Principal Producing Regions. 



The manufacture of boxes in the United States is conducted 

 on a large scale in certain regions determined by the supply of 

 raw material and the markets for the product. The manufacturing 

 industries turning out products usually shipped in boxes, and the 

 intensive production of fruits and vegetables for wide markets 

 are the consuming channels calling for large box supplies. Among 

 the leading box consumers are manufacturers of oil, pack'ng-house 

 products, canned goods, groceries and tobacco, clothing and dry 

 goods, the manufacturers of hardware, tinware and machines, 

 growers of fruit, berries and vegetables. Crates, which are classed 

 in this report with boxes, are used in large quantities by shippers 

 of furniture, hardware, machinery and stone. There are innum- 

 erable special demands for boxes and crates, but on the whole 

 it is manufacturing and intensive fruit raising and market garden- 

 ing which create the demand for boxes, and a careful analysis of 

 the centers of these activities, together with a consideration of 

 the sources of timber supply, will explain the widely varying rela- 

 tive importance of the industries in the several States and regions. 



Nearly three-fourths of all the boxes, shooks, crates, cratng, 

 etc., are manufactured in the region east of the Mississippi River 

 and north of Tennessee and North Carolina, which, owing to the 

 extent of its industries, offers the best market for boxes, and 

 also embraces or is contiguous to the sources of the woods most 

 used in box making. New England and New York produce and 

 manufacture into boxes a great deal of white pine, hemlock, 

 spruce and balsam fir, though they also secure a portion of the : r 

 box material from Canada. Virginia and Maryland produce yel- 

 low pine loblolly, shortleaf and scrub and use nearly half a 

 billion a year for boxes and shooks, though much of this comes 

 from North Carolina. Wisconsin and Michigan manufacture white 

 pine into boxes, also join with Minnesota in furnishing the wood 

 to box factories in Illinois. The latter State draws also on the 

 southern supply of red gum, cottonwood and yellow poplar, as 

 do Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. 



The fourteen States lying east of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennes- 

 see and north of South Carolina produce 50 per cent of all the 

 boxes and shooks manufactured annually. Wisconsin, Michigan, 

 Ill'nois, Indiana and Ohio together contribute 20 per cent of the 

 total production, the Pacific Coast States California. Oregon 

 and Washington 10 per cent; the red gum States Missouri, 

 Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee 9 per cent, while all the rest 

 of the States together produce only 11 per cent. 



Boxes manufactured in the States east of the Mississippi 

 River are largely used in the same region, while Pacific Coast 

 box manufacturers not only supply salmon packers and fruit rais- 



