WOOD-USING INDUSTRIES OF MARYLAND 



21 



of cherry is also disappointing, as shown by Maryland reports, and 

 is doubtless much smaller than it was several years ago, though there 

 are no statistics to show it. Sweet birch has largely taken the place of 

 cherry as a furniture wood. It has done so because it is cheaper. The 

 Maryland furniture manufacturers paid $72.92 a thousand for cherry, 

 and only $26.02 for birch. 



Only three foreign woods were reported, mahogany, Circassian wal- 

 nut, and French walnut, and in the aggregate they constituted only 

 one-fifth of 1 per cent of the total furniture wood. No French walnut 

 was reported for any other industry. 



TABLE 5. Furniture. 



COOPERAGE. 



It is not always an easy matter to distinguish between cooperage and 

 basket-making on the one hand and box-making on the other. Coopers 

 are divided into two general classes ; those who make vessels to con- 

 tain liquids, and those who manufacture barrels and kegs intended 

 for dry articles, such as nails, sugar, flour, apples, and similar com- 

 modities. Tight cooperage is a term applied to the manufacture of 

 vessels for liquids, and slack cooperage applies to the making of other 



