SMELL OF NEW SHOE LEATHER DISAPPEARING

They still make shoes at Cape Girardeau, Dexter, Liberty, St. Louis, and a dozen other places in Missouri.

In past years, Missouri was among the nation's top shoe-producing states, with hundreds of factories and thousands of workers.

A list compiled last year shows the nation had only 133 shoemakers.

Perhaps the history of a five-level International factory in Cape Girardeau is an indication in the industry's trend .

International employed 1,200 workers in its heyday but was taken down brick-by-brick in 1989. The old building, once "the Pride of Southeast Missouri," was replaced by a 92,000-square-foot, one-level factory that employed about 200 workers.

Thousands of the area's workers were shoe industry experts during the mass production era of shoe-manufacturing which started following late 1880s inventions of a number of new shoemaking machines.

The "old shoe factory," as the giant building on North Main Street was called in its final years, was used as storage by Florsheim, which owned the building in 1984, when it donated the structure to the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce.

The empty building joined many of the shoe plant buildings closed or used for other reasons during the period between the mid-1960s and waning months of the 1990s century.

More than 550 shoe factories closed between the mid-1960s, 1970s and 1980s, erasing thousands of jobs in the area's small towns.

During the 1990s, more shoe factories shut down, leaving only a handful in operation nationwide.

Today, the industry produces fewer than 200 million pairs of shoes.

The more than 10 million pairs of shoes sold on the a year are made in such places as China, Mexico, and in several parts of Asia.

U.S. shoes represent 12 percent of the domestic sales while imported shoes represent the rest.

Brown Shoe Co.. is a good example of the fading U.S. market.

At one time, Brown, of St. Louis and manufacturer of the famous Buster Brown children's brand, had 90 factories in the United States.

In 1970, that number had dwindled to 42.

Twenty years later, 16 Brown shoe factories were left in the United States, two in Missouri.

In 1995, Brown closed its final shoe factory, with all the company's shoes imported.

Last December, Florsheim closed its final U.S. factory and now imports the bulk of its shoes. It purchases a few from the few U.S. shoe manufacturers in existence.

Florsheim purchases one of its brands from the company that purchased its plant and equipment in Cape Girardeau.

Cape Shoe, which has four labels of its own, two boot varieties and oxford and casual slippers.

About 300 workers lost their jobs when Florsheim closed, but Cape Shoe has opened with about 60 workers and hopes to increase.

When Brown closed its final factories 1995, a number of Southeast Missouri jobs were lost.

Brown's closing of its Caruthersville factory in 1995 put 460 people out of work. It could have been devastating, but some workers found new jobs right away, others trained for new careers, and some settled into retirement.

Caruthersville, had become home to Casino Aztar, a riverboat gambling operation, about the same time, and provided employment to about 600 people, including some of the shoe workers.

The shoe industry has been a mainstay in rural economies since the turn of the century. As many as 26,000 workers depended on Brown for employment in the early 1970s. Many more worked in shoe factories during those peak years when as many as 90 shoe plants operated in places like Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Perryville, Malden, Piedmont, Ironton, Caruthersville, Charleston, Sikeston and Fredericktown.

During the early years of the century, two shoe factories operated in Cape Girardeau Harley Shoe Co. and International Shoe with more than 1,200 workers. As late as 1955, International Shoe employed 1,000 workers here.

Florsheim came to Cape Girardeau in the mid-1960s. Most of its work has gone to India. Florsheim previously had plants at Anna, Ill., and Paducah, Ky., along with a special sole-cutting center in the Nash Road Industrial Park.

Some former shoe factory buildings are being use for other manufacturing facilities.

A report in the Southeast Missourian business section in 1995, reveals the grim figures on what has happened to the shoe industry. Twenty-five years ago more than 233,000 workers produced 642 million pairs of shoes, representing 79 percent of the U.S. market. By 1988, the work force fell to only 84,000 workers and production fell to 300 million pairs of shoes, a 20 percent market share.

Missouri has taken the brunt of the shoe industry pain because it is second only to Maine in shoe production.

During the past five years, Southeast Missouri has lost 4,000 workers from the shoe-production work force.

Imported shoes come from countries where workers are paid very low wages, and those foreign-made shoes are sold at much cheaper prices than shoes produced in America.

It is easy to be bitter about the plant closings, but one newspaper columnist points out:

"It must be remembered that these Brown Shoe Company plants are moving to Mexico, India, China and other foreign countries for the same reason they came to Piedmont, Caruthersville and Charleston in the first place. More than two generations ago they came to small-town Missouri to find a hard-working and loyal work force that was willing to work for modest wages. There were few, if any, restrictions on working conditions back in those days, and the workers drew modest wages for hard work and good, solid production.

"But along came restrictions and regulations, together with a demand for more reasonable wages, and the industry answered the siren song coming from Mexico, or other countries, for even lower wages, few restrictions and an eager work force."

At one time, in the mid-1980s, some newspaper headlines warned that "Shoe workers advised to look for other work."

The issue of shoe imports was in the headlines, and U.S. Labor Department officials were pointing to the more than 70 percent market share the country had lost to imports.

It hasn't always been that way.

In 1968, 14 million pairs of shoes were imported from Taiwan, a million pairs came in from Spain and 50,000 from Brazil.

The domestic shoe market has been on the decline since.

In 1988, the lion's share of shoes was being sent here from other countries.

A U.S. Commerce Department report said from 1981 to 1985 there were 200 U.S. shoe factories closed, leaving 500 plants scattered throughout 38 states, 60 of them in Maine.

Things haven't improved.

In fact, a few thousand jobs have been eliminated from the shoe industry in Southeast Missouri over the past five years.

Again, U.S. shoe companies blame the closings of domestic operations on a flood of imports from countries where people work for low wages, allowing foreign manufacturers to sell shoes far more cheaply than American companies.

AREA SHOE INDUSTRY

The goodnews:

1907: Work starts in new Cape Girardeau Shoe Factory.

1921: Shoe factory here turning out 8,760 pairs of shoes a day.

1922: Cape Shoe factory employs 1,200 workers, weekly payroll at $27,000; Jackson shoe factory employs 120, payroll at $1,800.

1923: Sikeston raises $70,000 in five days for new shoe factory.

1924: Cape Shoe Factory seeks to secure an addition to building with total expenditures over five years to total $5.1 million. Perryville raises $148,000 for new shoe factory.

1937: Chaffee celebrates completion of shoe factory building.

1968: New Florsheim Shoe Factory constructed near intersection of Highway 74 and Boulevard.

2000: Cape Shoe Co. opens manufacture of Cape Shoes and has a contract to produce one Florsheim label, the top selling Rivas.

And, the bad news:

1975: Sikeston International Shoe Factory closes, 450 jobs.

1979: Chaffee Shoe Factory closes, 450 jobs.

1984: Ironton Shoe Factory closes, 400 jobs.

1986: Florsheim Shoe Factory closes in Poplar Bluff, 200 jobs. Potosi Shoe Factory closes, 51 jobs.

1988: International Shoe closes at Perryville, 250 jobs.

1988: Florsheim Shoe Factory closes at Jackson, 250 jobs.

1991: Brown Shoe closes plant at Fredericktown, 450 jobs; Charleston, 300 jobs; Bernie, 450 jobs; Caruthersville, 51 jobs.

1993: Shoe factory closes at Anna, 300 jobs.

1994: Brown announce factory to close at Caruthersville, 400 jobs; Charleston, 300 jobs; Piedmont, 300 jobs; Mountain Grove, 408.

1999: Florsheim closes factory at Cape Girardeau, 300 jobs.