“Bless your heart! We don’t break the eggs here!” roared the workman, shaking with laughter. “No, indeed. We get egg-yolk by the barrel; when we pour it out it looks like thin yellow paint. We tan kid for gloves in egg-yolk,” he went on, observing that both Nat and Peter were much interested. “After sheepskins are tanned the leather must all be fat-liquored, dried by steam or air fans, dampened, split or shaved off to uniform thickness, dyed in revolving paddle-wheels filled with color, and tacked on boards to dry just as calfskins are. The chemists who have laboratories up-stairs test the dyes and mix or match the colors for us. Then the skins go to the various rooms for the different finishes. And speaking of finishes, I suppose you went into the buffing-room in the other factory.”
“No,” said Peter, “we didn’t—at least I didn’t.”
“Nor I,” put in Nat. “The door was always closed and no one was admitted.”
“They don’t like to have people go in if they can help it because every time the door is opened it stirs things up; but I can take you into our buffing-room if you want to go.”
“I wish you would,” cried Peter.
Accordingly all went up-stairs and their guide cautiously pushed open a door on which No Admittance was scrawled in large letters. The moment Peter squeezed through it he drew in his breath and then regretted that he had done so, for he at once began to cough.
The boys glanced about the room before them.
Every window was closed, making the air hot and stuffy; yet, Peter asked himself, how was such a condition to be avoided in a place where it was evident that even the tiniest draught must create instant havoc? This room which Peter and Nat surveyed was thick with flying white particles that were being whirled into space from rapidly turning emery wheels. The workmen who were busy buffing the flesh side of split skins in order to get the rough surface required for a suede finish seemed enveloped in a miniature blizzard. As the swiftly turning discs sent clouds of white dust into the air it settled on the hair, faces, eyelashes, and clothing until the laborers looked like snow men moving amid the blinding flakes of an old-fashioned storm. Peter and Nat, who looked on, began to be changed into snow men, too.
“I guess you don’t want to stay in here long,” announced their guide, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the revolving wheels. “As you see, they are making ‘suede,’ or ooze finished leather. Some calfskins are finished this way too, as of course you know. A certain amount of this leather will be left white for gloves or shoes; more of it, however, will be stretched on boards and brushed over with some colored dye. Suede is made in all sorts of fancy shades for women’s party slippers.”
Peter nodded and then, quite without warning, he sneezed.