Transcript of Howard Shinaberry of the Howe’s Leather Company at Frank, WV.
& Tom Morrison, Supt. Of Tannery
Today is June 11, Friday, 1976. We will be interviewing officials of the
Howe’s Leather
Company. The company originally founded as the Pocahontas Tanning Company.
It is located in Frank, West Virginia, in the county of Pocahontas. The
day is a pleasant day. The sun is shining brightly and after a cool night,
but the temperature is rising rapidly so the next voices you hear on this tape,
then, should be the voices of the officials of the Howe’s Leather Company.
I suspect we might be taking a tour of this operation. I’ve been briefed
on it. I have been told it takes approximately sixty days in which to tan
a hide, bringing it from the raw material to the sole leather. They make
exclusively leather soles for shoes at this location.
ALEX: That, that name is Howard Shinaberry?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: How do you spell that last name?
SHINABERRY: S H I N A B E R R Y.
ALEX: Is that a long time name in this county?
SHINABERRY: Uh, yeah. Quite a few of them around here.
ALEX: You’ve been around a long time, huh? How long have you been working
for the company?
SHINABERRY: Uh, I worked down in Frank for ‘bout a year, then I went to the
University for a year. I’ve been back about a year and a half now.
ALEX: West Virginia University?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: Hi. How are you? (speaks to a worker)
SHINABERRY: This is the hide house. This is where the hides come in,
the unloading dock over here to back the trailers in.
ALEX: Where do you get most of your hides?
SHINABERRY: They come from the uh Chicago stockyards, the Chicago slaughterhouse
mostly. Yeah.
ALEX: Have you had any trouble getting hides lately?
SHINABERRY: No.
ALEX: You’ve still been able to secure an adequate supply of hides to be
processed.
SHINABERRY: They’ve raised the price on them. It helps it along there two
cents.
ALEX: Yeah. What do you get, what do you have to pay for a hide?
SHINABERRY: Uh, I don’t know. Hanover Shoe Company—they buy their own
hides and bring them in here for us to tan, like those over there. I think
they got the tag on them.
ALEX: Oh, yeah. They buy them and then ship them to this location?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: Now do you supply the sole leather, then for the Hanover Shoe
Company that’s located down in Marlinton?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: They use a certain amount of it, but they certainly don’t use it
all, do they?
SHINABERRY: No. Burns, trucks hauls it down to them.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: So many loads a week.
ALEX: Yeah, now where else does the, where else does the uh …
SHINABERRY: Hanover, Franklin, I think.
ALEX: Where does the production go? It goes to another….
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: To Hanover, Franklin. Now, Hanover has a plant in White
Sulphur Springs, too, don’t they?
SHINABERRY: I’m not sure.
ALEX: I think, yeah, I think they’re down there too. Got about every color
skin here in terms of the hair on the hide.
SHINABERRY: Yeah. Been to the sash…wash mills.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: These big mills out here.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Right in here.
ALEX: What’s the next process?
SHINABERRY: Come out of those wash mills they dump’em into these flat
trucks here.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Like that, they, they, like this guy over here doin’.
They tie the corners like those ropes on that pile right there, and they tie ‘em
together. Tie the corners together. Throw’em over in ‘em holes.
First holes there.
ALEX: Un, huh,. What is in those holes?
SHINABERRY: That’s just water there.
ALEX: Plain water?
SHINABERRY: Then the next time there’s lime. Lime vats all the way
up through there.
ALEX: Un, Huh.
SHINABERRY: Then they reel to one vat into the other. Uh, see that
guy over there is getting that string up outta the hide?
ALEX: Yes.
SHINABERRY: The last hide they throw in they tie a chin or a long string
on it.
ALEX: I SEE.
SHINABERRY Throws it over that reel.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: He starts the reel and they pull that rope to get the hide
started o’er in the next vat. They reel from one vat o’er into the next.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Each day they go into a different lime vat.
ALEX: Now what’s that? Hot water? Hot lime water?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. That’s lime comin’ out of that pipe up there.
ALEX: I see. All right we’ll watch you take it and cut a big hook
there to pull it to get it started?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. Yeah. They use the hooks all the time.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Ever’ hide or so they hook it an throw it out ant they got
rope outside ‘em holes.
ALEX: Where they tie, ten, twenty of those together at a time or how many?
SHINABERRY: No, they’re the…a hundred and forty-four, I think. A
hundred and forty-four to a string. They call them packs.
ALEX: Uh.
SHINABERRY: A pack of hide. I think a hundred and forty-four in a
pack.
ALEX: Uh, huh. How long are they left in this bath here? In a
pack.
SHINABERRY: They just move from one hole to the next ever’ day.
ALEX: Just move everyday? Move right on through.
SHINABERRY: See’em coming through that vat up there, that end vat?
ALEX: Yeah. Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Come out of that vat and come through there the last day.
They come out that, come across that conveyor and up here.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: The guys cut the strings off the corners., and hang them out
separately, and hang up, like that.
ALEX: Burns Motor Freight, then, haul these out of Chicago for you most of
the time?
SHINABERRY: No, I think different companies bring them in.
ALEX: But, does Burns do any of it? Do they do any?
SHINABERRY: I don’t think Burns brings in any. Any hides.
ALEX: So coming, coming out of Chicago different trucks bring it out of
the Midwest?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: They’ve got two sets of machines here. They take the
hair off, the hair machines.
ALEX: What do you do with that hair?
SHINABERRY: Hair comes through and runs under here.
ALEX: Have a hair house?
SHINABERRY: Yeah, they bale it, dry it and bale it for use for
installation and that sort of thing.
ALEX: I see. Who do they ship this to?
SHINABERRY: I’m not sure.
ALEX: You’re not sure.
SHINABERRY: There’s a lot I don’t know about.
ALEX: This becomes a by-product after it’s off the hide, huh?
SHINABERRY: Uh, huh.
ALEX: At this point, the hide’s completely stripped, Huh?
SHINABERRY: The hair’s all off of it. This is what they call a flesh
machine. Takes the flesh off of it here.
ALEX: Cleans off whatever remaining flesh that might be on.
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: Uh, huh. shines ‘er down.
SHINABERRY: Yeah, this machine. This is the last process.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: A little more.
ALEX: Squeeze it out like a wringer, isn’t it”?
SHINABERRY: Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: Kind of looks like a giant paddle wheel off the back of a, uh, of an
old paddle wheeler on the river.
SHINABERRY: Yeah. Comes out of this machine and goes through here
and washed around, back up that way.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Goes across that thing up there and comes into the other wheel
from the other side.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Comes down, washed back down another conveyor over there.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Over there they fold’em in the middle, fold em down the
backbone section and they cut the bellies off. Bellies are taken off.
Bellies come down this way and they drop in the barrels and the men o’er there
sort ‘em.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Show you more about that when we get around there.
ALEX: Okay.
SHINABERRY: Side. This side gets what they leave, you know.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: You may find a tan yard a little offensive in odor, but’s it’s
a vegetable extract. I kinda, I think it smells, a tan yard is pleasant to
me. I really don’t like the smell in here though.
ALEX: Yeah.
SHINABERRY: Mostly steer and some cows. Cut it and throw out the
sides. Spray it with bug spray. Our aim is to get it all.
This would make a good leather with the hair on, but we don’t get it all.
A certain percentage of it does go through. When the finished works is
into leather we can burn it. Take a torch or take a rag and wipe it.
That’s an extra operation.
ALEX: These two guys right here are turning proficiency. They’re
throwing that hide in there and shaking it out right. Going to strip most
of it. Is the pole stuck in the hide? Why would it stay on there?
That seems like a pretty….
SHINABERRY: Well, now, that doesn’t. It’s seven days in this lime
bin here.
ALEX: Has a lot to do with it.
SHINABERRY: And if we don’t treat it right up there somebody does
something wrong, or if the hide, itself, is beginning to deteriorate a little
bit, before we get it into the water…
ALEX: Oh, I see.
SHINABERRY: Sometimes the tankers will hold’em a long time before they
let’em go in order to price plan, price game, you know.
ALEX: Oh, I see.
SHINABERRY: They cure them. They put them in a brine fluid and they
cure them, but sometimes the bacteria may start to work on them before they get
them in. Now, if that happens that will set the hair.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: If we can’t get it all.
ALEX: Yeah.
SHINABERRY: To skin the animal, they’ll run it through, what they call a
bashing machine, into a brine solution. It will stay in there like
twenty-four hours, and then they’ll take it out and salt and fold it up into a
bundle. And, that’s the way we get it. Of course, they’re supposed
to be in a state where they’ll keep for a long time. Now, to play the
price game, why he may keep them a little bit too long. Now, The black
ones are a lot harder to get the hair off of than the red ones or the white ones
or any other color.
ALEX: Where’s the, I noticed we’ve been over in the hair house.
Where do they ship that hair to?
SHINABERRY: Most all the hair is exported.
ALEX: Exported?
SHINABERRY: Rug backing mostly.
ALEX: Rug backing.
SHINABERRY: What you see laying there has already come off. It’s
just excess that’s laying there in a pile. The roots are pulled out.
ALEX: Yeah.
SHINABERRY: Now, that you see on there, that’s out.
ALEX: Aw, Aw, I see.
SHINABERRY: There’ll be a little pile there.
ALEX: Aw, I see.
SHINABERRY: You won’t see too much on that pile there.
ALEX: It’s free by the time it gets here, then?
SHINABERRY: See that hair there, it’s just laying there. That
operation is on the grain. This machine here is working on the back of it.
And side.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Those are steel cylinders in there with blades. A rubber
roll pushes it up against that and cuts on it. Now, this is a sharp knife
cylinder, here. These cylinders are rounded off where they can run across
the grain without skinning it. Here’s a sharp one. It takes about
twenty-five minutes, a half-hour to go through there. Goes down there,
back across this one, up in there into the second one over there. Out, up
into there and that’s where they drop off the bellies, they take off the bellies
and they shine the rest.
ALEX: What do they use for the bellies?
SHINABERRY: They’ll turn it into grub leather. We’ll tan about six
or eight hundred of those bellies a day. They turn it into scrap leather.
But, what we pickle, ship out, pickle, they’ll turn into grub leather.
ALEX: Uh, huh. When you export that hair—where does most of it go?
SHINABERRY: I don’t know. We have a broker we sell it to, the
broker, I don’t know who he gives it to.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Fold them along the backbone and cut the bellies off, with
that radial saw over there.
ALEX: You got a slick, square hide there.
SHINABERRY: Yeah, it’s pretty slick.
ALEX: Scrub, wash.
SHINABERRY: Do you want to walk between these boards or do you want to go
around?
ALEX: Let’s go around.
SHINABERRY: Okay.
ALEX: It makes no difference though. I think it would probably be
safer to go around.
SHINABERRY: Yeah. This is called the rocker yard. That’s
liquor, tanning liquor in those vats.
ALEX: Uh, Huh.
SHINABERRY: They stay in those vats, but once they put them in---that’s
where that guy’s going with that truck load there.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: He goes down there to the hanger. There’s two guys down
there and they hang’em in. There’s two layers in ‘dem vats, one on the
bottom and one on top.
ALEX: How many hides to a vat? I can see there are many….
SHINABERRY: Uh, let’s see….
ALEX: Looks like there’s at least two hundred.
SHINABERRY: Uh, yeah, there’s more than two hundred. I don’t
remember how many there is.
ALEX: What do you have there?
SHINABERRY: I don’t know that either.
ALEX: You don’t know that either. A gentle massage, that’s the way
those things are raised and shoved back down, aren’t they.
SHINABERRY: Yeah, Oh, the pollution standards in West Virginia’s so high
they had to change over to oil.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Put in oil furnaces.
ALEX: Coming in on the Illinois Central on the boxcar. So, those,
uh, hides get in here then, uh train comes up, what about once a week?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. Yeah. Every Thursday. About to haul it out,
but I don’t see it now. They break it into the vats there then mix….
ALEX: Yeah. What do you do with those burlap backs then?
SHINABERRY: Oh, they wash’em and use’em for other things.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: And on some machine they have to wrap them with burlap.
Breaks it in downstairs, and it come up the conveyor and goes into several which
tubs wants it in.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Mixes up comes up here is what it looks like. Kind
of looks like little pieces of quartz or coal or something like that. It’s
a dark color, glassy look and uh, hard like a rock that will break easy.
ALEX: What was your grandfather’s name.
SHINABERRY: Alley Sheets.
ALEX: Alley Sheets?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: That’s quite an old name around here, too, isn’t it?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. ‘bout a year ago.
ALEX: How old was he when he died:
SHINABERRY: He was eighty somethin’ ‘bout eight three, four, or five.
ALEX: My goodness sakes.
SHINABERRY: Come out of the vats, the vats come out that way.
ALEX: Yeah, uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Bring’em down here and that’s the whole hide. Just the
one it stands.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: And here they cut it. They cut it two times. They
cut the shoulder off, and then they split it down the backbone after they cut
the shoulder off. And, the two pieces, they’ve got after they split it
down the backbone, they call’em bends.
ALEX: Uh, huh. How do you spell that?
SHINABERRY: B E N D S
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: And the bends are mostly used for sole leather. The
shoulders, they say they use the double rough shoulders for uh, welding.
You know, the welding around the shoe, it’s uh, like this leather piece here.
It’s not the sole itself….
ALEX: But, the inter sole.
SHINABERRY: It’s the layer that goes around.
ALEX: Yeah. Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: …to cut the shoulder off at, at the bend section, they split
it down the backbone. Throw the shoulders over here.
ALEX: Look how stiff they got.
SHINABERRY: Yeah. They’re pretty stiff.
ALEX: Are they paid on a production schedule on….
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: How many hides they handle, like back here?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: The guys…
SHINABERRY: Practically all the operations are on standard. How many
people.
ALEX: Yeah. They’re working pretty efficiently on that.
SHINABERRY: Yeah, they sure are.
ALEX: Where are they going on the conveyor belt there?
SHINABERRY: They go upstairs to, uh, what they call a wheel-bleach mill.
They run’em in there, and it takes all the tanning solution out. The color out,
it kind of makes’em bright or a lighter color. Go around over here to this
guy. That’s the sorter, for he sorts’em out. He takes, uh, what
they’re tryin’ to do is get what they call a curried selection. Uh, they
make white leather out of it. It’s supposed to be white.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Uh, curried leather can’t have any warps, butcher cuts, hair,
brand, stuff like that on it. They try to get it flawless.
ALEX: Flawless?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. What doesn’t make a curried shoulder, called a
double rough, and that’s what they make a welding out of.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: And, the double rough shoulder, this guy back here gets’em and
throws’em down in the hole. No, that was wrong. Double rough
shoulders are left here in this pile…
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: And they’ve got two guys at night that run the double rough
shoulders in these mills. They bring them over in the conveyor, we'll bleach’em in the wheel bleach mill, and go on through the process.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: But, the curried selections, uh, that’s the ones they put on
the pallets.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: And, uh, they go on that pallet for one day, come out the next
morning, curried shouylders. They bring’em ujp here and take’em out back
there the next morning after they put them in. They bring them up here and
they split’em. They split’em down about fifteen iron, I think.
Fifteen means about sixty-four. Iron is sixty-four.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: And then after they split’em, they go up this elevator here.
Upstairs, they run in this big mill right here. I’ll show you when we get
down there, and another little mill over there you see turning. And, when
they come out, they make this white-lookin’ leather on that load right there.
ALEX: Yes.
SHINABERRY: By those boards, that’s curried leather. That is
finished at the mill.
ALEX: What’s that leather by that thing downstairs:
SHINABERRY: Over there? That is bends that came back from the shippin’
room. They’re going to make chrome leather out of it. It’s a dark
leather.
ALEX: What do they use it for, you know?
SHINABERRY: Uh..
ALEX: It’s just a dark leather.
SHINABERRY: Yeah. They use for soles. One vat has water in it
and the other vat has a chrome solution. I’ll show you the leather after
while when we get around there where it’s at, but it’s real dark, real dark
leather. The guys are puttin’ the bends up the conveyor out of. They
go in these as mills, wheel-bleach mills, you saw how dark they were up there,
and this is where they come out.
ALEX: Cleaning or stretching?
SHINABERRY: This is a wringer. That’s a wringer right there.
Just wrings the bends out, across a conveyor, up another conveyor, to some wheel
over here.
ALEX: Runs them through mineral oil, ephedrine salts, flax, don’t they?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. They run in there for thirty minutes. They
dump them out and what those guys are doing, they’re catching ‘em in that big
truck.
ALEX: Thank you. A hundred and twenty pieces.
SHINABERRY: Chrome leather.
ALEX: A real dark leather, isn’t it?
SHINABERRY: Yeah. It’s chrome shoulders.
ALEX: Keep them covered to keep them from drying out?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: To keep them moist.
SHINABERRY: This is a set out machine. It sends the bends after they
come from the wheel over there.
ALEX: To more or less straighten the hide?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: To get the humps and bumps out of it, Huh?
SHINABERRY: Yeah, wrinkles and everything. This is where it will be
before it goes to the dry loft. It hangs up there about five, about five
days, ‘till it dries.
ALEX: …beside have a arm?
SHINABERRY: They could have, yeah. Vats here, one’s water and the
other one’s chrome. When it comes out, it looks like that dark leather you
saw out there.
ALEX: Yes. The one I saw.
SHINABERRY: This is a flute solution here. This is a chrome tanning
solution. That stuff right there in those bags. That green looking
stuff.
ALEX: I see.
SHINABERRY: Six times.
ALEX: You run them out six times?
SHINABERRY: Yeah.
ALEX: Run them through that wringer like that?
SHINABERRY: Yeah, he’ll run that one six times.
ALEX: What do you ship the hides off to?
SHINABERRY: …here. This guy’s running the curry trallies.
Down here they sort them out. Sort the different grades out.
ALEX: Back with the red and black hairs are trying to get back here with
the gray ones.
SHINABERRY: All gray. The two I’ve got left.
ALEX: Yeah, I’ve never seen an operation like this before in my life,
first for my family.
SHINABERRY: This is the largest sole leather plant in the world, but we
make a lot of other things besides. This is all scrap leather. These
are the bellies which are the underside of the hides.
ALEX: Yes.
SHINABERRY: And the shoulders here, the shoulder part of the hide.
ALEX: There’s nothing like a good piece of leather, though, is there?
SHINABERRY: We buy it so we like it. We gave up on leather heels.
We don’t like leather heels too well, but a lot of people prefer them. We
think we make quality men’s shoes particularly curried leather. That’s
really…
ALEX: What do you do with that pole over there?
SHINABERRY: That’s a measuring device. In sole leather we have
another type of gauge we measure the thickness. It’s an iron gauge and
it’s a forty-eighth of a inch. That’s the way leather is sold. Mr.
Alexander, this is Tom Morrison.
ALEX: I was hoping I’d get to talk with you about the company background a
little if I could. Shake you loose, I know you’re a busy man, but, uh, I’d
like to find out something about the founding dates, this sort of thing.
MORRIS: Sure, I’d be glad to help you.
SHINABERRY: Very accurate…clinic, but not upholstery leather or shoe upper
leather. This is much more accurate. A lot of this leather is sold
by the square foot. Most of the sole leather is sold by the pound.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: Same kind of operation except…. Now this is our strip
leather, we’re working on here, but this goes mostly in the waist belts.
Strip this down into widths they want, put a buckle on it, dye it whatever color
they like.
ALEX: A belt like I’ve got on.
SHINABERRY: That right. It might well be the same. Some
sanding machines take that grain off, and there’ll be another type of finish to
go on.
ALEX: Uh, huh. These men certainly see the end product here, can’t
they, the operation, can’t they? Don’t have to walk too far to see it, do
they?
SHINABERRY: No.
ALEX: It’s not the end product in terms of shoes, it’s not what I’m
saying, but in terms of what they’re doing, their process in making leather.
SHINABERRY: Those fellows checking for cracks sometimes they get a little
crack in them. Mostly, this leather is made for a very small buckle, made
to go over a wristwatch or something that has to stand a real tight bend.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
SHINABERRY: They go to all the work to cut those, and when they put a band
in the shop, they just love us. They think we’re great people. It is
what we call a back operation, some people just like a finished coat on the
backside.
ALEX: Oh yeah.
SHINABERRY: It changes it from that to what you see over there.
(Begin interview with Tom Morrison, Plant Manager)
MORRIS: …Jackie Hunt was playing football against Wesleyan. I see now
where they’re pushing him for the Hall of Fame.
ALEX: Yes, they are.
MORRIS: You’re not old enough to remember him, are you?
ALEX: Well, but, you know, I’m a great Cam Henderson fan.
MORRIS: Oh, are you really?
ALEX: Cam, uh, I went over, I was one of the pallbearers for his wife’s
funeral. We buried her over in Glenville last year. I was just at a
breakfast meeting yesterday morning in Huntington with the President who made a
proposal before the community. It had already made the Board of Regents on
our Multi purpose facility. He said very definitely name it the Cam
Henderson Memorial Hall or something of that nature.
MORRIS: Yeah, he was great. I didn’t follow him too much at Marshall,
but I knew a lot of the people who played for him at D and E up here. He
was a stickler.
ALEX: This Buck Harper up here, I guess, played for him and Spike
Underwood played over here for him somewhere. Spike, you know, ran for the
legislature last year in Cabell County and was elected, and he ran this time for
assessor. He got nominated on the Democratic ticket, so he may become the
next assessor of Cabell County.
MORRIS: Red Brown was one of his players too.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
MORRIS: He was actually a better basketball player than he was a football
player. You know Paul Collins?
ALEX: Oh, yeah. I talked with Paul yesterday.
MORRIS¨ He and I were in the same high school class.
ALEX: He told me to convey his regards to everybody I saw up here.
MORRIS: Paul worked here every summer while he was in school.
ALEX: Paul’s a vice president, now at Marshall. He’s doing very
well.
MORRIS: He was a very hard worker, and I supposed he still is.
ALEX: He sure is.—You’d give him(Jackie Hunt) your vote for the Hall of
Fame?
MORRIS: Yeah, oh yeah. I had an idea I’m not sure that he might have
made All-American at that time. I think maybe he did.
ALEX: He had to, I’m sure. Yeah, he’s from Huntington.
MORRIS: Is he still there?
ALEX: Jackie’s still there. It I’m not mistaken, he’s selling for
Bill Turnbull at the Buick place. He’s a car salesman at Bill Turnbull’s
Buick there in Huntington.
I met, uh, Jackie, uh, I think at the Buick dealership there one day, and I have
seen some of the meetings and gatherings that they have in honor of the athletes
and so on.
What’s your pound production per day?
MORRIS: Well…
ALEX: Do you measure it or hides or number of hides?
MORRIS: Number of hides, run around nineteen hundred hides a day.
ALEX: What’s been the maximum you’ve ever run.
MORRIS: That it.
ALEX: That it?
MORRIS: That’s it. Uh, we hope before the summers’ over to get a few
more pieces, but that’s the biggest production we’ve ever had. At one
time, this, all of this operation here is comparatively new. It took three
years. We went really from practically nothing to the largest producing in
the country with this type of thing.
ALEX: Uh, huh. So, you’re the absolute largest producer in the
United States that sole leather. That means that you not only shipped
Hanover locally, Franklin and Marlinton…
MORRIS: We ship tit all to Marlinton, they have a plant there.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: Then, they ship to Franklin, Hanover, Pennsylvania, and to White
Sulphur Springs. They have a nice plant there.
ALEX: That is a recent plant, isn’t it?
MORRIS: Yeah. That was one of those Burlington Mills tape plants.
ALEX: Ribbon, wasn’t it.
MORRIS: Ribbon tape. Yeah. They moved out and left about 145
employees there and we knew about it. So, we contacted…well, the president
of Hanover shoe Company is a director of our company and we contacted and told
him about it. They looked it over and, uh, went in. I guess they’re
very happy with it. In the meantime, he has left them and is now executive
vice president of the J. M. McGowen Company.
ALEX. Uh, huh.
MORRIS: McGowen, makes Tom McCann shoes.
ALEX: Oh yeah.
MORRIS: It went from about a fifty million dollar sales company to about
seven hundred fifty million dollars. We got, Florsheim –gets an awful lot
of our leather. Florshiem Shoe Company.
ALEX: Nunn-Bush?
MORRIS: None, in which we sell no leather in the piece. Now, uh, of
course, we sell cutters that cut the leather into soles that are made by the
soles. Uh, same thing of J. F. McGowen, we don’t sell J. F. McGowen any
leather for himself, but it goes through a cutter.
ALEX: I see.
MORRIS: In fact, J. F. McGowen has just started putting leather back on
the shoe. You know, they went completely out of the leatherwork.
They made a mistake. That’s the reason they put Matt Fitzgibbon from
Hanover there because he was probably one of the best men in the country on
leather shoes, and they wanted somebody to show them how to make leather shoes
again.
ALEX: What was his last name again?
MORRIS: Fitzgibbons.
ALEX: How do you spell that?
MORRIS: F I T Z G I B B O N S.
ALEX: Oh. Fitzgibbons.
MORRIS: Fitzgibbons. Yeah. They were originally from Winston,
Massachusetts. His father was a cut sole operator.
ALEX: …been in the family for years.
MORRIS: Well, his brother is the President of our company. They’re
kind of, the Fitzgibbons are pretty close knit.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
MORRIS: So, we don’t sell Hanover any, any leather. He can’t afford
Hanover. They buy their own hides and we tan for them. And we
contract the tanning. We sell a lot of leather to Jametsco, a low general
shoe company.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: The wrap is small. Small.
ALEX: Uh, huh. Three years old when you go here.
MORRIS: Yes, in 1939, I came on full time. This is what they call
bends. This is the best part of the leather for wearing qualities we need
on the shoes.
ALEX: Fine looking leather, I tell you. I’ve always, I’ve always
liked leather. I don’t know why. I remember as a kid I’d go and buy
shoes, I’d grab up the leather and smell it and test it and bend it and feel.
MORRIS: Most of, most of the leather in this tannery will have brands on
it because that’s what we buy. The ones that are clean and don’t have the
brands go into upholstery and get into upper leather.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: The way we cut soles, why we can use some of the brands.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: Cut the soles, cut those ends of the heels even if they’re hidden.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: the leather is dried back in this area here and it’s brought in
and they just put these water sprays. Filed down overnight, and then we
spray, spray it with oil solution. And put it through this machine which
you can see the cylinders there. Those cylinders just run against the
leather. This machine was made in Czechoslovakia. Then, we have a
second machine in, which you’ll see and a third one. The second one we
built and the third one is a German.
ALEX: You have three countries represented.
MORRIS: That’s the third largest business in this country has been the,
and very few American people will spend any time and money trying to develop
machines for us. Either, we have to go to foreign countries or develop
them ourselves. The fiber… We’ve got the fiber set. You
know these were all filled up with fiber in here. And once we get those
dried, the nails will come off. They’re hard to do much with from then on,
but that’s where….go down flat… a piece of leather. This is through here
and it’s got an oil solution on it. Actually what has happened…we’ve
swelled this up with lime. Because, that does two things: That
dissolves the epidermal layer, and it releases the hair. It loosens the
hair from the hair follicle, and then we put it through the machine that will
scrape the hair off. And, it forces it open, so, uh, the tanning material
moves in and all of the solutions move in through these pores that are open.
Now, we want to close them up. That’s what we, that’s what we…we close
them up to keep the water from going in and bringing the color out.
I have an idea that closed shortly there. In order to work out those deep
wrinkles, we have to put it on this type of machinery. This pushes that
plate up against that glass ball. It’s getting a lot of pressure on it:
probably five thousand pounds per square inch. We don’t get that in this
machine over here. So, real rough leather. All the leather is
finished that way.
ALEX: Oh.
MORRIS: I hope, that’s pretty well closed.
ALEX: Yeah, it is.
MORRIS: The leather is taken
upstairs to get put in heat for two days and dried. Then, it’s cooked in a
wax solution in order to get some SHINABERRYe on it.
ALEX: I suppose that all the cattle rustling that have been going on that
there’s been an increase in the branding of animals. You probably see more
different brands and imagine a lot of owners before wouldn’t think of a brand or
branding now.
MORRIS: Now, take a state like West Virginia, they set a branding program
with the Department of Agriculture. They register the brands. This
type of thing is completely new in the east, although I haven’t seen anybody in
West Virginia branding.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: But they’re set up to do it.
ALEX: It would make, it takes a strip of bad leather. Would be a
rough strip of leather each time in a hide. Every time you put a brand on
it, you’ve got a place in your hide.
MORRIS: Downgrades it.
ALEX: Downgrades it.
MORRIS: This machine is what we wet the leather in. Dries it off.
ALEX: Makes it more pliable.
MORRIS: That’s right. It just gives those fibers more moisture in
them so the leather will pack.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: You try to roll it or finish it in that kind of…, it’s very soft,
very spongy. This is some foam leather that we make that is waterproof.
Now, of course, this will be leveled and this grain will be sanded off of that,
but this is Hanover shoe companies’ for outer soles and it’s waterproofing
materials.
ALEX: What kind of operation is…?
MORRIS: Start on the bottom of this and wax, the same type of operation on
another stack. Of this stuff, and we sort this into three grades.
One is just scrap and there’s two grades of it that would be used. Made
leather board of some of it. Some of it is actually cutting the strips and
pasted together. Some of it is pasted on nylon and some pasted on plastic
and belting.
ALEX: So, nearly every scrap of it is used?
MORRIS: Every piece of it.
ALEX: Every piece of it.
MORRIS: It gets off of the bellies, and this is just sold as scrap, and it
will be ground up and used as leather boards. A lot of it goes overseas
and New York.
In the sorting area, each truck will represent a different weight and a
different selection.
ALEX: These fellows are stamping them.
MORRIS: Well, these fellows are ironing, I told you about ironing a
forty-eighth of an inch.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: And they’re gauging it about eighteen inches down from the root of
the tail.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: And, it’s broken down to seven to eight iron eight to nine iron,
nine to ten iron, ten to eleven and a half iron, and an eleven and a half iron
to nothing. You see, that’s seven forty-eighths to an inch to eight
forty-eighths of an inch.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: Which is, you know, fairly close tolerance on it…
ALEX: Sure it is. Is this the iron leather you were talking about?
MORRIS: This is what, this is what he’s doing. Harvey, let me show
this gauge here to him. Second. See the way this is in there six to
seven. Now, you’ve got that much room to read a forty-eighth of an inch.
ALEX: Oh yeah.
MORRIS: So, actually from there to there you’ve got that much room to read
a ninety-sixth of an inch. So, it’s quite a gauge really. You get….close
tolerance, quite accurate.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: That is, the guy that is reading it who knows what he’s doing.
Sometimes they don’t know what they’re doing. These brands are all
damaged. The most valuable piece of leather that you get is one that is
clear.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: And then a one brand is the next valuable and then a two brand.
ALEX: Now that’s a two brand there.
MORRIS: That’s a two brand there. Then we go into the threes and
fours and fives and then you finally get into the rejects.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: Which is branded all over or some other damage. Now, there
is one that has nothing wrong with it at all. That’s, that’s top quality.
ALEX: There’s a second one there.
MORRIS: that’s a second one. We buy practically all Colorado steers.
Colorado steer is the type of animal that you can sight brands on it.
They’re out on the range, and the people put big brands on them. They want
to be able to read them for a mile, I guess…
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: But, most of the time they will only brand one side, so that the other
side, in most cases we get a clear piece of leather. That stamp?
ALEX: That his stamp?
MORRIS: That stamp indicates that it’s Hanover Shoe Company leather.
This is a butcher cuts. The butcher cut that one he took if off.
That’s terrific damage.
ALEX: He cut a hole all the way through.
MORRIS: Yeah. With those slashes in there it’s just. That’s
going down into a three grade. But, when you’re cutting when you’re
cutting sometimes they cut, and they have a machine that they keep feeding
straight through. And then you have to keep what you get. But on
beam cutting the way you put it under and you select the cut…
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: You can heel these in. You can put your sole like this, and
put this in a heel, or cut it this way, and put it in a heel.
ALEX: I see.
MORRIS: As long as it’s in the heel it will be covered up. It will
be all right.
ALEX: and it’s not exposed and really it’s not interior in terms of the
product, the final product.
MORRIS: No, no. It has no defect.
ALEX: But, it just doesn’t show.
MORRIS: I thought it was my belt. But now, here’s another defect
that we get. These are grub holes.
ALEX: How do they get like that?
MORRIS: We buy cattle out on these ranges, big ranges, these Texas ranches
you know. What are they, a hundred thousand acres with cattle running all
over the place?
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: It’s really hard to control places like this.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: I think we’ve got a different size farm, but there you go for miles and
you don’t see any. There’s a different weight and a different selection, a
synthetic rubber and a resin to increase the wear, particularly for children’s
shoes. There’re tricks to every trade, and we try to put the stuff into
wherever we can get the most in return. As a result, our efforts are out.
That means we have all these selections. Plus the fact, we do have certain
shoe selections for specific shoe factories asking for certain things.
ALEX: I notice you don’t have your name on them.
MORRIS: Well, we have Hanover buy their own hides, and we tan them for
Hanover. And, they just take, as they come, divided into three ways.
They have a lightweight, a middleweight, and a heavyweight. And, the only
diversification from that id that we’re making some chrome leather for them.
Some chrome belts. And other from that, we also select the Florsheim.
And uh, oh, anywhere up to 15 percent of our total would go into Florsheim.
And, they have their own qualities, standards. Incidentally, they aren’t
as tight as our own.
ALEX: What’s that?
MORRIS: Incidentally, they’re not as tight as our own standards.
Florshiem knows how to take care of themselves’.
ALEX: Yeah,
MORRIS: They help their own in the shoe business. They are the
backbone in the leather industry because they’ve been so successful and they’ve
always used and say they’ll use a very large percentage of leather.
ALEX: uh, huh.
MORRIS: other people like Hanover, Rhineburg, and these people are afraid
not to keep leather lines in when they see the success that Hanover, or that
Florsheim is having. So our company, I think, you know, if anything would
happen to Florshiem would really quit using leather, then, the industry would be
in real trouble. This is some leather here that is going down to Baltimore
to Dixon Barber. They make women’ shoes. Not many women’s
shoes are made in this country anymore. But, there’s a company in
Baltimore that are making them and this leather is level. Put through a
splitting machine, and then this is sanded on this side.
ALEX: Fine looking leather there.
MORRIS: Yes, that is a good grade. Excuse me. We used so many
pallets that finally we had to put our own pallet shop in.
ALEX: Do you get your lumber…
MORRIS: Buy the lumber locally.
ALEX: Uh, huh. Bartow down here?
MORRIS: No, we get this, most of this coming from George Hook over in just
on the other side of Frost on the Virginia side.
ALEX: Oh yes. Are those the ones that are going or the ones that
aren’t going?
MORRIS: These are the ones that are going.
ALEX: And about three or four places.
MORRIS: Well, this, this factory is pretty specific in what they want,
both in quality and thickness because they have machines that they cut this up
into soles, and they have machines to where they stitch it and those machines
are set up for certain weights. And, if we don’t have this pretty close,
they can just foul those machines up.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: Every once in a while we get a little bit lax, and we don’t do
this girdling. He’s measuring the square feet of the leather. That
gauge up there is the number of feet, that leather is sold by the foot.
This, leather will be sold by the foot because it’s split. Now, most of
the sole leather will be by the pound. We just recently got ourselves in
trouble with Dixon-Barber. How big trouble with this shipment, will there
be, Harvey?
Harvey: Oh, I don’t know.
MORRIS: And then sometimes a fellow will accept it and find we went a
little bit overboard, and then he’ll come and talk to both people, because
actually the quality of a piece of leather is pretty much to a matter of
judgment. What does he think about it? The guy that picks it up to
cut it may have some other idea about what he thinks about it. And he may
be looking at it through another set of eyes for his vies: what he’s going to
do?
ALEX: How much will you ship to this company in Baltimore?
MORRIS: Uh, it’s not a big company, but I think a couple hundred pieces a
week.
ALEX: A couple hundred pieces a week.
MORRIS: What do we ship, Bart, a hundred a week or two hundred a week?
Bart: What ever we can get out for them.
MORRIS: Well, it’s supposed to be a hundred a week or two hundred a week.
Bart: I’ve already worked 257 today.
ALEX: Two-hundred fifty-seven today.
MORRIS: Well, that’s because they’re sending back some leather. Some
of it’s put up with just runners underneath, some of it’s put up on low pallets,
some on high, depending on what each customer wants. They’ll usually have
different kinds of wants.
ALEX: Miller Shoe, where are they?
MORRIS: Cincinnati.
ALEX: They’re in Cincinnati. Do they manufacture men’s shoes?
MORRIS: Oh, I wish I could tell you.
ALEX: You don’t know.
MORRIS: I should know, but I’m sorry I don’t.
ALEX: that’s all right, a shot in the dark.
MORRIS: That’s nine to ten hour. That’s nine forty-eight to ten
forty-eight. Not over two grams. It will run 60 percent branded and
40 percent clear.
ALEX: Uh, huh. Who does you shelling of the leather, is it mostly
done by telephone or do you have an outside salesman?
MORRIS: Our offices, our home offices are in Boston. And our sales
come from out of the Boston office. Our sales manager has offices there.
We don’t have too many salesmen. In some cases like out on the West Coast
we have agents out there.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: To sell for us. It just costs too much money and you can’t
get out there. But, that’s not to say that they can do a lot of selling
out on the telephone, but like everything else they like the personal contact
too.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: This is chrome leather going into a cutter in a chrome outsole.
Chrome outsole. It you sew the leather back behind how it looks pretty
terrible.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: And then this is what it comes out to.
ALEX: Yeah. Is this leather considered to be good leather for
wearing quality?
MORRIS: Yes. It’s perspiration resistant. The military use a
lot of it for insoles.
ALEX: Oh, I see.
MORRIS: That also contains paraitratheol, which is a fungicide.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: That was discovered back in the Second World War when the shoes
started falling off of everyone’s feet down in New Guinea in the South Pacific,
and finally, they found the fungus that was attacking the leather.
ALEX: And you say it’s water repellent too?
MORRIS: Well, it’s perspiration resistant. You know that
perspiration will deteriorate leather and this will withstand. This cowboy
boot type of leather…
ALEX: Yeah, it a lot myself.
MORRIS: In a lot of cases that’s solid leather heel, in fact, recently, I
think they’ve even stopped using leather board for some of those heels and using
all leather. And uh, when the rubber heel first came out and that goes
back to about 1920, the United States Leather Company was the biggest Tanning
company in the world at that time. They’re out of business now. They
lost the heel business. They closed down seventeen tanneries. That’s
how many tanneries were devoted to leather that was made into heels. No,
they weren’t as large as this tannery.
ALEX: Are these during the same operation?
MORRIS: Miami Footwear.
ALEX: Miami Footwear.
MORRIS: Yes. Miami Footwear makes shoes for at least the last time I
visited them for Sacs Fifth Avenue. I think, I think, the name of the shoe
was Jack Rogers it I recall right. That’s a women’s shoe. For
women’s shoes, they usually want the thin leather and soft leather. The
men’s shoes they want thicker leather and firmer leather. This is some
leather here that has been sanded. The grain side, the hair side has been
pickin off.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: That will take any, almost any kind of a finish. It’s a real
blond color. If you antique it or anything like that, you have a contrast.
It’s pretty good. This leather is going out to mark control and they’re
the people make mechanical washers.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
MORRIS: This is military chrome insole leather that is made out of
shoulders. This is seven, seven and a half iron. This all has to
meet government specifications for chrome, for ph, and for PMP. I think we
have some down there that hasn’t been sanded so you can see the difference.
This leather is going out to California to the Camel Shoe Company, another
high-grade women’s shoe. That’s the problem with a lot of these people.
They don’t want any brand, so we’re restricted to the amount we can get because
we just don’t have that much stuff not branded. This is a chrome insole
leather before it has been cut.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: This is a curry fan here. This is going into waist type of
things as the shoulders down below. Now, this is where the warble has come
out and healed over. See what I’m talking about?
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
MORRIS: It’s a lighter shade that sole leather, almost white. Here’s
where they will be sorted and put into selectors wherever, they might belong.
Usually, they’ll be shipped out in container trucks…
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: This is a split off the impregnated leather I was telling you
about.
ALEX: Oh, yes.
MORRIS: Most of the, most of the impregnated leather will go into
children’s shoes.
ALEX: Yes. It’s darker looking leather.
MORRIS: Yes, it is. Maybe we have some here. In central
Pennsylvania area, Harrisburg, Lancaster, and that area, there’s a lot of very
high-grade children’s leather factories up there. This is not what we
want. What we want is the color that is even a little browner than this
right on the edge, so this will have to back and be processed again. Now,
this is more, this is more the color that we’re after.
ALEX: Looking for a deep brown.
MORRIS: Now, this is for children’s sole shoes. Most of it is
Stride-Rite. Well, yes. I know that Stride-Rite’s a customer and…not
of ours. Not at this level. On an effort to shoe company,…in
Pennsylvania do have anybody else who uses it from us, or is that the…
ALEX: Yes.
MORRIS: Oh, also from up at Brooklyn, there’re children’s shoes. I
don’t know the brand on them. They were at one time putting practically
all their production into this type thing. They were going on very fine
boys’ shoes. Unfortunately they are out of business. We never
sold them much leather either. Virginia Oak was pretty tough
customers, creditors with discounts.
MORRIS: A history, a little history of Frank that I got out of the
Charleston Gazette or something when he died.
ALEX: Now your father was one of the original founders?
MORRIS: No, no. But he worked here. This company was formed
about 1902. I’m not sure about that but I think that’s when it was.
There was a financial interest from Wheeling, which was 75 percent capital, and
25 percent of the capital were Howe’s brothers of Boston who were leather
merchants, and that was incorporated under the name of Pocahontas Tanning
Company. The Wheeling people, their names were Hoffman, H-O-F-F-M-A-N.
And they were a German family. And they had a tannery on the Wheeling
Island that made harness leather. They had a tannery in…that made sole
leather. They had a tannery in Des Moines, Iowa that saw saddle leather.
This was a new venture. And their arrangement with the Howes’ was that
they would buy the hides, buy the extracts, of course we’d pay for them, and
they would sell the leather. And, uh, that was the arrangement. All
the rest of it was up to the Wheeling group to operate the tannery, hire the
people, pay the payrolls, and do whatever else there was to do. Buy other
materials. That went on until, well, up to 1917, this tannery was a
hemlock tannery. They tanned nothing but hemlock. And that made a
very harsh leather, a very red leather.
ALEX: that’s the bark of the hemlock?
MORRIS: The bark of the hemlock, that made a very course fiber so when it
was wet back, they’d punch holes in it to drive wooden pegs in it. It was
peg layered. When it dried, those fibers would grab hold of that
peg, you know, just like glue. That’s the way the shoe construction was
made from the leather at this tannery. After the First World War, when
things began to be mechanical, and they started to use sewing machines, that
leather was too hard because it would break the needles. It would always
break the thread. Most of the time it would break the needle. So,
the, the trend was away from the from the hard hemlock leather to a softer
combination leather that was made from oak bark, chestnut bark, and chestnut wood
extract and hemlock. And then they started to import some extract from
South America. And they blended that which made a soft type of leather and
actually the type of leather that we’re still making today. In 1921, my
father came here. He’d been a tanner for the United States Leather Company
in Pennsylvania. He came here in 1921.
ALEX: And you came with him at age three?
MORRIS: I came with him at age three. And, uh, he’d lived here all
of his life and died in 1960. I started to work full time for the company
in 1939 and I’ve been here ever since. And, in 1947, uh, the Howe’s
Brothers Company in Boston at that time had interest in two tanneries in
Michigan. They were interested in the tannery at Columbus, Indiana, three
tanneries in Pennsylvania—West hickory,…., and Mount Hughet, and an interest in
this tannery. They merged all of those plants and sold everything to New
York University. And New York University operated the plants up until
about three years ago when the …came into our company. He began to read
the indenture, indenture, and the financial. He always went with the New
York University so he got the idea that we could probably buy it back from New
York University which we did. But in the meantime, it’s cut down to two
tanneries. One in Collensville, Pennsylvania , and this tannery.
ALEX: In Collensville?
MORRIS: In Collensville, Pennsylvania. In Clearfield County.
ALEX: I see.
MORRIS: And this tannery. We have our own cut saw plant in Ridgeway,
Pennsylvania. Cuts taps from tear work. Our sales offices are in
Boston, our administrative-executive offices are in Boston, an uh, that’s…
ALEX: How many people do you employ at this site?
MORRIS: A hundred fifty or better. Ah, It’s better. I think about a
hundred seventy. Yeah.
ALEX: About a hundred seventy. A hundred seventy,
Payroll roughly?
MORRIS: Round $26,000 a week. Roughly, $30,000 a week.
ALEX: Thirty thousand a week. That’s net not gross?
MORRIS: That’s net pay.
ALEX: Net pay not gross. And, uh, most of these men are local men.
You’re providing jobs.
MORRIS: We have men coming here from as far as Riverton. We have
some men here from Marlinton. We have a man I think from….
ALEX: But most of them are from Pocahontas County.
MORRIS: Most of them are Pocahontas County, yes. Most of us are
Pocahontas people.
ALEX: Well. Has business been pretty good?
MORRIS: Business has been excellent. Even when all the other economy
was bad, why, our business was doing pretty well. Last year it’s really
been good. We just can’t make enough. I don’t think that will hold,
that will last forever, it never has, but it’s been nice while it lasted.
Up to a point. We get people on the telephone wanting to know why we sold
them the leather if we weren’t going to deliver them, that type of thing.
ALEX: Yes.
MORRIS: Pretty hard to run a store with empty shelves, sometimes.
ALEX: That’s right. That’s right.
MORRIS: I know our salesmen sometimes hate to hear the telephone ring.
It’s quite a problem.
ALEX: And you’ve been running about nineteen hundred hide, per day here.
And that’s about maximum production.
MORRIS: That’s at the moment that is maximum production. We’re going
to put in some other machinery, and we’re going to put in some mills for drum
tanning. What it will work out to be I don’t know, but we’re going to try
to get some more through. Bottleneck is really back in the beam house
where the lights are put in the tan yard.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: that’s where the real bottleneck is, of course.
ALEX: Some of the equipment out on the finishing in here could take a
little more…
MORRIS: Yes, yes, of course, you could operate two shifts. The beam
house is a one- shift operation. Could make two shifts there…
ALEX: Do you work two shifts here?
MORRIS: No, we don’t.
ALEX¨ No two shifts anywhere?
MORRIS: I don’t think we do have. … the only one.
ALEX: There’s actual operation at Curry mills.
MORRIS: Curry Mills, yes. Of course, we have staggered starting
times. People come in at four o’clock in the morning and work eight hours.
Other people come in at seven o’clock to eight o’clock and work through.
ALEX: Oh, yes. So there’s a shift basis. It’s a single shift
operation. I think you’ve given me most of the information.
MORRIS: Oh, Pennsylvania tannery is a fifteen hundred hide a day tannery.
Not quite as large. They only make, uh, sole leather bends and, uh, double
rough shoulders. You didn’t see any double rough shoulders, but those
double rough shoulders are put into walking leather. A lot of people do
that.
ALEX: Uh, huh.,
MORRIS: And the Goodyear welt shoe is a little piece of leather.
Rockinson leather. It goes between the upper leather and the sole leather,
and they sew through that. That, that acts as the, it holds the shoe
together.
ALEX: Or soles?
MORRIS: No, it’s right around the edge.
ALEX: Right around the edge? It’s a welt. Oh!
MORRIS: It’s a welt.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
MORRIS: Where the …it’s almost round belted, that’s almost what it really
amount to. Like a sewing machine belt, but, not quite.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: It’s right, it’s just…I don’t know what you call it, but you use
it when you’re sewing clothes together. They use it to bind seams with
there. And then they use it to use the upper end of the sole on that one
type of shoe. And, uh, we don’t make very much of that, that leather
because most of our product is going into the Curry operation, but in
Pennsylvania the fifteen hundred hides, they’re all going into sole leather and
all double humped shoulders. The only thing we make up there other than
that, is about eight sturdy sides a day and that goes into saddle making.
That’s a complete half hide, the head, the belly, everything. It’s just
lifted off. Split the hide down the backbone from the head to the tail and
that’s what we call a sturdy side. It’s almost like the Curry leather.
It’s heavy in oil, so that it will bend and wear water resistant.
Actually, goes into saddles in most cases.
ALEX: Now, for the biography, when were you born?
MORRIS: When was I born?
ALEX: Yes. You were three years old when your father…
MORRIS: I was born November 12, 1917.
ALEX: Nineteen-seventeen.
MORRIS: That seems like a long time ago.
ALEX: No, it doesn’t really. I think you’ve given us more than
adequate time. I know you’re busy. I want to thank you and say that
I certainly appreciate the time that you’ve taken with us. And for having
Howard here to accompany on out of here and the other, and his time too is
appreciated. You have a very fine operation here. One in which you
can be proud of, and I think every West Virginian should be proud of it.
MORRIS: You’ll find, if you read this little article, I hope he’ll show it
to you, there was two Franks. There was Frank Howe and the Frank Huffman.
Now, we don’t know whether this town was named after one particular man or after
both of them. Regardless of what that article said, I really don’t
remember what it said, but the town was named after one or both of those two
people.
ALEX: Uh, huh.
MORRIS: And both of them were incorporators. Incorporators
originally. Probably, they just decided the name of Frank and covered the
whole thing. That would have been a different way of doing it. It
would have got both groups. It would have got the Boston group and the
Wheeling group, so nobody could fuss about it.
ALEX: Right. They’re different names.
MORRIS: I think I know where Durbin go its name. I think Durbin,
there’s a man around, uh Clarksburg…
ALEX: I think I dug that, I think I dug that, I think I’ve dug
that out.
MORRIS: …that owned that property.
ALEX: I think I’ve dug that out though. It may have come from the
survey made by, uh, one of the explorers that was in here was French by the name
of Bartea. It’s spelled E A you know. I found that.
Bartue. Your theory was what and where? Bartow where? You just
thought you knew another family, and I interrupted you.
MORRIS: No, Durbin. I think it was named after a man of the same
name, but Bartow I have no idea. Bartow was all laid off, it’s actually a
town that’s, that’s, courthouse is laid out the streets and all. That was
laid out by a man named Arbogast, I don’t remember his first name. The man
named Arbogast has dreams of this becoming quite a town, which really never
developed.
ALEX: Did you know any Taylors? John Taylor?
MORRIS: I’ve known some Taylors, but there’s not too many Taylors who work
here. Most of the Taylors were down at Green Bank in the Dunmore area, and
I really didn’t say that I’ve known a lot of them—Rubin, Dan, and those people.
ALEX: Dan Airsdale’s another name.
MORRIS: Airsdale?
ALEX: Dan Airsdale. Have you heard that name?
MORRIS: Gary Airsdale who built the hotel at Boyer. Uh, his father
was a finishing foreman here, well, back before my father came.
ALEX: Do you remember his name?
MORRIS: No, I really don’t, uh, Sam Airsdale.
ALEX: Sam Airsdale.
MORRIS: And he owned the, he owned the house, the first house in, coming
up Frank this side of the filling station, the store there.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
MORRIS: they lived there and then, uh, I really don’t what Gary was a
carpenter. I don’t think he ever really did too much. He, always,
seemed to make a living though. Then he got the store at Boyer, the Post
Office, and then he built that motel, and his daughter inherited the motel and
is still running it. They’ve added to it.
ALEX: Yeah, that’s on the right hand side as you come out.
MORRIS: That’s right.
ALEX: The store’s on the left hand side there.
MORRIS: Yeah, well, the store was between the motel and their home.
There’s a building there, but it’s not being used. I suppose it’s filled
with antiques. They’ve quite a lot of antiques. They had a big
antique sale a while back, so I don’t know how many is still in there.
But, there were a lot of antiques in there. It was a post office for a
time after they closed the store.
ALEX: Oh, yeah.
MORRIS: You’ll see on the right as you go down a cinderblock building.
Here is the hair house where we wash and dry the hair that we take off.
And just on either side of that, there’s two units there. And the
pallet plants, actually, I think it’s the only one in the country. It’s
nothing other people don’t have at other industries, but it’s a pallet plant for
sewage disposal. And, uh, we’re hoping that through our work with those.
There’s two of them, there’s an activated sludge system and there’s a bio-disk
unit there. I’m not going to try to explain it. I just know that the
two units are there, and we hope that with the lab information out of that we
can begin to construct plan sewage disposal units. And, that we will be
able to meet the 1982 or 83 standards laid out for controlling of tanneries.
No, you can use it for soil conditioning cause there’s a lot of lime in it, but
there’s really not too much fertilizer value. There’s not enough nutrients
in it for fertilizer. It’s a good ground conditioner, and if you need
lime, it’s a good source of lime. Of course, that’s just the sludge
hamming proposition. The other, the other is the hamming of the solution
itself. This tannery requires at this time about half a million gallon of
water a day. Of course, it you bring it in one end, you’ve got to put it
out the other. Because there’s not other places else to do it. Of
course, we work on recycling, and this type of thing because we’re sure any type
of insulation we have, the retention time is going to be important, so the less
use you have the smaller unit you can make to do the same job. We’ve got
some pretty hopeful results, but, of course there is one other question, because
we’re here on a small stream and on a nice stream and uh, the state of West
Virginia actually put tougher standards on us than the EPA. And, actually
they put standards on us that we’ll never meet. So, uh, when we get our
pallet plant finished then we will go to the state and say this is what we can
do. I’m sure that we’ll never meet their standards. Then, it will be
up to them to say, “We’ll cut or relax our standards.” Now what’s going to
happen, I don’t have any idea.
ALEX: Make a bearing of standards.
MORRIS: The EPA standards we can meet. We’re positive we can meet those.
But, this is a quality stream and, uh, and uh, a trout stream. I have
confidence that we’ll be able to work something out. There is some people
in our company who are not all that comfortable. I’m a West
Virginian…
ALEX: You’ve had problems before.
MORRIS: And I really don’t feel that. Oh, did we ever have problems.
We had one of these big basins up here one time and we did have problems then.
We had sludge about two feet deep all through this plant. Plus, the fact
we had a lot in the river.
ALEX: How long has that been?
MORRIS: Oh, five or six years. Three or four years. That was,
four year years, maybe.
ALEX: Well, those things will happen I guess.
MORRIS: Well, it really shouldn’t happen. We had a primary settling
basin, a seat basin that we discharged directly to that. The state asked
up to put in an arrow aeration, which we did. So, our engineer put a
trough from the primary lagoon into the secondary lagoon for the sludge.
But he put the trough higher than the bank what it was and of course…
ALEX: Dumped.
MORRIS: the stuff started to come over the side of the wall before it got
up to his trough and, un, nobody saw it and it just roaded. It just went
loose.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: But, the vice president, they called us to tell us what happened,
you know, he almost went the other way. He couldn’t decide which way to
go.
ALEX: Come back or go the other way.
MORRIS: I talked to Tom. Well, how bad it is Tom? Oh, it’s
bad. But, uh, it didn’t affect the stream as far down and, uh, some of the
college professors from the University said it’s stay in the stream for a
hundred years. Really I think it might have done it some good.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: Ever see trash fish?
ALEX: Yeah. It’s probably what, probably flushed pretty regularly.
MORRIS: Well, what I really think happened to it, there’s some fairly
large holes in the river here, and I really believe it settled down in them and
most of it was lying, so it was dissolving at a slow rate. It might have
been beneficial, you can’t be wrong. Dumping that out of there at about 12
ph didn’t help the fish that were close to it, I’ll tell you that. We got
close to thirty-eight pounds. I don’t think we ever did it. That’s
what died. At the hatcheries they were trying to count for their own.
They were almost constantly harassing us. Because actually up here this
far on the stream, it is a beautiful stream and we try to take care of it, as
best we can.
ALEX: Well, thank you again for your time.
MORRIS: You’re quite welcome. In 1904… They just recovered it.
They covered it with clear board and put siding on it and they fixed up those
signs.
ALEX: What is there now?
MORRIS: The foreman’s, the foreman’s dressing room and they eat in there.
ALEX: Yeah.
MORRIS: Showers are there.
ALEX: How many people work in the office:
MORRIS: Three—six. Three girls, Tom, Neil and the other guy
upstairs. Two other guys upstairs.
ALEX: You don’t have any way of making coffee?
MORRIS: I know a way, but it won’t go through there.
ALEX: Okay, I’m reading from a bit of information that’s just been handed
to me here called, “West Virginia namesakes—Frank”, by R. K. Forster.
Postmarked October 30, 1969, Frank, West Virginia.
At 4:10 A.M. on April 29, 1904, a tragedy stuck the little mining village of
Frank, 4,200 feet up in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.
Ninety million tons of rocks and limestone boulders from near by Turtle Mountain
cascaded down upon the outskirts of the sleeping village with a loss of seventy
lives. One survivor, a baby girl, lived through the terrible rockslide.
As no one knew her name, rescuers gave her the adopted name of Frances.
Within a few years a new village had been built at a safe distance from the
threatening mountains. Today, the little community on the Crow’s Nest
River in Southwest Alberta has a population of about two hundred. A new
highway runs across the wilderness of fallen rock where the second of Turtle
Mountain four miles wide there the … toppled down on the sleeping village.
Franks, West Virginia’s namesake in Green Bank District, in Pocahontas County,
is said to have been named in 1926 in honor of Frank Huffman of Wheeling, a
member of the Pocahontas Tanning Company.
This article carries both postmarks of Frank, West Virginia and Frank, Alberta,
October 20, of ’58 and the Frank postmark has been put on as been indicated to
you on October 30, a.m., 1969 from zip code 24937. His name is Harry
Whitney. He’s vice president of tanning operations at the Howe Leather
Company, and Tom Morrison is the Superintendent of the tannery at Frank.
The End