the force developed by the spring 156 as may be desired from the foregoing it will be appreciated that the finger guides 134 and therefore the fingers 122 may be spaced as desired along the rods 136 and may be oriented at a downwardly and inwardly inclined attitude to the extent desired in most instances it will only be necessary to make an initial adjustment which will ordinarily be sufficient for substantially all shoes to be manufactured in accordance with the invention the fingers 122 are formed to be relatively stiff at least in a lateral direction so that when the shoe assembly urges the fingers 122 upwardly they will not bend in a lateral direction this is desirable in order to assure that control over the extent to which the fingers 122 move laterally outward is achieved solely by the angular attitude of the finger guides 134 it is preferred that the relatively light force e g 1 2 ounces with which the fingers 122 press the margins 28 against the insole be generally uniform and to this end the fingers 122 may be formed so that the lower ends 124 of the more intermediate fingers 122 in each group extends somewhat lower than the ends 124 of the more toeward and heelwardly disposed fingers 122 thus the finger ends 124 in each group define a locus 125 see fig1 15 which correspond approximately to the curvature of a shoe bottom in the shank region of a shoe assembly by initially arranging the locus 125 of the ends of the fingers 124 to approximate the curvature of the shoe bottom from the ball region to the heel breast region a substantially uniform pressure will be applied to the margins of the.