734 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



jolts, calves, and real wagons and sleds in which they are 

 privileged to ride with real horses to pull them. Toy 

 tools are made more for the town child. The rakes, hoes, 

 spades, lawnmowers, snow shovels, and hatchets are such 

 as the town child sees about the yard and garden. No 

 toy store exhibits miniature plows, harrows, cultivators, 

 fanning mills, seed sowers, threshing machines, corn 

 shellers, horse rakes, hay tedders, and other farm ma- 

 chines now so common in all rural communities. The 

 reason why they are not made is that city children do 

 not know what such things are, and would not buy them ; 

 but they are well acquainted with yards and gardens and 

 take readily to tools the use of which they know. The 

 same idea is carried out by the toy manufacturer in 

 making barns and stables. They are such as are found 



DRIVING SCREWS BY MACHINERY 



Business comes before pleasure in the toy business, for while the toys 

 are intended for pleasure after they reach the hands of the children, the 

 manufacturing comes first, and that is a matter of the most serious 

 business. Observe the power screw drivers. 



in the city, not on the farm. The stores are full of toy 

 stalls that hold one or two cows or a single horse, with 

 the small hayloft above, and the small grain bin at the 

 side; but the country barn with its more ample mows 

 of hay, larger and more numerous stalls, and the dairy 

 with its rows of stanchions for cows, are not found. 



The list of wooden toy musical instruments is not 

 long, for metal holds principal place, yet large num- 

 bers of a few kinds are made. Pianos lead, and 

 toys of that kind range in size from the smallest 

 that can be made to emit a sound from a vibrat- 

 ing string, up to instruments which approach the line 

 which separates toys from real pianos. Wood, by its 

 rigidity, lends itself well to taut cord instruments. A 

 common one is the violin, and harps are occasionally seen. 

 The wooden whistle, though it cannot justly claim to be 

 a musical instrument, is quite common and is a favorite 

 with children. It is made in styles almost innumerable, 

 and the toy maker has exercised his ingenuity in pro- 

 ducing tones and noises as numerous as the styles. A 

 common class of toys which pretend to be musical, are 

 based on the resonous qualities of small bars of dry, 



straight-grained wood, when struck with mallets. A 

 modification of the whistle becomes a kind of flute or 

 fife, formed of a wooden tube with a few stops and keys. 

 The lowest in the scale of toy musical instruments is the 

 rattle, a kind of forked stick with a clapper, modified in 

 various ways to increase its range of tones, but all more 

 or less distressing to adults, though highly delightful to 

 children. Wood floats, and the toy inventor natural- 

 ly turns to it as the material for all kinds of craft 

 that ply on water. He has a wide range of subjects to 

 pattern after. Noah's arks are favorites with children, 

 and so numerous are the styles turned out that Noah 

 himself would fail to recognize them as copies or imi- 

 tations of the original, if such a thing as parading them 

 in review before him were possible. Some toy vessels 

 are skillfully made, and are graceful objects ; but it is 

 not so with the average Noah's ark in the toy shop. It 

 is usually loaded with animals totally out of proportion 

 to the size of the vessel, and so top-heavy is the craft 

 that, if one like it were to attempt the deep, it would 

 capsize so suddenly that the animals on board would 

 quickly find themselves swimming for their lives. How- 

 ever, the number of such toys sold indicates that chil- 



POWER DRILLS AT WORK 



Toy makers in Europe do nearly everything by hand, but that process 

 is too slow for the American toy factories. The kiddie car maker is 

 here shown using the most up-to-date drilling machine to be had. That 

 is a necessity in quantity production. 



dren like them, and this proves the good judgment of 

 the manufacturers who make them. Vessels more mod- 

 ern than Noah's ark are generally constructed on more 

 correct, scientific principles by the makers of toys. Some 

 are designed to float and they do it very nicely in ponds 

 or rain puddles where children try them. Usually, how- 

 ever, toy vessels made for the water are of the smaller 

 kinds, such as skiffs, canoes, catamarans, and whaleboats. 

 The European war brought in the submarine as a popu- 

 lar model for toys. The small boats are usually cut out 

 of a piece of solid wood, and the painter tries his skill 

 on them. Paint on such toys serves a double purpose. It 

 looks well and it keeps the wood dry and light. Most 



