22 WOOD-USING INDUSTRIES OF MARYLAND 



kinds. A much higher class of wood is required for tight cooperage 

 than for slack, and comparatively few woods are suitable for the 

 highest class vessels of all, those which are to hold spirituous liquors. 

 White oak has long been considered the best available wood for such 

 work, but the increasing scarcity of this timber of suitable grade has 

 stimulated the search for substitutes, and some success has attended 

 the search. There are different kinds of tight cooperage, and wood 

 which can not be employed for one may answer very well for some 

 other. 



Slack cooperage is also of different kinds, and woods serving for 

 one kind may not do for another. A resinous wood, strong with the 

 odor of turpentine and readily imparting a disagreeable taste to ab- 

 sorbent articles of food brought in contact with it, would scarcely be 

 made into flour and sugar barrels, but would be unobjectionable for 

 nail kegs. The gradation is regular and unbroken from the highest 

 class of slack cooperage down to vessels so open and flimsy that they 

 will hold little else than vegetables and coarse merchandise, while one 

 grade lower passes from cooperage to berry and fruit baskets, and 

 vessels of a similar kind. 



Table 6 gives a list of the eleven woods reported by Maryland 

 coopers. These woods are used in both tight and slack cooperage, but 

 the table does not distinguish between them ; in fact, the distinction 

 could not, in all cases, be made from the available data. The price 

 paid for white oak indicates that the most of that shipped into the 

 State, which was 95 per cent of the total amount used, was employed 

 in tight cooperage. The cost of the Maryland-grown white oak was 

 so low that it was evidently suitable for slack cooperage only. The 

 same process of reasoning will place the loblolly, which was 32 per 

 cent of the whole amount of wood reported, in the slack-cooperage list. 

 The cottonwood was nearly all made into flour barrels, and the elm 

 into lime and cement barrels, while the red oak was made into flour 

 barrels and a good grade of fruit barrels. The cypress and the red 

 cedar, though they were not largely used, were tigh1>cooperage woods. 

 Both are excellent materials for cider and vinegar barrels. Yellow 

 poplar is good for many kinds of slack-cooperage vessels, and is par- 

 ticularly suitable for tobacco hogsheads, and has been used for that 

 purpose in Maryland for 200 years. 



