Fred Lynch retired in 2018 after capturing images for the Southeast Missourian since 1975, in that time moving from black-and-white to color, from film to digital and to video. The blog title is a nod to an earlier era of news photography and the 4x5 Speed Graphic: It's more important to be there for the shot than to worry about technical details.

International Shoe Co. workers

Posted Friday, September 27, 2013, at 12:00 AM

Employees in the finishing department at the International Shoe Co. on Main Street pause, for only a moment, to pose for a photo in the early 1900s. (Cape Girardeau Faces and Places, submitted by Lloyd McElroy)

Previous blogs:

International Shoe Co. aerial

Shoe factory parking

Shoe factory workers strike

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Here are other stories about shoe factory workers.

http://www.capecentralhigh.com/cape-photos/cape-downtown/shoe-factory-to-cape-ca...

When I did that post, I made this observation:

When I typed the search phrase "shoe co" into the Google News Archives, I was struck at how much a part of Cape Girardeau the shoe factory under all its names was.

Scores, if not hundreds, of names popped up: in the early years, it was couples who worked at the factory getting married and starting families. In later years, right up to the present, it was in the obituaries of folks who had worked there for 20, 30 and even 48 years.

A faux riverboat gambling casino may bring all of the good things to Cape that the owners promise, but I doubt that it will ever become a part of the fabric of the community that the shoe factory was.

-- Posted by ksteinhoff on Fri, Sep 27, 2013, at 1:41 AM

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