COOPERAGE AND ITS RELATION TO 

 FORESTY 



BY 



JOHN A. McCANN 



Editor National Coopers' Journal 



AS a preliminary measure of enlightenment and to 

 •^ illustrate the attitude of my cooperage friends as 

 they relate to the subject of improved forest condi- 

 tions, I may say without fear of contradiction that the 

 writer of that beautiful poem, "Woodman, spare that 

 tree," has never been a very popular personage in 

 cooperage circles. Indeed, I think it will be very 

 generally conceded, even by manufacturers of coop- 

 erage stock themselves, that no class of timber work- 

 ers have been more indefatigable and painstaking in 

 their efforts to make the work of the American For- 

 estry Association and the Bureau of Forestry a prime 

 and pressing necessity than have those amongst whom 

 it has been my pleasant and, more or less, profitable 

 privilege to labor for many years. 



This being the case, it would seen to require a rare 

 and rather robust quality of courage for one who has 

 for twenty years conducted a cooperage paper to come 

 here for the purpose of offering congratulations on 

 the fact that in future we are likely to have intelligent 

 and scientific efforts to prevent the enthusiastic labors 

 of those who seem bent on leaving nothing of our 

 American forests but a memory. That I am here for 

 that very purpose, however, would seem to indicate 

 that I have that able-bodied quality of courage with 

 me, but as a plea in extenuation or avoidance, which- 



