98 



made from beech and sugar maple. The former is more extensively used. 

 The rubbing surface at one time was made of maple and beech, but now 

 metal or glass rubs have been substituted. 



Table 60. Wood for Laundry Appliances, year ending June, 1912. 



CIGAR BOXES. 



Cigar boxes are the only wooden tobacco containers made in Pennsylvania 

 and the woods required solely for this purpose are listed in Table 61. In a 

 number of southern states, plug and twist tobacco boxes were included with 

 cigar box lumber and the factories known as the tobacco box industry. 

 Cigar box material is bought as thin lumber and veneer, the former usually 

 5-32 of an inch in thickness. This material, as is customary in commerce, 

 was reported in terms of superficial feet. To make it comparable with the 

 other tables of this report, however, it was reduced to board measure and 

 valued on that basis. For this reason the cost of the material may appear 

 somewhat high, especially since the cost of manufacture has not been elimi- 

 nated nor has any allowance been made for waste. The prices range from 

 $20 to $30 per thousand feet surface measure for Spanish cedar, $12.50 to 

 $16.50 for yellow poplar and basswood and $14 to $17.50 for cotton gum 

 and red gum. 



Though the eastern part of Pennsylvania raises the best grades of leaf to- 

 bacco, the center of the cigar box industry is not located there but in the 

 Pittsburgh region where the manufacture of stogies and cigars has gained 

 a reputation. 



Spanish cedar, it is claimed, gives a delicate odor to the cigars which is 

 attributed to no other wood. This accounts for the fact that it is the principal 

 cigar box wood not only in Pennsylvania but in the country at large. Spanish 

 cedar is native to the West Indies and Central America and is brought to 

 this country in log form to be manufactured. It is a broad leafed tree and 

 not a relative of the domestic cedars or junipers which are conifers. 



