Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1868-09-06
GLOVES.
Their Inrtodactlon and Use.

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ARGENT visitor in France, who has
had many facilities for seeing the manu-
facture Of gloves, writes coneering the
house of Laporte & Co, in Paris, the
largest manufactures of gloves in the
world. This firm employs twelve thou
sand operatives, mostly women, and
manufacture over a million pair Of kid
gloves annually. The cutting is all
performed by machinery and such math-
ematieal accuracy is observed that every
square inch of the kid is preserved for
some portion of the glove. There was
an old proverb that, "-for a glove to be
good and we'll made, tL-ee kingdoms
must contribute to it-Spain to dress the
leather, France to cut it, and England to
sew it, But of late years a~llcountries
have Welded the palm in all these re-
speets to France, and they now have as
much the advantage in dressing and sew
ing as in cutting. The English, who
make excellent gloves of heavy material,
themselves admit their inability to COM
pete with the French in the manufacture
of kids, and largely import Partisan
gloves for their own use.
: A few years ago. all the cutting was
done by scissors, but it is now done by
machinery, the labor saved being almost
incaIcuIable and the exactness secured,
adding greatly to the value of the pro-
Guctien. The gussets and all the small
pieces necessary for the formation of the
glove must be cut from the same skin or
one precisely similar, and in the work, 1t
is said that a Frenehman will usually
obtain one or two pairs more from the
same skin than an Englishman, and as
handsomely shaped as the rest. The
improvement made by NJ. Jouvin, OF
constructing the thumb-piece, like the
fingers, of the same piece with the rest
| of the glove, and therefore requiring no
| seam for attaching it, has been of great
value. A toothed apparatus pricks the
points for the stitches, and before sewing
the seams the edges are placed in a vice
with brass teeth, only o~ne-twelfth OF an
inch long, between which the needle
passes in successive stitches. The mate
rails employed for this purpose include
the skin of the channels, kid. lamb, bea-
yer, doe and elk. Even rat skins were
occasionally used for the thumbs, when
they were separated from the rest Of the
glove.
The use of gloves is of great an
t%iquitY. In XenophOn, we read of Cy-
rus going out without his gloves, and
| Greeks and Romans used them in man
ual labor, probably for the protection OF
their hands. But in the middle ages
thew we're considered as marks of dis
tinction, and they only cam into gene
raj use very gradually as civilization add
vanced. Queen Charlotte, wife Of
George III, was in the habit of taking
snuff from a box for the purpose, and
as she always wore white kid gloves
they were Of course ruined each time
that she SO INDUCED, and were immedi'
ately replaced by a fresh pair.
In some Of the modern European Ian.
guages, a glove is termed a handshoe
and in the Psalms, where We read, " ovel
Edom will l east out my shoe" the wore
was sometimes rendered glOre, alludins
to the Oriental custom of contractin!
sales of land, by giving the purchaser
glove, by way of delivery or inyesture
From this practice was probably derived
that of throwing down a glove as a chal
lenge, the acceptance of which vas sig
nifed by the opposite party picking
up and throwing down his OWN. Nor
recently the same ceremony was per
formed by the interchange of cards
Gloves were formerly much more highl,
regarded than at the present time, ant
though their manufacture has nov
reached so high a point, we value then
only for their comfort and beauty, Will
the ancients held them in a fgurativ
and p~oetical sense as the type of mucl
that was precious to them. 1t was thu
that IN the times of chivalry the lad,
presented her knight with her glove a
the highest pledge of her favor, and of
fcials frequently did the same in con
ferring dignities. They were ther
though doubtless rough in eonstructio.
and devoid of elegance, f~requentl
adorned with precious stones, and mad
with every possible expense. Even no1
in some Eastern countries singular Gus
toms are preserved in regard to then
such as taking them off before e%nterin
a private stable, or forfeiting them I
the servants, and observing the sam
ceremony in hunting at the death of
stag. Gradually time obliterated thes
ancient customs, and We come to valu
all material things for their real use an
beauty, rather than for the igurativ
or traditional associations Of fOrme
times. .