The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1885-05-30
CORKS.
How They are Made and to What Uses the
Refuse is Put.

Refuse is Put.
ats funny what prejudice will do"
said Mr.. c. M. Fay. the cork merchant.
1--WE are compelled to import every
year several thousand dollars worth Of
hand-cut corks. These come chiefly
from Germany. They are not so good
as the machine-cut corks of our own
country, as they vary in SIZE and are
but approximately round. machine
cut cork will always fit the bottle it is
made for Yet some of our old Ger
man brewers, bottlers and druggists are
so preiudiced 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
it peculiar fact, and one showing
how cheap labor can get, that those
corks, cut one by one by hand in Ger
many and brought over here, twenty
five per cent. tariff paid at the Custom
House, and then sold a little cheaper
than our machine-cut corks. The cork
business is growing very rapidly. This
is great country for bottled goods,
and bottles must be corked with some
thing. There are twenty-three cork
factories in the country, but the one in
Pittsburgh, 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 bark comes
/ from Spain and Portugal. There they
keep cork woods. 1t doesn't kill the
tree to take its bark away, and it can
be skinned every six or eight years.
About 81 100000 worth of the raw
| bark is brought to this country everyyear.
| There is no tariff on it, but tariff of
| twenty-five per cent on the manufac-
| tured product. The importations of
manufactured corks run about Sl30,00O
Il year. The cork has to be steamed up
| before it is cut. Corks are made in
thousands of sizes and grades, from the
size of a pin-head up to four meters in
diameter. We keep 600 sizes and
| grades in stock. There's a little cork
| that sells at six cents a gross, and yet
every cork has to be handled three
! times in the manufacture in cut
ting, once in taperimg, and the last
time in asserting one grade from the
others.
None of the bark that comes over in
the ships goes to waste. We used to
| burn the refuse, but we know better
| now. Up between the ioists, right
under the roof OF this building, we have
packed fifteen inches of graduated
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
~ +,,T =, b,,
Of their cars to deaden the sound and
under the roofs to keep the heat out [
sold fifty car loads of granulated bark
to a certain gentleman to pack under
the roofs of his refrigerator cars as u
non-conductor of heat. He has saved
thousands of dollars in ice by the use Of
that substance, and has hoped that none
of his competitors would catch on to 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? Well, this
old castle along the Rhine, the rocks,
hills, trees, vineyard, flowers and birds
an exquisite landscape, is it nOt?-are
all made from cork, pressed like PAPER
mache. 1t is a German no"elty, and a
neat one. Fruit and egg cases, ice
houses and ice machines, are often
packed with the granulated cork, which
costs only two cents a pound"
I'VE beat the old world at cutting
corks, but it is rather strange that
America should import tons of straw.
Yet we do every year buy immense
quantities of straw in Germany in the
form of bottle-covers. These covers
cost eight dollars thousand, and they
are handmade. They can not be made
for onefourth the sum in this country
until somebody gets up a machine to dc
it with. We import something like
100,0 900 of these covers every month.
All of these little tinfoil caps for wine
and soda bottles come from Paris A
New York firm has tried to compete,
but they can't do it. We have $50, 600
at the depot, Just arrived from Paris
to-day. They are shipped in hermetic-
ally sealed cases. But this country leads
in wooden ware. Perhaps you don't
know it, but the best wooden ware
maker in the United States, old man
Bauerle, carried on business in Chicago
for twenty-five years. He is now over
| Ill MlcnlSdu, Ill lnc IilHDcI COuHJlI
making faucets, bungs, bung starters
wooden shovels, cork drivers and vine
gar measures and tunnels, each out OF
one piece of wood without Joint OF
seam.
"As for bungs, Cincinnati might
properly be called the bungtown of
America, as there are made all the
bungs used in this country. One fac
tory there ships 200 barrels of bungs
every day" - Chicago Herald.