The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

shoemakers. Jeffreys noticed fifty years ago how this mixed nature of boot and
shoe distribution - that combined retailing and production in different and
changing ways - was retained well after the mid-nineteenth century. 56 This was a
puzzling problem in Jeffreys' mechanistic interpretation of retailing
modemisation. The size of the market was considered to be the fundamental
variable in the separation between production and retailing. A growing market
complexity was faced through the division of production, distribution and
retailing. The footwear industry did not fit within this ideal model. Even at
present day many of the most important shoe producers are also retailers.57
There seems to be a direct link between the knowledge of the market and
consumers' tastes and the capacity to be active and efficient in production. The
nature of the product and, for instance the permanence of a clear gender
differentiation, is influencing the way in which the product itself is retailed,
distributed and ultimately manufactured. Jeffryes' conundrum is easily explained
if we consider how the market expansion coincided market segmentation. It
is not the quantitative aspects of consumer behaviour to influence the structuring
of the product's provision system, but its qualitative aspects.
A variable in the choice of extemalisation of production related to possible
economies of 'shop space'. 58 In a city where rents were high, an increase in
indoor production would have implied an increase in the fixed cost of rent. As
we observed, production was very much linked to seasonal variations in sale.
The choice to expand the workshop would have created both a problem of
employing constantly a fixed number of journeymen, as well as a cost in
providing space for them. The seasonal nature of the trade made the
internalisation of production a solution that did not provide much flexibility.
Such seasonal variation of business can be seen from a productive point of view
in the percentages of employment/unemployment of British shoemakers in the
second half of the eighteenth century (fig. 5.10).
The account Book of Richard Latham, 1724-1 767 (Oxford, 1990) edited by L. Weatherill is a
suggestive and interesting document of a family's consumption choices.
56
J.B. Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain, 1 850-1 950 (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 353-78.
are Church, Bata and Clarks.
58 A. Federer, 'Payment, credit and the organisation of work', cit., pp. 11-12.
We should notice that the rate of unemployment was particularly high. The graph is a reelaboration
from Snell. The original graph distinguishes the periods before and after 1790 and is
presented as a graph of unemployment.
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