The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes

My title comes from an old expression that speaks to the plight of any businessperson. They put their customers ahead of their own well-being. Sometimes it is an ethos, other times a necessity. Once you dedicate yourself to a business, it becomes a top priority to make it work.
It comes to mind in light of the unexpected public blaming of grocery stores for inflation. It’s absurd. Their profit margins are very low, especially in light of the high costs. Just as you are paying higher prices for food, the stores are paying higher prices for products to sell, insurance, rent, labor, and repair costs. They too are victims of inflation.
Back to the old expression. In legend, the last person who eats the candy in the candy shop is the owner, because he knows better than anyone about the expense and the balance sheet. It’s absolutely true. The merchant generally puts the enterprise ahead of his own interests. You know this if you have been in business.
Does your town have a cobbler, by which I mean an old-time craftsman, typically a single individual, who repairs shoes? If so, you should pay this person a visit. What they do is quite remarkable. It’s an extremely rare skill with unusual machines and tools. There are ever fewer in times when people’s shoes are manufactured to throw out, not to resole.
I enjoyed hanging around the shop of an old-time cobbler last week, looking at his machines of uncertain origin. He kept saying 18th century, but I’m pretty sure he was being hyperbolic. Maybe they are from the 1950s—certainly his sewing machine is because I could put a date on this one—or maybe much earlier. In any case, the machinery alone is a feast for the eyes. Seeing machinery designed to last many generations rather than be thrown out in a few years gives you a glimpse into how the old world worked.
I didn’t need to ask, but I did just to confirm. Yes, his father was in the shoe repair business and his father before him. It’s the kind of trade that runs in the family because it is so specialized and not on the list of professions we pick up from childhood dreams. Maybe this is because we think of shoemakers as something from the old world, but the reality is that you might still have one in your hometown.
The cobbler plays a large role in the history of civilization not just from the ancient world but all the way to “modern” times with Grimm’s fairy tales. One of my favorites is “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” which is about an old couple that has a hard time making a go of it. Some elves show up at night to make shoes and leave them for the morning. They turn out to be the most popular shoes. The old couple then have a successful business and repay the debt by making clothing for the elves.
The story was written during the rise of German prosperity in the early 19th century, when the bourgeoisie began to form its own class interest, as wealth grew and spread among everyone. We can see in this one story an archetype of what was then a new type of middle-class success story in the framework of a commercial society. The couple went from poverty to wealth in relatively short order. This came about not because of favors from the king or the discovery of gold, much less from stealing or piracy, but purely by virtue of work and commerce, combined with the assistance of some benefactors in the night whose favors they never sought but nonetheless came to deeply appreciate.
Apply this story in our times: We are all in the position of poor shoemakers with benefactors. In a state of nature, we would be struggling for survival as most of humanity did from the beginning of recorded history until the late Middle Ages, when the first lights of prosperity as we know it began to appear on the horizon. Over the next several hundred years, and especially during the 19th century, life itself was transformed. The state of nature was vanquished, and the world was completely remade in the service of human well-being.
The story is an homage to the forces that made this happen, with the experience of the cobbler put front and center.
When I was there at the local shop, marveling at all that was going on, the lonely proprietor works all day, every day, his entire life, all in service of bringing shoes back to life. Each resulting product might as well be considered custom because of the huge variety of shoes and sizes out there and his professional obligation to deliver a final product better than it came from the story. That is nearly always the case because the hand-crafted product is almost always better than the retail version.
When I was there the second time, a line formed behind me with well-dressed patrons bringing in extremely nice shoes that cost far more than airport specials. These are discerning customers who know exactly what they want. I noted that the cars these people drove matched their class and wealth (high-end BMWs and Mercedes and so on), and it finally struck me. Cobblers are an example of a surviving remnant of the old world that serves mostly a wealthy, educated, and discerning clientele.
It’s fascinating to me because this man’s shop is around the back of an inauspicious street. He does no advertising beyond the basics. He has no website. But as the lone worker, his costs are low, and he has all the business he can handle. And it works. It’s his profession. He is not rich, but he gets by. It’s his calling and mission, and he carries it out with great skill, scrupulosity, and pride, all in the hope of repeat business, which he certainly earns.
Of course, he has no apprentice, which truly raises the question: Who is going to train the next generation after these old-timers are gone? You might say that we don’t need them anymore. We don’t repair shoes anymore. We simply buy cheaper ones and throw them away. I was at a shoe shop a few weeks ago and noted that only one pair among a hundred had a leather sole. I asked why this is and the salesmen explained that customers don’t want leather soles anymore and far prefer the comfort of these spongy, rubber, and plastic soles. Fine, whatever the market wants, right?
Still, something bugs me about how the entire market has developed. The United States used to have a vibrant shoe industry that served the whole population. There are still high-end shoes made in the United States (Red Wing, Rancourt, Alden, Allen Edmonds, et al.), but they serve mostly a fancy and deeply informed clientele, like much of customer-facing manufacturing in the United States. The rest has left our shores, and we now deal with a dramatically changed market.
One has a sense of foreboding about the skills and the shops themselves. In 10 years, how many cobblers will remain? What about 25 years? Who will carry on this tradition? Will it even exist in the future? Maybe not, but maybe everything could change. The cobbler I visited certainly seemed to have a solid lineup of clients and tasks, and herein we find the beauty of the market. It matches supply and demand. So long as there are shoes that need new soles, there will likely be those willing to do them, provided there are still people around with the skill.
It’s not a lucrative industry. The cobbler’s children probably do have shoes now, and that’s a good thing. But in the end, these smaller merchants are mainly benefactors to us all. They really don’t need to be demonized as the cause of woe.
I hope the cobblers survive if only to remind us of where we have been from the ancient world until today. The shoemaker played a huge role in the unfolding of civilization and still has a role today. So too for all the merchants.