Cottage Industry & Shopkeeping – This Story Shall Be Taught!

Surviving in Southcoast, MA – FREEDOM.  SECURITY.  PICK ONE.  YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH!  OR, CAN YOU?  Imagine you’re astride your heavily armored battlesteed.  It’s Friday, October 25, 1415 - Saint Crispin’s Day.  You are preparing your mind for battle.  The place is Agincourt, France and this battle will become one of the most famous in history.  You are a part of the French Cavalry, one of the finest in Europe.  As a heavily armored knight, you and your band of brothers are feared.

The French Cavalry were the Panzerkamfwagens of their day.  The Panzerkamfwagen, also known as, a Tiger tank was feared in its day - World War II.  They were perhaps the mightiest land war machine ever created.  The German Wehrmacht’s mighty war machine featured the incredible firepower of an 88 mm gun.  The Panzerkamfwagen was heavy, powerful and lethal.

Could anyone on that Saint Crispin’s Day in 1415 have imagined that victory would be decided by a product of a country’s cottage industry?  The French soon found out when the sky, the air; the entire space above them was filled with British-made arrows.  It was raining down terror and death.  The arrows, made by children and old men and women of all classes pierced the heavy armor.  There was no defense.  The British archers that launched this agony were so feared for their skill that, when captured, the first two fingers of their bowstring hand were cut off. 

At that time, England’s main cottage industry was making arrows.  Nearly everyone made them.  British soldiers fought the battle but the British people won the war.  The arrows were launched by what was then the English longbow, or Welsh longbow.  It was the Medieval version of a Tomahawk missile.  But no weapon is effective without ammunition or a soldier to use it.  The British archers and their bows and arrows did more than win a battle; they changed how war was waged.  The moral of this story is that many smaller businesses are better than a few large ones.  Depending on large businesses for our economic survival is like putting all of our proverbial eggs in one basket. 

We’ve seen enough proof of that here in the Southcoast.  The empty hulks of our textile factories and industrial might were either burned down, torn down or have been turned into housing. With this economic downturn, more and more skilled, experienced and now displaced workers are going into business for themselves.  Working for oneself offers lots of freedom and little security.  However, our individual notion of, or need for, control is sometimes stronger than the need for security.   

Everything changes.  Technology thins out the workforce.  An economy with lowered demand slows down production.  Consumer habits change.  Things are in and out of fashion.  The cost of doing business is always on the rise.  Most of what affects our jobs or our professions or our working lives is external and not within our control.

Entrepreneurism offers some sense of control to the small business owner; whether shopkeeper or cottage enterprise.  Many of those cottage enterprises evolve into shops, small factories and some grow even larger.  Our elected officials need to start paying attention, real attention, to this economic sector; not just pay lip service.  What the Battle of Agincourt proves is that everyone needs to be involved in the economy – everybody! 

The economy starts at street-level.  Demand is generated by consumers.  Consumers live in houses.  Houses create neighborhoods.  Neighborhoods develop into villages.  Villages grow into or define the character of cities.  Shopkeepers supply the villagers with what they need.  Villages are more sustainable. 

If nearly everything you need is available on a more human scale to you in your neighborhood or village, you have to travel less.  If you travel less; you consume less fuel.  If you consume less fuel; you reduce your carbon footprint.  If you reduce your carbon footprint; the environment is healthier.  If the environment is healthier; the planet’s inhabitants are healthier.  If the planet’s inhabitants are healthier; the cost of health and social services is reduced putting less strain on state and federal services.  If we reduce the cost of health and social services; the economy is healthier.      

None of this sustainability required mobilizing armies or doing business on a grand scale.  None of this required government funding.  None of this needed to be legislated.  None of this needed anything but for “we few, we happy few,”* we shopkeepers and cottage entrepreneurs.  “From this day to the ending of the world... we in it shall be remembered”*

   

*William Shakespeare, King Henry V