K)6 ANIMAL PROTEINS 



harrowing, carting, etc., and so to arrange the tannery that 

 the minimum transport is needed. 



All these lines of evolution involve more intensive pro- 

 duction, and necessitate much more careful supervision. 

 It is not surprising, therefore, that the industry now feels 

 that scientific oversight and administration are essential. 

 A dozen years ago the trade chemists were largely un- 

 qualified men, whose work lay solely in the laboratory, 

 and consisted mainly in the analysis of materials bought. 

 To-day all large tanneries have qualified chemists, and it is 

 realized that they are the practical tanners. Their function 

 is so to control the manufacturing processes that all waste 

 is avoided, and so to correlate and co-ordinate the manu- 

 facturing results with the analytical and experimental records 

 of the laboratory, that constant improvements are made in the 

 methods of production. The extended use of machinery, and 

 the necessity for economy in coal and power, give the engineer 

 also very large scope for useful work. Modern business con- 

 ditions, moreover, have made necessary more skilful clerical 

 work and accountancy in the large offices of a modern tannery. 

 In the creation of cordial relationships between capital 

 and labour in the leather trades, there has been un- 

 fortunately little progress. The leather trade is not a 

 sweated industry. Its workers have always enjoyed reason- 

 able hours of work. In most factories an approximate 

 48-hour working week (involving no night work) has long 

 been in operation. The industry, however, is not one in 

 which high wages obtain. The average tannery worker 

 receives a wage which is never much above the level of 

 subsistence. This is mostly due to the fact that he is 

 usually a quite unskilled labourer, and is therefore on the 

 bottom rung of the labour ladder. In addition to this the 

 work itself is often distressingly monotonous, and makes 

 little demand upon the intelligence of the worker. The 

 trade consequently offers little attraction to the intelligent 

 labourer. The old system of apprenticeship is now quite 

 obsolete, partly owing to the rapidity of the changes in the 

 methods of manufacture, partly to the specialization of 

 labour which results from the development of large factories, 



