LEWISTON – Falcon Shoe, one of Lewiston’s two remaining shoe manufacturers, is shrinking.

Without notice, officials Thursday laid off 42 of the company’s 141 workers.

“This is a very emotional time for us,” Manager Roland Landry said Friday. “Everyone was crying and hugging.”

Falcon’s parent company, Iron Age of Pittsburgh, could not be reached Friday for comment. However, Landry said the layoff is one more result of an industry that is leaving the U.S.

“It’s today’s world,” he said. “It’s a global market.”

Lewiston’s only other shoe maker is Maine Shoe, a high-end manufacturer that hand-stitches all of its footwear.

Together, they comprise only a fraction of the thousands of shoe manufacturing jobs that were once a regional force.

In December, G.H. Bass & Co. announced it would close its Wilton Distribution Center. Layoffs were to begin in March and the center will close in May, said company leaders. An estimated 78 jobs will be lost.

The Falcon layoff is the second to hit the company in less than three years. In December 2001, the company let 40 other workers go.

At the time, company leaders blamed the recession and a worldwide leather shortage, caused by Europe’s mad cow disease scare.

The current work force combines the last shoe workers from two Lewiston mainstays: Falcon Shoe and Knapp Shoe. The latter was purchased by Iron Age in March 1997 and the workers were sent to Falcon’s Cedar Street plant. In 2002, the company opened a factory store in the Continental Mill.

Falcon Shoe makes industrial work boots and shoes for firefighters, police officers and other professions.

Iron Age is the largest manufacturer of industrial footwear in the country. According to its Web site, www.ironageshoes.com, it’s also a successful profit maker.

The parent company has annual revenues in excess of $120 million with about 1,000 employees in 38 states, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico.

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