MASSACHUSETTS WOOD-USING INDUSTRIES. 11 



manufacturing industry requires, and almost twice as much as all 

 the others combined. It is clear that the making of boxes and crates 

 is preeminently the leading business in the State among those who 

 manufacture wood. Box makers paid foiir times as much for their 

 raw material considering wood as raw material when it reaches the 

 factory as was paid by any other of the listed industries. The 

 nearest approach was by the furniture makers, both in amount of 

 lumber used and the cost. Twenty-three woods are on the list of box 

 materials. The manufactured product ranged from the grossest 

 crates, such as serve for shipping marble slabs or nursery stock, to 

 the finest sample cases for commercial travelers, and receptacles for 

 confectionery, toilet articles and jewelry. The cheapest wood re- 

 ported, averaged for the whole, was cottonwood, at $9 a thousand, 

 cut in Massachusetts and received as logs at the factory. The most 

 costly was mahogany, at $251 per thousand, a higher average price 

 than was reported by any other industry in the State. Only one 

 wood more costly was reported by any industry, rosewood, at $750 

 per thousand, for pianos. It is therefore apparent that box makers 

 supply a wide range of customers and send their wares to many 

 markets. 



One-third of the manufacturers of wood in the State make boxes. 

 It is a side line with many, who thus utilize what otherwise would be 

 waste. Others, whose chief business is in other lines, perhaps not 

 directly connected with wood, make boxes and crates for shipping 

 their own products. Less than 38 per cent, of the reported box ma- 

 terial is grown in the State. The largest importation is of white pine, 

 spruce next. If no outside lumber were obtainable, boxes alone 

 would consume 94 per cent, of the State's whole lumber cut. 



Though some very fine and costly boxes are made, the bulk of them 

 are of cheap lumber. It generally reaches the factory as wane-edge, 

 unplaned boards, with bark on the edges, due to sawing small logs 

 through and through without slabbing the four sides. Some factories 

 saw, plane and match box boards, making shooks of them, and selling 

 them to the users, who nail them up, but operate no wood-working 

 machinery. Others do all the work, from the log perhaps from 

 the tree on the stump to the finished box. In some instances a 

 factory makes boxes for one purpose only, perhaps shoe boxes ; while 

 others manufacture many sizes, shapes and kinds. 



