ments, where the tanning business facilitates the destruction of 

 the forests, which obstruct agriculture." The embarrassment of 

 riches augured well for the future of an industry, if not for the 

 conservation of resources. Here, then, neatly told by Coxe stood 

 a century and a half of leather-making experience in America — a 

 basic industry, meeting the needs of an essentially agrarian society; 

 and it had been precisely so ever since the arrival of the first 

 settlers. - 



In the first settlements, along with sawmills, gristmills, and other 

 machinery, a need for the leather crafts had soon developed. 

 Hides were available everywhere either as a result of the fur trade 

 or from the slaughter of domestic animals. In Virginia alone by 

 1649 there were twenty thousand head of cattle along with two 

 hundred horses, three thousand sheep, five thousand goats, and 

 many swine; and from "A Perfect Description of Virginia," as 

 transcribed by Peter Force, it is apparent that tanning was a 

 common practice carried on at all well-managed plantations.^ In 

 addition to a steady supply of hides from colonial farms, tanning 

 was further aided by the forests which provided quantities of 

 excellent tanbark. 



Natural conditions were abetted by colonial legislators who 

 encouraged the manufacture of leather. Virginia, in 1680, ruled 

 that tanhouses be erected in every county with tanners, curriers, 

 and shoemakers provided to convert hides into leather. By 1682, 

 Virginia forbade the export of any "wool fells, skins or hides, or 

 any manner of Leather, tanned or untanned, or any deer, oxe, 

 steer, bull, cow or calf . . . except only such hides ... as shall 

 appear by the oath of the owner that it is to be directly trans- 

 porting to some tan house ... to be wrought-up."* In other 

 colonies legislative action promoted the making of leather. Mary- 

 land, in 1681, placed an export duty on leather and hides hoping to 

 encourage tanning and shoemaking.' 



In the northern colonies at this time, leather manufacture was 

 a well-established branch of domestic industry. Public records 



2 Coxe, Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the United States of .dmerica for the Year 1810 . 

 part 1, pp. xiv, xv. 



^ Force, compil., Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to the . . . Colonies in North America, 

 vol.2, no. 8, pp. 3, 7-8. 



* Hening, ed.. The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, vol. 2, pp. 471, 

 476, 494. 



^ Kilty, ed., Laws of Maryland. 



