertised for 500 new shoemakers to meet military demand. In total, shoe production in Rochester tripled between 1860 and 1865.
Unfortunately, unscrupulous war profiteering was all too common. Suppliers sold spoiled meat and broken-down horses to a state government in desperate need of military supplies. In New York City, Brooks Brothers made uniforms out of scraps of cloth held together with glue! When the uniforms fell apart in the rain, the name of the fabric, ‘shoddy,’ quickly became a by-word for poor workmanship of any kind.