Excelsior 161 
carriages, mattresses, and chairs. It is also used extensively 
for shaping dolls and toy animals. Mattress factories use a 
great deal of excelsior for the centers of low-grade mattresses, 
which are then faced with quilted cotton. 
The excelsior industry, like the newsprint industry, gives 
the closest utilization of raw material placed at the door of the 
factory. The armies of the world used excelsior for filling 
mattresses ; the manufacturers of china and glass not only pro- 
tect shipments from breakage but avoid dampness which for- 
merly existed when straw and hay were used. Wood-wool has 
only one-third the weight of hay, and-is crowding the older 
packing material out of the markets through its lightness of 
weight, cleanness, and assortable condition for packing. 
Kennel and stable bedding, filtering mediums for beer, packing 
fancy goods, ornamenting shop windows, and innumerable 
other uses requiring elastic, pliable, clean, and bright packing 
material all invite the establishment of excelsior plants in the 
several woodlot areas of the State of New York. 
EXCELSIOR 
Quantity UsED Mearns Total G G 
ee ae erage ota rown rown 
K Ww cost cost in out of 
SEO eo per i102 Ds New York,} New York, 
GordsttliPeveent cord factory cords cords 
PIR ele. UNE ysiey, 858 sa, Sane 3 14,380 | 100.00 | $12 85 $184,728 12,910 1,470 
Wotihonwood eats. c% 62. 2 9,105 63.32 | $12 80 $116,544 8,200 905 
SARS WOOGIE ER ete ninis & 50.2 a 3 5,075 35.29 1312 66 , 584 4,510 565 
TSS tano 6 er 200 1.39 8 00 1,600 200) ete. ae ore 
RELATIVE UTILITY oF SPECIES. 
A merely superficial knowledge of the industries would be 
sufficient to rate white pine at once as the most useful wood in 
New York State. It would not-be so easy, however, to place 
many of the other species in the relative order of their useful- 
ness, unless some method of rating were adopted. 
Usefulness depends first upon those qualities which the 
wood possesses which render it especially fit to perform service 
6 
