Vegan reply: But wearing fur is worse compared to wearing leather

"Leather isn't merely a "by-product" of the beef industry. In fact, most leather doesn't even come from the same type of cow used for beef.
Even if this were the case, it's important, again, to think of what we do to animals not in terms of "inflicting suffering," but their property status. If an animal is killed to create two different products, what sense does it make to say one product is a by-product while the other is the real thing? Animals are killed because their dead bodies can be sold in the form of various products."
http://www.vegankit.com/wear

What would happen if the nonvegan population would start to abhor meat, but continue to like leather. They would still continue to exploit cows for leather.

Exploitation is exploitation.
Who are we to say that it is "worse" for a mink to be exploited for fur compared to a cow being exploited for leather and meat.  We are not the victims. We have no right to give that kind of judgment when it comes to the exploitation of other sentient beings.

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Jonathan Hughes Roy, if you think it's useful to apply 'worse' to why/how an animal died, you're looking at things from a different perspective completely. I see *that* they died as the problem, not *how* they died. In being killed for human use, all animals are equal and equally deserving of support from Vegans.

See also
Leather Is More Than “a By-Product of the Meat Industry”