Animal Proteins

by Hugh Garner Bennett

A good illustration of this "speeding up" in modern tanneries is the adoption by all large factories of much more rapid methods of extracting tannin. On the old press-leach system liquors may be percolating through the material for possibly a fortnight. The extract manufacturer reduces this operation to about two days. Steam generated from the spent bark is used to heat the extracting vats, and to work a vacuum pan or evaporator whereby more water can be used and a more complete as well as a more rapid extraction obtained. The evaporator also makes easy the preparation of the strong liquors used in modern tanning.

Hand-in-hand with quicker production and manipulation are the attempts to obtain a larger turnover. It is realized that the big business attains cheap production. Even before the war the smaller factories were disappearing. A small tannery must now either extend or close down. This has been better realized in the heavy than in the light leather trades. In the sole leather tanneries very often many thousand hides per week are put into work, but in the glacé kid factories there is nothing yet to correspond to the output of American glacé factories, which sometimes reaches three or four thousand dozen a day.

Another very prominent feature of factory evolution is the increased use of labour-saving machinery. This practice has been in operation for a considerable time, but with marked acceleration during the last few years owing to the labour shortage occasioned by military service. This development of machine work has largely dispensed with that labour which involved any skill or training. The journeyman currier is now practically extinct. In the beam house, too, fleshing, unhairing and scudding are rapidly becoming machine instead of hand operations. Many devices are now being adopted also which reduce the quantity of unskilled labour needed. Instead of "handling" the goods from pit to pit, modern tanneries aim at moving the liquors. Thus in the "Forsare" and "Tilston" systems of liming, hides are placed in a pit and lie undisturbed until ready for depilation, the soak liquors and lime liquors being supplied and run off just as required, whilst these liquors are agitated as often as desired by means of a current of compressed air. This agitation replaces the "handling" up and down once practised. In the tanyard proper the same tendency is at work, "rockers" are increasingly preferred to "handlers," and an inversion of the press leach system permits the exhaustion of tan liquors by a gravity flow, and so avoids the handling forward from pit to pit. There is also a tendency to install lifts, overhead runways, trucks on lines, motor lorries, etc., to replace carrying, barrowing, carting, etc., and so to arrange the tannery that the minimum transport is needed.

All these lines of evolution involve more intensive production, 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 unqualified 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 manufacturing 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 conditions, 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 unfortunately little progress. The leather trade is not a sweated industry. Its workers have always enjoyed reasonable 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, and partly also, because to understand modern tanning involves a better general education than most workmen receive. It is indeed frequently difficult to find competent under-foremen for the different departments of the modern leather factory. Until recently leather workers have been either unorganized or badly organized, and their views and complaints have been confused and sporadic, but during the war period there has been a very rapid extension of trade union movements, and consequently a more articulate expression of the demands for "democratization" as well as "a greater share in the fruits" of the industry. In the leather trades, however, the gulf between the unskilled labourers and the wealthy employers is perhaps unusually wide, and there is little disposition on the part of capital to recognize the equity of either of the above demands of labour. Generally speaking, the leather trade firms are not public but private companies. There is absolutely no trace of "co-partnership" or "profit-sharing" schemes, or of co-operative production. There is little recognition that the trades' prosperity should be shared in any way by the workpeople, and still less recognition of any right to a voice in industrial conditions. This condition of affairs has an ominous reaction upon the attitude of labour, which believes that it is producing great wealth but not obtaining much more than subsistence. It is not the function of this volume to pronounce a verdict upon the wages question or upon the democratization of the leather trades, but one may be permitted earnestly to hope that if such be the future lines of development, there will be also, as an absolutely essential part of any such schemes, a much higher standard of education amongst the workers, for this is the only satisfactory guarantee that the voice of labour in council will have any practical value, or that higher wages will be at all wisely used by the recipients.

In his instructive and valuable volume on "The Evolution of Industry," Prof. MacGregor points out that modern industry has evolved three outstanding types, viz. the Co-operative Movement, the Trusts, and the methods of Public Trading. He also suggests that these types tend to blend. In the leather industry co-operative and municipal production are unheard of, but the industry has certainly developed along the lines of the large trusts. Large businesses have replaced small, and later still have formed local federations, which in turn have combined to form the "United Tanners' Federation." War conditions have certainly stimulated evolution towards the trust type. The United Tanners' Federation has become possessed of powers which were not originally contemplated, such as the purchase and distribution to its members of hides, bark, extract, sulphide and other materials. How far some of these arrangements will be permanent is problematical, but one beneficial result is that the allied trades have certainly realized more thoroughly their unity of interests. This is shown by the much freer collaboration of the tanners, and by the encouragement now given to similar collaboration between their chemists. More evidence is found in the proposals for combined research.

There is also considerable reason to believe that there is some movement in the direction of partial State control. There is little doubt that evolution along trust lines will make this less difficult and possibly more desirable. The country cannot afford the spectacle of a Leather Trust permanently at war with a Labourers' Union. The public has realized that the well-being of the leather industry is vital to the national safety. It has realized that the leather trades are great producers of national wealth, and that increased production with the development of the export trade will materially assist to restore the country's financial position. It has realized also its own right to protection from bad leather and from exorbitant prices. On all these grounds it is probable, though there may be some reaction from the present position, that the State, which has already got its fingers in the pie, will refuse to draw them out altogether. The Imperial aspect of the question affords some further justification for this attitude. The leather trades operate very largely upon imported material, and it is clearly desirable that there should be close co-operation between the home industry and the colonial supplies of material. Here too the war has also given a great stimulus in this direction. Indian myrabolans has long been a staple tanning material. South African wattle bark has during the last few years replaced almost completely, and probably to a large extent permanently, Turkish valonia. There has also been great increase in the imports of Indian kips and of South African hides, and it is not at all an impossible proposition to maintain a self-contained Imperial Leather Trade, should this be necessary. French chestnut extract, and quebracho extract, however, are much too valuable tanning materials to exclude for merely sentimental reasons. These instances indicate possible advantages in Imperial co-operation, but also show the need for caution in the elaboration of such schemes.

Although a partial, and indeed increasing, measure of State Control is probable, there has been as yet no serious proposal to nationalize the leather industry. Such a proposition, indeed, is hardly ripe even for discussion. Until the nationalization of transport and of mines is a proved success, and until the merely distributive undertakings of the municipalities (e.g. of coal and of milk and other foods) are past the experimental stage, any proposition to nationalize the leather trades seems premature. It is noteworthy, however, that in Queensland, Australia, the Government have the right to commence and to administer State Tanneries.

Any progress in the direction either of democratization or of nationalization, has been certainly postponed by the sudden and unprecedented trade slump which commenced in the earlier part of 1920. This depression, in spite of heavy falls in the prices of raw materials, has made economic production a much more difficult problem. It has undoubtedly given a further stimulus to evolution towards the trust type, and created a further tendency towards the closing of the smaller factories, and the employment of labour-saving devices. When the general fall in prices has made an appreciable fall in the cost of living, some reduction in the leather workers' wages, together with more efficient work, will also contribute to the solution of the difficulty. It is chiefly to be desired, however, that the export trade should be restored. The realization of this hope depends largely upon the establishment of peace and prosperity abroad, and the consequent stabilization of the various foreign exchanges.