“But what does one have to do to be a toggle-boy?” persisted she.
“I am afraid a toggle-boy is not as grand a person as he sounds, Mrs. Jackson,” interrupted Peter. “Nat and I are down at the lowest rung of the ladder again. We couldn’t get much lower unless they set us to making the wooden frames the leather is stretched on before it is japanned. Somebody has to do that. The frames are about three yards long and two yards wide, roughly speaking; it isn’t much work to make them, though, because the light thin boards come cut just the right size and simply have to be nailed together at the corners. Still I should not want to be set to doing carpentry. Even a toggle-boy’s work is better than that—eh, Nat?”
“He is at least an inch nearer making leather,” admitted Nat grudgingly.
“Of course he is! You see, Mrs. Jackson, Nat isn’t stuck on his present job. I shouldn’t be either if I expected to do it for life. It is not a position that inspires you with the feeling that you are well on your way toward being a captain of industry,” Peter chuckled. “No, I’m afraid there is more than one step between being a toggle-boy and being president of the company.”
Nat smiled in spite of himself.
“Now, Mrs. Jackson, to make our career a little clearer to you I’ll tell you more about the toggle-boys,” Peter continued. “When the dyed leather is sent over from the other factories to be made into patent leather it is first stretched on the wooden frames, as I told you, so that the gloss can be put on. The reason why they stretch the leather on frames instead of boards is because a frame, being open, allows the wet japan to run off the edges of the material and drip through to the floor as it could not do if it were stretched to a solid surface. They have found that for many reasons it is much better not to nail the leather to the frames. Nails make holes in the stock and waste it; besides the tacks might catch in the brushes as the men work and cause the dressing to spatter. Then, too, the leather is irregular in shape and some of it does not reach to the edges of the frame anyway. So steel nippers, or toggles, are snapped at intervals around the edge of the material and by means of strings knotted to the nippers the leather can be pulled out tightly and tied to the frame. Do you understand?”
Mrs. Jackson nodded.
“And you boys are the ones who put on the toggles?”
“Well, no, we’re not,” replied Peter, a little apologetically. “But we shall be some day. Just now we are employed in taking from the toggles that have already been used the strings that have been cut or knotted, and substituting instead new, long strings so that the nippers will be ready for the men.”
“It isn’t much of a job, Mother,” put in Nat, ruefully.