[MD] Individual Quality--A working theory of value

[Platt Holden]

Hi All,

Today is Labor Day in the U.S., a holiday dedicated to all who work for a 
living. The following essay celebrates one individual worker's Quality. 

"The old man had long ago given up fixing shoes and tried other 
businesses, but always at the same location, and with many of the same 
customers. But he never found any other work that gave him as much 
satisfaction as putting new soles on a pair of old uppers. Or putting a 
pair of Cat's Paw heels on shoes that still had a lot of wear left, and 
doing it neatly, surely, carefully - to last.

"He loved the feel and aroma of new leather, the grain in the old. He was 
seldom as happy as when he could hold a pair of weathered shoes in his 
hands, turn them over and over, feel the tread, admire the workmanship, 
and sometimes even name the local shoemaker who'd done it.

"Labor omnia vincit. Labor conquers all. The old man had no Latin, but he 
did have some Hebrew, and would have known that the Hebrew word for labor 
and worship are the same: avodah. He worked the same way he prayed: with 
dedication, concentration, intention. It showed. In those two things, work 
and prayer, he came into his own.

"His boys could remember those rare occasions when the old man lost his 
temper. Once he threw a poorly repaired pair of shoes against a wall in 
his fury. What a sloppy waste of good leather. What a waste of time and 
the customer's money. In his old age, he was unable to contain his 
contempt when he would drive past one of those glittery new shoe stores 
that sold cheap, shiny imports - the cardboard kind sure to come apart in 
the first rain.

"The old man took poor workmanship as a personal affront. Labor wasn't a 
factor of production to him, it was a calling - and a refuge.

"The old man wasn't much on theory, but he understood value received, good 
will, repeat business and, above all, the importance of trust between 
people - customer and merchant, worker and boss, lender and borrower. To 
him commerce was friendship. All the talk he heard about labor and 
capital, first from agitators in the old country, and then as the standard 
fare of politics in this one, seemed textbookish to him - not really 
useful like a good, solid pair of shoes.

"He had a more personal concept of how economics worked. He thought of the 
economy as a web of personal relationships: with his customers; with the 
workers he hired and trained and sometimes had to let go; with the banker 
he depended on to get him started in various new ventures; with the 
landlord who collected the rent from him; and with his own tenants after 
he began buying a piece of property here and there, and building some rent 
houses.

"He liked his houses kept up, the lawns mowed, so they would look like 
something. Like a good pair of shoes.

"Like most Americans, the old man was too deeply involved with labor and 
capital to think in those terms. Instead he thought in terms of people and 
whether their work - and their word - was good. He liked giving people a 
start.

"There was Henry Johnson, for example, whom he had hired as a boy - and 
taught how to fix shoes. Henry would stay with him for the next 50 years 
through the old man's various ventures, mastering one skill after another. 
His apprentice would grow old with him, teach him as much he had learned, 
and die two weeks before the old man himself did. The family smiled 
knowingly. They knew Henry had just gone ahead, as usual, to scout things 
out.

"On this Labor Day, a great deal will be said in the usual press releases, 
but none of it will be more eloquent than work done well. To me, two new 
soles on a pair of well-shined shoes still say more than all the Labor Day 
speeches ever written."

- - By Paul Greenberg, a nationally syndicated columnist.