arrangements to have the horse taken back, and take passage on a West
Indies cattle brig to New York. It took him a week to get to New York.
He then took the ferry for Elizabethtown.

When young Edwards began life as a tanner it took twelve months for
the tanning of hides. This was by far the most extensive tannery in
America. It had a capacity of 1,500 sides. The only "improvement" then
known--1784--was the use of a wooden plug in the lime vats and water
pools to let off the contents into the brook. The bark was ground by
horse power. There was a curb fifteen feet in diameter, made of
three-inch plank, with a rim fifteen inches high. Within this was a
stone wheel with many hollows and the wooden wheel with long pegs. Two
horses turned these wheels which would grind half a cord of bark in a
day of twelve hours. The first year William was at work grinding bark.
All the pay received for the year's work was the knowledge gained of the
art of grinding bark, very poor board (no clothing, no money), and the
privilege of tanning for himself three sheep skins. The fourth half
year he received his first money, $2.50 a month, which was paid out of
friendliness for the Edwards family.

Before he was twenty he set up in business for himself. He had saved
$100; his father, still poor, gave him $300; he bought land for his
plant for $700 on long credit. After years of great struggle he
succeeded in business and developed the process by which instead of
employing one hand for every one hundred sides he could tan 40,000 with
twenty lads and the cost was reduced from twelve cents a pound to four
cents. The quality was improved even more than the cost was reduced.
When the war of 1812 broke out he had practically the only important
tannery in the United States, but the war scare and attendant evils led
to his failure in 1815. He was now 45 years old with a wife and nine