The Press., 1884-07-10
pERELlCrION IN THE TANNING BUSINESS.

out into-several inches of dry dust Not a drop of rain had fallen there
 -------------- DERELICTION IN THE TANNING BUSINESS.
 The failures thus far in 1883 in this in- dustry, and among old and large firms, cannot but have been great surprise to most business men in other lines of trade. They exceed in number and magnitude anything of the kind which has happened within generation, and probably there never has been year within the history of the trade ill this country so fraught with disaster to those connected with the busi- ness of manufacturing sole leather Man ufacturers of cotton and wool, iron and other metal workers, and jobbers and mer- chants generally, have been accustomed fer years to look upon the sole leather business as among the most ''solid' of our industries, and the banks and note brokers have been only too glad to take all of this class of paper offering, at the lowest mark ct rates, through many periods when lead ing houses in other industries have been severely crippled by the stringency of the money market. But with several large failures early in the year, and the recent gigantic one in BostOn-where the largest firm of sole leather manufacturers in the world has gone down, with liabilities of nearly ten million dollars-all this has been vastly changed the banks, note dealers, money lenders, and hide import CTS have been heavy losers, and the outside public find it difficult to understand how such disasters could occur in one of our staple industries when most others are prosperous.
 Perhaps, howeve, 8 little looking into the nature and peculiarities of the busi- | lE will rSyn hnt tnr tor, ,1i the situation. There are few people who realize that, notwithstanding all our mod ern improvements, it usually takes as long to make a side of sole leather as is ordiEar- fly require d to build ship, although such is the fact. From the purchase of the raw hide until it is returned to the store as leather, it has been usual to average the time in the trade at about eight months all of this time IS not required in actual tanning although in some heavy leather as long as this is required in the manufac- ture--but there are many unavoidable de- lays in the business. With this long pe- riod, then, between the first and principal investment of capital in the raw material and the completion of Q marketable pro- duct, it will be readily seen that there may be-as there often are-such wide changes in the value of leather as will either give the tanner a large profit or net him an in- evitable loss, even with the wisest manage ment And this, too, has been SO common in the trade that the best houses seldom congratulate themselves on the profitable buiness of @ year or two, or take blame for the, reverse, but rather on the average of their profit and loss for a serles of five or ten years, so that the making of sole leath- CT seems to have very properly come to be designated as ''long" manufacturer as it is commonly styled.
 In cotton, wool, silk, iron, and nearly every other manufacture, the raw materials are produced directly with view to the market therefor, and the slights st varia- tions in their price are immediately seen in corresponding changes in the value of tue finished goods. But hides arc only by product. Cattle are never killed now in order that the tanner may buy their hides, although this aOds one reason, some years ago in Texas and Buenos Ayres, when a small proportion were killed principally for the hide and tallow. The supply of raw material for the tanner is, therefore, neither greater nor less, whether the price be high or low, except as values may vary in different countries, when the highest ratesfwill bring the greatest abundance in special localities. In most of the other great industries, too, the production is Concentrated in but few places, compared with the way in which our tanneries are spread out all over the country, so that, with the uncertainty attending any calcu- lation of the supply of raw material, or the actual amount of leather at any one time Ill process of manufacture, and with money market particularly easy for leather firms wanting to borrow, the practical re- suit has been that, beginning with the high prices for sole leather in 1879, there has been such undue competition for hides as to keep their cost abnormally high, while the production of leather has been so great as to make 1t impossible for any but 8 few of the best tanners to make profit in the business.
 It is evident from the foregoing facts, that over production is not likely to be so quickly checked in the leather trade as in most other lines of business. In stopping textile manufactures the greatest loss is in interest, and this is often over-balanced by the opportunity afforded for repairs to stop blast furnace is more detrimental, but not in these, or any of our industries, are the results of shutting down" so se- rious as with the tanner. In the first place he has always to supply himself with bark for the year in the brief bark peeling period, but this bark greatly deteriorates in value if kept much more than year; then the liquor in the vats, in case of stop page, rapidly sours and becomes useless, the leather in process of tanning is greatly injured, and the whole plant is reduced in value far more rapidly than is the case in any other manufacture The large and steady demand for our sole leather for ex- port, and the undoubtedly healthy condi- ton Of our boot and shoe business, have kept up the faith and stimulated the pro- duction of tanners through three years in which the business has been generally un- profitable; but those many failures cer- tainly seem to indicate the urgent necessi- ty of so limiting production that fair profit may be realized, which would come as surely from natural decline in the price of hides, under a less active demand, as from an advance iu leather.
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 have just heard, says a London cor respondent of the New York Tribune, an amusing story of man, who, fresh from India, where he had been for some years, was not skilled in the great subject, "Who's