THE HICKOKY SUPPLY. 9 



The use of hickory saplings for hoops has in the past been very 

 important, but is now on the decline. The hickory barrel hoop is 

 recognized as the best wooden hoop, but it is more expensive because 

 it has to be made by hand, and is, therefore, giving way to the patent 

 elm hoop and to iron and wire. The prices of hickory hoops have 

 fallen 20 per cent during the past ten years until 7-foot hoop poles 

 bring only $5 per thousand, cut and delivered, and there is now little 

 profit in them. This is really fortunate, from the point of view of 

 prolonging the hickory supply, because hoop poles require straight, 

 clean saplings from 1 to 2 inches in diameter and from 10 to 15 feet 

 high ; this means the destruction of the most promising young growth 

 and the leaving of scrubby and knotty specimens as the basis of the 

 future crop, and has, in fact, secured the survival of the unfit. 



EXPORTS. 



A great deal of American hickory is used in the vehicle industry 

 abroad. It is exported chiefly in the form of bent rims, spokes, and 

 shafts, but a great many finished wheels and logs are also sent. 

 About 5 or 10 per cent of the annual output is used in this way. In 

 addition, large quantities of hickory, both in finished and unfinished 

 form, are sent to Canada. About 40 per cent of the total output for 

 tool handles is shipped abroad, mainly to Germany, to South Africa, 

 and to Australia. 



THE HICKORY SUPPLY. 

 PRESENT STAND. 



Hickory once grew in commercial quantities from Connecticut, 

 New York, and southern Michigan south to Florida and west to 

 Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas. In this region it 

 formed, perhaps, one-fortieth of the total hardwood stand. Measure- 

 ments of 2,000 acres in the Southern Appalachians, for instance, 

 showed that it formed 5.1 per cent of the trees over 10 inches in 

 diameter. The percentage was greatest in the Ohio and in the lower 

 Mississippi valleys. 



The original supply is now approaching exhaustion. East of the 

 Alleghenies and north of the Potomac it has disappeared almost 

 entirely. West of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio only a few scat- 

 tered remnants are left, and the bulk of the supply lies south of the Ohio 

 River. Most of the northern manufacturers get their supplies from 

 the South; all of the larger operations are there and competition is 

 very keen. The whole hickory-producing territory has been covered 

 by the timber buyers, and already some of the larger companies are 

 working over their old cuttings, taking material which had been 

 rejected ten or fifteen years ago. In only a few years, probably not 

 more than ten, the conditions of to-day in southern Indiana and Ohio 



51762 Bull. 8010 2 



