are new whites as good as the ones from years ago? I have heard mixed reviews about the quality of leather. It is hard to know if I should take these things with a grain of salt.
I am trying to decide to drop my hard earned coin on either a pair of wesco's, white's or nicks. At the moment I am leaning towards the nicks.
The tannery that supplied the leather for White's and Wesco (Salz) was here in Santa Cruz for 100 years of so. They closed up shop a few years ago and sold the formulas to the Communist Chinese because there were do few shoe manufactureers here in the USA. The two sons of the owner lived on my street and we went to high school together. The youngest son was in sales and now is a leather broker.
I talked with him yesterday (he had been in Communist China the past 3 weeks) about White's. They still buy American leather and their boots and rebuilding have not changed. Still top notch. I forgot to ask about Wesco but I would guess they are the same way.
He also said that since Communist China is seeing a huge increase in wages, nearly on par with the USA, that they are modernizing their tanneries to allow more automation. He said the quality of the leather is becoming some of the best in the world. They Commies also make cheap leather when the customer wants it. China is just now starting to build a new $50,000,000 tannery. I wonder when the last tannery was built in the USA? Most of the hides come from here and Australia ( though far fewer than in the past), France and South Korea.
When Salz closed the doors their average wage for tannery workers was $18.00/hour and at that time Communist China was paying $0.28/hour (28 cents/hour) the week was 66 hours and room and board were taken out of their pay. There were no rules regarding pollution and some tannery sites were so bad that the entire property was razed and a layer of fill was used to cover the old site. Then the tannery moved a few miles away to another river valley.