6 ms·
Striking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
by MikeTaylor 5y ago
Striking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
- PeterisP 5y agoAs the article mentions, a lot of the "most popular jobs" is determined not by the popularity of the industries but by the fragmentation of jobs. If you have 20 people working on shoes and 40 people working on clothing, then if shoemakers are a single profession/guild but clothing has 10 people each working on a different stage of the product (which actually is the case, with the most labor-intensive tasks of medieval clothing production being in the multiple stages of making the actual cloth, not tailoring it) then shoemakers become a more common job.
- dmurray 5y ago4% of the workforce being shoemakers seems enormous. One person working full time making shoes for every fifty-ish adults? I don't know what the right comparison is today. According to [0], the fashion industry accounts for about 3% of world GDP. Perhaps shoes are a quarter of that? [0] https://fashinnovation.nyc/fashion-industry-statistics/ https://fashinnovation.nyc/fashion-industry-statistics/
- qw 5y agoThe shoemakers also repaired and maintained shoes. They would replace soles, repair holes etc.
- dmurray 5y agoThat's an argument for needing fewer people, not more - since it happens in situations where it's less labour-intensive to repair shoes than to make them from scratch.
- Someone 5y agoNot necessarily. If the materials are expensive, paying somebody to repair a shoe can be the cheaper option. I think people still repaired socks after knitting them was automated for that reason. The first automated knitting machine was from 1589. Queen Elizabeth I denied its inventor a patent “because of her concern for the employment security of the kingdom's many hand knitters whose livelihood might be threatened by such mechanization” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(inventor)) Edit: maybe not. https://www.historylink.org/File/5721 https://www.historylink.org/File/5721 learned me that gear for us soldiers in World War One was knitted manually. Maybe, those machines weren’t used (much) yet by then?
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoIsn't the main reason that making from scratch is less labour-intensive than repairing because of mass production? With medieval production methods, I would bet that making from scratch is significantly more labour-intensive than repairing.
- mysterydip 5y agoI assume 1) people walked a lot more, 2) shoes took longer to make, and 3) didn't last as long which means more people necessary to handle demand. I could be completely off, though.
- telesilla 5y agoExactly, walking! Something few of us do these days even at short distances. I prefer shoes that can recobbled but I know from the dwindling numbers of cobblers that I'm a shrinking demographic.
- sillyquiet 5y agoPoint 3 is the key one - soles, especially. Rubber soles weren't a thing - they were made of leather (or sometimes textiles) and they wore out in a matter of a couple months or even a few weeks with heavy usage, especially give point 1. Point 2 isn't really the case - your later period and fancier pointed-toe, lace-and-ribbon-bedecked shoes for the higher classes took probably some time, but a pair of common leather turn-shoes can be made in a couple hours.
- kingcharles 5y agoWhen I was a kid there were vastly more shoe repair places than there are now. I guess if we plotted the graph backwards there would be way more several hundreds years ago.
- honkdaddy 5y agoIt does seem a bit strange, you're right. When you read into it though, this city seemed to have a higher cobbler population than most, as alluded to by the author. > They were organized in different guilds, based on the street in which they kept their shops. In 1360, nine cobblers’ guilds were attested in documents, all situated within the city’s walls I know almost nothing about medieval France, but perhaps peasants from smaller surrounding cities may have come to this one to learn or work, leading to this skew?
- wildzzz 5y agoThere's always an overlap of skills. Cobblers may have been tailoring on the side but wouldn't be counted as such. I've been to many dry cleaners that will do alterations or repairs on clothes but also will do some light shoe repair as well. They won't make you a shoe but can fix a broken heel just like I'm sure there are cobblers out there who are capable of clothing repairs.
- ghaff 5y agoCobblers are very good for doing repairs of anything that requires heavier duty needles and threads.
- dotancohen 5y agoSo, full-text search making full use of every core under the heatsink? ))
- nradov 5y agoThey were serving a lot of customers from outside the city who would occasionally visit to trade and shop.
- Xylakant 5y agoIt's much easier to make clothes at home than shoes. I could probably cobble together an odd looking shirt given some time and instructions without needing to buy special tools, but leather shoes are an entirely different thing.
- guythedudebro 5y agoI'm amused and perplexed at your choice of the word "cobble" there
- Xylakant 5y agoI’m not a native speaker so this was entirely unintentional, but now that you point it out I see the pun. Thank you.
- kingcharles 5y agoI've never met a non-native speaker who used the word "cobble", and successfully too. Props to you!
- Xylakant 5y agoWhy I missed that is not the meaning of the phrase "to cobble something together", but its root in "cobbler", which is - at least for me - something I rarely use.
- mrlonglong 5y agoAlso Cockneys in old London would say cobblers if you were talking out of your hat. Also balls to refer to the pawnbrokers on account of their three ball shop signs.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoMind you -- my amusement was "odd looking shirt". It made me imagine what that would actually look like.
- lordnacho 5y agoYou can keep wearing clothes that are messed up, broken shoes will stop you being able to do a lot of stuff.
- ldoughty 5y agoThis statistic might also be a specialization for just this case/city. The author noted that Montpelier was known for shoes, which might mean people traveled there for shoes, or they were exported/bought by traveling merchants and sold elsewhere.
- analog31 5y agoThey may have been exported to the surrounding countryside too. The one thing that a farmer couldn't make for themselves.
- vincebowdren 5y agoWeaving and making clothing was done mostly within the household, by women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_medieval_clothing#:~:text=While%20most%20of%20the%20peasant,each%20adult%20in%20the%20household%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_medieval_clothing#:~:t....
- photojosh 5y agoIn tracing my family tree, I found a branch that went back to a small town in Scotland, and at least 3-4 generations back were shoemakers. When did my forefather leave the family trade? Circa 1850, when the Industrial Revolution apparently hit shoemaking hard. He ended up keeper of a coffee shop in Glasgow, and his daughter was on a ship to Australia in 1891.
- kingcharles 5y agoI traced mine back to 1600. They were all shepherds.
- dotancohen 5y ago> on a ship to Australia in 1891 What was she accused of? ))
- monknomo 5y agoThey quit transporting people in 1868
- dotancohen 5y agoThanks, I didn't know that.
- photojosh 5y agoYep... she was a free settler. I do have about 1/4 convict heritage though.
- zoomablemind 5y agoPerhaps the ranking may be also influenced by reporting requirements. According to the article, the shoemakers were organized in guilds, so possibly this would standardize the reporting to the city gov.
- lqet 5y agoI would expect that. Clothes last significantly longer than shoes (you can wear a cheap T-Shirt for way over 5 years, but even good midrange shoes start to fall apart after 2 years). It is also fairly easy to repair or even make clothes at home. But shoes?
- agumonkey 5y agoI'd say one would suffer a lot more with borked shoes than torn upper clothing.
- bluedino 5y agoShoes might fall apart in 2 years if you wear them every day. Do you wear the same t-shirt every day?
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoYeah, false equivalence. If you wear a dozen shoes on rotation, they will also last for 5 years.