Chapter 1 

 A Basic hidustry 



"The tannery did not usually . . . tarry long 



behind the first occupants of a new town." 



— /. Leander Bishop, 1861 



Now that most ot the necessities of life are mass-produced, it is 

 difficult to imagine an earlier period in which artisans and crafts- 

 men meticulously shaped a variety of raw materials into useful 

 goods. Shoes, boots, aprons, and harness, all were needed, and 

 it was the tanner's task to produce the leather of which these 

 articles were made. 



The mysteries ot the tanner's art had evolved from antiquity, 

 and by the 11th century leather production had been reduced to 

 well-established techniques, but the chemical principles involved 

 were not defined until the 19th century. The tanner, unlike the 

 flour miller or the iron founder, was slow to utilize power-driven 

 machinery (see fig. 1); yet leather played an important part in 

 many early machines, and it was just as essential to everyday life 

 in the New World as it had been in the Old.^ 



Just how essential to everyday life was America's early leather 

 industry? Tench Coxe provided an impressive summation in 

 1812 when he wrote: "The uses of leather are of the utmost 

 importance to health, the facilitation of industry, the diffusion of 

 knowledge, and the military operations of the United States by 

 land and sea." Coxe's list of the uses of leather contained only 

 "real necessaries or plain conveniences." Of these it named "shoes, 

 boots and slippers, saddles and briddles, harness, carriages (many 

 of which have leather boots, tops, curtains, and aprons), drums, 

 gloves, leathern breeches, rigging and other hides for ships and 

 vessels, bound books, manufacturing cards and carding machines, 

 military equipments, and other leather goods." 



In addition, Coxe notes, the tanner's essential place in society 

 was strengthened by the significant fact that "the manufacture 

 of hides and skins are of great importance to agriculture." For 

 example, "bark, abundant every where, is redundant in new settle. 



' Waterer, "Leather," pp. 147-187 in vol. 1 oi History of Technology; Bishop, History of Ameri- 

 can Maniifactures from 1608 to 1860, vol. 1, pp. 424-464; Charles H. McDermott, ed., History of 

 the Shoe and Leather Industries of the United States. 



