Now! Then! A satirical London magazine congratulates the Yorkshire Tannery and Boot Manufactory on its appointment of directors with relevant professional knowledge

10 June 1882: A satirical London magazine congratulates the Yorkshire Tannery and Boot Manufactory on its appointment of directors with relevant professional knowledge

Vanity Fair. 1882/06/10. The Yorkshire Tannery and Boot Manufactory. London. Get it:

Excerpt

This is something in quite a new line. We have studied the list of directors, and we remark with surprise that it does not contain one single general, admiral, baronet, honourable, or even a Member of Parliament. The ubiquitous Sir Henry Tyler is not there. Sir Edward Watkin, owing perhaps to the dryness of the Channel chalk in which his navvies will, as he hopes, have to work, takes no interest in boots or in leather. But in the place of all these great characters we have a lot of Leeds leather merchants and boot and shoe manufacturers whose names, valuable, we believe, on cheques, are utterly unknown to fame. It must be admitted that these gentlemen ought to know what they are about, and it may be assumed that they do. In that case this company ought to be a good thing, for even supposing for a moment that a bootmaker can be as crooked as a financing baronet, which we doubt, at any rate he knows something about leather, and in a leather business such knowledge must be useful. Personally, we have no knowledge in the matter. We never knew a bootmaker we did not wish to kill, but we should rather go into a business of this kind under the protection of our natural torturers than under the care of the conventional guinea-pigs.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Bristol merchant John Cary commented on this 200 years earlier in his influential Essay on the State of England in Relation to Its Trade, Its Poor, and Its Taxes:

I confess for my own part I value nothing that cannot be reduced to a certainty in its practice, things seem difficult to those who do not understand them, if we are to besiege a town we make use of soldiers, if to storm a castle, engineers, if to build a ship, carpenters, and so in lesser things, and yet gentlemen are thought fit to sit at helm, and steer the ship wherein is embarked the treasure of our trade, who are altogether unskilled therein, on whose good conduct the nation’s weal or woe depends; thus things do fall into confusion, whilst men undertake what they do not understand and set the nation in a flame, whilst they injudiciously guide the chariot of the sun (Cary 1695).

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Original

THE YORKSHIRE TANNERY AND BOOT MANUFACTORY.
This is something in quite a new line. We have studied the list of directors, and we remark with surprise that it does not contain one single general, admiral, baronet, honourable, or even a Member of Parliament. The ubiquitous Sir Henry Tyler is not there. Sir Edward Watkin, owing perhaps to the dryness of the Channel chalk in which his navvies will, as he hopes, have to work, takes no interest in boots or in leather; but in the place of all these great characters we have a lot of Leeds leather merchants and boot and shoe manufacturers whose names, valuable, we believe, on cheques, are utterly unknown to fame. It must be admitted that these gentlemen ought to know what they are about, and it may be assumed that they do. In that case this Company ought to be a good thing, for even supposing for a moment that a bootmaker can be as crooked as a financing baronet, which we doubt, at any rate he knows something about leather, and in a leather business such knowledge must be useful. Personally, we have no knowledge in the matter. We never knew a bootmaker we did not wish to kill, but we should rather go into a business of this kind under the protection of our natural torturers than under the care of the conventional guinea-pigs.
Thursday, June 8th, 1882.

239 words.