Neatness Among Trimmers

Order is Heaven’s first law, and in no department of our business have we found less of this law than in the trimming room. Some workmen will have their work-bench filled with tacks, knobs, buckles, chalk, paste—in short, a sorry hodge-podge of here a little and there a good deal of evidence of slovenliness on the part of the occupant.

The again, the patent leather is unrolled and kicking about the floor, the moss—nobody uses moss now-a-days—and curled hair are everywhere, and the paste is sticking to everything in use. We have seen trimmers, whose jobs have been “turned out” with such a variety of paste shading, about the top and other parts of the leather as to almost entirely spoil it.

Such workmen are not fitted for their profession. The old adage, “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” was never more appropriately exercised than in the trimming department. We all know that leather, once soiled, can never be made to look as good as new. For this very reason, a trimmer should keep his hands clean, and his work, as far as practicable, as he proceeds, covered up.

Not long since, we saw in a trimming room any quantity of scraps hanging on the floor, and a pile in one corner, of dirt, and leather, and paper, and other material, as the merchants say, “too numerous to mention,” a fine place for one to raise his own fleas, and no doubt they find ample feeding ground near at hand—in the sloven’s own person!

But all are not like our hero. There are some trimmers whose habits are worthy of commendation—they are neatness itself; such we should hold up, to the class we have been describing, as worthy pattern for them to follow.

The New York Coach-Maker’s Magazine – November, 1859

—Jeff Burks