Gregg Andrews, "Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri: The Rise and Fall of Manufacturing in America’s Hometown, 1890–1970" (LSU Press, 2026)
About this episode
Dr. Gregg Andrews discusses the history of shoe manufacturing and labor in Hannibal, Missouri from 1890 to 1970.
In Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri: The Rise and Fall of Manufacturing in America’s Hometown, 1890–1970 (LSU Press, 2026), Dr. Gregg Andrews examines the history of factory laborers in a celebrated Mississippi River town. In the late 1890s, shoe manufacturing transformed Mark Twain’s boyhood home from a steamboat village to a factory town. By the mid-1920s, the St. Louis–based International Shoe Company, the world’s largest shoe manufacturer at the time, controlled all shoe production in Hannibal and continued to do so until it shut down production lines in the 1960s. The company kept a tight grip on the town as it battled to keep out unions and maintain labor at a low cost and in a malleable state. When Hannibal’s shoe workers claimed their right to organize under the New Deal during the Great Depression, the shoe corporation was defiant. The company’s stance sparked mob violence against outside union organizers, nurtured a company union, pitted unionists against company loyalists, and badly divided Hannibal. At the same time, the town was engaged in yearlong festivities to celebrate the centennial of Mark Twain’s birth and the opening of a museum named in his honor. Dr…
Topics covered
- factory labor
- shoe manufacturing
- union organization
- Great Depression
- Mark Twain
- Hannibal history
Keywords
- shoe workers
- Hannibal
- manufacturing
- labor history
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