The management of the new organization proposed at the start not to raise the royalties paid at the time the combination was formed for the use of the various machines, and it has never done so. It proposed also to take off what had been a custom in the business—the initial charges for installing machines. Indeed, the company claims that while before the combination the initial charge for fitting out a factory was $12,000, it now is but $1700. In the case of many of the metallic machines, as they are called, the practice was to charge no rent, but to require the manufacturer to take from the companies certain findings, like tacks, wire nails, and eyelets; the company charged its own price, not the current one, and in this way got its pay. These prices probably were always high, but the company claims it has never raised them. That is, the new organization proposed to make no changes in what the manufacturer had been paying, but to increase its profits through the greater continuity and perfection of the service of its system.
But this of course meant that the manufacturer should use all the machines in its system; that is, all those that it had tied together. And to make sure that he did this, the company prepared a remarkable lease, requiring that all the machines it made pertaining to the bottoming of shoes beginning with the lasting of the uppers should be kept together; that is, that no outside machines for any of these processes could be used, and if an attempt was made to introduce one, the company had the right to take out the remaining machines of the system.
In addition to the regular bottoming and lasting machinery the company handled a large number of general machines, and it was specifically provided in the leases of each of these that it should not be used on shoes that had been lasted and welt-stitched, or turn-stitched on other machines than those put out by the company. The penalty for using the leased machine with outside machines was the forfeiture of all leases in all departments—also the breach made the lessees liable to an action for damages.
The New England Shoe and Leather Association considered certain features of the leases for the metallic fastening machines so objectionable that a long series of conferences was held in 1901 with the company, and certain modifications were obtained. Thus an alternative was secured for the ironclad lease covering the metallic fasteners by which the shoe manufacturer could use them with foreign machines by paying ten per cent more for his materials. (The rent of these machines, it will be remembered, was included in the price charged for the materials.) The penalty for disobedience was also lightened, and other concessions were obtained. Thus it is possible now to buy the general machines outright. The committee said quite frankly in its report that it was clear that the company intended to make such contracts as would give it a monopoly of the manufacture and renting of all shoe machinery, but it added it was patent that to do this it must continue to serve the shoe manufacturers better than they could be served elsewhere.