Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 119, vol. III, April 4, 1886

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 119, VOL. III, APRIL 10,
1886 ***





[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 119.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]




GLOVING.


‘A pair of gloves, if you please.’—‘Yes, sir. Kid gloves?’ The
customer indicates the kind of gloves he requires; and down comes a
long shallow box, divided into several compartments, in each of which
there lies a neat bundle of gloves of various colours and shades, held
together by a band of paper. ‘What size, sir?’ The size is mentioned;
and one of the bundles is lifted out of its compartment and quickly
and carefully opened at one end. Gloves of the exact size and shade
required are selected, the price is paid, and there, for the most
part, the transaction ends. How many of the thousands who every day go
through this process have any idea of where and how the soft, delicate,
tight-fitting gloves they wear are made?

Enormous numbers—said to exceed two-thirds of the entire
consumption—are imported from France, Germany, and Sweden. But there is
a large home manufacture, which is carried on to a considerable extent
in and about Worcester, but principally in the west of England.

If the reader will glance at a railway map, and let his eye follow the
main line of the London and South-Western Railway, he will find, about
midway between Salisbury and Exeter, a station marked Yeovil Junction.
Should he actually travel down the line and change at this junction,
he would speedily find himself landed at the ancient market-town of
Yeovil, the centre and capital of the glove-trade, or as it is locally
described, ‘the gloving’—a town of about eight thousand inhabitants.
A visitor from the North or the Midlands would probably be surprised,
on entering the gloving metropolis, to find nothing of the noise or
dirt which is usually associated with manufacturing industry. No
tall chimneys belch out black clouds of smoke; no gaunt factories
rear themselves aloft above the houses; no ponderous machinery makes
its throb felt even by passers-by in the streets. No obtrusive signs
of the trade which is being carried on meet the eye anywhere. The
place is clean and bright and quiet; and surrounded by green hills
and luxuriant valleys dotted over with magnificent timber. Yet it
looks—what, indeed, inquiry proves it to be—a prosperous and thriving
town, presenting a marked and agreeable contrast to most of the sleepy
old towns whose glory has long since departed, in this beautiful west
country that Kingsley loved so well. In this respect the capital is
a fair sample of all the gloving centres—a general air of prosperity
pervades them all.

The area over which the trade extends is not large. A line drawn
east and west through Yeovil and continued for ten miles in each
direction would intersect the whole district, which lies on the
borderland of Somerset and Dorset, and includes some half-dozen small
towns and fair-sized villages, of which Milborne Port, Sherborne,
Stoke-sub-Hamdon, and Martock are the principal. Nor can the trade
itself be compared for magnitude with many other industries; it is a
mere pigmy beside the cotton, the iron, or the woollen trade.

Let us have the pleasure of conducting the reader over one of the glove
factories, fourteen or fifteen of which may be found in Yeovil alone,
that he may see the present state of one of the most ancient industries
in the country, and have an idea of the number and variety of the
processes and hands through which his gloves have passed.

Beginning at the beginning, we enter a room in which the raw material
lies before us in the shape of hundreds of bundles of sheep-skins
tanned and bleached as white as the driven snow. Handling them, we
find them soft and elastic to the touch. These are not the skins of
our high-bred English sheep, which are wholly unfit for the purpose,
but the skins of half-wild mountain-sheep, which are collected by Jews
over the east of Europe and the western part of Asia. The glover does
not care for the skins of your wool-producing sheep; his dictum is,
‘the rougher the hair, the better the pelt’ (skin). These skins were
formerly imported untanned; but the German tanners have now beaten
the English tanners out of the market, and they are bought in the
condition in which we now see them here, in Berlin or Vienna. As the
skins are required, they are taken out of the store and soaked in a vat
containing the yolks of eggs, in the proportion of ten dozen skins to
one gallon of yolks. In order to secure that every part of the skins
shall be thoroughly soaked, they are trodden by men’s feet. This is
done, it is said, ‘to feed or nourish them;’ or, in other words, to
make them still softer and more elastic. The soaking over, the skins
are next taken to the dyehouse, and laid face uppermost on a slightly
convex, lead-covered board. Here they are rapidly and frequently
brushed over with dyestuff until they have absorbed a sufficient
quantity to give them the desired colour, when they are again brushed
with what is called ‘a striker’—that is, a liquid preparation that will
fix and render permanent the dye already put on them.

The skin is next hung up in a stove or heated room, where it rapidly
dries. When dry, it is handed over to a man whose business it is to
examine it; and if, as is almost always the case, it is too thick for
the purpose for which it is intended, or is of unequal thickness, to
pare it down until it is of the required thickness and of one uniform
thickness all over. In some places this process is carried on in the
factory, but more commonly in an outbuilding attached to the workman’s
home. It is done by means of a peculiar knife, shaped like a quoit, the
outer edge of which is kept very sharp. Fixing the skin, by a dexterous
movement of the hand, to a horizontal bar in front of him, he lays hold
of it with the left hand to keep it stretched, and with the right hand
scrapes off so much of the fleshy matter at the back of it as may be
needed. Considerable skill is required to pare the skin without cutting
it, and should the workman be awkward, he may not only injure his work
but seriously cut himself.

The skins are next passed under the eye of an experienced workman, who
assorts them into their various qualities. After this, they are passed
on to another room, where they are first rolled up in damp cloths, very
much after the manner in which a laundress rolls up clothes preparatory
to wringing the water out of them; and, when so rolled up, they are
vigorously pulled, so as to develop their utmost stretching capacity
from head to tail. Then they are spread out on a broad flat table, and
carefully, though very quickly, for the workman’s eye gets exceedingly
sharp, examined for flaws or defects of any kind, such as the scar
left by a wound or thorn-scratch, or a thin place, which when found is
instantly made into a hole. The examination over, the cutter has made
up his mind how this particular skin before him can be cut up to the
best advantage—that is, in such a manner as to leave as little waste
as possible. His mind made up, he lays on a paper pattern, taking
care to place it so that it shall be the right way of the grain and
not across it; then, with a pair of shears, resembling sheep-shears,
he cuts it into as many oblong squares—each of which is just large
enough for one glove—as the material will admit of. Out of the parts
left he cuts pieces for the thumbs and fourchettes or sides of the
fingers—usually pronounced ‘forgets’—and for the binding round the
top and the opening just above the palm of the hand, which are called
‘welts.’ Having cut a number of skins, he proceeds to pair the pieces,
endeavouring to match them exactly in colour and quality, and to make
up little bundles containing all the pieces necessary for each pair of
gloves. This process is one of the most important of all those through
which the leather passes. A clumsy or careless workman will cut it to
waste, getting several pairs of gloves less out of a dozen skins than
a clever and careful one. As we watch the process, we are struck with
the rapidity with which the work is done, and with the skill shown in
dealing with flaws in the leather. Here, for example, is a skin with a
hole in the best part of it about the size of a shilling; with seeming
rashness, the man cuts the leather so that that very hole comes into
one of the oblong squares. We call attention to the fact, when, with a
smile, he points out that at that precise point a hole will be required
for the thumb-piece.

The pieces of leather, called in the trade ‘trancs’—for they are no
longer skins—are now passed on to another room, where they are cut into
their final shape. Hitherto, we have been dealing with the preparation
of the material for gloves, and a stranger might have followed all the
processes so far without gathering from what he saw any indication of
the use to be made of these pieces of leather. But now they begin to
assume a shape which cannot be mistaken. The reader, especially the
fair reader, has doubtless often seen, if not used, the shapes with
which pastry is cut into leaves, circles, squares, and so on. Now, if
you will put your two hands together, palms uppermost, and imagine a
shape that would cut out the figure made by these two hands, minus the
thumbs, and treating the two little fingers as one, you will have a
very fair idea of a glover’s punch or ‘web.’ In the room we now enter
we find quite a number of these punches, agreeing with the number
of sizes manufactured. One of them is laid on a sliding table edge
uppermost; then six of these oblong squares of leather—which have been
placed face to face in pairs, so that right and left hand gloves may be
cut together—are laid upon it, and covered with a thick pad of wood or
vulcanite. The table is pushed forward until the punch and its burden
rest under an iron press, not unlike a printing-press. One pull at the
powerful lever, and the press comes down, and the leather is cut. The
thumb-pieces are next treated in the same manner. Up the back of every
pair of gloves there are three lines of ornamental work of some kind.
If these gloves are to have the heavy silk-work on the back called
tambouring, they will now be laid upon a block and punctured with as
many holes as there are to be stitches in the tambour-work. Before
leaving this room, the size of the gloves is stamped on the inside of
one, and a consecutive or matching number is written inside each of the
two pieces of leather that are now an embryo pair of gloves, so that
if, in any of the subsequent processes, they should be accidentally
separated, they may be identified and brought together again. After
they have been looked over and carefully perfected with scissors
wherever the punch may have left a jagged edge, they are ready to
resume their travels.

Tied up in bundles of a dozen, they are given to women, who do the
ornamental work on the back of the gloves. Some of these women work
on the premises, and others at home. Most of the tambouring, which
is very popular, is done in cottage homes. Entering one of these
cottages, you may see a woman rocking a cradle with one foot, and
giving an occasional glance at the dinner cooking on the fire, while
she bends over a frame on which the gloves are stretched, and with
a crochet-hook, and apparently little more attention than a knitter
gives to her stocking, she quickly adds those three times three rows
of silk-work up what will be the back of the gloves. Carrying back the
gloves to the factory, she will receive ninepence a dozen for her work.

The gloves are next given out to other women, who also work at home,
to be stitched—that is, to have the fingers completed and the thumbs
put in. This is now nearly all done by a recently invented and cleverly
adapted sewing-machine, the needle of which comes down on the tip of
an upright iron finger. Gloves are not all stitched in the immediate
neighbourhood of the factories, but are often sent long distances into
remote country villages, where, work being scarce, labour is cheap.
And to facilitate this, a class of middle men (or women) has grown
up—people who come in from the country to the factories, and take away
a hundred or a hundred and fifty dozen a week, which they distribute
among the women of the village in which they live, collect again when
finished, and bring back to the factory. These putters-out or bagmen
are paid the usual price, some half-crown a dozen for the stitching,
and make their own bargain with the actual workers. They are generally
supposed to make a profit of about threepence a dozen; but, as a matter
of fact, being shopkeepers, they commonly make two profits—one on the
gloves, and another on the goods the sewers purchase at their shops.
These people have a somewhat difficult part to play, as they stand
between two fires; but they are a most useful class, and carry work and
its rewards into many villages where, but for them, they would never
come. They have done much to stay the exodus of the population from
this part of the agricultural districts, enabling parents to keep their
young people, and especially their young women, at home, instead of
sending them to the great towns to seek for employment.

Having come back from the stitchers, the gloves are sent out once more.
If they are heavy winter gloves, they are sent out to be lined with
warm soft cotton material. If they are lighter goods, they are at once
despatched to be welted—that is, to have the binding put round the top
and the opening at the wrist. The buttons or clasps, as the case may
be, are next added; that done, they come back to the factory for the
last time, and pass the final examination.

They have still a rough, tumbled, unfinished look, which would
prove anything but tempting to a purchaser. They are now forwarded
to the laying-out room, where they are stretched with ordinary
glove-stretchers, and then put on heated steel hands, which take out
all the creases and improve their appearance. Nothing now remains but
to assort them, to put them up in neat bundles according to size, to
pack them in boxes, and to send them to market.

The special gloves that we have been following through all their
stages are those which are known in the trade as ‘grain’ goods, and
are sold to the public under the name of dogskin, Cape, and other
names, each name indicating some peculiarity in the quality and finish
of the leather. Many other kinds of gloves are made in the district,
such as calf and buck and doe skin; the calf gloves are made from
English calf-skins, and the buck and doe from English lambskins.
There is also a large manufacture of fabric gloves—in other words, of
gloves made of cotton, woollen, silk, or merino material. Real kid,
however, is nowhere made in this district. The processes through which
leather gloves of every kind pass are very much the same as those
described above, and the manufacture of fabric gloves differs only in
the comparative fewness of its stages, beginning with the process of
punching the material into the required shape. After that, its course
is undistinguishable from that of the manufacture of leather gloves.

There are altogether about five-and-twenty factories in the district,
ranging from one which claims to be the largest glove factory in the
world, and is capable of turning out forty thousand pairs per week,
to some which produce only from five hundred to a thousand pairs in
the same time. These factories give employment to nearly ten thousand
persons, five-sixths of whom are women. Only about a quarter of the
employees work in the factories; the rest take the work home, and in
many cases do it in time which would otherwise be wasted. By thus
finding employment for the wives and daughters of an immense number of
agricultural labourers—an employment which in no way interferes with
their domestic duties—the gloving brings a large amount of comfort into
the homes of the peasantry of the west, and alleviates a lot which
would under other circumstances be hard and hopeless in the extreme.




IN ALL SHADES.


CHAPTER XIX.

It was the very next day when the governor’s wife came to call. In any
case, Lady Modyford would have had to call on Marian; for etiquette
demands, from the head of the colony at least, a strict disregard
for distinctions of cuticle, real or imaginary. But Nora Dupuy had
seen Lady Modyford that very morning, and had told her all the absurd
story of the Hawthorns’ social disqualifications. Now, the governor’s
wife was a woman of the world, accustomed to many colonial societies,
big and small, as well as to the infinitely greater world of London;
and she was naturally moved, at first hearing, rather to amusement
than to indignation at the idea of Tom Dupuy setting himself up as
the social superior of a fellow of Catherine’s and barrister of the
Inner Temple. This point of view itself certainly lost nothing from
Nora’s emphatic way of putting it; for, though Nora had herself a
bountiful supply of fine old crusted West Indian prejudices, producible
on occasion, and looked down upon ‘brown people’ of every shade with
that peculiarly profound contempt possible only to a descendant of the
old vanquished slave-owning oligarchy, yet her personal affection for
Marian and Edward was quite strong enough to override all such abstract
considerations of invisible colour; and her sense of humour was quite
keen enough to make her feel the full ridiculousness of comparing such
a man as Edward Hawthorn with her own loutish sugar-growing cousin. She
had lived so long in England, as Tom Dupuy himself would have said,
that she had begun to pick up at least some faint tincture of these
newfangled Exeter Hall opinions; in other words, she had acquired a
little ballast of common-sense and knowledge of life at large to weigh
down in part her tolerably large original cargo of colonial prejudices.

But when Nora came to tell Lady Modyford, as far as she knew them, the
indignities to which the Hawthorns had already been subjected by the
pure blue blood of Trinidad, the governor’s wife began to perceive
there was more in it than matter for mere laughter; and she bridled
up a little haughtily at the mention of Mr Tom Dupuy’s free-spoken
comments, as overheard by Nora on the Orange Grove piazza. ‘Nigger
people!’ the fat, good-natured, motherly, little body echoed, angrily.
‘Did he say nigger people, my dear?—What! a daughter of General Ord
of the Bengal infantry—why, I came home from Singapore in the same
steamer with her mother, the year my father went away from the Straits
Settlements to South Australia! Do you mean to say, my dear, they won’t
call upon her, because she’s married a son of that nice old Mr Hawthorn
with the white beard up at Agualta! A perfect gentleman, too! Dear me,
how very abominable! You must excuse my saying it, my child, but really
you West Indian people do mistake your own little hole and corner
for the great world, in a most extraordinary sort of a fashion. Now,
confess to me, don’t you?’

So the same afternoon, Lady Modyford had powdered her round, fat,
little face, and put on her pretty coquettish French bonnet, and driven
round in full state from Government House to Edward Hawthorn’s new
bungalow in the Westmoreland valleys.

As the carriage with its red-liveried black footmen drove up to the
door, Marian’s heart sank once more within her: she knew it was the
governor’s wife come to call; and she had a vague presentiment in her
own mind that the fat little woman inside the carriage would send in
her card out of formal politeness, and drive away at once without
waiting to see her. But instead of that, Lady Modyford came up the
steps with great demureness, and walked into the bare drawing-room,
after Marian’s rather untidy and quite raw black waiting-maid; and the