“The boot and shoe makers, either as shoemakers or “cordwainers,” have been the earliest and the most strenuous of American industrialists in their economic struggles. A highly skilled and intelligent class of tradesmen, widely scattered, easily menaced by commercial and industrial changes, they have resorted with determination at each new menace to the refuge of protective organizations.”

—  John R. Commons

John R. Commons, "American shoemakers, 1648-1895: A sketch of industrial evolution." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1909): 39-84.

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John R. Commons 26
United States institutional economist and labor historian 1862–1945

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