ABSTRACT
The use of kid leather for English boots and shoes led in 1914–1918 to a threefold increase in production, but the total output in November, 1918, was still only 1,200 dozen a week, less than a day's work at the great factory in Philadelphia. For all the subsidiary undertakings of Alfred Booth and Company—shipping, leather and engineering—1919 was a year of feverish prosperity. Towards the middle of 1920, however, rumblings of the approaching storm were heard almost simultaneously in America and England. The shipment of materials for capital construction financed in 1911–12 made the year 1913 a good one for the Booth Steamship Company, but the volume of freight fell heavily in the following twelve months. The management of the sheepskin business was transferred to New York in 1915, and in Brazil the war served only to aggravate the existing depression.
