J. A. Simpkinson & Co.’s wholesale Boot and Shoe House is situated at No. 89 West Pearl Street.  The store has a frontage of 33 feet and a depth of 185 feet.  It is five stories in height.

The firm was established on 1840. They manufacture every description of Men’s, Women’s, Misses’, and Children’s Boots and Shoes, of all grades, from the medium to the very finest and best in quality and style.  There are three floors of the building devoted to manufacturing purposes, and about three hundred hands employed daily.

The business of the firm extends over the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia, and the establishment is one of the busiest and the most commodious in the West.

There are probably buy very few who are award of the vast extent to which the manufacture of boots and shoes has grown in the United States.  According to the last census there were no less than 23,428 factories, employing 135,889 hands, with an invested capital of $48,994,366, and turning out $181,644,090 worth of manufactured article.  To affect this $51,000,000 were paid in wages, and had it not been for the recent improvements in the art of the application of machinery to shoemaking such immense results could never have been accomplished.  The members of the firm are, John, Alfred and Henry H. Simpkinson.

From: "1875 Kenny's Ilustrated Cincinnati" pages 240 - 241

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