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KID GLOVES

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 8, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 32.

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KID GLOVES.

BAREFOOTED boys and hens form a curious partnership in the making of a pair of fine gloves. Thousands of dozens of hens' eggs are used in curing the hides, and thousands of boys are employed to work the skins in clear water by treading on them for several hours.
When a woman buys a pair of gloves she speaks of her purchase as "kids." If the clerk who sold her the "kid" gloves knew the secrets of the glove-making business, he might surprise his fair customer by telling her that those beautiful, soft, smooth-fitting "kid" gloves came from the shoulders and belly of a three-weeks-old colt, whose neck was slit on the plains of Russia, and whose tender hide was shipped with huge bundles of other colts' hides to France, where they were made up into "kid" gloves. Or he might, with equal regard to the truth, tell her that those gloves in the other compartment once darted from tree to tree in South America on the back of a ring-tailed monkey. And, if he made the rounds of the store and could distinguish one skin from another, he could point out "kid" gloves made from the skins of kangaroos from Australia, lambs or sheep from Ohio or Spain or England, calves from India, muskrats from anywhere, musk oxen from China and other parts of Asia, rats, cats, and Newfoundland puppies.
But the Russian colt, the four-footed baby from the plains where the Cossacks live, the colt from the steppes of Siberia, where horses are raised by the thousand, supplies the skins which are the favorites at present with the glove makers. Experts say that the colt skin makes a better, stronger, finer glove than real kid skin.
But, after all, the real kid, the lively infant of the goats which live in France, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy, furnishes the choicest and most expensive gloves, and nearly 10,000,000 kids are sacrificed every year that women and men may cramp their hands in smooth, delicate-hued gloves.—Chicago Record.