Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/258

248[February 13, 1869] counter, she briskly whipped off the feet (which are always left attached to the skin); slit the little arm-holes; then ran the blade up the neck and head. The skin now showed a tolerably even surface. After thus operating upon a large portion of the bundle, she caught up a piece of whiting, and where there were any signs of fat upon the flesh side of the skin rubbed it over therewith. Sometimes her work was hard and ridgy, from not having been properly stretched out while drying. In that case a pan of water and a hare's foot took the place of the whiting. She next picked up a skin, laid it upon her knee, slipping a string loop over it, and under her foot as a shoemaker does his stirrup, and after protecting her thumb with a stout leathern stall, took her knife once more in hand and began pulling. The tail end of the skin was turned from her, that she might work against the grain. Now and then some tuft or knot in the wool brought into play the card, a kind of curry-comb. Its back and handle are of wood, and for its teeth it has close rows of pin-wire. At every pull of the knife, out came a bunch of grey hairs, till presently a most beautiful under clothing of delicate wool, darker than the surface hair, was disclosed. The pullings are allowed to fall upon the floor, and at the end of the task carefully gathered up and stored away. They will make stuffing for cheap beds. Cheap lodginghouse-keepers, too, remarked my guide, very often impose a rabbit for a goose-down bed upon their customers. "The price of down just now is bad. Not worth more than threepence per pound. That's because feathers are cheap. Some time back it brought sixpence."

"What becomes of your waste?" I asked.

"Waste, sir! No waste here. All our trimmings and stuff, being of a very heating nature, makes an excellent manure for some things, hops for instance, and finds a ready market. The pullers all work piece work, and if they stick to 'collar' can earn ten or twelve shillings a week, but a great many of them, as I told you just now, will keep Saint Monday, and some do not come to shop before Wednesday. Pretty creatures among them I can tell you. They take their dinner and tea upon the premises, the employer finding firing accommodation. They come at nine in the morning, and quit at eight in the evening. Formerly much of this work was given out, but it is more to the interest of the employer to have everything done upon his own premises."

I was now taken into the machinery department. A shop eighty or ninety feet long and some five-and-twenty wide opened before me. On one side and near the roof ran a shaft and drum, whence leather bands were made to connect themselves with a series of six machines ranged down the middle of the floor. They were not very complex of structure. The drum-band moved a wheel which moved another wheel, which moved a cylinder about a foot and a half long and six inches in diameter. Upon this cylinder were arranged diagonally five knives, which in their revolution came into the most delicate articulation with a perfectly straight-set bed knife. Two fluted rollers in front were used as a means of feeding the knives. The nose end of a skin was introduced between these rollers. Away it glided, and lo, in a second or two the fleece or lock of wool began to descend into a tin receiver. The skin proper, or pelt, fell upon the floor cut up fine as hay. The fleece was now turned over in a sheet of brown paper, and laid upon a kind of counter. Having had certain portions removed by a picker, it passed into the hands of a young woman, called a locker, who sorted out other parts; for be it known a rabbit's, unlike a gentleman's coat, is not expected to be of the same quality all over. The pate, cheek, and sides had been put apart, and the most valuable portion of the lock, the back, remained. This was dexterously made into a flattish kind of ball, and with the grain still unbroken placed carefully into a brown paper bag, ready for sale. While the backs were worth six shillings a pound, the sides were valued by the pound at four shillings, and the pate and cheek at not more than two and sixpence.

I observed that a number of the skins being cut, were of a very deep orange cast, and asked the reason. "After the skins have left the pulling-room," said my informant, "they are taken into a shed, and the wool is damped with a preparation of aquafortis, mercury, and other chemicals. They are then carried into a heated apartment where they dry, and in so doing, turn to the colour you see; that is, they are what we call 'carroted.' We mostly give it them in a milder form, and then they don't change colour."

"And why are they carroted?"

"That is to make the wool easier to work, when in the hands of the hat maker."

Each machine then requires four attendants, a feeder, a picker, a locker, and a clipper. The picker is always a girl of fourteen or fifteen. The other three are young women. The clipper's duty is, with a pair of shears, to snip off the wool from any fragments of skin that cannot be passed through the machine, or that fall off while the skins are being cut. Feeders and lockers alike are paid twelve shillings a week, clippers nine, and pickers six shillings. All employed in this shop were of a superior cast to the pullers, evidently a remove or two above them, and were dressed in neat cotton gowns and coarse linen aprons. There was a man to superintend the whole of the machinery, see to the grinding of the knives, and so forth. Every night the wool cut during the day is carefully weighed and compared with the number of skins given out, and a pretty just estimate formed of the amount of care and honesty exercised in this department. The instrument by which the work is performed is known as the American machine, and was introduced into England about five-and-thirty years ago. Before that, for some fifteen years, the chopping machine was in use. It was a vast improvement upon hand labour, but slow in comparison to the machine which takes its