A NEW FRIEND
For a week Peter worked patiently cutting ropes from freshly received
shipments of skins, trimming the skins, and learning to sort them. Every
night he went home exhausted after his day's work. Sometimes it was hard
to realize that he was the same boy who, but a short time before, had
jauntily sauntered out to play tennis every evening with his classmates.
He couldn't have played tennis now had he tried, and he was not sorry
when the rumor reached him that it was commonly reported at the high
school that he had been sent away to a distant military academy. So that
was the reason why the fellows had not hunted him up! Perhaps it was
just as well. It saved many embarrassing questions, and he was much too
worn out when night came to do anything but fall into his bed. Still he
did not complain of his fatigue. He was too proud to do that. Moreover
had he not brought the entire situation upon himself? He would swallow
his medicine in silence.
But he knew from his mother's troubled questions; from her unusual care
that his luncheon be tempting and nourishing; from the solicitous gaze
she fixed on him that the present ordeal worried her not a little. Once
he overheard her say to his father: "The boy isn't strong enough to
stand it! He will be ill."
"Don't have any anxiety about Peter," was the retort. "The young
scoundrel finds energy enough, I hear, to play ball with the men every
noon time. He is the star pitcher of Factory 1." A chuckle came from the
older man. "It is something of a joke, too," he continued, "for I
thought I had put him beyond all possible range of a bat and ball. Don't
fret any more about him. Let him alone. He is showing more pluck than I
dreamed he possessed."
"But suppose he should overdo."
"He won't overdo."
And the prediction was true. Tired as he was every night Peter awoke in
the morning entirely refreshed. The lameness of back and muscles soon
wore away. At the end of the week, when he received his first pay
envelope, no boy in the wide world ever felt as rich as he. Six dollars!
Six dollars of his very own! To be sure his father had often given him
twice that amount; but receiving it as a present was a vastly different
matter from earning it.
"I mean to save up for a motorcycle," Peter declared. "Then I could ride
to the tannery every day."
"So you could," agreed Mr. Coddington. "It is not a bad idea. Don't
forget, though, that you will be needing clothes now and then. You spoke
last night of wanting some flannel shirts to wear to work."
"Yes, but you----"
Mr. Coddington shook his head.
"I have bought your clothes up to this time," he answered, "but now that
you have a salary of your own it is time you relieved me of that
expense."
"Oh--of--of--course," Peter stammered. "I guess, though, I can get the
motorcycle and pay for my clothes, too, without any trouble. How much do
clothes cost?"
"Let me see!" Mr. Coddington took out a small expense book and turned
its pages rapidly. "Clothing for Peter. Here it is. Last year I spent
for you $638."
"For me! For my clothes?" gasped the boy. "Did I spend $638? Why, I had
no idea of it! I could have gone without some of those overcoats and
things as well as not if I had known they cost so much. That's an awful
lot for a boy to spend, isn't it?"
"It's a plenty."
"Why, it's more than I will earn in a whole year."
"Yes, I am afraid it is--at least, for the present."
Peter was thoughtful.
"I can see that it's good-bye to the motorcycle," he said at last,
disappointment in every feature.
With an impulsive gesture Mr. Coddington thrust his hand into the breast
pocket where his check-book lay; then resolutely took out the hand and
put it behind him.
"There seems to be no way but for you to do without a motorcycle for a
while, son," he replied. "Do not be discouraged, though. You are now
pretty well stocked with the necessary clothing and in consequence will
not require many new things for some time. If you are not too proud to
wear your old suits to work you can easily put aside some money each
week."
"I do not care how old and shabby my clothes are," smiled Peter. "It
does not make much difference what I wear to the tannery if I can just
have some flannel shirts, overalls, and rubber boots. I've packed away
my white tennis suits in moth-balls, you know, since I went into the
mill."
They both laughed.
As flannel shirts and overalls were inexpensive and easily obtained,
and as Peter already had rubber boots it was possible to begin the
saving for the motorcycle without further delay.
In the meantime orders came that Strong was to leave his task of
trimming skins and present himself at the beamhouse. Reluctantly he bade
farewell to Carmachel and the other men--his first friends at the
tannery--and on the following Monday morning he made his way into the
long, low room where he had been told the skins were tanned. The room
was a revelation, and a none too pleasant one at that! If he had thought
the unloading and sorting department unsavory what should he say of
this? The floor of the beamhouse was slippery with water, lime, and
tanning solutions; unpleasant fumes of wet skins made heavy the air;
revolving paddle-wheels suspended from the ceiling dripped upon the
passer-by; and men, dragging saturated skins from vats in the floor,
piled them in heaps where the water oozing from them trickled out into
the general sloppiness and transformed the floor into a great shallow
pool of moisture. Back and forth through this wetness moved workmen
who, as they wheeled barrows of freshly tanned skins, left a wake of
slime behind them. Peter looked about in consternation. The steaming
odor of the room was nauseating and filled him with disgust. Could he
stand it? And they called this a promotion! What wonder that Carmachel
had chuckled when asked what the beamhouse was!
As Peter stood hesitating, a prey to these confused impressions, a lad
about his own age touched him on the shoulder.
"Bryant, the foreman, wants to speak to you," he said.
Peter roused himself and followed the boy.
In a corner of the room the foreman greeted him.
"How are you, Strong?" he began. "You see you are no stranger to me, for
I have watched you play ball at noon time. I am glad we are to have you
in our department."
"Thank you, sir. Yes, Mr. Tyler said I was to report here for the
present."
"That's good. We can put you to work, all right. Before you begin,
however, I should like to have you look about and get an idea what
we do in here. A man always enjoys his work better and does it more
intelligently, I contend, if he has some notion of the process in which
he is to have a share. Jackson is about your age and has been in this
room a long time." (He indicated the boy at Peter's elbow.) "Suppose he
takes you around and shows you what happens to the skins after they are
sent in here to us."
"Thank you, sir."
Jackson seemed pleased at the task assigned him.
"I'm glad you are coming into the beamhouse to work, Strong," he
ventured timidly. "There are not many boys here my age. You won't like
it at first, I'm afraid, but you will soon get used to it."
"I don't believe I shall like it at all," was Peter's rueful reply.
"It's an awful place, isn't it?"
"Oh, it's not so bad as it seems. You won't mind it--really you won't.
Of course the smell is disagreeable and it is wet and sloppy, too; but
Bryant, the foreman, is a mighty white fellow and the men, although
mostly foreigners, are pleasant enough. I myself was so thankful to get
any work that I did not much care what it was."
"Have you been here long?" questioned Peter.
"Ever since I was old enough to go to work--a year this August."
"And you've been in this room all that time!"
"Yes. It takes quite a while to get a promotion here at the tannery. My
pay has been raised to nine dollars, though. Maybe I wasn't glad to get
the money! You see, I support my mother." Jackson threw back his head
proudly.
"You? You support yourself and your mother?" repeated Peter
incredulously.
"Sure I do! Why not?"
"But you--why, you are not much older than I am!"
"I'm sixteen. Mother and I get on very well on what I earn, even though
it isn't much. Don't you have anybody to take care of?"
"No."
Jackson regarded Peter with astonishment.
"I should think you would be rich as a lord if you have all your money
to yourself!" he exclaimed. "What on earth do you find to do with it?"
Once--and the time was not far passed, either--Peter would have laughed
at the naive question; now he answered gravely:
"Oh, I am saving some of it."
"That's right. I can't save a cent at present, but some time I hope to
get a better salary and then I shall be able to. Now let's go over to
the other end of the room and see where they are putting the skins to
soak in those big vats of water to get out the salt and dirt. That's the
first thing they do after the skins are sent into the beamhouse. You
remember how stiff and hard the dry skins were when you unloaded them.
Well, they are put into the great revolving wooden drums that you see
overhead and are worked about in borax and water until they become soft.
They are washed, too. Then after all the skins have been washed and
softened they are thrown into lime and are left there until the fibre
swells and the hair is loosened. The men you see with rubber gloves on
are the limers. If they did not wear gloves they would get their hands
burned and raw, for the lime and the chemicals used in the tan often
make the hands and arms very sore."
"But I don't see that the skins that are tossed into the lime pits come
out with the hair off," objected Peter.
"Bless your heart--the lime does not take the hair off. The men who
unhair them have to do that. They lay the wet skins out on boards and
with sharp knives pull and scrape off all the white hair."
"Why don't they take off the brown or black hair as well?"
"Because only the white hair is removed by hand. That is kept separate
and after being dried is sold to dealers for a good price. The colored
hair is taken off by machinery and is sold too, but it is not so
valuable."
"I suppose plasterers can use hair like that," speculated Peter.
"Yes, and upholsterers," added Jackson.
Peter smiled.
"Carmachel told me nothing in a tannery was wasted," he said. "I was
surprised to find that even the lumps of fat and bits of flesh adhering
to the skins, together with the parings that came off when the calfskins
were trimmed down to an even thickness, were disposed of for glue stock
or fertilizer."
"Every scrap of stuff is used, I can tell you!" assented Jackson.
"Calfskin, you know, is never split; it is not heavy enough for that.
Besides it is more nearly uniform in weight than a skin like a bull's
hide, for instance, which is very much heavier about the head. No,
calfskin is fairly even and therefore, while wet, is just put between
rollers where a thin, sharp blade shaves from the flesh side any part of
it that is thicker than any other. It comes out of equal thickness all
over. Do you understand?"
Peter nodded.
"And now have you this beamhouse process straight in your head so we can
go on?"
Jackson held up his hand and began to check off the successive steps on
his fingers:
"The skins are washed until the dirt and salt are out; they are worked
in paddle-wheels, if necessary, until soft; they are limed; unhaired;
and bated, or puered. By puering I mean that they are put through a
liquid that takes out all the lime; if the lime is not carefully soaked
out the skins will be burned and hard and cannot be tanned properly.
After the puering the short-hairers remove any remaining hairs; the
skins are thoroughly washed again, and at last are ready for tanning."
"How are they tanned?"
"Why, by putting them into paddle-wheels filled with the tanning
solution where they revolve as many as seven or eight hours. This
solution is then changed for a weaker one, and they revolve again for a
couple of hours more. Some skins are tanned in a mixture of chemicals
which we buy all prepared; we call those chrome tanned. Others are
soaked in a vegetable tan of hemlock, oak, chestnut, palmetto roots,
gambier, or quebracho."
"Or what?"
"Quebracho!" Jackson rolled out the long word with a gusto. "Quebracho
is a tree something like the lignum-vitae and grows in South America. The
hardened gum comes in barrels and looks like rosin; sometimes, instead
of being hard, it is shipped in a liquid state in big tank cars. There
is about fifteen per cent. of tannin in quebracho and at the tanneries
it can be diluted, of course, to any strength desired. We use it
altogether here instead of using other vegetable tans."
"But it says in my geography that every one uses oak or hemlock bark,"
objected Peter, sceptically.
"Well, the Coddington Company doesn't. Bryant says we tan so much
leather here that there would be no way of disposing of the quantities
of bark left after the tannin had been extracted from it. Besides bark
is scarce and expensive; then, too, it takes a car-load of bark to get
even a decent amount of tannin and the freighting adds to the cost.
Quebracho can be shipped by water and is therefore more economical, and
for the varieties of leather we tan here it answers the purpose as well.
It is lots of work to get the tannin out of oak or hemlock bark. The
bark has to be ground up and put in a leaching-kettle full of water;
after it has boiled the liquid is drained off and the tannin extracted.
Using quebracho is a much simpler method. Of course we use oak and
hemlock bark, though, in the sole leather tanneries over at Elmwood."
Peter regarded Jackson intently.
"How did you come to know so much about all this business?" he asked at
last.
"Oh, I don't know much," was the modest answer. "I just wanted to learn
what I could while I had the chance. You can't help being curious when
you work so long in one room. Bryant saw I was interested and he's
explained all the things I wanted to find out."
"Then maybe you'll pass on some more of your information," laughed
Peter, "and tell me why some of the skins are tanned in quebracho and
some in chrome."
"As I told you," repeated Jackson good-naturedly, "quebracho is a
vegetable tan and chrome a chemical tan. The effect of each of these
processes on the skins is different; so the process used depends on what
sort of leather is wanted. At many tanneries chrome is used almost
entirely for tanning calfskins because the process is so much quicker;
chrome takes but about nine hours while quebracho tanning takes two
weeks or thereabouts."
"I see. And after the tanning?"
"The skins are inspected while wet and sorted for stock; they are then
stamped with a letter or number so they can be identified; they are
fat-liquored, and are dyed."
"What is fat-liquored?"
"Fat-liquored means working the skins about in a mixture of soap and oil
until they absorb these softening ingredients and become pliable. All
leather, whether chrome or vegetable tanned, has to go through this
process. The liquid is put into paddle-wheels just as the tanning
mixture is. The dyeing is done in paddle-wheels too, and some kinds of
leather have in addition a coat of dye rubbed into them by hand. It
gives them a better surface."
"What is your work, Jackson?" asked Peter.
"Oh, I've done about everything there is to do in a beamhouse. Just now
I am inspecting and sorting the skins after they are tanned."
"What is Mr. Bryant going to set me at?"
"I don't know. You will have to ask him. But no matter what he gives you
to do you must not be discouraged, Strong. You were lucky to get any job
at all in the tannery. They have turned away lots of boys your age--they
do it every day."
Peter bit his lip to keep from smiling.
"I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky," replied he.
"Well, aren't you? To be young, and well, and to know that if you do
your best you have a chance to work up to something better? I think
it's great! I intend to work up. Some day I may be a partner in
Coddingtons'--who knows! Then I'll dress my mother in silk every day in
the week and I'll buy an automobile. I'd like to ride in one of those
things just once. Did you ever?"
"Yes," admitted Peter cautiously.
"Honest? Wasn't it bully? Where did you go?"
But Peter was spared the difficult task of replying. Instead, Bryant
summoned him, and he was given a wheel-barrow filled with wet skins
which were to be carried from the soaking vats to the lime pits. All the
rest of the morning back and forth he trudged wheeling load after load.
It was stupid, dirty work, and he was glad when the noon whistle blew.
"Let's eat our luncheon together, Strong," said Jackson, "that
is--unless you have somebody else you want to lunch with."
Peter assented only too gladly. It was far pleasanter to have a boy his
own age to speak to than to eat by himself. Besides he liked Jackson.
But even in the fresh breeze that swept the open field, even while
playing ball, even at home after a hot bath and clean clothing, Peter
could still scent the odor of the beamhouse. It was days before he
became accustomed to it and could feel, with Nat Jackson, that he was a
lucky boy to have a "job."
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