select is
that of Pusey, Scott & Co., at Madison and Third streets, five stories
high and a hundred and sixty feet deep. Over this scented labyrinth we
go, up stairs and down; now among the slippery vats, where the hides
are deprived of their hair; now into a bright room, where half a dozen
pretty sewing-machine girls are stitching the wet, slimy skins into
bags; now into gloomy cellars, where these bags are filled with
sumach-dust and water. The scene in these dark apartments, where many
of the workmen are negroes, is especially high-flavored and like a
chapter in _Vathek_. Writers usually talk of "life in the iron-mills"
as conducing to the development of herculean strength. But
iron-workers are apt to be dry and wiry, their flesh half sweated off
and their complexions unnaturally pale. For true muscular development,
rather Flemish and beefy in quality, we would instance the workmen
in this department of a morocco-factory. The skins when filled with
water are very heavy, and the jolly fellows who play at aquatic games
with them, now ducking into the tanks, now holding a bag under the
hopper whence the sumach descends, and anon stirring, manipulating
and inspecting the mass of floating pillows, are true heroes out of
Rubens' pictures. The scenes up stairs again, where young Swedes
and Irish boys dress the dry skins, painting them over with black,
and polishing and graining them by rubbing them with stones (a
back-breaking operation, apparently, in the attitude of laundresses
bent over an eternal washboard), are all highly entertaining. In
the store-rooms we see the handsome sheets of morocco, including the
kangaroo skins from Australia, perforated here and there with the
hunter's shot, and distinguishable by the enormous flap which has,
in the creature's life, encased the tail. Among them all the little
orphaned kid skins, clothed in mourning colors and so soft and small,
look very innocent and interesting. The distinguishing claim of
Wilmington is that of having been the pioneer to introduce machinery
into this as into other kinds of business. Several kinds of
labor-saving apparatus are explained to us, and the foresight in
building the apartments so that the skins travel from stage to stage
with the least possible lifting is pointed out. These economies are
said to be unmatched in the world. In this manufacture the relations
of employers with employed, and amongst each other, would appear
to be particularly happy. T