AMERICAN FOREST TREES 387 



particular place where cork elm is preferred is in the manufacture of 

 vehicles and boats, but it is by no means confined to those commodities. 



The state of Michigan alone sends 50,000,000 feet of elm a year to its 

 factories to be converted into articles of general utility. Furniture 

 makers take over 2,000,000 feet of it, though elm is not classed as a 

 furniture wood. In certain places it is superior to almost every 

 other wood. No matter how discolored it becomes by weathering and 

 the accumulation of foreign substances, a vigorous application of soap, 

 water, and a scrubbing brush will whiten it. It is liked in certain parts 

 of refrigerators which need constant scrubbing. Elm to the extent of 

 8,000,000 feet goes into refrigerators in Michigan alone. 



The strength and toughness of elm make it suitable for frames of 

 tables. When thus used, it is generally out of sight, but not infrequently 

 it is made into table legs as well as frames. Statistics show that more 

 than a million feet are manufactured yearly into handles in Michigan 

 alone. All three of the northern elms white, cork, and slippery are 

 listed in the handle industry. 



Many millions of feet of elm are yearly converted into automobile 

 stock 3,000,000 in Michigan. Horse-drawn vehicles take more. 

 The most common place for it is the hub, but it serves also as shafts, 

 poles, reaches, and even as spokes for wagons of the largest size. 



The important place in the slack cooperage industry held by elm is 

 well known. It is a flour barrel wood, but is employed for barrels of 

 many other kinds. It stands high as veneer, not the kind of which the 

 visible parts of furniture are made, but the invisible interior, built up of 

 veneer sheets glued together. A similar kind of veneer forms the boxes 

 or frames of trunks the part to be covered by metal, leather, or cloth. 

 The slats which strengthen the outside of trunks are frequently of elm. 



This wood is not in favor for one important purpose, hardwood 

 distillation. It has escaped pretty generally also from being employed 

 as a farm material, on account of its poor lasting qualities. Some slip- 

 pery elm was mauled into fence rails in the pioneer days of Ohio, Indiana, 

 and southern Michigan, but that was only because it was plentiful and 

 convenient. Cork elm probably never made a fence rail, because it is 

 so unwedgeable that no rail splitter would have anything to do with it. 

 At the best, it is but a temporary makeshift as fence posts, but by apply- 

 ing creosote and other preservative treatments to lessen decay, it mea- 

 sures up with most other post woods. 



The elms are not indispensable woods in this country, but their 

 exhaustion, should it ever come, will leave many places hard to fill. As 

 far as known, no woodlots of any species of elm have been planted in this 

 country, and there is little prospect that any will be planted, because 



