By Gregg Andrews

In 1899, the Roberts, Johnson & Rand Company (RJ&R) in St. Louis established the first of many satellite shoe factories in nearby small towns of the Mississippi River Valley. To shift the control of shoe production away from manufacturers in the East, the St. Louis company tapped cheap, malleable labor and pressured taxpayers in small towns for cash subsidies, tax abatements, and other financial concessions. Hannibal boasted the first, and the largest, of these satellite plants after RJ&R gained a controlling interest in the town’s Hixson Shoe Company and created the Star Shoe Company as a subsidiary.

Thanks to RJ&R’s vast sales force and marketing network, the demand for Star Brand women’s shoes designed and previously manufactured in Hannibal skyrocketed nationwide. Sales of Star shoes helped to fuel RJ&R’s explosive growth. In 1911, RJ&R orchestrated a merger with the Peters Shoe Company, of St. Louis, to create the International Shoe Company. After buying the factory of Hannibal’s homegrown Bluff City Shoe Company and opening its own Rubber Plant in the mid-1920s, the world’s largest shoe conglomerate controlled all shoe production in the town. International’s economic power meant enormous political power in civic affairs. Nurtured by the company, the practice of running union organizers out of town became a blood sport in Hannibal in the 1930s. Local elected officials endorsed and even led the mob violence. Hannibal remained a shoe town until the 1960s, when the company shut down its lines in all three plants and left town.

Much of the twentieth-century history of shoe manufacturing in the United States has been forgotten. When the companies shifted production to low-wage havens overseas in the final quarter of the century, shoe towns like Hannibal were left holding the bag. Long forgotten are the stories and struggles of shoe factory workers and their families. In my new book, shown in the featured image of this blog post, I explore the very real stories of those whose lives were shaped by shoe manufacturing. Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri: The Rise and Fall of Manufacturing in America’s Hometown, 1890-1970 (LSU Press) captures the workers in their own words as they describe their jobs, family struggles, and battles to unionize. The book’s official publication date is May 16, 2026, but it is available now to pre-order. For further details, click on the link below.

Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri