American Forest Congress 143 



It has been estimated that the manufacture of 

 wooden boxes alone consumes toward 40 per cent, of 

 the entire lumber production of the United States. 

 When we consider what the aggregate of this lumber 

 production is, and, if we further consider the fact that 

 a wooden box is about the most familiar and fre- 

 quently seen object on the face of the civilized earth, 

 we can begin to appreciate the figure cut by the wooden 

 box industry alone, in lumber consumption. 



The barrel, as we all know, takes no back seat as 

 an industrial container, and it is more important com- 

 mercially, and is made in greater numbers, with every 

 year that passes, owing to the very rapid multiplication 

 and growth of those industries which are extensive 

 and, in many cases, exclusive, barrel users. The term 

 "barrel," is a very elastic one, ranging from the cheaply 

 constructed article made for truck, salt, and the like, 

 through many stages of increase in value and quality, 

 up to the expensive and substantial packages used for 

 beer, whiskey, oil, meat packing, and numerous other 

 purposes which require the utmost of tightness and 

 quality in a package. 



When we stop to think how much flour, apples, 

 sugar, meat, fish, truck, salt, cement, lime, whiskey, 

 beer, oil, molasses, etc., are produced in the United 

 States, and how largely they are dependent upon the 

 barrel as a package, we begin to see what the con- 

 sumption of timber — ^hardwood mainly — amounts up 

 for barrel packages alone. The butter tub trade is 

 also an extensive one, and takes a large amount of a 

 very high class of hardwood timber. A great annual 

 production of woodenware in the shape of tubs, pails, 

 firkins, etc., comes in to swell the aggregate in the 

 use of timber by the package making trade. It will 

 thus be seen, without further enumeration of the 



