484 Forestry Quarterly. 



The average wage for the basket-maker is $1.75 to $2.00 a day. 

 Labor conditions are peculiar in that "no one is learning the 

 trade," and as a result hands are scarce and they do about as 

 they please, although many work all their lives in one factory. 

 There are four sizes of hampers made; clothes, market, office 

 baskets, and cat and dog baskets. Some years as high as 35,000 

 clothes baskets alone were made. 



The Barrel and Box. 1912. 



As a rough estimate there are about 



History 1000 veneer establishments in the United 



of the States, using approximately one-half bil- 



Veneer lion feet of lumber yearly. There is an 



Industry. annual production of veneer in 34 States ; 



the leading States are Michigan, Indiana, 



Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri and Wisconsin. Practically every 



kind of wood is used ; the leading ones in the order of prominence 



are gum, yellow pine, maple, poplar, cottonwood, oak, birch, elm, 



basswood and beech, besides foreign woods in less amounts. 



There is evidence of veneer cutting in one form or another 

 back as far as history goes ; but those early efforts were hand- 

 work and have little connection with modern veneer making. 

 The use of fine face veneer in cabinet work seems to have started 

 with Sir Ishambard Brunei in 1799 at the Chatham dock yards'. 

 Here he had the first steam saw-mill in England. He equipped 

 a shop at Battersea about 1805, and developed the practice of 

 sawing veneer from mahogany and rosewood. About this time 

 he invented the veneer-saw, pretty much as we know it today, 

 and cut veneer as thin as 1/16 inch with great precision. 



Since that time there have been many veneer cutting machines 

 invented,all of which may be classed under three heads : sawing, 

 slicing and rotary cutting or peeling. The rotary veneer cut- 

 ting industry was just attaining importance in the woodworking 

 world 15 to 16 years ago. About that time there were some pre- 

 tentious experiments tried at making built-up lumber, which 

 proved unprofitable. The origin of the rotary cutting is obscured 

 a little, but some of the old writers claim, without clear references 

 however, that it originated in Russia. The best data seems to 

 give Gen. Bentham in England credit ; for the rotary method 



