Gloves, Past and Present

by Willard M. Smith

A community whose associations with gloves are particularly interesting, was Yeovil, where the craft was established as early as the middle of the sixteenth century, giving employment for hundreds of years to peasant workmen and workwomen living over an area of some twenty miles. At one period the number of its masters, cutters and sewers was 20,000, and about 300,000 dozens of gloves of all kinds were produced annually. An ancient folk song of the Yeovil glove-women has recently been revived by the Fuller sisters, to simple harp accompaniment, just as it used to be sung, as a “round” or “part song,” by the diligent sewers as they drew their triangular needles in and out of their work. It is very quaint and tuneful, marking the time of the motions in sewing; and its rhythm, no doubt, facilitated the speed and ease with which the women plied their task.

Yeovil was famous for its military gloves for many years. Later, a fine imitation of kid gloves was made there; but these were crushed out by the return of the genuine foreign product. An idyllic industrial community was transformed almost over night into a desperate and dangerous populace, demanding by force the means of bread-winning which so suddenly had been denied it. Hull tells us that to quell these disturbances, two troops of dragoons were kept continually in the town, where, a few years before, “a horse-soldier would have been looked upon as a sort of centaur by the lower orders of the people.”

A territory, not yet mentioned, which was closely bound up with the prosperity of the glove trade in England, was Ireland. Limerick, Dublin and Cork formerly were noted glove cities. The “Limericks”—a glove named for its birthplace—were of exquisite texture, and were greatly in favor among the aristocratic English for their property of rendering the hand of the wearer smooth and soft. These gloves were made of “morts” or “slinks,” the skin of the abortive, or very young, calf, lamb or kid. Some of them were so beautifully delicate that they could be enclosed in a walnut shell. “No glove ever exceeded the Limerick in beauty,” declares Hull. Skin collectors went all over Ireland, and the trade was a great boon to the peasantry. But after 1825, the skins were no longer worth the trouble of collecting, and a great resource of the country was lost.

To one who views these facts it must be apparent that England never was intended to compete with France in the skilled making of the finest gloves. She could content her people with the home product only by excluding all foreign gloves; and even then, the privileged, who could bribe the government, insisted upon the secret importation of gloves from France. To be sure, the wave of protection rose high in 1462, in 1675 and in 1744; but, in every event there came a reaction, as far as the complete prohibition of gloves was concerned. Instead of supplying her own colonies with the home product, England even imported gloves from France, stored them in her warehouses, and then shipped them at an ad valorem duty to her East Indian possessions!

The truth of the matter was, French glove-makers early had won the first place in Europe. Struggle as she might, it is exceedingly doubtful whether her rival across the Channel ever could have equalled her prestige. In the heavier varieties of leather gloves, English makers did enjoy—and still do to-day—an enviable reputation; but here their fame stops. England had neither the inventive skill nor the natural climate to produce the perfect kid glove, for which France is so celebrated.

In France itself, we already have traced in the course of other chapters, more or less definitely, the development of the glove market. Particularly we have followed the fortunes of the trade in Grenoble, as being, most distinctively, the glove city of the world. We have seen Grenoble guarding her precious art from “the foreigner”; holding herself on the defensive against other French cities, of which, under the old laws and internal duties, she had no choice but to be jealous. We have noted how the Revocation ruined many of her neighbors, even while it stimulated competition beyond the confines of France. In the seventeenth century, Paris and Grenoble enjoyed the monopoly of the glove markets of Europe. During the eighteenth century, however, these cities began to cope with Germany, Italy, Austria, and even Russia, in glove-making. The vexed question of the exportation of skins was settled to the advantage of the manufacturers at home, and unnatural rivalry between the different French cities was smoothed away.

The Revolution saw the entire industry, apparently, snuffed out. And yet, so deeply had the glove trade taken root in French soil that, at the first breath of the revival of culture and refined manners, under the patronage of the Empress Josephine, this ancient art again sprang into being; and, like a miracle, the resurrection of the glovers was complete. At this point the great clients of to-day appeared—the United States, reconstructing itself, and building up its commerce with the foremost marts of the world. The Americans demanded, among other things, the most beautiful gloves of Europe.

Grenoble, on recovering from the shock of the Revolution, the long, dark days of the Terror, found, to her chagrin, that she had a formidable rival in Paris. Naturally, the capital city, the centre of the court, was the first place to feel the effects of the renaissance of glove-making. Paris swarmed with workers, and could get more sewers at lower wages than Grenoble contained within its gates. In 1810, however, the southern city began to reach out into the surrounding country for apprentices; and quickly the peasant people responded by the hundreds and thousands. Many of them flocked to the town, filling the places left destitute by the violent events of the last twenty years; and, for miles about, sewing was portioned out, to be done in the small villages and in isolated households scattered among the mountains. Grazing and goat rearing once more became a profitable occupation.

It proved a long, proud pull—but the glovers of Grenoble were not to be daunted. At last that city’s ancient prestige was restored. The War of 1870, instead of being a set-back, was really a help; for the remoteness of Grenoble from the seat of war permitted her to continue working, and orders from England and America—which, ordinarily, might have sought other channels—she filled in her factories and home shops. In 1872, to be sure, Grenoble, and all the French glovers, suddenly found themselves up against tremendous, and totally unexpected, competition with Saxony, Austria, Luxembourg and Belgium. These countries had devised a means of placing on the market remarkably handsome lambskin gloves, which rivalled in appearance the fine French kid product and sold for far less. But a few years of obstinately insisting upon the high prices they always had exacted for their goods, soon taught the French manufacturers the necessity of finding a less expensive kid; and with the development of new mechanical inventions for cheaper cutting and sewing, Grenoble presently regained her firm footing.

If the seventeenth century must be considered little short of marvellous as regards glove-making in Grenoble—and it may be compared, indeed, to the first five years of a child’s life, in which he makes, proportionately, his most astonishing progress—the achievements of the industry in the nineteenth century, if possible, have been even greater. Apart from the facts of the vicissitudes the trade had had to face, the battles it had waged—and won—all the vast accoutrements of modern machinery and scientific appliances now come into play. Also, a great, inventive genius has arisen, destined to revolutionize the art of glove-making.