After the dyer’s work is done, and the skins would appear to a novice ready for the cutter, still another process has to be gone through, requiring an entirely different kind of skilled labor. This is the process of “doling”—mentioned a few paragraphs back, in connection with chamois—and it consists in reducing each skin to a uniform thickness throughout, as nearly as possible. The doler lays the skin on a marble slab and with a broad, flat knife, sharp as a razor, goes over the inner surface, planing or doling off the uneven places. A thoroughly good cutter always doles his own skins. Some manufacturers, however, employ dolers for this purpose exclusively. Such are the leading leathers used in the making of fine gloves. Developments in tanning have also brought into use the skins of many animals ordinarily considered of no value to the glove trade. While deer, sheep, kid and calf skins in former days were used exclusively, in our times the skins of dogs, foxes, bears, the cow, the colt, the kangaroo—and almost every hair animal—are employed to some extent. Most of these, however, could never pass for fine products, even among the uninitiated—with the possible exception of colt; and they are used only by inferiors in the trade, with whom the present discussion of glove-making has nothing to do. These coarse leathers are honest enough, however, in the hands of Esquimaux, backwoodsmen, and people who are obliged to provide out of the materials within reach warm coverings for the hands. But, in such cases, the fur is usually left on the hide, deceiving no one. And now we come to the actual turning of the leather into gloves. Since Xavier Jouvin’s invention, the glove cutter has not actually cut out gloves. The old method of tracing the pattern and following it with the scissors has completely vanished. But the glove cutter, still so-called, exercises a great deal of care and skill in cutting oblong-shaped pieces of leather which will make exactly the size he stamps on them when, later, the gloves are cut out by means of steel dies. In doing this, the cutter uses pasteboard patterns, to be sure; but these are simply guides to enable him to put exactly the right amount of leather into each piece that he cuts, in order to produce the size desired. To the cutter each skin he takes up becomes a new problem. As no two faces are alike, so also no two skins are alike—not even those of the same class.