IN 1861, J. LEANDER BISHOP, in chronicling the rise of American industry, pointed out that historically the tanner had never tarried long behind the first occupants of a new town.'' However, the role of this essential artisan has been largely neglected. The techniques of his trade are almost forgotten, and evidence of his early activities is widely dispersed. To the historian the tanner is an enigma. His trade flourished, and leather was in great demand from the time of first settlement to comparatively recent times. Nevertheless, tanning techniques remained nearly unchanged until late in the nineteenth century. Technological innovation that marked other American industries was ignored by the leather maker, and the usual generalizations simply do not fit the tanner. For example, the scarcity and high cost of labor in America did not result in the early or widespread application of significant labor-saving machinery to the most burdensome and basic aspects of leather production; nor did the spirit of progress and improvement rampant in the early Republic prove to be stimulating within the confines of the tanyard. Even the discoveries made by Europeans-principally David Macbride, Armand Seguin, and Sir Humphrey Davy-that defined the chemistry of tanning and reduced the time required to tan sole leather from 18 to four months were largely overlooked before 1850. Although patents for processes and machines mounted in the Patent Office files, a technological conservatism plagued the leather industry. Not all of the tanners' problems were technical. It was a financial fact that the industry was city-centered and that the leather interests resident in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston controlled the fortunes of the small town and village tanner. To this burden of urban control the first half of the nineteenth century brought new troubles;