46 



hardness, and smoothness of maple serviceable in their business. 

 Rings of many sorts and sizes are manufactured from this wood — 

 curtain-pole rings, gymnasium rings, martingale rings, and many 

 used in industries, games, and arts. Canes and crutches are in the 

 list of maple commodities, as are tripods for photographers and 

 surveyors; screws, gauges, and benches for carpenters and other 

 mechanics; and tool chests for workmen. 



Fuel makes very heavy demands upon sugar maple. It is cut in the 

 woods, but the largest supply of fuel probably comes from slabs at 

 sawmills and tOps and limbs left in the woods by log cutters. The 

 mills in Michigan and Wisconsin which saw maple logs find large 

 sale for slabwood in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, 

 and other cities and towns on the Great Lakes. 



DISTILLATION. 



Maple is one of the three principal hardAvoods used for distilla- 

 tion, the tWo others being beech and birch, as previously described. 



Ashes ai'e so often a waste product that their value is seldom 

 thought of, yet they have been and still are of industrial importance. 

 Sugar maple stands first as a producer of the commodity. Almost 

 immediately after the settlement of this country the colonies shipped 

 ashes to England. In 1621 the Virginians were selling it there at 

 6 and 8 shillings per 100 pounds, but the different species which pro- 

 duced the ashes are not recorded. Later 80 per cent of the ashes 

 exported from Boston and New York was made from sugar maple. 

 In the maple regions just over the line in Canada the burning of 

 ashes was made a business, and doubtless the same business was 

 found in near-by parts of the United States. Annual exports of 

 potash and pearlash from Canada, at a comparatively recent period, 

 represented 20,000 barrels of ashes. Most of the material is used to 

 make soap for the British Navy.^ 



The use of ashes in this country in former times for making soap 

 was very general. In farmhouses and villages each family made its 

 own, just as it made its own clothing and shoes. Wood ashes — not 

 necessarily maple, though that was considered best — an ash hopper 

 where the leaching was done, a lye trough, kettle, gxease, and a sassa- 

 fras soap stick for stirring constituted the usual rural family soap- 

 making establishment. 



Ashes, maple and hickory preferred, were once in very general use 

 for curing meat, particularly bacon. At the present time some of 

 the largest meat packers in this country smoke bacon with sugar- 

 maple wood. Thousands of cords a year are so used. 



1 " The Potash Salts," L. A. Groth, Lonclon. 



