COLLOQUIUM SPONSORED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF
FOLKLORE AND FOLKLIFE
 
 
WOOL PULLING: THE HIDDEN INDUSTRY
by Dr. David S. Rotenstein
 
In the waning weeks of the summer of 1879, John Stratman of Allegheny
City, Pennsylvania founded a hide brokerage that today survives as
Pittsburgh Wool: the lone surviving wool pullery in the Eastern United
States.  Before striking out on his own, Stratman was a book keeper for
one of the Pittsburgh region's largest tanneries.  During the first half
of the nineteenth century German and Irish immigrants founded a complex
economic and social sphere based on the slaughter of livestock and the
processing of meat byproducts into leather, glue, wool, candles, soap and
fertilizer in the stream hollows dissecting the Allegheny River valley
adjacent to the city of Pittsburgh.  By the turn of the twentieth century,
livestock and leather were the dominant industries in the former Allegheny
City (now, Pittsburgh's North Side neighborhood).  Eclipsed by the better
known steel, glass and aluminum industries of Pittsburgh, these craft
industries have been all but forgotten. In 1912 Stratman's hide business
incorporated as Pittsburgh Wool, the last vestige of Pittsburgh's
livestock and leather industries.  Wool pulling -- the manual removal of
wool from the pelts of slaughtered sheep -- is a craft obfuscated by the
tanning and meatpacking industries. This presentation focuses on the
traditional basis of Pittsburgh's livestock and leather industries and the
history of the Pittsburgh Wool Company.
 
LOCATION: Department of Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania,
3440 Market Street, Suite 370. Room 372
 
DATE AND TIME: Friday April 10, 1998 at noon.