10 
Farmers' Bulletin 1055. 
to many other commodities. After the producer sells them, the hides 
must pass through numerous necessary processes of further market- 
ing, transportation, and manufacture before being converted into 
leather, which in turn undergoes many additional processes in being 
made into finished articles and in being sold. It must be remembered 
Fig. 7. — Grain side of leather from a branded bide. 
also that a loss, based on the weight of the salt-cured hide, of from 
10 to 30 per cent, occurs in tanning. The wide difference between 
the prices of the raw and the finished products, as well as the low 
prices paid for country hides and skins as compared with the 
Fig. 8. — Showing the flesh side of the same leather and the penetrating effect of brand- 
ing. Leather from the branded areas is hard and brittle and of limited usefulness. 
Value of the hide reduced from one-fourth to one-half. 
prices paid for those marketed by the packers, is also due partly 
to several factors less difficult to control than those just mentioned. 
Anions: them is the general inferiority of country hides and skins, 
due to indifferent and improper methods of handling and to the 
lack of a well defined and closely followed system of classifying 
