New-York tribune., 1897-01-30

WANANAKER'S BUILDING, BROA
brawny butcher boy. His internal economy is
distributed into townships Of tripe and swelling
lines Of sausage stufirg material. His pigship
, is shouldered and hammed and sided and spare
ribbed and soused and sausaged and larded in
the eye Of the Imagination. There is one thing
lacking however, TO perfect the present alb
attor The skin or the hide should be tanned
and then passed on to further delvings In the
realm Of revealed genius. The abattor wants
a saddlery and harness machine which will cut
and fashion the leather into appropriate pat
term and turn II out gold silver mounted.
while the pigskin should pass TO spherical
chambers and emerge in the shape Of bounding
footballs base5alls and things. Perhaps the
picture Is complete enough illustrative of
the design of contemporary monopoly, yet it
would be very pretty to see the smoothed and
finely polished hides scooting across a special
carrier ard into snarling complication Of cogs
and pnons and cylinders and shaping knives
TO emerge therefrom a continuous piece of
triple betting long enough TO girdle the world
and reach to the moon, and so father the
power that should turn the solar system Ger
tainly man never is but always TO be blessed.
Under the magic of nineteenth century In
vention this result is almost accomplished
though and in the result the Greater New-York
plays very important part. for while as
= hide and leather market her interest has some
what decreased since 1893. owing to a concen-
tration OF capital, still the major portion Of
the sole leather exported passes through her
port Of exit and an enormous proportion is
eaten up in her betting works, her shoe fac
tories, her shoe sole cutting establishments
and in the thousand and one other ramfcations
of trade interests that find Judgements in centre
whose progress affects directly the prosperity
of three and a half millions of people.
Every hide-producing country on the face Of
the big round globe contributes to the needs Of
the Greater New-York whether in hides or
skins. A particularly heavy hide for betting pur-
poses comes from Switzerland. Goatskns come
from South America and on this one point i'm
porters and brokers are at daesers points with
the Wilson bill. Goatsklns weighing In all 30
2SS.221 pounds and valued at $S.3'i,5.i mark
the importation OF single year at the port OF
Greater New-York while all other hides and
skins weighing 1O7 7S7O74 pounds enter the port.
their value being S10.22S.1 119 OF goatskins this
- four-ffths cf rhe entire imports Of the coun-
Try, and Of ali others 1t is two-thirds CT the en-
lire importa tion. These figures are significant.
The number of imported hides alone for a single
rear reaches 3,SS2. .039. being nearly nine -tenths
of the entire supply. For reasons which 1t is too
far to follow domestic hides take another direc-
ton. Two hundred thousand annually are used
here by the big leather betting companies. there
being thrty-four firms engaged in this business.
and here the two largest companies in the coun-
try find place. Like the balance Of the leather
Industry, on the wholesale and brokerage side.
they are located IN the odtime Swamp, which
has been the centre Of the leather trade ever
since those four original Dutchmen settled there
and before 1896 made the portion of the city to
"the shoemakers Land There tanning
vats in the Swamp in those days also. but now
r.he tanneries have gone where the bark is to be
,und to save the cost of shipment. In the belt
& works oak tanned leather lis used very large
- because Of its greater pability An interest
ing story might be written of the gradual prog
ress OF hide butt" as 1t is called. after
the fore shoulders have been trimmed off, before
It appears at the shipment door collcd into
lengths OF betting Of varying degrees of wide
ness and moving power. Recently fin
ished in one of the factories here that was -
inches wide and 100 feet in length II was
made Of three thicknesses of selected hide. and
$50 hides were used Ia its makeup. Others have
been made S4 inches in width, but these are the
exception. The manufactured product is of the
highest standard known. subsidiary line r
this connection is the production Of lace leather
the aces being used for bringing the ends of belts
together after they have been passed the
pnon pulley where they TO run their
ful lives away; but the industry is a fractional
factor In the wilderness Of interests.
Perhaps next in importance IS the manufacture
Of boots and shoes although the latter article
marks the climax of production as against the
old-fashioned rival. the boot Very few men in
cities affect boots in these modern days. They
go to the country communities and the farm
A few riding boots worm but the shoe Is
the thing toward which the energies of invention
have been directed during the last few years
and to such perfection has the manufacture been
brought that shoes turned out by the thou
sands of pairs every day from the hundreds of
big factories the country over. In Greater New
York there are perhaps $50 factories for the
making OF shoes. and in all OF them the energies
of producers are bent bringing out a high
grade article that makes no pretensions OF COM
petns with the cheaper product OF other places
very large proportion OF the output of these
factories Is consumed In and about Greater New
York. and about s9O00O0O is annually realized
Il the business Almost every bit of the work