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I can't help by wonder what his commission was?

And was it some company honor system that prevented him from starting his own shoe business instead of being the employee? (since he could obviously sell from scratch)

I don't have any idea if a non-compete would be a standard part of the contract in that time.

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Well, you could probably ask the same question of any good salesperson today. The answer is likely that people stick to what they want to do and what they're good at. If you want to build a company, you build a company. If you want to sell, you find a product you can sell and you excel at that.

I'd hazard a guess that Johnson was really great at doing what he did to create Blue Ribbon when he had the backing of an established company behind him, but starting from absolute zero might not have been his cup of tea.

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