Leatherworker

“ From about 1540 to 1700, there were 23% involved in cloth or clothing industries such as weavers, tailors, hosiers, haberdashers, and cappers. 9% were leatherworkers such as skinners; tanners; those in the heavy leather crafts such as shoemakers, saddlers, and cobblers; and those in the light leather crafts such as glovers and pursers. Another 9% worked in metals, such as the armorers, smiths, cutlers, locksmiths, and coppersmiths. 8% worked in the building trades. ”

“ Currying—whatever it may have meant to Homer (or to Alexander Pope) —is not a method of preparing hides and 6 skins from fresh-slaughtered animals, but a complex of processes for treating leather already tanned. These processes include smoothing the leather, paring it down to even thickness overall, especially working fatty matter into it for pliancy and water resistance, and giving it whatever surface dressing, color, and finish its intended use calls for. Prominent among such uses in the eighteenth century were shoe uppers, harness and saddlery, upholstery, trunkmaking, and bookbinding. ”

“ Leather can be stiff as bone or supple as silk, nearly as waterproof as rubber or capable of sopping up water like a sponge, tough and unyielding or resilient and stretchy, smooth and translucent as paper, deeply grained in many patterns, or softly napped. ”

“ At the same time, it is practicable to prepare, emboss, and gild cheap leather covers by the same processes and machinery adopted for cloth cases, and the bindings of cheap family and pocket Bibles are thus produced. But although the old solid and substantial handiwork of the craft is thus fairly eclipsed, there is still employment—and more employment than ever—for binders in leather, who chiefly rely on manual dexterity for the forwarding of their work, and individual taste and skill for its artistic finishing. ”

“ I am journeying far to find a certain kind of leather. This morning I shot my arrow at a tree, but it glanced, and tore a big hole in the wizard shoemaker’s leather apron. I must mend this, or he will do me harm, and to do it I must have a certain kind of leather which neither man can give me, nor woman can give me ”

“ Currying of the Lighter Leathers.—The duty of the currier is not solely directed towards heavier leathers; he is also entrusted with the dressing and fitting of the lighter leathers for the shoemaker, coachbuilder, saddler, &c. He has to pare the leather down and reduce inequalities in thickness, to impregnate it with fatty matter in order to render it soft and pliable, and to give it such a surface dressing, colour and finish as will please the eye and suit the purposes of its consumers. ”

“ But if we are determined to wear leather, if we set ourselves to the work with a will, we can produce as fine leather of every variety, and as fine shoes and almost every other necessary within ourselves as we import, and a great deal better. But we must stop sending away our hides by the car load and must tan them ourselves. We have plenty of workmen who understand the business, and more can be trained, and we shall then not be compelled to ship car-loads of hair from the States for the use of our plasterers, in mixing the lime to finish our walls. ”

“ The shoemaker usually buys his leather from the manufacturer; and procures his tools, tacks, and various other articles of a similar nature, at the finding stores. In some cases, the shoemaker with little or no capital, gets his materials from the leather-cutter, who makes it a business to supply them ready cut to the proper size and shape. There are, however, but few leather-cutters in our country; but, in England, this branch of trade is one of considerable importance, and is frequently connected with that of the leather-dresser. ”

“ There are many women, too, who get a livelihood by closing the shoe, while others again follow the various sorts of binding.
The mechanical processes, after marking and cutting out the leather, consist chiefly in various kinds of strong needlework, such as the lasting or tacking of the upper leather to the in-sole, the sewing in of the welt, the stitching to this welt of the out or top sole, the building and sewing down of the heel, and the sewing or closing of boot legs. The boot closer is the most skilful of the persons employed, and receives the highest wages. ”

“ When we come to add to this the value of the leather for harness-making, for belting and the other purposes for which leather is used, we have over $2,000,000 taken annually from the people of this city for leather, and its fabrics. ”

“ Leather, on the other hand, is a product of the hypodermic part of the body and, as such, belongs to those parts of the organism which are filled with blood, and, therefore, permeated with life. (Note as a characteristic of leather that it requires a special treatment, tanning, to make it as immune from decay as hair is by nature.) Hair and leather, therefore, represent in themselves a salt-sulphur polarity, and thus fulfil the corresponding function when brought together with resin or glass respectively. ”

“ Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well—rather dark, and smelling soothingly of leather—which formed the shop, there would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking—as if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this interruption. ”

“ They must be well paid.”
“What they earn depends on how fast they work,” Stuart said. “All this finishing is piece work. The more a man can do in an hour the higher he is paid. Almost all these fellows are skilled workmen who have been at just this task for a long time. They do it rapidly and well, and receive good wages.”
Stuart walked on and Peter followed.
“Here is a machine that makes gun-metal finished leather for the uppers of black shoes; the leather is, as you see, put through a series of rollers where it is blacked, oiled, and ironed, and comes out with that dull surface.” ”

“ On a blank he gave his age, his experience, how much he expected; [115] and a brisk, impersonal clerk told him to return next day.
On that next day the world became wonderful for Father, wonderful and young again, for some one did actually want him. He had a temporary holiday-help job in the leather-goods department, at eight dollars a week.
Father’s first day of work in the leather-goods department was the most difficult he had ever known. His knowledge of shoes and leather had become purely mechanical; a few glances at new stock and at trade journals had kept him aware of changing styles. ”

“ My grandfather was one of these boys; in fact, he always used to say he was the ringleader, but that may have been another form of his penance. As he grew up he began to work into his father's business of tanning leather, and by and by, when a man grown, he traveled down to a big tannery at Newtonville, in Massachusetts, to learn some new processes in leather-curing. ”

“ Somebody must invent an unhairing device to do away with the taking off of the white hair by hand. You’d better try your brain at the puzzle. Another chance for you to make yourself famous is to think out a machine for softening fine leather that will take the place of [Pg 213] knee-staking. Still another opportunity to write your name in golden letters across the tanneries of the world is to perfect a patent leather varnish that will dry indoors. Now there are three roads to fortune open to you, old man. ”

“ This coat was probably a petticoat. It is curious, too, to find a tailor making gloves and stockings at any price. I think both buff gloves and stockings were of leather. Perhaps he charged thus broadly because it was “not in his line.” Work in leather was always well paid. We find tailors making leather breeches and leather drawers; the latter could not be the garments thus named to-day. Tailors became prosperous and well-to-do, perhaps because they worked in winter when other Virginia tradesfolk were idle; and they acquired large tracts of land. ”

“ The same may be said with regard to the manufacture of leather. Our hides and skins either rot upon the fences, or are gathered up and sold mostly to men who ship them to other countries to be tanned and worked up into harness and boots and shoes, which are brought back for you to wear ”

“ There is, I am told, far less slop-work in harness-making than in shoemaking or in the other trades, such as tailoring, and “many a lady’s pony harness,” it was said to me by a second-hand dealer, “goes next to a tradesman, and next to a costermonger’s donkey, and if it’s been good leather to begin with—as it will if it was made for a lady—why the traces’ll stand clouting, and patching, and piecing, and mending for a long time, and they’ll do to cobble old boots last of all, for old leather’ll wear just in treading, when it might snap at a pull. ”

“ The leather should be neatly and sharply cut out for open-work decoration, and placed over a groundwork of leather, stuff or metal: the last material is well adapted by its contrast of colour to show up the ornament laid over it. Open-work leather is a good material for hangings, and when destined for this purpose the design is sewn on the groundwork of leather or stuff with a sewing-machine, or stuck with gutta-percha. ”

“ Take, then, a piece of leather two feet long, and one inch and a half wide. The leather ought to be the thickest a shoemaker can give you, of the same sort as he makes the uppers of a navvy’s boots with. ”

“ There are also corrugating, creasing, fluting, pebbling, piercing and punching machines; machines for grinding the bark and also for grinding the leather; machines for gluing sections of leather together, and machines for sewing them; machines for rounding flat strips of leather, for the making of whips and tubes; machines for scalloping the edges; and a very ingenious machine for assorting leather strips or strings according to their size or thickness.
The most important improvements of the century in leather working relate to the manufacture of boots and shoes. ”

“ All workers employed in tanneries and leather preparing houses. All workers engaged in the manufacture of shoes and boots, as cutters, lasters, inseamers, etc., which, of course, includes all clerks and stenographers in the offices, and the clerks in shoe stores and distribution houses of shoes, teamsters, engineers, firemen, etc., working in the shoe industry. All workers in other leather goods, or substitutes of leather, such as harness makers, and horse goods makers, workers in belt factories, etc. ”

“ Although there was thus an efficient control exercised over tanned leather, the tawed soft leathers used by glovers, pointmakers, pursemakers, saddlers, girdlers, coffermakers, budgetmakers, stationers, etc., seem for the most part to have escaped supervision, with the result that at the end of the sixteenth century the markets were flooded with counterfeit leathers. ”

“ A broad leather belt, usually studded with metal buttons, confines the man’s garment at the waist and holds his knife; a gaily-coloured head-wrap, with long fringes, which replaces the hood in summer, falls down over the woman’s dress. ”

“ Their company was in existence in 1309, and they have a hall in the Vintry. The Leather-sellers have an active and flourishing guild, which is first mentioned in 1372, when their probi homines or bonz gentz petitioned for some regulations for the prevention of the sale of fraudulent leather. By the charter of{208} James I. they have the full oversight of "skins and felts called buff leather, shamoy leather, Spanish leather, and that of stags, bucks, calves, sheep, lambs, kids frized or grained, dressed in oil, allum, shoemack, or bark or rawed." ”

“ There is enough good leather in the world to make good sightly boots and shoes for all who need them, enough men at leisure and enough power and machinery to do all the work required, enough unemployed intelligence to organise the shoemaking and shoe distribution for everybody. ”

“ Our first shop was at Ackworth, Georgia, where they did a good deal of work, but were prevented from turning out anything extensive ever after, for the reason they were unable to get leather. I paid one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the leather I got at this tanyard. Colonel Harrison promised me, after my return from prison, that if I would furnish the leather he would have rigged for me one of the finest saddles that could be made, which was the inducement for me to carry this roll of leather on my horse’s back. ”

“ The leather industry, particularly boot and shoe manufacture, is perhaps the most highly specialised of all in the sense that an operator may work a lifetime in any one of the between three and four score processes through which a shoe passes and know little of all the rest. ”

“ Before the leather can be cut and sewed into the handsome articles that are sold over the counters of the retail dry goods houses and furnishing goods stores as gloves, the skins from which they are made must be specially prepared. ”

“ I must here be understood to confine my approbation to the articles manufactured from leather tanned in a regular manner, and not that paltry brown-paper-like rubbish manufactured in pots and pans by indigent natives, who often work up a skin within the third or fourth day after its being stripped from some starved sheep, or goat; but which leather may always be distinguished by a narrow streak of white, that is, of raw hide, remaining in the middle of its thickness. ”

“ For all leatherwork requires constant feeding with oil in order to keep it fit and pliant, while the “fake” dries the fibres of the leather and starves it, rendering it liable to cracking and perishing. ”