Tears For The Cobbler

The other day I was thinking, something I highly recommend doing sometime.
Whilst thinking, I realised that the days of the cobbler were gone, I became quite sad afterwards, and thought more about if this could be true.
Who makes shoes anymore? Really it is just the big name companies. In my lifetime I haven't even seen a shoe store with a cobbler on site. And who even bothers with shoe repairs?

The obvious exception would be expensive leather shoes, but even then, machines CAN make those. No one can deny that a hand made pair of Italian leather dress shoes are of the utmost quality, but, for us commoners, the days of the cobbler are over.