TOOTHPICKS TO LUMBER WAGONS 25 



It Is impossible to discuss this subject without 

 also taking into consideration the many thousands 

 of hard and soft-wood barrels produced by the 

 cooperage plants of the country. Cooperage — bar- 

 rels, buckets and other containers of that general 

 construction — is of two main classes, slack cooper- 

 age which is intended only for solids, and tight 

 cooperage which is capable of holding liquids. Both 

 are interesting, not only because of the importance 

 of the industry as a consumer of 250 million cubic 

 feet of wood a year, but also because of the mechan- 

 ical perfection of the process. Barrels are generally 

 manufactured piece-meal — one plant making the 

 staves, another the heads, and a third the hoops, 

 each in widely separated regions, although, to be 

 sure, the ownership may be the same. In the north 

 our old friends beech, birch and maple are chiefly 

 used for the best flour and sugar barrel staves, with 

 perhaps pine for the heads and nearly always elm 

 for the hoops. In the south staves are commonly 

 made of red gum, this affording a very satisfactory 

 barrel for molasses, rosin and the like. A barrel 

 stave has no single flat surface. To produce it, 

 special cylinder-shaped saws are sometimes used, 

 but more often the shaping is done with a mechan- 

 ical shearing knife after the wood has previously 

 been steamed and softened. The hoops for slack 



