The Story of Leather Part 5

"Thank you, sir."

Jackson seemed pleased at the task a.s.signed him.

"I'm glad you are coming into the beamhouse to work, Strong," he ventured timidly. "There are not many boys here my age. You won't like it at first, I'm afraid, but you will soon get used to it."

"I don't believe I shall like it at all," was Peter's rueful reply.

"It's an awful place, isn't it?"

"Oh, it's not so bad as it seems. You won't mind it--really you won't.

Of course the smell is disagreeable and it is wet and sloppy, too; but Bryant, the foreman, is a mighty white fellow and the men, although mostly foreigners, are pleasant enough. I myself was so thankful to get any work that I did not much care what it was."

"Have you been here long?" questioned Peter.

"Ever since I was old enough to go to work--a year this August."

"And you've been in this room all that time!"

"Yes. It takes quite a while to get a promotion here at the tannery. My pay has been raised to nine dollars, though. Maybe I wasn't glad to get the money! You see, I support my mother." Jackson threw back his head proudly.

"You? You support yourself and your mother?" repeated Peter incredulously.

"Sure I do! Why not?"

"But you--why, you are not much older than I am!"

"I'm sixteen. Mother and I get on very well on what I earn, even though it isn't much. Don't you have anybody to take care of?"

"No."

Jackson regarded Peter with astonishment.

"I should think you would be rich as a lord if you have all your money to yourself!" he exclaimed. "What on earth do you find to do with it?"

Once--and the time was not far pa.s.sed, either--Peter would have laughed at the naive question; now he answered gravely:

"Oh, I am saving some of it."

"That's right. I can't save a cent at present, but some time I hope to get a better salary and then I shall be able to. Now let's go over to the other end of the room and see where they are putting the skins to soak in those big vats of water to get out the salt and dirt. That's the first thing they do after the skins are sent into the beamhouse. You remember how stiff and hard the dry skins were when you unloaded them.

Well, they are put into the great revolving wooden drums that you see overhead and are worked about in borax and water until they become soft.

They are washed, too. Then after all the skins have been washed and softened they are thrown into lime and are left there until the fibre swells and the hair is loosened. The men you see with rubber gloves on are the limers. If they did not wear gloves they would get their hands burned and raw, for the lime and the chemicals used in the tan often make the hands and arms very sore."

"But I don't see that the skins that are tossed into the lime pits come out with the hair off," objected Peter.

"Bless your heart--the lime does not take the hair off. The men who unhair them have to do that. They lay the wet skins out on boards and with sharp knives pull and sc.r.a.pe off all the white hair."

"Why don't they take off the brown or black hair as well?"

"Because only the white hair is removed by hand. That is kept separate and after being dried is sold to dealers for a good price. The colored hair is taken off by machinery and is sold too, but it is not so valuable."

"I suppose plasterers can use hair like that," speculated Peter.

"Yes, and upholsterers," added Jackson.

Peter smiled.

"Carmachel told me nothing in a tannery was wasted," he said. "I was surprised to find that even the lumps of fat and bits of flesh adhering to the skins, together with the parings that came off when the calfskins were trimmed down to an even thickness, were disposed of for glue stock or fertilizer."

"Every sc.r.a.p of stuff is used, I can tell you!" a.s.sented Jackson.

"Calfskin, you know, is never split; it is not heavy enough for that.

Besides it is more nearly uniform in weight than a skin like a bull's hide, for instance, which is very much heavier about the head. No, calfskin is fairly even and therefore, while wet, is just put between rollers where a thin, sharp blade shaves from the flesh side any part of it that is thicker than any other. It comes out of equal thickness all over. Do you understand?"

Peter nodded.

"And now have you this beamhouse process straight in your head so we can go on?"

Jackson held up his hand and began to check off the successive steps on his fingers:

"The skins are washed until the dirt and salt are out; they are worked in paddle-wheels, if necessary, until soft; they are limed; unhaired; and bated, or puered. By puering I mean that they are put through a liquid that takes out all the lime; if the lime is not carefully soaked out the skins will be burned and hard and cannot be tanned properly.

After the puering the short-hairers remove any remaining hairs; the skins are thoroughly washed again, and at last are ready for tanning."

"How are they tanned?"

"Why, by putting them into paddle-wheels filled with the tanning solution where they revolve as many as seven or eight hours. This solution is then changed for a weaker one, and they revolve again for a couple of hours more. Some skins are tanned in a mixture of chemicals which we buy all prepared; we call those chrome tanned. Others are soaked in a vegetable tan of hemlock, oak, chestnut, palmetto roots, gambier, or quebracho."

"Or what?"

"Quebracho!" Jackson rolled out the long word with a gusto. "Quebracho is a tree something like the lignum-vitae and grows in South America. The hardened gum comes in barrels and looks like rosin; sometimes, instead of being hard, it is s.h.i.+pped in a liquid state in big tank cars. There is about fifteen per cent. of tannin in quebracho and at the tanneries it can be diluted, of course, to any strength desired. We use it altogether here instead of using other vegetable tans."

"But it says in my geography that every one uses oak or hemlock bark,"

objected Peter, sceptically.

"Well, the Coddington Company doesn't. Bryant says we tan so much leather here that there would be no way of disposing of the quant.i.ties of bark left after the tannin had been extracted from it. Besides bark is scarce and expensive; then, too, it takes a car-load of bark to get even a decent amount of tannin and the freighting adds to the cost.

Quebracho can be s.h.i.+pped by water and is therefore more economical, and for the varieties of leather we tan here it answers the purpose as well.

It is lots of work to get the tannin out of oak or hemlock bark. The bark has to be ground up and put in a leaching-kettle full of water; after it has boiled the liquid is drained off and the tannin extracted.

Using quebracho is a much simpler method. Of course we use oak and hemlock bark, though, in the sole leather tanneries over at Elmwood."

Peter regarded Jackson intently.

"How did you come to know so much about all this business?" he asked at last.

"Oh, I don't know much," was the modest answer. "I just wanted to learn what I could while I had the chance. You can't help being curious when you work so long in one room. Bryant saw I was interested and he's explained all the things I wanted to find out."

"Then maybe you'll pa.s.s on some more of your information," laughed Peter, "and tell me why some of the skins are tanned in quebracho and some in chrome."

"As I told you," repeated Jackson good-naturedly, "quebracho is a vegetable tan and chrome a chemical tan. The effect of each of these processes on the skins is different; so the process used depends on what sort of leather is wanted. At many tanneries chrome is used almost entirely for tanning calfskins because the process is so much quicker; chrome takes but about nine hours while quebracho tanning takes two weeks or thereabouts."

"I see. And after the tanning?"