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