High Button Shoes and Education Reform
As a very young child, I was fascinated by my grandmother’s collection of button hooks. It was the mid-1940s and high button shoes had been out of style for decades. She collected the hooks that were used to pull the tiny buttons through the holes that ran up the sides of the ladies’ shoes back in the early 20th century.
Often made of silver with decorative handles of porcelain or glass, the hooks made for an attractive display.Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, his long-time partner at Berkshire-Hathaway, also had a connection to shoe buttons. Munger’s grandfather had managed to corner the market on shoe buttons back around 1900. The grandfather exercised a virtual monopoly over their production and sale. Emboldened by his business acumen, the old man grew to believe that he not only knew more than anyone about shoe buttons but that he knew more than anyone about anything—and he preached and proclaimed at length on such. Munger and Buffett named the syndrome the Shoe Button Complex, and they
