

Tree Dyes of the Uiiited States -iy 



->'ri" 



lit llllllino ^J^^•* ^Min'li IdrilnTlv 



caoin from Qt<riimnr to Uic Vuito<l StnU«. 8oinp ot Uic colorR liuvo 

 bo- ^ will Iniit from odd to two 



mo- ..f oUicrs )K>iii(; import<Hl. Somo 



«t< : luwnrj buildiiif; up a coal tnr Jyo industry 



in 1 '' fniiUou of the pliinn lies u long wny in tlio 



future. The Hituntion will soon bo acut«. Of course, wo can live 

 witliout ilyiwtuff, but no nation, cither snvogo or civilited, ever did it. 

 America can fall back upon its own resource*, but there may come 

 a time stKin when certain of our neglected forest mpplies will bo 

 dmwn upon. They were used once. Before coal dyes were invented, 

 the fieoplc. fHM'li-d bark, dug root.t, chipped wooil and ni.ide dyes. The 

 colors were not so brilliant as the aniline dyes; but some people 

 prefer colors not too brilliant. The subdued tones of genuine oricntnl 

 rugs are not dissimilar to what might bo produced from the bark 

 and woid of certain American forest trees. The people have almost 

 forgotten what our forests contain in the way of coloring matter. 



A government commerce report, issued by the Department of Com- 

 merce, recently dif^cussed the dye situation very fully, except that the 

 report wn« somewhat lame concerning tlie resources cf our forests in 

 dyestufTs. It wns st.iteil tlint the black oak (Qucrcu.1 nitjra) is the 

 source of "the only natural dyestuff indigeuous to the United 

 States." It is a mistake in name, for it is the yellow oak (Qucrcus 

 veltitina) and not the black oak {Quercus nigra) that supplies the 

 quercitron for dyeing purposes. The yellow oak has a much wider 

 range than the black oak, and is also more abundant. 



The government rej-ort above mentioned is entirely too modest in 

 allowing that yellow oak is our only source of tree dye in this country. 

 There are many others. The pioneers knew them by the dozen. Those 

 people understood nothing about chemistry, but they learned by 

 eiperienco that certain barks would dye cloth, yarn, wool and leather. 

 Following are a few native trees whose wood, bark, roots and fruit 

 have been employed for dyeing. 



FHr.st of all is yellow oak. It ranges from Maine to Minnesota 

 and southward to Florida and Texas. It covers a million square 

 miles. The coloring matter lies in a thin layer under the bark, being 

 a part of the inner bark. 



Butternut (Jufllans civcra) was formerly a valuable dye material. 

 It usually colored brown, but the shades could be varied. The "Con- 

 federate jeans," the cloth much used for Confederate uniform in 

 Tennessee and Kentucky during the Ci\il war, was dyed with the 

 bark of this tree. It was not the historic "Confederate gray." The 

 tree is found in all northern states east of the Mississippi river, and 

 even westward, and it grows also in most of the southern states. 



Bla<k walnut (Juglans nigra) furnished dyes from the outer hulls 

 of the nuts. The color was slightly darker than that produced by 

 butternut bark, and was not so popular. 



Osage orange (Toxylon pomiferum) was limited in its original 

 range to about 10,000 square miles of northern Texas and southern 

 Oklahoma, consequently it was not widely known to early settlers; 

 but the roots, bark and wood produce a fine yellow dye that has been 

 compared with fustic. 



Yellow wood (Cl^dra.stis luica) yields a yellow dye, to which the 

 wood owes its name. The tree is confined to Kentucky, Tennessee, 

 Alabama and North Carolina, and is nowhere abundant. The home- 

 spun of the pionc-ers was occasionally colored with this dye. 



Mesquite (Prosopis jttlifiora) furnished dyes with which the 

 Spanish horsemen of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern 

 California imparted the yellow colors to saddle leather. 



Staghorn sumac (Shus hirta) supplied a dye for coloring fine 

 leather, as well as the tannin for dressing it. The dye was yellow 

 and was occasionally employed in coloring cloth. 



Alder (Abuis sp.) appears not to have been used in America by 

 any people except the Indians. It dyes a reddish color, and down to 

 a few years ago was employed by natives of the northwest Pacific 

 coast in coloring their fishnets. Alder dye used for the same purpose 

 is said to be the oldest recorded dye in the world. It is mentioned in 



liir miiri.ii.i I.I I iiiniaii.i, -hjij.ok, ,i |,, ,i„i,. nearly 3,000 years ago. 



Ked gum ( LiiiuiiUimbar tiryadHua) was used by the early Swedish 

 settlors of IVin .tid Now Jersey in dyeing purple, but the 



secret of tlio pi n-, to have bc»'n lost. 



Locust (lit>h\nui ptntdacnria) iit huid to pOKsiMi ixnoDnliUes in 

 the way of dyo", but nuUienticnted records of its u«c upiieur not to 

 bo at band. A very similar tree of Cliina supplies tlic brilliant yellow 

 dye so admired in China silks. 



Bluowood (Condalia obovala) is found in the valley of tho Bio 

 Grande in Texas, where the largest trees nro thirty feet high and six 

 or eight inches in diameter. It is known also ns logwooil berause 

 of its rcsembhini-e to the dyewood of that name in tropical America. 

 Locally, a black dye is obtained by boiling tho finely-chipped heart- 

 wood. There is no account that it has ever been used commercially. 



Dogwood (Comu» florida) was tlie source of the fanious "Indian 

 red" with which tho vain warriors dyed tlieir oagle feathers and 

 buckskin clothes. They procured tho dye from the roots of dog- 

 wood. They used in the same way tho roots of western dogivood 

 (Cornuj? nuttnllii). This is probably tlie most brilliant dye to bo 

 procured from American trees. 



Tangible Evidence of Railroads' Activity 



The plant of the American Car & Foundry Company at Bing- 

 hamton, a suburb of Memphis, has resumed operations with about 

 250 men. This company has entered into a contract with the Mis- 

 souri Pacific-Iron Mountain Bailway to do a great deal of car build- 

 ing and car repairing. In fact, it is stated that the orders which 

 have been placed by this system alone will keep this plant in steady 

 operation throu^'lioiit the summer. There is every indicatinn, however, 

 that the railroads are beginning to reenter the market for equipment 

 and that they are also finding it necessary to do a great deal more 

 repair work, with the result that the outlook for the American Car 

 & Foundry Company is very greatly improved. 



Only within the past few days the shops of the St. Louis South- 

 western (Cotton Belt) Railroad, Pine Bluff, Ark., have resumed 

 operations with about half of their usual force. The order to resume 

 resulted from tho fact that there was a large accumulation of bad 

 order equipment. It is also a well established fact that this road is 

 receiving a much larger volume of tonnage than a short time ago 

 and this is also believed to have played an important part in the 

 determination of the management to start tho machinery again. 



The Illinois Central system has completed plans for the con- 

 struction of modern car repair sheds at Nonconnah, just sooth of 

 Memphis, at a cost of $200,000. It is announced that actual work 

 will begin in a short time. The company has been building big ter- 

 minals here for about a year and while these were being built tem- 

 porary shops were erected. The Illinois Central is also completing 

 the erection of an ice plant at Nonconnah to cost $150,000, and 

 W. L. Parks, vice-president of the road, is authority for the statement 

 that these improvements are only a part of the general plans for 

 making Nonconnah the most important terminal on the Illinois Central, 

 with the exception of those at Chicago. 



Lumbermen here are watching developments in railroad circles with 

 great interest, particularly those bearing upon construction work and 

 the increase of equipment. Within the past few days information 

 has been received here that the Pennsylvania system has awarded 

 contracts for 14,000 new cars and information has likewise been 

 received that some of the other big systems have recently begun to 

 place orders for additional equipment. The railroads have been 

 out of the market for the past eighteen to twenty-four months, and 

 lumbermen have felt their absence keenly as a large part of the 

 lumber and timber soid from the South has heretofore gone either 

 directly or indireotly to the railroads. It has been predicted for 

 some time that the railroads would find it necessary to reenter the 

 market for equipment, and the fact that orders are now being placed 

 for new cars is accepted as positive evidence that such a develop- 

 ment is already at hand. 



