The Story of Leather Part 6

"The skins are inspected while wet and sorted for stock; they are then stamped with a letter or number so they can be identified; they are fat-liquored, and are dyed."

"What is fat-liquored?"

"Fat-liquored means working the skins about in a mixture of soap and oil until they absorb these softening ingredients and become pliable. All leather, whether chrome or vegetable tanned, has to go through this process. The liquid is put into paddle-wheels just as the tanning mixture is. The dyeing is done in paddle-wheels too, and some kinds of leather have in addition a coat of dye rubbed into them by hand. It gives them a better surface."

"What is your work, Jackson?" asked Peter.

"Oh, I've done about everything there is to do in a beamhouse. Just now I am inspecting and sorting the skins after they are tanned."

"What is Mr. Bryant going to set me at?"

"I don't know. You will have to ask him. But no matter what he gives you to do you must not be discouraged, Strong. You were lucky to get any job at all in the tannery. They have turned away lots of boys your age--they do it every day."

Peter bit his lip to keep from smiling.

"I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky," replied he.

"Well, aren't you? To be young, and well, and to know that if you do your best you have a chance to work up to something better? I think it's great! I intend to work up. Some day I may be a partner in Coddingtons'--who knows! Then I'll dress my mother in silk every day in the week and I'll buy an automobile. I'd like to ride in one of those things just once. Did you ever?"

"Yes," admitted Peter cautiously.

"Honest? Wasn't it bully? Where did you go?"

But Peter was spared the difficult task of replying. Instead, Bryant summoned him, and he was given a wheel-barrow filled with wet skins which were to be carried from the soaking vats to the lime pits. All the rest of the morning back and forth he trudged wheeling load after load.

It was stupid, dirty work, and he was glad when the noon whistle blew.

"Let's eat our luncheon together, Strong," said Jackson, "that is--unless you have somebody else you want to lunch with."

Peter a.s.sented only too gladly. It was far pleasanter to have a boy his own age to speak to than to eat by himself. Besides he liked Jackson.

But even in the fresh breeze that swept the open field, even while playing ball, even at home after a hot bath and clean clothing, Peter could still scent the odor of the beamhouse. It was days before he became accustomed to it and could feel, with Nat Jackson, that he was a lucky boy to have a "job."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV

PETER'S MAIDEN SPEECH

Peter had been three weeks in the beamhouse and had in that time proved himself so useful that his pay had been raised from six to six dollars and a half a week. Very proud he was of his financial good fortune. With few demands in the way of clothing he was now able to lay aside quite a little sum toward the motorcycle he so much desired. The days at the tannery pa.s.sed more quickly. Nat Jackson became his chum and the two lads were almost inseparable; they lunched together, played on the ball team, and often spent their Sat.u.r.day afternoons in taking long walks or going to Nat's house. Peter, however, took great good care that Nat should not visit him.

The omission of this hospitality was not entirely unnoticed by young Jackson, and the conclusion he drew was that Peter lived humbly--perhaps poorly--in lodgings to which he did not consider it suitable to invite a guest. Nat thought this foolish pride on Peter's part and he meant to tell him so some time when they became better acquainted. It was a mistake, argued Nat, to be over-sensitive about one's poverty. If Peter was saving his money surely that was excuse enough. He had a right to live as he pleased. Furthermore what possible difference could it make in their friends.h.i.+p? Nat himself lived simply but very nicely on the meager salary that he earned. He and his mother rented two tiny bedrooms, a sunny little living-room, and a microscopic kitchen in a part of the town which, to be sure, was cheap and ugly; but Mrs.

Jackson, Peter soon found, was one of the rare women who could make a home--a real home--almost anywhere. She often laughingly remarked that if she were to dwell in a snow hovel at the North Pole she believed she should cut a window in the side of it and set a pot of flowers there, and Peter could well imagine her doing it.

She was a short, bright-eyed, motherly little person, with a quick appreciation of a joke, and a wonderful knack at cooking. Incidentally she had a quiet voice and chose soft colors in preference to crude ones.

Peter gathered from her manner of speech and from the delicate modeling of her hands that at some time in her life she had occupied a very different position from the one she was now filling. But whatever that past might have been he gained no inkling of it either from her or from her son. Bravely, patiently, happily, she made a home for her boy--such a home that Peter Coddington visited it with the keenest pleasure and came away with a vague wonder what it was that those three wee rooms possessed which was lacking in his own richly furnished mansion.

Perhaps if it had not been for the encouragement of Nat and his mother Peter might not have had the grit to master his work at the beamhouse.

A wholesome spur these two friends were to his flagging spirits. There was some subtle quality in Nat's mother that made a fellow want to do his very best--to be as much of a man as he could. And yet she said little to urge either of the lads to their task. It was just that she was so proud and so pleased when they did win any good fortune through their own endeavors. And so Peter forged bravely on, prodded by an unformulated desire to do well not only for the sake of his own parents, but that he might not disappoint the faith that Nat and Nat's mother had in him.

Even Mr. Coddington remarked one evening at dinner (and there was a twinkle in his eye when he said it) that he was highly gratified by the reports he heard of "young Strong."

But as the summer advanced and the days grew hotter Mrs. Coddington watched her boy with anxious care and dropped more than one suggestion that it was time they all were off to the sh.o.r.e. None of her suggestions bore fruit, however, and by and by when she saw that Mr. Coddington had no intention of leaving Milburn she ceased to remonstrate further and Peter settled down to work and to keep as comfortable as he could during the hot weather. What a haven his home, with its green lawns and wide verandas, became, after those long, breathless hours in the tannery!

Never before had he half appreciated his surroundings. Most of the houses where the men at the factory lived were huddled closely in that dingy part of the town where Nat Jackson's rooms were, and Peter soon discovered that after supper many of the workmen and their families came and sat in the ball field opposite Factory 1 where there was more air, and where some of the men actually slept when the nights were very hot.

It was a blessing--that great open s.p.a.ce! Peter wondered what they would have done without it.

He had been raising the query mentally one July morning on his way to work after a close, restless night in his big room on the hill. The day was a sultry one; no air stirred, and it was with a sigh that Peter entered the beamhouse. No sooner was he inside, however, than he at once saw that something was wrong. Knots of men were speaking together in undertones and seemed to be far more eager to talk than to take up their daily tasks. Only Bryant, who moved from one group to another, urging, coaxing, commanding, succeeded in compelling them to attend to what they had to do.

"You fellows can do all the talking you want to at noon," he said.

"There will be no builders around to-day, I guess."

"They'll do well to keep away!" muttered an angry Swede, threateningly.

"You go to unhairing skins, Olsen," Bryant commanded, putting his hand firmly but kindly on the broad shoulder of the man. "You can scold your wrath all out this noon. Go on."

Sullenly the man obeyed.

"What is the matter?" Peter managed to whisper to Nat Jackson.

"The men are furious; they are threatening to strike," returned Nat in an undertone.

"To strike!" exclaimed Peter. His thoughts flew to his father. "What has happened?" he questioned insistently.

"Didn't you see last night's paper? Haven't you heard? Mr. Coddington is going to put up another tannery. He's going to build it on the ball field!"

"On the ball field! Our field!"

"So the paper says. Of course the land is his. But it does seem pretty tough!"

Peter moved on, dazed.

To take away the field--the one out-of-door spot for luncheon and exercise! To deprive hundreds of stifled creatures of fresh air and sunlight! It was monstrous! Why hadn't his father mentioned the plan? Of course he did not realize what it would mean to the men or he never would have considered it. What would become of all those tired people who nightly left their bare little dwellings and sought a cool evening breeze in the field? Peter knew Nat and his mother always sat there until bedtime and many of the other workmen brought their wives and children. Once the boy had sat there himself. It was an orderly crowd that he had seen--children tumbling over each other on the gra.s.s; women seated on the benches and exchanging a bit of gossip; tired men stretched full-length on the turf resting in the quiet of the place.

Why, it was a crime to take the field away!

All the morning while he worked Peter's mind seethed with arguments against the building of the new factory. He longed to see his father and talk it out. Surely Mr. Coddington would listen if he realized the conditions. He was a kind man--not an inhuman brute. It seemed as if the noon whistle would never blow.

With Nat Jackson and a score of agitated workmen Peter went out into the shade opposite. Luncheon was forgotten, and ball, too. Instead a crowd gathered and on every hand there were mutterings and angry protests.

"Of course Coddington can take the land. It's his. There is no law to prevent him from doing anything he wants to with it. What does he care for us?" remarked an old, gray-haired tanner.

"The working man is nothing to the rich man," grumbled another. "All the millionaire wants is more money. Another factory means just that--more money! It's money, money, money--always money with the rich. The more they have the more they want."

Sick at heart, Peter listened.

"Why don't you fellows do something about it?" bl.u.s.tered a red-faced Italian. "I'll bet you if we called a strike it would bring Coddington to terms. He'd a good sight rather give up building that factory than have us all walk out--'specially now when there's more work ahead than the firm can handle. I've been in five strikes in other places and we never failed yet to get what we started for."