Connecticut western news., 1885-10-21
A SHORT CORK CHAPTER.
A Light Subject, and Yet One
 Full of Interest.
Where Cork Bark Comes From, and How
 it is Utilized in Various Ways.

"Its funny what prejudice will do," said a well-known cork merchant I've are compelled to import every year several thousand dollars worth of hand-cut corks. These come chiefly rom Germany. They are not so good as the machine-cut corks of our own country, as they vary in size and are put approximately round. A machine cut cork will always fit the bottle it is made for. Yet some of our old Ger man bottlers and druggists, are SO preIudieed in favor of the products of fatherland that they will buy hand cut corks every time Of course, price may have something to do with it, for its peculiar fact, and one showing how cheap labor can get, that those corks cut one by one by hand in Germa- ny are brought over here, tariff paid, and then sold little cheaper than our machine-cut corks. The cork busi- ness is growing very rapidly. This is a great country for bottled goods, and bot ties must be corked with something. There are twenty-three cork factories in thecountry, but the one In Pittsbur gh of (which we are the branch, works up little more than one-half of all the bark imported every year.
 Cork, you know. is the bark, not the wood, of the cork oak. All our barks come from Spain and Portugal. There they keep cork woods. It doesn't kill the tree to take its bark away, and it can be skinned every six pr eight years. About s1,OOO,O 900 worth of the raw bark is brought to this country every year. There is no tariff on it, but tariff of 25 per cent, on the manufactured product. The importations of manufactured corks run about s130,Q0O year. The cork has to be steamed up before it is cut, Corks are made in thousands of sizes and grades, from the sizes of pin head up to four meters in diameter. We keep 600 sizes and grades in stock. There's little cork that sells at 6 cents a gross, and yet every cork has to be handled three times in the manufact- ure-once in cutting, once in tapering, and the last time in asserting one grade from the other.
 "None of the bark that comes over in the ships goes to waste. We used to burn the refuse, but we know bet ter now. Up between the joints, right under the roof of this building we have packed fifteen inches of granula- ted cork. Last summer this upper floor was as cool as any floor in the building. The heat can't get through that cork protector. The palace car builders use the same stuff to pack un- der the floors of their cars to deaden the sound and under the roof to keep the heat out I sold fifty car loads of RlduuldIC0 UdIh lO d CcIldlu BcuIlc- man to pack under the roofs of his re- frigerator cars as non-eonductor of heat. He has saved thousands of dol lors in ice by the use of that substance, and has hoped that none of his compet- itors would catch onto the scheme. But he hoped in vain.
 "The finest of the refuse is used by picture-frame makers in decorations. They sprinkle it on their bronzed or japanned frames. See that picture We'll, this old castle along the Rhine, the rocks, hills, trees, vineyard, flow CTS and birds-an exquisite landscape, is it not ?-are all made from cork, pressed like papier mache. It is a German novelty, and a neat one. Fruit and egg cases. ice houses and ice machines, are often packed with granulated cork, which cost only two cents pound.-Chtcdgo Herald I