16 WOOD-USING INDUSTRIES OF MARYLAND 



4,000,000 feet a year are still used in Maryland, notwithstanding its 

 high price twice that of scrub pine. It is a favorite material for 

 shoe boxes, and for packing provisions. There are woods, however, 

 which are preferred to any of the pines as packing boxes for provisions 

 and confectionery. Among these are yellow poplar, basswood, cotton- 

 wood, and buckeye. These are light in weight and fairly light in 

 color, but what gives them their chief value is that they are not liable 

 to impart stain or odor to articles packed in them. Practically all the 

 buckeye reported was made into candy and chocolate boxes, and a 

 considerable part of the yellow poplar went for the same purpose. 

 The box makers drew largely from cypress, but they used low grades, 

 as the price indicates. Its average cost was under that of pitch-pine 

 box lumber grown in Maryland. It is worthy of note that pitch pine 

 bought by box makers was one of the woods which cost less when 

 brought from without the State than when cut within. The supply 

 from without came from Pennsylvania. 



INTERIOR FINISH. 



Eleven per cent of all the wood manufactured into interior finish 

 grew in Maryland, and the home-grown constituted 9 per cent of the 

 total value. The next largest in quantity used was loblolly pine, about 

 one-fourth of which grew in Maryland. The next two woods most 

 extensively used were not supplied in any part by the State, but came 

 wholly from the South. They were longleaf pine and cypress. Of 

 the 81,000,000 feet of lumber manufactured into interior finish in 

 the State, 66,000,000 feet, or 81 per cent, were soft woods. White 

 oak headed the list of hardwoods with less than 8 per cent of the total, 

 or about 40 per cent of the total of the hardwood lumber. Its average 

 cost was exceeded by seven woods on the list, as shown in Table 4, and 

 one of these was white pine. The state-grown white oak cost $21 a 

 thousand more than the imported. An examination of the reports of 

 the manufacturers fails to explain why this was so, on any other 

 ground than that the home-grown wood was of better quality and was 

 better suited to the purposes for which it was bought. One-fourth of 

 the white oak was cut in Maryland. The output of all kinds of oak 

 lumber in 1908 for Maryland was about 45,000,000 feet, and its 

 value at the mills averaged $18.57 per thousand. The most of this 



