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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
GLOVING.
IN ALL SHADES.
CONSCIENTIOUS MONEY-SPENDING.
THE SIGNALMAN’S LOVE-STORY.
ROWING AT OXFORD.
A HOLIDAY IN COUNTY CORK.
PEAT AS A MANURE.
ABSENCE OF MIND.
THE RETURN.
No. 119.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1886.
GLOVING.
‘A pair of gloves, if you please.’—‘Yes, sir.Kid gloves?’ The customer indicates the kindof gloves he requires; and down comes a longshallow box, divided into several compartments,in each of which there lies a neat bundle ofgloves of various colours and shades, held togetherby a band of paper. ‘What size, sir?’ Thesize is mentioned; and one of the bundles islifted out of its compartment and quickly andcarefully opened at one end. Gloves of theexact size and shade required are selected, theprice is paid, and there, for the most part, thetransaction ends. How many of the thousandswho every day go through this process haveany idea of where and how the soft, delicate,tight-fitting gloves they wear are made?
Enormous numbers—said to exceed two-thirdsof the entire consumption—are imported fromFrance, Germany, and Sweden. But there is alarge home manufacture, which is carried on toa considerable extent in and about Worcester,but principally in the west of England.
If the reader will glance at a railway map,and let his eye follow the main line of theLondon and South-Western Railway, he will find,about midway between Salisbury and Exeter,a station marked Yeovil Junction. Should heactually travel down the line and change at thisjunction, he would speedily find himself landedat the ancient market-town of Yeovil, the centreand capital of the glove-trade, or as it is locallydescribed, ‘the gloving’—a town of about eightthousand inhabitants. A visitor from the Northor the Midlands would probably be surprised, onentering the gloving metropolis, to find nothingof the noise or dirt which is usually associatedwith manufacturing industry. No tall chimneysbelch out black clouds of smoke; no gauntfactories rear themselves aloft above the houses;no ponderous machinery makes its throb felteven by passers-by in the streets. No obtrusivesigns of the trade which is being carriedon meet the eye anywhere. The place is cleanand bright and quiet; and surrounded by greenhills and luxuriant valleys dotted over withmagnificent t