Shoemaking In The Post-Revolutionary Period: The Business Records of Three Cordwainers of Reading, Massachusetts

Abstract

Three manuscripts in the possession of the Reading Antiquarian Society contain information about the business of shoemaking in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One is the journal of James Weston, from 1788 to 1793; the others are account books of John Goodwin, Jr., and John Johnson, covering a somewhat later period. Each presents its distinctive picture of a shoemaker's work, with interesting contrasts. The career of Goodwin, in particular, illustrates one course of development from workman to businessman, which has been followed by many in past generations. It also demonstrates one reason why class lines have been so hard to draw in American experience. Often a man played both the employer's and the employee's roles at different stages of his own personal history, which not only affected his thinking, but also that of many who aspired to follow his example, and were sure it could be done because they had seen it happen. This transition has become more difficult since the development of the factory and its enormous capital requirements, but, in the days before the centralized workshop, enterprise and imagination were often capital enough to launch a business career.