Excerpt from Hides Skins and the Manufacture of Leather: A Layman's View of the Industry

The remarkable feature of the industry, even now, remains the fact that it rests primarily on an empirical basis, far more so than any other of our primary industries. While it is probably true that medi cinal herbs constituted the first chemical discovery of man, it may well be claimed that industrial chemistry, to which our present civilization owes so many of its material adjuncts, originated in the preservation of animal Skins.

Besides the usage of leather for boot soles and uppers, there are an infinite number of purposes to which it has been adapted, some of which it will be impossible to treat here in even a cursory manner. It is not intended by these omissions in any way to belittle the im portance Of the subjects which the author has felt to lie beyond the scope of this pamphlet. Furthermore, in order to avoid duplication, the arbitrary expedient has been adopted of discussing in Part Two only the vegetable tannage of sole leather, and in Part Three only the chrome process for making upper boot leather. In this manner each method of tanning is taken up in detail in the field where it finds its greatest application, but it must not be inferred by the lay reader that sole leather is never chromed, or that no upper leather is made by the vegetable processes. While this fact is brought out later on, it cannot be too strongly emphasized at the outset.

To attempt a discussion of the entire industry within SO brief a space is at best a precarious undertaking. For purposes of simplification the subject has been divided into four groups: 1. The Raw Material; that is, hides and skins, what they are, where they come from, how they are Obtained, and their imperfections; also the materials by means of which they are made into leather. 2. The Manufacture of Sole and other Heavy Leather. 3. The Manufacture of Boot Upper, Glove, Book, and other Light Leather. 4. The Economic Distribution of the Industry.

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